One of the most consistently interesting aspects of Eddie Campbell’s comics art — whether it’s drawn in paint or ink, with pens or brushes, in color or black and white or hazed in screen tones — is the push and pull between chaos and control it always carries.  Campbell sticks to the grid as much as anyone.  His stories progress in an almost uniformly metronomic, evenly measured, deliberate fashion, more concerned with catching clear pictures of as many moments as possible and letting readers come upon the important ones naturally than thrusting anything into the audience’s face.  But there is always a strong element of wildness present in Campbell too.  No matter the tools or the approach he’s using, there are always lines or brush strokes or tone dots that wriggle away from whatever figurative content his panels hold and out toward the edges, seeking the place in the frame where they can best exist as nothing but media on paper, set free from the picture’s meaning in search of their own.  It’s the way these two truths of Campbell’s work interact, now in harmony, now struggling for control, that brings the comics to beating, vibrant life.

Few Campbell comics are more controlled than his legendary collaboration with Alan Moore, From Hell.  Moore, widely known as one of comics’ most exacting scriptwriters, boxes Campbell in tightly over the book’s 500-plus pages: though the scratchy marks seethe wildly within the panels, the grid remains as fixed as a windowpane throughout, leaving each frame to boil with a life lightly separate from what surrounds it.  It makes sense, then, that when Campbell is allowed to go wild within the book’s confines, he produces some of his career’s most striking work, careening from the strict formality that characterizes the Victorian period piece into the white-hot image making of the visionary.

The sequence above is probably the most savagely avant-garde page of From Hell; certainly the only one that demands an explanation of its basic content when viewed by itself.  Well, if I must.  What we’re looking at is an extreme close-up of a knife blade planing through human flesh, specifically the stomach cavity.  To spread a single act — one cut, one gesture — out over seven panels requires a precision and flare for choreography that’s simply beyond most cartoonists’ grasp, but Campbell pulls it off with a flourish.  In the first panel, we see the shiny surface of the blade planing through a membrane, placed right in the middle so as to neatly bisect the panel itself into equal pieces.  The next shot is filled entirely with the metal’s glare, a spray of black fluid rising up from the bottom to bathe it.  Panel three focuses in of the spray itself as the knife passes out of sight.  The second tier zooms us into the tunnel of an opened vein, and finally we arrive inside, feet panted on the floors of the body’s passageways.

Making such queasy subject matter so visually appealing is no easy task, and making it appear elegant is even more difficult.  But this page is an incredibly beautiful bit of near-abstract art , taking readers from the splashing, dirty-lined visual chaos of the top three panels into the sublimely peaceful, hauntingly still and silent chapel of the final frame, a world somehow both recognizable and completely alien.  In context, it’s a test of even the most experienced comics reader’s comprehension; taken as a single page, separated out from story and meaning, it’s simply seven beautiful pictures, each image both arresting and dynamic, moving you on to the next, until the full stop of the devastating last shot.  Campbell’s in-panel compositions ensure that this page works as comics, with lines and black spaces leading the eye neatly from one picture into the next, but the whole time the reader is assaulted with gorgeous imagery that demands a second to be drunk in fully.

It’s in that deep analysis of these pictures that perhaps the most impressive thing about this page emerges: unlike just about every other comics sequence out there, Campbell’s page gives absolutely no clue as to its manufacture.  Are the ragged lines edging the veins dip pen?  Are the splatters ink blots, or dry brush, or wite-out?  Are we looking at photos, and if so, how adulterated are they?  The same flat, basic black-and-white printing that allows Campbell to treat slashed-open innards with such elegance of effect ensures that these images remain mysterious, communicating nothing concrete about their origin.  They’re there to be looked at, not questioned; accepted, not analyzed.  Campbell forces even the most curious reader into passive reception of his pictures here, and in the process reminds us why we come to comics in the first place.  It’s to see things we haven’t before.

Eddie Campbell announced on his blog that his early graphic novel Dapper John in the Days of the Ace Rock ‘n’ Roll Club is available as a standalone iPad app. The comics, a series of interlocking seven-page stories, were drawn in 1978-79. Campbell self-published them in the 1980s, and Fantagraphics did a collected edition in 1993. The app, which was produced by a Tokyo company called Panel Nine, includes not just the original run of comics but also the original small press covers, Alan Moore’s review of the comic (which started the ball rolling), and sundry other extras, some of which have not been seen in years. So it’s sort of a digital collector’s edition.

Batton Lash’s Supernatural Law is another vintage comic (well, from the 1990s) that is getting a new life in digital form. In this case, the comic is not its own app but is available via the Comics + and Graphicly platforms at a reasonable digital price: Wolff & Byrd #1 is free, and subsequent issues are 99 cents.

Finally, the Japanese publisher Ohzora, the parent company of the now-defunct U.S. publisher Aurora, has not given up on the English-language market, apparently: Its English site makes clear that it has lots of manga available for licensing, and in a few cases, it’s skipping the middleman and going straight to digital. And that means: Project X Cup Noodle, possibly the greatest manga ever published in English, is now available as an iPad app. This was one of the great oddball manga of the U.S. manga boom: The story of the development of instant noodles in a cup, presented as a series of heroic struggles. It was originally licensed by Digital Manga but published only in print; the license must have lapsed, because Ohzora’s app uses Digital’s cover dress, now strangely appropriate, for the iPad app.

Justice League #3

Sales | The comic book market was up more than 19 percent in November when compared with the same period last year, with comics up 23 percent and graphic novels up 12 percent. So far this year the comics and graphics novel market is up 1.87 percent versus the first 11 months of 2010. If December cooperates, this could be the first up year for the market since 2008.

DC Comics was once again the top company in terms of market share. The company took six of the top 10 spots on Diamond’s Top 100 Comics list, with Justice League #3, Batman #3, Action Comics #3, Green Lantern #3 and Marvel’s Point One #1 making up the top five comics of the month. Batman: Noel took the No. 1 spot on the Top 100 Graphic Novels list. [The Comichron]

Publishing | IDW Publishing has promoted Chief Operating Officer Greg Goldstein to president, with a focus on new markets and acquisitions. He joined the company in 2008 from Upper Deck. [ICv2.com]

Creators | Ron Marz is selling signed copies of comics he wrote, with plans to use the money he makes to buy toys for his area Toys for Tots program. [Messages from Marz]

Creators | Darwyn Cooke is again hosting “12 Days of Christmas” art auctions to benefit the Hero Initiative. [Almost Darwyn Cooke's Blog]

Frankenstein #4

Creators | Frankenstein writer Jeff Lemire says to expect a twist in Issue 7 of the DC Comics title: “You can’t sustain an on-going with monster battles. Monsters beating up monsters every month is really fun for like five or six issues, but it gets stale and formulaic to keep repeating it. The fun and interesting thing to do is to shift the tone around that time, halfway through the first year. We’ll still have the action and the adventure and the sci-fi concepts, but I’m going to focus a lot more on Frankenstein himself, his past, where he came from and how he became how he is. Build him up as a character and give some depth to him. I want to expand who this guy is and the role he plays in this larger New DC Universe. So I really needed to shift the tone in somewhat of a more serious direction. The readers need to know who Frank was and why he’s important and why they should care about him before going back to the big action stuff again.” [Paste Magazine]

Creators | The BBC’s Nick Higham talks to Art Spiegelman about Maus and MetaMaus inside Gosh Comics in London. Eddie Campbell then uses the location of the interview to have some fun. [BBC]

Digital comics | Johanna Draper Carlson reviews the iPad version of Jason Shiga’s choose-your-own-adventure tale Meanwhile: “Instead of having to be careful to visually follow the right path, the app handles all the mechanics for you, allowing you to focus on the art, story, and choices. Even when you’re reading in a sequence, you move from panel to panel via a yellow highlight, tapping whenever you’re ready to move on.” The iPad seems like the natural medium for this particular work. [Comics Worth Reading]

Digital comics | Artists Doug Hills, Joshua Hale Fialkov and Gabriel Hardman discuss how they deal with the challenge of presenting double-page spreads in digital comics. [Graphicly blog]

Exhibits | Curator Martin Brauen discusses an exhibit at New York’s Rubin Museum that features “the most complete collection of comics related to Tibet ever assembled.” [Salon]

Commentary | Comic Book Resources’ Kiel Phegley reviews a comic he found in a cereal box, General Mills Presents: Justice League #1: Unstoppable Forces. [The Cool Kids Table]

If ever there’s been a time where I’ve been tempted to have a column literally consist of “[Name of Comic]. You guys. [Name of Comic Repeated for Emphasis],” then it’d be today, because Ganges #4. You guys. Ganges #4.

I’ve written before about my love of Kevin Huizenga’s work, but reading the latest issue of Ganges, I started thinking about the ways in which his work reminds me of another of my favorite creators, Eddie Campbell. Like Campbell, Huizenga creates some level of fictionalized memoir, recreating themselves – or, parts of themselves, at least; I don’t think there’s as direct a connection for Huizenga as there is for Campbell – as characters for some of their most well known, most successful work; as Campbell becomes Alec McGarry, Huizenga becomes Glenn Ganges. But both creators’ work is… I don’t want to say non-mainstream, because that makes it sound inaccessible when nothing could be further from the truth, but there’s something about the way that both are interested in something that is quieter, less obvious that most comics and comic creators, and that they employ methods that aren’t exactly the norm, nonetheless.

This isn’t to say that their work is actually that similar, because Campbell is ultimately much more straightforward both in terms of execution and subject matter than Huizenga, who gets… more cosmic, in a way. For example, the plot of Ganges #4 is, essentially, that Glenn Ganges can’t sleep, and his mind wanders as he tries to, which doesn’t really sound like something that is a strong contender for my favorite comic of the year. But it’s all in the execution; not just the choices of things that Glenn’s insomniac mind fills with (The obsessing about the calendar and everything that lies ahead is depressingly familiar to me, I have to admit), but the way that Huizenga visualizes the whole thing. Again, as in so many of his books, there’s formal play and experimentation happening here that’s akin to creating new language for comics in some way – Reading Glenn’s endless night as pages that bleed past the edge of the page, or the way Huizenga takes the calendar motif to abstraction and back again – and impressive even outside of its role in the storytelling.

There’s also more… ambivalence, perhaps, in Huizenga’s work than Campbell’s, which has always had a strong authorial voice (Something that’s always been a massive selling point for Alec, for me). Huizenga is anything but a passive creator, but he’s one that is more than happy to let his work speak for itself, as opposed to leading the reader to any particular conclusion. Ganges #4 feels like the furthest he’s gone in this direction for awhile, with so many silent panels and abstract sequences – it’s a comic that engages the reader in the sense of essentially expecting them to act as co-author, which makes it an especially rewarding read. But, despite all of this, there’s a humanity that’s present throughout the whole thing, a kindness of sorts. That might be what brought Eddie Campbell to mind, the first time I read it; the feeling, while reading, that this was actually someone’s life I was looking into, as complex and scattered and uncertain and sleepless as the rest of us.

Ganges #4 isn’t a quick read, and it isn’t necessarily an easy read. But it’s a great one, and it’s something that everyone should be picking up and reading. It’ll keep you awake at nights.

Okay, now I’m picturing the authors of Alec and Subway Series standing shoulder to shoulder, swords in hand, fending off the critical Ringwraiths as Craig Thompson cowers Frodo-style in the background. So yeah, the headline’s a bit dramatic. But in light of critic and scholar Nadim Damluji’s thoughtful and widely linked critique of Thompson’s massive new book Habibi, I thought it worthwhile to direct you to a pair of acclaimed cartoonists’ responses.

