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Comics College | Gabrielle Bell

Chris Mautner — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:00:55 +0000

Cecil and Jordan in New York

Comics College is a monthly feature where we provide an introductory guide to some of the comics medium’s most important auteurs and offer our best educated suggestions on how to become familiar with their body of work.

This month we’re taking a look at one of the most significant cartoonists to come out of the indie scene of the 1990s, Gabrielle Bell.

Why she’s important

Bell’s stories usually deal with people struggling — either to form an identity, to overcome feelings of poor self-esteem or to overcome the small-mindedness of other people. While she’s mainly known for her autobiographical stories, her comics can frequently veer sharply from reality to pure fantasy without any warning. As a result, her work keeps the attentive reader on his or her toes in a manner unlike any other cartoonist working today. You never quite know how “true” Bell’s stories are or in what direction they will take you, which is the central element I find so exciting in her work.

Where to start

Lucky

The short stories collected in Cecil and Jordan in New York contain some of the best work she’s done to date, particularly the title story (which she adapted with director Michel Gondry for the anthology film Tokyo), about a woman who undergoes a startling transformation and “Felix,” about a young artist who starts tutoring the son of a famous sculptor. Whether she’s dealing with the raw autobiography of “Summer Camp,” or the pure, silly, seemingly improvised fantasy of “My Affliction,” Bell betrays a confidence in her storytelling capabilities and an eye for detail that makes her best work so captivating.

From there you should read

Between 2003 and 2004 Bell did a series of autobiographical mini-comics under the assumedly ironic title of Lucky. Those stories were collected in a similarly titled book published in 2006 by Drawn and Quarterly. The bulk of the book is autobiographical, with Bell chronicling her various anxieties and fears, bad jobs, confusion over how to greet French people and various stories her friends tell her. Far from being drab or dull, Bell’s minimalist, straightforward approach makes these stories seem completely relatable and moving.

Bell attempted to do the pamphlet comic thing again in 2008 with a second volume of Lucky this time published by D&Q. That only lasted two issues, and some of the material is reprinted in Cecil and Jordan, but they’re still worth tracking down anyway, especially the second issue, as it contains a lengthy daily diary that has yet to see the light of day anywhere else.

Ancillary materials

Bell’s earliest work can be found in When I’m Old and Other Stories, published by the now seemingly defunct Alternative Comics. It’s can be rough work at times — you can sense Bell trying to find her voice as she adopts a variety of different art styles and even genres (the decidedly dark Just One Reason Part II marks one of Bell’s few attempts at horror). Still, there’s a more than a bit of solid work to be found here, and you can see the Bell playing with the themes — especially contrasting mundane reality with absurd fantasy — that would come to dominate her work.

Avoid

While she’s certainly had misfires or stories that fell flat, none of Bell’s work thus far has been so egregiously bad that I’d recommend avoiding it.

Next month: Scott McCloud

Comics College | Jessica Abel

Chris Mautner — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 18:00:47 +0000

This month we finally break Comics College’s glass ceiling (what took us so long anyway?) with an in-depth look at one of the many notable female cartoonists to come out of the alt-comix scene of the 1990s, Jessica Abel.

Why she’s important

Abel was one of the leading lights of the alt-comix scene of the ’90s, a warm, observant artist whose richly detailed stories of anxious young people looking for love and success helped propel comics from towards the — if not financial success — then more mainstream acceptance they endear today. And while she may have entered the scene a bit too late to be called a pioneer, there’s little doubt that her work, along with that of peers like Megan Kelso, helped encourage other women to read and make their own comics.

What’s more, she’s been a tireless advocate of the medium, both as a creator and as an educator and editor, shepherding young cartoonists and getting noteworthy work out in the face of a larger public. She may be one of the best ambassadors comics has at the moment.

Where to start

La Perdida

It might be nostalgia on my part, but I think the best place to be introduced to Abel’s work is Mirror, Window, which collects the second volume of Abel’s seminal series, Artbabe. Befitting the author’s own age at the time, the stories here deal with freshly minted adults who struggle with friendships being tested, young love, making drastic changes in the hopes of improving your lot, trying to decide which direction you want the rest of your life to go and other things that plague modern day 20-somethings. Far from being solipsistic, or indulging in whiny navel gazing, Abel presents her stories with a good deal of grace and even poetry at times; her characters are rich in telling, nuanced details and their behavior suggests an author who has sharply observed the world around her. Really, it’s a killer collection of work.

From there you should read

Abel’s next project, and the one that’s won her the most acclaim so far, is La Perdida, a 250-plus-page story of a young woman who moves to Mexico seeking a different life but ends up involved with some seedy characters. And then things take a turn for the worse. Although it takes some time to get all the ducks lined up in the row — this is a very character-based work – Perdida is more of a straight-up thriller than any of Abel’s previous stories, and also one of her darkest works to date. She also adopts a much looser, rougher art style here, which fits the main character’s seeking, confused tone as well as the violence that occurs afterward. It’s not my favorite comic of hers — I find the main character to ultimately be too willfully naive to root for — but it definitely has its charms and has won enough acclaim to be a good next stop on your tour of Abel-land (definitely opt for the collected version, which is much tighter and better than the serialized issues).

Ancillary materials

Abel has had a noteworthy second career as an educator and comics advocate, mainly at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Drawing upon her experience in the classroom she and her husband and fellow cartoonist Matt Madden created Drawing Words and Writing Pictures, an exemplary textbook on making comics. Just about every aspect of comics, from dialogue to scenery to lettering and making mini-comics is discussed at length here, making it the most essential, thorough book on the subject so far.

Madden and Abel are also the co-series editors of the Best American Comics series that Houghton Mifflin puts out every year. These books tend to be more reflective of the instincts of the special “guest editors” that oversee these yearly volumes, but it’s worth noting if just to remark how varied and busy her current workload seems to be.

Those looking to get hear the artist talk about herself and her work can check out The Comics Journal #270. She also did a recent interview with Mike Dawson as part of his TCJ Talkies series.

Finally, Abel has a number of irons in the fire that should appear soon, including a sequel to Drawing Words and a children’s prose novel that has yet to see the light of day. Her most intriguing upcoming project is Trish Trash, Rollergirl of Mars, which Abel has started a Kickstarter project for to help get it off the ground.

Avoid

Life Sucks has a great hook, combining the world of vampires with that of young adult slackerdom. The notion that vampires have to deal with the same shitty jobs, poverty and unrequited love affairs as normal human beings is a great one. Unfortunately, the book, co-created with writer Gabe Soria and artist Warren Pleece doesn’t go much further than that. It seems mostly content to rest on the laurel of its initial premise and doesn’t really develop the cast well enough to get the reader to care too deeply about what happens to them. Honestly, the book feels like a warmed-over movie pitch, but I give Abel and company credit enough to assume that’s not the case. It’s not a horrible book, but it’s far removed from the type of stuff Abel was doing in Artbabe and La Perdida, and not the first book you should turn to when going through her bibliography.

Next month: Gabrielle Bell

Comics College | Grant Morrison

Chris Mautner — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 16:00:03 +0000

Absolute All-Star Superman

Strap yourself in, kids, because this is going to be a big one, as we run through the lengthy and considerable career of one of mainstream comics’ biggest stars, Grant Morrison.

Why he’s important

If nothing else, Grant Morrison is a writer with a definitive vision. A big believer in the power of the superhero genre to inspire hope and change, his stories often — despite his considerable ability to frighten and disturb – are optimistic affairs, suggesting that even in one’s darkest moments, things are never as bad as they seem. That he can frequently pull this type of sincere optimism without seeming saccharine or winsome is a testament to his skill as a writer.

Morrison is not always an easy writer to read. He’ll frequently break the fourth wall, indulge in non-linear storytelling or throw out obscure references. He expects his readers to meet him halfway and often a bit of work is required to suss out exactly how everyone moved from plot point A to B. Usually this type of effort is rewarded, however, as at his best his writing blends surreal, dense and sometimes elliptical storytelling with a fondness for humanity and a yen for crafting likable, fully rounded characters.

Note: In culling this list together I decided to skip over some of Morrison’s single-issue stories, anthology contributions and unfinished projects (like those two issues of The Authority). Otherwise we’d be here all day. Feel free to yell at me about it in the comments section.

Where to start

Doom Patrol Vol. 1: Crawling From the Wreckage

Morrison’s most well-known and beloved work is easily All-Star Superman, and thus makes as likely and new-reader-friendly a place to begin as any. Working with his best and frequent collaborator Frank Quitely, Morrison penned a loving mash note to the Silver Age, Weisenger-era Superman that didn’t ever once come off as nostalgic sentimentality. In many ways, All-Star Superman is a thoughtful treatise on the fragility and splendor of life, with Morrison asking readers what sort of legacy they’d like to leave behind for friends and family after they’ve gone. The series is available in two softcover volumes, or you can buy the whole shebang in one expensive Absolute edition.

Personally though, I feel that Morrison’s run on Doom Patrol features not only some of his best writing ever, but it’s also one of the best, if not the best, superhero comic of all time. Teaming up with artist Richard Case, Morrison created a comic that reveled in playful sense of surrealism and absurdity. New, bizarre ideas and characters seemed to spring off every page — Paintings that eat cities! A villain that has every super power you can’t think of! — only to be tossed aside to make room for the next big notion. But it’s all grounded by the main cast of characters who, despite their odd appearances and complex problems, remain very sympathetic figures. The series has been collected in five six easy-to-find trade paperbacks: Crawling From the Wreckage, The Painting that Ate Paris, Down Paradise Way, Musclebound, Magic Bus and Planet Love.

From there you should read

Flex Mentallo Man of Muscle Mystery Deluxe Edition

After his run on Doom Patrol concluded, Morrison spun-off one of his creations from the series, Flex Mentallo, into a self-titled four-issue mini-series. The comic followed the “Muscle Man of Mystery” as he tried to find his former friend and fellow crimefighter, The Fact, while also focusing on a burned out rock star calling a suicide prevention line who may or may not be imagining the whole Mentallo storyline. Working again with Quitely (who does some of his best work to date here) Morrison lays out his entire feelings about the superhero genre and why he’s so sweet on it. As manifestos go, it’s a pretty sterling one. Though it’s long been out of print, it’s scheduled to come out in a deluxe hardcover collection early next year.

Morrison’s other great superhero project is the wildly ambitious Seven Soldiers of Victory. The idea was to create a loosely interconnected series of comics, each starring a semi-obscure character from the DC Universe: Klarion, the Guardian, Mister Miracle, the Shining Knight, etc. It all builds up towards an epic battle against a nefarious enemy from the future, the catch being none of the characters ever meet (at least not for more than a few seconds). Really, it all comes together a lot better my meager description would suggest and features some great art from folks like Doug Mahnke, J.H. Williams III, Frazier Irving and Ryan Sook. The whole blessed extravaganza has been collected in two hardcover volumes.

At the same time Morrison was pushing the dada envelope in Doom Patrol, he was cheerfully breaking the fourth wall in Animal Man.The series started off as a familiar second banana character revamp, with art by Chas Truog, but quickly became something deeper and stranger as main character Buddy Baker started fighting for animal rights and inadvertently found his world literally coming apart at the seams, with the end result being a meeting between the character and his creator. The entire storyline is collected in three volumes: Animal Man, Origin of the Species and Deus Ex Machina.

While I disagree somewhat, many consider The Invisibles to be Morrison’s definitive work. Certainly it’s one of his most fondly remembered works and the one that won him a decidedly devoted audience. A superhero/spy story that draws on countless conspiracy theories, the Invisibles follows a clandestine group of operatives who work at overthrowing a shadowy Illuminati-type group that manipulates humanity and history behind the scenes. The first half is excellent, but it begins to falter somewhat in the second half before gaining steam again, perhaps in part due to the fact that Morrison fell gravely ill while writing the series. You can read the whole thing via seven volumes: Say You Want A Revolution, Apocalipstick, Entropy in the U.K., Bloody Hell in America, Counting to None, Kissing Mister Quimper and The Invisible Kingdom.

Rounding out Morrison’s collaborations with Frank Quitely is We3, a surprisingly effective sci-fi revamp of The Incredible Journey with a cybernetically outfitted (and incredibly dangerous) rabbit, cat and dog on the run from the military that wants to “decommission” them and trying to find their original owners. In a rather neat feat, Morrison manages to give all the animals speaking parts without ever having them lose their animal nature or resorting to easy sentimentalism. As violent as this book can be, it’s hard to reach the end with a dry eye.

And then you should read

Seaguy

The Filth was Morrison’s follow-up to The Invisibles and something of a flip side to the latter’s more positive, rebelling against the status quo attitude. I think it’s a more successful book though it certainly has its detractors. It’s about an average schlub of a man who (re)discovers he’s actually the member of a super-secret organization devoted to maintaining the “status q” known as The Hand. Or maybe he’s a pedophile who’s starting to hallucinate because he can’t handle the fact that his beloved cat is dying. Morrison keeps readers guessing the true nature of the story’s “true” reality all the way up to the end and beyond. It’s one of the writer’s densest, most challenging books to date largely, but a hell of a ride, largely due to the considerable artistic abilities of Chris Weston.

