Review: THE ENVIOUS SIBLINGS and Other Morbid Nursery Rhymes

THE ENVIOUS SIBLINGS AND OTHER MORBID NURSERY RHYMES
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY – @wwnorton

AUTHOR/ILLUSTRATOR: Landis Blair
ISBN: 978-0-393-65162-1; hardcover – 7.3” x 7.3” (October 8, 2019)
240pp, Color, $20.00 U.S., $27.00 CAN

The Envious Siblings and Other Morbid Nursery Rhymes is a book collection of nursery rhymes and cartoons from comics artist, cartoonist, and book illustrator, Landis Blair.  A hardcover book (7.3” x 7.3” dimensions/trim size), The Envious Siblings and Other Morbid Nursery Rhymes is a collection of rhyming vignettes or stories.  Each vignette/story is divided into multiple verses; each verse has its own page featuring a cartoon that illustrates the contents of the verse.

The Envious Siblings and Other Morbid Nursery Rhymes (which I will occasionally shorten to The Envious Siblings) contains eights vignettes/stories.  They are “The Malicious Playground,” “My Suspicious Sister,” “The Envious Siblings,” “The Refinement Tree,” “The Awful Underground,” “Honourable Beasts,” “Grounded,” and “Danse Macabre.”

I am not familiar with Landis Blair's prior work, but it is obvious that he is influenced by Edward Gorey, the American writer and artist whose drawings were macabre and unsettling.  In fact, Blair holds Gorey for special notice in the acknowledgments page at the back of the book.  The contents of The Envious Siblings can also be favorable compared to the work of Roald Dahl (renowned author of children's books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), Quentin Blake (children's author best known for illustrating Dahl's books), Charles Addams (legendary cartoonist at The New Yorker and creator of what became known as “The Addams Family”), Shel Silverstein (beloved children's book author and illustrator), and Tim Burton (director and filmmaker known for his 30+ year career making films with macabre sensibilities).  I would also add to that list cartoonist and comic book creator, Richard Sala, who is far lesser known than the aforementioned authors and visual artists, but whose work is also true to the spirit of Edward Gorey.

I have seen the term “pop macabre” used to describe the work of Charles Addams and Tim Burton.  I assume that the term separates Burton and Addams from horror novelists like Stephen King, Peter Straub, and Clive Barker, “masters of the macabre” who emerged in the last quarter-century of the twentieth century.  The authors' novels were sometimes both macabre and violent, while Addams and Burton's work is macabre, but gentle and humorous.

I would call Landis Blair more “pop gruesome” than “pop macabre,” but the stories and cartoons in The Envious Siblings are both gleefully gruesome and grotesquely macabre.  They have a kind of absurdist horror to them that, to me, redefines the nursery rhyme, the fairy tale, and the folk tale.  Or perhaps what I see as a redefinition is actually a cartoonist and visual artistic voice that is truly unique.  Edward Gorey may have inspired Blair, but Blair has gone on to create his own aesthetic, the way American blues music inspired The Rolling Stones' Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards, before Jagger and Richards took those influences and invented their own sound for the Stones.

I want to pick a favorite story in The Envious Siblings, and I actually think a few of the stories here would get Landis Blair jailed in countries ruled by authoritarian regimes.  First, there is the pantomime comic strip (of sorts), “The Awful Underground,” a sort of Brothers Grimm fairy tale-warning about getting lost.  It mixes a bit of Shel Silverstein and Maurice Sendak and has a blood-chilling ending.  I really don't want to spoil this, so I'll say no more.

Right after that is “Honourable Beasts,” a Satanic Aesop's Fable about talking to strangers.  The ending is ghastly, just not the way you think it would after reading the first 15 pages of this 16-page tale.  And right after that (dear Lord) is “Grounded,” a middle-grade (not nursery) rhyme about an incorrigible child in a test of wills with his exasperated and none-too-bright parents.  About that ending, all I can say is “Wow!”

All the stories here are delightfully macabre, but these three are the little monsters that stand out.  If every music album needs one great song, The Envious Siblings and Other Morbid Nursery Rhymes has three great rhymes/songs and that makes the entire book a great work of the macabre and the gruesome.

If you like Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake, Charles Addams, Shel Silverstein, and Tim Burton... and Richard Sala, do I have a book of cartoons for you!  The Envious Siblings and Other Morbid Nursery Rhymes is a must-have, and its author, Landis Blair is a revelation.  Encore! Encore!, you sick and devious new master of the macabre.

10 out of 10

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"

https://www.landisblair.com/
https://twitter.com/LandisBlair
https://www.instagram.com/landisblair/


The text is copyright © 2019 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

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Book Review: ET TU, BRUTE? The Deaths of the Roman Emperors

ET TU, BRUTE? THE DEATHS OF THE ROMAN EMPERORS
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY – @wwnorton

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

AUTHOR/ILLUSTRATOR: Jason Novak
ISBN: 978-0-393-63573-7; hardcover – 5.6” x 7.3” (June 12, 2018)
208pp, Color, $16.95 U.S., $22.95 CAN

Et Tu, Brute? The Deaths of the Roman Emperors is a book of cartoons from cartoonist, Jason Novak, whose work has appeared in such periodicals and journals as Harper's, The New Yorker, and the Paris Review, to name a few.  Et Tu, Brute? is a work of history told via cartoons, and it compiles the deaths of all the Roman emperors, from the establishment of the Roman Empire (27 BC) to the fall of Rome and the end of the “Western Empire” (476 AD).

Did you know that Julius Caesar was not the first emperor of Rome.  Caesar had proclaimed himself provisional dictator, but he was murdered before the role of Roman emperor was codified.  Still, Caesar's brutal fate and his ghost seemed to have haunted the role of emperor, as the first emperor, Augustus, who was Caesar's adopted nephew, Octavian, would learn.  When the Roman Republic became an empire (27 BC), it got an emperor, and suddenly Rome, what it was – body and soul – became embodied in a single frail and imperfect human being.

And many of those emperors found their lives snuffed out, often murdered by colleagues and fellow citizens, the way Julius Caesar was.  See Nero stabbing himself in the throat.  Witness Tiberius smothered in his sleep by his successor.  Cartoon Caligula is killed by his own praetorian guard in a single cartoon illustration.

Et Tu, Brute? The Deaths of the Roman Emperors chronicles the death by murder, disease, mutiny, war, etc., and by unknown causes of every emperor.  It begins with Augustus being poisoned by his wife in 14 A.D. to the mysterious fate of Romulus Augustus after the fall of Rome in 476 A.D. and the end of the Rome's “Western Empire.”  Et Tu, Brute? carries readers on a bloody romp through the first five centuries of the Roman Empire, but it is a journey illustrated in over ninety 5.6” × 7.3” cartoons, each one with a wry and wicked sense of humor in depicting the demise of an emperor and occasionally a would-be-emperor.

I am a huge fan of the kind of humor and political cartoons found in magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals.  I especially love the singe-panel vignettes and single-page illustrations found in men's magazines such as Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, and the Humorama line.  If I had to pick a favorite periodical for cartoons it would be the venerable magazine, The New Yorker, and my favorite cartoonist is the late and eternally great Charles Addams, one of the grand old masters of The New Yorker.

