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Man Out of Time: Comics

Introduction | Music | Movies | Comics | Sports | Books

There are three major problems I have with writing about comics for this “favorites of the decade” post:

  1. One of my best pals is a comics critic, and I always feel like I’m coming up short when I try to discuss comics around him.
  2. I can’t draw worth a damn and always feel like I’m coming up short when describing the visual side of comics.
  3. I have no idea what constitutes the “of the decade” part of “favorite comics of the decade.”

See, I love Chris Ware’s book, Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth, but, while it was published in 2000, it’s actually a collection of comics published in the ’90’s. Do I include that, or do I only consider books in which most of the work was originally published this decade? Because so many comics are first produced as serials, I’ll have to make an arbitrary ruling on this.

Because it really was a hell of a decade for collections of pre-2000 work. There were massive volumes of the Hernandez Brothers’ great Love & Rockets comics, Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo Sunday comics (reprinted at their original size!), the first volumes of the complete Popeye strips by E.C. Segar, Charles Burns’ Black Hole, the three-volume collected Calvin & Hobbes, Humbug, Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s gekiga books, Bill Mauldin’s Willie & Joe, the World War II Years, Jim Woodring’s Book of Frank, the complete Peanuts series, Tales of the Bizarro World (the 1950’s reprints), Scott McCloud’s Zot! from 1987-1991, and a million more great collections. Had it come out on time, the collected Alec comics by Eddie Campbell, The Years Have Pants, would have been at the top of my comics list, even though many of the comics in it are pre-2000. (One of my pals says he just found a copy in a comic store, but I’m still waiting for an Amazon delivery of it.) I have no idea if it’s a great time to be a reader of mainstream/superhero comics, but it sure is a blast to be a “literary” comics reader (with a steady job and decent income) in this era.

So I’ve tried to confine this list to comics that were mostly of this decade, but this would’ve been a much easier task at the end of the previous decade. Then I could have just recited the litany of usual suspects — Dan Clowes‘ Eightball, Pete Bagge’s Hate, Beto & Jaime Hernandez, Chester Brown’s Yummy Fur, Ware’s Acme Novelty Library, Seth’s Palookaville, R. Crumb’s Mystic Funnies and Self-Loathing Comics, Woodring, Panter, et al. — and seemed smart enough. Perhaps I’d have tossed in a somewhat obscure short story by David Mazzucchelli (Discovering America), to look even smarter!

But I’ve fallen off in my comics reading in recent years. It seems that the comics I most want to read are also the ones that take the most time to read. With my work and entertainment priorities, I really have to shut everything off to make time for good comics. I don’t think there’s a dearth of good new work; rather, there’s definitely a ton of new, likely worthy comics this decade that I simply haven’t read: Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers (my only nod to The Bush Years theme for this series), Nate Powell’s Swallow Me Whole, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Craig Thompson’s Blankets, Gary Panter’s Jimbo’s Inferno and Jimbo in Purgatory, Al Columbia’s Pim & Francie, Lynda Barry’s What It Is, and on and on.

It’s sad, because comics have been part of me since I was a little child; they’re my first language, and I wish I could keep up with their conversation more than I do with novels, music or film. I have dreams occasionally about wandering through unreal malls or shopping plazas, and visiting the comic shops. I don’t recall if I ever find Hicksville-esque Comics That Should Have Been on those dream-walks, but there have been enough good ones for me to offer up another list:

Favorite Comics of the Decade

Wimbledon Green (2005) – Seth – I may’ve missed a step or two in Seth’s progression, but this is the comic where he seemed to get away from autobiographical comics and/or lead characters who bear an astonishing resemblance to Seth. The sketchbook style of the work seems to free him from an over-reliance on a 1940’s

New Yorker

cartooning style (which he employed very well, but had become too much of an identifier, in my opinion). The fragmented storytelling style presaged his next book . . .

