I read, but couldn’t think of anything much to say about, Jason’s The Living and the Dead (note: this does not mean that I did not enjoy the book). Fortunately, other writers on the web, as usual, are on the job, with thoughts to spare.

It took me a while to pick an excerpt from One of the Jones Boys’ excellent discursive review, which delves into the history and anthropological implications of the zombie genre, as well as its recent resurgence in comics of all kinds, before getting down to the specific book in hand, but I finally settled on this one:

[...] Jason’s characters are uniquely well-placed to survive the apocalypse. The devil himself could appear on the page, rape a thousand schoolchildren and destroy the universe. At most, Jason’s characters might show a few flying sweat beads in alarm; the final panel would matter-of-factly show the earth exploding, seen from outer space. Dealing with a horde of zombies out for their flesh? Child’s play. …more

Jones writes the kind of criticism I’d like to be able to provide, here, at GNR — connecting the contextual dots around the endeavor in an unpretentious, meaningful way, while, at the same time, doing the simpler work of a thumbs-up thumbs-down analysis, too. He is, in other words, one of the best critics on the scene, making my own efforts look weak and drab by comparison. I must unpleasantly destroy this man at some point, if man he truly be.

Over at the Daily Cross Hatch, Brian Heater complains a bit about how quickly the book can be read, at a flimsy fifty mostly-wordless pages, though his final judgment falls onto the “positive” side of the scale:

Prostitutes, shitty jobs, blood thirsty zombies—by the end, all of the pieces fit neatly in place, an achievement that has as much to do with Jason’s skill as a storyteller, as it does with the ultimate dose of earnest humanity that he is able to bestow upon his undead subjects. …more

On the other hand, Dylan Kurlansky, writing for the collaborative pop culture review site Undress Me Robot, enjoys the silence:

It is a nearly silent book (there are only seven lines of dialogue total), which in and of itself can be dangerous. However, Jason’s minimalist artwork shoulders the burden and soars. …more

And, in what is becoming an “Elsewhere on the Web” tradition, the indefatigable Tom Spurgeon has posted an insightful but brief interview with everybody’s favorite deadpan Norwegian cartoonist, which includes several full-page scans from the book.

SPURGEON: What effect did you hope to achieve through the silent movie-style panels of dialog, as opposed to, say, going with an all-silent approach? Why is that effect dropped after a certain point?

JASON: I’ve already done completely wordless strips, like “Shhh!”, so that was no longer a challenge. I wanted some dialog in the beginning, mostly to say something about the characters. After that introduction though that was no longer necessary. When the zombies show up it’s pretty much all action, one big chase sequence, that worked better with no words. …more

I said I couldn’t think of much to say about the book. I did think of one thing. I love the casual, distracted way the zombies eat human flesh — like they’re munching on popcorn while staring at a movie screen. I think you’ll agree that that’s not enough to hang a review on. But that’s all I got! Woe!

(The image in this post is a detail from The Living and the Dead, copyright (c) 2007 Jason)

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Following up on yesterday’s feature review of Popeye Vol. 1: “I Yam What I Yam”:

Unlike me, Robert Dayton of the Discorder blog likes the bigness and deluxe packaging:

Designed by Jacob Covey, the hardcover package features a cut-out word balloon title—it’s literally cut out of the hardbound cover. Fantagraphics has made excellent use of digital technology to render these strips in crisp glory; the full page colour newspaper strips are lush, soft washes. As such an integral part of comics history, these strips should always be in print. Before this book, one had to desperately seek out Fantagraphics’ previous re-printings from the early 90s, unassuming volumes that, even in soft cover, were less economical and not as advanced in design and layout. This book is a steal at approximately thirty dollars, an investment of joy. … more

Bill Sherman likes the packaging, too, and declares it “book of the year“:

There’s a lotta reading in this volume of strips. Unlike today’s newspaper funnies, Segar had the room to tell each day in five to six panel offerings, which he crammed with colorful dialog. The pacing is subsequently much more leisurely than most modern comics readers are accustomed to, but it pays off in the strip’s delightfully quirky characterization. … more

Writing for City Pages, Zak Sally admires the badassedness and chaotic amorality of it all:

[F]ar from quaint and staid, these strips are badass. People insult each other, beat on each other, love each other, and screw each other over in a way that’s a little shocking in this day and age. There’s a scene—one among many, really—of a typical bad guy throttling the living hell out of Olive (note to modern cartoonists: Do not show women being beaten), threatening to “shake her teeth out.” Meanwhile, Castor sneaks up behind him preparing to unload a gunful into his head at point-blank range. Yeowch. Still—funny stuff. …more

