In December I am usually scouring the “Best of� lists for things I missed, and found Freddy Carrasco’s first novel, GLEEM, on one list, though it saysIn December I am usually scouring the “Best of� lists for things I missed, and found Freddy Carrasco’s first novel, GLEEM, on one list, though it says it was originally published in 2019. This production/re-release is 2024, and by Drawn and Quarterly, which is a mark of distinction, polish. And with the stamp of approval by fellow alt/art comics explorer Michael DeForge: “Nobody’s doing space and time the way Freddy Carrasco does space and time. Love a comic that trusts you’ll be able to keep up with it.�
Which is another way of saying that the average comics reader might be challenged to figure it out. But fun, if you just go with it and enjoy it (especially the artwork). So it’s three short stories, all different, but marked by space/time invention, with a touch afrofuturism, cyberpunk, psychedelia, rave, and sci fi.
"Born Again� takes place in a church where a boy is tripping, experiencing his own “divine� inspiration. "Swing� is longer, about some kids and a discarded and damaged robot and their desire to save him. "Hard Body" is about a rave experience and what comes after, almost wordless but very action (dance) focused, with indications of mental states,
This is great cartooning, especially for a first book! ...more
Chrysanthemum Under The Waves by Maggie Umber (October 22. 2024) is her first long form work, weighing in at 300 pages, though it is also a collectionChrysanthemum Under The Waves by Maggie Umber (October 22. 2024) is her first long form work, weighing in at 300 pages, though it is also a collection of nine pieces (some very short, some a little longer) she accomplished for over 6 years, mainly from 2016-2021, during which her marriage ended, the foundation for the anguish and melancholy beauty of this book. She calls it a book of mourning, which also speaks to the loss of her health and the end of her working with her ex at a comics press they helped develop together. And the physical/psychic conditions imposed by the pandemic figure in as well.
But the book began with an appreciation of horror, as she is a Shirley Jackson fan, among other artists, with a focus on the mythological tradition of tales about James Harris, also known as the Daemon lover. Then, as she writes in her afterword, she began to realize it was also about herself, her marriage, her work, her life. For someone as young as she appears to be (I met her as I had before at CAKE, the 2024 Chicago Alt Comix expo), I would hesitate to suggest it might be her “life’s work� but I’ll propose that it is that so far for two reasons; 1) this is a deeply personal project, dealing very much with her “life’s work,� at least the work of her life, until now, and 2) it is her most ambitious work, by far. I’ll call it art comics, too, to distinguish it from alt comix, as the painterly image is central here. And it’s most often wordless, or privileging the image. The fact that it involved linking so many separate pieces and many of them wordless, it could be challenging to many readers, for sure. It was for me, but it pays off for the work I invested. I can’t wait to see it in paper next month. It’s tremendous.
The cover sets the tone and speaks maybe to grief, with smudging here and there of words perhaps connoting grief and the disorientation that sometimes accompanies it with tears. And the wet rotting decay that is associated with gothic horror? Water, under water, under waves
Epigraph: “I sought my image in the scorching glass, for what fire could damage a witch’s face?�--Sylvia PLath
Sections: *Introduction: in which Umber names and identifies the central figure of the Daemon Lover, a popular ballad dating from the mid-seventeenth century, aka "James Harris," "A Warning for Married Women", “The Man in the Long Black Coat,� and others, where a woman [including Umber herself] succumbs to this tempter (not a femme fatale, but a homme fatale).
*Those Fucking Eyes is wordless, depicting mainly a woman with eyes closed, perhaps seduced by Harris’s eyes. Mysterious, passionate, then a disturbing photo where the image of a figure is obscured, severely smudged, maybe pointing seduction/trauma. Watercolors. Theme of forties gothic romance, forties films begins, wordless.
*Rine features drawing, a big house in the woods, trees, isolated images, the gothic contemplative, chrysanthemum theme, distorted face of Harris, haunting, wordless
*Intoxicated depicts more delirious dangerous passion, featuring usually a ghostly pale face without distinct features, a punchbowl, with alcohol one, presumes, the place (or a bar) where fateful meetings between future lovers takes place, often leading to a kiss, a stage in a relationship� again, vague perhaps daemon-ish features or lack thereof. With an overlay of sort of sepia-toned, old photo wash. . . creating a sense of ambiguity. And maybe these folks are from the Victorian age, as this daemon lover is timeless.
*The Devil is a Hell of a Dancer features a poem about a woman setting foot on a ship with no mariners on it. . . until we meet the devil:
“Oh yon is the mountain of hell/where you and I will go.�
The words as always are smeared (under waves, tears, rotting gothic. . .)
“Old saying: when you dance with the devil, the devil doesn't change, the devil changes you."
To “dance with the devil� is to engage in risky, reckless, or potentially immoral behavior. And she does, with this Harris.
*Chrysanthemum (formerly The Daemon Lover): Again, forties noir film vibe, Katherine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Vertigo’s Kim Novak? � forties and fifties Shirley Jackson and Hitchcock fashionable and well-dressed women, surrounded by Chrysanthemums, Psycho hotel tryst?
[Chrysanthemums are generally associated with happiness, friendship, and well-being. However, yellow chrysanthemums can also be used to express neglected love or sorrow.]
Again, in Chrysanthemums, it’s a feature-less-faced man, with one even creepier frame of a man with two black dots for eyes (yikes). He leaves, she goes out to get groceries and returns to an abandoned apartment, in ruins, he’s gone.