In Et Tu, Brute? The Deaths of the Roman Emperors, James Novak's cartoons recall the work of a author and illustrator who plied his trade in a vein similar to Addams, the late master, Edward Gorey.  Novak's drawing and graphic style are more about sensibility rather than about composition, in this case a macabre sensibility.  Novak is at once mercurial and then, representational.  His compositions erratically balance sparse line work and brushstrokes that slap ink around as if by a drunken cartoonist's hand.  And that works for his subject matter, particularly in Et Tu, Brute?

This book is both witty and morbid, but there is power in the way Novak draws these cartoons, in what he presents to his readers.  He conveys that fate is fickle and life and existence – if they can be embodied or personified – have a twisted sense of humor.  Dear reader, you don't have to know much about the Roman Empire to like this book.  You can simply enjoy Et Tu, Brute? The Deaths of the Roman Emperors because cartoon history is a great way to learn a little history and because this cartoon history is a macabre blast to read.

8 out of 10

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


The text is copyright © 2018 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

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Review: A CONTRACT WITH GOD - Centennial Edition

A CONTRACT WITH GOD And Other Tenement Stories
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY – @wwnorton

[This review was originally posted by Patreon.]

CARTOONIST: Will Eisner
ISBN: 978-0-393-60918-9; hardcover (March 7, 2017)
224pp, B&W, $25.95 U.S., $34.95 CAN

Introduction by Scott McCloud; December 2004 Preface by Will Eisner

A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories is an original graphic novel written and drawn by legendary comic book creator, Will Eisner (1917 to 2005).  It was first published in 1978 and is composed of four comic book short stories that revolve around several poor Jewish characters who live in a tenement apartment building in New York City, apparently sometime between World War I and World War II.

A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories (often referred to only as A Contract with God) was not the first graphic novel published in North America, but it was a seminal graphic novel because of its influence on other comic book creators to produce work that was more ambitious than standard superhero fare and children's comics, both in terms of content and format.

2017 marks the centennial of Will Eisner's birth.  In celebration of what would have been Eisner's 100th birthday, W.W. Norton & Company is publishing what is essentially a “Will Eisner Centennial Edition” of A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories.  This new edition is a hardcover book and contains the four stories from A Contract with God reproduced in high-resolution from Eisner's original art boards.  This book also includes “Introduction to the Centennial Edition” by Scott McCloud (a comic book creator and friend of Eisner); the essay “A Brief History of A Contract with God;” and Will Eisner's “Preface,” written in 2004 for a 2005 edition of the book published by Norton.

The narrative of A Contract with God is a short story cycle of four stories.  The stories are mostly set in a tenement at 55 Dropsie Avenue, the Bronx, New York.  Tenements were apartment buildings built to accommodate the flood of immigrants that flowed into New York after World War I.

The title story, “A Contract with God,” opens the book.  It focuses on Frimme Hersh, a devout Hebrew man who grieves the loss of his adopted daughter, Rachele.  Hersh believes Rachele's death is a violation of his “contract with God,” violated by the Almighty himself.  Hersh rebels against his previous life, but years later decides he needs another contract with God.

Eisner's creation of the entirety of A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories was driven by his grief over the loss of his own daughter, Alice, but especially the story, “A Contract with God.”  I think the central message of this story is about man's foolish belief that he can actually not only initiate a contract with God or eternity, but also dictate terms and conditions.  I cannot tell if Eisner wishes to convey acceptance or resignation to fate and God, but the sense of futility is obvious here, while also being wearily hopeful.  Life goes on...

The second story, “The Street Singer,” is set in the 1930s and focuses on Marta Maria (not her birth name), an opera singer who long ago abandoned her career, and a street singer named Eddie.  Their chance meeting gives birth to hopes of a career revival for one and a debut for the other, but a simple error on both their parts endangers their bold plans.

Other than the 10 pages that depict Marta and Eddie's meeting and their sexual and professional consummation, I am not crazy about this story, although I like it.  However, those ten pages contain some of Eisner's best page and individual panel design of his late career as a graphic novelist, especially that two-panel page in which Eddie walks into Marta apartment and then, enters her boudoir.

The third story is “The Super,” which is about Mr. Scruggs, the mean superintendent of the tenement at 55 Dropsie Avenue and his fateful encounter with Rosie, a poppet who might be one of the youngest femme fatales ever in comic books.  I am not a big fan of this story either, but it has some of Eisner's best cartooning of the human figure an exemplified in Mr. Scruggs.

In his post World War II work on his foundational comic book, The Spirit, Eisner frequently showed off his dexterity in cartooning the human figure in motion.  He matches that with the “The Super.”  This story opens with two masterful full-page illustrations, one suggesting Scruggs walking and the other a magnificent pose showing off Mr. Scrugg's physicality and his ability to intimidate using the threat of his physical prowess.

The final of the four stories is “Cookalein.”  The term refers to a kind of resort farm in the Catskill Mountains; 150 miles north of New York City.  City residents went to such places for summer vacations, and in this story, a wife and her two sons travel to a “cookalein” one summer.  However, marital stress lines between the wife and her husband, who will follow his family to the “cookalein” sometime later, grow wider, while the older of their two sons, Willie, has a life altering experience one hot summer night.

I have lost track of how many times I have re-read and perused all four of these stories in whole and in part, especially “Cookalein,” which is one of my all-time favorite Eisner works.  I had long hoped that Eisner would expand on this story, making it a larger, self-contained work or perhaps as a long-running serial featuring all the main characters from the story.

Over my many years of reading articles about A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories, I have come to understand that some comic historians and aficionados consider this work to be the pinnacle of Eisner's career.  I don't.  I consider Eisner's post-WWII work on The Spirit, his comic book published as a newspaper insert during the 1940s and early 1950s, to be his best work.  I do think that A Contract with God is the height of Eisner's comics that are his personal expressions, both as a storyteller and as an artist working in the comics medium.  This graphic novel may also be the best blending of Eisner's expression of pre-World War II Jewish American culture in New York City with his own history as a boy and then as a young man before WWII.

I can say that I love A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories even with my mixed feelings about some of the stories.  In the times that I have read or looked over A Contract with God since Will Eisner's passing, I find myself missing him something fierce... although I never met him.  Anyone who reads graphic novels has not really read graphic novels until he has read A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories.

A

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You


The text is copyright © 2017 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for syndication rights and fees.

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Review: COUSIN JOSEPH: A Graphic Novel

COUSIN JOSEPH: A Graphic Novel
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY/Liveright – @wwnorton and @LiverightPub

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

CARTOONIST:  Jules Feiffer
ISBN: 978-1-63149-065-1; hardcover (August 3, 2016)
128pp, Color, $27.95 U.S., $35.95 CAN

Born in 1929, Jules Feiffer is an American syndicated cartoonist, author, playwright, screenwriter, and comics creator.  He may be best known for his long-running comic strip, entitled Feiffer, which ran for 42 years in the venerable New York City weekly, The Village Voice.

Two years ago, Liveright, an imprint of W.W. Norton & Company, published Kill My Mother: A Graphic Novel, a brand-new, Film-Noir inspired graphic novel by Feiffer.  Kill My Mother opens in Bay City, California in the year 1933.  The story revolves around a woman named Elsie Hannigan and her estranged teenage daughter, Annie, who hates her mother.  Elsie is a widower, following the murder of her husband, Sam Hannigan, a policeman.  Elsie's life is hectic and complicated.  Her boss is her late husband's former partner, Neil Hammond, a hard-drinking, has-been private detective who takes shady jobs.  Hammond ends up murdered, the beginning of a mystery spread over a decade.

