Today I talked about King-Cat no. 80, a minicomic by John Porcellino. I mentioned Porcellino's small-press distro, Spit and a Half, which I recommend that you check out. I also mentioned how Porcellino visited Houston on a book tour, and I wrote about it then. I have written about his work in other posts as well. I want to recommend his books, as well. Check out The Hospital Suite, Perfect Example, Map of My Heart, and From Lone Mountain. I said it in the review and will repeat it here: John Porcellino is a great American artist.
Showing posts with label John Porcellino. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Porcellino. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 20, 2021
Robert Boyd's Book Report: King-Cat no. 80
Friday, December 12, 2014
My Favorite Comics of 2014
Robert Boyd
I feel a little guilty posting this list now because in the next 19 days I am sure to read some more comics that should have been in the top 10 or at least in the honorable mention list. There are still some from Comic Arts Brooklyn that I picked up and haven't yet read, for example. But that said, I've read a whole bunch of comics this year and have some opinions about them and 'tis the season, you know?
Notice that I didn't say "The Best" comics of 2014. I haven't read all the comics the came out this year, so what do I know? For one thing, I've only read comics published in English. So what of the thousands of comics published this year in French, Japanese and other languages? But even if you specify English-language comics only, I've read only a small percentage of the total published. So if you know of a really great comic that's not on my favorites list, it may simply be that I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. Or it may be that we just disagree.
Because above all, this list reflects my own idiosyncratic tastes. For example, I've come to really dislike most "mainstream" comic books over the past couple of decades. I find them hard to get into. At a moment when superheroes have finally gained universal popularity, I've grown permanently tired of them. I still have a nostalgic love for the ones I read as a kid (although I find it hard to read them now), and I recognize that there are works within that genre that are exemplary, but I'm not personally interested in searching them out. Once or twice a year I'll make an effort, and I'm always disappointed. So there won't be any costumed heroes on this list.
But more than this, what often happens is that one of my favorite cartoonists produces a new book, and it's excellent as usual, and therefore it ends up on the list. I'd like to think I chose Jaime Hernandez and Dylan Horrocks books because they are inarguably the best, but my relationship with their work goes back so far and is so deep, I can't be sure I'm really being objective. Sam Alden is the only cartoonist on the list whose work I'd never read before this year (although I can't say I was super-familiar with Mimi Pond's work or Christophe Blain's--and Blain's writing partner, Abel Lanza, was a revelation).
With all these caveats and disqualifications, here are my favorite comics from 2014.
1) Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir
by Roz Chast (Bloomsbury USA). Long my
favorite New Yorker cartoonist, this lengthy work on a serious subject is
miraculously both moving and hilarious. She can't stop being Roz Chast
even while talking about the slow decline and death of both of her
parents. And it had personal resonance with me because it deals with
issues that I and my siblings are having to deal with with our own
elderly parent.
Chast's parents were significantly older than her. She first became aware of problems when they were 90--she visits their apartment in Brooklyn and notices it is covered with grime--something her mother had never previously tolerated. She tells these stories in episodes often presented as full page comics--very similar to her strips in the New Yorker. These episodes are linked by hand-written illustrated text pieces which keeps the thread together. Her odd parents at first seem quite vital for two people in their 90s, but a fall puts Chast's mother in the hospital and makes Chast realize how senile her father has become. It becomes obvious that these are two people who should not be living alone in an apartment. But it took a year after her mother's fall for them to seriously consider moving into an assisted living situation.
Chast has always been a cartoonist whose drawing was crude (but funny). But this book demonstrates that she has great chops and deploys them only when they will have maximum effect. Her full page drawing of her father when her mother returned home from the hospital is classic--a funny, loving portrait. She also includes photos of the crap she cleaned out of their apartments when they finally moved out.
She deals with the irritations, the guilt, the sadness and all the other emotions of seeing a parent decline and die. The book is moving, very funny, and instructive, and I appreciate it as a representative of a new genre in comics (for example Special Exits
by Joyce Farmer and The Song of Roland by Michel Rabagliati). It heartens me to think that comics are now mature enough to deal with this subject. Roz Chast's Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? is an unexpected masterwork.
2) Sam Zabel And The Magic Pen
by Dylan Horrocks (Fantagraphics Books). I saw this unfold more of less in real time as Dylan Horrocks drew it--he posted the first page online on February 23, 2009. Now it's finished and you can read the entire story in book form. Horrocks tells us a fantasy story about the joys, dangers and responsibilities of fantasy stories. It's quite post-modern in that regard and may remind you a little of Italo Calvino or Vladimir Nabokov, but Horrocks always wants you to remember that you are reading a comic book about comic books. It's funny and sexy and there's self-doubt and sadness in it, too. It's this richness that's kept me interested as it unfolded glacially before my eyes over the course of five years. The wait was worth it.
The basic premise is that there exists a magic pen that if you draw a picture (or better yet, a comics story) with it, you can then blow on the picture and be transported into the world you've drawn. Not only that, any reproductions of that image or comic will have the same property. That's how Sam Zabel, a cartoonist writing a terrible mainstream superhero comic for which he feels zero passion, is transported into another world--specifically, a rather silly and sexist but somewhat delightful version of Mars from a kid's comic published by a New Zealand cartoonist in the 1950s. He meets a young woman, Miki, who carries a backpack full of comics and drawings created with the magic pen, which allows for a variety of explorations.