To prepare for my reading of this chapter, I reread Shirley Jackson’s “The Daemon Lover,� on which Umber’s story is in part based. A story of a woman abandoned on her wedding day, the Harris guy nowhere to be found, a true real life horror, standing at the altar (and I have been to a couple of these events that were not finally weddings, everyone in shock). Fundamentally about a man’s lack of commitment to her and the devastation that entails.
Daemon mythology: a supernatural being whose nature is intermediate between that of a god and that of a human being.
*There is Water: Short, elliptical, watercolor washes, under water, waves, drowning, Hitchcock’s Rebecca, or maybe its this physical sense of Vertigo as in Hitchcock's film
The text: Blood displaces slumber/if the desert dominates Somewhere else there is water
*The Witch: A castle in the clouds, where a witch lives, ominous dark scenes--a reversal or inversion, maybe, where a woman is a dark figure, but there’s a mysterious dark man here, too, and dogs� The Innocents based on Henry James’s Turn of the Screw, or any gothic mansion in Jackson� a horse drawn carriage� the man meets the woman in the woods . a kiss, passion taking her down, down. . . and later, rowing in a boat. . .two terrifying frames of an open, toothy mouth
*The Tooth: A wordless comic also collected in Rob Kirby’s The Shirley Jackson Project: Comics Inspired by her Life and Work, a rendering of her story. So yeah, rabbit hole, I actually reread “The Tooth� from Jackson, and Umber’s rendering is maybe her least ethereal drawing, more of a pretty straight interpretation or Jackson’s story, but capturing the unsettling vibe. The woman is controlled by her tooth, and with the pain killers she takes, disoriented, increasingly in body horror.
“Her tooth, which had brought her here unerringly, seemed now the only part of her to have any identity. It seemed to have had its picture taken without her; it was the important creature which must be recorded and examined and gratified; she was only its unwilling vehicle�--Jackson
The tooth is about Umber’s own physical/psychic “demise� (that forties word) that she went through, that dissociating, isolating occurrence of ill health.
*The Rock: Layered, shadowy, in a boat again, a woman in a long gown, with a man; , he touches her lower back. The rock is an island of rock where she goes to meet him, and again, to meet her demise.
Afterword: In the afterword Umber says she had beenwriting about James Harris, the daemon lover figure, highlighted in Shirley Jackson and elsewhere historically, then was left by her husband, and then realized, “The more I plunged in the darkness, the more I saw myself.� I am reminded of Yale psych literary critic who said your favorite stories are always to a great extent autobiographical. True here! Hauntingly so!
The best way to read/experience this collection is to just experience it before you read anything in the intro or afterwords, where certain things may become clearer, and then you can do as I did, reread it with her words as a guide. You see mirrors, water, decay, duplications, repetitions.
Umber says at one point as she was working she played the soundtrack from Hitchcock’s Vertigo sound track on repeat. Yeah, Kim Novak haunts this text as much as Shirley Jackson and James Harris:
“As I layered the woodblocks, sorrow mixed with sweetness�--Umber, somewhat restored in the process of her work, healed by it to some extent.
Fabulous project, one of my faves of the year, without question. Get it when it comes out, and see a book rollout event if you can here in Chicago or across the country. Thanks, Maggie, and congrats, and sorry to all readers for this erratic pile of notes toward a review. ...more
Aidan Kich’s collection Spiral & Other Stories (2024) I call art comics, or maybe even poetry comics, imbued with lyrical intent. Minimalist, mostly sAidan Kich’s collection Spiral & Other Stories (2024) I call art comics, or maybe even poetry comics, imbued with lyrical intent. Minimalist, mostly suggestive of narratives and sometimes resisting them altogether, though sometimes embracing allegory (rivers entwining, as relationships), the totality s lovely, ethereal, elliptical, reflective, with lots of wordless, negative space, using watercolors, pencils, crayons, charcoals, and collage.
The loosely linked stories, or sections, include "Spiral," "A New Year," "The Forest," and "Man Made Lake." "Spiral" is the longest one, focusing on a rocky relationship between two women that seems to parallel two winding, sometimes intereseting rivers. The women look at a rock they call "The Old Man," sculpted over centuries. Nature time versus human time. "A New Year." also featuring two women,is also about time--Happy New Year!--evolving into a kind of fable or allegory about a colorful, fantastical tree that seems to have lasted many years beyong human years, magical.
"The Forest," the shortest piece, is obviously also about the natural world, with a sense of enduring natural time, more poem than story, with--again--a tree as emblematic center, including a river. The fourth story is the least like the others, "Man Made Lake," where a man exlores his past lives in therapy. again it's about time, natural time vs human time, exploring how small our lives are compared to the millions of years of history on the planet.
Interestuing for me that I also just read Wendell Berry's Collected essays about the land--and natural time versus human time--and humans, an agrarian manifesto featuring trees and farming and a river. They speka to each other for me, definitely.
Sometimes the color is, like the narratives themselves, just a dab here and there, suggestive, as with the least amount of drawing. We are told Koch lives in the desert now, intending to explore in her work the natural world and how humans now interact with it. But the relations of humans are here, too. Call it comics cli-fi. But after writing this review I read Nicole Rudick’s Afterword and reread the book, which yields even more layers of exploration. Koch is reaching forward to what comics can do. Minimalist, but just enough story and artwork to light our way.
