Showing posts with label Dan Clowes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dan Clowes. Show all posts

05 October 2021

Caricature by Dan Clowes (No. 82)

Caricature (1995)
by Dan Clowes

REVIEW BY BART BEATY:
(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)
At just 16 pages, Dan Clowes' Caricature is comparable to Nabokov's masterpiece Lolita for its comedic genius, psychological horror, and perfection of narrative language in a story of an older man deposed by a young girl. Published before the completion of Ghost World, Caricature officially marks Clowes' departure from a period of hilarious editorial comics and MAD-style mayhem of Eightballs past, and move into the complexity, naturalism, and depth seem in such works Gynaecology, Immoral, Invisible, and the ongoing David Boring. Though published concurrently with the fifth instalment of Ghost World, Caricature is the first complete work of the current Clowes era and defines the nature of his comics to date.

The "Humbert" of the story is Mal Rosen, the eponymous traveling caricaturist and lonely, middle-aged man who encounters young girl of indeterminate age, Theda (probably an anagram for Death, considering Clowes' penchant for wordplay), whose estranged parents are famous art world celebrities of the Jeff Koons/Damien Hirst variety. This pretentious environment marred Theda with a rebellious, post-ironic malaise that coverts lowbrow, outsider culture for its real world contact to the underclass and its humble devotion to craft. Mal seems painfully aware of a subtle degradation implicit in Theda's critical appropriation of his art, as seen in what is probably the quintessential moment in their relationship: Mal shows Theda a goofy, banal portrait of himself a fellow cartoonist had rendered of him, only to incur Theda's disdain. "He's not as good as you. He seems almost 'too' aware of what he's doing," she says, while Mal eyes her with suspicion and dismay.

It's hard to tell who's more pathetic. Mal is older and presumably more mature, yet he is deliberately at the mercy of an irresponsible, possibly insane young woman betrayed by her own overt intelligence and zeal. Dissing her mother's claim that only women can make art because of a primal 'birthing' connection, Theda argues that, "making art is more like shitting," a statement that resonates with significance when, after she disappears, Mal is left alone in his motel room staring at her day-old shit in the stopped-up toilet.

Both a powerful statement on the current role of Art (both High and Low) in society, and a haunting story of the futility of love for these two fully developed characters, Caricature realises all the themes of Clowes' comics: visceral, complex narratives that are simultaneously naturalistic and self-aware; the preoccupation with anagrams and Freudian subtext; the fetishsed pop aesthetic versus the ironic kitsch of Post-Modernism; and the sophisticated ego artfully degraded by existential dread. Caricature if the first great apotheosis of Eightball, and establishes Clowes as the American successor to, not Crumb, but Nabokov.


FURTHER READING:



08 July 2021

MAD #1-24 edited by Harvey Kurtzman (No. 8)

MAD #1-24 (1952-1956)
edited by Harvey Kurtzman, with Wally Wood, Bill Elder, Jack Davis and others

REVIEW BY DARCY SULLIVAN:
(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)
Despite their very name, comics have contributed very little to America's comic legacy. Comic strips have introduced many of the most famous persona of American humour, from Charlie Brown to Zippy to Ziggy. But strip away the obscurities (including all alternative comics), the borrowings from other media and the juvenilia, and only one comic book emerges as a true influence on the country's comic consciousness: MAD.

MAD has been an American institution for more than 40 years. Even kids who skipped the Superman and Spider-Man phase snuck MAD to school, memorised the zany names given to characters from films (even films they'd never seen), compete to see who could most adeptly manipulate the back cover fold-in.

The MAD honoured here, however, prospered for just four years, from the comic's birth in 1952 until 1956, when its father, Harvey Kurtzman, left its publisher, William Gaines' EC Comics, in one of the classic creator's rights disputes in comics history. (Shades of Image: Kurtzman not only left MAD, he took his top artists with him and started his own humour magazines.)

Kurtzman possessed a fluid, rhythmic drawing style suited to physical humour. He was also a detail obsessed writer, who had rewritten the rule book on war comics on EC's Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat. As Kurtzman saw it, he was a seeker of Truth.

Of course, a few bucks wouldn't hurt. Kurtzman wanted a book he could crank out faster than his heavily researched war comics. He proposed a humour magazine to Gaines. In its first incarnation MAD was a comic book about comic books (postmodernist alert!) - largely poking fun at the kinds of comics that kept EC afloat.