Damluji argued that in treating the Orientalist art and literature of the past as just another genre to play with, Thompson ended up perpetuating some of the very stereotypes he presumably set out to subvert when he decided to set his near-future fantasy in a fictional but still recognizably Arab/Islamic culture — particularly where sexuality and male-female relationships, often used by Western nations as a pretext for action against Middle Eastern ones, are concerned. Eddie Campbell responds that Thompson’s interest in these topics, or more generally Love, are consistent; the Middle Eastern trappings of the tale are just the vehicle Thompson selected to get where he’s going:

Thompson’s need was not to tell us all about the geographical or political Middle East, either of today or yesteryear, but to find a narrative body that would carry him through the next stage of his development as an artist. For me, many years ago, Greek mythology served a similar purpose; I had no special interest in the subject prior to that. I just needed an engine that came ready built with all its interconnecting parts in place, that enabled me to encase stories within other stories right from the kick-off.

Critiques of the book that focus on the sociopolitical make-up of Thompson’s made-up land of Wanatolia are overly literal, Campbell says, because the book’s true purpose is in all its meticulously constructed narrative and visual diversions, digressions, and filigrees. “It’s all in ideaspace, to refer to Alan Moore’s concept, where one thing and its opposite tend to exist in immediate juxtaposition.”

In the comments for Campbell’s post, Leela Corman contributes a further defense of Thompson’s book: For all his ahistorical mixing-and-matching of Arab and Islamic imagery, his specific points of interest are depicted with a great deal of accuracy:

Thompson did his research. I’m thinking specifically of the harem setting, which is pretty much the quickest way to get the finger of Orientalism pointed and wagging at you. His portrayal is a very well-researched depiction of the Ottoman harem, specifically, down to the Mimar Sinan architecture and the fact that “harem” really only means “women’s quarters”. Some of the girls were there as concubines, but many were there in palace service, or had been born there. And, yes, there were abducted or sold girls from all over the Empire there. And African female servants. And African eunuchs. These are historical facts. So you can get pissed off when someone mentions them, or you can simply understand them in their context. He even got the style of head covering right when the girls go out into the garden. I appreciated his level of research in this area, and elsewhere, because I’m a student of that time and place, myself.

Corman, who teaches and performs as an Arabic folkloric dancer, goes on to warn against a too-rigorous patrolling of the cultural borders when it comes to members of one culture making art about another:

It’s hard to represent another culture, but it’s very important to try….The message underlying so much of the queasiness around it is, “Stick to your own kind”. If Craig did that, all you’d get year after year would be comics about contemporary Wisconsin and Portland. That sounds pretty deadly to me.

I’m on the record as liking Habibi quite a bit. It’s an enormously ambitious and complex work that has evoked comparisons to Alan Moore’s similarly baroque books from Campbell, Joe “Jog” McCulloch, and myself; as such, it’s frequently dazzling and always interesting, even in its weaknesses. I will also add that I did not find it to be a work that either demonizes or patronizes Muslim, Arab, or African men and women. I think this is important because at this point, that’s a low-to-medium priority project of one of this country’s two major political parties, and given the “some say/others say” structure of political reporting, that viewpoint is given plenty of airtime already.

That said, I’m far too lapsed a Catholic to be comfortable with demands that any culture or religion be afforded respect automatically. So I can abhor bigotry against Muslims but still find some Muslim attitudes towards women benighted and wrong, for example — just as I do such attitudes among Roman Catholicism, evangelical Christianity, orthodox Judaism, and so on, to varying degrees depending on the severity of the ideas and practices.

But I don’t think any of this is really on Thompson’s agenda anyway. To the extent that Habibi investigates the unseemly side of Islamic doctrines, they are always just a uniquely Islamic variant on universal human foibles and failings. The scene that’s most singled out as Orientalist by commentators is the one in which Thompson’s character Dodola throws away her headscarf, but she could just as easily be throwing away a wig, a yarmulke, a clerical collar — hell, a bikini.

Now, presentation matters, context matters, and if a depiction of another culture singles that culture out as uniquely repellent compared to the nobility of one’s own, then by all means decry that attitude. But it’s so easy to see the continuity of ideas and execution between Thompson’s take on American evangelical Christianity in Blankets and his phantasmagorical Islam in Habibi that I lean toward Campbell and Corman’s read of things here. The pastors, jocks, and Bible-camp beauties have been replaced by sultans, eununchs, and harem girls, but the song remains the same.

Animal Man #1

Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading? Today our special guest is Kevin Colden, whose comic work includes Fishtown, I Rule the Night, Vertigo’s Strange Adventures and Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper, among others. He’s also the drummer for the band Heads Up Display.

To see what Kevin and the Robot 6 crew have been reading lately, click below …

*****

Michael May

Justice League #1

I spent most of my week getting caught up on the New 52. I liked some of Justice League #1, but have many of the same problems others did. I’m primarily interested in Justice League to see what kind of relationships the heroes have with each other in this new version. That’s what I like most about team books anyway, and I did enjoy Green Lantern’s feeling like Batman needed to prove himself and how Batman reacted to that. It was a new take that couldn’t have been done without the reboot. But stretching that out to an entire issue was disappointing and I may wait until Wonder Woman shows up in the series before I buy another issue. I’m very curious to see how Johns’ version compares to the way Azzarello’s going to write her.

Action Comics #1 was a nice surprise though. I love, Love, LOVE the less-powered Superman. I’ve been watching the Fleischer Superman cartoons lately and this reminded me a lot of those. Superman’s incredibly tough and strong, but not invincible and I sincerely hope he stays that way. Even though it reminded me a lot of Batman: Year One and Spider-Man 2, I also liked the Superman vs. the cops scene with the people coming to Superman’s defense. I don’t care that it’s not the first time I’ve ever seen that kind of thing, it’s the first time I’ve seen it with Superman and it was awesome. Lois reminds me of Fleischer’s Lois too: badass and capable, but not immune to getting in over her head and needing some help. There’s so much storytelling potential there that doesn’t have to have her be as goofy and helpless as her Silver Age version. I bought the issue out of curiosity, but I’m very much looking forward to more like it.

Batgirl

Batgirl #1 was another disappointment though. I typically love Gail Simone’s work so much, but I wanted a light-hearted superheroine (like the one on the cover) and didn’t care at all for Batgirl’s dealing with the Post Traumatic Stress of being shot by the Joker. I’m not saying it’s a bad story, it’s just very heavy and not what I’m looking for. I won’t buy the second issue, but may come back to it in the collected version if the buzz is good.

Static Shock #1 – My hopes that this will include more Milestone characters than just Static are encouraged by Hardware’s playing a major role in Virgil Hawkins’ story. I’m hoping for more like that (Blood Syndicate please!), but in the meantime, this was a lot of fun with some great, new villains and I can’t wait for the next issue.

Demon Knights was always going to be a hard sell for me because I’m not a big Demon fan, nor do I generally care for the way Marvel and DC have portrayed medieval times. But Diogenes Neves has some nice designs and halfway through the issue Paul Cornell threw in a romantic triangle that hooked me but good. Then he netted me and put me in the boat with the last page. I not making any long-term commitments, but there are some great elements here and I’m excited to see where it goes.

Brigid Alverson

MetaMaus

I got an advance copy of MetaMaus this week, and when I sat down and started flipping through it I couldn’t put it down. It’s basically a book about Art Spiegelman’s Maus, and the heart of it is a lengthy interview with Spiegelman himself in which he talks about the thought process that went into the book, how the making of Maus affected his relationship with his father and the origins of many of the images in the graphic novel. The book is crammed with visuals, including photos from Spiegelman’s bar mitzvah album and pictures from books about the Holocaust that once belonged to his mother. The result is fascinating, at least for a Spiegelman fan like me. The book comes with a disc that includes Maus in its entirety as well as recordings of Spiegelman’s father. I haven’t cracked that yet, but I know it will add a whole new dimension to the experience.

On a much, much lighter note, I worked my way through the first year of the Life With Archie magazine, with its dual Archie-marries-Veronica and Archie-marries-Betty storylines, this week. I have been picking these up and putting them down all year, but sitting down and reading them all at once makes the stories come into sharper focus. It’s interesting that some events occur in both storylines, while other outcomes are totally different—for instance, Moose becomes mayor of Riverdale in one story and janitor of Riverdale High in another, for reasons that have nothing to do with Archie’s choice of a spouse. Although the multiplicity of characters and subplots makes it a bit confusing to read both at once, it’s hard to put the stories down, as writer Paul Kupperberg keeps the plot twists coming thick and fast. It’s good melodrama, and because the characters are all familiar faces, it’s fun to see what directions they evolve into from their teenage selves.

Tim O’Shea

Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E.

Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #1: When I picked up this week’s comics from the local store, my pal Dugan admitted that this comic reminded him somewhat of Hellboy. After I read it, I had to agree with him to a certain extent. Oddly enough, it also reminded me of another Dark Horse property, The Umbrella Academy. One major thing that annoyed me about Jeff Lemire’s writing (as much as I typically enjoy it) was this issue seemed really too text-intensive–and I hope the S.H.A.D.E.NET narrative. (If I never see another writer use narrative elements like “Data incoming…97% downloaded” I will be happy). But the first issue, despite its hiccups, introduced enough interesting characters (I bailed on Flashpoint after the first issue) to me to want to return for issue #2.

Black Panther: The Man Without Fear #523: This series is at its strongest when writer David Liss is teamed with artist Francesco Francavilla (as with this issue), Since this series began (with the departure of lead character) a major focal point of the series has been the importance of Hell’s Kitchen. T’Challa/Black Panther’s efforts to help Hell’s Kitchen continues to pay off in the neighborhood’s darkest hours. In terms of the supporting cast, I love love love Sofija.

Daredevil #3: I would not be surprised if Marvel is pitching Mark Waid’s Daredevil run as a TV series at some point. The surprise twist involving Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson’s law firm in this latest issue was really what triggered my theory. While the book is called Daredevil, Waid has devoted a good amount of time to showing Murdoch attempting to rebuild his life and career, which has entertained me to date. This was my favorite read of the week.

Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors #5: I feel for independent creators trying to garner attention for their respective series in a month like this, where the new DCU 52 dominates the news and review cycle. If you have not checked out Mark Andrew Smith and Armand Villavert’s Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors, you are genuinely missing out on a quirky series. In this issue, all the kids get a hold of the comics that the Nefarious Kid has been reading. (The two-page sample of those comics that Villavert offers early in this issue is executed with such great homage-level attention, it actually reminded me of some of the scenes from Jim Rugg’s Afrodisiac). The story really kicks into high gear in this installment and I really love where the creators leave things at the end of this installment (always leave folks wanting more, of course [which surprisingly some creators fail to do]).

Chris Mautner

Prison Pit 3

Prison Pit 3 — I had the opportunity to do a Q&A panel with Johnny Ryan at SPX last weekend. One of the more interesting parts of discussion was when Ryan said how each volume of Prison Pit had to have a different vibe or theme so that the different books didn’t feel interchangable. That’s certainly true in volume three, as we see the inclusion of a new character, who, while just as violent and vicious as CF, is completely different in attitude and demeanor. Plus, he has one of the most amazing (and utterly grotesque) resurrection scenes I’ve ever seen. There’s also a neat little bit toward the end where it seems like Ryan is heavily drawing upon the Fort Thunder crowd, particularly Mat Brinkman. All in all, it’s another excellent volume.

Prince Valiant Vol. 4 — This volume covers the most of the WWII years, 1943-44, when the paper shortage was at its highest. As Brian Kane notes in the introduction, this meant creator Hal Foster had to format the strip so parts could be cut for papers that had been forced to shrink their page count. He did this by adding a bottom strip, The Medieval Castle, which, while certainly informative and amusing, wasn’t necessarily as good as pure, unadulterated Valiant, especially since this new situation meant that Foster was unable to do the big, impressive vistas that had quickly become the strip’s trademark. Still, while no doubt hampered by this new situation, it did nothing to harm his storytelling skills, and Valiant remains a hugely enjoyable action strip, as Valiant battles a variety of ne’r do wells on a quest to find his true love, Aleta.