In some ways, Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen is playful and light-hearted, but the book is always asking this question: what is the responsibility of the fantasist? "Responsibility" and "fantasy" are not two words that go together very often, except when various scolds tell us that fantasy itself is irresponsible. But this book really wants us to consider them as partners in a way--it tells us that our fantasies are where we go wild and break out of our mental and emotional binds (there is even a chapter called "Anhedonia"), but that we must always remember that fantasies have consequences. It's a beautiful, thought-provoking comic.
3) Here
by Richard McGuire (Pantheon Books). This is the most formally daring of all the comics I've listed. Each page is a double spread, facing into the corner of a nondescript room, with a window on the left and a fireplace on the right. In the upper left-hand corner of each page is a year, like 2014 or 1956 or 1775 or even 3,000,500,000 BCE. And what you see in the spread is what you would be seeing at some point in that year. So we see the house being built in 1907, and we see the large house across the street being built in 1764. We see the forest before then inhabited by Native Americans who come into contact with Dutch settlers, and we see prehistoric landscapes. And we see a future, which at first seem fairly hightech. One image from 2213 shows a tour guide using a device that allows the tourists to see what we're seeing in Here--the house that stood on that spot throughout the years. But we also see a very distant future that seems devoid of humanity. We even have a guest appearance by Benjamin Franklin, who visits the colonial house which is, apparently, where his son lives. And all these different views are shown in non-chronological order.
Within each double-page spread are inset panels. They are from different times as well, and we see small episodes and events unfold, mostly from the 20th century, but quite a few from the 18th century and several from before. These floating panels are distinguished from the larger spreads and from each other by color. McGuire's color scheme helps us keep the different elements distinct.
This is an expansion of a six page story Richard McGuire published in RAW in 1989. That story is legendary--an acknowledged classic. But by expanding it as he has done here, McGuire has created something quite different (although no less formally audacious). I heard him speak earlier this year, and he was at pains to say this wasn't about his family or his childhood home, except that it really was. The family shown in the late 50s and 60s is his family. He really did grow up in an old house across the street from William Franklin's house in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. But while the personal stories here are important, the book is unmoored from them. There is no linearity here unless one carefully follows the dates in the corners of the pages and panels. And, in fact, the book invites you to do this. Reading it through once is like looking at a kaleidoscope, but as you read, you mentally file away episodes you want to return to, like the fight between two men in straw boaters in 1910 or or the romantic Native American couple in 1609. I've just "read" this book, but I suspect I won't really be "finished" with it for quite a while.
4) The Love Bunglers
by Jaime Hernandez (Fantagraphics Books). This collects several related stories from Love & Rockets. Jaime Hernandez has been drawing stories about Maggie Chascarillo since the early 80s, and he's allowed her to age over that time. But one thing he's done a little bit recently is to deepen her personal history--characters we never knew existed are slotted into her childhood or young adulthood and make appearances in her adult life. In this volume, he introduces Calvin, Maggie's brother. His childhood story is told in the searing "Browntown", surely the most disturbing story in Hernandez ever wrote. The damage done to Calvin as a boy affects him (and Maggie and her lover Ray) as middle-aged adults. As Faulkner wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." In addition to "Browntown," there is "Return For Me," set shortly after the period in "Browntown," and told from the point of view of Maggie's friend, Letty Chavez. It's a startling story, because it's told in past tense as if Letty is telling it to us up until the instant that Letty is killed in a car accident. Her story ends mid-sentence.
But the main thrust of the story is how Maggie and Ray, whose relationship has come and gone over the years, finally end up an old couple together. Getting there is a quite a twisty journey, and Hernandez tells it rather obliquely. For someone who has written a generational epic, Hernandez has evolved into a minimalist. I wonder what he's going to do next, because this book feel very much like an ending to Maggie's story. It's a beautiful ending, too, especially for those of us who have been following this story since the beginning.
5) Over Easy
by Mimi Pond (Drawn & Quarterly). This is another one that took years to come out--I heard about it from Pond herself in 2009. She posted a few pages on line, and then nothing until this year. This is a brick of a graphic memoir, unusual in that it discusses the ins and outs of work, a subject criminally ignored by most cartoonists. Jobs, employment, co-workers, the boss, the grind--Over Easy has it all, and it's all funny and affecting. My review is here.
6) The Hospital Suite
by John Porcellino (Drawn & Quarterly). Starting in 1997, John Porcellino started feeling sick. This book is a memoir of illness, both
mental and physical. First it's stomach pain, which he is reluctant to
treat because of the cost. He only goes when his wife threatens to leave
him if he doesn't. He is diagnosed with Crohn's disease, but treatment
doesn't seem to help. Porcellino depicts the emotional aspects of sickness
very movingly. His pacing is perfect. In one panel, he is on his knees
searching. The caption reads, "My wedding ring had slipped off my
now-bony finger...." This is followed by a "silent" panel, and then one
that reads, "and I cried and cried." In this case, it turns out they had misdiagnosed
him, and they were able to fix that, but his problems were just
beginning.
His illnesses eventually contribute to the end of his first marriage. He wishes he could "be a normal person" and ponders suicide. His struggles with allergies may remind readers of the movie Safe. And most of all, Porcellino's depiction of OCD is the best depiction of that insidious disease I've seen. "One half of your brain is making you do this nutty stuff... The other half is telling you how ridiculous you are for doing it..." From the beginning of the book, Porcellino depicts himself as a spiritual seeker, particularly interested in Buddhism. But the disease turns even that against him as he comes to believe that God is punishing him for some reason. At one point he borrows a copy of the old Japanese monster movie Destroy All Monsters from the library. But his OCD-afflicted animal brain concludes that if he watches, monsters could come and destroy his town. His rational mind knows this is insane, but still he can't bring himself to watch it.
