David McKean's Cages

Cages centers on a apartment populated with a jazz musician, a novelist and a painter. In orbit of the building is a cat, a cray man, a homeless man and a Demiurge. The ten issue arch is both tribute and performance of the trials and rewards of the creative process.

Cages, like McCloud's Understanding Comics and Moore/Campbell's From Hell, is alumni Tundra Publishing. It shares in, and is partly responsible for, the mystique of excellence around that short lived publishing house. Cages is still a contender for being the high watermark of art house comics even after being in print for almost a generation. While it isn't a breeze read I found it flowed pretty smoothly once I committed to sitting down and giving it my full attention. It can be challenging but it never sacrifices the simple joy of storytelling for its well deserved reputation as a avant-garde comic book narrative.

McCloud lays out his theory of the 'four tribes' in the third essay of chapter six of Making Comics.  Here is a short article from The Guardian on the subject. I want to focus on the relationship between Animists and Formalists which from the less subjective of his two sets of opposed artistic preference among the comic book community. Jeff Smith and (early) Jack Kirby are excellent examples of Animist. Their mastery of form and style intentionally and seamlessly obscures itself in their devotion to story and content. McCloud singles out Cages as the perfect example of the junction between the Formalist and Classicist tribes.

The juxtaposition between the preferences of the Animists that use the techniques of comic book composition to tell a story by concealing those techniques and what McKean offers us is telling. Mckean shows off his skills in his composition and editorial decisions. He weds the artistic showiness of his form to content as his story pulls the reader deeper and deeper into the drama of the creative lives of characters.

Cages has been in and out of print and shifted publishers 4 times. Currently Dark Horse is keeping it in print and has a well-priced paper back edition. His web-site isn't live yet, but its going to be gorgeous.

Alex Robinson's Tricked

From the first chapter, reoccurring themes of small scams and funny retail math set the stage for the larger deceptions. Tricked follows the lives and loves of six seemingly unconnected characters whose paths occasionally cross as they move toward a final convergence. Each character is actively holding something back that must be resolved either by coming to terms with it or with crisis. The Little Piggy Diner and the its owners round out the cast and provides a reoccurring location.

What makes Robinson's body of work so relevant is in his non-heroic, non-autobiographical long work he has given us some incredibly dynamic characters. All likeable even while unapologetic, petty and flawed. While deceptions and revelations shift our sympathies towards the characters, it is our empathy that turns the page. (I was barely able to closes this 349 page book. I also finished Robinson's Box of Poison's 608pgs in a long weekend and To Cool to Be Forgotten's 128pgs in a sitting.)

I love Box Office Poison, but it is almost his juvenilia. In Tricked, the wild experimentation with page layouts that show his love for Dave Sim has settled down. It is more the case that Tricked 's symmetry of form and content has unified into a narrative fatit-accompli. Matt Kindt gorgeously playful rap-around cover for the second edition highlights the interconnected totality of the book.

In Robinsion's speech at Staple! 2011, he claimed that he was a better writer than an illustrator. On the face of this claim it is him talking down his cartooning, but I would argue that it highlights one his strengthens as a cartoonist. As a writer he is very good about allowing his character drawings to hold most of the diegesis of the internal states of his characters. The lines of his faces, body posture and even the externalization of internal body image creates an expansive dimensionality to his characters. If he had attempted to convey this content in prose it would quickly become ponderous and preachy. As it is, the character contradictions are conveyed atmospherically. The accomplishment has relevant teachings in the larger world of the narrative arts as one of the defining separations between high and low art.

There is an open question of whether he has a profound admiration for or is disgusted by humanity. Tricked can be read as love for the human condition (warts and all) or as condemnation of human as all too human. Either was the trick of the book, and Robinsion's work in general is sincerely guileless and a beautiful read.

You can click to Mr Robinson web-site.  If you don't have a hip local comic book store you should buy his books from his Top Shelf page because Chris "rock-"Staros and the gang at Top Shelf deserve your love too. The Top Shelf page is also a great resources.  If your trying to squeeze every nickel out of your dimes you might consider by a digital copy from Top Shelf or the comiXology smart phone app.

About the blog

If there is one thing that I want to get across it is that comics are an important art form. 