Seaguy and its sequel, the yet-to-be-collected Seaguy: The Slaves of Mickey Eye, is an energetic, dystopian superhero fable dealing with a scuba-outfitted hero who slowly comes to realize the seemingly perfect, amusement-park world he’s living in is a facade hiding lots of nefarious goings-on. It’s a fun, affecting ride, largely abetted by the cheerfully clean styling of Cameron Stewart. Morrison has promised a third and final Seaguy series but as of yet nothing has been announced.

Morrison must have a deep fondness for Oscar Wilde. How else to explain Sebastian O, which re-imagines the author of The Importance of Being Earnest as a witty assassin, wrecking havoc on the establishment that sent him to prison decades ago? It all wraps up a little too quickly, but longtime collaborator Steve Yeowell and Morrison manage to spin a clever and occasionally disquieting steampunk ode to Wilde and his contemporaries as well as giving a fat raspberry to the voices of censorship and repression.

One of Morrison’s most recent Vertigo books is the just-collected Joe the Barbarian, a charming fantasy story about a boy who, in the midst of a diabetic seizure, imagines himself transported to a fantasy kingdom where he is “the chosen one” who can save their world (Notice a pattern here? Morrison’s big on the ability of imagination and fantasy to transform everyday life.) Despite the Vertigo label and seemingly convoluted storyline, this is one of Morrison’s most direct, straightforward works ever and his first and only all-ages styled book to date. He and artist Sean Murphy do such a fine job here that you wonder why he doesn’t try his hand at this type of thing more often.

Though the bulk of his work has been done for DC/Vertigo, Morrison spent some time a decade or so ago at Marvel. The most notable fruit of his labors there was his run on the New X-Men, where he shook up and in some cases completely altered the status quo on the long-standing, convoluted superhero soap opera series, laying lots of established back story to literal waste and giving a hipper sci-fi edge to the proceedings, all while re-emphasizing the adolescent angst that gave the series’ its heart. It all suffers quite a bit from the revolving door of artists that came in to handle various arcs or fill-in issues (Igor Kordey’s best work is certainly not represented here). But still, there are some great ideas at work here and some really stunning sequences, usually involving Frank Quitely (there he is again). The best way to experience the series is probably through the latest three-volume set of omnibuses (omnibi?).

Further reading

Final Crisis

Morrison teamed up with Duncan Fegredo for Kid Eternity, a three-issue prestige-styled mini series that was yet another dark revamping of a long-forgotten superhero character, in this case a boy who could summon classic (and dead) characters from history just by saying the word “Eternity.” Teamed up here with a hapless stand-up comedian, the series is basically Morrison’s take on Dante’s Inferno, as the pair wend their way to hell and back in order to save the Kid’s mentor and possibly the human race. It’s a bit muddled at times, but still entertaining.

Having attempted a convoluted mega-crossover series with Seven Soldiers, Morrison got the chance to try something similar with DC’s A-listers in Final Crisis, one of those super-duper “event” stories that plague superhero comics these days. Morrison basically dares to ask the question “What if Darkseid really won?” and then goes on to explore how the Superman and friends manage to pick up the pieces and restore order and justice to the universe. It’s kind of a mess — the divergent elements don’t cohere very well, part of which may be due to the fact that artist J.G. Jones was replaced early on in the series by a variety of artists, including Doug Mahnke. And I recall being very irritated at figuring out at the end that I needed to read some of the tie-in series in order to figure out what was going on. Still, all that tie-in stuff has been included in the collected edition, so maybe it all reads better in book form.

Morrison first made his name in 1989 with Arkham Asylum, a heavily-hyped standalone graphic novel that teamed him up with a pre-Cages Dave McKean. The book had Batman wending his way through the titular mental institution, combating various villains and Jungian archetypes along the way. At the time (and despite the strong sales) it was derided by some fans as being needlessly convoluted and self-important, but I think it’s held up rather well over time, though it does perhaps take itself a bit too seriously.

Those looking for a more straightforward Batman story should check out Gothic, which was originally serialized in Legends of the Dark Knight. The story, featuring some nice art by Klaus Janson, pits the caped crusader against a seemingly immortal killer named Mr. Whisper who’s secret origins may tie into Wayne’s own personal history. It’s one of Morrison’s most simplest and straightforward stories ever and perfect for those who are just looking for a nice Batman story without all the surreal frou-frou.

If you haven’t guessed yet, Batman is clearly Morrison’s favorite superhero. Or, at any rate, he’s the superhero he’s spent the most time with, having not only done the previous two books but also having written the eponymous Batman series from 2007 to 2010. Here he attempted to incorporate every single aspect of the character’s mythos from the past 70-odd years, from the silly to the profound. Again, it’s hard to fault his ambition, but it’s clear certain artists weren’t on the same page as Morrison or weren’t capable of matching his vision and thus the quality and tone vary wildly. Morrison’s run is collected in Batman and Son, The Black Glove (the best of the bunch, with some great art by J.H. Williams III), The Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul (another multi-series crossover Morrison took part in), Batman R.I.P. (where everything comes to a head), and the coda, Time and the Batman, which also re-explains some events from Final Crisis.

Morrison hit the ground running from his Batman run with Batman and Robin, which imagines first Robin Dick Grayson taking over the Batman role in Bruce Wayne’s absence, joined by Wayne’s cocky illegitimate son Damian. This was a deliberate attempt to harken back to the goofy TV show and carefree era of the 60s, while maintaining a bit of menace and gravitas. Overall it’s a more successful run than Batman, though, once again, there are some really awful stumbles depending on who’s handling the artistic chores. You can read the whole thing in Batman Reborn, Batman vs. Robin and Batman and Robin Must Die!

The whole saga came to a head in Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, which found Bruce Wayne traveling through time — here a caveman, there a puritan — but still solving crimes and righting wrongs. Honestly, the whole thing feels a bit perfunctory and is not one of Morrison’s better works. Much better is the series it led into, Batman Inc., which finds Wayne expanding his superhero empire around the globe. So far that series has been pretty solid and though it’s currently on hiatus, there’s no reason to suspect the quality will dip down once it returns.

Even further reading

Vinanarama

Morrison went Bollywood with Vimanarama, a three-issue mini-series he did with Philip Bond about a nebbishy British Asian man who finds himself battling ancient giant monsters bent on destroying the world as well as juggling various personal crises, most notably his impending arranged marriage. On the whole this is slight and more than a bit silly (deliberately so), but it has a devoted fan base among Morrison devotees.

Along with New X-Men, Morrison worked on the series Marvel Boy with artist J.G. Jones. The short-lived comic featured a surly Kree warrior as its anti-hero, who, after having his ship destroyed and friends killed, felt little love for humanity and was more than happy to carve a giant “F.U.” into the New York landscape, in between battles with a villainous armored millionaire who craves his technology. After X-Men, it’s probably Morrison’s best work at the House of Ideas.

Apart from the X-Men, Morrison didn’t get to handle to many of Marvel’s iconic characters, though he did get to offer his take on the FF with Fantastic Four: 1234. This short, slight story features some nice, moody art by Jae Lee as the Richards family find themselves beset with doubt, with Doctor Doom moves in for the kill. The best part in the whole thing is Sue Storm’s verbal takedown of Doom.

Finally, there’s Skull Kill Krew, which Morrison worked on with Mark Millar and Steve Yeowell. The comic, about a group of misfit anti-heroes hell-bent on destroying the Skrulls hiding in society (and presumably plotting world domination) adopts a cheerfully amoral and anarchistic tone as the group merrily goes about slaughtering aliens left and right (and in the end decimates an entire town). The defiant, tongue-in-cheek attitude isn’t for everyone certainly, but there’s something to be said for a superhero comic that comes off as having an attitude without seeming like a cynical marketing ploy.

Millar and Morrison also collaborated on Aztek the Ultimate Man, an original superhero character blessed with a magic suit of armor and given a quest to save the world from … well, you know the drill. N. Steven Harris’ angular art gives the whole thing an off-kilter, claustrophobic edge, which works to the story’s advantage, considering it takes place in an allegedly “sick city.” Beyond the simple “hero saves world” plot is a nice running commentary on the uber-violent, “dark” superheroes that were all the rage in the 1990s that gives the series a little kick.

Aztec’s final fate is revealed toward the end of Morrison’s run on JLA, better known as Justice League of America to simple souls like myself. Morrison took over the then moribund-title in 1997, attempting both a back to basics approach by bringing in heavy hitters like Superman and Batman and giving the series an epic scale by having them face off against some seemingly staggeringly tough opponents. It was an enormous success and garnered a new group of fans for Morrison that had previously found his work alienating or confusing. In retrospect, however, the series suffers a bit from repetition: each plot involves the JLA facing being painted in a corner, either by a super villain or a universe-shattering event, only to come through at the last possible second. The series was also a slave to the vagaries of various plot threads going on in other books, which can be irritating (Superman’s blue and electric! Now he’s normal again! Wonder Woman’s dead! Now she’s not!). And then there’s Howard Porter’s art, which is serviceable at best. The entire run is collected in four oversize volumes, the fourth of which collects also collects JLA: Earth-2, a stand-alone story where the heroes face evil versions of themselves. It’s far, far better than the bulk of the rest of the JLA material, perhaps due in large part to the fact that — you guessed it — it was drawn by Frank Quitely.

Ancillary materials

Morrison teamed up with Mark Waid, Geoff Johns and Greg Rucka for 52, a year-long, weekly series that juggled various plot threads to reveal what was going on in the DC universe after the events of Infinite Crisis. It’s a bit all over the place, but still entertaining. One of the most fun parts is trying to figure out what sections were written by Morrison.

Remember Virgin Comics? At one point they planned a multi-part animated Internet-0nly series based on the classic Indian text the Mahabharata, to be written by Morrison. It all fell apart when Virgin collapsed, but you can read Morrison’s lengthy story pitch and some of his initial scripts in 18 Days, published by Dynamite. The book also features some lavish illustrations by Mukesh Singh that, combined with Morrison’s conceptual ideas, make you wish the project had come to fruition.

An enormous amount of Morrison’s early work, especially his work for 2000AD and other British comic magazines, has yet to be collected in the states, including Big Dave, Bible John and the New Adventures of Hitler. Some of these are available online in various illegal fashions. Probably his most notable early work is Zenith, another epic superhero saga starring a snotty youth who would rather be a pop star than fight crime. It’s a bit too jam-packed, though it settles itself out a bit as it goes on, and you can see a lot of his initial ideas on the superhero genre being laid out here. Eclipse published two volumes of Zenith but those have sadly long since fallen out of print. Supposedly a collected edition will be coming out from 2000AD sometime in the near future but I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting, as Morrison and the publisher have supposedly been at loggerheads about who truly owns the rights to the character.

One early Morrison comic that did get reprinted here in the states was St. Swithin’s Day, which Oni released only to let fall back out of print again. The comic, featuring some lovely art by Paul Grist, follows a sullen teenager who may or may not be plotting to kill Margaret Thatcher (Morrison has gone on record as saying the comic is at least partly autobiographical). The whole thing’s terribly earnest, but sweet in its own way and worth tracking down.

Fans of the classic British TV show The Avengers will want to check out Steed and Mrs. Peel, in which Morrison and Ian Gibson dream up new adventures for the classic spy duo. It’s pretty amusing, but really only if you’re a fan of the source material. BOOM! plans to re-release these comics in January.

Finally there’s Dare, a modern politicalized rethinking of the classic British Dan Dare sci-fi comic done with artist Rian Hughes. As with The Avengers, it helps to be familiar with the source material. Dark but still entertaining, the comic is more of a showcase for Hughes’ considerable talents work than for Morrison’s writing. The story can be found in the Hughes collection Yesterday’s Tomorrows, which is well worth tracking done because Hughes is such a masterful artist.

Avoid

The Mystery Play

Don’t let the subtitle to Supergods fool you. The book is not really about “What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human.” Instead what you get is a rambling, warmed-over, rather problematic (to put it mildly) look at comics history, along with some rather self-aggrandizing reminiscences by Morrison. On the other hand, it is a good place to find out more about a number of events the author has hinted at in various interviews, particularly a transcendental experience he had in Katmandu. More than anything, though, this book was in really bad need of a good editor.

The news that Morrison was going to return to Superman in Action Comics as part of the new DC revamp was heralded by many, but so far the series has proven to be something of a disappointment, feeling tired and rote where it should be vibrant and fun. Perhaps it will improve as it progresses …

Morrison can be a little too “on the nose” sometimes, and that’s absolutely the case with The Mystery Play, a graphic novel team-up with Jon J. Muth that reeks of symbolism and allegory to the point where you want to scream “Enough already.” The story takes place during the modern re-enactment of a medieval mystery play, see, only God gets murdered in the first act. The rest of the book is more of the same painfully obvious allusions that cause the reader (or me at any rate) to wince inwardly when reading them.

That “on the nose” thing also plagues Kill Your Boyfriend a “youth on the run” comic with Philip Bond that despite its apparent desire to shock and awe seems a bit too overly familiar and annoyingly cute. You don’t necessarily have to “avoid” it but I’d recommend saving it for last.

Next month: Jessica Abel

Comics College | Adrian Tomine

Chris Mautner — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:30:16 +0000

After a brief one-month vacation, Comics College is back with a look at the bibliography of one of the brighter stars indie comics sky, Adrian Tomine.