Mome Vol. 22 — I’ve talked at length before about how good the Mome anthology has been, and while I’m sad to see it come to a close, it’s nice to see it end on such a high note. Seriously, this is the best volume of Mome yet, with standout contributions by Chuck Forsman, Eleanor Davis, Laura Park, Dash Shaw, Jesse Moynihan and Sara Edward-Corbett. But really, there’s not a bad story in this entire book. It might seem weird recommending the last book of a series, but if you gotta only read one of these things, this would be the one.

Kevin Colden

Besides obsessively lurking on my Twitter feed and the typical mind-sucking websites like Damn You Autocorrect my, um… INTELLECTUAL reading time has been chock full of good stuff.

I suppose the elephant in the room would be the DC New 52 books – of which I’ve read about half so far (maybe 13 of the 27 to date). The overall concept of the reboot is solid, though some of the books have nailed it better than others. Animal Man in particular is one of the best new books I’ve read in a long time. I’ve always thought that Jeff Lemire was an interesting, unorthodox choice to write DCU books, and he and Travel Foreman have crafted an eerie, tonal work that recalls Moore and Totleben’s Swamp Thing – and it lives up to its pedigree. I got really excited for this title when I saw a preview of Foreman and inker Dan Green’s artwork for this book – creepy, angular and distorted, with a tasty late-80′s vibe – and it delivers. Colorist Lovern Kindzierski complements their work by smartly keeping it subtle, not eating the ink with rendering and doing some sweet limited-palette work as well. This one is on my regular list now and forever.

Bakuman

Keeping my comic selection broad and stroking my passion for well-crafted manga, a few months back DC Digital super editor and newly-installed Angeleno Kwanza Johnson recommended I read Bakuman by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. Or maybe he strong-armed me into reading it. I don’t remember. Either way, I loved the creators’ previous work Death Note (which I also highly recommend; I read the first five volumes -about 1000 pages – in one sitting), so I figured this one was a good bet. Bakuman is about two high school-age kids making comics. Yeah. It’s about writing and drawing – possibly the least interesting and least active things in the universe – yet somehow the creators infuse the story with drama, tension and suspense. Besides some inexplicably bizarre behavior by two characters that requires Herculean suspension of disbelief, it’s thoroughly enjoyable and the art is stellar. Interestingly, Viz released volume 4 as a digital day-and-date experiment, and then promptly abandoned that plan with volume 5. Boo.

On my bookshelf, you will find many, many a finely bound graphic novel. You will also find my only two other reading passions – mountain-climbing memoirs and music biographies. I kid you not. I love reading about climbing because I will never be able to do it myself. I like to read about being a touring musician, because I will likewise never be able to do it myself. My current musical selection is See A Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody by Bob Mould. It’s a great companion piece to Andrew Earles 2010 Husker Du biography (for which Mould declined to be interviewed, in anticipation of his own book), detailing Mould’s view of the band’s acrimonious history, and moving further into his time with Sugar, his solo career and his life as a gay man. It’s a fascinating, unflinching, sometimes brutal portrait of a self-made artist, and it’s one of the best and most inspiring I’ve read.

Those selections, by the way – all purchased and read digitally. The revolution is here, and it will not be televised. It will be downloaded.

Willworld

Which is not to say I’m all ones and zeroes here – quite the opposite. I’m a biblio-junkie with a bad habit. Two weeks ago, I read WE3 by Morrison and Quitely, Green Lantern Willworld by DeMatteis and the late, great Seth Fisher (buy all of his work – ALL OF IT), and when my wife is done with it, our pal Mike Dawson’s Troop 142 is in the pile. Last weekend, I was at Small Press Expo and went on such an insane buying binge that I’m not even sure what I bought. I know I had Jennifer Hayden sign a copy of her new book Underwire, and I picked up Eddie Campbell’s Alec (both from Top Shelf), got a few Roger Langridge’s books, and went on a blind spree at Fantagraphics with Four Color Fear, an Alex Toth collection, some books by Jordan Crane and an impulsively bought Jacques Tardi book because CBLDF’s Alex Cox told me I needed it. That’s the first bag of three.

What am I reading? Everything, apparently.

It’s an annual tradition to look forward to: The alternative comics publisher Top Shelf has unveiled its “Massive $3 Sale,” in which they’re pricing down their catalog to near-ridiculous levels — in many cases $3, and in many more cases just one lousy American dollar. For very little money, you can rack up a big chunk of one of the best comics publishers’ best comics.

What would I get? At the $3 level, Kolbeinn Karlsson’s The Troll King — a surreal collection of intertwined short stories that for once lives up to the overused, rarely true label “fairy tales for grown-ups” — is basically a must-buy. I’d also be sure to pick up Andy Hartzell’s Fox Bunny Funny, an unpredictable and impeccably cartooned funny-animal allegory about conformity and self-discovery. Lilli Carré’s remarkably assured debut collection of satirical short stories, Tales of Woodsman Pete, is another no-brainer. If you’re interested in rounding out your Alan Moore collection with some of his more off-the-beaten-path efforts, you can get all eight issues of his underground-culture zine Dodgem Logic, his prose novel Voice of the Fire, and his poetry/photography collaboration with José Villarubia The Mirror of Love for three bucks a pop. And you can pick up all three issues of Jeffrey Brown’s one-man action anthology series Sulk — Bighead & Friends, a return to his genuinely funny superhero parody characters; Deadly Awesome, an 84-page mixed martial arts fight comic; and The Kind of Strength That Comes from Madness, a grab bag of sci-fi/fantasy/action/adventure spoofs — for a buck apiece, which is a steal.

Beyond the deepest discounts, you’ll rarely find the publisher’s heavy (literally–these books are big) hitters priced as low as they are now: Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell, Campbell’s Alec: The Year’s Have Pants omnibus, and Jeff Lemire’s complete Essex County are all $20, while Craig Thompson’s Blankets is just $22.50.

And hey, if you’re totally new to all of these books, so much the better. Maybe DC’s New 52 initiative has you in an “I’ll try anything for $3 a book” mood? If so, put a few bucks aside and get some full-fledged graphic novels for that price or lower. You’ll be glad you did.

from Big Numbers #3 by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz

It is perhaps the greatest comic never published. Intended to be a 12-issue miniseries ambitious and complex enough to make Watchmen look like Wizard of Id on an off day, Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz’s Big Numbers was a Joycean look at life in a small English town as a big-box retailer prepared to set up shop. But this grand fiction-as-fractal-geometry experiment only managed to produce two published issues in 1990 before hitting a massive delay during work on issue #3, losing Sienkiewicz, moving from Moore’s Mad Love publishing imprint to Kevin Eastman’s Tundra, tapping Sienkiewicz’s then-teenaged assistant (and current reclusive Pim & Francie creator and alt-horror superstar) Al Columbia to take over, losing Columbia and all the pages he’d completed, and finally shuddering to a halt.

The exact details of these events have long been a matter of conjecture and dispute, involving as they do some of comics’ major (and in some cases most mercurial) talents: Moore, Sienkiewicz, Columbia, Eastman, then-Tundra editor Paul Jenkins, and the saga’s most reliable chronicler, Moore collaborator Eddie Campbell, who told the behind-the-scenes story as he knew it in his book Alec: How to Be an Artist. Meanwhile, nothing has been seen of the all-Columbia fourth issue, long rumored to have been destroyed in its entirety by the perfectionist artist. Ten pages of issue #3 saw the light of day in the short-lived SubMedia magazine in 1999; that was all that most anyone saw, or even knew for sure existed, until January 2009, when a photocopy of the entire third issue surfaced on eBay with art credited to Columbia. The pages were purchased by Irish bookseller Pádraig Ó Méalóid, who (with Moore’s permission) scanned and posted them on his LiveJournal.

Now Ó Méalóid has returned to the scene of one of comics’ great literary mysteries, and he’s brought along one of the three people best equipped to get to the bottom of things: Bill Sienkiewicz himself. In an essay apparently originally intended for Heidi MacDonald’s blog The Beat but now posted to Ó Méalóid’s blog, Sienkiewicz explains his side of the Big Numbers debacle in detail: the status of Big Numbers #3 (completely finished); the involvement of Al Columbia in the issue (zero, except for maybe a background or two); why he dramatically changed his art style from photorealistic to Sienkiewicz-scratchy between issues #2 and #3 (the prohibitive effort, time, and cost of sustaining his stable of photoreference models, two of whom tragically died and one of whom moved to Germany in the midst of making the comic, plus the opportunity the script for #3 afforded him to make a stylistic shift work for the story); how #3 fell off the scheduling rails (during that time he lost a parent, a relationship, Columbia, and a lot of money); the status of Big Numbers #4 (he hasn’t seen it, but heard (like all of us have) that Columbia destroyed the original pages before they could be published); the status of his relationship with Columbia (they’ve patched everything up; he wishes Al well); and what you’ve likely been waiting for — whether or not he and Moore will ever finish the series (he’d like to!):

To this day, I’ve lamented that Alan and I never finished the series. I actually literally can’t stomach the thought of it remaining a hole in our creative lives, certainly in mine. And honestly, there’s not a week that goes by that I don’t think about completing it, about contacting Alan and saying, “Adult here. What say you? Let’s kick out the jams!” I understand his great disappointment, though I’ve no doubt he’s moved on. And gotten even more brilliant, if that’s possible. I’ve apologized to Alan personally, and to the others, for my part.

Read the whole thing and imagine what might have been.

House by Josh Simmons

Editor’s note: As a part of Robot 666 Week, we welcome guest contributor Van Jensen, writer of Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer and its upcoming sequel.

by Van Jensen

I was on a panel with Steve Niles and Bernie Wrightson to discuss horror comics earlier this year, and I admitted that I didn’t really like horror as a genre. I can’t even see a trailer for Saw MCXVII (or whatever number they’re up to) without feeling repulsed. But Steve and Bernie talked me down from the ledge. The problem isn’t so much with the horror genre, it’s with the trend of comics and movies that use gore as a substitute for real fright. So here’s my list of favorite horror comics and films, and they’re all projects that rely heavily on atmosphere and thrills (the real hallmarks of horror) rather than buckets of blood.

1. House, by Josh Simmons.

Simmons’ debut graphic novel is a relatively simple story, with three teenagers exploring a giant old house in the woods. Things go wrong, which is predictable, but in an unpredictable way. Simmons uses no words through the entire story, but his real accomplishment is utilizing the design of the pages to deliver an increasingly claustrophobic, disorienting and terrifying story.

2. Creature from the Black Lagoon.

My grandparents used to run a theater, and there were lots of stories of how my grandpa would do different things while horror movies were playing to scare the audience. During a showing of Creature from the Black Lagoon, he waited for a dramatic moment and then — wearing tights, scuba flippers and a mask — ran through the aisle. I only saw the movie on VHS years later, but I always loved it. Not just for the iconic design of the creature, but more because it excels at slowly building tension.

Beasts of Burden #4

3. Beasts of Burden, by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson.

The concept of a group of pets protecting a neighborhood from the occult sounds kind of silly, but this series is both genuinely scary and, more importantly, haunting. The difference is that Beasts of Burden is full of well developed characters, and Dorkin and Thompson create them in such a way that when the horrific violence surfaces — as it inevitably does — one is left with an emotional pain that far outlasts the momentary frights.

4. The Host.

This Korean film is far from flawless, but it earns a lot of credit for breaking so widely from genre conventions. It’s the exact same type of giant monster movie as Cloverfield. But whereas Cloverfield offers nothing new beyond the gimmick of the handheld camera, The Host defies expectations at every turn. It’s a monster movie that becomes a family drama, a social critique and finally something of a ghost story. It is weird, daring and beautiful — words too seldom associated with horror.