Feiffer's new comic book is entitled Cousin Joseph: A Graphic Novel, the follow-up to Kill My Mother.  Cousin Joseph is set in Bay City in 1931, two years before Kill My Mother opens, and it reveals why and how Sam Hannigan was killed.  Detective Sam Hannigan is a bare-knuckled, tough, no-nonsense cop who does not hesitate to use his fists to resolve a case or a dispute.  Sam is also a bag-man for a mysterious Hollywood power broker that he knows only as “Cousin Joseph.”  Sam delivers payoffs to other Hollywood types for Cousin Joseph, and if they don't comply with Cousin Joseph's demands, Sam also delivers brutal beatings.

Bay City is also roiling with labor unrest.  Hardy Knox, owner of the cannery, Knox Works, is facing a strike by his employees who are members of a union led by Billy Doyle.  Billy and Sam go way back, but Sam may have to call out his union-busting team, The Red Squad.  Sam knows that he is on a mission, but it may be the wrong mission – one that will make him enemies – some close to home and some quite deadly.

The first time I tried to read Kill My Mother, I stopped after a few pages.  I avoided the galley/review copy that the publisher Liveright has sent to me.  I finally forced myself to read Kill My Mother and ended up loving it.  I had no such problems with Cousin Joseph, for which I also received a galley, as I dove right into book.

Cousin Joseph is a quintessential American graphic novel and comic book, something rare.  Jules Feiffer not only tackles the complexities of the American dream, he also illustrates how Americans see it differently.  He even delves into the notion which some American have that the American dream is not for everyone who lives in America.  Only certain people can have the best of America, these people believe.  Everyone else:  the second class citizens, those with the wrong skin color, those who worship differently; is of an undesirable ethnic origin.  Those people have to know their place, and it ain't anywhere near the top.  For some, America is about dreams of a place at the top of society and joy of finally reaching that pinnacle.  For others, there is struggle and prejudice, and that is the way it should be, almost as if it were part of a natural order in a certain kind of America.

Years ago, I heard an old white lady tell someone that she loved movies like A Few Good Men (1992) because they reflected the best of us (America).  I like Cousin Joseph because it skins the American myth raw.  This comic book is about the story Americans tell themselves and the whole world, but Americans have no plan to make that myth the real thing.

A

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


The text is copyright © 2016 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

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Review: In Search of Lost Time: SWANN'S WAY

IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME: SWANN'S WAY
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY/Liveright – @wwnorton and @LiverightPub

ORIGINAL STORY: Marcel Proust (novel)
CARTOONIST: Stéphane Heuet
TRANSLATION: Arthur Goldhammer
ISBN: 978-1-63149-035-4; hardcover (July 13, 2015)
240pp, Color, $26.95 U.S., $32.00 CAN

Stéphane Heuet is a French comics artist, who is known for his work in Franco-Belgian comics, which are called bandes dessinées (or “BD”).  Two decades ago, Heuet made a big leap in his career, which was also a huge risk, and this career-changing decision was connected to Marcel Proust.

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust, best known as Marcel Proust (1871-1922), was a  French novelist, critic, and essayist.  He is considered one of the greatest authors of all time, and his prominent work is À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time).  This monumental novel was published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927.

The novel first gained fame in English under the title, Remembrance of Things Past.  This lengthy work has a theme of involuntary memory, and it follows the narrator, a middle-aged writer, as he recalls his past, the people he knew, and the places his visited.

In the early 1990s, Stéphane Heuet, decided to adapt In Search of Lost Time into comics form.  In 1998, he published Combray (Editions Delcourt), what he hoped would be the first of about a dozen large-sized, hardcover comic books (graphic novels?), the number it would take for him to adapt In Search of Lost Time into comics.  As of this writing, Heuet has published five books in this series.  In 2003, NBM Publishing released an English edition of Combray in North America.

The original prose Swann's Way is the first of the seven books that comprises Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.  Last year, in July, Liveright, an imprint of W.W. Norton and Company, published the large-size, full-color hardcover, In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way.  This book collects Heuet's comics adaptation of Swann's Way.  Liveright's In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way is also an English-language edition of the French comics hardcover, Du cote de chez Swann: Edition Integral (Editions Delcourt), which also collects Heuet's comics adaptation of Swann's Way.

In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way opens with “Combray,” in which the narrator, an aspiring writer, evokes the village in which he grew up, Combray.  This opening section includes the famous “episode of the madeleine.”  While visiting his mother, the narrator has tea with her and eats a madeleine, a small pastry in the shape of a cockle shell.  The taste of the pastry causes the narrator’s memories to return to his boyhood (the “involuntary memory”).

The second part, “Swann in Love,” tells the story of the romance between the aristocratic Charles Swann and Odette de Crecy, a prostitute.  Swann's infatuation with Odette causes him much torment, especially once he comes to believe that she cannot stand his presence and is also having an affair with the Comte de Forcheville.  Although he comes to believe that Odette is beneath his station, Swann cannot stop thinking about her and wanting her.

The third part, “Place Names: The Name,” details the narrator’s idealized boyhood love for Charles and Mme (Odette) Swann's daughter, Gilberte.  This part also deals with the narrator's preference for the manner of women's fashion, make-up, and hair as it was when he was a boy in the past, as he compares it to the way things are in the present, now that he is an adult.

While researching Marcel Proust, Stephane Heuet, and this graphic novel, I found a New York Times article from 1998 about the controversy that ensued in France after the release of Heuet's first In Search of Lost Time graphic novel, Combray.  I don't know why I found myself surprised by the controversy, as the French are so open-minded...

Anyway, it took me a long time to read this (in addition to the fact that, at one point, I misplaced my reader's copy).  I am assuming that all the dialogue (word balloons) and exposition (caption boxes) that Heuet uses in his comics adaptation come directly from Proust's original text.  Proust's winding prose reads as if someone took Shakespeare and stuck every line together to form one incredibly long run-on sentence with little to no punctuation.  Yet Proust, at least in this comic book, is not abstract.  The language is meant to be evocative, and I found that certain words go together to form phrases which in turn are meant to evoke involuntary memories in my mind.  It is as if I were remembering something that not only did I not experience, but may also not even be real.

And I like that.  I think Heuet's adaptation works best if the reader can unravel the layers of the text.  Some words are mere flights of fantasy, while others are metaphorical.  Some deal with memory and are, therefore, highly descriptive.  In “Swann in Love” I found myself having to reread portions of the text to discover when the story was focusing on the matter at hand:  character, personality, relationship, conflict, and narrative.  I think the translation of Heuet's original French text into English by Arthur Goldhammer is likely the best a translation of this can be.  It is reader-friendly, but emphasizes the beauty of the prose.

It is also easy to get lost in Stephane Heuet's beautiful art.  His “clean line” (or “clear line”) style recalls the work of Tintin creator, Hergé, and it gives the story a sense of wonder and of adventure.  That makes this journey into the narrator's memory a joyful trip.  I was never bored; I was always curious about where this story was taking me.  Honestly, In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way is not the easiest read, but it is a remarkable book, and the map of Paris and illustrated Proust family tree that comes with this version of the book helps.