In 2007, SUNY Stony Brook awarded me a Master's Degree in Philosophy for a thesis largely focusing on Kantian Metaphysics and Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. My plan was to create a new critical vocabulary for the study of comics as high art.

Now that I'm out of the academy my exposure is limited to what I pick up here in Austin and from podcasts like Indie Spinner Rack, so I want to reach out to communities of like minded readers and to up the profile of comics. I feel that part of doing that is maintaining a few commitments to those of you who are kind enough to read this and the artists that share their brilliance with the world. So here is the mission:

1) Every Monday I will publish a post of either reviews or bits of house keeping like this one. Hopefully one day I will have interviews...

2) Because I want this to be a resource for ongoing discussion and not a soap-box, each post will be tagged to allow you to search out my thoughts on a particular artist or on comics in general.

3) I am interested in sequential art as art and not a given genera, so my reviews will focus on artist styles of narrative storytelling favoring form over content.

4) I will try to keep the reviews updated with info on where you can purchase the books and contact the artists.

5) Out of the deep admiration I have for anyone who puts their art out there, I will not publish any reviews on anything self-published and self-marketed without getting it approved by the artist.

6) I won't review anything that I wouldn’t generally recommend and I will try to give warnings if I feel a particular work might be too offensive or difficult for a given audience. (I have a 10 year old nephew who breathes comic books. I get the need for rating.)

That is what you can expect here. Hopefully, there will be audience participation. There are three ways that I would especially love to get feedback from you the reader.

Please, please leave comments. They are always welcome. Don't hesitate to share any positive or negative feedback about this blog. Positive discussion about the books reviewed is the point. The only caveat is if you pick up something I suggest and you don't like it, I ask that you focus your criticism on my failure to properly represent the work and live up to point 6 of the above. You don't have to agree with me, but I ask that you remain polite to the artist and those of us who do like their work.

I want to encourage you to get involved in the comic book community. It is still small enough that most artists are reasonably approachable. Most have websites or blogs which make fan mail easy. They tend to do lots of book signing and conventions which I should be highlighting according to point 4. If you do get a chance to meet them, ask if you can take a picture of yourself with them and post to the review.

If any of the artists read and especially like my review, I hope you want to help build the content I offer. Please contact me to do an interview by e-mail or locally around one of our Austin conventions. Contact me if you would be willing to share an image or images of a page from the book in the progress of composition. It would be extremely cool whether it is just a quick photo of the page with the pencil lines intact or images from the stages of completion.

And let me know if there is something you want me to review

Free comic book day score!

Austin Comic Con

Jeremy A. Bastian auteur behind "Cursed  Pirate Girl."  CPG has to be the breakaway 2010 critical success.  While the book has had all kinds of success it has had lots of distribution and printing issues.  The indvudial issues and collection are hard to come by and I had feared I would have to buy a copy from a third party Amazon dealer.  I wasn't aware he was attend and I must have walked by his table three time before stumbling across him.  We got a chance to talk for several minutes and I had a chance to pick up the collection of the first three issues.  I look forward to reviewing it.

Andy Hirsch artist of SLG's "Royal Historian of OZ."  As well as auteur of his new self published serires "Varmints."   He has a wide body of short works like "Doggie Houndser: Muttical Dogtor" and "Idle Threat" as well as other on-line comics.  I really really want to see him at Staple: Independent Media Expo.

David Mack is the auteur behind "Kabuki."  He has been working since 1994 but largely went under my radar.  It started amid a slew of comics with cheesecake pinups with swords on the cover "Shi" and "Lady Death."  Recently Indie Spinner Rack brought it to my attention, and just thumbing through it at the library it is startlingly cerebral.   I 've been reading this and a few other collections the breadth and variate of his art and storytelling styles will merit a much longer analysis then I can pt forward now.

Marv Wolfman  is forty year writer and editor veteran of comics.  I had hoped to get my nephews sketch books full of doodles and get my older nephew who is sort of interested in writing a chance to get Mr. Wolfman's autograph.  Unfortunately my brother-in-law and younger nephew came down with the plague.  The my nephew and some of his friends quickly became distracted by all the toys and wall art....

Jeffery Stevenson's mains stream credit is probably as writer "Jim Valentino's Task Force 1" at Shadowline.  I talked to him briefly about his role as writer for creator owned "Steam Punk Faeries" and online comic brat-halla.  We also talked about an opportunity he had to correspond with Marv Wolfman.  He has attend Staple: Independent Media Expo in the past and is thinking about the 2012 con.