5. From Hell, by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell.

I was tempted to choose Moore’s Swamp Thing run, but for my money, his masterwork is From Hell. Part historical graphic novel and part pseudo-journalistic examination of the Jack the Ripper slayings, the book is an in-depth examination of one man’s insanity played out in the larger insanity of a turbulent time in England’s history. It also deserves a lot of credit as a book that immediately reveals the identity of the villain and still manages to keep readers on edge.

6. The Devil’s Backbone.

Pan’s Labyrinth always earns mention as Guillermo del Toro’s best film, but his earlier foray into the Spanish civil war, The Devil’s Backbone, is far superior. Its protagonist is a boy who’s taken into an orphanage, which happens to be haunted. The ghost is what terrifies the children, at least until they begin to see just how horrifying adults can be. It’s an almost painful movie to watch, one that will alternately have you covering your eyes out of fear and covering your eyes so no one will notice the tears.

You can buy this book for three bucks

Goodness gracious, look at all the terrific titles that are on sale for $3 over at Top Shelf Productions’ website. That’s some 70 in all, including books by Alan Moore, Jeffrey Brown, James Kochalka, Scott Morse, Liz Prince, and Renee French. Another 30-plus comics and graphic novels are also on sale for suitably impressive amounts — the complete Lost Girls from Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie and the complete Alec: The Years Have Pants by Eddie Campbell may be purchased for just $25 and $20 respectively, for pete’s sake. Top Shelf’s $3 Sale lasts through Friday, September 24th, so get ‘em while the gettin’s good!

Blood's a Rover

Hello and welcome once again to What Are You Reading?, where the Robot 6 crew talk about the comics and graphic novels that they’ve been enjoying lately. Our special guest this week is comics journalist and critic Dirk Deppey of Journalista and The Comics Journal fame.

To see what Dirk and the Robot 6 crew have been reading lately, read on …

*****

Sean T. Collins

Fallen Angel

A couple of let-downs bookended a pleasantly unpleasant surprise for me this week. Click the links for full reviews…

Fallen Angel by Nicolas Robel (Drawn & Quarterly): This modern-day fairy tale never quite makes the leap from the personal to the universal.

Kaspar by Diane Obamsawin (Drawn & Quarterly): I’m not necessarily nuts about some of the lo-fi visual choices here, but this true story of a young man who may or may not have spent his first 17 years kept in a dungeon in total isolation hit me hard.

Rambo 3.5 by Jim Rugg (self-published): A disappointingly one-note Dubya parody from the talented artist behind Afrodisiac.

Brigid Alverson

I’m used to Osamu Tezuka’s peculiarities by now—the juxtaposition of the cute and the brutal, his oddly sociopathic main characters and his simplistic psychological explanations for their behavior, even his splintered layouts. And Apollo’s Song still struck me as the oddest Tezuka manga I have ever read. It starts with a young man, Shogo Chikaishi, who kills animals for fun, because, apparently, his promiscuous mother rejected him (and he walked in on her with a guy). His psychiatrist subjects him, with grim relish, to shock treatment, during which he hallucinates a goddess who tells him he is condemned to fall in love with the same woman over and over, but each time, one of them will die. This seems kind of harsh when we have just learned that poor Shogo isn’t really responsible for his condition, but that’s Tezuka for you. Anyway, he starts cycling through these new lives, but after two, the story takes a different turn altogether. It’s almost like Tezuka was making it up as he went along. Still, it’s entertaining enough to keep me reading (and guessing) all the way to the end of this first volume, and anxious to see the conclusion in volume 2.

I haven’t gotten too far into Eric Hobbs and Noel Tuazon’s Broadcast yet, but I’m impressed with Tuazon’s loose style and the care with which Hobbs is setting up his story. The characters have all emerged as individuals with strong personalities, and good and evil are sharply delineated. Tuazon’s art is washy and atmospheric, and he does a great job of setting the scene, including small details such as a set table or a scarecrow on a rainy night. Sometimes his art is too loose, and it’s like looking at the drawings through a rain-streaked windshield. I was afraid I would have trouble telling the characters apart, but somehow distinct sets of features emerge from the haze for each one. It’s a book to linger over, not one to read in a hurry, so I’m enjoying taking it slow.

JK Parkin

I’ve started reading a collection of superhero short stories called Masked, edited by Lou Anders and featuring prose by Matthew Sturges, Paul Cornell, Gail Simone, Mike Carey, Bill Willingham, Peter and Kathleen David, Chris Roberson and many others. I downloaded a sample of it to my iPad a few weeks ago and became so engrossed in Sturges’ fun-yet-kind-of-gruesome story that I ended up downloading the whole thing so I could finish it.

Dirk Deppey

The Cold Six Thousand

For the past few years, most of what I’ve read has come from a computer monitor, so I’ve lately been forcing myself to return to printed books. I began with James Ellroy’s Underworld trilogy — American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand and Blood’s a Rover. They’re basically crime-noir novels, except that the setting is the turbulent events of the 1960s political stage, and the cast of characters includes JFK, RFK, J. Edgar Hoover, Jimmy Hoffa, Martin Luther King, Howard Hughes and a violent blend of mobsters, Cuban exiles and semi-rogue FBI and CIA agents. It’s trashy, politically dubious and utterly gripping work, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. I’m now digging into the first volume of William Patterson’s Robert Heinlein biography, after which I’ll probably go back and dig up some Christopher Hitchens to hold me over until the end of the year, when the first volume of Mark Twain’s unexpurgated autobiography finally hits bookstore shelves (after an author-imposed, century-long embargo). Twain is one of my favorite writers, so this new book is going to make for a really good Christmas present to myself.

Comics: I was happy to finally get a chance to read Daren White and Eddie Campbell’s The Playwright, a droll sex comedy about not getting laid. It’s brilliant stuff. There’s a stack of manga sitting several feet high next to my desk, which I’m slowly working my way through — new volumes of Suppli, Mushishi, Nana, Twin Spica and Black Jack, as well as several Jiro Taniguchi books that I’ve been putting off until I can go back and re-acquaint myself with the story in previous volumes. (This is particularly necessary with The Times of Botchan, which is a dense and complex read even without the delay between books.) Also sitting in the stack is a reprint of Dino Buzzati’s 1969 proto-graphic novel, Poem Strip. I’ll be damned if I can remember where I first heard about it, but the New York Review of Books translated and reprinted it last year, and just flipping through the pages, I can tell it’s going to be interesting stuff. I ordered Kevin Huizenga’s The Wild Kingdom before realizing that it was essentially a reprint of Or Else #4 (which I already own), but the larger size and excellent production values are a gold-ticket invitation to read it again, so I can’t get too worked up about buying the same book twice. Finally, I recently ordered a copy of Howard Cruse’s collection of gay-themed comics, From Headrack to Claude, from the author’s website. It’s a print-on-demand softcover — one of the first I’ve ordered — and I’m almost as impressed with the quality of the printing as I am with Cruse’s daring, trailblazing work. This’ll be a fun one to read, I’m sure.

Oh, and someone at Fantagraphics finally got around to sending me a copy of Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories, a week ago. I’m an employee of the publisher and played a minor role in bringing it to print, so I’ll spare you yet another round of Dirk’s Company-Shill Ego Cavalcade… but I would like to note that just holding the damned thing in my hands is by and of itself a deeply satisfying experience. Thanks, Matt! So when are you going to start translating the next one…?

X'ed Out

As the final days of summer start to waste away and you’re looking for something to enjoy before hitting the books for school, there’s no better place to find some good stuff to read than right here in our weekly What Are You Reading? column.This week our guest is journalist/blogger Heidi MacDonald, of The Beat and Publishers Weekly fame.

To see what Heidi and the rest of the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below …

Tim O’Shea

Welcome to Tranquility

Welcome to Tranquility: One Foot in the Grave is a fun read for the back story element. This issue opens with a flashback to a 1960s beach party film with Mr. Articulate in his traditional costume (down to 1960s sock stirrups) … but in swim trunks? Any chance that writer Gail Simone gets to do comedy, as far as I’m concerned, the overall story benefits.

Invincible Iron Man 29: As much as I enjoy Matt Fraction’s writing on this book, Salvador Larroca’s art is just too antiseptic and stilted for me to enjoy the story. There’s a geek scene in which, as dated as geeks can dress, there’s no geek that dresses like Alex P. Keaton of 1985. I guess it was an effort by Larroca to go for comedy, it just fell flat for me.

After this month’s issue, there’s only installment left in the 10-part miniseries of Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba’s Daytripper. I hate to see this story end. I’m hoping Vertigo taps this creative team again, if they’re interested. If you told me when this series started it would end with the death of some variation of the same character, there’s no way I would have imagined I could enjoy the series as much as I have.

If I had any chance of being labeled as one of the hip comic book critics (not likely) it ends today. I’m immensely enjoying JMS’s Superman and hope it continues in this done-in-one (while part of the larger Grounded arc) style. I’m sure others can point to large plot holes or character inconsistencies (it’s what fuels the Internet), but I don’t care. I enjoy this story so much, I can ignore the whole Superman looking like Christopher Reeve mandate that DC editorial seems to be enforcing these days.

Zatanna 4

Zatanna 4 finds Dini getting into a groove with the book. As a touring performer, Dini is allowed to take the character to different towns for adventures. In this issue she hits Vegas. There’s a bittersweet moment for me in this issue, as Zatanna practices escaping from a straightjacket; lamenting that her time was slow and “Lame. Scott Free could do it in twelve [seconds].” Why is that bittersweet? Last I checked Scott Free is dead or missing, along with the rest of the new gods. I’m glad Dini still remembers a universe where Scott Free exists, but I’m surprised DC editorial let the reference slip in.

Roger Langridge is building a unique Marvel universe in Thor: The Mighty Avenger and I’m just happy to be reading it. One has to wonder if Marvel is leaning on Langridge to write an Avengers title in this vein at some point (I sure as hell hope so), judging from the way he effectively works in Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne in this third issue of the series. Artist Chris Samnee and Langridge have constructed one of the most engaging takes on Thor in three issues, it’s visually nothing like Kirby but very Kirby-esque in tone. For me, it’s the best title that Marvel publishes at present–hands down. (Small aside to Marvel, you might want to check the spelling of Langridge’s name on the cover)

This past week on Twitter many folks took a moment to observe G-Day–a day where colleagues and fans remember Mark Gruenwald (who died 14 years ago) and Mike Wieringo (who we lost three years ago). Look to Twitter hashtags #MarkGruenwald and #MikeWieringo for a glimpse of people’s reflections. Chris Roberson reposted his essay from a few years back on Gruenwald, which includes this conclusion:

“The current state of superhero comics, with its obsessive attention to continuity and rationalization, line-wide crossovers, multiple realities, and increasing divergence from the real world, resembles nothing so much as a Mark Gruenwald comic writ large. Everything that Gruenwald pioneered, from the late seventies through the mid-nineties, has now become industry standard. And the mainstream superhero comics of today resemble Gruenwald’s Squadron Supreme more than they resemble the mainstream comics of the day.”

Brigid Alverson

Artichoke Tales

I read Megan Kelso’s Artichoke Tales almost in a single sitting, which is probably a good way to do it. Her characters are deceptively cute and simply drawn, and at first I had trouble telling one from another, but they are full of interesting quirks. This book deals with some standard themes—strong women and intellectual, impractical men, the impulse that leads to war, technology vs. rural simplicity—but none is treated in a standard way. Kelso definitely has a point of view, but she doesn’t insult the reader’s intelligence, and there’s plenty of nuance; she’s telling a story, not making a point. Also, it’s beautiful just to look at. There’s no mention at all of artichokes, though, which was a little disappointing; it’s purely a visual thing.