On the other hand, Elgin Carver at RackRaids sees moral truth and epic scope:

If the animated version of Popeye the Sailor Man is the sum total of your knowledge about this misanthropic hero, then you know him not. Epic in scope, deep in moral truths, as imaginative as any character ever invented, Popeye moves through these strips with a grace that movie stars of that era could only envy. If you have never read any of these strips, or if you are so immersed in them that you can recite dialogue from memory, you owe it to yourself and posterity to stop reading this review immediately and either go on-line or to the nearest brick and mortar bookstore and buy this book. Remember, Fantagraphics has striven to bring us other works in their complete grandeur, Little Orphan Annie comes quickly to mind, only to fall into financial trouble due to slow sales. They deserve better. Popeye deserves better. This is as good as it gets. Do your duty. …more

Finally, Tom Spurgeon conducted a long and insightful interview with the book’s designer, Jacob Covey, who, it must be said, did a great job creating a beautiful and entirely appropriate object, given the apparent goals of this project — and my complaints were not meant to disparage his high level of craftsmanship and artistry in the least. I’d just have preferred a cheap little pocket-sized paperback.

But that’s apparently just, you know, my problem.

And I’m cool with that.

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It is impossible to overstate the influence of Elzie Crisler Segar (1894 – 1938) on the cartoonists who followed him. Take the underground comic book creators from the 1960’s for example, like r. crumb and Bill Griffith: their rounded, gravity-aware, cross-hatched, rubber-limbed figures, their wobbly lines that don’t always connect quite exactly where you’d expect them to, their off-balance character blocking and camera placement, etc., are all signs of Segar’s influence. But then, Thimble Theater (also known as “that comic strip with Popeye in it”) was probably still running, in some form, in the funny pages of their childhoods. So that explains that. Even today, though, when other cartoonists of Segar’s era have long been forgotten (quick — who drew Toonerville Folks?), young, up-and-coming figures ranging from Kevin Huizenga to Manu Larcenet have obviously studied, and internalized, his style. For the most part, the strips collected in Popeye Vol. 1: “I Yam What I Yam,”, originally published at the tail-end of the “flapper era,” appear as fresh and vital as if they had been drawn yesterday, by the hottest of the cool alternacomickers.

Which is not to say that a taste for Segar comics is a rarefied one. Quite the opposite. From his first appearance in Thimble Theater, about ten years into the strip’s lifetime, Popeye was, and has remained, a mass market phenomenon, popular with children and adults alike, almost as famous as his contemporary Mickey Mouse (who is, in turn, more popular than Jesus). His star has faded a bit since my own childhood in the late sixties and early seventies, due to changing cultural priorities and the emergence of more guilt-ridden (and therefore more intrusively concerned) parental units. Popeye, after all, smokes. He smokes a pipe. According to one panel collected here, he actually smokes his pipe while chewing tobacco. He beats people up. What’s worse: he beats people up in order to impress a woman and win her favors. And so on. Even so, except for the pipe smoking, the humorously violent understanding of courtship and love, and a small number of very unfortunate panels showing dehumanized monkeyfied African tribesmen hunting human prey in the bush, there is very little in these pages that will strike the modern reader as completely alien; there’s much less of that kind of stuff than you would find in just about any other specimin of popular entertainment from the era. These strips actually seem more contemporary than the much more famous and widely-distributed animated cartoons featuring Popeye, for example. For one thing, Popeye’s relationship with Olive Oyl, and his rivalry with her other suitors, is not at the center of the story (this may change in future volumes, I don’t know). There’s no spinach. There’s no Bluto. Or Brutus. Or whatever his name was supposed to be. There’s more than one, you know, plot. Characters have interesting motivations and relationships. And so on. The stories collected here are generally more complex, less predictable, and, well, just a whole lot better, than the animated cartoons — more like Seinfeld with a crusty, seafaring, middle-aged, super-powered protagonist, and without the urban focus and the laugh-track, than like anything else. Um. Yeah. I think that made sense. Anway, before Popeye came on board, Thimble Theater was apparently a kind of hybrid between an adventure strip, a family situation comedy (featuring the Oyls — Castor and his sister Olive, their parents and hangers-on), and a romance/dating gag strip — and at least through the duration of this volume, it remained so. That’s a good thing. If you like comics at all, of any kind, you’ll like these comics. They’re a lot of fun to read.