PS: I just read some of the other reviews of this work and see a consistent complaint about Koch's lettering, how hard to read it was, and this is true, I also struggled to decipher the words, but it occurs to me that the effect of the art, the prose, the lettering, is sort of ephemeral, like a soft human footprint on the planet, lovely, reflective, but soon to fade away. ...more
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence--Carl Sagan (the epigraph to this book)
Totem opens with a dead body being pecked aTotem Laura Perez
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence--Carl Sagan (the epigraph to this book)
Totem opens with a dead body being pecked at by crows; then a woman hears the news of the discovery of this body. Was it a ritual killing? The body was surrounded by dolmens. What is death? Where does one's spirit go? Why do some spirits hang around?
Totem is a book of magic and mystery where the spiritual is always present. Two women, lovers, make a pilgrimage to the desert, after they meet a woman who consorts with spirits and speaks of different spiritual dimensions.
“In some places, every day life is extraordinary.�
In Totem there are many wordless pages, including many close-ups of hands, one dream like sequence of four girls, pages of close-ups. Many wordless pages, spare images, very reflective.
A gravestone with a picture of a girl--what totem to put at her grave?
In the desert they meet a man who invites them to a gathering in a sacred Pueblo site, where they enter an altered state of consciousness, and the surreal art reflects their hallucinogenic experience.
“I love you,� one of the women says to the other, and maybe at base this is what the elliptical, dream-like experience of this--I hesitate to call it a story--couple is about, the other-worldly state of being that is love. But it's not only that. It's about the mystery of spiritual existence. It'a a mystery.
I love all the spareness. I love it that nothing is explained or obvious. I see so many dislike the book on ŷ; maybe they were looking for something else. I didn’t know anything about the author or her work but this is what I was looking for and didn't know it. ...more
I have been waiting to get my hands on this work for years. The first volume of W the Whore (or Die Hure H) was published in 1996. It was followed by I have been waiting to get my hands on this work for years. The first volume of W the Whore (or Die Hure H) was published in 1996. It was followed by two more volumes, W the Whore Makes Her Tracks, and W the Whore Throws Down Her Glove that is now (2022) published for the first time as a one-volume hardback by NYRB Comics.
West German poet/writer Katrin de Vries became interested in the art work of East German Anke Feuchtenberger before the fall of the Berlin Wall and she sent her some writing, which the artist worked with to tell what I can only say us a feminist allegory or myth, with sort of abstract female characters. This is not a close study of sex work, in case you were curious. It’s a study, as de Vries says, “of the body, the female body in particular . . . Our natural bodies determine our fates� (this is from an interview included in an appendix). “We both have similar ways of talking about the body.�
The effect is myth, and the text itself references the way myth and storied expectations shape selves: “Once as a little child W the whore thought about princes and kings.� The art too has mythical and historical reference points, dealing sometimes with a series of images we associate with romance, such as a dropped handkerchief or glove. The language is pared down, with sort of stilted dialogue: “Where has the man gone. I wanted to desire him,� consistent with the distancing drawing. No one smiles throughout. This is a work of ideas, not warm relationships. It’s about desire, self-perception, societal and personal expectations. It is a kind of coming-of-age story, but it is also later about motherhood.
It’s not particularly “likable� as it is an experimental work made to urge you to think more than just feel. It is a kind of narrative, but more a series of linked stories. The artwork kind of reminds me of the work of Mark Beyer (Agony, Amy and Jordan), though his work is also played for laughs. Not this one. This one has lots of room for interpretation, space to breathe: “My texts, just like Anke’s drawings, hold secrets.�
As Katrin says, to the student of comics, this volume is a gift.�
My first read of 2024, experimental or alt-comics, so I hope that signals more of that for me this year. ...more
Lale Westvind’s Grip is for me the comics event of the year, so far, though it was published in 2020. It came to me via a circuitous route. The copy ILale Westvind’s Grip is for me the comics event of the year, so far, though it was published in 2020. It came to me via a circuitous route. The copy I have was lent to me by Mia, who has written about a shared interest, poetry comics, and who ordered it from Spain’s Apa Apa Press, that publishes other experimental work by Ana Galvan, Matt Furie, Roberto Masso, and Yuichi Yokoyama, among others (those are just the folks I know from the press so far).
ŷ reviewer and friend Kim, who also writes in a scholarly way about alternative, indie, and experimental comics of all kinds, made a Top Ten Comics Artists of the Decade list I only saw recently (oh, I love such lists), and she included Westvind, of whom I had never heard, in her top ten! Then I watched a review of her work on comics guru Robert Boyd’s Book Report (link below) who talks about how he heard of it from the comics podcast, Comics Burning in Hell. So when Mia texted me she owned the book, I urged her to drop it off.
It doesn’t work this way with Jane Austen, folks. You want the book, boom. But the secret cult of alt-comix I belong to (involving blood oaths, pinky swears, secret decoder rings you get in cereal boxes) has this outsider geek aspect to it.
Oh, and, the book, you ask? Gorgeous production, by Apa Apa, with bright and almost garish coloring Boyd tells me is an attempt to mimic the original lithograph process of the work. Wordless, it’s a kind of magical Rosie the Riveter feminist story involving a woman who heads down an alley and acquires magic hand powers, and possibly superhuman strength--a grip, which you see for the first time in the last image as two hands grip each other in feminist, working-class solidarity.