Why he’s important

Tomine initially came to prominence when he was still in high school, self-publishing issues of his mini-comic, Optic Nerve. In some ways it seems he’s been on the defensive ever since then, despite the justified acclaim he’s received. He got accused of selling-out once once he moved over to Drawn & Quarterly. He then got accused of pandering to trendy, hipster “emo” attitudes with his frequent focus on disaffected twentysomethings. Then he was decried by some as creating “stories about nothing.”

None of those things are true, of course. Since teaming up with Drawn & Quarterly in 1995, Tomine has proven to be one of the best short story writers in the industry, creating affecting tales of people plagued by insecurity. He never spells anything out, but he’s a master of naturalistic dialogue and expression, and often able to convey in a few panels a character’s inner thoughts without resorting to wordy thought balloons or text boxes.

If nothing else, he should be admired for stubbornly sticking to the pamphlet format when every other alt-cartoonist of note has grudgingly abandoned it.

Where to start

For new readers coming to Tomine’s work for the first time, Summer Blonde, a collection of Tomine’s later, longer short stories (roughly Optic Nerve #5-8) might be the best place to start. It’s the beginning of what could arguably called his mature period, with Tomine taking more time and care to offer detailed, perceptive portraits of deeply insecure or otherwise emotionally and socially awkward people, “Bomb Scare” and the title story being the best of the bunch.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for a cheaper entry point, there’s the latest issue of Optic Nerve, No. 12, which just arrived in stores last week. It’s a good issue, too, featuring a suburban gardener who attempts to create art by combining his landscape know-how with sculpture only to face derision from just about everyone, and “Amber Sweet,” the story of a young girl who just happens to be a dead ringer for a well-known porn star.

From there you should read

Shortcomings is Tomine’s best work to date by far, but it’s drawn criticism by some for having a main character that’s basically an insufferable asshole. I don’t remember reading any rules of literature that dictated that the lead character had to be likable, but apparently that’s an issue with some readers. It’s a shame, however, as a closer reading, I think, reveals that despite Ben Tanaka’s pathetic behavior, he’s not a character that alien from people we know or even ourselves, especially in his search for love, security and a removal of self-loathing. It’s a near-perfect story of person who desperately needs to alter their way of living yet seems unable to find a way to do so.

Ancillary materials

Scenes from an Impending Marriage

Scenes From an Impending Marriage is a trifle, but it’s a charming trifle, a minicomic Tomine did for his wedding guests chronicling the stress he and his then-fiance went through preparing for their nuptuals. It’s familiar enough material (trying to find the right DJ, mailing invitations, etc.) to bring a smile to anyone who’s gone down the aisle themselves, or witnessed plenty of their friends doing the same.

Finally, there’s Scrapbook, a paperback collection of sketches, illustration art and other ephemera. The most notable thing about this book is the inclusion of a series of uber-short strips Tomine did for Tower Records’ Pulse! magazine, all of which are pretty great.

Avoid

Nothing really. Tomine’s output has been relatively strong over the years with never such a serious drop in quality as for me to recommend you avoid something of his. It’s all good.

Next month: Because you asked for it! (Okay, not really.) Grant Morrison

Comics College | Jack Cole

Chris Mautner — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 19:00:05 +0000

This month, we’re looking at the career of one of the Golden Age greats, Jack Cole.

Why he’s important

In addition to creating Plastic Man (and the original Daredevil), Cole — because he got into comic books right at the start — helped to set the groundwork for the medium for years to come, showing future cartoonists what narrative possibilities the page could hold. After Kirby, Kurtzman and Eisner, he might arguably be the most influential artist of the Golden Age. Though a lot of his early work shows a strong Eisner influence, Cole has a manic, rubbery style which only his most famous creation could match. His figures seemed in a desperate hurry to get from one side of the page to the other and Cole would help them whenever he could with a near-dizzyingset of page compositions. His sense of humor, which eventually shone through the stalwart superhero stuff, prefigured Mad Magazine and Harvey Kurtzman’s by several years, and eventually made him one of the most popular cartoonists at Playboy magazine.

Plus, he’s one of the rare cartoonists to have done it all — comic books, superheroes, horror tales, funny comic strips, gag cartoons — Cole dipped his pen in just about every genre and style the medium offered, and succeeded exceedingly well in each.

Where to start

Jack Cole and Plastic Man

I don’t believe I’ve ever recommended a website as a starting point before, but Cole’s Comics, a blog created by one Paul Tumey, offers about as thorough an introduction to the artist as you’re likely to currently get, though you’ll have to do a bit of hunting around. The site isn’t updated all that frequently, but it remains an excellent warehouse of Cole’s material, with samples from just about every period of the artist’s career with Tumey offering intelligent, insightful commentary.

If you feel the need for something to hold in your hands though, the book to get is Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to their Limits by Art Spiegelman (and designed by Chip Kidd). Spiegelman offers a rather good analysis of what makes Cole’s comics so interesting, and he puts together a pretty good sampling of some classic stories, including “Murder. Morphine and Me,” which contains the infamous “injury to the eye” panel. It’s about as close to a “Best of Cole” book we’re going to get for now.

From there you should read

If you’ve got the cash, you should Plastic Man Archives volumes from DC. Unfortunately they’re $50 a pop (assuming you can find them at retail price at this point) and feature that garish coloring job that drives a lot of fans crazy. To make matters worse, the series ground to a halt after Volume 8, meaning that some of Cole’s best work on the series remains uncollected. Still, if you want to find out why Golden Age fans rave so much about Plastic Man, this is the place to go to.

If you do attempt to track down these books, I’d recommend starting with the later volumes and working your way backward, as it took Cole some time to find his footing with the character, and the first few years are rather straightforward action tales, with little of the zany humor Cole would later insert into the comic.

Ancillary material

Betsy and Me

Several of Cole’s comic book stories can found in a variety of anthologies, like Supermen! and Four Color Fear. Your best bet for tracking down the bulk of Cole’s Golden Age work, however, may be online database sites like the Golden Age Comics or the Digital Comic Museum.

In addition to creating the Spirit knock-off Midnight for Quality Comics, Cole also ghosted on Eisner’s creation for awhile, the results of which can be seen in Vol. 9 of DC’s Collected Spirit series.

You can also try to track down Focus On: Jack Cole, an 78-page Fantagraphics zine by Ron Goulart that Fantagraphics published long ago but allegedly has one of the best biographies of the artist to date.

Avoid

Cole has been so ill-served by the reprint market that there really is no book or collection that I can tell you to stay away from at this point. Such are the vagaries of comic-book publishing.

Next month: Adrian Tomine

Comics College | George Herriman

Chris Mautner — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:33:44 +0000

Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman

This month we’re looking at a man routinely regarded as one of the most significant creators in the history of the medium, and his central work one of the finest comics has ever produced. I’m speaking of Mr. George Herriman.

Why he’s important

Herriman and his most-famous strip, Krazy Kat, have received so many accolades and is so beloved and well-regarded (it routinely hits the No. 1 spot on many “best of” lists, including the Comics Journal’s Top 100 list), for many reading Krazy Kat can feel like a rite of passage, something they “ought” to do, like reading War and Peace or watching PBS.

Krazy Kat is far from a chore, however. Indeed, it is rarely anything less than a delight to read, although it can be a bit challenging for newcomers. The early strips are dense with wordplay, while the later strips take on the quality of near-abstract paintings at times. Then there’s Krazy’s off-kilter dialogue (“If only I could be star or a moom or a komi or ivin a solo eeklip. But me, I’m nuttin”). Thus, whichever book you decide to dive into first, I’d recommend taking your time. Read (and reread) the strips slowly and don’t feel the need to rush through.

Where to start

I usually try to avoid recommending out-of-print books, especially for the ”Where to Start” category, but I firmly believe the best place to begin is Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman by Patrick McDonnell (of Mutts fame), Karen O’Connell and Georgia Riley de Havenon. It’s got everything a newcomer would need: a well written biography about the man and his work and a healthy sampling of daily and Sunday strips taken from various decades. McDonnell and company did enough of a bang-up job here that it’s worth tracking down a copy, especially if you’re a neophyte.

From there you should read

Krazy & Ignatz

If you liked that initial offering and want to dig deeper, the next logical choice is Fantagraphics’ lovely collection of Sunday strips, dubbed Krazy & Ignatz. There are currently 12 volumes in print — Love in a Kestle or Love in a Hut; A Kind Benevolent and Amiable Brick; There is a Heppy Lend Fur, Fur Away; Love Letters in Ancient Brick; A Mice, A Brick, A Lovely Night; A Kat a’Lilt With Song; Necromancy by the Blue Bean Bush; A Wild Warmth of Chromatic Gravy; Shifting Sands Dusts its Cheecks in Powdered Beauty; A Brick Stuffed With Moon-Bims; A Ragout of Raspberries and He Nods in Quiescent Siesta — with the final (but actually third) volume, At Last My Drim of Love Has Come True, due in stores later this year. Each volume collects about two years worth of material, except for the first two and Drim, which collect three.

You don’t, by the way, need to read the volumes in any particular order, chronological or otherwise. Certainly it’s interesting to see how the strip developed and evolved over time, but it won’t hamper your appreciation of the material. Nor is there any particular volume I’d suggest you begin with — they’re all good. I’m partial to the later, color strips, and Chromatic (which is where the color strips begin) features a fantastic essay by Jeet Heer about Herriman’s racial roots and how it affected the strip, but beyond that you start with any volume.

If all those books seem like too much shopping for you, Fantagraphics has collected much of the same material in two hardcover volumes, with a presumed third one coming along the way sometime in the near future.

On the other hand, if you want to catch a glimpse of what the strip looked like when it originally ran in newspapers, consider shelling out some serious coin for Krazy Kat: A Celebration of Sundays. This oversize volume, from Sunday Press Books, prints a collection of Sunday strips in their original 14 x 17″ printed size, along with samples of Herriman’s pre-Kat comics.

Ancillary material

Krazy Kat: A Celebration of Sundays

George Herriman did a lot of other strips prior to (and in some cases concurrent with) Krazy Kat. Sadly, most of them are unavailable in print. The Comics Journal #287, however, (i.e. featuring the Jeffrey Brown interview) contains a healthy sampling of strips like Stumble Inn, Gooseberry Sprig and Baron Mooch. In addition, Allan Holtz has also been posting a number of editorial cartoons Herriman did for the L.A. Examiner over on his Stripper’s Guide blog.

Herriman profusely illustrated a series of books by newspaper columnist and poet Don Marquis about a poetic cockroach and a cat that thinks it was Cleopatra in a previous life. The series of books were remain quite popular in certain literary circles, and collected versions of the Archy and Mehitabel stories are still available in various forms on Amazon and elsewhere on the Internet.

Avoid

Most of the Krazy Kat animated cartoons, especially the ones done in the 1920s for Columbia Studios, are subpar, with the titular Krazy bearing more of a resemblance to Mickey Mouse than Herriman’s creation. Don’t load up your YouTube browser expecting to find anything even close to the sort of magic Herriman worked on the page.

As far as books go, Eclipse Comics originally started collecting the strip back in the 1990s before the company went belly up. You can still find copies of the book in various places hither and yon, but since they duplicate the material found in the Fantagraphics books, they’re more than a bit redundant and not worth picking up at this juncture, nice as they are.

Next month: Jack Cole

Comics College | Jason

Chris Mautner — Fri, 27 May 2011 21:00:43 +0000

I Killed Adolf Hitler

With a few notable exceptions, most European cartoonists have a tough time getting noticed by U.S. audiences. That’s definitely not the case, however, with this month’s Comics College entry, the Norwegian artist John Arne Sæterøy, better known to most American readers by his pen name, Jason.

Why he’s important

Well, for starters, he’s just so consistently great. Since his U.S. debut in 2001, Jason has produced 15 books, with nary a drop in quality. More to the point, he’s been able to use and play with a lot of familiar genre cliches — movie monsters, the big heist, the man accused of a crime he didn’t commit — and make them seem fresh and inviting.

That’s largely because his characters are usually grounded in a strong emotional reality. What often drives them are not simplistic ideals about right and wrong but love, longing, guilt and anxiety, the same stuff that drives most of us. What’s especially fascinating about his work, though, is how he’s able to convey all these roiling emotions with such a placid, minimalist style. His characters rarely register anything other than a placid indifference to their surroundings, yet simply though context and some exquisite pacing he’s able to ensure the reader is fully aware of what’s going on behind those animal faces and pupil-less eyes. Anyone interested in learning about timing and tempo in comics to should be studying Jason’s comics.

Where to start

Hey, Wait was the first book that introduced America to Jason and it’s an extremely good book, but at this point I think I Killed Adolph Hitler serves as a better introduction as it’s more indicative of the artist’s interests and overall style. A lot of his familiar tropes can be found here: the blend of sardonic wit and affecting emotional drama, an awkward and occasionally one-sided romance and a playfulness with familiar genre tropes, in this case the time travel paradox. It also happens to be one of his best and most iconic works so far.

From there you should read

Hey Wait

As I mentioned, Hey Wait ... was Jason’s first book to be published on North American shores. The stark, heartbreaking tale, which shows how a ugly childhood tragedy affected the knocked many readers for a loop and even if if it doesn’t suggest the directions his work would later take it still packs a strong emotional wallop. Keep a box of tissues handy.

One of my personal favorite Jason books is The Last Musketeer, which puts noble swordsman Athos in the modern world, dissolute, but willing to face off single-handedly against a horde of Martian invaders. It’s a clever, frothy riff on classic adventure tales that nevertheless manages to tug your heart strings on the last page.