MAD quickly ran out of comic books to lampoon and began taking on other media, particularly film and advertising. And in a stroke that still seems revolutionary, Kurtzman persuaded Gaines to publish MAD in magazine format - thus sidestepping the then raging furor over comic books and giving Kurtzman the "status" book he sought (he'd been wooed by a major magazine of the day, Pageant).

Notoriously strict about artists following his breakdowns, Kurtzman is clearly MAD auteur. But the artists who drew it - especially Wally Wood, Bill Elder and Jack Davis - rose to the occasion, introducing a new freneticism to comic art. They squirted panels full of sight gags and non sequiturs, creating a dense style described as "chicken fat". That manic energy, along with Kurtzman's rapid-fire verbal riffing, made MAD's pages absolutely electric and immediate.

Critics have praised MAD so fulsomely that the magazines true historical impact has been distorted. Neither Kurtzman or MAD created American satire - but they did bring it to a younger audience. Kurtzman and company used humour as a crowbar to pry apart what things were and what they pretended to be. "Just as there was a treatment of reality in the war books," Kurtzman wrote in his comics history From Aargh! to Zap!, "there was a treatment of reality running through MAD; the satirist/parodist tries not just to entertain his audience but to remind it of what the real world is like."

Ultimately, though, Kurtzman and MAD's subsequent writers were part-time satirists and full-time funnymen. Like children, they would make fun of anything - left or right, young or old, good or bad - simply because it was there. Gaines would later argue that MAD had no morality, no statement beyond "Watch out - everybody is trying to screw you!" Satire was important to MAD, but its real metier was iconoclasm. It was a pie chucked at the nearest face visible.

And like the pie in the face, it was both anarchic and quaintly traditional. Kurtzman brought the Jewish inflections of Catskills comedy to comic books - what are MAD coinages like "potrzebie" and "veedlefetzer" if not put-on Yiddish? Kurtzman's joke constructions drew frequently and expertly from vaudeville comics. The balance between deconstructive cliche-busting and well-structured routines, between Swiftian wit and pure spitball silliness, helps account for Mad's sustained and wide-ranging popularity. For all its buzzing surface quality and apparent rudeness, MAD wasn't nasty - it had charm.

MAD's historical importance grew in the 1960s and 1970s, when it offered the pre-protest set their own connect-the-dots guide to social criticism. And many of MAD's most famous conventions - the movie parodies with Mort Drucker's deadly caricatures, the gonzo visual slapstick of Don Martin, the witty wordless rim-shots by Sergio Aragones and Antonio Prohias - post-date Kurtzman's reign as well. But these and other riches simply wouldn't exist without Kurtzman and his original collaborators, who created MAD's skewed, sarcastic, staccato style. Godfather of the undergrounds, influencer of modern film humour, infiltrator of virtually all media, Kurtzman's little "quickie book" stands not just as one of the greatest comic books ever, but as a true cultural phenomenon.


REVIEW BY ALAN MOORE:
(from a tribute to Harvey Kurtzman in The Comics Journal #157, 1993)
The first time I encountered Harvey Kurtzman, I was around ten years old. The encounter took place between the covers of The Bedside MAD, a paperback collection; strange, American, the cover painting possibly by Kelly Freas, the edges of the pages dyed a bright, almost fluorescent yellow. To this day, it burns inside my head. The stories in that volume and the Kurtzman stories I discovered later brandished satire like a monkey-wrench: a wrench to throw against pop-culture's gears or else employed to wrench our perceptions just a quarter-twist towards the left, no icon left unturned. 


REVIEW BY DAN CLOWES:
Had he not existed, I'd be a dull, humorless lout working in a muffler shop somewhere, and so would practically everyone I know. I shudder to think how horrible the world would be today without that which Harvey Kurtzman begat!


REVIEW BY BILL GRIFFITH (ZIPPY THE PINHEAD)
MAD was a life raft in a place like Levittown, where all around you were the things that MAD was skewering and making fun of. MAD wasn't just a magazine to me. It was more like a way to escape. Like a sign, This Way Out. That had a tremendous effect on me.