When I say the graphic novel is wordless, I mean no words, so of course you read the images to get what story exists, though most of the effects have less to do with narrative than poetry. The color is almost psychedelic, and the panels teem with swirling transformational motion. It almost feels like music, with vibrant, pulsing rhythms.
The woman has to learn how to channel and control her power, and it’s a process to get there. Messes are made, distortion happens, but ultimately things come together. If I had to say what it is “about� metaphorically I guess I would say it is about harnessing life energy, about achieving and controlling your powers. It’s muscular. The woman is muscular, no skinny Vogue model but a worker. And our hero is not the only woman worker. Wherever you go there are women working hard, serving food, cooking, flying planes, driving a motorcycle, building shelters. It’s not a shy and retiring set of images. It’s about work, getting things done. Muscle and machines. Hands everywhere, the tools for work.
Grip is about strength and vibrant beauty, not so much quiet, muted contemplation. It’s about physical and spiritual and psychic/magical changes. “I am woman, hear me roar�? You almost can hear it. I only read the interview with her now, after writing my review, but she says she writes women in her comics she would have liked to see growing up, or would like to become. She speaks of friends/influences such as Anya Davidson, Conor Stechshulte, Margot Ferrick. Westvind grew up in NYC with Turkish and Swedish parents, and got her BFA at Chicago's Art Institute.
An essay by Gerardo Vilches in the afterwords connects her work to other, what he calls “cosmic primitives,� folks like Jesse Moynihan. I thought of Ron Rege and his Wonder Woman origin comic, which might also draw on and reflect cosmic energy. Cool stuff. Exciting.
Robert Boyd’s Book Report on Grip (ten minutes):
Thanks, Maria! I'm getting my own copy, and more from her at Quimby's (one of my local comic book stores)....more
A slim and evocative and almost wordless graphic novel that depicts with some joy and melancholy from the beginning to the end of a relationship. WhenA slim and evocative and almost wordless graphic novel that depicts with some joy and melancholy from the beginning to the end of a relationship. When I categorize this as poetry comics I mean that the "story" of this relationship operates largely metaphorically, as with poetry. Some of it is very familiar--scenes of dancing, brushing their teeth together, lying around in bed together. Then there are the little hurtful disagreements that fester, separate. Feels familiar.
But one of (what I take to be) the abstract or metaphorical vignettes has the guy (or some guy) with some kind of bat or stick, calmly warning a woman (but with blond hair, unlike the woman we have met) that he might hurt her, and he does. From a narrative point of view this would seem to come out of nowhere, and I (for one) do not think he actually hits her with a bat, but he hurts her, nevertheless, somehow, that's clear. In another scene, the blond woman has a sharp object and would appear to be hurting him, returning "the favor?". Again, I don't think it actually happens, but it may have.
In a restaurant, the woman orders "one break-up," but they can't get empathy "on the side," they are all out of that.
The title, The Butchery? There's a reference to butchery in the text, one in a line from a fellow soldier in combat before a parachute jump: "Watch your back, you could get butchered down there." But the butchery may also be a reference to the bat and knife, the "slaughter" that attends the end of a relationship, which could involve physical violence, but is more likely (I think, imho) a metaphorical reference to emotional damage.
The last pages, wordless, involve two men and the blond woman, with some kind of parting for all of them, though (spoiler alert and possible trigger warning) the last image is of one of the guys on the ground, the knife near him.
This is sad, somewhat disturbing, certainly provocative, drawn with delicate lines and few words by a master of French comics, though with little explicit narrative help for the reader, which I like because I get to reread and reread it and try to figure it out. If you want absolute narrative clarity you don't read this book, but I like digging into a story or poem to try and figure it out. I like to figure out mysteries. Usually mysteries involve a detective who explains every last detail, which most readers find "satisfying;" this book makes you work a bit, which is to say it invites you to construct the narrative with the author. It reminded me in that way of Brecht Evens' The Panther where you have to figure out what happens....more
I like what the publisher says, though I didn't read this description until after I had read the whole book:
"Mountebank is like nothing you've ever seI like what the publisher says, though I didn't read this description until after I had read the whole book:
"Mountebank is like nothing you've ever seen before: a systematized sketchbook that tracks the inner workings of an obsessive brain and a book that could only be described as 'psychedoolic.'"
That's funny, that word, and seems apt. It is OCD crazy, page after page of mazes, intricately drawn. And you know, the artist hmself uses that word, so only he can comment on the influence of psychedelics in the creation of the art. But let me say, I would not be surprised to hear that D.W. has enhanced the doors of his perception through acid.
Oh, and you know what a mountebank is, right? No? You could simply ask Siri, but okay, sigh, I'll tell you:
"a person who deceives others, especially in order to trick them out of their money; a charlatan."
A reviewer may be tempted at this point to cleverly identify the artist D.W. as mountebank, as you might have wished you had a story, and then found it was it was just a sketchbook, but I won't stoop to that here. There may be a kind of story lurking in her featuring anthropomorphic creatures throughout, but that's not the point; the obsessive drawing is the point, the depiction of the working of one guys' mind is the point, not any references to narrative, which D.W. (I think) sees as beside the point in this obsessive production.