As a former New Yorker myself, I have a lot of love for Julia Wertz’s Drinking at the Movies, an unsparing but hilarious account of her life after she left her native San Francisco to live in poverty, squalor, and drunkenness in Brooklyn. Her drawings and descriptions of herself are uniformly self-deprecating—it’s like Cathy, only smarter and with a lot more drinking. Too much drinking, actually, and although she cleverly depicts her depression and drunkenness by showing her anthropomorphized brain going off on one toot after another, it’s hard not to see something concerning behind the laughter. She’s self-aware enough to know that, though, and in the end she does quit drinking, so the story is really a good picture of a functioning, self-rationalizing alcoholic. And it’s really funny. Everyone who has ever been 23 should read this book.

And, as I indicated in Friday’s blog post, I did indeed start reading Nathan Sorry. I has a great story, and I really like Rich Barrett’s clean art (a bit like Cameron Stewart’s Sin Titulo) and slightly nonlinear storytelling style—he shifts back and forth in time, revealing a bit of the story at a time. It’s very intriguing and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes next.

Sean T. Collins

Two shaky but interesting works bookended a real must-read for me this week. Click the links for full reviews…

Cyclone Bill & the Tall Tales by Dan Dougherty: It’s far from perfect, but one of the rare rock and roll mythmaking comics that’s more endearing than annoying.

Fandancer by Geoff Grogan: A stunning genre-and-media-mixing meditation on besieged femininity? A bowl-you-over Kirby superheroine tribute? Stop, you’re both right!

A God Somewhere by John Arcudi and Peter Snejbjerg: Superhero revisionism from the brain behind B.P.R.D–mostly flawed, still worth a read.

Heidi MacDonald

The Playwright

The Playwright
By Darren White and Eddie Campbell (Top Shelf)

The story of a successful middle-aged playwright who lives a celibate life sounded like heavy heavy going, but this book made me laugh out loud several times, even though the comedy is dark throughout. The Playwright lives in a carefully proscribed lifestyle, fantasizing about the girls he sees on public transport, carrying out mental rituals that he developed to protect himself from childhood emotional abuse. But when his mentally handicapped brother comes into custody instead of sending him to a home, he hires a live-in nurse to care for him. That pounding on the door the Playwright hears is Change, and resist as he might, it will come. It turns out that in many ways the Playwright is correct to fight – his success as an author is directly tied to his failure as a well-rounded human being.

Along the way we learn every detail of The Playwright’s phobias and OCD and their origins. (The Nurse’s pathology is also examined and equally screwed up.) While the Playwright lives an outwardly sedate and safely chaste life, inside, like all of us, he’s a stewing cauldron of impulse and longing, which is shown in scatological and frequently hilarious detail.

White and Campbell have collaborated on several graphic novels including Batman. White controlled writing brings out Eddie the Illustrator and the warm, flowing watercolors Campbell uses here – much more inviting than the scratchy pen and ink he uses for more foreboding tales – helps bring these ridiculous characters to life and makes them likable. By the end you may even be rooting for the Playwright.

If you had forgotten that Eddie Campbell is one of the finest cartoonists of his generation, the quiet naturalism and deadpan humor of The Playwright will remind you, big time.

My next two what are you readings are previews, so if I’m a stinker for getting so many advance copies, I apologize in advance.

X’ed Out
By Charles Burns (Pantheon)

This doesn’t come out until October, but some black and white galleys are floating around and even without the final color this book is a spellbinder that you can read over and over. I’m a huge Twin Peaks fan and this reminded me of David Lynch and for once the comparison isn’t unflattering to the newcomer. The story opens with Doug, a young man who is recovering from some kind of head injury. Then his little black cat Inky leads him into another world full of Burns’ patented grotesqueries. But in the meantime, there are shiftless teens partying it up, a misshapen animal guide in the fantasy world, and questions questions everywhere.

X’ed Out is Burns take on Tintin, — Inky = Snowy, get it? – as a youth explores a world of adventure, only this time the adventure is based in horror, drug abuse, nagging parents, and parties gone bad.

Like Campbell, it’s beyond dispute that Burns is one of the finest cartoonists of his generation. As in his acclaimed Black Hole, Burns starting point is the tropes of 50’s horror films about teenagers who party a little too hard and pay the price at the hands of some supernatural monster. But he’s upgraded those bland melodramas to cover real emotions and sympathetic characters.

Burns art here is as pitch perfect as ever—even the most mundane plate of Pop Tarts is infused with dread and danger. Sadly X’ed out is only the beginning of what looks to be a fantastic epic. I want it all right now!

How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less

How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less
By Sarah Glidden (DC/Vertigo)

Another advance – sorry! – but Glidden’s mini comics version of this is still available here and there. Glidden’s mini comic created such a stir when it came out in 2007 that she was immediately snapped up by Vertigo to produce a redrawn and colored version of this autobiographical story.

I’ve been frank in the past about tiring of the many mundane autobiographical comics out there, but Glidden doesn’t fall into the self-absorption trap. This is the story of her Birthright journey to Israel – a trip that young Jews age 18-26 are entitled to take. The trips are funded by charities to enable younger Jews to bond with Israel and their heritage. Glidden goes on the trip as something of a skeptic with an agenda – she’s most concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and feels sure that she’s going to find the pro-Zionist version of the story discredited.

Glidden’s story function as a travelogue and political commentary. An armed guard has to accompany the group, which gets shown films even their guide identifies as propaganda at various stops. But as the journey continues, Glidden finds out that maybe nothing is as simple as anyone wants to pretend.

For a debut graphic novel, this is a stunning achievement. Glidden uses the 9-panel grid – reminiscent of Burns – and a loose watercolor style – reminiscent of Campbell – showing that she’s studied her comics theory well. Her drawings are simple but packed with telling detail. You get a real feeling for the terrain and country and the people she encounters. Most important, Glidden has a good sense of her own fallibility and isn’t afraid to question. The “situation,” as it is called, is unimaginably complex and tragic with no answers or solution.

Glidden has the eye of a journalist, and those unfamiliar with the history if Israel will learn a great deal from this book. Some will undoubtedly say it favors this side or that, as well, but that seems tragically inevitable as well. Glidden has more projects in the journo-comics (i.e. Joe Sacco) vein planned, and based on this debut, she is definitely a cartoonist to watch.

Fate of the Artist

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.

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.

Further reading

Despite the acclaim his Alec tales have won, Campbell’s most famous work is probably From Hell, the Jack the Ripper conspiracy tale he did with Alan Moore. I’ll deal with that book in more detail when I get around to discussing Moore in this feature (whenever that will be) but suffice it to say that this remains one of Moore’s best collaborations and a shining star in both men’s bibliographies.

Equally stellar (and in some ways exhibiting more of Campbell’s own personal voice than Hell does) is A Disease of Language, in which Campbell adapted two of Moore’s performance art pieces into comics, rather successfully I might add.

The Amazing, Remarkable Monsieur Leotard

Moving on, The Amazing, Remarkable Monsieur Leotard, written with Dan Best, is a comical look at the life of a trapeze artist who, despite a number of notable attempts and some rather fantastic bad luck, fails to achieve much in the way of success or notoriety. The book exhibits the same sort of formal playfulness found in Fate of the Artist, with the characters (and at one point the author) running around in the margins. It’s one of his lightest (if still somewhat melancholy) books.

Campbell’s newest book, The Playwright (done with Daren White) examines some of the same themes as Leotard and Fate, namely the inverse relationship between happiness and the creative life, but follows a much more rigid structure and format. Dealing with “the sex life of a celibate, middle-aged author,” it hews to a third-person, landscape format that nevertheless displays a good deal of warmth and sharp, observational humor. Certainly it’s one of the best character studies you’re likely to find in comics these days.

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

Sean's MoCCA 2010 loot

I came to shop.

Seriously, I was just about as excited for this past weekend’s MoCCA festival as I’ve ever been for any comic convention. And it wasn’t because of the guests or the panels or even getting to see so many of my friends and colleagues — it was because of the comics. The best thing about a small-press show is your ability to dig into the tables and come away with enough treasures to keep you reading happily for weeks. Proceeding from the top left of the picture above in as logical a fashion as I can manage, here’s a rundown of my personal treasure trove…

Cage Variations Vol. 1 by Sean T. Collins & Matt Rota and The Side Effects of the Cocaine by Sean T. Collins & Isaac Moylan: I apologize if it seems crass to include comics I myself wrote and helped sell at the show, but I assure you, these books were as new to me as they were to anyone else who bought them. As a mere writer (though I prefer the phrase “pure writer,” of course), my involvement in the production of actual books to contain the comics I’ve done is beyond minimal. I just bankrolled the print run for The Side Effects of the Cocaine (a David Bowie bio-comic), while the very existence of the Cage Variations mini (containing interlocking stories about a college kid who imprisons one of his fellow students in a cage in his basement) was unknown to me until Matt told me about it two days before the show. Isaac and Matt did all the hard work, and the result was as much of a discovery for me as anything else I bought. Thanks, guys, and thanks to the Partyka table for giving me the table space to sell these!

Jumbly Junkery #9 by L. Nichols: The latest installment of Nichols’s one-woman anthology minicomic series, featuring maybe the most striking cover of the lot. I’ve got a backlog of Nichols material I’m psyched to make my way through in the coming weeks.

The Troll King by Kolbeinn Karlsson, Alec: The Years Have Pants by Eddie Campbell, and Second Thoughts by Niklas Asker: The results of my raid on the Top Shelf table. The Troll King was the weirdest-looking book in the publisher’s so-called “Swedish Invasion,” a creepy-cute fairy-tale-lookin’ thing, right up my alley. Second Thoughts was published before the “Swedish Invasion” proper and I had a review copy, but I wanted the real thing, largely on the strength of Asker’s gorgeous Farel Dalrymple-meets-Adrian Tomine art. Finally, Eddie Campbell’s art has always impressed the pants off of me (no pun intended), but at the same time the writing of his autobio work hit me as off-puttingly knowing and arch. I’m excited to plow through his entire autobio oeuvre in one go to see what I really think.

Mr. Cellar’s Attic by Noel Freibert, Closed Caption Comics #8 by Closed Caption Comics, and Held Sinister by Conor Stechschulte: The latest bounty from the Closed Caption Comics collective, a squad of MICA grads who seem to grow more ambitious and prolific with each show they attend. There are so many CCC’ers, and they make so many comics, that it’s almost impossible to keep up with them, but I always come away from their table with two or three new gems. Any issue of their flagship self-titled anthology is a good place to start.

Monstrosity Mini by Jorge Diaz: I met Jorge because he was sharing a table with L. Nichols and Jess Fink, and he was kind enough to hand me a copy of his new minicomic, a tiny package that looks like it was loaded with its tiny nine-panel-grids by some kind of machine. He’s got some real control over his line, that’s for sure. I’m looking forward to giving this a read.

Studio Visit by James McShane: I liked McShane’s ambitiously constructed minicomic Archaeology a lot, which I suppose is what persuaded him to hand me a copy of his new one. Flipping through it, it looks like it’s staking out some of the same territory as its predecessor, dealing with the interaction of physical space and emotion, but in a much less minimalist style. Intriguing!

Snow Time by Nora Krug: Krug was my big discovery at last year’s MoCCA, thanks to her killer suite of interwoven books collectively called Red Riding Hood Redux. I’ll now pick up whatever she’s doing, as if the lovely blues of Snow Time weren’t enticement enough.

pood #1, edited by Geoff Grogan, Kevin Mutch, and Alex Rader: I’ve admitted my skepticism about newsprint, but taking a look at this impressive, giant-sized anthology, it’s easy to put those doubts to rest. (Besides, as Geoff Grogan told me, the paper stock was a question of economic necessity, not nostalgia.) From its striking Sara Edward-Corbett front page on down, this is a compelling collection of comics off-the-beaten-path creators both (relatively) well-known and obscure. I ought to cut quite the figure flipping through this gigantic thing on the Long Island Rail Road!

