...at least that's what I think I used to headline short review columns.
I caught covid for the first time this past week, probably at work where other people did, and I had just been transferred to the home office from a satellite one where I was one of two people showing up daily. I'm fine, that's fine, the disease is endemic now, and we've got vaccines to make sure most of us don't suffer badly from it, just like I haven't.
But it did mean that I ended up with some free time - at least 5 days in which I had to skip the events I had this weekend, which included a poker game, 2 comic book signings at Fantom Comics, a Pixar Inside Out exhibit preview at the Children's Museum, and a story-telling party. Instead I've been reading some of the graphic novels that came my way.
Dirty Pictures: How an Underground Network of Nerds, Feminists, Misfits,Geniuses, Bikers, Potheads, Printers, Intellectuals, and Art School Rebels Revolutionized Art and Invented Comix by Brian Doherty, Abrams, 2022 - This isn't a graphic novel. Instead it's a dense history with no pictures which is why I haven't finished reading it yet. Reason magazine editor Doherty's produced a readable, comprehensive history of who knew who, who was sleeping with who, and who was drawing with who, why, and when. This is not for the uninitiated, as it has no images and assumes a familiarity with the field that's a step beyond basic. As such, I'm enjoying it and learning from it, but at times it reads like a Who's Who of underground comix - that's not a bad thing, especially as the cartoonists themselves either died young or are dying now (Diane Noomin within the past month). It does mean that it can be a bit of a struggle to keep people straight, or honestly to pick it up again after putting it down. I've been trying to read a chapter at a time, no more or less, which works for me, but I'm not a major fan of the undergrounds in spite of being dedicated to comics history. If you're similarly dedicated, you should buy this.
Fantastic Four: Full Circle by Alex Ross, Abrams, 2022 - I got a pdf of this from the publisher (who's been very kind about sending me material), and then was gifted a copy by my buddies at Big Planet Comics so it was clear the universe was telling me to read it. I also love the classic FF. Ross' hyper-realistic paintings have set a standard in superhero depiction for a couple of decades now, but he hasn't done a comic book in years. This time, he did it all including the writing, but not as a painted book. The story leaps off a plot point from FF #51, a Kirby-Lee story in which (here's the Kirby part) a minor character succeeds in copying the Thing's body exactly, fooling Mr. Fantastic into taking him into the Negative Zone, and then sacrificing himself to save Reed Richards. At 64 pages, this is exactly a story that could have been an FF annual in the 1960s. Ross's art is competent, being redolent of Kirby without descending into pastiche (Ross draws a photo-collage rather than making one as Kirby was doing at the time), and is steeped in FF history with respect. (Except for an unnecessary gag about Reed and Sue having sex, and Sue running out naked when the Baxter Building is breached by the negative zone, but hey, it's not 1968 anymore). The plot makes no more or less sense than Lee's ever did, and the hyperbole is cut back for modern audiences. I enjoyed this just fine, but it's a loving salute to a long-gone era. Although Ross does explain Captain Marvel / Rick Jones' nega bands which swapped their bodies in and out of the negative zone in the 1970s for longtime fans. As the first original comic book published by Abrams via licensing from Marvel, I'm sure it was a smart choice due to Ross's fans, but I don't think it'll bring any readers over to the FF.*
Mickey Mouse: Zombie Coffee by Regis Loisel, Seattle:
Fantagraphics, 2022 - For years, Fantagraphics has been publishing the adult Disney material that has appeared in the European market. Greg Bennett of Big Planet Comics Bethesda makes a point of keeping me up on it. Loisel first made his mark with a bawdy retelling of Peter Pan - now many years later, he's doing licensed work. This story replicates the feel of Floyd Gottfredson's adventurous Mickey with simulated comic strips set during the Depression. Mouseton is seeing a real-estate speculator trying to buy up a bunch of lower middle class homes to build a golf course, and Mickey, Minnie, Horace, and Clarabelle are in the front of the resistance while Goofy, Pluto, and Donald make minor appearances. The two main villains are the traditional lawyer Sylvester and Pegleg Pete, often seen in the early comic strips. Like the previous book, the story doesn't make a lot of sense and you just need to go along and enjoy the madcap corny and violent story for what it is. The mind-control agents, such as the zombie coffee and 25-cent hamburgers, are typical of the days of the comics in which someone would build a 5-story robot to knock over a convenience store for $25. Loisel did a good job in capturing the feel of the 1930s strip, and I recommend this to those who like the early adventurous goofball Mickey.