FURTHER READING:



05 July 2021

Barnaby by Crockett Johnson (No. 68)

Barnaby (1942-1946, 1952)
by Crockett Johnson

REVIEW BY TOM SPURGEON:
(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)
It is worth noting David Johnson Leisk, who created the strip Barnaby for the New York paper PM under his more famous pen-name in 1942, had two interesting careers after comic strips: he was a successful illustrator of children's books (including the classic Harold & The Purple Crayon) and an avant-garde painter of geometric shapes and objects. Barnaby reads like the work of a wide-ranging intellect rather than a lifer in the comics trade. Its spare beauty comes from its perfect sense of time and place, and its emphasis on the sometime whimsical, sometimes not-quite-real way in which children create meaning in their lives. 

Barnaby was concerned with the title character's relationship with his fairy godfather, Mr. O'Malley, one of the great creations in strip comics. A rotund figure in a hat, whose wings extended from his oversized coat, carrying a cigar, and avoiding all overt displays of fairy godfather powers, Mr. O'Malley looked less an object from classic children's literature than a slightly-addled uncle (one possible reading of Barnaby is to see all the characters as a child's interpretation of various types of adult). Most of the narratives dealt with Mr. O'Malley making more difficult - and ultimately more satisfying - situations which Barnaby, despite being a very young child, was often well-equipped to handle on his own. Mr. O'Malley's friends and professional acquaintances made frequent appearances, and Johnson's arch take on many of those fantastic character-types helped make Barnaby a prototype for a young persons' entertainment with much to offer adult readers. 

Barnaby also underlines how fragile a strip's success can be, particularly when one breaks it down element by element: Johnson's art is simplified by today's standards, but gave the strip a distinctive and elegant look; typeset lettering has almost never worked for any comics work, but allowed Johnson to save space within his dailies; and the World War II setting of the original strips would seem to date it, but a more modern, script-altered update showed how important and how well-observed those original strips were in regard place and time.

Barnaby is a perfectly-balanced work greater than the sum of many admirable parts. Never the most popular feature of its time, it has a sterling critical reputation and is remembered fondly by many who read it as children. Johnson's return for the final story, where Mr. O'Malley decides to forego the rules and stay with Barnaby past his next birthday only to find that the birthday boy can't see him anymore, is one of the great send-offs in strip history, and its sentimental power is a testament to some of the medium's most enduring characters.


REVIEW BY CHARLES M. SCHULZ:
Barnaby was one of the great comic strips of all time.


REVIEW BY DAN CLOWES:
(from an interview, Comic Art #1)
You know, you look at it panel by panel and it doesn't do much, but when you read the stories it really comes alive. Not only is it absolutely hilarious, but it has this really strong, unexpected emotional quality.


FURTHER READING:



21 June 2021

Ghost World by Daniel Clowes (No. 42)

Ghost World (1993-1997)
by Dan Clowes

REVIEW BY DARCY SULLIVAN:
(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)
With his graphic novella Ghost World, Daniel Clowes brilliantly bridges the gap between two styles of independent comics: smarts funny books like his own Eightball and character-driven autobiographical comics. What emerges is a modern comics masterpiece, a hilarious and affecting coming-of-age story.

Two wickedly funny teenaged girls, Enid and Rebecca, struggle with sex, identity, loss of innocence, and those eternal adolescent questions: "What should we do now?" and " What should I do with my life?". Enid might be going off to college. Rebecca might wilt without her. Both might be in love with their quiet friend Josh. 

This would be terribly precious and sentimental if these young women didn't think so fast and talk so sharp, like their clear forebears, Hopey and Maggie in Jaime Hernandez's Love & Rockets stories. Enid and Rebecca try to carve persona out of sheer attitude. But Clowes slices beneath the surface anger to show the sense of loss that haunts them, particularly Enid. The ghosts in her world are reminders of how much she has changed and will change, ghosts summons by old toys, old clothes, old songs. Ghost World captures that painful first flowering of nostalgia. Clowes reminds us that even the most perfect adolescent friendships are as brittle and fleeting as the pop passions of youth. 

The story marks a clever maturation for Clowes, from laughing at people to caring about characters who laugh at other people. He teases us with autobiographical elements - the anagram name Enid Coleslaw, the appearance of a "Perry" cartoonist names David Clowes - as if to say "There's a lot of truth here." But despite the too-rich dialogue, the story's emotional authenticity is never in doubt. Simply put: You'll laugh, you'll cry.


