Random Thoughts

Swamp Preacher #1 by David Sandlin.

Sandlin is an artist who’s only done a handful of comics, I think. He’s had a few pieces in Blab, I seem to recall.

This magazine sized book is strikingly printed in burgundy and green (and no black ink), giving the pages a muddy, swampy look very apposite for the story.

Which is basically a preacher/salesman ranting away, telling his life story. Sandlin mostly illustrates his outlandish story as he is telling it, but there’s these smaller, saner panels scattered around that hints at a less incredible upbringing. It’s a simple trick, but the effect is really unnerving here, somehow.

Googling Sandlin a bit now, I see that he was born in Ireland, but his parents moved to Alabama when he was a child. That is, perhaps, reflected in this book…

I don’t know whether Sandlin planned on making any further issues of Swamp Preacher, but he seems to be saying so here. Of course, that could be Sandlin just having a laugh.

Sandlin won a Guggenheim a couple of years ago, and is still doing artwork today, but he seems to have stopped publishing comics.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Amazons by Frank Stack.

Frank Stack is a first-generation underground artist: His first underground comic was published in 1962 (The Adventures of Jesus), but he hasn’t published that many books. Amazons is one of his rare 80s/90s solo floppies, and I don’t know whether it’s an original work, or whether it’s a collection of pieces serialised in an anthology somewhere.

Stack writes a three-page introduction where he explain his interest in the Amazon myth (or history, depending on who you ask).

The Greek soldiers sound more realistic here than in any other depiction I’ve seen.

Lots of action.

Stack’s artwork is clearly identifiable as being underground, and his cross-hatching technique is a wonder to behold. He uses all these different line weights, from solid to extremely thick, in varying densities, all parallel on the same object, but changing direction from object to object. Some people who shade with hatching to this extent often end up with grey-looking pages with little variation in intensity, but Stack’s pages are very, very readable.

He’s not that serious about all the fighting, though, and the soldiers often veer off onto semantic tangents.

As an introduction to the final chapter, we see the artist himself (probably) being challenged by a friend as to whether Amazons existed or not. I love that drawing of the artist.

Stack has continued to publish books sporadically after Amazons. His most famous one is probably Our Cancer Year, written by Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner. Fantagraphics finally published a collection of various Stack works (many published under the name Foolbert Sturgeon) as Foolbert Funnies: Histories and Other Fictions last year.

Hm… Have I forgotten to buy that? I can’t recall… Oh, it’s over there in the ever-growing “to be read” pile. When I’ve finished this blog series, I should be able to make a dent in it, I hope…

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Whotnot #1-4, Sleepy: The Early Daze by Jeremy Eaton.

Eaton is probably most well-known for his alternative weekly strip “A Sleepyhead Tale” from the late 80s/early 90s. Fantagraphics released a handful of collections of that series, but only one of them are in floppy format, so I get to skip the rest for this blog series! Haha! (I’ve got them here somewhere, though.)

Sleepy: The Early Daze collects some early strips. They’re all basically like this: It’s a retelling of a dream that doesn’t really … seem convincingly dream-like. It veers a bit into Zippy territory, I think. Which is fine.

Whotnot has the look of a Mad Magazine homage, and it seems to attempt to adhere to that template for the first issue. So you have the cultural critique…

… and a parody of all those “aren’t things weird in Japan, huh?” articles every written. It’s amusing.

The last half of most of the issues are taken up by a serialisation of a story called “Americaville”. I assumed that it was going to be a straight-up parody of Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron from Eightball… and I’m still not sure that it isn’t. But it could also be an earnest attempt at doing something along the same lines, really.

It’s a somewhat abstract story.

Eaton’s imagination is prodigious: Here we have a guy that was born with only half his body selling split-level homes.

But is it funny?

I guess it is, but I’m writing this three days after that most disastrous US elections ever, and my mirth doesn’t seem to want to be stirred by this stuff. It’s probably just me.

And some of Eaton’s satirical subjects are a bit tired. Even if they’re inventively done.

Uh-oh. When Fantagraphics starts offering subscriptions to a series, there’s a pretty good chance it’ll be cancelled soon. I don’t have statistical data to back that up, but this is a post fact world, right?

The readers weigh in.

The fourth issue is quite different from the first three issues. There’s mostly page after page of this kind of stuff. I kinda suspect that Eaton lost interest in the project, because it seems a bit slap-dash, both graphically and humour wise.

Eaton promises to continue the Americaville series. Which is a good way to say “this is the last issue”.

Eaton seems to be doing mostly paintings these days.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.