A Fantagraphics publication; so cool they produced this and other stuff like this. Experimental, art comix. Here's a review so you can see some of it and hear him talk about it as a process of his one artistic learning:
You can also see his work here on Instagram, where he has four separate, ongoing sketchbooks:
Here's a Comics Beat review of Paper Peril by John Seven where you can see some of Bourgois's light and sketchy and breezy and uplifting approach:
Here's a Comics Beat review of Paper Peril by John Seven where you can see some of Bourgois's light and sketchy and breezy and uplifting approach:
A comics/illustrator memoir, almost wordless, both documenting and illustrating the artist’s evolution to the style he is best known for. But not a seamless tale of success, by any means. Bourgois documents the process of finding himself through his art, and shows us the pride and perils of the process. At one point he feels a kind of self-erasure, that he feels like a ghost. So it's as much about struggle as the joys of being an artist. It's work even though he makes it look easy, in many ways.
He dedicates the book to his mentor, R. O. Blechman, though you can see the influence, too, of Saul Steinberg, and he mentions Tove Janson, Sir Quentin Blake (never heard of him?), Roland Toper (not recalling him at the moment?), Copi, Tomi Ungerer and others as influences: “I studied them carefully, like birds or minerals.� He imagines them all with cloaks of recognizable styles. “Their cloak was an extension of their thinking.�
I really liked this short and lovely and provocative story of one artist's evolution as an artist....more
I think I have rated all of the Brecht Evens books I have read thus far with four stars, mainly because the stories, the narratives, don't quite matchI think I have rated all of the Brecht Evens books I have read thus far with four stars, mainly because the stories, the narratives, don't quite match the often exhilarating artwork. So I don't know if this is his "best" work that I have read thus far, but I simply have to acknowledge the astonishing visuals in this book, which is otherwise titled/translated as The Entertainment or Amusement (help me out here?) but in English, published by the amazing Drawn & Quarterly, it has the prosaic title The City of Belgium.
Thanks to Moira for posting this in her enthusiastic review, which I borrow:
Brecht Evens posted an impression of his book on YouTube:
What's it about? Color? A night in the city. Talk. Fluid movement, everywhere. If we all could afford it, this should be a very, very large oversized book format, because I had to peer in closely to read the handwritten lettering of all the talk, and to see the sometimes cramped night life-focused space, to see all that was going on. Oh, this is what it is like in a bar at night on a weekend, where we see tables of talkers, we hear snippets of conversation. Fun!
The focus is on three people who have fun and also get involved in violent criminal activity and mix drugs with their excessive drinking. Then some of it feels surreal, fun, nightmarish, at turns, drug and alcohol-induced. Wonderful watercolor fantasy, moving, moving, a sense of visual noise, amidst bursts of light, crowds of people, a dream?
If you like coherent narrative, if that is your standard for art/literature, you might be frustrated, as I initially was in reading this, but if you let go of the need to hold on to the railing and raise your hands in the air and ride this rollercoaster, you will admire it for the way it conveys one night with lots of noise and talk and fun and excess....more
A kind of surreal, funny, quirky book about eight runners, running everywhere together. I shelved this as "sports" but it's in one sense a commentary A kind of surreal, funny, quirky book about eight runners, running everywhere together. I shelved this as "sports" but it's in one sense a commentary on the limitations of looking at sports as merely competitions. Or the absurdity of sports. And the sheer joy of doing them. The importance of play. Creating new sports.
The world that gets built here includes one woman's sentient poncho that tells her what to do ("I'm taking the train." "Why?" "Because my coat told me to"), algebra dogs, and a cast of likeable weirdos
How to convey the weirdness?
Natalie Whey gives badges to herself to wear on a cape. And for what? One eight panel scene has her tell the story: I smashed a trapeze, to catch a cloud, and keep all the fields nice. She sailed the almond triangle to return a left boot. See what I mean?
Sometimes the landscape on full facing pages looks like Richard Scarry's Busytown: Look what all there is to see! Weird sports everywhere! Urban golf! Pie throwing!
It's about goofy world-building, not story. But then there's this hidden network of people that seems to be watching all the events, from above; when one girl loses her arm (!) (I know! Surprising violence) a guy comes out and offers her a huge wing as a replacement, which she accepts. Some hint at allegory, as we begin and end with unquestioning running on and on and on. . .
Fun imaginative trippy book made big and beautifully made by Fantagraphics for your (2020) pleasure during a pandemic. Run anywhere you imagine!...more
I happen to have read two graphic novels in a row that are both about music and are wordless. At a glance, they couldn’t seem more different; one is BI happen to have read two graphic novels in a row that are both about music and are wordless. At a glance, they couldn’t seem more different; one is Bix, by Scott Chandler about Bix Beiderbecke, a Davenport, Iowa pianist, cornetist and composer, one of the most influential musicians of the 1920’s. Bix didn’t talk much but communicated largely through his music. Loud, by Maria Llovet, takes place in a strip club with punk/rock music; it’s too loud to talk, one presumes; again, most of what you “hear� is music.
So both books are what I would call “art� comics (where formal, compositional elements seem to be foregrounded more than anything else), even “poetry� comics (where as with lyrical poetry, the comics foreground the juxtaposition of images as it is constructed--no, composed is the word at least as it pertains to these music books). Bix is a narrative, a biography of a quiet musician, but it proceeds as Loud does through images, the totality of which are. . . musical. But the effect is cool, dark, jazz, elegant. Impressive cartooning.