FURTHER READING:


19 June 2021

Covering The Classics: The Usual Suspects

In 2006 Penguin Classics began reissuing titles in their catalogue featuring cover art by notable comics artists. Below are some covers from the initial launch of the Penguin Classics Deluxe series, which at the time drew criticism from Dave Sim (Cerebus) for the choice of artists being "the usual suspects"

The New York Trilogy
by Paul Auster
Cover art by Art Spiegelman

The Portable Dorothy Parker
by Dorothy Parker
Cover art by Seth

Lady Chatterley's Lover
by D.H. Lawrence
Cover art by Chester Brown

Candide
by Francois Voltaire 
Cover art by Chris Ware

Gravity's Rainbow
by Thomas Pynchon
Cover art by Frank Miller

The Jungle
by Upton Sinclair
Cover art by Charles Burns

Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley
Cover art by Daniel Clowes

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
by Ken Kesey
Cover art by Joe Sacco


FURTHER READING:
Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions
CBR: The Sublime Variant Covers of Penguin Classics Graphic Deluxe Editions


25 May 2021

Dirty Plotte by Julie Doucet (No. 96)


Dirty Plotte #1-12 (1991-1998)
by Julie Doucet

REVIEW BY BART BEATY:
(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century!, The Comics Journal #210, 1999)
Of all the autobiographical cartoonists to have emerged onto the scene in the 1990s, perhaps none has come so far or accomplished so much as Julie Doucet. Her most recent work, and her first lengthy story, My New York Diary, was a tremendous accomplishment, managing simultaneously to vastly expand her reach as a cartoonist while at the same time sacrificing none of the charms of her earliest work.

Dirty Plotte began life as a fairly crude little mini-comic featuring stories of self-abasement, destruction and debauchery. Before long Doucet had transformed her work into a full-sized American-style comic book without changing its thematics and tone. The earliest issues of the series have a ferocious intensity about them, but the savagery is tempered by a sometimes whimsical sense of humour and an approach to confessional story-telling that is equally self-depreciating and self-aggrandising.

With My New York Diary in the tenth through twelfth issues of Dirty Plotte, Doucet came into her own for the first time. The story of a woman adrift in a new city while caught in a relationship gone not dreadfully but pitiably wrong is evocative and genuinely moving while at the same time it maintains the artist's distinctive visual look, albeit toned down a notch. By de-amplifying her work Doucet has, ironically, given it more resonance.

I'd say that Julie Doucet is one of the most promising young cartoonists working today except for the fact that Dirty Plotte demonstrates that that she has accomplished a great deal in comics already. So let's just say that Doucet is one of the best cartoonists working today and leave it at that.


REVIEW BY DAN CLOWES:
These are among the most personal and powerfully intimate comics ever made. In their obsessive, utterly-fearless precision they draw us fully into Doucet's private dream-vision, a gleefully-nihilistic, rageful and tenderly melancholic perspective on a dark and complicated world, the panels so dense with raw anthropomorphous energy they seem more like living organisms than lines on paper.


REVIEW BY ROBERT CRUMB:
Okay, she's not a comic story-teller in the "normal" sense, but her personal vision is honest and compelling... I find her completely sincere, incapable of "structured, linear narratives", sure, but her "stories" are like powerful dreams... I admire her work and sympathise with the crisis she's going through... Her struggle is to continue to draw under the magnifying glass of recognition at a young age, when one is still developing and not so sure of how to get along in the world... I'm happy to see that, while she's drawing less than before (I'm sure she's close to being burned out by the constant barrage of demands for her talents from all sides), it's as good as ever... I thought her latest Dirty Plotte was great! I hope she can make it through the ocean of bullshit that she has to cope with... Even if she has to back off and quit drawing for a while... I hope she's tough enough to survive...


READ THIS BOOK:
Dirty Plotte: The Complete Julie Doucet was published in 2018 by Drawn & Quarterly, which received Eisner and Ignatz Award nominations that year for Best Archival Publication. It collects the entire 12-issue comic book series, including the acclaimed My New York Diary, as well as rare comics and previously unpublished material; a reproduction of the first Dirty Plotte mini comic; essays about her comics legacy and feminist influence by curator Dan Nadel and academic Martine Delvaux respectively; an interview by comics scholar Christian Gasser; and personal anecdotes from Jami Attenberg, Adrian Tomine, and more!