I’m also partial to The Left Bank Gang, a Reservoir Dogs-style thriller that re-imagines the modernist authors Hemingway, Joyce, Pound and Fizgerald as cartoonists who have to turn to robbing banks in order to pay their bills. A sly comment on the financial vagaries of working in comics? More than likely. A sharp riff on a familiar genre? Definitely.

In case you haven’t caught on yet, Jason is rather partial to crime stories and noirish thrillers, a fact evidenced by Why Are You Doing This, a Hitchcockian tale about an ordinary man who is framed for a murder he didn’t commit. And, of course, he finds one woman who believes in his innocence and is willing to help him. It’s a credit to Jason’s considerable talents that he’s able to create such a memorable story out of such familiar material.

Ancillary material

Those who want to see what Jason’s stories look like when he draws honest-to-goodness people should check out Pocket Full of Rain, which collects a number of early short stories and strips, most of which find him experimenting with a variety of styles and influences. If you want even more background information on the artist, track down a copy of Comics Journal #294, which features a lengthy interview with him.

Avoid

Of the five stories in Low Moon, two are excellent, two are “meh,” and one is decidedly lackluster. A lot of cartoonists would kill for a final tally like that but considering Jason’s overall track record, that makes Low Moon easily the weakest book in his bibliography. That doesn’t necessarily mean the book is to be avoided — those two stories are rather excellent after all — but it might be advisable to save that particular book for last.

Next month: George Herriman

Comics College | Joe Sacco

Chris Mautner — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:00:28 +0000

Safe Area Gorazde: Special Edition

This month we’re examining the bibliography of one of the more interesting and significant cartoonists to come out of the alt-comix movement of the 1980s and ’90s, Joe Sacco.

Why he’s important

There’s not many cartoonists in this day and age who can actually say they invented an entirely new genre virtually from scratch. Sacco can. Oh, sure, there were cartoonists poking at the idea of comics journalism before Sacco (most notably Spain), but it wasn’t until Palestine that the idea of using comics as a form of journalism — to relay information and tell important, human-interest stories about events happening around the world, came to the fore. Few have followed Sacco down his chosen path — perhaps out of a fear of putting oneself on the front line — but the fact is you can draw a direct line from works like Safe Area Gorazde to recent books like How to Understand Israel in 60 Days, AD: After the Deluge and even Ward Sutton’s book reviews. Sacco made it OK for cartoonists to explore nonfiction (that wasn’t necessarily autobiographical).

The novelty of Sacco’s particular niche tends to obscure some of his rather significant qualities as an artist and storyteller. He’s an endlessly inventive cartoonist, capable of creating incredible detailed vistas that give readers a definitive sense of place and time. He’s capable of moving from near-photo-like realism to a Basil Wolverton-ish exaggeration that can perfectly capture, say, a sweaty, crowded night club. In short, he’s an amazingly gifted craftsman, one of the best people making comics out there today.

Where to start

Safe Area Gorazde, Sacco’s story about a small, mostly Muslim town that somehow managed to survive the Bosnian War despite being surrounded by Serb forces, was the book that finally broke Sacco out into the wider public (and helped kick-start the graphic novel boom). It arguably remains Sacco’s best work to date (though some may cite his latest, Footnotes in Gaza, as a contendor; more on that in a minute) and is the best starting point for any newcomer. The good news is that Fantagraphics has just released a Special Edition of the book, featuring reference photos, essays, updates on the people Sacco chronicles and more. Fanta has done a good job filling their Special Edition books with choice extras, so I’d say it’s probably worth ponying up the extra scratch for this version.

From there you should read

The Fixer and Other Stories

The Fixer and Other Stories is a good next stop on our journey, as it continues Sacco’s examination of the Bosnian War with a trio of compelling stores: the title tale, about a former soldier who helps correspondents find the headline-grabbing news they want; Soba, about a warrior-poet soldier who finds it difficult to adjust to peacetime; and the brilliant Christmas With Karadzic, wherein he and other reporters go out on a desperate attempt to meet and interview a known war criminal.

Safe Area Gorazde was the book that won Sacco national attention, but it was Palestine that first pointed the way towards what could be done by mixing comics and journalism together. As the title suggests, Sacco makes no bones about where he stands on the Mideast debate, and while he takes care to not present the Israelis as devils or the Palestinians as saints, there are no doubt those who will balk at anything that even suggests that Israel is unjustified in their use of force. It’s not as strong a book as Safe Area — you can sense the author getting a feel for which tone the material should take, starting with an exaggerated self-deprecation before settling down into a more straightforward serious vibe. Again, I’d recommend going with the Special Edition version, which contains a number of lovely extras like sketchbook samples.

If anything Footnotes in Gaza, Sacco’s most recent book is even angrier than Palestine in tone, though it’s far from a polemic. Covering two barely mulled-over events from 1956, he draws deep connections between the injustices committed more than fifty years ago and the abuses heaped on the people living in the Gaza Strip today, detailing a shameful legacy. It’s nothing less than a tour de force, as Sacco weaves effortlessly back and forth between the past and present and relays countless stories almost lost to the ages.

Ancillary material

Sacco contributed a powerful story of female refugees entitled Chechen War, Chechen Women, in the Mia Kirshner-edited project I Live Here. In fact, Sacco’s done a number of compelling stories for a variety of magazines, most of which have yet to be collected in one volume. Here’s hoping that changes soon.

Sacco was also a regular collaborator with Harvey Pekar on Pekar’s American Splendor series, a sampling of which you can get via the Music Comics collection from Dark Horse.

Folks who want to hear about Sacco’s personal history and read what he has to say on various comics and journalism related topics should check out a very nice interview with Sacco in the Comics Journal Special Edition Winter 2002. I understand there’s also a notable interview with him in the upcoming Comics Journal Issue #301.

Avoid

I don’t know that I’d say you should necessarily avoid this book, but Spotlight on the Genius That Is Joe Sacco, a 57-page one shot collecting his early, early work (mostly culled from the pages of anthologies like Weirdo) is definitely not the place for newcomers to begin, as the focus is on more slapstick and satirical material, particularly on the vagaries of the corporate, work-a-day world. It’s not Sacco’s best work, certainly, and the fact that some stories are repeated in Notes From A Defeatist make it only that much less essential. Save it for when you’ve indulged in everything else he’s done and still want more.

Comics college: Frank Miller

Chris Mautner — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 16:00:53 +0000

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

Strap yourself in for a long read, because this month we’re looking at the rather lengthy and considerable career of one of the most influential comics creators of the past 40 years, Mr. Frank Miller.

Why he’s important

Back in the 80s, there where three books every media pundit trumpeted as the high-water example that comics weren’t just for kids anymore: Maus, Watchmen and Miller’s Dark Knight Returns. While that pairing may seem odd and slightly reductive today (and it did for many then), there’s no question that Miller’s work helped many creators and fans, both in the superhero mainstream and outside it, think beyond the perceived limitations of the medium and helped drag comics kicking and screaming into the modern day.

Aesthetically, he’s one of the most exciting and dynamic creators working in the field today. While even his best work has its share of flaws and his worldview can be … overly simplistic at times, he is never boring.

Where to start

It may seem like a cliche, but his best known and arguably most beloved work – The Dark Knight Returns — is the best place for new readers to be introduced to Miller’s work. All of Miller’s tropes are laid out right there on the page. The superhero fused with noir ethos; the clipped, terse dialogue; the tiny panels that bleed into a huge splash page, the sketchy, delightfully rumpled line (nobody draws trenchcoats like Miller); the TV screens that doubled as panels. If Daredevil made Miller a star and Ronin showed what he was capable of, Dark Knight showed how he could apply his style to the superhero genre, and has served as a framework of sorts for his work since then (not to mention ushering in a host of lesser copycats, but let’s not blame him for that).

From there you should read

Ronin

Some people will tell you that Dark Knight Returns is Miller’s finest work. Those people would be wrong. Miller’s best work by far — no question about it — is Ronin, sci-fi post-apocalyptic saga that combines all of the artist’s influences at the time — Lone Wolf and Cub, Heavy Metal, Will Eisner — and whips it up into a tense, delirious froth.This was Miller’s chance to show everyone what he was truly capable of, what he could do if the restraints were taken off, and he went full throttle. While he’s certainly produced good — even great — work since then, he’s never equaled what he achieved with Ronin.

Of course, Miller is known just as much for his collaborations as he is his solo work. Easily his most fruitful collaboration proved to be with David Mazzuchelli, who worked with him on the excellent Batman: Year One and Daredevil: Born Again. The former retells Batman’s origin by way of Dashiell Hammett, while the latter throws DD through an emotional wringer, pulling apart and examining the tenets of heroism and villainy. Both exhibit some of Miller’s best writing to date and more than earn the high reputation they have among fans, both in and outside the traditional superhero club walls.

Even further reading

Hard Boiled

Many readers and critics didn’t know what to make of The Dark Knight Strikes Again when it first came out and it can definitely be an off-putting book for those expecting something more straightforward and serious, like the first Dark Knight book or 300. But taken on its own terms it’s great fun, a rough, raw, big-footed attempt to make superheroes goofy and fun and snappy again. Don’t try to make too much sense out of it, just let it wash over you.

Miller got made his name back in the 1970s on Daredevil, and that extended run is collected in Daredevil Visionaries Vol. 1-3. Frankly, of all of Miller’s work I think this holds up the least. You can sense him chafing at the bit, frustrated by the conventions of the era, especially towards the end of his run. (Why doesn’t DD just go ahead and kill the bad guy? Why can’t we raise the sex and violence quotient? Do I have to reintroduce DD’s secret origin and powers in every issue?) But if you want to see where Miller got his start, this is where you go.

Miller returned to Daredevil yet again with John Romita Jr. for Daredevil: The Man Without Fear, an attempt to do for Matt Murdock what Batman: Year One did for Bruce Wayne. It’s nowhere near as good as that book, but it’s still a pretty tight, grim read, and well worth checking out for Romita’s visuals as much as Miller’s prose.

In 1990, Miller introduced the world to artist Geof Darrow with the release of Hard Boiled, another over the top action set piece that starts with a wonderfully surreal bang but quickly deteriorates into a standard “man against oppressive forces” plot, though it still retains some comic punch by the end. Miller and Darrow followed that up with The Big Guy and Rusty the Robot, a parody of classic Japanese monster movies and old-school superhero comics that feels strangely reined in by both parties. Both books are worth reading if for no other reason than to feast upon Darrow’s hyper-articulate, to-hell-with-negative-space art, but neither book qualifies as essential.

Ancillary material

Robocop Versus Terminator #1

Miller is many things, but subtle isn’t one of them, which makes him a very poor satirist. This is best evident in the series of books he did with Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons — Give Me Liberty, Martha Washington Goes to War, Martha Washington Saves the World and Martha Washington Dies, all of which are collected (and then some) in The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century. While Gibbons art is stellar, the story itself is limp. Miller goes for big, obvious targets and his arguements (liberals mean well but are ineffectual; republicans are corrupt, evil bastards; you have to fight and risk all for what you believe in) seem tiresome and rote here.

Going back in time, The Complete Frank Miller Spider-Man collects a number of unrelated Spidey stories Miller drew but didn’t write for Marvel back in his early days at the company. Those who like Miller’s art work, particularly his early style, will enjoy this, but there’s nothing exemplary here.

Miller parodied his own macho blustering in Tales to Offend, which, while more than a trifle obvious, is the one exception to the “bad satirist” rule.

Way back in 1992, Miller teamed up with Walt Simonson for the four-issue Robocop vs. Terminator, a fitfully amusing spin-off that never achieves true lift-off, but has some neat moments, especially in playing with the “the past has changed the future! now we must go back into the past again” time-travel hokum.

Speaking of Robocop, Miller ia no stranger to Hollywood, having written the screenplays to Robocop 2 and Robocop 3, both of which apparently were heavily futzed with (Avatar Press adapted the original scripts into comics if you’re curious). Successful adaptations have also been made of Sin City (which he co-directed) and 300 (though Sin City is by far the better adaption). Those successes led Miller to try to direct a movie on his lonesome, a crazy-quilt version of Will Eisner’ The Spirit, which, while visually striking and — again — far from boring, is a truly awful film.

There aren’t a lot of critical writings available on Miller, at least not in print, but interested parties are encouraged to check out The Comics Journal Library: Frank Miller, which contains a number of interviews Miller did for the Journal at various points at his career.

Avoid

Let’s see, I already mentioned A Dame to Kill For, right? That would leave Spawn/Batman, a ugly, cynical team-up with Todd McFarlane that flatters neither contributor.

Then there’s All-Star Batman and Robin. Fans of this series tend to regard it as a parody, but I don’t think it is. It’s self-aware and a bit tongue-in-cheek to be sure, but it revels in its trashiness a bit too much to be a simple parody. This is Miller attempting to “have fun” with Batman, which in this case means being as over the top as possible, which in turn results in a garish, obnoxious mess. Part of my problem with this work may be that I just don’t care for Jim Lee’s art very much. Certainly if you enjoy late-period Miller work like Dark Knight Strikes Again there’s a good chance you’ll like this as well, but this definitely isn’t the place for newcomers to start.

Next month: Joe Sacco

Comics College | Seth

Chris Mautner — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:00:36 +0000

George Sprott 1894-1975

This month we’re going to take a look at the bibliography of the Canadian cartoonist called Gregory Gallant, better known to you and me as simply Seth.