Porcellino's drawing is minimal and functional, and that has always served his poetic, haiku-like stories. But the stories here are not poetic. They are about about how disease destroys the poetry in his life. Porcellino went through hell, and he is humiliated by the experiences. Sickness is not just pain (although there is plenty here); it is one indignity after another. Porcellino's magic is that he succeeds in making the reader empathize, even when his character can't seem to forgive himself.
7) Sugar Skull
by Charles Burns (Pantheon). The concluding book of a trilogy, it wraps
up the mysterious beginning and middle with a gut-punch of an ending.
Burns is an artist who was closely associated with the legendary RAW and
is best known for his graphic novel Black Hole. I reviewed Sugar Skull here.
8) Weapons of Mass Diplomacy
by Abel Lanzac and Christophe Blain (SelfMadeHero). Weapons of Mass Diplomacy was reviewed here in August. It's surprising that a roman à clef about French diplomacy could simultaneously be so funny and so moving.
9) Incomplete Works
by Dylan Horrocks (Victoria University Press). Yes, Horrocks gets two entries in the top 10. I wrote about Incomplete Works earlier. The funny thing is that I knew Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen was coming this year--it had been announced and was being discussed, and of course readers of the online serialization could see that it was heading towards a climax. But Incomplete Works was a total surprise to me when Horrocks announced it on his own website. They are both deserving of their places on this list--one an overview of his art from its earliest days, the other a fully mature masterpiece.
10) It Never Happened Again: Two Stories
by Sam Alden (Uncivilized Books). I reviewed this book earlier this year. It's been a great year for this artist, about whom I know very little except that he is in his mid-20s and seems to be quite peripatetic. In fact, before this year I had never heard of him. But he's someone whose work I'll be keeping an eye on from now on.
Honorable Mention
I feel a little guilty posting this list now because in the next 19 days I am sure to read some more comics that should have been in the top 10 or at least in the honorable mention list. There are still some from Comic Arts Brooklyn that I picked up and haven't yet read, for example. But that said, I've read a whole bunch of comics this year and have some opinions about them and 'tis the season, you know?
Notice that I didn't say "The Best" comics of 2014. I haven't read all the comics the came out this year, so what do I know? For one thing, I've only read comics published in English. So what of the thousands of comics published this year in French, Japanese and other languages? But even if you specify English-language comics only, I've read only a small percentage of the total published. So if you know of a really great comic that's not on my favorites list, it may simply be that I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. Or it may be that we just disagree.
Because above all, this list reflects my own idiosyncratic tastes. For example, I've come to really dislike most "mainstream" comic books over the past couple of decades. I find them hard to get into. At a moment when superheroes have finally gained universal popularity, I've grown permanently tired of them. I still have a nostalgic love for the ones I read as a kid (although I find it hard to read them now), and I recognize that there are works within that genre that are exemplary, but I'm not personally interested in searching them out. Once or twice a year I'll make an effort, and I'm always disappointed. So there won't be any costumed heroes on this list.
But more than this, what often happens is that one of my favorite cartoonists produces a new book, and it's excellent as usual, and therefore it ends up on the list. I'd like to think I chose Jaime Hernandez and Dylan Horrocks books because they are inarguably the best, but my relationship with their work goes back so far and is so deep, I can't be sure I'm really being objective. Sam Alden is the only cartoonist on the list whose work I'd never read before this year (although I can't say I was super-familiar with Mimi Pond's work or Christophe Blain's--and Blain's writing partner, Abel Lanza, was a revelation).
With all these caveats and disqualifications, here are my favorite comics from 2014.
1) Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir
by Roz Chast (Bloomsbury USA). Long my
favorite New Yorker cartoonist, this lengthy work on a serious subject is
miraculously both moving and hilarious. She can't stop being Roz Chast
even while talking about the slow decline and death of both of her
parents. And it had personal resonance with me because it deals with
issues that I and my siblings are having to deal with with our own
elderly parent.Chast's parents were significantly older than her. She first became aware of problems when they were 90--she visits their apartment in Brooklyn and notices it is covered with grime--something her mother had never previously tolerated. She tells these stories in episodes often presented as full page comics--very similar to her strips in the New Yorker. These episodes are linked by hand-written illustrated text pieces which keeps the thread together. Her odd parents at first seem quite vital for two people in their 90s, but a fall puts Chast's mother in the hospital and makes Chast realize how senile her father has become. It becomes obvious that these are two people who should not be living alone in an apartment. But it took a year after her mother's fall for them to seriously consider moving into an assisted living situation.
Chast has always been a cartoonist whose drawing was crude (but funny). But this book demonstrates that she has great chops and deploys them only when they will have maximum effect. Her full page drawing of her father when her mother returned home from the hospital is classic--a funny, loving portrait. She also includes photos of the crap she cleaned out of their apartments when they finally moved out.
She deals with the irritations, the guilt, the sadness and all the other emotions of seeing a parent decline and die. The book is moving, very funny, and instructive, and I appreciate it as a representative of a new genre in comics (for example Special Exits
by Joyce Farmer and The Song of Roland by Michel Rabagliati). It heartens me to think that comics are now mature enough to deal with this subject. Roz Chast's Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? is an unexpected masterwork.