Stephen McCranie's Space Boy Volume 13 by Stephen McCranie, Dark Horse, 2022 - I've been enjoying these manga-influenced webcomics collections since the middle of the pandemic when someone at Fantom Comics recommended them to me. It's an American reworking of Astro Boy for the most part, but as will happen with longer-running strips, it's become something of its own too, although this issue returns to a Pinocchio-plot point that can't really be avoided without the book becoming a horror novel. One definitely can't start with this issue, which opens in the middle of a murder investigation and leads to more injuries via exploding roboot, but his art is very assured by this point and I'm enjoying the unfolding of the story in chunks, rather than reading it on the web.
McCay by Thierry Smolderen and Jean-Philippe Bramanti, London: Titan Books, 2018 - somebody recommended this recently and while I don't remember who it was, I respected them enough to pick up a copy. A French work, written by a distinguished historian and comics writer, this is an alternate biography of the ground-breaking cartoonist Winsor McCay, and proposes that he can turn himself into a fourth-dimension (not time) where a version of Slumberland can be built from his dreams. Silas, McCay's pen-name for some strips, is a real person with the same ability, who's an anarcho-Communist determined to kill people he thinks deserve it. The story makes no sense at all, just like McCay's own works, but is lovely - Bramanti wisely doesn't try to emulate McCay and uses a much sparer, yet still lush style. It's a fun read and homage to a master cartoonist.
Blossoms in Autumn, words by Zidrou and art by Aimée de Jongh, translated by Matt Madden - a slice of life story about two older (I wrote elderly until I realized the man is only 2 years older than I am) people - a laid-off furniture mover and a cheese store owner who meet each other, and fall in love. It's not a major work, but a perfectly good read and a pleasant couple to spend an hour with.
The Return of the Honey Buzzard, by Aimée de Jongh, translated by Michele Hutchison - this one was a bit more confusing because there's some magic realism going on in this and it takes a while to clue into it. On the other hand, it's been made into a movie, so perhaps I was just slow to pick up on the plot. Simon is about to lose his inherited bookstore, and won't go along with any of his wife's suggestions to sell and save what they can, when he witnesses the second suicide of someone around him. In his confusion, he meets a Lolita-like young woman (girl? her age is hard to tell) who needs assistance with school projects, we see the true story behind the first suicide, and begin to wonder if he'll make it to the end of the book. Oh, and the honey buzzard's return is a nature metaphor, not something you need to be watching out for in the corner of your eye.
Days of Sand by Aimée de Jongh, 2022 - her current book, researched here in DC, is off all things for a Dutch cartoonist to do, a story of the 1930s American dustbowl environmental disaster in Oklahoma, told through the lens (hah!) of a Farm Security Administration photographer from New York City. As she noted at the Library of Congress, this story is generally completely unknown in Europe, and largely forgotten here in America except by Steinbeck and Springsteen fans. de Jongh uses real government photos to lead into each chapter, and it's a moving account of a photographer 'going native' as it used to be phrased and becoming more sympathetic to the subjects of his camera than to his employers. The art is fantastic. The story is fine. The main character... a bit under-developed with daddy issues. Still, I'd recommend picking this up.
Smahtguy: The Life and Times of Barney Frank by Eric Orner, 2022 - I really liked this book. I didn't particularly expect to because it's a partial biography of a gay former-Congressman (by one of his former staffers) and I don't usually read political biographies, although I've been interested in gay cartoonists since moving to DC in 1983 and discovering that such a thing existed at all in the pages of the Washington Blade (back in print but no comics) and the Lambda Rising bookstore (long-closed but a new gay bookstore just opened this year). I was sheltered in 1970s New Jersey, sometimes for the good, and others not [full disclosure: I'm not gay, but didn't meet out people until I arrived at GWU]. Anyway, Orner was signing his book this summer at Solid State Books on H Street, I went, along with many of his former Hill colleagues, and was very impressed by the book. It took me a while to sit down and read it ... it's still a political biography... but it's well-worth reading to see how America has changed from those 1970s and how people like Barney Frank shepherded that change, sometimes by not leading from the front. I recommend this - enough that I interviewed the cartoonist a shamefully long time ago.
That's it for today - let me know if you want to see my trying to get my writing chops back with more.
*9/26 - Rodrigo Baeza sent me a note about this comics' history with permission to reprint it -