Why he’s important

Wimbledon Green

Along with such cartoonists as Chris Ware and Chester Brown, and Joe Matt, Seth was one of the seminal cartoonists of the 1990s, building on the work started by 80s-era artists like the Hernandez brothers and Daniel Clowes, and helping to bring attention to the medium by telling literate, emotionally complex stores that resonated with a variety of adult audiences. The cultural success that comics eventually received over the past 10 years is due in large part to the hard work that Seth and his contemporaries put into the art form.

Because he works in a style that so deliberately harkens back to the classic gag cartoonists of the early 20th century, and because his stories are frequently set in the past, some critics have made the assumption that his work is all surface nostalgia, a simplistic longing for a idyllic past that never really existed. It’s not. If anything, a closer reading of Seth’s work reveals that he is deeply suspicious of that sort of bygone wistfulness. More to the point, his work instead reflects a concern with the passage of time and mortality, and how our lives and memories can often quickly be swept aside by successive generations. More than just a valentine to the early 20th century, Seth uses that period to ask questions about how culture and the times influence and shape us, and vice-versa.

Where to start

Of all of his books, I think Wimbledon Green makes perhaps the best entry point, as it is easily Seth’s most lighthearted and whimsical work to date. What’s more, in many ways it marks a demarcation part for the artist towards a looser, more organic style.

Though a lark, the book, which tells the story of a mysterious, legendary comic book collecter who lives in a world where such characters can afford to have manservants and gyrocopters in their pursuit of that elusive issue of Green Ghost #1, carries a strong, melancholy undercurrent that keeps it from becoming too much of a trifle, and ruminates on a number of the afore-mentioned themes that resonate throughout the author’s oeuvre.

From there you should read

It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken

Continuing on the ground laid by Wimbledon Green, George Sprott offers a portrait of an elderly TV personality in a small Canadian city, as viewed from the perspective of various people who knew him at different times in his life. I reviewed the book for Robot 6 back in 2009 so I won’t repeat myself too much here except to say that it remains Seth’s strongest work to date.

Seth came to national attention (or whatever the alt-comix equivalent of that may be) in 1996 with the publication of his first graphic novel It’s A Good Life If You Don’t Weaken, a seemingly autobiographical (but really completely fictional) account of the author’s attempts to learn about an obscure New Yorker cartoonist. The good news is time hasn’t dimmed this book’s quality much. It remains a rich, evocative work and the next, logical step for those who want to continue to reading more of his comics.

Ancillary material

Those who have developed a special appreciation for Seth’s unique art style should definitely check out Vernacular Drawings, a lovely coffee-table sized culling of the author’s various sketchbooks.

Both Clyde Fans and It’s a Good Life were initially (and in the case of Fans, continue to be) serialized in Seth’s ongoing series, Palookaville. Never collected in a book, the first three issues are worth tracking down, especially since they show the artist trying his hand at (one assumes) autobiography. The first issue recounts a time where he was assaulted (and apparently had long white hair) while issues 2-3 reveals of how he lost his virginity to an older woman.

If you want to track down even earlier work, I recommend searching the back issue bins for early issues of the first edition Drawn and Quarterly Anthology (i.e., the thin, magazine format) where you’ll find him attempting a number of short, one and tw0-page fictional stories. If you want to see him trying his hand at a more mainstream type of comic, check out the Mister X Archives, where he does the art chores for a few Dean Motter stories.

Seth’s illustration work abounds, and can be found decorating a number of books, advertisements, CD packaging (Aimee Mann’s Lost in Space being a notable example) and DVD covers. He’s also had a second career of sorts as a book designer, most notably on the John Stanley Library and The Complete Peanuts series. Some critics have complained that Seth’s style is so overpowering that it tends to overshadow the work of the artist that’s supposedly the focus of the book. It’s a valid criticism as far as it goes, but I tend to feel that it’s something that only rarely occurs and that on average his art does a more effective job of celebrating the artist in question rather than shouting them down.

Bannock, Beans and Black Tea

Seth has always been something of an armchair historian and critic as well, as his attempts to bring artists like Doug Wright back into the spotlight show. It’s a role perhaps best examplified by the little chapbook, Forty Cartoon Books of Interest, which was bundled along with issue no. 8 of Comic Art magazine. It’s a charming little tour through some of the author’s most treasured books, most of which you’ve probably never heard of before. You can still find new copies of that issue of Comic Art — chapbook included — on the Internet.

Finally, while he’s been interviewed a number of times, the best is probably the one he did with Gary Groth in The Comics Journal #193 (but good luck finding a copy).

Avoid

Last year saw Seth become yet one more alt-cartoonist to abandon the traditional pamphlet format with the release of Palookaville Vol. 20. Designed as an annual as a small book, not unlike recent volumes of Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library, the new format ostensibly gives Seth the opportunity to include different types of stories, art and writing and take more chances (in addition to continuing Clyde Fans).

Unfortunately, vol. 20 comes up a little short — the new chapter of Clyde Fans feels a bit to in media res even for those who’ve been following it all these years, and the concluding story, about a trip to Calgary, is the sort of self-loathing, solipsistic, navel-gazing nonsense that indie comics routinely and unfairly get flagged down for. It’s certainly not a book to be avoided per se, and I’m have the utmost confidence that future volumes will show him knocking it out of the park once again, but this is definitely not the best place for newcomers to start their journey.

Next month: Frank Miller

Comics College | John Stanley

Chris Mautner — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 18:00:46 +0000

This month we’re looking at the career of a Golden Age artist who’s undergone a bit of a rediscovery and renaissance lately, John Stanley.

Why he’s important

Besides being a masterful storyteller, John Stanley is an important reminder that the history of the American comics industry, particularly its Golden Age, is made up of more than superheroes and EC horror titles. There was a diverse amount of material being published that aimed to appeal to a variety of interests and ages (relatively speaking). Most of it, of course, was dreck, but in Stanley’s case craftsmanship and an eagerness to entertain won out. Though he usually dealt with licensed, G-rated material, Stanley refused to hack anything out. His stories are always tightly constructed affairs, filled with memorable characters and a dry, almost macabre, wit that keeps the material from becoming too saccharine.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Stanley is how little his work has aged. It remains as witty, imaginative and fall on the floor funny as it must have seemed to young readers back in the 1950s and ’60s. Stanley’s comics are that rare beast that can be appreciated by both adults and children — our house is frequently filled with discussions of our favorite Lulu stories for example. Bottom line: he’s just plain fun to read.

Where to start

Giant Sized Little Lulu Vol. 1

Even though he didn’t create the character, Stanley is best associated with Little Lulu. As good as Marjorie Henderson Buell’s original cartoons are (and they are very good), Stanley took the character into the realm of the greatness, adding his own unique cast and spinning seemingly endless inspired variations on only a few basic themes (Lulu gets revenge on Tubby and the mean neighborhood boys, Tubby plays detective, Lulu tells little kid Alvin a story). Dark Horse has done an excellent job of reprinting these seminal stories and have 25 volumes in print as of this writing. That can seem like a frightening amount of reading to even the eager reader, so I would recommend neophytes start with the Little Lulu Color Special. While it’s not exactly a “greatest hits” collection, it does have a number of great stories including “Pieces of Eight,” “The Fuzzythingus Poopi,” and “The Case of the Mysterious Nose,” and is a good enough sampler to give you an idea of what lies ahead.

From there you should read

The rest of Dark Horse’s Little Lulu series is the obvious next step. I’d recommend reading them in order. The first couple of volumes have fallen out of print, but Dark Horse has made up for that by bundling them together and re-releasing them as “Giant-Sized” editions.

If you find your Lulu love increasing with each volume, you may want to also check out the Tubby comics, as the character proved popular enough to merit his own spin-off comic. You have a choice in this particular regard, as both Dark Horse and Drawn & Quarterly have been repackaging these old comics. The D&Q volume is the more handsomely produced and the art looks a bit cleaner, but the Dark Horse version is cheaper, the colors are a bit brighter (or, depending on your point of view, more garish) and the first volume includes stories that aren’t in the D&Q collection. It’s really a matter of preference.

Ancillary material

Nancy Vol. 2

Hopefully D&Q plans to reprint some of Stanley’s other ’60s work, including Kookie and Dunc & Lou, in the near future, but in the meantime, you can read samples of those stories, and lots more via the internet, particularly the great Stanley Stories blog. The site offers a good deal of thoughtful appreciation of Stanley’s work and methods, and frequently posts stories he did based on other licenses, like Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker and even Howdy Doody.

While he is known mostly for humor, Stanley did try his hand at a few horror stories, two of which are collected in Art in Time, Dan Nadel’s anthology of interesting, forgotten or just plain odd comics work. What makes these stories worth checking out is how Stanley avoids the typical shocks and gore of the day in favor of slowly building suspense and tension, particularly in the masterful “Crazy Quilt.”

Avoid

This is one of those rare instances in Comics College history where I honestly can’t think of a single work of Stanley’s that isn’t worth reading. While no doubt Stanley has his nadirs, none of them exist in print at the moment. Even at his most mediocre, Stanley is still leagues above just about every single one of his contemporaries.

Next month: Seth

Comics College | Charles M. Schulz

Chris Mautner — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 22:00:15 +0000

Complete Peanuts, Vol. 10

Happy holidays everybody and welcome to another edition of our monthly Comics College feature. As our holiday gift to you, dear reader, this month we’re examining the career of one of the most beloved and acclaimed cartoonists of the 20th century, Mr. Charles M. Schulz.

Why he’s important

At first glance, attempting to cover Schulz’s in a column of this nature seems like a silly venture. After all, his body of work consists mostly of one comic strip, done over five decades and is arguably one of the most famous comics ever known. But for many younger generations, even those who are comics fans, I suspect Peanuts is more of a curiosity than a living work of art; a cute, dinosaur strip that’s a bit too comfortable and familiar, something used to sell life insurance and Dolly Madison cupcakes but has about as much impact on their lives and sensibilities as Beetle Bailey or The Family Circus. It’s a strip for little kids, or for old Gen Xers and baby boomers who grew up watching that Xmas special.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Peanuts remains one of the sharpest, funniest, achingly sorrowful and most moving comic strips ever produced. Time has done little to age its relevance or its emotional power. Those who have balked at delving into the strip because they were forced to watch “It’s Flashbeagle Charlie Brown” at an early age should make the effort at a second look.

Where to start

Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years

Fantagraphics’ Complete Peanuts series seems like the obvious choice, but if you’re delving into Schulz’s world seriously for the first time, and if you haven’t been a fan up till now, then you may balk at starting a collection of $30 volumes, especially since the early years are very much formative ones, and quite different from where the strip ended up.

A better starting point may be one of the many treasury collections out there, and there are lots of them, that offer a “best of” sampler from the various decades. My own recommendation would be either Peanuts: A Golden Celebration or the more recent Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years. You can also try to track down Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz by Chip Kidd, which was quite seminal in it’s ability to cause people to rethink the stip’s artistic merits, though the emphasis is heavily on the early years, as much of that material had rarely seen print before and thus was new to a lot of fans and casual readers.

From there you should read

The Fantagraphics series is the logical next step of course. Ah, but where to start? Assuming you want to dive into prima-Schulz and not necessarily go in chronological order, (again, the first 2 or 3 volumes, though charming, aren’t indicative of the directions Schulz would take the strip) let me suggest that the period from about the mid-1960s to the early 70s (’till say about ’74) is when Peanuts was at its absolute best. A lot of fans tend to prefer the late ’50s/early ’60s stuff, because it’s a bit more melancholy and nastier (at least as far as the treatment of Charlie Brown is concerned), and Snoopy hasn’t stolen the spotlight away from Charlie Brown quite yet. But I think this slightly later period shows Schulz taking more chances, widening his cast and taking some more absurd and even occasionally surreal directions. Whatever time period you opt to dive into first, feel free to go back from there and start with the early, initial volumes and fill in any gaps as needed.

Ancillary material

The Peanuts Collection

A number of biographies of Schulz abound, including Good Grief by Rheta Grimsley Johnson, which is as yet unread by me but has won various plaudits from fans. More notable is Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis. The book reveals much about the author and his relationship to his art, and delves deep into his early life in Minnesota, but it was severely criticized by his children for its portrayal of Schulz as an emotionally stunted, withdrawn father, not to mention several factual errors. My recommendation would be to read it, but then immediately follow it up with Monte Schulz’s rebuttal/memoir that appeared in The Comics Journal #290.

Of course, Peanuts was more than just a comic strip, it was a merchandising machine. A bit of that influence can be glimpsed in The Peanuts Collection, which focuses on Peanuts memorabilia as much as it does the making of the actual strip.

I’m avoiding talking about the animated specials and movies here to focus on the comics (short advice: stick to the holiday specials for the most part) but if you want to look beyond the strip, there’s also A Treasury of Happiness, which collects all the little “gift books” that Schulz published over the years like Happiness is a Warm Puppy and Security is a Thumb and a Blanket. You could argue they aided in the “Hallmarkification” of the strip, but .

Avoid

Common consensus is that the ’80s and ’90s were Schulz’s fallowest periods. I don’t completely agree with that — even when Charlie Brown and Snoopy failed to provide decent material in the mid-80s, Peppermint Patty and Marcie were more than able to pinch-hit (indeed, some of the Marcie/Patty sequences rank among Schulz’s best story runs), and the later strips focusing on Rerun, Linus and Lucy’s little brother, are some of the funniest and most poignant work Schulz ever did. All that being said, those decades may be best approached after having delved deeply in the earlier years and developed an appreciation for the man and his work.