2) Sam Zabel And The Magic Pen
by Dylan Horrocks (Fantagraphics Books). I saw this unfold more of less in real time as Dylan Horrocks drew it--he posted the first page online on February 23, 2009. Now it's finished and you can read the entire story in book form. Horrocks tells us a fantasy story about the joys, dangers and responsibilities of fantasy stories. It's quite post-modern in that regard and may remind you a little of Italo Calvino or Vladimir Nabokov, but Horrocks always wants you to remember that you are reading a comic book about comic books. It's funny and sexy and there's self-doubt and sadness in it, too. It's this richness that's kept me interested as it unfolded glacially before my eyes over the course of five years. The wait was worth it.The basic premise is that there exists a magic pen that if you draw a picture (or better yet, a comics story) with it, you can then blow on the picture and be transported into the world you've drawn. Not only that, any reproductions of that image or comic will have the same property. That's how Sam Zabel, a cartoonist writing a terrible mainstream superhero comic for which he feels zero passion, is transported into another world--specifically, a rather silly and sexist but somewhat delightful version of Mars from a kid's comic published by a New Zealand cartoonist in the 1950s. He meets a young woman, Miki, who carries a backpack full of comics and drawings created with the magic pen, which allows for a variety of explorations.
In some ways, Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen is playful and light-hearted, but the book is always asking this question: what is the responsibility of the fantasist? "Responsibility" and "fantasy" are not two words that go together very often, except when various scolds tell us that fantasy itself is irresponsible. But this book really wants us to consider them as partners in a way--it tells us that our fantasies are where we go wild and break out of our mental and emotional binds (there is even a chapter called "Anhedonia"), but that we must always remember that fantasies have consequences. It's a beautiful, thought-provoking comic.
3) Here
by Richard McGuire (Pantheon Books). This is the most formally daring of all the comics I've listed. Each page is a double spread, facing into the corner of a nondescript room, with a window on the left and a fireplace on the right. In the upper left-hand corner of each page is a year, like 2014 or 1956 or 1775 or even 3,000,500,000 BCE. And what you see in the spread is what you would be seeing at some point in that year. So we see the house being built in 1907, and we see the large house across the street being built in 1764. We see the forest before then inhabited by Native Americans who come into contact with Dutch settlers, and we see prehistoric landscapes. And we see a future, which at first seem fairly hightech. One image from 2213 shows a tour guide using a device that allows the tourists to see what we're seeing in Here--the house that stood on that spot throughout the years. But we also see a very distant future that seems devoid of humanity. We even have a guest appearance by Benjamin Franklin, who visits the colonial house which is, apparently, where his son lives. And all these different views are shown in non-chronological order.Within each double-page spread are inset panels. They are from different times as well, and we see small episodes and events unfold, mostly from the 20th century, but quite a few from the 18th century and several from before. These floating panels are distinguished from the larger spreads and from each other by color. McGuire's color scheme helps us keep the different elements distinct.
This is an expansion of a six page story Richard McGuire published in RAW in 1989. That story is legendary--an acknowledged classic. But by expanding it as he has done here, McGuire has created something quite different (although no less formally audacious). I heard him speak earlier this year, and he was at pains to say this wasn't about his family or his childhood home, except that it really was. The family shown in the late 50s and 60s is his family. He really did grow up in an old house across the street from William Franklin's house in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. But while the personal stories here are important, the book is unmoored from them. There is no linearity here unless one carefully follows the dates in the corners of the pages and panels. And, in fact, the book invites you to do this. Reading it through once is like looking at a kaleidoscope, but as you read, you mentally file away episodes you want to return to, like the fight between two men in straw boaters in 1910 or or the romantic Native American couple in 1609. I've just "read" this book, but I suspect I won't really be "finished" with it for quite a while.
4) The Love Bunglers
by Jaime Hernandez (Fantagraphics Books). This collects several related stories from Love & Rockets. Jaime Hernandez has been drawing stories about Maggie Chascarillo since the early 80s, and he's allowed her to age over that time. But one thing he's done a little bit recently is to deepen her personal history--characters we never knew existed are slotted into her childhood or young adulthood and make appearances in her adult life. In this volume, he introduces Calvin, Maggie's brother. His childhood story is told in the searing "Browntown", surely the most disturbing story in Hernandez ever wrote. The damage done to Calvin as a boy affects him (and Maggie and her lover Ray) as middle-aged adults. As Faulkner wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." In addition to "Browntown," there is "Return For Me," set shortly after the period in "Browntown," and told from the point of view of Maggie's friend, Letty Chavez. It's a startling story, because it's told in past tense as if Letty is telling it to us up until the instant that Letty is killed in a car accident. Her story ends mid-sentence.But the main thrust of the story is how Maggie and Ray, whose relationship has come and gone over the years, finally end up an old couple together. Getting there is a quite a twisty journey, and Hernandez tells it rather obliquely. For someone who has written a generational epic, Hernandez has evolved into a minimalist. I wonder what he's going to do next, because this book feel very much like an ending to Maggie's story. It's a beautiful ending, too, especially for those of us who have been following this story since the beginning.
5) Over Easy
by Mimi Pond (Drawn & Quarterly). This is another one that took years to come out--I heard about it from Pond herself in 2009. She posted a few pages on line, and then nothing until this year. This is a brick of a graphic memoir, unusual in that it discusses the ins and outs of work, a subject criminally ignored by most cartoonists. Jobs, employment, co-workers, the boss, the grind--Over Easy has it all, and it's all funny and affecting. My review is here.
