What makes the comic so unusual is the way it combines what could be considered a staple of art comics—autobiography—and a staple of mainstream comics—the fantasy action/adventure story. Jeff Wilson and May scripted the first of the comic’s two stories, “Hair of the Dog,” a tale of metal-heads, stoners, carnies, and failed romance based on Wilson’s teenage years during the 1980s and drawn by May, who wrote and provided layouts for the second story “Your Bleeding Face,” with finished art by Jason Robards. Continued from Injury 1, it features a cyborg named Manleau who takes on a gang of punks known as The Barnyard Animals. As Manleau and the Farmer brawl, the cyborg breaks out a number of his patented moves (at least I assume they are patented; they have names . . .):
The story has a lot of great pages like the one above; there’s a real interest here in creating layouts that change as the story moves from dialogue/conversations to action. Those who are interested in intelligent but not overly-clever layouts will find a lot to look at. The sci-fi inflected Manleau story is not a parody of or a self-conscious commentary on mainstream comics, but rather a straight-up action story done with a genuinely humorous approach (with many great jokes and puns) that I rarely see in Marvel and DC comics. I don’t want to spoil too much of the goodness, but here’s a tease of a panel plus a little extra that continues in the fight mode:
This story works well in the stapled comic book in part because it’s the type of ‘tale’ we have associated with this format since the 1960s. Also in that spirit, May’s information page reads a little a Stan Lee “Soapbox,” with funny descriptions of the stories and invitations for readers to write in with comments and to participate in a fill-in-the-word-balloon contest. And the back cover has a Kirby-flavored full-color drawing:
Yet, it would be wrong to think of this comic as a nostalgic throw-back; and “The Hair of the Dog” is certainly nothing like a Marvel story:
And, for no particular reason other than I like it, here's a great series of expressions from "Your Bleeding Face," especially the one on the Veronica-inspired character Pig:
The comic contains over 40 pages of story in crisp black and white, beautiful color covers, and no ads. A more detailed preview can (and should) be checked out here. It’s refreshing to read a comic whose only pretense is to entertainment and yet is so intelligently done that it encourages re-reading rather than a trip to the long-box to file it away.
[Disclaimer: I was involved in a small way with the production of this comic--so that makes this post not a ‘review’ as much as a little ‘boosterism’ for a comic I really like.]
Friday, May 2, 2008
Comics: Art versus Action
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Reminders
Leon Beyond: new strips by Ted May, Kevin H., and Dan Z. are here.
Jordan W. Lint: Part 2 of Chris Ware's serial is in the latest VQR. It's a comic-friendly issue, with a cover by Art Spiegelman, a comic by Ross MacDonald, and an essay on cartoonist Rory Hayes by his brother, Geoffrey.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities
Take a look through the Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities, a great blog best explained in their own words:
Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities features new acquisitions, unique documents, and visual and textual curiosities from the collections of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. This ongoing exhibition is curated by Tim Young, Associate Curator of the Modern Books and Manuscripts Collection, and Nancy Kuhl, Associate Curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature.
Among the interesting work they feature you'll find: The Real adventures of Tintin, and this fun and beautiful piece of ephemera: The Test Flight of Sky Robin.
Wow, there is just too many incredible things shared at that site.
Click below to see a random sampling of stuff you will find in the archives.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Tomine's Scene
Scenes features a stripped-down approach to storytelling in a simply designed, attractive book, two hallmarks of Tomine’s work. It includes six strips (each is 1 to 4 pages) and two single-panel full-page gags, all of which narrate humorous moments as Tomine and his then-fiancée-now-wife, Sarah, prepare for their wedding. They almost hire a DJ, who gives them some CDs so they can “get a sense of his flow,” but they’re not feeling it; they visit a salon, where Adrian supportively comments on—and according to Sarah, tries to decide upon—her wedding-day hair style. The couple also undergoes the “bizarre ritual” of registering for wedding gifts; and they negotiate their two families’ request for different kinds of traditional ethnic entertainment.
In the indicia Tomine writes that “some of the characters and . . . events . . . are fictitious, or at least highly distorted for the sake of clarity and/or humor,” reminding us that, as with all autobiography, Scenes should not be taken literally, though it’s fun to do so. And Tomine’s work, like that of many artists I like, is often far funnier than it's given credit for. And his sense of humor is on full display here. The comic is only 16 pages, but Tomine packs a lot of comedy into the small 6-9 panel grids, making it feel far longer, like a typical full-size comic book. When I talked about the comic with someone who had read it, he recalled it being around 30 pages . . .