That said, I can’t recommend Popeye Volume 1 to the casual reader. The presentation and format are just entirely too damned deluxe. It’s a big, big book. You can’t take it to the coffee shop, or read it on the bus. It fits no bookbag. You can’t even easily carry it under your arm. If you sit it down on a table or a desk to read it, you have to kind of stand up and hover over the pages, leaning on your hands, craning your head left and right, like a navigator on a wooden frigate, contemplating a map of the stars (which, okay, I guess may be kind of appropriate). Leaning back in your Laz-E-Boy and propping it up on your lap is the only relatively comfortable way to read this monster, and even then you’ll find that it cuts off the circulation below your knees after a couple of hours. I’m totally serious. Or maybe I’m just getting old. I don’t know. Whatever. Given the historical value of the material, and its difficult-to-find status over the past several decades, I understand and appreciate the need to make Segar’s work available in a high-quality, archival, durable edition. Collectors, aficionados of the cartooning form, serious-minded cartoonists, historians, and, especially, libraries should not hesitate to purchase this edition. It is clearly intended for them, and serves their needs well. The oversize format is probably the only one that could have done justice to the Sunday strips printed in the back, for example, allowing them to be seen at their huge original size, along with the extra matter (a secondary strip of Segar’s) that originally accompanied them in the papers. I understand this. I know. Segar’s work must be made available to future generations in as faithful a manner as possible. But, yeah, the interests of the average reader would best be served by something smaller, more convenient, and maybe a lot less expensive. Popeye belongs to the people. The people demand their Popeye! Let’s hope that, in addition to continuing this fine, archival project, Fantagraphics, or someone else, is able in the near future to put out some reasonably-sized paperbacks collecting the same material. Yes, I know they did so in the nineties. Maybe they can release those again? Pretty please.

The image in this post, a detail from Popeye Volume 1 by E. C. Segar, is copyright (c) 2007 King Features Syndicate.

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The posts where I link to other reviews of books I’ve reviewed myself have turned out to be the most popular things on this blog (I don’t know what that says about my own writing skills … hurm). Since I can’t possibly write a good, solid, in-depth review of every notable book that comes out, and since there are actually some fantastic graphic novels that I won’t be reviewing as a matter of policy (more on that in a minute), I’ve decided to expand the link-blogging to reviews of books that haven’t actually appeared on GNR. I still hope and plan to post at least one in-depth review of my own every week, too. Plus more. Um. Maybe.

Yesterday, Don McPherson posted a decidedly mixed review of K. Thor Jensen’s Red Eye, Black Eye on his Eye On Comics blog:

Red Eye, Black Eye is a surprisingly engaging read, but it’s also a surprisingly quick one. I powered through the entire volume rather quickly as I killed some time waiting for the girlfriend to arrive home for supper one evening. With a price tag of almost 20 bucks US, readers will likely expect something a little meatier, something that will occupy a little more of their time. [...] Mind you, while it may not occupy time, it does occupy the mind. … more

Last Tuesday, Brian Heater did the comparative review thing over at Daily Cross Hatch: Nick Bertozzi’s The Salon vs. Jason’s The Left Bank Gang. Bertozzi wins this round:

Nick Bertozzi’s The Salon has a lot with The Left Bank Gang, centering around a fictionalized account of a group of avant-garde painters (art patrons Gertrude and Leo Stein also play pivotal roles, the former of whom, incidentally has a minor part in Jason’s book), living in Paris in 1907. Where Jason’s book abruptly transitions into a noirish robbery caper, the action in Bertozzi’s is more akin to a supernatural murder mystery. The Salon is also more successful in framing its own plotline—unlike Jason, Bertozzi feels fairly confident in the direction that his story is going to go in, from the outset. … more

I won’t be reviewing Red Eye, Black Eye or The Salon here at GNR, because both of these graphic novels were originally serialized on a website that I happen to own, and I try to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest when that happens. At some point I will probably get over myself and break that rule. But not yet.

I also won’t be reviewing Leland Myrick’s Missouri Boy, but not for the same reason. I read it; I liked it okay, I guess; I just couldn’t think of anything interesting to say about it.

Fortunately, Elizabeth Chou, also writing for Daily Cross Hatch, comes through with a lengthy review:

Leland Myrick’s autobiographical Missouri Boy is like a shoebox of snapshots, chronologically organized and punctuated subtly by various coming-of-age moments in his life. Each story is awash in the subdued tones of nostalgia and set at a distance by dreamy, poetic narration and sparse dialogue. … more

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Following up on this week’s feature review.

Megan Kelso, though well-known enough among literary comics aficionados, wasn’t quite as familiar to casual readers when The Squirrel Mother and Other Stories came out eight months ago (I’m that far behind! I started writing my review when the book was new! I swear!) as she has become since. Having your next comic serialized in The New York Times Magazine — and made available for reading online at the GooglePageRank-arrific nytimes.com domain — will do wonders for any career.