6) The Hospital Suite
by John Porcellino (Drawn & Quarterly). Starting in 1997, John Porcellino started feeling sick. This book is a memoir of illness, both
mental and physical. First it's stomach pain, which he is reluctant to
treat because of the cost. He only goes when his wife threatens to leave
him if he doesn't. He is diagnosed with Crohn's disease, but treatment
doesn't seem to help. Porcellino depicts the emotional aspects of sickness
very movingly. His pacing is perfect. In one panel, he is on his knees
searching. The caption reads, "My wedding ring had slipped off my
now-bony finger...." This is followed by a "silent" panel, and then one
that reads, "and I cried and cried." In this case, it turns out they had misdiagnosed
him, and they were able to fix that, but his problems were just
beginning.His illnesses eventually contribute to the end of his first marriage. He wishes he could "be a normal person" and ponders suicide. His struggles with allergies may remind readers of the movie Safe. And most of all, Porcellino's depiction of OCD is the best depiction of that insidious disease I've seen. "One half of your brain is making you do this nutty stuff... The other half is telling you how ridiculous you are for doing it..." From the beginning of the book, Porcellino depicts himself as a spiritual seeker, particularly interested in Buddhism. But the disease turns even that against him as he comes to believe that God is punishing him for some reason. At one point he borrows a copy of the old Japanese monster movie Destroy All Monsters from the library. But his OCD-afflicted animal brain concludes that if he watches, monsters could come and destroy his town. His rational mind knows this is insane, but still he can't bring himself to watch it.
Porcellino's drawing is minimal and functional, and that has always served his poetic, haiku-like stories. But the stories here are not poetic. They are about about how disease destroys the poetry in his life. Porcellino went through hell, and he is humiliated by the experiences. Sickness is not just pain (although there is plenty here); it is one indignity after another. Porcellino's magic is that he succeeds in making the reader empathize, even when his character can't seem to forgive himself.
7) Sugar Skull
by Charles Burns (Pantheon). The concluding book of a trilogy, it wraps
up the mysterious beginning and middle with a gut-punch of an ending.
Burns is an artist who was closely associated with the legendary RAW and
is best known for his graphic novel Black Hole. I reviewed Sugar Skull here.
8) Weapons of Mass Diplomacy
by Abel Lanzac and Christophe Blain (SelfMadeHero). Weapons of Mass Diplomacy was reviewed here in August. It's surprising that a roman à clef about French diplomacy could simultaneously be so funny and so moving.
9) Incomplete Works
by Dylan Horrocks (Victoria University Press). Yes, Horrocks gets two entries in the top 10. I wrote about Incomplete Works earlier. The funny thing is that I knew Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen was coming this year--it had been announced and was being discussed, and of course readers of the online serialization could see that it was heading towards a climax. But Incomplete Works was a total surprise to me when Horrocks announced it on his own website. They are both deserving of their places on this list--one an overview of his art from its earliest days, the other a fully mature masterpiece.
10) It Never Happened Again: Two Stories
by Sam Alden (Uncivilized Books). I reviewed this book earlier this year. It's been a great year for this artist, about whom I know very little except that he is in his mid-20s and seems to be quite peripatetic. In fact, before this year I had never heard of him. But he's someone whose work I'll be keeping an eye on from now on.Honorable Mention
- Best of Enemies: A History of US and Middle East Relations, Part Two: 1953-1984
by Jean-Pierre Filiu and David B. (SelfMadeHero). Not quite as good as the first volume, but still good. These books feature rather didactic texts, but the text is enlivened by the fertile visual imagination of David B, one of the greatest cartoonists alive.
- Buddy Buys A Dump
by Peter Bagge (Fantagraphics). Reviewed here.
- My Neighbour's Bikini
by Jimmy Beaulieu (Conundrum Press). It starts off as a "meet cute" romantic comedy, but My Neighbor's Bikini is actually quite sexy. It has a down-to-earth eroticism that is emphasized by Beaulieu's beautiful pencil drawing.
- Truth is Fragmentary: Travelogues & Diaries
by Gabrielle Bell (Uncivilized Books). Review here.
- Mutiny Bay by Antoine Cossé (Breakdown Press). A find from Comic Arts Brooklyn, this book takes an incident of mutiny from the voyage of Magellan and fleshes it out in a detailed, almost hallucinatory way.
- How To Be Happy
by Eleanor Davis (Fantagraphics Books). Beautifully drawn, these stories range from dramatic to humorous, but all told from the point of view of the modern person who is into yoga, worried about wheat allergies, etc. I'm not even sure what to call this vast subculture--but I like the way Davis circles around and through it, dealing with its absurdities and beauties.
- Angie Bongiolatti
by Mike Dawson (Secret Acres). An intriguing story that combines left wing street politics with frustrated romance in an unexpected way. Discussion of Dawson and this book lead to one of the most popular posts this year.
- Minimum Wage Volume 1: Focus on the Strange
by Bob Fingerman (Image Comics). The first version of Minimum Wage (collected as Beg the Question
) found Fingerman loosening up from his earlier art style and getting into a funny roman à clef. (I was even drawn into the background of one scene!) But this new Minimum Wage series is so much better--his drawing amazingly continues to improve with age and the dialogue feels less written and more lived.