George Sprott: 1894-1975 (2009) – Seth – . . . which was flat-out amazing. Expanded from Seth’s series of one-pagers in the NYTimes Magazine’s Funny Pages, this gorgeous book tells the story of lecturer, TV host, Arctic explorer, philanderer, one-time seminarian, Seth intersperses his not-so-omniscient narrator’s descriptions of the man’s life with interview-style passages with the people who knew Sprott. The complexity of the character belies Seth’s cartoony style, drawing the reader (this reader) into the life of a small-city semi-celebrity. I think it’s a remarkable comic; it’s my favorite of the year and may just be #1 among this list, too.

Ice Haven (2001) – Daniel Clowes – Only a few installments of Clowes’ Eightball were published this decade, but man were they good. Ice Haven is a repackaged edition of Eightball #22, and uses a number of different cartooning styles (in short bursts of a page or two) to tell the story of a small town in which a child may’ve been kidnapped in a Leopold & Loeb scenario. Clowes has a new book coming out in 2010, and I’m guessing that, if I’m writing this sorta post 10 years from now, it’ll be high up on my list.

The Death Ray (2004) – Daniel Clowes – Another standalone issue of Eightball (#23), this one sorta pays homage to 1970’s comics. It tells a “realistic” but utterly fractured superhero story, laden with Freudian weight and a deeply disturbed “hero.”

Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow / The End #1 (2006 / 2007) – Anders Nilsen – This guy’s fiancee got sick and died in a hurry, and these two books are an attempt to work through his grief. It has some of the saddest passages I’ve ever read in a comic and, even though the second volume ends on a somewhat redemptive note, I’m still sure that if I meet Nilsen I’ll want to give him a big hug and reassure him that life’s not that bad.

Jaime Hernandez‘s body of work – I have no idea how to relate the ongoing magnificence of Jaime Hernandez’s comics. In this case, the arbitrary decade-mark is silly. He and his brother Beto have continually produced some of the finest comics in history for nearly three decades now. Jaime’s comics from 1998 to 2007 (or so), collected in Locas II, a 400+ page volume, show a master storyteller working at the top of his game. Pick up the two Locas collections, and get to marvelin’.

Safe Area Gorazde / The Fixer (2001) – Joe Sacco – Comics reportage from hell on earth. In this case, Sarajevo during the war in the 1990’s. Sacco’s comics journalism is unprecedented and unparalleled, while his eye for caricature marks him as a mutant David Levine.

Achewood (2001-present) – Chris Onstad – The only online comic I follow, and one of the most bizarre and funniest things I’ve ever read. Shortly after we adopted Rufus, we came home to discover that he’d stolen one of Amy’s bras from the hamper. Thanks to Achewood, we could simultaneously quote Lyle, who said, “I’m lickin’ this bra! Found it at the police station!”

I Killed Adolf Hitler (2007) – Jason – It’s no Inglourious Basterds, but this 48-page time-travel-with-a-twist tale by Norwegian cartoonist Jason is one of the more delightful comics I’ve read. Several of Jason’s works have an O. Henry twist to them, but they’re a joy to read.

Kevin Huizenga’s body of work – A while ago, I asked my comics critic pal Tom who the good young comics talents are. I’d looked around at indy comics and had concluded that no one had stepped into the role once held by those usual suspects I mentioned above. Tom pointed me toward Kevin Huizenga and Sammy Harkham, and I have to say that they’re the two best young (under 40) cartoonists I’ve seen this decade. I’m putting Huizenga on the list because I’ve read more of his work, but I don’t have an individual favorite comic by him. Still, he’s good enough that I can recommend you pick up just about anything he’s published, esp. his Glenn Ganges comics.

