FF2013: 3 New Comics

3 New Stories, Cosplayers #1-2 by Dash Shaw.

The major alternative publishers have all but stopped publishing comic book comics, so it was quite a surprise when Fantagraphics dropped 3 New Stories on an unsuspecting public in 2013. According to the comics database and my notes here, Fantagraphics had published no new pamphlet series since 2006 (although Tales Designed To Thrizzle, started in 2005, continued to appear irregularly throughout the years).

I would assume that publishing art comics pamphlets in the current market is a money-losing proposition, but some artists like the format. I would guess that that’s why these comics were published like this, with ads (even however untraditionally produced) and all. Shaw had previously released a number of (pretty successful, I think?) graphic novels.

In the first story in 3 New Stories, Shaw does his “reproduce paintings under drawings” thing that he would use more at length in his New School graphic novel, also released around this time.

It’s often difficult to make out what the paintings (and sometimes photos) are supposed to be, and whether there’s any connection between them and the storyline.

Like here, where the father has sold off all the furniture, and they’re eating (the dog) on the floor of the apartment, there’s a picture of a desert landscape underneath. It adds a dissonance to the already dissonant story. It’s rather unnerving cumulatively.

Oh, yeah, it’s a wonderful story.

The second piece is Shaw apparently adapting a Girls Gone Wild segment. It’s fun.

And rounding out the issue is a brutal story about a future Bronx children’s prison.

The first issue of Cosplayers, released the year after 3 New Stories, is about two girls who are making no budget films in a rather original manner: They don’t tell the other people in the films that they’re in the films. So it’s a different version of “cosplaying” than you’d think looking at the cover.

Heh heh. Fashion advice, too.

It all feels so real.

In the next issue the protagonists go to an Osamu Tezuka convention and do the cosplay thing. (And meet up with some nerds.) It’s drawn in a simpler line than the 3 New Stories pieces. All the figures are more blunt.

Reading these comics, I’m mostly just flabbergasted how much emotion Shaw manages to convey. It’s all so tense and feels so important, both to the characters in the stories, and to me as a reader. I really want to find out what’s going on.

And funnily enough, Cosplayers was recently published in a collected edition, which I haven’t read yet, but it’s somewhere over in that stash of unread comics…

Give me an hour and I’ll read it and get back to you on whether the collected edition is any different from the comics.

I’m back!

The storyline hasn’t changed much, but the material from the first issue was completely redrawn. Here’s a page from the original (printed on very glossy paper, by the way):

p1320915

And here’s the new version (on non-glossy paper, and somewhat smaller format):

The material from the second issue hasn’t been redrawn, but the colouring has been touched up on some pages.

In addition to those changes, about fifty new pages were added to the end.

There’s a story about Hulu approaching our heroes to make a professional version of their cosplay films, with a somewhat predictable storyline.

And a story about a very wise guy working in a comic book store. (That’s Cold Heat by Frank Santoro and Ben Jones, but Shaw did a special, I think…)

The Cosplayers book is, of course, a very enjoyable book, but I think I may have preferred the floppies. It’s difficult to say, though: Reading the story twice over a couple of hours isn’t the normal way you’d read comics.

Anyway, Shaw has a number of new books out at the moment (I think perhaps Doctors is the latest one (and which I managed to buy two copies of, for some reason or other)), and it’s also rather good. I think the only Shaw book I haven’t enjoyed was Bottomless Belly Button, which I think was akin to Blankets: Not very exciting.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

FF1999: Death & Candy

Death & Candy #1-4 by Max Andersson.

Max Andersson is a Swedish cartoonist who make nightmarish stream of consciousness comics.

Andersson’s style takes me back to early 80s New York newave comics: Macabre and funny stuff in a blender. Here’s Car Boy, one of Andersson’s more recognisable characters.

The print quality of the first issue is variable. Some of the pages look washed out, while others are fine.

I think most of the material for Death & Candy was new, but this one is a reprint from a French magazine. Andersson is a contributor to anthologies all over the world, which might help explain the less-than-annual schedule Death & Candy was published at.