Loud has a narrative, and something dramatic at the end happens, but the narrative is not really the point, I think. The book is a series of images, that add up to. . .. music, but not jazz, but rather loud punk music roaring through the bar. In Loud we meet strippers, a pedophile looking for a young girl, a sadistic dominatrix, a divorcing middle-aged woman, two hitmen, but they swirl around in the drug and alcohol and music and nude dancing. “What’s going on� is more a sum of images than a story, though all the drama does lead to a conclusion, one that maybe fits the Tarantino-esque violence of punk more than jazz, but both feature deaths.
Llovet’s artwork is formally impressive; look closely at the formal progression of panel to panel, which is how comics speak, and you can see that it teaches a lot about how comics work to create a vision. Comics usually wed words and images. Both use words sparingly--Bix through one scene where his wife tries to get him to talk about his family; in Loud Llovet uses words for sounds, like bow, bum--those drums and bass throbbing-wob, crash, and a couple word bubbles throughout, but neither need words to help us understand what is going on. Impressive cartooning.
PS: I have family in Davenport, where each year they sponsor a race, "The Bix" and where the Bix Beiderbecke Museum is located:
I happen to have read two graphic novels in a row that are both about music and are wordless. At a glance, they couldn’t seem more different; one is BI happen to have read two graphic novels in a row that are both about music and are wordless. At a glance, they couldn’t seem more different; one is Bix, by Scott Chandler about a Davenport, Iowa pianist, cornetist and composer, one of the most influential musicians of the 1920’s. Bix didn’t talk much but communicated largely through his music. Loud, by Maria Llovet, takes place in a strip club with punk/rock music; it’s too loud to talk, one presumes; again, most of what you “hear� is music.
So both books are what I would call “art� comics (where formal, compositional elements seem to be foregrounded more than anything else), even “poetry� comics (where as with lyrical poetry, the comics foreground the juxtaposition of images as it is constructed--no, composed is the word at least as it pertains to these music books). Bix is a narrative, a biography of a quiet musician, but it proceeds as Loud does through images, the totality of which are. . . musical. But the effect is cool, dark, jazz, elegant. Impressive cartooning.
Loud has a narrative, and something dramatic at the end happens, but the narrative is not really the point, I think. The book is a series of images, that add up to. . .. music, but not jazz, but rather loud punk music roaring through the bar. In Loud we meet strippers, a pedophile looking for a young girl, a sadistic dominatrix, a divorcing middle-aged woman, two hitmen, but they swirl around in the drug and alcohol and music and nude dancing. “What’s going on� is more a sum of images than a story, though all the drama does lead to a conclusion, one that maybe fits the Tarantino-esque violence of punk more than jazz, but both feature deaths.
Llovet’s artwork is formally impressive; look closely at the formal progression of panel to panel, which is how comics speak, and you can see that it teaches a lot about how comics work to create a vision. Comics usually wed words and images. Both use words sparingly--Bix through one scene where his wife tries to get him to talk about his family; in Loud Llovet uses words for sounds, like bow, bum--those drums and bass throbbing-wob, crash, and a couple word bubbles throughout, but neither need words to help us understand what is going on. Impressive cartooning. ...more
Several years ago I was hoping to see what the short form online comix guy Michael DeForge would do if he had a story to tell, in long form, a graphicSeveral years ago I was hoping to see what the short form online comix guy Michael DeForge would do if he had a story to tell, in long form, a graphic novel, but after reading this, certainly one of the best graphic collections of the year, but a new collection of shorts, I am frankly not sure what is his best format. Keep ‘em guessing, looks like. Or, just say that DeForge can do a range of things very, very well. This is a great display of a range of what he can do, one of the best comics works of the year.
Michael DeForge is one of the smartest, funniest, most creative, the most resistant to categorization, working in comics today. One thing he does is play with narrative; he’s postmodern in that respect, messing with our expectations. But he’s always done that, with his weird, creepy, amoeba-like anthropomorphic blobby characters. In this collection he includes kid stories, sort of spinoffs from his Adventureland work, and he creates non-stories masking as stories. These are art comics, alt-comix, experimental, messing with various genres, work with a certain expressive vitality. There’s horror, dystopian, children’s stories, sci fi, and many bizarre places in between. Though this somehow seems more accessible to me than some of his early work, less violent and profane and that's a good thing. Is DeForge becoming more domestic, more conventional, more coherent? Dunno� But there’s humor throughout.
Some examples:
“Roleplay� is about a person masquerading as a surgeon. But everyone in this story seems to be roleplaying--a cop who seems to be arresting her after a family accuses her of killing their family member. .
“Of all the professions to impersonate, why did I choose ‘surgeon�?� But hey, you have to get over that self-doubt, girl. She kills someone in surgery and coolly comments: “They say if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.� Funny and chilling. Call it black humor/horror and it works.
“No Hell� asserts there is no Hell, but several levels of Heaven that you can earn your way to. Quirky and funny.
“One of my Students is a Murderer. . . But Which?� is a fairly straightforward (for DeForge, anyway) kid story about an FBI detective who becomes a substitute teacher to figure out who is the murderer in an elementary classroom. A children's crime story--that genre, this time--played for laughs. There are other kid level pieces in here, too, though they are weird, for weird kids:
“My Step-Dad is a Disgusting Bug: And I Hate Him� will be an insect-phobic’s worst nightmare.