Next month: John Stanley

Comics College | Herge

Chris Mautner — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 21:00:00 +0000

Tintin in Tibet

Welcome and happy holidays to all our Comics College readers. Today, as a post-Thanksgiving treat to you, we’ll be talking a lengthy look at the career of one Georges Remi, better known by his pen name, Herge, and by extension, his most famous creation, the plucky boy reporter Tintin.

Why he’s important

There are only a handful of cartoonists in the world who have had as enormous and significant an influence in comics as Herge has. There’s Osamu Tezuka, Charles Schulz, Jack Kirby and then there’s Herge. The incredible popularity of the Tintin books and their considerable influence on European comics really cannot be overestimated. Artists like Joost Swarte and Yves Challand built their entire careers upon Herge’s style, creating what eventually would be known as the “ligne claire” school. Herge to Eurocomics is sort of like the Beatles to rock music: You’re either influence by it, or you work in opposition to it. There’s no in between.

Plus, Herge’s work remains utterly charming and enthralling after all these decades. Though ostensibly created for younger readers, the Tintin books are some of the few all-ages books that can be read by adults and children alike, without any embarrassment on the former’s part (well, there are one or two exceptions, but we’ll get to that later).

Where to start

The Complete Tintin

Though he did create other characters, Herge is primarily known for Tintin, the crime-solving reporter (even though he mysteriously never files a story) who, with his cadre of friends and little dog Snowy, brings down a rabble of drug pushers, spies, counterfeiters, dictators, warmongers and general bad guys.

Tintin’s American publisher, Little, Brown, has, in recent years, made the decision to package three Tintin stories together in one, much smaller, hardbound volume apiece. It’s not a move I support, quite frankly, as I feel it doesn’t give the reader the chance to fully appreciate Herge’s detailed, precise art in the manner it was initially designed for. Instead, I’d suggest picking up the individual, traditional BD-sized books, most of which are still easily available online. The hardcover volumes are admittedly a cheaper option in the long run though.

Having disparaged the hardcover volumes, I will admit that the Collector’s Gift Set, which collects all of Tintin’s color adventures (minus Tintin in the Congo, more on that in a while) is pretty spiffy looking. Still, at $150 a pop, it’s might not be the first purchase a Tintin neophyte might want to make.

So, all that being said, if you’re going to stick with the hardbound volumes and you don’t want to blow your whole wad on the complete set, then I recommend starting with Volume six, which contains what most Tintinologists consider Herge’s finest moment, the lovely Tintin in Tibet, in which our hero treks to the Asian land in search of a friend he believes has survived a horrible plane crash, even though all evidence points to the contrary. It’s a touching tale about sacrifice, faith and friendship and shows the amount of research and detail the author put into his books. You’ll swear after reading he actually visited the country even though he never did.

Volume 6 is also recommended as it contains The Calculus Affair, one of my personal favorite stories and, I think, a rather archetypical tale, and also quite good Red Sea Sharks.

From there you should read

Explorers on the Moon

Volumes three, four and five contain some of the best and most memorable Tintin tales, including the two-part Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure (in which Tintin searches for buried treasure and we meet the deaf genius Prof. Calculus); the Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun (in which Tintin heads to South America and meets up with some ancient Incans); and the excellent Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon (which contains some rather accurate predictions about space travel). These books are about as good as Herge ever gets.

From there I’d go back to the earlier volumes one and two, which feature Tintin minus his usual boozing companion Captain Haddock (and, in several cases, before Herge became more culturally aware and devoted himself to researching the places he wrote about). Of special note here are The Blue Lotus, which marks a turning point in the artist’s attitude towards other cultures and the world around him. Also good are The Cigars of the Pharaoh, Lotus’ prequel, The Black Island, which finds him in Scotland, and King Ottokar’s Scepter, a great bit of escapist fun involving an attempted coup d’etat in Eastern Europe.

Conclude your Tintin reading with the final volume, number seven, which contains the Castafiore Emerald, Flight 714 and Tintin and the Picaros. The latter two verge dangerously close to self-parody and you get a sense Herge was growing tired of the formula and perhaps even feeling a little trapped by his creation. Emerald, however, is a great little drawing room comedy, with Tintin staying at home for once.

Ancillary material

Tintin: The Complete Companion

Books about Herge and his famous creation abound, many of them released by (you guessed it) Last Gasp and several of them by or edited by one Michael Farr. Farr wrote a biography of Herge, entitled (appropriately enough) The Adventures of Herge, Creator of Tintin (you may also want to check out The Man Who Created Tintin by Pierre Assouline). He also penned Tintin: The Complete Companion, which goes book by book through the series and compares different versions as well as provides valuable information on influences, origins and research methods. Tintin and Co., meanwhile, takes a closer look at Herge’s cast of characters.

For my money though, the book to check out is Art of Herge: Inventor of Tintin by Philippe Goddin, which offers scores of early sketches, advertising art, original art, paintings and other illustrations that throw a new light on the man and his work. There are two volumes out now, and I’m hoping a third is on the way soon, as they’ve proven to be quite invaluable.

Avoid

There’s a reason why Tintin in the Congo has (apart from the afore-mentioned Last Gasp release) never been published in America. It’s horribly racist. Indefensibly so, with the boy reporter schooling a bunch of big-lipped, dull-witted savages in basic arithmetic and the glories of occupying power Belgium (he doesn’t treat the surrounding wildlife much better either). It’s an especially egregious attitude considering how Belgium treated its colony and the people who lived there in real life. Herge was deeply embarrassed about the book (which he blamed on his own youth and naiveté), and his later work reveals a great sensitivity and sympathy for other races and cultures that belies Congo’s simple-minded bigotry. Still, it’s not a book for newcomers — especially those with an easily offended sense of moral outrage — to tackle on first blush. In fact, it’s probably a book best saved for last.

Next month: Charles M. Schulz

Comics College | Kevin Huizenga

Chris Mautner — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 18:00:13 +0000

cover to Ganges #3

This month we’re looking at the career of a relative newcomer to the comics industry, Mr. Kevin Huizenga.

Why he’s important

Even amidst a generation of cartoonists that includes such stellar folk as Anders Nilsen, Dash Shaw, Dan Zettwoch and Eleanor Davis, Huizenga stands apart for his artistry and ingenious, inventive use of the medium. In many ways he also embodies many of the characteristics of his contemporaries. To wit: an interest in comics of all types and genres resulting in a bevy of disparate influences, and an interest in formalism and experimentation that parallels an interest at more straightforward storytelling and characterization. In the short time he’s been making comics, Huizenga has shown himself to be an author of considerable talent and probing sincerity.

Where to start

Ganges #1

In addition to arguably being his best known work, the award-winning Ganges series remains the most emblematic of Huizenga’s comics so far and thus the best place for newcomers to start. Fantagraphics has published three issues to date as part of the oversize Ignatz format and all are worth getting and reading, preferably in order. The series follows an afternoon and subsequent evening in the life of Huizenga’s everyman Glenn Ganges as he goes to the library, plays some video games, reminisces on a previous job and battles insomnia. It sounds like drab minutiae, but Huizenga has a wonderful way of making the everyday seem not just relatable in the “I’ve been there too” sense but significant. He also is the only cartoonist I know of that is able to visually express difficult to describe thoughts and emotions in ways that make you wonder how no one ever came up with them before. His portrayal of Glenn’s frantic attempt at sleep in issue 3 for example, drawing him awash in a sea of random thoughts and word balloons is inspired.

From there you should read

Curses collects most of Huizenga’s best work up till now, including the stellar short stories “28th Street,” “Green Tea,” and “Jeepers Jacobs.” Most of these stories star Ganges again in one form or another and are actually interrelated in so far as they loosely follows Ganges and his wife Wendy’s attempts to conceive a child. Huizenga shows a deep interest in folklore, religion and mythology here that examines how spiritual and a belief in otherwordly or supernatural forces affect our perception of the world around us.

Ancillary material

Having come from the minicomics world, Huizenga has actively kept a toe or two dipped in that culture, with books like New Construction, which offers a loose collection of sketches and preliminary drawings, and Rumbling 2, which continues a story he started in Or Else #5 (and which you can read for free at What Things Do).

Huizenga collaborates regularly with a number of his fellow cartoonists, most notably on the Ripley’s Believe It or Not parody Amazing Facts … and Beyond, which he does with Ted May and Dan Zettwoch. A couple of published mini-comics collecting the strip are easily available via Huizenga’s online store.

Fight or Run

Huizenga has actually quite the online presence. In addition to the above-linked sites, there’s also his regularly updated blogs The Balloonist and New Construction.

Avoid

Huizenga’s most recent book, The Wild Kingdom, is by no means to be avoided — it’s a stellar work, examining man’s relationship to nature and consumerism in a invigorating left-of-center fashion, but it’s not the best place for newcomers to begin as it’s a highly experimental work that eschews narrative in favor of quick asides and impressions (or, rather, it jumbles several narratives and moments together to create an effect that’s not unlike zipping past several cable TV stations via remote). I heartily recommend reading it, but only after you’ve explored his other offerings.

Next month: Herge

Comics College: Kim Deitch

Chris Mautner — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 19:15:22 +0000

The Search for Smilin' Ed

A rotten sinus cold/upset stomach plus an ungodly amount of day-job work has kept me from event attempting to work on Comics College. Thankfully, the ever-erudite Bill Kartalopoulos graciously volunteered to write this month’s entry, about the legendary underground cartoonist Kim Deitch. And it just so happens that Bill’s the perfect person to write about Deitch and his legacy, as he curated a show featuring the artist at MoCCA not too long ago and also wrote the intro for Deitch’s latest book, The Search for Smilin’ Ed.

So with that, I’m going to take some Advil and lie down. I leave you in Bill’s more than capable hands.

Why he’s important

Shadowland

Kim Deitch is an enormously vital and prolific cartoonist who was also one of the charter members of the underground comix scene that changed comics in the 1960s and 70s. Even before underground comic books were popularized with the 1968 publication of Robert Crumb’s Zap #1, Deitch was part of a group of cartoonists contributing early underground comic strips to countercultural newspapers like the East Village Other. From the beginning, his style showed the influence of early American animation, and his stories featured wild flights of fancy rooted in comics’ satirical traditions, tinged with psychedelia, and shot through with an earnest sympathy for the human character in all its eccentricity.

More than forty years later, Deitch stands as one of the few underground cartoonists who has steadily and consistently produced a large body of important work, spanning every available format from the alternative weekly comic strip to the graphic novel. Even more strikingly, Deitch has built upon each successive story to spin a complex, career-spanning yarn of interrelated stories that refer to and amplify one another, while mixing fact and fiction to include Deitch himself as a character in his own narratives. These comics are all rendered in brilliant, heavily cross-hatched black and white artwork, and his frequently mind-blowing page compositions pulsate with radiant intensity. In recent years most of his major works have been collected and reprinted, making it possible for readers to explore this significant body of work by one of this country’s great cartoonists.

Where to start

The Boulevard of Broken Dreams

The Boulevard of Broken Dreams is Deitch’s most immediately accessible major book. Starring his signature character Waldo the Cat, Boulevard is a historical fiction revolving around the early animation industry of the 1920s and 1930s. Featuring some brilliant sequences that play with the formal distinctions between animation and comics, the book follows several generations of characters to meditate on the human and cultural legacies of industrialized art. Collected in a beautiful hardcover edition by Pantheon several years ago, this book unfortunately seems to be on the brink of slipping out of print, but remains findable for now.

From there you should read

Although all of Kim Deitch’s comics work together to highlight different aspects of his vast fictional world, there is no true beginning or endpoint. Alias the Cat isn’t exactly a sequel to The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, but it’s a major (and majorly underrated) graphic novel that, among other things, will catch readers up with Waldo’s more recent exploits. The book itself plunges Deitch — the character — more directly into his own story, and includes a comic-within-the-comic, a fictional silent film star acting as a pacifist superhero, high seas adventure, and a journey to the heart of old Midgetville. The book also exhibits Deitch’s fascination with Victorian illustrated literature, featuring an illustrated text interlude and fine crosshatching throughout that shows the graphic influence of wood-engraved illustration.

Alias the Cat

Anyone wondering just who — or what — Waldo is, and why he keeps popping up, must read A Shroud For Waldo, originally serialized in an alternative weekly newspaper (and presented in a page-by-page episodic format). Shroud details the strange, surprisingly familiar origins of this apparently immortal anthropomorphic cartoon cat. This information will come in handy later. Guest starring Jesus Christ.

From there, you’ll want to explore the other major strand of Deitch’s work beginning with his graphic novel Shadowland. This book extends Deitch’s exploration of the backstage world of American popular entertainment to the pre-cinematic era, tracing the history of medicine show impressario Doc Ledicker and his extended family, and spiraling outward into a weird science-fictional world that treats history as entertainment and entertainment as history. This slightly oversized book is a great showcase for Deitch’s detailed artwork, and includes a full color fold-out section in the back.