A-

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


The text is copyright © 2016 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

Review: FATHERLAND - Original Graphic Novel

FATHERLAND
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY/Liveright – @wwnorton and @LiverightPub

CARTOONIST: Nina Bunjevac
ISBN: 978-0-63149-031-6; hardcover (January 19, 2015)
160pp, B&W, $22.95 U.S., $26.99 CAN

Fatherland is a 2015 graphic novel written and drawn by Canadian illustrator and comic book creator, Nina Bunjevac.  Fatherland is a memoir and also a history of Bunjevac's family and of the Balkans, the homeland of Bunjevac's immediate family.  Much of this graphic novel's story also focuses on Nina's father, Peter Bunjevac.

In 1975, Nina's mother, Sally, was weary of her husband, Peter's alcoholism.  However, she was also increasingly fearful of Peter's growing political fanaticism.  He had connected with an organization of Serbian nationalists in Canada and the United States who were determined to overthrow the communist government of Yugoslavia.

Sally took two-year-old Nina and her older daughter, Sarah, and moved to Zemun, Yugoslavia to live with her parents, Momirka and Spasoja.  Sally told Peter that it was only going to be a short visit, but he would not let her take their oldest child, a son, Petey, on the trip.  With his wife and two daughters gone, Peter Bunjevac continued his activities, as his family's present, just as his family's past, become ensnared in the history of the fatherland.

Above the title on the cover of Fatherland are the words, “A Family History.”  This wonderful and engaging graphic novel is indeed a family history, but this comic narrative insists that families are not simply individual units of people that exist outside of the goings-on and happenings of the world.  Indeed, Fatherland insists that the creation of a family is firmly rooted in the history of land or nation.  A family's conception can only exist by the actions of the past, which act as a kind of fertile plain or earth from which relationships spring.

Reading Fatherland, there were times when I could not separate the story of the Balkans from the story of Peter Bunjevac's family and ancestors.  I think that is what Nina Bunjevac wants.  She makes 150+ pages of graphical storytelling seem like an epic novel of family and history spread out over two continents and taking place in several nations.

In Fatherland, her exquisitely rendered black and white drawings are like a marriage of cross-hatching and stippling.  They have a quality that is photographic, dream-like, and earthy.  That may be why this true story felt so real to me.  I had not heard of the Toronto-based Nina Bunjevac until W.W. Norton & Company sent me a galley/advanced reading copy of Fatherland.  Still, her storytelling welcomed me into the part of her family story that she wanted to reveal to readers through Fatherland.

By the end of it, the loss of life that is the center of Fatherland stung.  Why should it?  I don't know these people, but Nina Bunjevac made me care enough about them to be hurt.  So, readers looking for heartfelt biographical graphic novels and graphic memoirs will want to visit Fatherland.

A

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


The text is copyright © 2015 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for syndication rights and fees.

Review: KILL MY MOTHER: A Graphic Novel

KILL MY MOTHER: A Graphic Novel
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY/Liveright – @wwnorton and @LiverightPub

CARTOONIST:  Jules Feiffer
ISBN: 978-0-87140-314-8; hardcover (August 25, 2014)
160pp, Color/2-Color, $27.95 U.S., $32.95 CAN

Born in 1929, Jules Feiffer won a 1961 Academy Award for his animated short film, Munro.  In 1969 and 1970, his plays, Little Murders and The White House Murder Case, each won Obie and Outer Circle Critics Awards.  Feiffer won the Pulitzer Prize for political cartoons in 1986.

Jules Feiffer is American author, playwright, screenwriter, and comics creator.  He is also a syndicated cartoonist and may be best known for his long-running comic strip, Feiffer, which ran for 42 years in The Village Voice.

Now, the former teenage assistant to comics legend, Will Eisner, has produced the first graphic novel of his long and distinguished career, entitled Kill My Mother: A Graphic Novel.  This Film-Noir inspired comic book pays loving homage to the pulp-inspired films and comic strips that Feiffer loved as a youth, according to press material included with this original hardcover graphic novel's release.  Kill My Mother centers on five formidable women who are fatefully linked to a has-been, alcoholic, and lecherous private detective.

Kill My Mother opens in Bay City in the year 1933.  The story introduces Elsie Hannigan and her estranged teenaged daughter, Annie, who hates her mother.  Elsie is a widower, following the murder of her husband, Sam, a policeman.  Elsie's life is hectic and complicated.  Her boss is Neil Hammond, a hard-drinking, has-been private detective who takes shady jobs.

Hammond's most recent case arrives when a mystery woman, who identifies herself as Ruby Taylor, walks into the office, and asks Hammond to find Patricia Hughes.  This woman is a missing high school drama teacher with whom Ms. Taylor once had a close relationship.  Hammond knows that Taylor is lying about much (if not all) of what she tells him, but he takes the case anyway.  And he ends up murdered.

Ten years later, in 1943, Elsie is living in Hollywood.  She is the Executive Vice President of the Department of Image Security and Maintenance at Pinnacle Studios.  Basically, Elsie does damage control for the studio's movie stars.

Meanwhile, her daughter is now Ann Hannigan, and she is the single-mother of a young son, Sammy Hannigan.  Ann is also the creator and writer of the popular radio show, “Shut up, Artie.”  Of course, the series is based on her ex-boyfriend, Artie, but there is a problem with the wildly popular series.  America is at war, and Annie's former teen punching bag in no longer known as “Artie.”  He is now Captain Arthur Fulsom of the United States Marines, and he is a decorated World War II hero who is still fighting in the Pacific theater and who does not like the show.

Both mother and daughter discover that their pasts and their current jobs are about to clash in unexpected ways.  People from their respective and shared pasts either reemerge with new identities or with their true identities revealed.  Also, Elsie may be finally able to uncover a murderer.  This is all headed for an explosive conclusion that begins on the island of Tarawa, where war rages.

To be honest, the first time I tried to read Kill My Mother, I stopped after a few pages.  I avoided the galley/review copy that the publisher (Liveright, an imprint of W.W. Norton & Company) sent me.  I finally forced myself to read Kill My Mother, although I did not think that it would amount to very much.

Dear readers, you humble and favorite comic book reviewer was so wrong.  In the fourth chapter of this comic book, the first femme fatale enters the story, and Kill My Mother explodes.  From that point on, I tore through the story.  I didn't want it to end.  I am attracted to this comic book because of its Film-Noir and detective fiction influences.  At the beginning the book, Feiffer dedicates Kill My Mother to detective and crime fiction legends, including Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.  He acknowledges Film-Noir and crime film masters, such as John Huston and Howard Hawks, among others.  One might even call Kill My Mother the first Turner Classic Movies (TCM) graphic novel.

I think the biggest influence on Kill My Mother is the late Will Eisner, for whom Feiffer once worked.  In the way the story is executed and the way that the narrative unfolds, Kill My Mother is like a Will Eisner graphic novel.  The characters:  their personalities, the way they act, and their motivations make me think of the kind of characters found in Will Eisner's melodramas like A Contract with God and A Life Force, among others.

Feiffer makes this work distinctly his own through his dazzling graphical storytelling.  His compositions give life to static images.  The cartooning of the human figure makes emotion and motion a tangible thing; motivation and conflict are genuine.  Reading the storytelling that Feiffer tells though drawings and word balloons is also an adventure in plot twists.  You will likely not see some of what is coming, but you will want to see it.

Kill My Mother cannot quite be called “beginner's luck,” as this is not Feiffer's first experience with the comics medium.  However, his first graphic novel makes me want more from him.  Readers looking for comic books worth reading will want Kill My Mother: A Graphic Novel.

A

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


The text is copyright © 2014 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for syndication rights and fees.