Wiegle for Tarzan by Matt Wiegle and The Numbers of the Beasts by Shawn Cheng: My ersatz tablemates from the Partyka collective are among the most acclaimed practitioners of the art of the minicomic around, and it seems that at every show they have some new marvel of comic efficiency to boast of. This time out, we’ve got one maybe Wiegle’s funniest effort yet — about his run for the oft-neglected office of New York State’s official Tarzan — and a child-style counting book from Cheng once again showcasing his love of mythological monsters from around the world. These guys can draw, and the production quality of their little books is second to none, especially considering the low low prices.

Dose #1-2, edited by Brendan McGinley: My former Wizard coworker Brendan gifted me copies of the first two installments of the humor anthology he helms. For what it’s worth, I think there were fully a dozen former Wizard staffers on hand, two of us as exhibitors. There’s probably a message of some kind there.

To Teach by Bill Ayers and Ryan Alexander-Tanner: This comics adaptation of educator, activist, and former Weatherman Bill Ayers’ memoir was pressed into my hands by NYC altcomix gadabout Jeff Newelt/Jah Furry, who’s apparently more down with pallin’ around with terr’ists than Sarah Palin was. I still think not getting Ayers on a panel with Frank Miller was a major dropped ball for the show.

Chiggers by Hope Larson: I used the occasion of getting a David Bowie sketch from Hope as an excuse to buy her young-adult summer-camp graphic novel. I’d never read it before but, after checking out her new book Mercury, I really wanted to.

Artichoke Tales by Megan Kelso, Weathercraft by Jim Woodring, and Tales Designed to Thrizzle #6 by Michael Kupperman: These are three of the jaw-dropping 13 books Fantagraphics debuted at the show. Kelso’s Artichoke Tales has been almost a decade in the coming, Weathercraft is creepy-looking new tale from Woodring’s darkly psychedelic funny-animal Frank-verse, and Thrizzle is the latest installment in Kupperman’s killer humor series, now in full color. I already had copies of Tim Hensley’s Wally Gropius and Jacques Tardi’s It Was the War of the Trenches and Jaime Hernandez’s Penny Century and Gilbert Hernandez’s The High Soft Lisp or I doubtless would have picked those up, too. You could safely shop only from Fantagraphics and still experience a hella great comics industry in microcosm.

Trigger #1 by Mike Bertino and Shitbeams on the Loose #2, edited by Rusty Jordan and Dave Nuss: Look at those covers! I’d heard of and been intrigued by the Shitbeams anthology thanks to a Tom Spugeon review, but a Ron Rege Jr. cover is always gonna get me to pick something up sight-unseen; he’s one of the most fascinating, and graphically lovely, cartoonists in alternative comics. UPDATE: Ugh. After writing all that about how much I love Ron’s work, editor Dave Nuss informs me that isn’t Ron’s work, it’s Andy Rementer’s. Don’t I feel like a horse’s ass. Anyway, Trigger was sitting next to it on what I assume was the Revival House Press table, and got bought through a case of reverse-guilt by association. The contents aren’t as Providence-y as the cover might suggest, but Bertino’s style comes across like a greatest-hits tour of the past half-decade or so of altcomix, and I think it’ll be fun to discover if it reads as well as it looks. And the thrill of discovery is what a show like MoCCA is all about.

At the end of any given year, when critics and fans pull together their list of favorites and best-ofs, there are always the books that get left behind, the titles that, for one reason or another, don’t get the critical acclaim and discussion they deserve. We’ve all got our list of books we feel were unjustly ignored. The following is my own list of six titles I think were underrated or insufficiently praised. It skews heavily towards the Fanta/D&Q side of things, but such are the vagaries of my interests at the moment. Feel free to argue about my choices or make some of your own in the comments section.

1. Alec: The Years Have Pants by Eddie Campbell. Perhaps it was the fact that it came out so late in the year, when everyone had already started putting their legs on the table and mulling over their their top ten list. Perhaps it was that it was just a stellar year comics-wise and there were just so many good books vying for attention. Perhaps it’s the size (and price) of the thing. Perhaps it’s that comics fans on both sides of the mainstream/indie divide don’t quite seem to know what to make of Eddie Campbell. He’s best known for autobiography, which seems to be a real turn off with the tights and capes crowd, but doesn’t indulge in the kind of mundane self-flagellation that the genre seems to be so renowned for (not that there’s anything wrong with that). He’s too bemused for the artsy-fartsy folk and too serious for the escapist crowd.

Whatever the reason, what should have been one of the most talked-about compilations of the year seems to have been met with a rush of silence, the few positive reviews notwithstanding. Over the past near-30 years, Campbell has been chronicling his life and times with wit, insight, artistry and a genuine affection for the world and all its misery that is nothing short of astonishing. To have all of these tales collected in one volume, with new material as well, is a achievement worth noting extensively, and more people, myself included, should have done so.

Talking Lines

2. Talking Lines: The Graphic Stories of R.O. Blechman. I’ve written about my love for Blechman’s work before. What amazes me about him is how he manages to be so prolific and produce work for such mainstream, national media outlets (The New York Times, The Huffington Post, etc.) and yet still be persona non grata where comics fans are concerned.

Talking Lines, a collection of Blechman’s short stories, was an attempt of sorts by Drawn and Quarterly to gain him some more recognition within the indie comics scene. It seems to been met with a collective shrug, which is disappointing, but I hope that doesn’t discourage D&Q from putting more of Blechman’s work out there. If only to placate my own neediness.

3. Giraffes in My Hair: A Rock ‘N’ Roll Life by Bruce Paley and Carol Swain. Swain is one of the most criminally ignored cartoonists around, and she had not one but two books out last year, this one and the short story collection Crossing the Empty Quarter. This one, centering on Paley’s account of his misbegotten youth spent in a drug-induced haze, seemed to be the more ignored of the two by my reckoning (though admittedly it’s a debatable point). Swain’s low-key, nonchalant art fits perfectly with Paley’s tales of hippie wanderings and punk-era decadence, stripping the stories of any rock glamor and tinging them with a genuine sadness. Really, this book just underscores how talented and sharp an artist Swain really is.

4. Cecil and Jordan in New York Stories by Gabrielle Bell. Bell’s comics aren’t exciting in the traditional sense. While fanciful elements often intrude — a girl learns how to become a chair, another gets captured by a behemoth — they are often very dialogue heavy, and her characters often tend to wear placid, expressionless faces. It’s what’s going on behind those faces, however, and what’s left unsaid beneath that morass of dialogue, that makes her work so compelling, rich and emotionally involving. Her work is fraught with adrift characters attempting to find a role for themselves in the modern world. This collection of wonderful short stories got some good press when it was initially released, but seemed to have been forgotten about by the end of the year. Shame, shame, shame!

5. From Wonderland With Love by various. I’m not terribly surprised that this collection of Danish comics didn’t receive much attention. Anthologies are a tough sell anyway, especially if they feature artists from overseas. There’s one main reason for including this book, however, and it’s Nikoline Wedelin’s haunting, chilling Because I Love You So Much, a tale of sexual abuse that still resonates with me months after I wrote this review. The unflinching regard for its subject matter is not going to have people beating a path to its door, but the sheer daring artistry on display deserved much  more attention than it got.

6. Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons. I’m not surprised this one didn’t create a bigger stir either — that $125 price tag no doubt kept a lot of people away. And yet, what an impressive retrospective of the man’s career this is: Three handsomely designed volumes containing every single macabre thing Wilson drew or wrote for the magazine that Hefner built. It’s a testament, not only to Wilson’s genius (the material never flags or gets rote, no matter what the decade) but also to Fantagraphics skill in presenting this material in such a stellar fashion. Really, it was the best retrospective collection of the year, and I wish more people had noticed it.

Sometime soon (hopefully next week) Diamond will be releasing Eddie Campbell‘s Alec: The Years Have Pants to a comic book store near you. In a year chock full of great, original work and important re-releases and rediscoveries, this has to be one of the most important books of 2009. I know that statement might come off to some as shallow hyperbole, but it’s a risk worth taking.

For the the unfamiliar, Pants collects all of Campbell’s autobiographical Alec stories (except for The Fate of the Artist, which was published by First Second) in one big (hardcover or softcover) volume. Since the early 1980s, the artist and writer has been chronicling his life’s adventures through his barely disguised alter ego, starting as a feckless young man in the King Canute Crowd to the successful cartoonist and family man in After the Snooter. It’s saying something to call these stories his most significant and stellar work, considering he also collaborated with Alan Moore on From Hell and created the elegant Bacchus series. One hopes this new collection (and the new material found therein) provides the opportunity for a re-examination and analysis of this impressive body of work.

I had the opportunity to talk with Campbell late last August over email about the book. This was my second time talking to him and he proved to be as gracious and thoughtful over the computer as the phone, if not more so.

From 'The King Canute Crowd'

Q: When you first started work on The King Canute Crowd, there weren’t very many people doing autobiography, just Harvey Pekar, Aline Crumb (and sometimes Robert) and Justin Green. Now you can’t walk three steps without tripping over a memoir or two. What’s your reaction to this outpouring of autobiography? Do you feel vindicated by it at all? More importantly, can you see your own influence in any of these books?

A: Spiegelman was there too, as seen in a number of pieces in his recently reprinted Breakdowns book. The underground movement made the personal part of the fun, and it is an integral part of the modern era of comics, which is good thing. I don’t think I had any influence on that development, much as I would like to see my part reflected in it.

Q: I know you’ve answered this question before, but what initially attracted you to doing autobiographical stories (however cleverly disguised)? What was the impetus?

A: I wanted to do comic strip stories about the subtle exchanges in the human experience. The melodramatic and superheroic and anthropomorphic were everywhere. The nearest we had to regular everyday life were the ‘soap opera’ strips, or ‘human interest’ as they have been more accurately described. I actually always liked a lot of that stuff, like the Apartment 3G and On Stage newspaper strips. The soaps were still about the emotional life. Later they would be all about wealth as in the TV shows Dallas and Dynasty. The times demanded something more ordinary, a stripping away of all the baloney.

Once that urge was felt, the best source of ordinariness was my own life. I had in fact done a few stories about ordinary stuff before i figured I needed to get it from somewhere instead of making it up. But once I started narrating with my own voice I found it difficult to go back and do it any other way. All kinds of small but memorable situations seemed to demand to be recorded.

Q: And does that same attraction still hold true today? In other words, has your relationship towards the work (i.e. telling your life story) and your reasons for doing it changed at all over time? And if so, how?

A: I don’t feel that I’m telling my ‘life story’ as though I have done something interesting that everybody ought to hear about. I’m using that material because it fits the things I want to say, the view of the world that I want to communicate. But yes it does hold the same attraction. I find it difficult now to invent fictional narrators to serve the same purpose. They sound too hollow and false to my inner ear. I tried it in The Fate of the Artist with the prose segments, supposedly narrated by a detective. I tried to write straightforward honest prose and found that I could only do it if there was a sense of it being a spoof from the start. In other words, the reader knows the thing is a hoax from page one. In fact, I find now that almost all fiction has this false ring. Right from the first sentence it always sounds false to me. The business about how a novel has to grab your attention with that opening line. It always fails with me. I stopped reading fiction because I never feel that it’s the real thing. I don’t mean it has to be a story that happened or has the appearance of having happened. I mean the words are not real prose. They are pretending to be real.

From 'The King Canute Crowd'

Q: You’ve worked in just about every genre known to comics, but you’ve always returned to the Alec stories. Why? What does autobiography give you as an artist that other genres, or fiction in general, doesn’t?