Tomine takes a looser approach in Scenes than he does in recent work like 2007’s Shortcomings where, for example, each panel shows a high level of detail, with backgrounds that are meticulously drawn:
And its cartoony-ness is a little like that of Tomine’s recent New Yorker cover
In the mini comics tradition, each copy (a few hundred were made) was hand-assembled, and in a way it’s a throwback to Tomine’s roots, as the early numbers of his series Optic Nerve were assembled and self-published (Tomine recount his self-publishing history in the introduction to his mid-'90s collection 32 Stories). But the fact that this comic was self-produced in a short period of time shouldn't mislead us. It’s the polished work of a confident and sophisticated cartoonist who knows how to work to great effect with an economical visual style and a compressed narrative sense.
All in all, a perfect mini comic.
A few panels from Scenes:
The Shortcomings Site
The "Donger and Me" at NPR.org
Tomine Interview at The Believer
Tomine's Official Site
Monday, March 31, 2008
Al Jaffee and his MAD Fold-Ins at The New York Times.
The New York Times has a feature on Al Jaffee with a really nice interactive collection of MAD Fold-Ins.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Great Garloo
Sorry for another Youtube post. This commercial is just amazing. With features that walk the fine line between cute and horrible, Garloo looks like something that might have inspired Charles Burns' work. Nice control unit too. A steering wheel and rocker switches. Pretty neat.
Seen on the Watchismo Times.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Lydia
If you are, I have an essay on Lydia Sigourney (the woman pictured above), in the current issue of "Children's Literature Association Quarterly." Here's a summary of the essay by the journal's editor:
If you are not interested in children's literature or nineteenth-century America, then you might want to stop reading.
--Ken Parille's "'What Our Boys Are Reading'" reveals the limitations of our received view of boys' reading as reinforcing "notions of male authority and privilege," in contrast to the disciplinary function of girls' reading. By examining Lydia Sigourney's writings about boyhood literacy alongside her biography of her son, Andrew, who died at the age of nineteen, Parille investigates Sigourney's critique of the "harmful norms" of "boyhood masculinity" perpetuated by the idea of "heroic imitation" in antebellum literary culture. Parille demonstrates that Sigourney's insistence that reading should cultivate boys' "domestic virtues" is echoed in later fiction for boys, such as Francis Forrester's Dick Duncan. Modern critics' tendency to divide nineteenth-century children's literature into "boys' books" (Twain) and "girls' books" (Alcott) obscures the complexity of both boys' reading and authors' attitudes toward the young. By questioning our reliance on "familiar classification of authors . . . by gender or perceived literary seriousness," Parille asks us to re-examine our "long-held beliefs" about boyhood. --
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/childrens_literature_association_quarterly/v033/33.1parille.pdf
Monday, March 17, 2008
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Peur(s) du Noir - [Fear(s) of the Dark]
I was lucky enough to see a premier of Peur(s) du Noir, a feature length film comprised of short B&W animated films by Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti, and Richard McGuire while in Angouleme earlier this year (thanks Richard and Charles). All of the segments are based on fears of the night and the cartoonists worked very closely with production teams at all stages in Angouleme and Paris for the past few years. My French is pretty rough so I'm eager to see it again with subtitles and I'm envious of those of you in New York that have a chance to see it. It played at Sundance at the begining of the year and is being screened again tonight and tomorrow at a french film festival in New York. You can buy tickets here
Frank Wing
In Yesterdays, each single-panel cartoon is printed on the right-hand page and is preceded by a short paragraph of commentary on the left, in which a friendly and knowing narrator often speaks in a tone of gentle condescension and ironic understatement about the characters and their lapses. He identifies himself as a part of the community that he satirizes (referring to "our town"), and speaks in a refined English peppered with colloquialisms, while most of the characters -- many of whom have pretensions to urbanity -- converse in a kind of rustic dialect. It’s a familiar class/language formula in the tradition of Southwestern humor, but it works well here. Wing has a real talent for drawing lanky yokels with distinct facial expressions in a visual style familiar from late 19th-century magazine and book illustration. And the writing, too, is great; each paragragh of narration or word balloon has words or phrases that I have never read before. I think that part of the reason I enjoy stuff like this so much is the sense of surprise and newness that, ironically, new comics don't often give me.