Review: Joe Sacco's THE GREAT WAR

THE GREAT WAR
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC. – @norton_fiction

WRITER/ARTIST: Joe Sacco
ISBN: 978-0-393-24039-9; hardcover/slipcase (November 2013)
Black and white, $35.00 U.S., $37.00 CAN

Cartoonist, journalist, and cartoonist-journalist, Joe Sacco, first rose to prominence in the 1990s with his comic book series, Palestine (Fantagraphics Books).  Time Magazine would later name his Safe Area Gorazde the best comic book of the year.

The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme: An Illustrated Panorama is a new work from Sacco.  The Great War is not a graphic novel, comic book, or even a book, as I discovered when publisher, W.W. Norton & Company sent me a copy a few months ago.

The Great War is an illustrated depiction of the first day of The Battle of the Somme.  Also known as the Somme Offensive, this was a World War I battle fought by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire.  The battle took place between July 1 and November 18, 1916 on either side of the River Somme in France.  More than 1,000,000 men were wounded or killed, and 20,000 British soldiers alone were killed with another 40,000 on the just the first day of the battle.

Depicted from the British perspective, The Great War is a 24-foot-long, black and white drawing.  Each foot of the drawing is a “plate,” so there are 24 plates, each plate connected to another.  This drawing is a wordless panorama presented on heavyweight, accordion-fold paper connected on both ends by a hardback cover.

The story that The Great War tells begins with General Douglas Haig, commander in chief of the British Expeditionary Force, leaving church service and moves the massive artillery positions behind the trench lines.  The drawing shows troop movements and also depicts a battle on the morning of July 1st.  It portrays the soldiers going “over the top,” as they leave their trenches to advance towards the Germans.  We see the destruction of the first hour of the attack, and a German barrage that kills many of the Brits before they can leave their trenches.  Then, we see scenes of many soldiers dying, the wounded being moved, and the gathering of the wounded to be treated, with some of them dying before they can be treated.  Finally, the panorama closes on the mass burial of British troops.

The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme: An Illustrated Panorama is packaged in a solid, cardboard, hardcover deluxe slipcase.  This set includes a 16-page booklet with some extras:  an “Author’s Note” (Sacco); a seven-page essay about the first day of the Battle of Somme written by historian and author Adam Hochschild; and Joe Sacco’s annotations for each plate of the panorama.  The dimensions of this slipcase package and its contents are 11.25 inches (width) x 8.5 inches (height) x 1.1 (depth or thickness).

In his author’s notes, Sacco writes that the model for the Great War’s panorama is Manhattan Unfurled, an accordion-style foldout drawing of the city’s skyline drawn by Matteo Pericoli.  In presenting this panorama as a narrative, Sacco writes that he looked to the Bayeux Tapestry, which tells the story of the Norman invasion of England.

Joe Sacco is known for his comic books and graphic novels.  His comic books, which acted as reports and journalism from inside war zones, refugee areas, and occupied territories, were brilliant and harrowing.  Even with his caricature, cartoony, non-realistic style, Sacco could transport you to fantastic and hellish places that were not on other planets, in other dimensions, or someplace else in time.  With his comics, Sacco can depict and portray what is right here on our world with the same gritty realism and drama that a camera can capture.

The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme: An Illustrated Panorama is not a comic book.  Like a comic book, however, it is narrative art or art as a narrative.  It is a powerful piece of work that infuriates me when I think of the human lives wasted and the human potential never met because of WWI.  I look at Sacco’s depictions of these young men dying, and I cannot help but think of the children they would never father or their fellow humans they would never help.

I am hopeful, however, that another author will try to create something like Sacco’s The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme: An Illustrated Panorama.  It takes an enormous and grand story and turns it into a unique, but assessable presentation of art and storytelling, and it is another reason to admire Joe Sacco.

A+

www.wwnorton.com

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux

The text is copyright © 2013 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for syndication rights and fees.

---------------------------------

Book Review: HOW ARE YOU FEELING?

HOW ARE YOU FEELING?
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC. – @norton_fiction

WRITER/ARTIST: David Shrigley
ISBN: 978-0-393-24039-9; hardcover (September 23, 2013)
208pp, Color, $19.95 U.S., $26.50 CAN

British visual artist David Shrigley, B.A. (Hons) has worked as an author, cartoonist, illustrator, photographer, and sculptor.  He has also directed music videos, among them a video for “Good Song” by the musical act, Blur.

How Are You Feeling? At the Center of the Inside of the Human Brain’s Mind is a new book from David Shrigley the author.  It is not a graphic novel or prose novel.  How Are You Feeling? has elements of a diary, sketchbook, and chapbook as a hardcover book.  The book is composed of pictures with text, pages of text, or full page illustrations.  But what is How Are You Feeling? about, you ask?

How Are You Feeling? At the Center of the Inside of the Human Brain’s Mind is a mock self-help book and satirical advice book.  Shrigley takes his readers on a journey between the ears, offering readers his crazy and wacky notions and ideas on how the brain decides what is right and wrong.  Throughout the book, Shrigley offers advice that is shocking and funny, but is also ethically dubious in a “just joshing” sort of way.  Of course, readers who would take this peculiar advice to heart would find themselves living their lives disastrously, although others would find delight in that unpleasantness.

How Are You Feeling? can be a little difficult to explain.  It is simply a crazy advice book about the most vexing aspects of the mind and of the psyche.  The advice is so funny because it goes beyond mere crazy and into the deranged.  It is all deliberately wrong, but in a way that is infectious to one’s imagination.

For instance:  Shrigley’s advice about hearing voices in your head is to obey the voices for a short period and to continue if things work out.  On alcoholism, he writes, “it is terrific fun, of course, but there are problems with it.”  Playing neurologist, Shrigley offers this medical guidance:  “We all have internal wiring. Sometimes this wiring comes loose. . . . Check for loose wires and re-fasten them with glue.”  He even suggests waxing your brain for lasting, healthy-looking brain.

Readers on the lookout for anything that skewers self-help and mental health advice books must have How Are You Feeling? At the Center of the Inside of the Human Brain’s Mind.

A-

www.davidshrigley.com

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


The text is copyright © 2013 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for syndication rights and fees.

-----------------------------

Graphic Novel Review: ON THE ROPES

ON THE ROPES
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC. – @norton_fiction

WRITER: James Vance – @authorjvance
ARTIST: Dan E. Burr
LETTERS/HALFTONES: Debbie Freiberg
COVER: Dan E. Burr
ISBN: 978-0393-06220-5; hardcover (March 2013)
258pp, B&W, $24.95 U.S., $26.50 CAN

James Vance is a comic book writer who has written for comic books such as The Crow and The Spirit. Dan E. Burr is an illustrator who has drawn comics for DC Comics’ Big Book Series. Together, Vance and Burr are pioneers of the American graphic novel because a particular work that was first published in 1988.

On the Ropes: A Novel is a 2013 hardcover, original graphic novel from James Vance and Dan E. Burr. It is the follow-up to their Kings in Disguise, a graphic novel that was originally serialized as a six-issue comic book miniseries and published in 1988 by Kitchen Sink Press. Kings in Disguise was a highly acclaimed comic book. At the time of its first publication, it drew praise from such comic book luminaries as Alan Moore, Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman and Art Spiegelman. It won a Harvey Award and two Eisner Awards.