Essex County Trilogy (2009) – Jeff Lemire – Okay, this is one of my quirky ones. I met Lemire in May 2009 at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. I bought the first installment of his Essex County trilogy, Tales from the Farm. I was mighty impressed by his story of a superhero-obsessed kid on a little farm in southwestern Ontario, dealing with the death of his mom. Lemire’s loose, scratchy inking made for lovely expressionistic pages. (Sure, maybe the kid looked like he was in his 50’s some panels, but hey.) This fall, I picked up the mammoth (500+ pages) edition containing all three of Lemire’s interlocking Essex County stories, as well as some side stories and ephemera. I think I dug this for the same reason I liked The Straight Story; the stories are earnest without being corny. The closest he comes to cheating is also the one moment that sorta choked me up, so I’m gonna let him slide. I can’t decide if he’s one of those “next generation of great young cartoonists” or if he’s “just” going to do good, strong work for the next dozen years. He’s moved from independent publisher Top Shelf to do a couple of series for the DC-owned Vertigo imprint; I’m sure the pay’s better, but I’m ambivalent about the work he’s produced for them. Which is its own conversation/blog post: am I really okay with an artist (in any field) who produces one really good work and never reaches those heights again? I like to think I am, but I still feel disappointed when subsequent works fall short. This is a lot more than I intended to write about Lemire’s comics.

All-Star Superman – Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely – The only superhero book on my list. Over the course of 12 issues, Morrison affectionately fuses modern storytelling and styles with some of the wackier elements of Superman comics from the ’50’s and ’60’s, ultimately elevating the character to the archetype of sun god. And it includes a 2-part story featuring my all-time favorite Superman concept: Bizarros. In this case, Superman discovers that, on a planet of 5 billion Bizarros, all meant to be the opposite of normal, one turns out to be the opposite of the opposite of normal. (He calls himself Zibarro and spends his time writing poetry and feeling misunderstood.)

Asterios Polyp (2009) – David Mazzucchelli – I just don’t know what to make of this book. It’s so phenomenally drawn and well-designed that I was floored when I read it, but there’s a sterility/flatness to many of the characters that undercuts Mazzucchelli’s story and the theory that underlies it. In that sense, it reminded me of the worst aspects of a Novel of Ideas. To its credit, it still has plenty life in it. it’s an important comic, just breathtaking in parts, and I’ll definitely give it more readings, so it makes my faves of the decade list.

Louis Riel (2004) – Chester Brown – This story of Canadian politician and resistance fighter Louis Riel is a beautiful, stark change of pace from Brown’s surrealism and his autobiographical tales. Also, it was the first book my wife ever bought me.

Fred The Clown (2004) – Roger Langridge – He portrays slapstick better than Lee Evans performs slapstick. No, not the wide receiver for the Buffalo Bills! The other Lee Evans! Roger’s all over my honorable mention list, but this is the book that I’ll flip through when I’m procrastinating downstairs in my library.

The Book of Genesis (2009) – R. Crumb – If you don’t get comics, you don’t get comics. If you do get comics, then you know that Crumb drawing an adaptation of the first book of the Bible is All That. After all, he is, to quote Robert Hughes, “The Brueghel of the second half of the 20th century,” or somesuch.

Honorable Mention

A Drifting Life – Yoshihiro Tatsumi

Nextwave, Agents of H.A.T.E. – Warren Ellis, Stuart Immonen

Exit Wounds – Rutu Modan

Unstable Molecules – James Sturm, Guy Davis

Little Nothings – Lewis Trondheim

Delphine – Richard Sala

Omega: The Unknown – Jonathan Lethem, Farel Dalrymple

Fin Fang 4 – Roger Langridge, Scott Gray

Let Us Be Perfectly Clear – Paul Hornschemeier

The Muppet Show – Roger Langridge

The Perry Bible Fellowship – Nicholas Gourewitch

Promethea – Alan Moore, J.H. Williams III (eh…)

Planetary – Warren Ellis, John Cassaday

Kramer’s Ergot #7 – Everybody

Epileptic – David B.