Although it’s not Deitch’s most recent work, his most recent book collection The Search for Smilin’ Ed, among other things, brings the various major strands of Deitch’s world together. Deitch’s quest to discover the fate of a (quite real) 1950s children’s television show host sets the stage for the inevitable meeting of Doc Leidicker, underground comix stalwart Miles Microft, Waldo the Cat, and, indirectly, Deitch himself. This book also features a stunning full-color double-gatefold image of “The Kim Deitch Universe,” conveniently labeled for ease of use.

Ancillary material

Beyond the Pale

Beyond the Pale collects several of Deitch’s best short underground and post-underground comics. It’s a bit of a grab bag, but it provides some of the funkier flavor of his earliest comic book stories (including an epic Miles Microft saga from his underground comic book Corn Fed #2) and there are many gems here, including some great stories from Arcade, an amazing gatefold image called “Anthropomorphism,” and “Two Jews From Yonkers,” an autobiographically-based account of his early cartooning career that was also his first foray into heavily illustrated fiction.

Beyond the Pale includes a nice introduction by Deitch in which he discusses his early history and career in comics up to that point. For a truly massive career-spanning interview, you’ll want to pick up the book-length Comics Journal #292, which is almost entirely devoted to interviews with Deitch, his father, animator Gene Deitch, and his two brothers. Much shorter but also very much worth reading is Deitch’s interview with Zak Sally in Comic Art #5.

Before A Shroud for Waldo, Deitch’s first weekly serial was Hollywoodland, a kind of love note to old Hollywood that chronicles some strange doings surrounding the La Brea Tar Pits. The story features ex-screen star Larry Farrell, a minor character in several of Deitch’s other works. It’s only tangentially connected to Deitch’s other narratives, but is, as always, a really fun, imaginative story.

For visual kicks, readers may want to seek out Pictopia #2, which includes a Boulevard-related story that didn’t make the final cut, as well as some amazing, full color pseudo-animation cells from Waldo’s “career” as an animation star. (There’s also an animated version of the story online here.) Additionally, Deitch’s three-page story in the massively oversized Kramers Ergot 7 offers a bit more background detail to his “Sunshine Girl” story and retells some of those events from a slightly different perspective — but this time at large size and in full blazing color. Deitch has also done some fun work for kids (some may recall his “Southern Fried Fugitives” series for the late Nickelodeon Magazine), including the full-color story “These Cats Today!” collected in Big Fat Little Lit.

Avoid

All Waldo Comics

I hope it’s clear by now that even Deitch’s minor works often illuminate some glimmer of his massive fictional universe, and anyone who’s been seduced by this work will want to read it all. As such, I’m reluctant to suggest “avoiding” anything, but if I have to pick something for this category I’ll suggest that all but the most dedicated readers can skip the slim book collection All Waldo Comics. Which isn’t to say that the book doesn’t have some things going for it, including a great cover, some fascinating sketches, and a fun, sharp looking Waldo story from RAW that hasn’t been reprinted elsewhere. However, the book also includes an illustrated text piece about the inspiration for Waldo that was later reprinted as an opening sequence in The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, and a prelude to A Shroud for Waldo that may only be of interest to devoted readers. For true “Deitch-ologists,” the real interest here may be an early Waldo saga called “Deja Vu” that reveals at least one major fact about Waldo the Cat. However, the story was originally printed in a beautiful three-color process in Gothic Blimp Works, to which the black and white version in this book does no justice. I hope that some day this piece of arcane Waldo lore will be reprinted the way it was originally meant to be seen. In the meantime, I’m grateful that the last ten years of comics publishing has produced such a bounty of Kim Deitch books that we get to pick and choose.

Next month: Kevin Huizenga

Bill Kartalopoulos teaches courses including “Reading Graphic Novels” and “Comics History” at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City. He is the Programming Coordinator for SPX: The Small Press Expo and the Programming Director for the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, is a contributing editor for Print Magazine and a comics reviewer for Publishers Weekly, and sits on the Executive Committee of the International Comic Arts Forum (ICAF). This year he curated R. Sikoryak: How Classics and Cartoons Collide at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. In 2008 he curated Kim Deitch: A Retrospective, also at MoCCA, and more recently contributed a lengthy introduction to Deitch’s 2010 graphic novel The Search for Smilin’ Ed.

Comics College: Harvey Pekar

Chris Mautner — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:00:21 +0000

This month we’re paying homage to a writer who left us a little too recently and too soon, the late, great Harvey Pekar.

Why he’s important

In a time when no one — apart from maybe a select few underground artists like Aline Kominsky-Crumb — was attempting to use comics to tell stories about everyday life, Pekar had an epiphany. By adapting into comics (with the help of an ever-expanding cadre of artists) his daily thoughts and experiences, as well as those of his friends and co-workers, he pushed people to look beyond their prejudices and preconceptions about the comic-book medium and think about its potential instead.

What’s more, he was a gifted writer, with a wonderful ear for people’s cadences and behavior. His self-awareness and probing honesty made incredibly minor incidents — making lemonade, a trip to the grocery store — fascinating and entertaining. Pekar wasn’t great because he focused on minutiae. He was great because in examining minutiae he found truths and emotions that most of us are in too much of a hurry to pay attention to.

Where to start

You have a couple of options here. My first suggestion would be to go with the American Splendor movie tie-in book (the one with Paul Giamatti on the cover, above). This collects the first two Ballentine anthologies from his comic book series and contains most of his best work, including “The Harvey Pekar Name Story,” “Alice Quinn,” “Hypothetical Quandary” and “A Ride Home.” This is pretty much the pure, unadulterated source.

On the other hand, if you want a slimmer, more distilled reading experience, you could start with Bob an Harv’s Comics, which only collects the stories Pekar did with Robert Crumb. Crumb was one of Pekar’s best — if not the best — interpreters, and the two had a rapport that made for one of the best collaborations in the history of comics.

Continuing along the “greatest hits” thread, there is also apparently a Best of American Splendor collection, though I haven’t had an opportunity to track down a copy yet. My understanding is it only collects stories from the 1990s and onward, which may not make it the best pick for a first-timer, but if there’s an intrepid reader out there who can enlighten me of its value in the comments section, please feel free.

From there you should read

The New American Splendor Anthology is another solid anthology culled from Pekar’s series, and features some great collaborations, including an inspired (and kinda loopy) one with Chester Brown. This is also where he delves into his appearances on the David Letterman show, for those who are curious to hear about that.

After American Splendor and Letterman, Pekar is best known for Our Cancer Year, in which he and his wife, Joyce Brabner, chronicled his first bout with Lymphoma (his cancer returned later in his life). Ably and strikingly illustrated by Frank Stack (author of The New Adventures of Jesus), it’s a pretty stark look at what a draining, tense experience it is to be seriously ill in modern America. The book takes a while to get going (there’s a lot of stuff about Brabner’s peace activism work and her relationship with some teen refugees that honestly could have used some trimming), but once it does, it makes for a compelling read. There’s been a number of graphic novels about cancer and terminal illness in the ensuing years, but this remains the best of the bunch.

Ancillary material

While it cuts perhaps a little too cute a portrait in the end, the American Splendor movie is probably about as honest and true an adaptation of Pekar and his work as anyone is ever going to get. At the very least, it has the common sense not to try a straightforward biography and mixes its docudrama with interviews from the real Pekar and Brabner. Plus, it’s a good entry point for those who aren’t in the mood to, well, read.

Tying into the film, Ballentine released American Splendor: Our Movie Year, which is little more than a loose collection of strips about making the film, doing the press junket and just general odd things that happened during the same time period, as well as some biographical sketches done for various magazines. It’s a mixed bag at best, and while there’s some good material here, it’s not one of the stronger collections.

After the success of The Quitter, Pekar did two American Spendor mini-series for Vertigo, collected in paperback as Another Day and Another Dollar. The idea was to pair Pekar up with some unexpected, more genre-based artists in addition to his more traditional collaborators and see what happens. While there are some amazing surprises (who knew Richard Corben could portray Pekar’s milieu so convincingly?) there’s also a lot of “meh” material as well and the end result is another one of those mixed bags.

Finally, for those looking to get go beyond the comics, there’s Harvey Pekar: Conversations, a collection of interviews, edited by Michael Rhode.

Avoid

In addition to writing about his life and milieu, Pekar frequently delved into biography and history, talking about figures and movements that fascinated him. Unfortunately, very few of these non-Splendor books are very good. The Beats and Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History in particular are muddled, dull affairs and should be avoided at all costs.

Next month: Kim Deitch

Comics College: Eddie Campbell

Chris Mautner — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:00:42 +0000

Fate of the Artist

Welcome to this month’s edition of Comics College. Today we’ll be looking at the body of work of one of the medium’s most unique creators, Eddie Campbell.

Why he’s important

Because there’s no one else like him. In a medium where one’s influences are frequently writ large (when they’re not outright plagiarized) and often look no further back than a generation or so, Campbell draws upon centuries of history — both artistic and otherwise — to infuse both his comics’ content and style. His wonderfully rough, ragged line, for example, is influenced as much by 19th century illustrators as Jack Kirby. While he’s largely acclaimed for his autobiographical work (and he was one of the first cartoonists attempt it), he stands apart from most of his peers in said genre by eschewing simple navel-gazing in favor of a more relaxed, philosophical, raconteur approach. Though playful, he delves into serious issues — most frequently the pursuit of art (both personal and abstract) and the individual’s cost of that pursuit. In his comics, Campbell broaches topics others would prefer to avoid, examines life in all its largess and agony, and gives you a sense not only of life as lived, but life as it has been lived and perhaps should be lived, through the ages. And he does it all with a smile.

Where to start

Campbell’s autobiographical “Alec” stories contain some of his best and most memorable comics, but newcomers might balk at trying to consume such a lengthy body of work (most recently compiled by Top Shelf into one 640-page omnibus). With that in mind, I’m going to instead suggest starting off with The Fate of the Artist, his first book for the then nascent First Second. It’s the autobiographical (sort of) about the author’s (i.e. Campbell) mysterious disappeareance and the attempt by family and other interested parties to figure out what exactly happened to him.

It’s also something of a tour de force, combining comics, prose, photos and more, along with a good deal of fourth-wall breaking and stylistic switch-ups. It’s one of the best things Campbell’s ever done, with a laser-like focus on many of the author’s preferred themes (the inevitability of death, the fragility of life and the ineffectiveness of art in attempting to deal with either). As experimental as it is compared to some of his earlier works, it’s a good starting point nevertheless.

From there you should read

Once you’ve devoured that, the next logical step is Alec: The Years Have Pants, the afore-mentioned omnibus. If the thought of reading such a brick of a book sends shivers up your spine, then I’d try to locate one of the single volume books Campbell self-published years before. My initial recommendations would be The King Canute Crowd and Three Piece Suit, which contains the masterful Graffiti Kitchen. But really, you should just break down and buy some Pants.

Bacchus

From there I’d move on to Campbell’s other major work, Bacchus, a wry and rather epic look at both Greek mythology and modern social and political mores from the perspective of an elderly, cranky Dionysus, who has numerous, somewhat unwanted adventures with the hero Theseus and the lightning-singing Eyeball Kid. Campbell published the series in nine volumes: Immortality Isn’t Forever, The Gods of Business, Doing the Islands With Bacchus, The Eyball Kid: One Man Show, Earth Water Air and Fire, The Eyeball Kid: Double Bill, 1,001 Nights of Bacchus, King Bacchus and Banged Up. You could try tracking down all nine books, but I’d recommend holding out for Top-Shelf’s two-volume omnibus which is scheduled to come out next year. If you have to confine yourself to one book though (or want to start with a sample), I’d go with Doing the Islands.

Ancillary material

In addition to his more personal work, Campbell has done a number of projects for DC and Marvel. His most notable entry is probably Batman: The Order of Beasts, though he also wrote issues #85-88 of Hellblazer (with Sean Phillips as artist) and drew the two-issue Captain America: Homeland story, among others. None of these comics should be too hard to track down, though none of them would merit the label “essential.”

Avoid

Campbell hasn’t really done any work that’s so bad it should be avoided (at least none that’s currently in print). Newcomers, however should probably save The Black Diamond Detective Agency for the end of their tour. While it has some stellar moments, especially in terms of design, this somewhat off-kilter thriller about a man accused of blowing up a train and inadvertently joining the detective agency hired to track him down, falls under the weight of its large cast of characters and knotty plot. Great opening sequence though.

Next month: Harvey Pekar

Comics college: Art Spiegelman

Chris Mautner — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 19:00:21 +0000

Maus Vol. 1

Today we’ll be traipsing through the body of work of one of the most significant (if not exactly prolific) American cartoonists of this modern age, Art Spiegelman.

Why he’s important

Even if his pen never touched paper again, Spiegelman would have his name etched in comics history until the sun swallows the Earth for Maus, his memoir/biography concerning his father’s harrowing time spent first hiding from the Nazis in Poland and then suffering in the Auschwitz concentration camp. It’s a complete tour de force from start to finish and one of the few unanimously agreed-upon entries to enter the modern comics canon.

Thankfully he has continued to make and champion comics, however, producing work that, if not equal in stature to Maus (and what really could be?), are often thought-provoking and invigorating nevertheless. A constant cheerleader for the medium, he has (along with his wife, Francoise Mouly) has fought the good fight to get comics to lose their red-headed stepchild status, both by trumpeting a variety of important cartoonists in anthologies like Raw magazine (which he edited with Mouly), and as a critic, scholar and speaker.