Set during the Great Depression, Kings in Disguise was the story of 13-year-old Manfred “Freddie” Bloch, a Jewish boy from the fictional town of Marian, California. Freddie and his older brother, Al, are abandoned by their father, a widower who can no longer support his family. In 1932, Freddie takes to the rails – traveling the country by train as a hobo – where he meets Sammy. Calling himself “the King of Spain,” Sammy is a sickly, older hobo who takes Freddie under his wing. Together, they travel through a scarred America, searching for Freddie's father.

On the Ropes opens in 1937, some five years after Freddie Bloch left home. Now 17, Freddie works in a traveling WPA circus. He is apprenticed to the circus’ star attraction, the escape artist, Gordon Corey. The act, called “Gordon Corey Escapes,” is a hangman’s illusion that plays it dangerously close to the edge.

After surviving the Detroit labor riots and violent anti-Communist mobs, Freddie has found home and has even befriended Eileen Finnerty, a gracious young woman who works at the circus. Could she become Freddie’s girlfriend? Before he started working for the circus, Freddie discovered that he has a talent for writing. Thus, he finds a kindred spirit, of sorts, in Barbara Woodruff, a WPA guide book writer who is interested in Gordon’s life story. In her own acerbic way, Woodruff nurtures Freddie’s talent.

Freddie also has a double life. He has joined the Workers Brigade, and he moonlights as a delivery boy for the different groups of workers trying to secretly coordinate their countrywide strikes. As “Jim Nolan,” Freddie receives and sends out secret letters as he travels with the circus. Freddie does not know that Virgil and Chase, two murderous union busters, are trying to find out who the “mailman” is.

Gordon sees that Freddie is playing a dangerous game, and although he is jaded and tired, Gordon wants to see his young assistant make something of himself. Both Freddie and Gordon, however, are haunted by the tragic past, which causes friction between the two. Each man can save the other or bring about their mutual destruction.

I will certainly be among the many reviewers and critics voicing great praise for On the Ropes. In the last decade or so, I have read few comic books that I felt in my heart as I read them. On the Ropes is one of those books. By the end of the year, On the Ropes will likely still be the best comic book or graphic novel of 2013; it will take a miracle for there to be a comic book that knocks On the Ropes off its perch.

James Vance’s story is unflinchingly human, telling a story that captures humankind both in stark contrasts and in perplexing shades of gray. The characters are basically stock characters, but Vance imbues them with humanity. Combine that with the intricacies of the narrative and with the various plot twists and these characters are largely unknowable, but have intriguing quantities that make them worth the effort to know. Vance delves so deeply into plot, setting, and character that his comic book script is more like a novel than a comic book script.

Dan E. Burr’s art is so earnest and heartfelt that it wrings the humanity out of Vance’s story. His compositions are painterly and reminded me of American art movements like American regionalism, social realism, and the Ashcan School. Thus, Burr’s graphical storytelling has more than twice the narrative heft than many of the best graphic novels of the last 30 years.

On the Ropes has a straightforward plot, and past and present are seamless in the way they move the story towards its conclusion. There is such complexity in this graphic novel that the entire time I read it, I thought of On the Ropes as a novel and not as a comic book (not saying comic books are junk).

Of course, the title, On the Ropes, is both literal and figurative. Vance and Burr take on the social and political turmoil of the Great Depression in ways that are intensely poignant and heartrending, but also ardently involved. Vance and Burr aren’t sitting on the sidelines, being dispassionate in recounting the past.

They have turned American history into great drama. This is a hypnotic account of who we were and where we came from that shows us who we are now and why we are where we are. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said, time is neutral. Then, On the Ropes is not only a timeless masterpiece, but it is also quite timely, especially if you’ve been paying attention to where we are now.

A+

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux

Review: The Illicit Happiness of Other People

THE ILLICIT HAPPINESS OF OTHER PEOPLE: A NOVEL
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC. – @norton_fiction

AUTHOR: Manu Joseph
COVER: Jarrod Taylor
ISBN: 978-0-393-33862-1; paperback (January 2013)
350pp, B&W, $15.95 U.S.

For his first novel, Serious Men (2010), Manu Joseph won The Hindu Literary Prize 2010 and the PEN Open Book Award. Joseph, a New Delhi-based newspaper columnist and editor, has written a second novel, The Illicit Happiness of Other People: A Novel, which was recently published. This fictional work follows the efforts of a father to unravel the mystery behind his teenaged son’s suicide.

The Illicit Happiness of Other People is set in the late 1980s in Madras. Madras is the former name of Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu, India. The meat-eating, Catholic, Chackos’ family lives in a Madras housing community, where everyone is a gossip. And the Chackos are the talk of the town. Three years before the story begins, 17-year-old Unni Chacko committed suicide by jumping to his death.

Unni’s father, Ousep Chacko, was a once-promising writer. Now, he is a washed-out journalist who drinks too much at night. When he returns from a night of drinking, he makes a horrid scene for the whole block to hear; then, he stages his own nightly suicide attempt. Mother Mariamma had been an intellect and budding athlete; now she fantasizes about her husband’s death and loudly talks to herself about old wounds and hurts. Twelve-year-old brother, Thoma, is caught between his parent’s stormy lives. He wears his brother’s old clothes, and he fantasizes about a 16-year-old neighbor, Mythili Balasubramanium, a beautiful teen girl who was close to Unni, but ignores Thoma.

Unni had been a young cartoonist and creator of hand-made comic books. One day, the post office delivers a comic book drawn by Unni that had been lost in the mail since his death. Shocked out of his drunken stupor, Ousep picks up the investigation into his son’s suicide that he’d dropped not long after Unni’s death. Three years later, however, Unni’s old friends are no longer interested in talking about their friend’s death. Ousep won’t take “No!” for an answer, and he even discovers more people who were friends with or acquaintances of his son. Now, a father must face the troubling truths, vague answers, and haunting memories if he is to discover why his son killed himself. The big questions: Can he really find an answer, and will he be satisfied with it?

The Illicit Happiness of Other People is two things. Half of it is an observational novel, with Joseph’s rich prose composing a gigantic canvas, mostly about the Madras community. On the edges of this prose painting are depictions, here and there, of places outside Madras. Joseph studies class and society, and surveys how people socialize inside and outside the family. In this first half of The Illicit Happiness of Other People, Joseph weaves brilliant one-liners seamlessly into this colorful portrait of relationships and divides. Sometimes, this is a sharp satire, but it won’t poke away the viewer.

The other half (or so) of the novel is something akin to detective fiction or a mystery novel. Once Ousep meets Balki, an acquaintance of Unni’s, the tone of the novel changes. There are rumors and small amounts of local lore and legend around Balki, but this meeting really pushes forwards Ousep’s investigation, which often seems to languish during the first half of the book. The meeting of Ousep and Balki is The Illicit Happiness of Other People’s Chinatown moment, and it saves the narrative from drowning in sameness.

The novel that was philosophical, in a satirical way, becomes philosophical, introspective, and investigative. The author digs deeper into issues of family strife, troubled personal histories, and mental illness. The novel has some pointed things to say about the way teenagers tackle the perplexing nature of existence, or at least, that is the way I see it.

I read somewhere (maybe in the novel’s press packet) that Manu Joseph is a novelist who wants to be a cartoonist. After Ousep meets Balki, this novel’s prose started activating a torrent of visuals in my mind and imagination. In my mind, Joseph’s descriptions of Unni’s comics became comics I could read and scrutinize.