Introduction | Music | Movies | Comics | Sports | Books

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Man Out Of Time: Introduction

Introduction | Music | Movies | Comics | Sports | Books

I imagine “future generations” will consider the decade to begin with the contested election of 2000 and end with “man, they messed up the country so badly, people were willing to vote a black guy president.” Maybe they’ll take 9/11 as the thematic starting point instead. Whatever. What I’m saying is, I think the decade’s outward/historical manifestation is The Bush Years, but I’m hard put to understand what my inner/hysterical manifestation of it is.

As the decade progressed, I found myself writing less about politics, finance/business and international relations, and more about my own life. There was no changeover moment; it must’ve occurred to me at some point that there are plenty of other blogs to turn to for commentary on those topics. I still care deeply about those fields, and spend a lot of time reading up on them. Maybe it was my time with Montaigne that taught me about the value of looking inside to get a perspective on the outside. As far as I know, no one else is writing about my love, my dogs, my travels, my friends, my photos, my work, etc., except for my wife, and she focuses much more on my eats. So I’m my niche and welcome to it.

(Also, there’s less chance I’ll offend someone with an, um, off-color joke like the one in the first sentence of this post.)

Still, with all the decade-mania going on, I thought it would be interesting if I wrote about movies, books, comics and music for a “decade-retrospective” post. Trying to assemble my own lists for each category — “favorites,” mind you, not “bests” — was more daunting than I expected. I keep a running list of the books in my life, but not those other art forms, so much of this has to be painted from memory.

(I considered adding TV as a category, but realized that the drop-off from The Wire to whatever came in second was too steep.)

Compiling lists — fun though it is — hasn’t helped me reach a deeper understanding about what this decade “meant,” but I’m fine with that. I’ve spent almost seven years writing here and maybe that’s the story in itself: digital distribution has transformed the way we experience/consume all forms of art and how we share our thoughts with others. I’m not going to wax rhapsodic or elegiac about Facebook, Twitter, Kindles or iTunes (okay, a little about iTunes), so much as writing about some artworks that were created or published in the past 10 years and why I like them.

Welcome to my Virtual Memories. On with the show!

Introduction | Music | Movies | Comics | Sports | Books

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What It Is: 12/28/09

What I’m reading: As is my wont, I did plenty of reading while visiting my in-laws for the holidays. I read Hadji Murat from Pevear and Volokhonsky’s new translation of Tolstoy’s stories, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Everyman, and started Winesburg, Ohio (Note: these were all via my Kindle; no carrying tons of books around on trips anymore). What’d I think?

  1. Tolstoy: Loved the new Hadji Murat and I’m glad P&V turned their attention to Tolstoy’s stories; I can’t wait to tackle Ivan Ilyich, The Kreutzer Sonata and a few others that I’ve only read in Garnett or Maude translations.
  2. Dog, Night, Curious: I enjoyed it, but didn’t think it was Novel of the Decade-level good, which a pal of mine contended. I’m down with “autistic Adrian Mole” as a narrator, but maybe I found the kid’s quirks too similar to my own “one step away from Asperger’s Syndrome” to be entertained.
  3. Dying Jew: Loved it, and was happy it didn’t turn into “elderly dying Jew is still a lion with the ladies.” Rather, starting at the lead character’s funeral and going back through past episodes of his poor health (and some of his sexcapades), Roth manages to convey our universal through the filter of this singular, never-named man (who’s Jewish and from New Jersey).
  4. Winesburg: I was going to start Roth’s next novel, Indignation. I knew it was largely set at a college named Winesburg, and that this was a nod to Sherwood Anderson, but, um, I’ve never read Anderson’s book. So I started that, knowing nothing about it. Seriously. I wasn’t even sure when Anderson was writing, and looked that up this morning (it was published in 1919). As it turns out, Winesburg, Ohio is written in the form of interconnected short stories. Who knew? I’m enjoying the heck out of it, and will report back next week.

What I’m listening to: OK Computer, Spirit of Radio, Oblivion with Bells, Boxer, and other comfort food.