One short features a person beginning to ask what kind of food they want to eat--Polish? Mexican?--and moves to other questions, some of them absurd, the whole piece and the whole relationship is conducted in q and a--June Wedding? New Bedding? And so on.
“Soap Opera� is a wild shaggy-dog story about--ostensibly--a failing marriage, that goes all the way to the US Presidency. . . .
So it’s a fun ride exploring various ways to tell a story, in weird images and through minimalism/surrealism, anything but realism. Worth your while to check out!...more
My second comics reflection on celebrity in the past 24 hours (the first is My Beautiful Despair: The Philosophy of Kim Kierkegaardashian (but really,My second comics reflection on celebrity in the past 24 hours (the first is My Beautiful Despair: The Philosophy of Kim Kierkegaardashian (but really, it was written and illustrated by alt comix dude Dash Shaw). The Bradley of the title is sort of a fictional Bradley Cooper, a celebrity actor who we learn has won an academy award for his depiction of Lance Armstrong in a film. He's also preparing for another film, possibly, as he (or is it he as Murray, the name of the guy he will play?) runs in the Las Vegas desert all through the book. The book is a strange, surreal experience, beautifully crafted cartooning contemplation of celebrity, and places like Las Vegas or Hollywood, places empty of spiritual significance. It includes a sappy letter Bradley writes to Robert DeNiro (Bob! They know each other! I couldn't have become Bradley Cooper without Bob!!) and a typically vapid award acceptance speech.
It's not for everyone, it's weird, and thoughtful and complex in that we never know exactly what is going on, or why, it feels like a fevered dream, or nightmare. When Bradley/Murray gets lost in one of his runs and needs help he encounters a family who agrees to help him, but one guy in the family wants something in exchange for the help, so Bradley does impressions of famous actors for him. The overall effect is kind of haunting. creepy, and sometimes a little funny. A touch of near futuristic in it, too, something that reminds me of Nick Drnaso's Sabrina. I want more alternative narratives like this!...more
So many biographies of artists seem unimaginative to me, just st“You blessed world, you crazy freak show�--Grosz
“I am up to my neck in visions�--Grosz
So many biographies of artists seem unimaginative to me, just straightforward and typically. . . biographical. But here is a unique one, accomplished almost exclusively in images, of the German painter and cartoonist George Grosz, who was a well known chronicler of German life, a soldier who became disheartened with the military, and thereafter with his country, who turned to surrealism and dark satire and dada to critique society. It's still pretty much chronological but the Grosz-inspired art is terrific.
“Today the cleaning of a gun by a red soldier is of greater significance than the entire metaphysical output of all the painters.�
Here’s a little taste of what Lars Fiske does in this biography:
Here’s a sampling across a career of Grosz’s work:
“You should stop reading those Russian authors. Their idea of romance is a bit too desperate for my taste”—Vidal Balaguer, to his model Mar Noguera, w“You should stop reading those Russian authors. Their idea of romance is a bit too desperate for my taste”—Vidal Balaguer, to his model Mar Noguera, who is reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment as she is painted.
I just happen to be reading Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov which, like Crime and Punishment, features a desperate romance. And also a murder. Odd coincidence, to take a break from Brothers to randomly pick this up. A book in part inspired by Dostoevsky!)
(But are there really any literary coincidences? Is it not fate, Madame? And please don’t move. The light is just right now. Ah, here, this shawl is a perfect complement to your ivory skin, red, perfect, a Manton, so lovely, so delicate and bold at the same time!)
Vidal Balaguer was a Catalan painter from the late nineteenth century, who disappeared and apparently destroyed most of his art before leaving. Once viewed in school as the Catalan Carravaggio, these are the remaining paintings, which I found on a Facebook page:
The Muse is a lovely, 48-page work of art in itself by Zidrou and Oriol, a graphic novel, that imagines a fantastical series of events to help explain the mystery. It’s a story within a story, the tale told by an older, struggling painter to his young model one afternoon about a struggling painter he had once known, Balaguer, who once had fallen in love with his “muse,� (or is it femme fatale?), Mar, the woman depicted in the painting on the cover of this book (yes, the actual painter Balaguer actually painted that portrait of Mar!). He’s (of course) fallen in love with her, but in the night he finishes her painting, she disappears. For days he wanders the streets looking for her. He’s broke, but he won’t sell this painting to a man who expresses interest in it. Where is she?
The man, a detective, visits; Mar’s disappeared, Balaguer’s the last to have seen her, he’s a suspect. Oh, and a detective also met with Raskolnikov, about a murdered woman. . . but what does our story have to do with that?
Here is what it feels fro me to be reading Dostoevsky while I wqtch Mar read Dostoevsky, while a struggling painter tells a story within a story about a struggling painter (Orson Welles, the "Hall of Mirrors"scene In other words, what is reality? It's mirrors all the way down!:
(You’re not too cold? I can turn up the heat. You want a sip of wine? Will the Muscatel do? Perhaps a bit to eat? An orange? Of course, very nice choice. But yes, yes, let’s take a short break and sit together by the window as the late afternoon light filters in.)
What does Mar’s disappearance have to do with a painting Balaguer made of a corpse, and the subsequent disappearance of said corpse? Or the fact that Mar was a model—and more, for money—for a host of other men/artists? And what about the missing oranges and Muscatel from that work on the still life Balaguer completed?