A: Going back and reading my other work I usually end up laughing at my refusal to take it seriously, though we should leave From Hell out of this, which of course I didn’t write myself. I’ll start reading some things, having a vague recollection that I played it straight and then this fountain of wicked self mockery will spring up out of the middle of it and I’ll feel that I’m back in safe hands, my own.

Q: Of all the Alec stories you’ve done, have there been any that have been a struggle to do because they hit too close to home, either in your own case or in that of a family member or friend? How did you solve that problem?

A: Not in any big way, though I did manage to catch a few problems before putting the big book to bed. If I were to elucidate individual problems in public here I’d have done as well to leave them in the book. But I should also say that I do think of it all as fiction. It obeys the same laws. It’s autobiographical fiction. Also on the whole I tend to be agreeable embracing rather than mean-spirited.

From 'Graffiti Kitchen'

Q: In your interview with Dirk Deppey, you talked about the “thematic connections” (at least I think that was the term) between the various Alec stories. Can you delve a little deeper into that? How are these stories connected, apart from them all being about you of course? What do you see as some of the larger themes of the Alec saga? Are there any themes that you didn’t see initially but cropped up when putting this Omnibus together?

A: A major theme is something you find in your work that you didn’t know was there. You can’t seed it. Well, you can but it would probably come across as bogus, or as a message that the author set out to force upon his reader. I did indeed find a major theme that I hadn’t really noticed before, one of the great themes of the ages, and that is the idea of the memento mori, which is a moral tradition in art of reminding everybody that they’re going to die. It’s represented by the funeral parlor in The Fate of the Artist, which surprised me, because I didn’t put it there consciously as it was a part of the short O.Henry short story I had wickedly decided to embed in the book. Then there is my earlier book, the Dance of Lifey Death. The Danse Macabre is one the medieval expressions of the memento mori. So the title of the new book, ‘The Years Have Pants‘ is taken from the first line of a comical poem which just happens to function as the reminder of our mortality.

‘…who remembers not the pie,
that each and every evening went,
into a mouth that now lies bent.’ (William Ernest Moenkhouse 1902-1931)

Q: You talked about how you think of these stories as fiction. Can you talk a little bit about how you “polish” the stories as you go so they end up moving from real life to fiction? What do you change, add or take away? Is it a conscious or intuitive process?

A: The simple process of arranging them is what makes them fiction, and that involves the whole range of decision making between conscious and default. By fiction I mean the art of writing stories. True and honest biography follows different rules altogether. Thus it’s fiction as opposed to non-fiction, and not fiction as opposed to fact. It always annoys me when people split hairs over Spiegelman’s work, arguing about whether it can be a “novel” because it’s an account of things that actually happened. He drew himself as a mouse for heaven’s sake. That puts it entirely in the realm of fiction. Similarly, I feel at liberty to show my nightmares physically turning up at the dinner table, as in After The Snooter.

From 'How to Be An Artist'

Q: Getting back to the first question, do you really not see your influence in any of the contemporary autobiographical cartoonists? Because I do think it’s there to some degree, as in James Kochalka’s diary comics for example.

A: You think so? That would be nice to think that. You know, I could just as easily have used James’ ‘elf’ persona in the example above, and he has other anthropomorphic characters in there too. I remember Pekar was once criticizing Spiegelman for not being completely realistic, that the mice and cats were a cop-out, but it can be said on the other hand that Harvey sticks too rigidly to the literal path in his neorealist intentions. I thought for that reason that the American Splendor movie was Harvey’s finest moment because of the layers of meta-fiction it laid over the stories. it took it a few notches beyond the literal, freed the whole thing up.

Q: How did the Omnibus come together, both conceptually and physically? Whose idea was it to collect the stories?

A: Chris Staros had been talking about it for ages, while the omnibus idea was happening with other cartoonists, like Eisner, and the Hernandez brothers. The art has evolved to the stage where those of us who have been doing it for that long can compile a half dozen books together in one big package.

From 'How to Avoid Sex'

Q: How did you go about selecting and arranging the material? I found it interesting, for instance, that you decided to place the stories in chronological order rather than in the order they were published. It makes obvious sense, but I could see going the other direction as well.

A: They weren’t organized that way at first. I originally had a long 86-page section at the back which rounded up short pieces and fragmentary, unfinished works. But I was sweeping through the whole thing once (around the end of 2007… its’ been on the boil for longer than that) and It occurred to me that there was the possibility of arranging it in an epic sweep, and letting the characters age naturally instead of jumping back and forth. I mentioned this to Chris as though I had just discovered the key to safely cloning humans, and he said “Huh? What do you mean? I thought that was what you were doing all along!” Then it was only at that point that I decided to add the whole new 35 page book at the end, bringing things up to date and giving a lot of my favorite characters a curtain call. It wraps the whole book up very nicely.

Q: Since there weren’t a lot of people trying autobiography in comics when you started, who were your initial influences? Who influences you now?

A: There were artists like Crumb and Spiegelman who had done occasional two pagers and the like, but my intention was different. It was to do a whole big story. A novel I guess, but ‘graphic novel’, which should have been very useful moniker, has entered an era of difficulty in which the original intention of the term has been largely redefined by people who are not very bright. It has come to mean a format even though a prose novel is not a format. The original intention was to reflect the fact that novels are the work and property of an author, rather than a company, and are found on a bookshelf rather than a spinner rack or inside a newspaper. Those two principles are the drivers in our period of comics.

The novelists I was reading at the time included Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller. I found their work liberating, but for influence on the page I’d be more inclined to direct your eye to Milton Caniff and Gary Trudeau, his early more simplistic style with all the repeated images and speech balloons coming from the White house. I always loved the way people like RC Harvey would get mad at him because he didn’t see it as a proper use of the comics form, though he later went back and changed his mind. RC, Pekar… there always used to be some interesting bun fight going on the comics over some mere technical preference. Hasn’t been a good one in ages.

From 'The Dance of Lifey Death'

Q: One of the possible themes that came to me while rereading the stories was that of the Inner Life and how it spills out into our daily “real” lives. That’s certainly true of Graffiti Kitchen, and I think How to Be An Artist deals with the notion of how to make your dreams (becoming an artist) a reality. And of course, in Fate of the Artist we see the inner life having a negative effect or at least rubbing up against our daily lives in an abrasive fashion. Even the issues of death come from interior fears — your “nightmares showing up at the dinner table” as it were.

Of course, I suppose you could make the claim that’s true of most autobiography, but I think most comic memoirs either tend to be all about the exterior life (this is something that happened to me) or the interior (I’d argue most of Pekar’s stuff is about his interior world and thoughts).

Does any of that make any sense? I realize it’s not really a question (and I’m kind of fumbling about trying to describe it), but it occurred to me while doing research for this interview and I thought I’d put it out there.

A: It makes perfect sense. In “Pants” I’ve included a large piece of an abandoned project I drew in 2002 titled The History of Humour. There were thirty pages altogether published in the two issues of my Egomania magazine, (and another fifteen page chapter carefully lettered with one panel penciled when I abandoned it.) I’ve reduced the 30 to 18 for this outing. My idea was that the entire book would take place in the interior world of the mind. First I would set up some ideas with reference to their historical context and then I would start shifting things around, the way things do in the unbounded spaces of the mind. My feeling at the time was that it was veering too close to being an actual academic book rather than a creative work going under the guise of one, so I backed off and started again and this time the result was The Fate of the Artist. When You think about it, it’s difficult to pinpoint anything that actually happens in real world terms in Fate. There’s a chapter in Fate that would have been in History exactly as it is, without any changes. That’s the adaptation of the O. Henry story, Confessions of a Humorist in which Campbell ‘acts’ the part of the protagonist. Fate of the Artist doesn’t appear in Pants because it’s still in print from First Second, but in the History Of Humour you get to see fragments of an alternative version of it. I think my work has tended more in this direction as I’ve got older, and also my technique has become more flexible. I can hop from the real to the imaginary more easily.

From 'The Crow'

Q: I wanted to ask you about the editing process you went through in putting the Omnibus, starting with what you decided to add to the book and why. Can you talk a little bit about it? I can see why “How to Avoid Sex” was included, but was less sure about “The Crow,” other than the father figure is referred to as Mr. Campbell.

A: The Crow was useful, because taking the balance of the whole volume into account, I found it useful to start giving my father that daunting personality earlier in the proceedings. Later when you read ‘My father never hugged me,’ which I hasten to add is ironic and not something I would ever say, you’ve got a better sense of his personality. I threw out some irrelevant pages from Little Italy to make room for it, such as a two pager titled ‘The Video Generation,’ which appeared dated to me now, and isn’t really an Alec page, in fact it was the editor of my French edition who first removed it, so i was following his lead. And a couple of other things like that which I had drawn just to raise a laugh and a buck the first time around. The Crow satisfied a structural urgency in the bigger picture. Along the same lines, there are several places where very minor players were unnamed, but because they popped up in another book which can now be seen close-by in the collection, I’ve gone in and removed their anonymity and lettered the names. This adds little morsels of meaning that wouldn’t have been accessible the first time around, and also more of those fine threads that weave from book to book, helping to bind the whole opus together, making it more of a continuous interconnected universe, which comics readers always love.

Q: What’s the latest with the TV show? Is that still in development?

A: Still in development. Things slowed down because of the world financial crisis. Tv networks have been loathe to take any chances over the last year. But we shall see. I’m meeting with the producers in three days, so it’s definitely still on the table.

Q: Refresh me on what parts of Alec the show is specifically adapting. Are they picking and choosing stories, or are they focusing mainly on a particular book/time period?

A: It’s actually much more than an adaptation. We’re using the assorted books that I’ve done, though predominantly the Snooter and after, as the springboard to make a series of half-hour comedy episodes. This involves coming up with a lot of extra material to expand anecdotes, and also bridges between anecdotes. We’re giving the project a different kind of structure from the books. There are whole episodes that don’t have any material lifted from the books. I see it as a logical extension of my work, and I’m hoping something will come of it.

From 'Little Italy'

Q: Let me awkwardly segue back to the Omnibus. Tell me a little about the new “Pants” stories at the end. What prompted their inclusion?

A: I’m always looking for an excuse to add to my oeuvre of real life work, and in the past I’ve always used the publication of a new book as an opportunity to add pages. There were twenty five new pages when I collected How to be an Artist in 2002, and I think five or seven when I rounded up the Snooter material the first time. It’s a life’s work that is always growing. There is always something new to add. If publication of ‘Pants’ were to be delayed for some reason, I’d want to add another sixteen pages. At least.

Q: You mentioned before about the theme of death or “memento mori” running through your stories. Where do you think that preoccupation comes from? Is it just growing older? Or is it settling down and having a family? I know once I became a dad I found myself worrying a lot more about death and illness than I ever had before.

A: It’s not about death really. The memento mori essentially is a reminder that life is short; do not waste it. As for there being an increase in an awareness of mortality after becoming a parent, yes I think that does make us tap into the bigger picture of life, it’s shape and it’s temporal boundary. You used to be at the bottom of the pile, but now you’re in the middle. The people at the top are starting to cash in their chips and new ones are appearing at the bottom. You have to radically reassess what it’s all about.

Q: On that note, one of the things that struck me going through the Omnibus is how much of a family snapshot it is as well and how you start off single and childless and by the end your oldest has left home and your others are fully grown. I was taken aback, for example, by how old Callum had become at the end. There’s also that great moment in Snooter where you note how Hayley was a child when you started From Hell and now you were escorting her to the movie premiere as a young woman. To what extent do you use the books to mull over the passage of time and do you have a conscious point you’re trying to make in those instances?