Andersson’s mixture of grotesque and sweet is endearing, but the main attraction is perhaps his gorgeous artwork with those juicy inks…

The stories mostly don’t really go anywhere, but when you’re having this much fun, who not stay put? This feels like a very dream-inspired apartment…

The title of the comic book is Death & Candy, who are two characters that Andersson had used earlier. Hm… I just read a bunch of their adventures, but where? Hm… Oh, yeah, I was in Sweden the other month and got one of his collections. Anyway, the only appearance of these characters in this series are for four pages in issue three, which is slightly perverse. But it’s a good title, anyway.

The last couple of issues are dominated by a collaboration with Lars Sjunnesson, “Bosnian Flat Dog”, which is even more stream-of-consciousness than Andersson’s solo work. Here they explain that they’ve forgotten what the narrative was all about.

The artwork is messier in the collaboration than in the solo stuff, too, but it’s rather funny.

Andersson is still publishing stuff today, and I’ll have to get that book, I think.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

WFC Viet Nam: Xích Lô

It’s a very moist film.

Sure, it’s aestheticizing poverty and stuff. Inscrutable film, great actors and cinematography.

Cyclo. Tran Anh Hung. 1995. Viet Nam.

Ginger Kaffir Limeade

limes sugar 1 part ginger syrup 1 part cointreau 3 parts vodka

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

This post is part of the World of Films and Cocktails series. Explore the map.

FF1999: Spicecapades

Spicecapades edited by Queen Itchie.

By 1999, I would have thought that Spice Mania had subsided? So it was probably too late publish this to cash in, but perhaps that wasn’t the point, anyway…

So what’s up here? If not a cash grab, is it an honest appreciation or ironic appropriation?

“No thanks to all you comic book snobs”, and then “with nothing to read but Ziggy books”. If that’s not comic book snobbery, I don’t know what is.

There are several essays here, and most of them have some kind of variation of those paragraphs: People who like comic books suck (which is generally true, I think), and… and… somehow that makes the Spice Girls important. Somehow.

This is apparently a drawing of the editor, who may or may not be called Jenny Nixon? It’s all so confusing.

Beto Hernandez does a page…

Why so defensive? If you like the Spice Girls, why spend all this time moaning about people who don’t? (Moaning by Peter Landau.)

Sarcasm by Kaz.

The best piece in the book is by Peter Bagge. His love for pop music in general and the Spice Girls in particular is unabashed and uncomplicated.

A center fold poster by Danny Hellman.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

FF1997: Poot

Poot #1-4 by Walt Holcombe.

The last three issues of this series are in a format that’s a bit smaller than standard-size US comics, while this first one is very small indeed.

Around this time, there seemed to be a lot of comics in vaguely this style: Slick, cartoony, anthropomorphic and wistful tales of love and friendship (i.e., Goodbye Chunky Rice and… er… you know). This one is more than a bit weird:

Here we see the snail character doing self-harm by rubbing against a salt lick.

The main story (about a bug and a water nymph?) is apparently somewhat autobiographical.

The final issue concludes with this page by Penny van Horn, which is an interesting thing to do.

Anyway, while it’s all very nice and wistful, I must admit to being rather confused most of the time on a page-to-page basis about just what exactly is happening. On the left-hand page we see the snail (in his car) colliding, and then pressing a button that apparently fires an ejector seat. (We can tell by the “EJECT!” sound effect.)

So he flies off into the night… and then we get a shot of the car that then explodes? And a tire goes off to the left? OK?

And then we see a big animal with two lovebirds on its tail. We get the sound effect “LAND!” Is the snail landing on the animal? No… doesn’t seem like it? So what’s landing? The bug is whistling? Why? Then the nymph approaches… and the bug pays somebody who has a hat in their hand…

OOOH! Right. That’s a flying squirrel? Who flies around as a service? Right. So the snail has nothing to do with this after all.

I found that every seven pages was like this, where it was not immediately obvious what’s going on; you have to decipher the action a lot.

And so it’s over.

Holcombe hasn’t published a lot of comics. His brief King of Persia graphic novel won the Eisner award in 1997, and ten years later his Things Just Get Away From You book was published.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.