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CBG SATELLITES
The ADD Blog by Alan David Doane
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Before I begin the usual slew of reviews, I need to issue a correction: Last week, I reviewed Bill Baker Presents…Alan Moore Spells It Out and I wrote that the book was really just the same content as an online Moore interview conducted by Baker for his “Baker’s Dozen” column. This isn’t true at all, and I regret the unfortunate, unintentional error. In fact, while the beginning of the book is virtually the same as the column’s interview, the book is much longer and covers a lot more ground with Moore. The book is not without its flaws, but I have corrected last week’s Breakdowns to focus only on the actual ones and not anything invented by mistake.
Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know
Sporting a Dan Clowes cover—an image from his story “Caricature” blown up and colored, perhaps, or possibly the cover to some foreign edition of stories—and horror manga lettering, it’s clear from the start that Gravett and designer Peter Stanbury are going to offer at least a good-looking product. While droll, the opening, “Things to Hate about Comics” had me skeptical, but one must remember this book is for those new to comics and graphic novels. In a concise, friendly way, Gravett explains how to read the page and the elements unique to comics, such as speech balloons. He then begins what is really the heart of the book, which is his insightful looks at most of the notable graphic novels ever created, but again, he does this in a way that won’t overwhelm the new reader. It’s really a clever scheme: he provides thumbnail synopses of 30 diverse graphic novels—only two of them in the superhero subgenre—and then goes on to look at each book “In Focus,” with sample pages and analyses of the different themes, art styles and storytelling devices. Gravett then provides a “Following on from…” section for each graphic novel, wherein he provides thumbnail synopses of four other graphic novels with similarities in subject matter, genre and/or tone to one of the 30 main books. For example, Enki Bilal’s dystopian epic, The Nikopol Trilogy has as its peers and descendants Akira, America, American Flagg! and Y: The Last Man. If John Wagner’s and Colin MacNeil’s Judge Dredd tale America doesn’t sound familiar, well, that’s where the book is rewarding for all but the most cosmopolitan graphic novel enthusiast. Gravett could be chided for including many obscure graphic novels, or comics that aren’t even in print as graphic novels these days, such as the long-delayed Flagg!, but it seems a valid argument that it’s better to spotlight the best books and hope they’ll be back in print soon than substituting the lesser efforts just because they’re readily available. In addition to the 150 books covered here, Gravett also includes chapter breaks with essays on various kinds of comics, such as war comics, and ends each essay with a list of another ten books. These sections are rich with enticing and appropriate images; it’s lovely to open the book and see Moebius, Bilal and Mignola across two pages. Gravett and Stanbury never forget the visual appeal of sequential art, so Gravett’s prose must be distilled for maximum effect in the spaces he’s allotted. As such, he rarely achieves great insight in anything but the 30 main books, but he is a consistently engaging, intelligent graphic novel cheerleader everywhere else. The value of this book to the novice is unquestionable, as it presents graphic novels and comics as a vital, wide-ranging art form created all over the world, and with attractive reproduction unseen in other graphic novel guides. As someone who considered himself pretty knowledgeable on the best the form has to offer, I was pleasantly humbled to find so many interesting books I need to catch up on.