A: There’s also a phase in After the Snooter where I cast my mind back to my own childhood. Every phase of life is depicted somewhere in the book. As I say in my intro, I was always quite captivated by the passage of time in Gasoline Alley. The idea that comic strip characters can age. This is actually more unusual even now than it was back then, because we now have characters in comic books who have lived over completely implausible spans of time without changing much, except that they are now ten-heads-to-one ratio instead of the natural seven and an half, or whatever it should be. And also the fact that death does not exist in the comic books. Nobody ever dies and stays dead. I think that’s a scam. It allows the modern viewer to vicariously enjoy the most outrageous violence because it has no effect. There is no price to pay.

From 'After the Snooter'

Q: I liked how the stories in the “Pants” section reflected on the earlier material, like the part with you realizing you wouldn’t be caught dead in a sleeping bag in someone else’s house these days or where you’re confiscating your daughter’s alcohol. Was that reflection deliberate on your part? Did you want to end with a comment on how things have changed for you or did it just come naturally?

A: I felt that it was the task of the last book to create a sense of unity in the collection. So it makes connections and hearkens back to moments and characters who appeared in the earlier works. In one place it even quotes page numbers for convenient backtracking. And there at the end there’s a reflection back to the beginning. I want the reader to come away thinking the whole collection adds up to more than a sum of the parts.

Q: Is there a particular story that stands out for you above the others? And if so why? Are there stories that you find difficult to reread because of the emotions or people involved?

A: Not so much the emotions that are evoked as in my naive interpretation of them at the time. But you can’t go back and tinker with stuff like that. And i wouldn’t want to ruin the earlier reading experience by casting a cynical shadow over it. The reader will get the sense that the parts were written by the author at different ages. And if they are themselves young, I am sure that all in all they will prefer the younger Alec. And if they pick it up four years later they may find themselves identifying with the next one along, and so on. I want that to be an important feature of it all. My personal favorite moments or chapters are probably in the middle of How to be an artist. There are pages in there that are teeming with all of life. Chapter eight sticks out in a quick flip though the dummy of the book that sits on the floor beside me. Situations are laid out thoroughly and precisely and the narrative whisks along without wallowing in any of them. It covers a lot of ground very quickly.

Q: Do you have any plans to do any more Alec/Eddie stories for the foreseeable future? Or are you too preoccupied with other projects? What are you working on these days anyway?

A: I’m taking things easy right now, but the next book out has been finished for a few months. That’s the Playwright, which is about the sex-life of a celibate middle aged man. It’s very funny. These things are taking so long to get published that I may have mentioned it to you when we spoke last year. But I’m starting to think it’s time to start a new autobiographical book. There are a few things that I need to get out of my system. There are bees in my bonnet.

From 'The Years Have Pants'

Exit Wounds

• Eddie Campbell has been offering one great critique after another lately, first on
Asterios Polyp and David Mazzuchelli’s ability to convey a sense of place, and then on Rutu Modan’s Exit Wounds (“The impressive thing about Exit Wounds is that there is a keen organizing intelligence at work at every single level of it, from top to bottom.”

• Jeet Heer ruminates on the concept of the “proto-graphic novel,” i.e. graphic novels that were published before the term became ubiquitous.

• It’s a few days old, but this review of R. Crumb’s Genesis adaptation by Bill Kartalopoulos is still well worth your time.

• I don’t always link to Tucker Stone’s “Comics of the Weak” round-up, but this one’s worth noting, as he mimics the prose of “controversial French writer Michel Houllebecq,” which leads to bits like this one on Batman:

Gotham City has but two types of people-those who wreak violence, and those who have violence wreaked upon them. The first type are all men, for the most part, although the occasional lesbian is permitted participation, as long as she has previously received approval from whomever currently holds the title of most cruel. (Said participation is usually considered an important story point, further cementing the little respect or interest that these stories have for women–there are few other places in fiction where “the bitch can stay” is considered interesting or dynamic.

• David Welsh writes about the wonder that is Junko Mizuno.

• Katherine Dacey Rumiko Takahashi’s Rin-Ni: “Takahashi’s latest series gives ample proof that while she may have a limited repertory, she’s the undisputed master of the supernatural mystery.”

• Noah Berlatsky transcribes a lecture he gave last year on comics, homosexuality and gender. Part One. Part Two.

• Bill Sherman looks at Vol. 1 & 2 of Inio Asano’s What A Wonderful World and declares: “If [Asano] occasionally over-iterates his themes, that’s consistent with World’s cast of rudderless urbanites still in the process of figuring out where they stand in the universe.”

• Rob Clough calls Tom Gaud’s Gigantic Robot “a beautiful-looking book about ugliness that is almost meta in the self-indulgence of the format.”

• Matthew Brady on The Deformatory: “The beauty of Sophia Wiedeman’s work is that one could come up with several possible interpretations.”

• Johnny Bacardi does his usual pamphlet run-down, which is always worth reading.

• Late to the party, but still worth reading: Michael Buntag on Darwyn Cooke’s Hunter.

• Our own Sean Collins reviews the Abstract Comics anthology: “What I liked, I liked for more than just the strips themselves–I liked them for the proof they offer that comics really is still a Wild West medium in which one’s bliss can be followed even beyond the boundaries of what many or even most readers would care to define as ‘comics.’ “

The very first Milestone comic will finally be collected, 17 years after its original publication. HARDWARE: THE MAN IN THE MACHINE will reprint Hardware #1-8, featuring the character’s origin, and first adventure. The Direct Market (comic book store) release date hasn’t been announced yet, but it tends to be about a month earlier than in the general market.

• In other news, Archaia announced plans to start a new $9.95 hardcover line of books, where one graphic novel will be released each quarter at that low price. The plan kicks off in August with the release of The Engineer: Konstrukt.

• Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson says the Norewegian artist Jason’s next project will be a repackaging of his previous books in the new Low Moon format. The first book, Almost Silent, will collect You Can’t Get There From Here, The Living and the Dead, Tell Me Something and Meow Baby! The next book, What I Did, will tentatively collect The Iron Wagon, Shhhhh and Hey Wait. Thompson also adds that Jason is working on a new graphic novel, Werewolves of Montpellier, which will be out in summer of 2010.

• Eddie Campbell has information about and sample art from his upcoming Alec Omnibus, entitled The Years Have Pants. Eddie Campbell is awesome, so you should check this out immediately.

• Finally I wanted to point out some upcoming titles from the “How to draw X” art publisher Watson-Guptill. In addition to their usual “how-to” series by Christopher Hart, the publisher is going to release a series of classic Spy vs. Spy books by the original creator Antonio Prohais. Anyone who grew up reading Mad magazine should herald these books arrival (there will be three of them) when they hit stores in early August.

On a separate note, the publisher will also be releasing The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics in September.

A Comic Studies Reader

If you have not read the first part of my interview with Jeer Heer, follow this link. In this second part, the email exchange branched out to include Kent Worcester. Worcester, an associate professor of political science and international studies at Marymount Manhattan College, has collaborated with Heer on two books, co-editing 2004′s Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium and (more recently) 2008′s A Comics Studies Reader. We discuss both books. My thanks to Heer and Worcester for their time.

Tim O’Shea: Would you ever consider preparing a revised edition of 2004′s Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium? How has your perspective changed–looking at the 2008 critical landscape in comparison to your 2004 view of the medium?

Kent Worcester: Yes, we have considered preparing a revised edition of Arguing Comics. There are at least a few essays on comics by major twentieth century intellectuals that we overlooked the first time around. A second edition would allow us to not only incorporate new material but also to expand the discussion in the introduction concerning the relationship of comics-oriented discourse to larger cultural conversations. I would very much appreciate having the opportunity to strengthen our underlying argument, which is that debates over comics are central to the so-called “culture wars” that have been a defining feature of American politics for many decades.

As far as whether our perspective has changed, I won’t speak for Jeet, but from my vantage point the last few years have only reaffirmed my sense that twentieth-century debates over comics are worth taking seriously and remain relevant not only from a historical perspective but from a literary-critical one as well. Many of the issues that our authors addressed continue to percolate across the culture, from what constitutes appropriate reading material for children to the political lessons of the superhero genre.

Jeet Heer: To add to what Kent has said, I’d say that an expanded edition of Arguing Comics would be influenced a bit by the outpouring of good scholarly books on comics in recent years, such as David Hajdu’s Ten-Cent Plague and David Michaelis’s Schulz biography. These books have given us a new sense of the past, so I think we could include a greater range of essays on, say, the censorship debates of the 1950s or some of the early articles from the late 1950s on Schulz and Feiffer (then seen as part of a new wave of intellectual humor). Our view of the past is always changing as we get newer and better researched histories. So there’s a lot to expand in Arguing Comics. I should also add that I’m been very happy with how wide the readership for Arguing Comics has been; it shows up on a lot of academic reading lists and I think it’s made a strong contribution to the conversation on comics.

O’Shea: A Comics Studies Reader marks the second time you two have collaborated in editing a book. How do you decide which of you tackles what when you do projects like this?

Worcester: Jeet is a pleasure to work with. Both collaborations were enjoyable as well as productive. For both books, we worked as equal partners on selecting material. Nothing went in unless we both approved of the selection. And in both cases, I wrote the first draft of the introduction and then Jeet improved both drafts enormously. Also, in both cases I put together the index. So if there are problems with either index the fault is entirely mine.

Heer: I should add that in addition to Kent and I working together, we had a lot of outside help for this book in particular. We wanted to really be up-to-date on what’s the best current scholarly writing on comics so we turned to a lot of experts for help. This introduced us to some new and out-of-the-way material, which really enriched the book.

O’Shea: A Comics Studies Reader is intended to introduce “readers to the major debates and points of reference that continue to shape the field“–were there certain more recent debates and points that you were pleased to be able to work into the book?

Heer: I think the major thread that runs through the book is the question of formalism: to what extent do comics have their own intrinsic properties and does that require the development of a language unique to comics (as opposed to borrowing terms from literary and film analysis). The early section deals with historical essays that are pre-formalist, focused on “what happened in the past” rather than “how comics work.” The middle sections introduce formalist analysis. The final section involves writers trying to fuse together historical analysis with formalism, looking at the works of specific cartoonist, placing them in their biographical historical context, but also providing a formalist reading of their work. So the drama of the book is the story of comics critics trying to develop a formalist critique of comics, but also synthesize formalism with other approaches. Or at least that’s one way to read the book. To put it another way, many of the essays in the book grapple with the ideas raised by Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. If I were teaching a course on comics I’d use the McCloud book together to form a rich dialogue.

O’Shea: Two of the topics covered in the book are the “international anti-comics campaign, and power and class in Mexican comic books”. It really seems like the book is ambitious in the ground it covers. As informed a person as you are, were there any trends or issues that you knew nothing about before previously and that you became educated about it through the book?

Worcester: I won’t speak for Jeet, but I learned an enormous amount from working on this book. I now have a much greater appreciation for the kinds of theoretical issues raised in the chapters by Charles Hatfield, Thierry Groensteen, Joseph Witek and others. Comics are endlessly fascinating from a formal-analytic point of view.

Heer: I agree with Kent, but I would also say that the essays in the last section, dealing with particular creators like Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell and Spiegelman, is also very rewarding. As I mentioned earlier, I think the most promising development in comics criticism is the merging of a historical approach with formalism; that’s what we really see in the last section.

O’Shea: I’m amazed at the list of folks contributing to this book, for instance, how were you able to get Chilean-American novelist/playwright/scholar Ariel Dorfman to contribute to the book?

Worcester: In the case of Dorfman, we contacted him via his literary agent and never communicated with him directly. We paid a reprint fee, of course, for use of that chapter. In most cases, however, we contacted the authors directly. Happily, no one turned us down. Like us, our contributors seemed to think this was a good time for a Reader of this type.