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CBG SATELLITES
The ADD Blog by Alan David Doane
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The House at Maakies Corner
One of the things -- the only thing I hate
about James Kochalka's Sketchbook Diaries is
the format, which places multiple daily strips on a
single page. The House at Maakies Corner is
perhaps the best presentation of a daily strip that
I've ever seen, a long, horizontally-formatted
hardcover presenting each strip on a single page.
Artistically, you could not ask for a better
presentation. I understand that, in the case of
Kochalka, economics play a role, and certainly The
House at Maakies Corner is a more expensive book,
but...this is exactly how it should be done.
There's a bit of irony, then, that the book suffered
some production problems. As you might have heard, the
entire run of books suffers from minor scuffing of the
covers, and there was apparently a problem with the
glue that binds the pages to the covers. My copy had
slightly glued-together endpages that I was able to
pry away from the following pages without tearing the
book. The overall effect of this minor damage lends an
antiquated feel, which plays perfectly into
Millionaire's mannered style -- so much so that he is
reportedly amused enough by this printing snafu to
have designed special stickers highlighting the
"antiquating" the print run suffers from.
As for the content, if you're familiar with
Millionaire's unique and devastatingly brilliant
strip, then you know what to expect. Alcoholism,
self-amputation and suicide are fodder for some of the
most twisted and hilarious gags ever set to paper. The
clever cover design, if studied for a moment, cleverly
suggests the strange parallel realities Millionaire
has created between the worlds of Sock Monkey
and Maakies -- but I always find Maakies
the more vital, entertaining and frankly fascinating
read.
I've had some unpleasant online encounters with Tony
Millionaire, but there's absolutely no denying
the appeal of his cheerily misogynistic, gin-soaked
parables. Ultimately, I have to consign Millionaire to
that rarefied region of the creative world occupied by
folks like Hunter S. Thompson, about whom my friend
Marshall points out it must be much more fun reading
about than actually spending time with. Reading
Maakies is fun. It's a twisted, perverse work
by an unpleasant man, but somehow it all works to
create staggeringly good comics. Grade: 5/5
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