Acme Novelty Library #16
“Rusty Brown” is the first story, and the character will be familiar to regular Acme readers. However, this time around, Ware takes the chubby, toy-collecting weasel back to his childhood, to explain how he came to be. When those first Rusty Brown stories appeared years ago, they seemed a bitter rebuke from Ware to collectors of all stripes, comics collectors included. When it was announced that Rusty would be the subject of his next graphic novel three years or so ago, it seemed the only way to make it really work was to give Rusty more dimension; make him sympathetic. As obvious a choice as it is, and yes, it makes it hard not to compare the story to Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, it works. The scene with the lonely Rusty rationalizing his ability to hear his parents arguing about him from outside as some sort of superpower is extremely clever and tender at the same time. Ware makes another smart choice in his scenes with Chalky White, another lonely boy who would become Rusty’s best, probably only, friend. Chalky has it tough, too—he and his older sister move in with their grandmother, probably due to some problems with their parents, and start in a new school—but Ware is careful to give him scenes that are touching but with some hope and love in them. His grandmother, though tough on the sister, treats him like a strong man, giving him a little bit of encouragement. His sister Alice, though making it clear he’s an annoying little brother, also makes it clear she will be there to protect him. Ware keeps the White stories mostly in a strip along the bottom of the page, indicating that Rusty is the star but the Whites are there for important counterpoint. One could go on and on, describing the other wonderful scenes such as those featuring the complex father of Rusty, Woody Brown, a teacher who feels trapped in a life that’s not really his, or the brief but affecting introductions of Alice, teacher and banjo enthusiast (like collecting, a scorned, devalued interest), or Ware himself as another teacher, but there will be time for that with future installments. From the movie spoof opening credits to the beautifully bleak closing, which evokes the feeling of most of the characters that they are trapped and alone, this is a brilliant beginning. After an amusing one page bridge, the second serial, “The Building,” begins. It is given much less space than “Rusty,” but Ware does design the panels much smaller and for different effect. It’s a less immediate story than “Rusty” in that Ware makes the reader work a little more, turning the book on its side, squinting to see the very small inset panels, but the scrutiny is worthwhile. As with the rest of Ware’s work, the story is largely about loneliness and people’s failures to connect, seen most here with the apartment building’s one-legged female tenant. We are introduced to the landlady, who appears to have spent the best years of her life caring for an ailing mother, and the shiftless layabout with the girlfriend and the wandering eye. Even stories about disconnection require scenes of interaction, and so one expects their lives and perhaps others to intertwine in future chapters. Ware tells the story almost entirely silently, though in a more easily accessible mode than in past work like Quimby the Mouse, which makes sense, since “The Building” is being serialized in a weekly alternative magazine, The Chicago Reader. Though one presumes both stories will be collected separately, no doubt with Ware’s customary expansion and revision and perhaps a larger size, it’s just too hard to wait that long. This is wonderful, smart, stirring work from a master who appears to just be getting better. A Question: Are there any comics you just can’t read? I don’t mean that they’re bad, but that there is just something in the design or art that prevents you from reading it all the way through. Salamander Dreams was like that for me; that green color was so off-putting I never did more than crack the book open. I don’t intend this as a review, obviously—lots of people liked that book and not having read it, it wouldn’t be fair for me to disparage it. I’m just saying I couldn’t read it. The latest one is The Bojeffries Terror Tome, from Atomeka Press. It’s a Prestige Format book, about 68 pages for $6.99 I think, so it’s not too expensive, even if the contents are black and white. But what got to me was that I really just don’t want this Bojeffries material spread out in a series of anthologies with lots of other stories I don’t really want to read. I mean, Ted McKeever doesn’t do it for me. Charles Vess is good, but this story is forgettable, as is the Neil Gaiman/Michael Zulli effort. It’s hard to be scary in just two pages. And it seems like many of the stories, such as Mr. Monster, Steve Pugh’s “Hotwire D.E.” and Eddy Current are collected in other books, so this whole thing feels like kind of a come-on. Put together a proper horror collection with Gaiman and the others and I might be interested. Do a proper, complete Bojeffries collection with additional material and I’m there. But I’m just not that interested in all this varied old material and lots of pin-ups being used to pad a $7 book that’s just a tease for a bunch of other books. Next Week: I may or may not finish Epileptic in time, but I will definitely be talking about how Mark Millar made me care about Wolverine again.
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Paul Gravett is a noted comics critic and lecturer, and wrote the well-received Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics. Now a Harper Collins imprint has released his guide to graphic novels and how to appreciate them.
Despite a great deal of creative freedom with Fantagraphics Books, Chris Ware has taken control of his own publishing, and in the process begun his most ambitious creative undertaking: duel serials with multiple characters that must somehow not compete with each other but complement and stand on their own.