- Megahex
by Simon Hanselmann (Fantagraphics Books). By all accounts, Simon Hanselmann is a workaholic. Funny then that his primary subject is the lives of a household of lazy stoners. The work captures the repetitiveness of the stoner life perfectly, and is hilarious.
- World War 3 Illustrated: 1979–-2014
edited by Peter Kuper and Seth Tobocman, featuring work by Kuper, Tobocman, Eric Drooker, Sabrina Jones, Sue Coe, Chuck Sperry and many more (PM Press). A really beautifully produced "best of" collection of the venerable left-wing political comic that has been published continuously since 1980.
- Facility Integrity and The Libertarian by Nick Maandag (Pigeon Press). Nasty, funny comic books that each take a slightly ridiculous premise and carries it to an absurd end--in one, a corporation prohibits its employees from shitting on company time, and in the other a libertarian falls in love with a "vegan-socialist feminist." Hilarity ensues.
- Showa 1939-1944: A History of Japan (Showa: A History of Japan)
by Shigeru Mizuki (Drawn & Quarterly). Mizuki's history is eccentric and depends heavily on photo references, but the parallel stories of his own life as a young soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army are amazing.
- Forming II
by Jesse Moynihan (Nobrow Press). This volume was not quite as engaging as volume 1 because the story (by necessity) slowed down a bit. Volume 1 spent a lot of time putting the chess pieces in place. Forming II is showing us how the game is playing out.
- Rough House 2 with work by Nicolas Mahler, Kayla E, James Roo, Mack White, Brendan Kiefer, Doug Pollard, Gillian Rhodes, Russell Etchen and many others (Raw Paw). The second squarebound issue of this Austin-based anthology shows both increased ambition and growth by individual artists. Really enjoyable, and I hope it continues.
- Beautiful Darkness
by Fabian Vehlman and Kerascoët (Drawn & Quarterly). A very strange story set amongst the fairies and insects of a forest, in a surprisingly violent fantasy world. Beautifully drawn but disturbing.
- Jim
by Jim Woodring (Fantagraphics Books). Collecting all the comics and 'zines that were published under the moniker "Jim" (and a few odds and ends from elsewhere), this is some of Woodring's finest, most oneiric work.
- RAV 1st Collection
by Mickey Zacchilli (Youth in Declne). Scratchy, urgent graphics combined with an absurd, funny, pulpy story.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Big Frame Up in Austin
Robert Boyd
This giant blue genie had nothing to do with Frame besides being across the parking lot from Big Medium
East Austin has become a locus for Austin's art scene. Of course there is EAST, the East Austin studio tour, but studios are the loam out of which other things grow--galleries, artists spaces, etc. Frame to me seemed to be about promoting the next stage of the evolution of an art district. Some institutions have sprung up, and to help people realize this, they join their voices like the citizens of Whoville
, shouting "We are here!" The four participants were Tiny Park, MASS, Big Medium and Co-Lab. What's interesting is that this grouping includes a commercial gallery, a non-profit and a couple of artist-run spaces.
Big Medium is a nonprofit that organizes EAST and the Texas Biennial. Soon they will have their own storefront space in a new development called Canopy. Right now, Canopy is empty. I think they'd like to full of galleries and complimentary businesses. Big Medium arranged for two of the spaces to be used on a temporary basis. So on the day of Frame, Fahamu Pecou: All Dat Glitters Ain’t Goals (curated by Salvador Castillo) was having its closing night and The F.R. Etchen Collection; Selected Works and More was opening.
Fahamu Pecou at Big Medium
Fahamu Pecou is an Atlanta-based artist who uses self-portraiture, video and performance to reflect on images and stereotypes of black manhood in the era of hiphop. The big canvases were impressive and projected an ironic sense of overblown masculinity, but the videos were the star of the show. They came across as modest and homespun (although they included some clever effects), with forceful but ironic raps.
The other Big Medium show was a show of Russell Etchen's personal art collection. Obviously this is a curatorial idea I have no real objection to. In Etchen's case, a lot of his collection comes from his colleagues in Sketch Klubb, various folks on the Houston art scene who are about his age, bits of comics-related artwork, and other odds and ends. Etchen is a cash-poor collector, which makes his collection all the more interesting--each piece has a story and is not simply the result of a cash exchange.
Mark Flood, Blue Skies for Russell Etchen
For example, Etchen has an astonishing collection of Mark Flood paintings because he designs Flood's publications and is more-or-less a member of the Flood entourage.
Mark Flood, Kitchen Mirror
Clockwise from the top: Jonny Negron drawing; 2 Geoff Hippensteil paintings; Travis Kent, Fan
Johnny Ryan
I loved Johnny Ryan's tribute to D.J. Screw.
Tim Kerr, Coltrane
John Porcellino, Skunk Cabbage
My next stop was MASS Gallery, a co-op operation that includes studios and a giant exhibition space. They were opening with a group show called Wally, which was apparently about the relationship of art to the wall. Unless you are radically examining this concept as William Anastasi did with Six Sites, it seems like a trivial theme for a show. The ways that the work addressed "walls" were not particularly profound. But it was a group show, and the thing about group shows is that one can usually find a few things to like.
Leah Bailis, Cinderblocks, 2013, cardboard and paint
Something like Cinderblocks by Leah Bailis strikes me as painfully obvious in terms of "walls," but quite appealing in terms of being a piece of sculpture. Because of their cardboard structure, they have the feeling of cartoon cinderblocks--the kind that Popeye could bust through easily.