I was able to find quite a bit of conversation out there, more than I’ve found for many of the other books I’ve reviewed to date, precisely because I’m so far behind. That’s one advantage to taking such a long hiatus; the rest of the web has had plenty of time to speak its mind.

Much of what I found, though, struck me as strangely curt and cursory, regardless of whether the opinion proffered turned out to be positive or negative in the end. Maybe Kelso’s minimalism has rubbed off on the reviewers? (No danger of that here at GNR, my friends, never fear! We never saw a ten dollar word we wouldn’t gladly pay you twenty for).

For example, there’s this from Larry Hosken:

Here is my Book Report on The Squirrel Mother: I didn’t understand these Megan Kelso comics. … more

Don’t bother following the link. There’s not a lot more to it than that. I only included it because the stilted diction, for some reason, pleased me. Kind of Andy Kaufmanesque or whatever. I can just see him staring at the floor, clearing his throat, standing up on his tiptoes, then coming back down, before delivering his solitary line. Maybe in a fake eastern European accent, even.

From Hebdomeros, a subdued appreciation:

[T]hose readers willing to dig into the layers of subtext will find a unique vision well worth experiencing. … more

Precocious Curmudgeon:

Kelso varies her storytelling approach as well. Sometimes a piece is a straightforward examination of an experience. In others, she invests them with expressive visual imagination, taking the mundane someplace wilder. The book as a whole shows Kelso to be a storyteller of wonderful range. … more

red / radio / music:

It’s too bad that the writing was not up to the level of the art. … more

Earth Minds Are Weak:

The book is named after the first story in the collection, a gorgeously depicted piece about… well, it’s a bit hard for me to say. … more

See what I mean? Lots of people are talking … but they’re not talking a lot. That doesn’t mean that the book didn’t have an impact on them, of course. Sometimes the best works of art leave us without words. For example, Justin Fox, the “Earth Minds are Weak” blogger quoted immediately above, went on several months later to declare the book his #1 favorite comic of 2006.

Kelso’s collection makes it to # 4 in the Panels and Pixels countdown:

This collection of short stories proves she’s not a “promising new artist” but someone new cartoonists can look up to. … more

… and nabs the # 5 spot at Comics Comics:

Pitch-perfect cartooning and closely observed tales of family, history and America make this a gem-like volume. … more

The Seattlest screams, in its headline, that “Squirrel Mother Screams with Subtlety,” then goes on:

Far too many semiautobiographical graphic stories fail to connect with their audience, adopting an artistic style incongruent with the subject or navel-gazing to a degree that renders the story largely masturbatory. Kelso avoids those trappings and creates a collection that resonates with the audience on an undefinable level, plucking emotional strings through simple artwork and in most cases a minimal amount of text. … more

Spurgeon puts it at # 34 in his own year-end round-up:

Kelso is our greatest working choreographer of cartoons, the way she makes her figures move and relate to one another while in conversation. …more

He also interviews Kelso, though all they talk about is Seattle, and also, a little bit, about how she doesn’t draw a lot of outdoor scenes. Blah. The interview was apparently commissioned by a Seattle tourist rag, so that’s probably the reason for the lack of depth. It would have worked fine in its originally intended context.

CindyCenter.com offers a choppily-edited audio interview in MP3 form where she talks about not discovering comics, and the need to create them, until she was in her twenties — something of a rarity in the field. Most cartoonists know from adolescence or earlier, it seems. It’s too bad that the questions sound like they were recorded separately from the answers, and the answers sound like Kelso is responding to deeper, more penetrating questions than the ones we actually hear the interviewer asking (though, to be fair, the interviewer does warm up later in the course of the interview, and sound like he’s from the same planet as his subject, maybe even in the same room, or at least on the same phone call, so there was probably just a recording glitch at the beginning that made him re-record, and in the process simplify, his half of the conversation; I’ve done it; every podcaster has).

Finally, Rob Clough, over at SeqArt, gives us a nice, thick review to chew on, the deepest and most compelling analysis I could find (other than my own, of course), placing the book in the context of Kelso’s career so far, declaring Squirrel Mother to be the end of her apprenticeship, the beginning of her mastery:

What was the key that allowed Kelso to go from being good to great? I would say that it was a simple refinement of her style. She works in the clear-line tradition but like many young artists, didn’t always trust in that economy of that line. Some of her earliest work (like the “Bottlecap” stories from GIRLHERO) is overrendered, and she relies on extraneous blacks in some other panels. In The Squirrel Mother, those early process difficulties disappear. [...] I read the collection three times before writing this review, and I found myself getting more out of not just the stories themselves each time, but finding myself impressed by how the stories were sequenced. … more

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