Where to start

The Complete Maus

Well duh. There’s a reason Maus won that Pulitzer Prize and all those accolades. Even in the almost twenty years since its completion, the book remains an astounding accomplishment, a thoughtful, emotional examination of both the Holocaust and Spiegelman’s relationship with his difficult father. It seamlessly blends straightforward narrative with an almost avant-garde visual style (its key conceit being that the Jews are drawn as mice, the Germans as cats). For many newcomers, young and old, Maus often serves as their starting point into the world of comics.

If you can find a copy, and you can play Hypercard files on your computer (and if you do, isn’t it time to get a new computer?) you should also try to find The Complete Maus CD-Rom, a nice addendum of notes, photos and assorted research materials used to make the book. (The rumor is a DVD version is in the making.)

From there you should read

The recently re-released Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist As a Young %@*$! provides a glimpse into Spiegelman’s early (sort of) years, and highlights his more formalist, experimental side. It’s smart, genre-defying stuff, and those who love seeing the boundaries of the medium get prodded, poked and pushed will especially enjoy what’s on display here. Look closely enough, and you can see many of the techniques that he’d later employ in Maus. Originally printed in the late ’70s, Pantheon re-released the book in 2008, along with a new, lengthy introduction from the author that sheds some more light on the material and his own personal make-up.

Breakdowns

After Maus, Spiegelman’s other “big” work is arguably In the Shadow of No Towers, his response to 9/11. It’s a series of one-page, landscape formatted essays that combine Spiegelman’s interests in the visual underpinnings of the medium and autobiography. Visually, the book is a wonder, full of panels that zig-zag. criss-cross and tumble around one another in an attempt to convey the inner chaos the author felt immediately after the attacks. Thematically and textually, the book is a little weaker, which is not helped by the fact that Spiegelman’s strips end at the halfway point and the rest of the book is padded out with a collection of early 20th century comic strips. Still, while Shadow has its faults (and certainly its fair share of critics), it remains, I think, the most logical next step for those interested in exploring his work.

Ancillary material

Spiegelman is equally well regarded for his work as an editor, particularly on Raw magazine. I could write a dozen other posts about that anthology’s significance and influence, but suffice it to say that if you want to discover its wonders for yourself, track down a copy of Read Yourself Raw, which collects the first three issues, and/or the three chunky volumes of the Penguin series that followed afterward.

Those looking for more “behind the scenes” type work should check out Be a Nose! a trilogy of sketchbooks from the 70s, 80s and 00s, published by the McSweeney’s folk.

For those interested in Speigelman’s scholarly side, check out Jack Cole and Plastic Man, a loving tribute to the Golden Age cartoonist, ably and somewhat frenetically designed by Chip Kidd.

Finally, there’s Art Spiegelman: Conversations, which, as the title suggests, compiles various interviews he did over the years in one fat book.

Avoid

Unsure of what to tackle after completing Maus, Spiegelman set his sites on illustrating Joseph Moncure March’s poem, The Wild Party. The illustrations (this is a strictly no-comics affair) are decent, but somewhat bland and obvious. To my mind this is the weakest entry in his bibliography.

Unless, of course, we’re talking about The Narrative Corpse, an interesting but decidedly lackluster comix jam experiment Spiegelman edited, that had cartoonists from all walks of life and genres (Mort Walker, S. Clay Wilson, Will Eisner, etc.) penning three panels of an incomprehensible and ultimately rather dull story of a stick-like figure. It’s the sort of thing that sounds fascinating in concept but quickly falls apart when reality intrudes.

Next month: Eddie Campbell

Comics College | Harvey Kurtzman

Chris Mautner — Fri, 28 May 2010 20:00:08 +0000

Mad Archives Vol. 2

Today it’s time (long pat time actually) to take a look at one of the most influential and undisputed masters of the comics medium, Harvey Kurtzman.

Why he’s important

Quick. Off the top of your head, how many cartoonists do you know actively influenced popular culture. I’m not talking about starting a catchphrase or being popular enough to end up as a question in Trivial Pursuit. I’m talking about actually shaping and changing the way we regard our relationship with the entertainment we consume. The only one that comes to my mind is Kurtzman. As with Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce and the other satirists of the 1950s and early 60s, Kurtzman made it OK to question what we saw on television, the music we heard on the radio and what we read in the newspaper. He made it acceptable — even fun — to poke fun at cherished symbols. The main differences between Kurtzman and the other comics from that period is a) Kurtzman never got his just share of the credit; b) because he worked in the relatively “underground” market of comic books, his influence was more widespread and, arguably, longer lasting.

Where to start

Mad Archives Vol. 1

Kurtzman’s run on Mad seems the logical and obvious place to begin. Those early issues — at least the first 23, when Mad was published in comic book fashion (when is someone going to collect Kurtzman’s initial run on those first couple of magazine issues?) — have been printed and reprinted in various formats, but the easiest and most accessible (relatively speaking) is probably The Mad Archives series, of which DC has published two volumes of so far. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be any plans for a third volume on the horizon, which means you may have to scrounge around to find any issues past #12. (Thankfully, DC published magazine-sized reprints of the complete series, which you might be able to find in better comic book shops across the country).

From there you should read

Equally regarded in stature to Mad are the two war books Kurtzman edited for EC: Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat. The two series, though not without their faults, are in the end justly acclaimed for their humanism and adept storytelling and offer a telling glimpse in Kurtzman’s ability to work outside of his usual humor “vein.” Gemstone published some nice, fancy-shmancy hardcover versions of these two series (though some may balk at the computerized coloring). Sadly, as with Mad, Gemstone never got to finish Two-Fisted, but these remain the best and most accessible versions of these stories today. If you’re an anal completist, you can try to located Gemstone’s initial, oversize, black and white volumes that were released in the 1980s, but expect to pay several hundred bucks for them.

Humbug

Kurtzman left Mad and EC for the greener pastures of Hugh Hefner, only to have his attempt at a slick humor magazine, Trump, fall flat on its face after two issues due to a variety of unlucky financial reasons. Kurtzman tried again with Humbug, a self-published endeavor that he attempted by pooling resources with fellow former EC artists Will Elder and Jack Davis (sorta), as well as relative newcomers like Al Jaffee and Arnold Roth. The result was a little better than Trump, it lasted a full 11 issues before running aground, which Fantagraphics packaged together in a lovely two-volume slipcase that handsomely shows off the individual contributors talents as well as Kurtzman’s skills as an editor.

It was while working on his third magazine, Help! that Kurtzman and his longtime collaborator came up with Goodman Beaver, a Candide-ish goodfella that kept getting his noble values, intentions and efforts rubbed into his face, resulting in some of the pair’s best and sharpest satire. The late Kitchen Sink Press collected most of the Goodman tales in one softcover book, which is still pretty easy to find (just click on that last link) but sadly, the book is missing the excellent “Goodman versus Playboy,” due to a litigious (at the time) Archie Comics. You can download a .pdf version of that story right here though.

Ancillary material

Little Annie Fanny Vol. 1

After handling one failed project after another, Kurtzman, with Elder in tow, finally ended up back at Hefner and Playboy, where he did the ever so slightly saucy strip Little Annie Fanny from 1962 to 1988. It’s decidedly weak sauce compared to the above books, but worth checking out if Dark Horse collected the comics in two paperback volumes, which you can grab in fancy hardcover form if you so desire.

The Art of Harvey Kurtzman by Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle and Comics Journal Library Vol. 7: Harvey Kurtzman both offer nice backgrounds of the beleaguered cartoonist. The former is a coffee-table type book that provides a well-thought out (if somewhat problematic) biography of the artist along with lots of never-before seen art. The latter is a collection of interviews with Kurtzman as well as essays taken from the Journal, along with lots of rarely-before seen art.

Avoid

While the notion of pairing Kurtzman up with famous comics artists like William Stout, Sergio Aragones and Robert Crumb seems ingenious, Harvey Kurtzman’s Strange Adventures fails to make the grade. Done long after Kurtzman’s prime, the book feels like a rehash of the kind of satire he used to do a lot better decades earlier.

Similar problems plague From Aargh to Zap, Kurtzman’s attempt to chronicle the history of the comic book in America, the biggest of which is it’s too thin and covers well-trod upon ground without offering much in the way of Kurtzman’s own unique perspective.

Next month: Art Spiegelman

Comics College: Lewis Trondheim

Chris Mautner — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 22:00:59 +0000

Sequence from 'Mister O'

Today we’ll be crossing the Atlantic to take a look at the one of the most prolific cartoonists of the past 30 years, either in Europe or America, Lewis Trondheim.

Why he’s important

Beyond being one of the most celebrated names in French comics, Trondheim was one of the stars — perhaps in some ways the biggest star — of the small press movement in Europe in the 1990s that gave birth to artists like David B, Marjane Satrapi, Joann Sfar and Chris Blain (indeed, as one of the founding members of the seminal publishing group L’Association, you could argue that he helped give birth to the movement in more ways than one). As Bart Beaty so aptly puts it in his book, Unpopular Culture:

That an artist who, by his own admission, had no ability to draw could become one of the most prolific, popular and financially successful cartoonists of his generation was conceivable only given the redefinition of the field by the artists of the small press. Few cartoonists involved in the movement have yet matched his success, and his victories are not entirely shared. However, the ascension of Trondheim to the top ranks of European cartoonists and his ongoing success in a number of related fields and international markets symbolize the importance of the entire small press revolution and the transformation of the comic book field that it put into motion.

What’s more, having produced over 30 books in as little as 10 years, he straddles genres — be it humor, autobiography, adventure, fantasy, children’s books, historical fiction or experimental works — with uncanny ease. American cartoonists looking to try a similar trick should look to his example.

Where to start

Dungeon Twilight, Vol. 1: Dragon Cemetery

The best place to begin is Mister O and Mister I, both easily available from NBM. These two thematically similar, deceptively simple books (O concerns a round-shaped creature who keeps attempting to traverse a short gorge and fails; I deals with an elongated man who tries to find food only to meet one gruesome death after another) provide a good sense of Trondheim’s black, dry wit, his love of formal play, his excellent sense of timing and his ability to convey action and emotion in just a few lines. They’re both very emblematic of his general attitude and style and both very funny.

Another good place to start is the Dungeon series, a ongoing, epic fantasy series he’s currently working on (and will probably never finish) with Sfar and a revolving door of artists. The series started out as a spoof of your average D&D-type stuff but has ended up taking on a life of its own, spanning out to cover hundreds of years, many characters and many, many volumes. You should start with the first one though, Duck Heart, also from NBM. (In general, I’d recommend reading the series in this order: Zenith, which covers the “present day;” then Twilight, which looks into the future; then The Early Years; Parade, which is unrelated, fun stories; and Monstres, which focuses on the supporting cast.)

From there you should read

Harum Scarum

Once you finish (or at least get through most of) the Dungeon books, move on to the Little Nothings series, a collection of one-page autobiographical strips (originally serialized on Trondheim’s website) in which the author provides a humorous, off-the-cuff look at his general philosophy and day-to-day existence. The series is up to three volumes here in America — The Curse of the Umbrella, The Prisoner Syndrome and Uneasy Happiness — and they’re all good.

In the late 1990s, Fantagraphics took a stab at introducing Trondheim to an American audience. The books sold poorly (to put it mildly), but both Harum Scarum and The Hoodoodad remain supremely entertaining tales featuring McConey, Trondheim’s shy, nonplussed, anthropomorphic rabbit and his friends.

Not to let one bad attempt keep them down, Fantagraphics tried again with an ongoing pamphlet series, The Nimrod, which sadly only lasted seven issues. It’s a great hodge-podge of some classic Trondheim material though, including autobio stories, McConey tales and the great wordless piece, Diablotus (found in issue #2). The back issues are available at dirt cheap prices too.

For a look at Trondheim at his blackest and most grotesque, pick up A.L.I.E.E.E.N, a dark, disturbing, but frequently hilarious (and again, wordless) tale of life on an alien planet that literally ends with everything drowning in a flood of excrement.

Ancillary material

Mome Vol. 7

In 2004, Trondheim announced his intention to retire from comics (it didn’t last long) a decision he chronicled in At Loose Ends, a sprawling, thoughtful examination of the creative process, how age can dull the imagination and the thin line between art and commerce. Fantagraphics serialized it in three issues of their Mome anthology (vol. 6-8 to be exact).

If you don’t mind doing a bit of digging around the Internet, and you’re willing to pay a bit more for shipping, I’d recommend checking out some of the artist’s as-yet untranslated works. There are a number of “silent” comics that have yet to be published stateside, like Non, Non, Non or the fantastic La Mouche. The latter is the story of a fly who for reasons best not spoils, finds himself growing to monstrous size. It’s a fabulous comic that, if it were more easily available in the U.S. I would have included it up in the “start” section at the top of this post.

If you want to learn even more about Trondheim, I recommend picking up a copy of issue no. 283 of The Comics Journal, which features an extensive interview with him.

Avoid

I enjoyed Bourbon Island 1730 (co-written with Appollo), but it didn’t tickle many people’s fancy. I can sort of understand why. It’s a departure from what most American readers have come to expect from the artist — much more serious, downbeat and contemplative than the concept (Trondheim does pirates) than you’d expect, and the detailed but loose and sketchy black and white sketch art came off as cluttered and difficult to read. I don’t agree, but I can see where it might not be the best place for a neophyte to begin. Make it your last stop on the Trondheim express.