Lee Piechocki, I Have a Lot of Faith in This Model, 2013, plexiglass, wood, sculpy, paint, paper, vinyl, found objects on shelf
As someone whose job revolves around making computer models of real things, I liked I Have a Lot of Faith in This Model by Lee Piechocki. The models I make are generally opaque to the people I make them for, and a lot of what I do is convince them that I believe in the model and that they should as well. This mysterious grouping of objects is also asking us to take it on faith that it works. And I do.
Yashua Klos, Totem, 2011, woodblock prints collaged onto archival paper
And I thought Yashua Klos's Totem was simply beautiful.
Kansas City Plein Air Coterie (KC PAC) Open Session
After checking out the show, I went out into the vast concrete "courtyard" where several people were set up painting. This was an activity open to all but led by the Kansas City Plein Air Coterie (KC PAC) with artist Lee Piechocki.
Then off to Co-Lab, which was having an exhibit and performance by Brooke Gassiot called The Stories Our Neurons Tell. It consisted of several sculptural objects, some incorporating video elements.
piece by Brooke Gassiot.
This one, whose title I didn't catch, was quite powerful. At first, you saw a large circular structure supporting a curtain that was about 7 or 8 feet high. You had to walk into the corner of the gallery space behind the structure to find a gap in the curtain. When you did, you saw the bathtub with a video projection in it above. I couldn't tell if the woman in the tub was crying or exhausted, but it's a strong image. And the way it provides a glow within the otherwise dimply-lit scene made it stronger. A projected image like this is a ghostly image--I didn't feel like it was meant to portray something existing now but rather the memory of something, possibly something very bad. Something that makes a woman cry in her bathtub.
scar piece by Brooke Gassiot
And memory is continued in this piece. You can't really see them in this photo, but the lightbox there is covered with little drawings. Gassiot was drawing these in the next room. People would sit down and show Gassiot a scar, which she would draw. As she drew, her subject told the story of that scar to her. Mine was a scar on my right palm, acquired in the late 80s on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico, stitched up in an emergency room in Houma, Louisiana. Then using needle and thread, she sewed up the drawing of your scar with the same number of stitches you actually got. Then you took the drawing and added it to the pile. It was a very personal experience between you and the artist. (And the artist got to hear a bunch of great stories, so she got something out of it as well.)
My favorite show was at Tiny Park, my last stop on my Frame Tour. It was a show by Joel Ross and Jason Creps. Their work consists mainly of signs that they have made and left someplace. This is Ross's part of the process. The residue of the work are photos of the signs in situ (taken by Creps, who is also a commercial photographer. He did the cover photo for Neko Case's album Middle Cyclone.)
Joel Ross and Jacob Creps, IN THE FUTURE (Installed and abandoned, Bradley, IL), 2012, archival pigment print, 42 x 55 inches
In addition to the photographs, the show consists of signs and word pieces. Their power is somewhat diminished being in a gallery setting (instead of just being out in public), but Ross makes up for that by being so amusing and clever.
Joel Ross, #UC!&+%, 2012, vinyl and acrylic paint on pine, dimensions variable
Joel Ross, #UC!&+%, 2012, vinyl and acrylic paint on pine, dimensions variable
Joel Ross, It Was a Bad Idea, 2010, flashe and graphite on paper, 60 x 30 inches
Still, the problem with these in the gallery setting is that they seem like clever one-liners of a sort. It's only out in the world that these things gain power. So Ross did an installation. He did it at the studio of OK Mountain over on Cesar Chavez, so he wasn't strictly removing it from an institutional setting. Nonetheless, it must have given people whiplash as they drove by it at night.
Joel Ross, TORTURE SOUNDS INCREDIBLE, 2006, electronic LED sign, 57 x 84 x 7 inches
All in all, I thought Frame was a success. But it would be even better if there were a bunch of galleries at Canopy. Frame is trying to force a beneficial clustering effect, and that may work, but it needs to get bigger and more dense in the long run.
This giant blue genie had nothing to do with Frame besides being across the parking lot from Big Medium
East Austin has become a locus for Austin's art scene. Of course there is EAST, the East Austin studio tour, but studios are the loam out of which other things grow--galleries, artists spaces, etc. Frame to me seemed to be about promoting the next stage of the evolution of an art district. Some institutions have sprung up, and to help people realize this, they join their voices like the citizens of Whoville
, shouting "We are here!" The four participants were Tiny Park, MASS, Big Medium and Co-Lab. What's interesting is that this grouping includes a commercial gallery, a non-profit and a couple of artist-run spaces.Big Medium is a nonprofit that organizes EAST and the Texas Biennial. Soon they will have their own storefront space in a new development called Canopy. Right now, Canopy is empty. I think they'd like to full of galleries and complimentary businesses. Big Medium arranged for two of the spaces to be used on a temporary basis. So on the day of Frame, Fahamu Pecou: All Dat Glitters Ain’t Goals (curated by Salvador Castillo) was having its closing night and The F.R. Etchen Collection; Selected Works and More was opening.
Fahamu Pecou at Big Medium
Fahamu Pecou is an Atlanta-based artist who uses self-portraiture, video and performance to reflect on images and stereotypes of black manhood in the era of hiphop. The big canvases were impressive and projected an ironic sense of overblown masculinity, but the videos were the star of the show. They came across as modest and homespun (although they included some clever effects), with forceful but ironic raps.