For half this novel, the words were clever, but the narrative went nowhere. To me, that is what keeps this from being a really great novel, but The Illicit Happiness of Other People: A Novel is still a very good novel.

B+

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux

Review AFTER THE FALL: An Illustrated Novel

AFTER THE FALL: AN ILLUSTRATED NOVEL
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY – @norton_fiction and @NewYorker

AUTHOR: Victoria Roberts – @TNYcartoonistVR
ISBN: 978-0-393-07355-3; hardcover (November 2012)
188pp, B&W, $24.95 U.S., $26.50 CAN

After the Fall: An Illustrated Novel is a new book from Victoria Roberts, who has been a contracted cartoonist (or staff cartoonist) for the magazine, The New Yorker, since 1988. Her illustrations and cartoons have also appeared in numerous other periodicals, including The New York Times, Barron's, Playboy, Time, Town & Country, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, among many.

After the Fall: An Illustrated Novel is exactly that – an illustrated novel. Featuring over 200 cartoons and illustrations, After the Fall is a sparkling New York City fairy tale that reinvents a familiar story – a well-to-do family suddenly becomes homeless. This book may be aimed at The New Yorker’s sophisticated audience, but this slim volume will eventually be a favorite of young readers – at least I think so.

The story is narrated by Alan, a 10-year-old-boy from a wealthy family (a fabulously wealthy family) that lives in an Upper East Side penthouse. His father, Pops, is a mad inventor and self-made millionaire because of creations like Smokos (a simulation cigarette) and GloveDip (an invisible replacement for medical gloves). Mother is a chain-smoking socialite with a sharp wit and an even sharper tongue. His sister is Alexandra, a creative 7-year-old also known as “Sis.”

One morning Alan awakens to find himself in Central Park. It seems that regime change and bad investments have left the family destitute and exiled from the penthouse. However, the entire contents of the penthouse – from furniture and artwork to clothes and the family pugs (Olive, Phoebe, and Sancho), have been relocated to the Park. In fact, everything has been positioned around Central Park, as if the park were the penthouse.

Usvelia the housekeeper and Gudelia the cook remain in the service of the family. Monsieur Marcel, the maître d’ of the family’s favorite restaurant, Le Château Boheme, regularly drops by to deliver food. As winter approaches, however, old tensions and furniture magnate, Hamid Kohlrabi, divide Pops and Mother. Now, it’s up to the resourceful Alan and the imaginative Sis to restore home and hearth.

After the Fall has that singular quality of an old book that remains timeless because its story seems to carry an enchantment. Roberts’ illustrations are lovely, and they come on with the force of a New Yorker collection of cartoons. Still, it is important not to downplay Roberts’ prose, which shimmers with charm and wit. Like a classic children’s story, it mixes imagination with melancholy, so it doesn’t come across as syrupy. That’s why this fantastical and fanciful scenario seems almost real – like some human interest story that could happen just once, and also manage to capture national interest, if only for a day or so.

Since part of After the Fall’s story takes place during Christmas, it has the makings of a Christmas (or Holiday) favorite. I hope Victoria Roberts tries the illustrated novel again. I hope another New Yorker cartoonist attempts this. Heck, I wish Charles Addams had written a book like this just once.

A

www.wwnorton.com

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux

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Review: THE COMPLETE RECORD COVER COLLECTION

THE COMPLETE RECORD COVER COLLECTION
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY

CARTOONIST: R. Crumb
ISBN: 978-0-393-08278-4; hardcover
96pp, Color, $25.95 U.S., $32.50 CAN

An American comic book artist, illustrator, and musician, R. Crumb (also known as Robert Crumb) is the famed Underground Comix creator known for his controversial work. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1943, Crumb is a founder of the Underground Comix movement and is its most prominent figure. Crumb also founded the seminal Underground Comix comic book series, Zap Comix.

Crumb is something of a satirist and social critic, and his work has frequently been called racist and sexist. But there are many sides to Crumb’s creativity and artistry, which is revealed in The Complete Record Cover Collection, a new hardcover Crumb art book from publisher, W.W. Norton & Company. Crumb is a prolific illustrator of record covers, having produced over 400 of them. Crumb apparently began drawing record covers in 1968 when Janis Joplin asked him to draw the cover for Cheap Thrills (1968), the second album from American rock band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, for which she was then the lead singer.

The publisher says that The Complete Record Cover Collection is the complete catalog of every record cover jacket Crumb has ever drawn, while also admitting that there could still be Crumb music-related art hidden away somewhere. Crumb mainly drew record covers for artists, new and forgotten, who performed jazz, country, old-time blues, roots, and Americana music of the 1920s and 30s. He also produced record cover art for his own musical act, R. Crumb and His Cheap Suit Serenaders.

The Complete Record Cover Collection also brings together other music related art from Crumb. The book reprints art for event flyers and posters, advertisements, magazine covers, silkscreen prints, and trading cards, among other things. Much of the work also reveals Crumb’s skill at lettering. I think the publisher would like reviewers to emphasize the record cover art in their reviews of The Complete Record Cover Collection, but I want to focus on something else.

What I like most about this book are the portraits of musicians – past and present. These drawings range in size from about 2.5” x 4” to a little larger. They are drawn with such power and faithfulness to the subjects that they seem larger. Crumb executed two such portraits of legendary R&B singer James Brown for The New Yorker in 2000. One depicts a young Brown that captures his likeness with a photographer’s touch. The other, a depiction of an older “hardest working man in show business,” is more of a cartoon, but it captures the spirit both of Brown’s public persona and of his stage performance. Crumb’s 1992 portrait of Frank Zappa (also for The New Yorker) is a sparkling psychedelic piece that encapsulates the eccentric Zappa.

These black and white ink drawings are rendered in such detail that Crumb’s cartoonish style has a kind of realism that is all his own. Crosshatching, fine line work, and solid brushwork bring these musicians to life in strange ways, making even what is familiar about them vibrant and new. This is exemplified in portraits of a smirking, older George Jones; a proud Bo Diddley, and a wired up Merle Haggard.

The Complete Record Cover Collection is about the record cover art of R. Crumb, and it is an excellent book in that regard. Its treasure, however, is the collection of portraits.

A

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"

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Review: THE SWEETER SIDE OF R. CRUMB

THE SWEETER SIDE OF R. CRUMB
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY

CARTOONIST: R. Crumb
ISBN: 978-0-393-33371-8; paperback
110pp, B&W, $17.95 U.S., $22.50 CAN

The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb is a 2010 paperback from W.W. Norton & Company that reprints various non-controversial works from the cartoonist and artist, R. Crumb (Robert Crumb). Crumb, the famed Underground Comix creator, has created comix and art that some describe as perverse, crude, cruel, nasty, vile, racist, misogynist, and just plain negative. While I would agree with those sentiments in some examples of his work, I think that American comic books would be worse off without the work of this genius.

Perhaps R. Crumb, a publicist, and/or his publisher decided it was time to show readers a less controversial, more artistic side of Crumb. The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb is a combination art book, portfolio, and sketchbook that offers an array of Crumb drawings that have nothing to do with the busty female revolutionaries, conniving funny animals, weird characters, and horny everyman’s that populate Crumb’s comic book and comix work. Also, the art here is in glorious black and white, the better to show off Crumb’s precision cross hatching and sumptuous, textured ink work.