One day, a little girl, named herself after a Greek muse, Melpomene, observes Balaguer painting a landscape with a tree in the center. She comments on his art and helps him realize his “perfect definition of painting: Reality, with a little extra,� which we might say is also the perfect definition of art for Dostoevsky, Zidrou/Oriol, and me! (You sense you are in that mirror scene again?! Exactly! What is going on here? Who is writing this review? Who is telling this story of a story within a story? Who am I?!)
(Yes, relax, only a few strokes left, breathe, the world is a delight, just a few more minutes. . .)
In gratitude, Balaguer gives his painting of the landscape tree to his young muse and. . . as we look at the actual scene to compare it to the painting. . . the tree disappears!
So, mystery lover, Monsieur Poirot, let’s see what we have: Balaguer paints a corpse and it disappears. He paints Mar and she disappears. A tree . . . disappears! He looks at his parakeet and realizes that since everything he paints is set free, he’ll do the parakeet a favor and paint it (I know, he could just open the cage, but. . . ).
Another way to think of this mystery is of the paintbrush as murder weapon, which is what is the detective’s theory! And was it yours?! Herzog, who lent him money, comes one last time to collect and Balaguer has an idea, to offer to paint his portrait. Hey, a way to solve his money troubles in a way Herzog might not suspect. . . And would never, ever know. . .) but there’s a twist in the ending, in this lovely noir romantic fantasy. Because as we know from his actual, real world (what can that possibly mean?!) biography, it is Balaguer who actually disappears! Guess how!
(Just the finishing touches, my dear, be patient, and then I have to get back to my reading of The Brothers of Karamazov. Here, let me clean my brushes as I turn to show it to . . ....more
I had read a couple of Frank Santoro's books and liked them, but in comparison to this memoir, they were more about art than anything else. The story I had read a couple of Frank Santoro's books and liked them, but in comparison to this memoir, they were more about art than anything else. The story here is about his growing up in declining Pittsburgh in the seventies and getting the hell out in the eighties, but the real focus is something he can't quite get beyond, emotionally, that his parents divorced then, almost twenty years ago.
The artwork, done with pencil and colorful markers, mixed-media in that clipped-out pieces of paper featuring figures are taped on to images that are themselves taped to the (larger) pages, feels usefully diy and sketchy and though the story is sad and reflective, has this brightly multi-colorful aura that underlines the sadness with hope. Feels to me raw, emotionally, because we see the process he went through in creating the art. The lettering is done by hand, adding to the intimacy.
I see at a glance a lot of people seem to be underwhelmed by both story and art here. It's not linear in most respects we expect in a memoir. I'm listening to the fourteen-hour long Say Nothing that is just filled with details about the Troubles in Northern Ireland and I like that a lot so far, but Pittsburgh ain't that kinda book. It's more elusive, impressionistic, emotional, as a story. Not to say Say Nothing will not get emotional for me as I keep reading. Just calling attention to its unconventional style to heighten the feelings, which for some reason reminds me of the similarly "unfinished" feel of Belgian comics artist Willy Linthout's sad story of the suicide of his son, Years of the Elephant. A human being is telling this story to you! It's not a digitized Marvel glossy story by committee, okay!?
I lived through this period, though not in Pittsburgh, so could relate to the depressed feeling of the closing of steel mills, that working class life, the suffering Dad went through in Vietnam, the divorce. I really liked it....more
I said I was giving up on the Louvre-co-sponsored series, having read only a very few that I was really impressed with, but someone encouraged me to cI said I was giving up on the Louvre-co-sponsored series, having read only a very few that I was really impressed with, but someone encouraged me to check this one out first (and another one with cats still on order). I am impressed with the artwork by comics artist Bernar Yslaire and admire the ambition of Jean-Claude Carrière’s story, but I still didn’t quite love it. It’s a slice of French history, the Terror, 1794, during the French Revolution, seen through the eyes of one artist.
In other words, lots of art in the Louvre pertains to historical subjects. This graphic novel imagines one artist painting one painting, that of the young Bara, a 13-year-old martyr of the Republic, making that moment in history come alive. The book also helps us understand the importance of Robespierre and David, though it kind of assumes you know a lot about the French Revolution. I think it would be a terrific companion to the study of that period....more
I think this is one of the better ones in the comics series based on The Louvre and I think sponsored by them. I really want to like them all better. I think this is one of the better ones in the comics series based on The Louvre and I think sponsored by them. I really want to like them all better. They give the initial impression of being quirky and quietly reflective. They are typically lovely, water-colored, a touch mysterious, but ultimately kind of vague in purpose. This one has the lovely/mysterious/vague factor--pretty pictures, vague story.
The real attraction for me was the suggestion that most museums seem to have ghosts, and yep, this story has one, too. A Louvre museum director is retiring but skips his retirement party, steals a couple bottles of wine and meets a (lovely) younger woman. Who is she?! Where did she come from?! She's so cool and mysterious and casually sexy! But you know right away she is a ghost from some painting, no spoiler alert needed there, I say.
But regarding the May-December aspect of this, which could be really intriguing to one in the target audience (i.e., older men closer to death that birth, which coincidentally includes me!), I unfortunately was reminded of Woody Allen's Manhattan and Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, similar May-December themed movies we can never again see as romantically as many people saw them at the time....more
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