The other Big Medium show was a show of Russell Etchen's personal art collection. Obviously this is a curatorial idea I have no real objection to. In Etchen's case, a lot of his collection comes from his colleagues in Sketch Klubb, various folks on the Houston art scene who are about his age, bits of comics-related artwork, and other odds and ends. Etchen is a cash-poor collector, which makes his collection all the more interesting--each piece has a story and is not simply the result of a cash exchange.
Mark Flood, Blue Skies for Russell Etchen
For example, Etchen has an astonishing collection of Mark Flood paintings because he designs Flood's publications and is more-or-less a member of the Flood entourage.
Mark Flood, Kitchen Mirror
Clockwise from the top: Jonny Negron drawing; 2 Geoff Hippensteil paintings; Travis Kent, Fan
Johnny Ryan
I loved Johnny Ryan's tribute to D.J. Screw.
Tim Kerr, Coltrane
John Porcellino, Skunk CabbageMy next stop was MASS Gallery, a co-op operation that includes studios and a giant exhibition space. They were opening with a group show called Wally, which was apparently about the relationship of art to the wall. Unless you are radically examining this concept as William Anastasi did with Six Sites, it seems like a trivial theme for a show. The ways that the work addressed "walls" were not particularly profound. But it was a group show, and the thing about group shows is that one can usually find a few things to like.
Leah Bailis, Cinderblocks, 2013, cardboard and paint
Something like Cinderblocks by Leah Bailis strikes me as painfully obvious in terms of "walls," but quite appealing in terms of being a piece of sculpture. Because of their cardboard structure, they have the feeling of cartoon cinderblocks--the kind that Popeye could bust through easily.
Lee Piechocki, I Have a Lot of Faith in This Model, 2013, plexiglass, wood, sculpy, paint, paper, vinyl, found objects on shelf
As someone whose job revolves around making computer models of real things, I liked I Have a Lot of Faith in This Model by Lee Piechocki. The models I make are generally opaque to the people I make them for, and a lot of what I do is convince them that I believe in the model and that they should as well. This mysterious grouping of objects is also asking us to take it on faith that it works. And I do.
Yashua Klos, Totem, 2011, woodblock prints collaged onto archival paper
And I thought Yashua Klos's Totem was simply beautiful.
Kansas City Plein Air Coterie (KC PAC) Open Session
After checking out the show, I went out into the vast concrete "courtyard" where several people were set up painting. This was an activity open to all but led by the Kansas City Plein Air Coterie (KC PAC) with artist Lee Piechocki.
Then off to Co-Lab, which was having an exhibit and performance by Brooke Gassiot called The Stories Our Neurons Tell. It consisted of several sculptural objects, some incorporating video elements.
piece by Brooke Gassiot.
This one, whose title I didn't catch, was quite powerful. At first, you saw a large circular structure supporting a curtain that was about 7 or 8 feet high. You had to walk into the corner of the gallery space behind the structure to find a gap in the curtain. When you did, you saw the bathtub with a video projection in it above. I couldn't tell if the woman in the tub was crying or exhausted, but it's a strong image. And the way it provides a glow within the otherwise dimply-lit scene made it stronger. A projected image like this is a ghostly image--I didn't feel like it was meant to portray something existing now but rather the memory of something, possibly something very bad. Something that makes a woman cry in her bathtub.
scar piece by Brooke Gassiot
And memory is continued in this piece. You can't really see them in this photo, but the lightbox there is covered with little drawings. Gassiot was drawing these in the next room. People would sit down and show Gassiot a scar, which she would draw. As she drew, her subject told the story of that scar to her. Mine was a scar on my right palm, acquired in the late 80s on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico, stitched up in an emergency room in Houma, Louisiana. Then using needle and thread, she sewed up the drawing of your scar with the same number of stitches you actually got. Then you took the drawing and added it to the pile. It was a very personal experience between you and the artist. (And the artist got to hear a bunch of great stories, so she got something out of it as well.)
My favorite show was at Tiny Park, my last stop on my Frame Tour. It was a show by Joel Ross and Jason Creps. Their work consists mainly of signs that they have made and left someplace. This is Ross's part of the process. The residue of the work are photos of the signs in situ (taken by Creps, who is also a commercial photographer. He did the cover photo for Neko Case's album Middle Cyclone.)
Joel Ross and Jacob Creps, IN THE FUTURE (Installed and abandoned, Bradley, IL), 2012, archival pigment print, 42 x 55 inches
In addition to the photographs, the show consists of signs and word pieces. Their power is somewhat diminished being in a gallery setting (instead of just being out in public), but Ross makes up for that by being so amusing and clever.
Joel Ross, #UC!&+%, 2012, vinyl and acrylic paint on pine, dimensions variable
Joel Ross, #UC!&+%, 2012, vinyl and acrylic paint on pine, dimensions variable
Joel Ross, It Was a Bad Idea, 2010, flashe and graphite on paper, 60 x 30 inches
Still, the problem with these in the gallery setting is that they seem like clever one-liners of a sort. It's only out in the world that these things gain power. So Ross did an installation. He did it at the studio of OK Mountain over on Cesar Chavez, so he wasn't strictly removing it from an institutional setting. Nonetheless, it must have given people whiplash as they drove by it at night.
Joel Ross, TORTURE SOUNDS INCREDIBLE, 2006, electronic LED sign, 57 x 84 x 7 inches
All in all, I thought Frame was a success. But it would be even better if there were a bunch of galleries at Canopy. Frame is trying to force a beneficial clustering effect, and that may work, but it needs to get bigger and more dense in the long run.
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