The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb presents intimate portraits of Crumb’s family and friends as well as drawings of roots music figures – some obscure (Charlie Poole) and some fairly well known (B.B. King). This book offers marvelous landscapes from the French countryside and lovely still life drawings, and even eye-popping depictions of French alleyways and buildings. Many of these drawings may simply be work that Crumb did while quietly observing people or interior and exteriors scenes. There are even a few comic strip vignettes starring Robert and his daughter Sophie as a small child.

I look at The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb as a publication Norton is going to use to pad their R. Crumb catalog. Or maybe people who only know the controversial R. Crumb need a book like this. Even Crumb seems to suggest as much in his introduction to this book, an introduction that only seems partly tongue-in-cheek. As far as I’m concerned, I’m up for anything that will get more people to see R. Crumb’s comix and illustrations. If it means The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb, then, let’s have more.

A

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"

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The Evolution of Sophie Crumb

I read Sophie Crumb: Evolution of a Crazy Artist

I posted a review at the Comic Book Bin (which has FREE smart phone apps).

R. Crumb's Sweet Side

I read The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb

I posted a review at the Comic Book Bin (which has those FREE smart phone apps).  This is a slim collection of drawings and illustrations from the great comix creator.

Review: STITCHES: A Memoir - Paperback Edition

STITCHES: A MEMOIR (PAPERBACK EDITION)
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY

AUTHOR: David Small
ISBN: 978-0-393-33896-6; paperback (September 13, 2010)
333pp, B&W, $15.95 US

In 2009, W.W. Norton & Company published STITCHES: A Memoir, a hardcover graphic novel from David Small.  Small is an author and illustrator of children’s books, and he has won numerous awards, including the 2001 Caldecott Medal for his illustrations in So You Want to be President? (written by Judith St. George).

Stitches is a recollection of David Small’s childhood and youth.  The author, born in 1945 in Detroit, Michigan, challenges conventional notions of a tranquil 1950s by eschewing nostalgic storytelling.  In this deeply personal tale, Small recounts a life spent in a house were free expression was forbidden.  The family communicated in ways that were as loud as screaming:  his mother, Elizabeth’s rage-filled movements and gestures; the sound of Edward, his father, hitting a punching bag in the basement as a way to blow off steam; and Ted, his older brother, loudly banging on drums in his room.

STITCHES: A Memoir is now in paperback, and readers can find my review of the first edition here:  https://ireadsyou.blogspot.com/2009/09/stitches-is-one-of-years-best.html

Using his fluid drawing style with its loose, quirky line, Small weaves a story that looks into the history of his mother’s family and exhumes his own life within a nuclear family unit.  Stitches is a deeply personal examination of the author’s evolution and his physical ailments and mental trials and tribulations.  This is also a memoir in which Small recalls his life from the perspective of the child he was.  It is simply a beautiful comic book, and I highly recommend it.

A

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


The text is copyright © 2020 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint and  syndication rights and fees.

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Don't Forget "Forget Sorrow"

I read Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale

I posted a review at the Comic Book Bin.

Genesis as Comix

I read The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb

I posted a review at the Comic Book Bin. I actually finished reading this some weeks ago, but various tediums delayed the review's posting until today. This book is a very revealing way to read Genesis, but ultimately, this is more a Crumb comic book than it is biblical.

Review: "STITCHES" is One of the Year's Best Graphic Novels

STITCHES: A MEMOIR
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY

AUTHOR: David Small
ISBN: 978-0-393-06857-3; hardcover (September 8, 2009)
333pp, B&W, $24.95 US

When a person recounts events of which he has an intimate knowledge through his own observation or writes of his own personal life and experiences, it is called a memoir.  Readers gravitate towards memoirs of people who are famous (or infamous) or people who have at least led interesting lives.

In STITCHES: A Memoir, a new graphic novel from children’s book author, David Small, the allure is in how the story is told.  It’s not that David isn’t famous; he’s won numerous awards for his children’s books, including the 2001 Caldecott Medal for his illustrations in So You Want to be President? (written by Judith St. George).  It’s not that he hasn’t led an interesting life; his family was apparently the anti-Cleavers ("Leave it to Beaver").  But do we really need another work of fiction or nonfiction that “shatters the myth of the nostalgic and tranquil 1950s” (as the press release for this book proclaims)?  We need and want it especially if it is told with great artistry, as Stitches is.

Small was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1945.  According to what Stitches recounts, David was born into a family where free expression was forbidden, and apparently also talking in general.  The Small house, however, was not one where silence ruled just because no spoke.  Other noises could be deafening and fearsome.

David’s mother, Elizabeth, slammed cupboard doors to express her anger, dissatisfaction, and fury.  David’s older brother, Ted, hid in his room and banged loudly on his drum kit to drown out his sorrow, according to David’s account.  David’s father, Edward, a radiologist, came home from work and retreated to the basement where he hit on a punching bag to blow off steam and frustration.

Without giving away too much of the story: David developed severe health problems that led to surgery and a need for stitches.  The stitches essentially act as a bridge between David’s childhood as a prisoner in the dysfunctional Small household and his emancipation out into the larger world to pursue his dreams of becoming an artist.  Thus, David’s story can be one of childhood survival or one of redemption.

Stitches as a memoir is two things.  First, it is a recollection of events by a person who has intimate knowledge of these events because he both observed and lived them.  Secondly, it is story about a family as told by a particular member (in this case, David).  However, the story is filtered through David’s own point of view and prejudices, as well as his own lack of knowledge about the other members of his family (such as David’s ignorance of his mother’s extremely poor health).  I don’t question the validity or truth of what Small presents in Stitches.  This is simply David’s view, which is important when one considers that Stitches’ success rests not on the particulars of the story, but on how it is told.  That Small depicts childhood in his own individual or even quirky voice is precisely why this memoir can be so engaging.  David is not only telling a familiar tale; he’s also telling it in a way that makes us look again at personal triumph over obstacles with new eyes.

With fluid, loose line work, Small draws a world in black and white and ink wash that is as real and as tangible as anything a photorealistic drawing style could depict, if not more so.  Even sequences that represent dreams and flights of fancy possess a sense of verisimilitude that transmits to the readers the implication that these fantasies actually happened.  No matter what Small shows, we can believe that this story comes from real human experience rather than being the contrivance of a fictional character.

Small has done something of utmost importance in selling a memoir to his readers.  He has depicted his experiences as unique through the distinctive manner in which he tells it.  With STITCHES: A Memoir, David Small, who is not a regular contributor to American comic books, has pushed the graphic novel forward, making us once again reconsider what we can do with the comics medium.

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Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


The text is copyright © 2020 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

My original comments on this graphic novel for this blog - circa 9/8/2009:

I finally posted my review of STITCHES: A Memoir by David Small. Small won the Caldecott Medal for So You Want to be President? Revised and Updated Edition. Small may not be known for his work in comic books, but this is a major graphic novel, and I wonder if I got that point across in my review.

As much as I liked Stitches: A Memoir, I thought that there should have been more about his life after he left his parents' house at the age of 16. But if I were to use John Updike's rules of book criticism, the first thing I would have to accept is that I must consider the author's intent, and this memoir is about Small's childhood, the most critical time in his life, in terms of his development both as a person and an artist. Also, the book has a killer ending, the kind that makes a great graphic novel great.

I think that I'm just feeling discombobulated because the past few days have been so busy with personal issues that I didn't get to start working on this late last week, as I'd planned. I started writing this review this morning. Ugh!

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