FURTHER READING:


22 May 2021

The Recommended Reading List

Comic-creators recommend their favourite comics!
This list is a work-in-progress and will be updated regularly.


CHESTER BROWN:
A Contract With God by Will Eisner
Frank by Jim Woodring
Little Orphan Annie by Harold Gray


EDDIE CAMPBELL:
Ethel & Ernest by Raymond Briggs
Palestine by Joe Sacco
Prince Valiant by Harold Foster
The Strange Death of Alex Raymond by Dave Sim & Carson Grubaugh


DAN CLOWES:
Barnaby by Crockett Johnson
Dirty Plotte by Julie Doucet
MAD edited by Harvey Kurtzman


ROBERT CRUMB:
American Splendor by Harvey Pekar
Binky Brown Meets The Holy Virgin Mary by Justin Green
Dirty Plotte by Julie Doucet
Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book by Harvey Kurtzman
MAD edited by Harvey Kurtzman
The Autobiographical Comics of Spain Rodriguez
The Buddy Bradley Stories by Peter Bagge


WILL EISNER:
Madman's Drum by Lynd Ward
The Cartoon History of the Universe by Larry Gonick
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud


NEIL GAIMAN:
Alec by Eddie Campbell
Cages by Dave McKean
Frank by Jim Woodring
Master Race by Bernard Krigstein & Al Feldstein
Pogo by Walt Kelly
Tantrum by Jules Feiffer
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons


SCOTT McCLOUD:
A Contract With God by Will Eisner
Frank by Jim Woodring
The Spirit by Will Eisner


MIKE MIGNOLA:
Murky World by Richard Corben


FRANK MILLER:
A Contract With God by Will Eisner
Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson
EC War Comics by Harvey Kurtzman & Others


ALAN MOORE:
Alec by Eddie Campbell
American Splendor by Harvey Pekar
Arcade: The Comics Revue edited by Art Spiegelman & Bill Griffith
Dark Knight by Frank Miller
Grendel: Devil By The Deed by Matt Wagner
Hellboy by Mike Mignola
Love & Rockets by Jaime Hernandez
Luther Arkwright by Bryan Talbot
MAD edited by Harvey Kurtzman
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Palestine by Joe Sacco
Tales of Telguuth by Steve Moore
The Book of Jim by Jim Woodring
The Loneliness of a Long-Distance Cartoonist by Adrian Tomine
The Sketchbooks of Robert Crumb
The Spirit by Will Eisner
The Suttons by Phil Elliott
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud


CHARLES M. SCHULZ:
Barnaby by Crockett Johnson
Thimble Theatre by E.C. Segar


SETH:
Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz
The Autobiographical Stories in Yummy Fur by Chester Brown


DAVE SIM:
A Contract With God by Will Eisner
Fourth World Comics by Jack Kirby
Master Race by Bernard Krigstein & Al Feldstein
The Autobiographical Stories in Yummy Fur by Chester Brown
The Willie & Joe Cartoons of Bill Mauldin


ART SPIEGELMAN:
Binky Brown Meets The Holy Virgin Mary by Justin Green
City of Glass by Paul Karasik & David Mazzucchelli
Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book
Krazy Kat by George Herriman
Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McKay
Little Orphan Annie by Harold Gray
Madman's Drum by Lynd Ward
Master Race by Bernard Krigstein & Al Feldstein
Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz
Plastic Man by Jack Cole
The Autobiographical Comics of Spain Rodriguez
The Bungle Family by George Tuthill
The Mishkin Saga by Kim Deitch with Simon Deitch
Thimble Theatre by E.C. Segar
Uncle Scrooge by Carl Barks
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons


ALEX TOTH:
Wash Tubbs / Captain Easy by Roy Crane


CHRIS WARE:
Binky Brown Meets The Holy Virgin Mary by Justin Green
Gasoline Alley by Frank King
Krazy Kat by George Herriman
Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz
Zap Comix by Robert Crumb & Others


BILL WATTERSON:
Krazy Kat by George Herriman
Pogo by Walt Kelly