What I’m watching: A bunch of college bowl games. Not my thing, but when in Rome. Also, I watched Three Kings on the flight down. Need to write about that this week.

What I’m drinking: Not much. I never really drink when I’m visiting the in-laws. Although we did have a nice Riesling that Amy’s pal Riece brought over.

What Rufus & Otis are up to: Living it up with their girlfriends, Ruby & Willow. My pal Jason texted to let me know that he & his wife got home one evening, and only two of the dogs were waiting for them in the living room. They panicked, wondering how two of the dogs had escaped (and why the other two stayed). Then they discovered that My Boy Rufus had gotten locked into their bedroom along with their dog Willow. Amy & I figured he pulled some variant of the “oh, we must be out of gas” trick, or invited her upstairs to look at his etchings. But since he has non-functioning genitalia, it was no harm, no foul. Anyway, they seemed to have a great time at our friends’ place.

Where I’m going: Nowhere! I’ll go to the office one day this week, but that’s about it! (oh, and our neighbors across the street invited us over for a New Year’s get-together with a bunch of other neighbors, so we’ll drop in on that)

What I’m happy about: See above! And, being home, where I have my familiar coffee, gin, bed and the ability to curse like a sailor. Which is to say, I like seeing my in-laws, but it sure puts me out of my element in a number of ways.

What I’m sad about: End of another year, blah blah blah.

What I’m worried about: Well, I wsa worried that there’d be all sorts of crazy new regulations on our flight back from New Orleans on Sunday but, outside of a pat-down after the metal detector, there wasn’t anything new.

What I’m pondering: What I’ll read and write (and record?) in the year ahead. Oh, and whether I should update to this blog template.

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What It Is: 12/7/09

What I’m reading: I finished Up in the Air last week, and enjoyed the heck out of it. I’m still sifting through my impressions of the book as a time capsule of the end of the ’90’s. It was published in 2001, just a few months before 9/11. While that event’s obviously (to me) the defining moment of our decade, the book is also informed by views of data, privacy, and Invisible Webs that seem antiquated only 8 years later. I think I’m going to re-read this one in the next weeks and try to write a little more about it.

During a conversation we had on Sunday, Samuel R. Delany mentioned to me that the introduction to his essay collection Longer Views contains a neat discussion about how Montaigne’s Apology for Raymond Sebond connects to the rest of M.’s essays, so I gave that one a read. (For those of you who haven’t been following this blog religiously and for years, the Apology is a 180-page piece in the midst of Montaigne’s generaly much shorter essays, and is so dissimilar in theme and content to the others that I was left completely flummoxed by it. Here are parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 of my ramblings on that one.) The writer of the introduction, Ken James, seems to think that M. changed his mind over that mammoth essay, but fro what I recall, the Apology was a commission, and it felt more like M. was stuck having to defend something he didn’t particularly believe. Why don’t you go give the Apology for Raymond Sebond a read and get back to me with your thoughts?

What I’m listening to: Dave Rawlings Machine’s A Friend of a Friend, a lot.

What I’m watching: Pootie Tang, which was far funnier than I expected. Still terrible, but pretty funny.

What I’m drinking: Desert Juniper & Q-Tonic

What Rufus & Otis are up to: Trying to fit together in the one-dog crate again. I had a Sunday appt. (cleaning a small section of Chip Delany’s apartment) and Amy had to work all weekend, so we had to delay Otis’ debut on the Sunday morning Wawayanda park greyhound hike for another week. Grr.

Where I’m going: Nowhere special.

What I’m happy about: Getting to see some old pals this weekend.

What I’m sad about: Missing the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival this weekend, but my visa’s not up to date, so there’s no way I could’ve made it to Brooklyn.

What I’m worried about: Contracting hantavirus from trying to clean Delany’s apartment.

What I’m pondering: What book I’ll pick up next.

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What It Is: 11/30/09

What I’m reading: I took last week off so’s I could keep our new dog, Otis B. Driftwood, from getting into trouble. To that end, I spent a lot of time on the loveseat, trying to give affection to both doggies (I didn’t want Rufus to feel like he’s being ignored/replaced). So I had some reading time on my hands.

I read Stephen King’s On Writing this week. One of my author-acquaintances asked me, “Why would you read a book about writing by an author whose writing you’ve never read?” I’d heard the memoir section was good and, even if I have no other experience with his prose, I was curious as to what he’d offer about the practice of writing. So it was illuminating, although I don’t know when I’ll get around to reading his fiction.

I continued to slog through Bill Simmons’ Book of Basketball, which has some good points but is poorly written in a way that the author would likely contend is its strength. He’d be wrong about that; huge swathes of it are just extended columns with overwritten jokes. He once described writing the book out of sequence and eventually figuring out the overall structure for it. After 250 pages, I can see the incoherence but not to emergent order.

And I read Jeff Lemire’s Essex County trilogy. This is a collection of comics by Lemire about a small farm-town in western Ontario, and several families whose lives have intertwined over generations. While his artwork is expressionist, the stories themselves aren’t filled with any formal trickery, outside of extensive use of flashback in the second book (about a guy with Alzheimer’s, so hey). I enjoyed the collection overall. It’s no George Sprott, which continues to subtly blow my mind, but I thought it was a good, solid collection by a young cartoonist.

And I started Walter Kirn’s Up in the Air, after reading the sample chapter on my Kindle. I know I don’t really travel too much for work, but an awful lot of the narrator’s Airworld observations resonated with me. Apparently, the movie is All That. I’m kinda jarred by how so many of the airport scenes are pre-9/11.

What I’m listening to: Not a lot. I didn’t drive much this week, and the dogs & I mainly hung out in the living room, away from my iTunes liberry.

What I’m watching: Chandni Chowk to China, a Bollywood movie about a poor potato-slicer who gets mistaken as the reincarnation of an ancient Chinese warrior and has to go save a small village. I was aghast when our Netflix DVD showed up and the movie turned out to be 2 hours and 30 minutes long (!). But it’s actually pretty darn entertaining (we split it up into two viewings), even if the Indian lead looked like John Turturro’s handsomer brother. We also watched The Third Man, which I’d never seen before. Loved it, and returned the next day to Ron Rosenbaum’s essay on Kim Philby.

And there was Unforgiven, some NFL, and Role Models again, because I’m a mark for Paul Rudd and The State guys.

What I’m drinking: Desert Juniper gin and Q-Tonic.

What Rufus & Otis are up to: Ru is just taking things as they come. He and Otis are getting along fine in the house. Otis, however, is still pretty hyper when we go for walks. He doesn’t bark, but he pulls pretty powerfully when he gets his prey-drive on.

Where I’m going: Nowhere. (Well, maybe a dinner or two in NYC next weekend.)

What I’m happy about: Having a nice Thanksgiving meal at the home of my neighbors across the street.

What I’m sad about: Being too on-the-verge-of-sick to make it to my 20-year reunion in Philadelphia over the weekend. And discovering that our water heater was leaking and needs replacing, an hour before I was supposed to get together with old friends in NYC on Sunday.

What I’m worried about: Not a lot. I mean, I’m a little burned out on my low-level anxiety of trying to train Otis to walk without going after everything he perceives as prey (squirrels, chipmunks, other dogs, deer, crows, etc.). I guess the draining aspect of this is that I have to exert power in a way that I can’t just “explain” to the dog. It’s tough on me, Having to be the Big Boss and pull him along when he starts going into his statue mode. So I guess there’s a worrisome aspect to that: my discomfort at the exercise of force. Boy, this has been one long What It Is post, huh?

What I’m pondering: The eschatological significance of my father’s decision to shave his beard, which he’s been sporting since before I was born.