Robert Wilson IV artist "Knuckleheads"  I didn't talk to him long I think he did say he was thinking about coming to Staple: Independent Media Expo.   I bought this because it looked art looked like Jamie Hernandez take on Matt Wagner's "Mage."

Isaac Mardis auteur"Defending Neverland" Didn't have time to talk to him but a James M. Barrie interpretation is the fast way to separate me from my money.  At quick glance I can't find any web info in the book : (  But I do have a card.

I picked up two free samples from Penny Farthing Press pfpress.com they look like a neat outfit and there web page is awesome.

With the last few dollars in my account I bought the latest two issues of Richard Moore's  "Gobs." Apparently he has a long history with Antarctic Press.  I may look into them the link is antarctic-press.com , but they seem to be pretty far flung and developed. 

I didn't get a chance to talk to Joe Eisma artist "Morning Glories."

A biblical parable

It starts with James K. Polk winning the 1844 Democratic convention as a dark horse candidate. Because if he had not, there comes into question the timeliness of the great western expansion. And in that time of success and fortune, rose an industrialist, who is of no importance to us other than the fact that this industrialist had a successor who moved west and built a huge mansion with a large and well stocked garage. Wanting only the best, the successor hired a master mechanic to move out west with him. After years of services the master mechanic retired and sold his shares in the railroads and built a diner out of a train car to occupy his golden years. It was mildly successful. After the master mechanic's death, his estate passed to an estrange son from an earlier marriage back east. The estranged son, wanting nothing to do with the diner or the railroad town the diner was in due to the railroad's rapid decline in the face of the national highway system, sold the diner. Then the master mechanic's estranged son took his young wife and moved to the Pacific northwest. The young wife was an avid bird watcher, so the estranged son built a beautiful garden and filled it with all kinds and shapes of bird feeders. They lived happily for many years but eventually the young wife stopped being young and the estranged son became a widower. In the following years the beautiful garden fell into disrepair and the hummingbird feeder developed a slow leak. Perhaps this disrepair was because the estranged son's heart was broken or because he was succumbing to Alzheimer’s, or perhaps because the hummingbirds were too enthusiastic. It took no time at all for a large, thriving colony of ants to develop under the leaking hummingbird feeder. Eventually, the industrialists' successor's mechanic's estranged son stopped refilling the leaking humming bird feeder. The hummingbirds moved on and ant colony weakened and became host to an aggressive fungal disease. Within a week, the spores in the ant carcasses congregated and collectively gave praise and thanks to the Lord our God for this the best possible of all worlds.

Two weeks in comics

    Hey, theme of this post seems funny, bizarre and writer/illustrator auteurs who express singular visions.   There still three books that are over due for a review as of this post.  Miss Lakso-Gross's A Mess of Everything doesn't quite fit partly because I found it so personally effecting that it will occupy a larger part of one of these upcoming Week in Comics and maybe a review of its own.  I also have finished all 90 issues of Terry Moore's Stranger in Paradise collected in pocket book 1-6.  Besides being over 2 thousand pages of material I also want to discusses it after touching on Jaime Hernandez's Locas. Finally, the Flight:Explorer inspired post on all-ages comics is still on its way.  Till then, here is four quick reviews.

The Lost Colony no2: The Red Menace, Pub. First Second, Owner Glady Klein
     Glady Klein Writer/Illustrator.
(Political Satire, Animated, Pogo-ish) 3.5 out of 5
     http://indiespinnerrack.blogspot spent some time plugging First Second.  I've already reviewed The Fate of the  Artist.  I liked Joann Sfar's Klezmer and Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese is easily a 9.5 out of 10.  So when I found Klein's second volume  for a faction of the cover price I snapped it up.  I liked it enough that I will be keeping an eye out for vol.1 & 3 in the library but I am not completely sold.  One of its strength is that Klein uses a very tight coloring with a simple/cartoony palate over line work that is controlled but wildly expressionistic.  It fits in nicely with the Yang and Sfar books in that it can come off as childlike while dealing with content that is very serious.  In this second volume Klein is looks at some lies we tell our selves about war.  Wars we fought, will fight, are fighting or wished we fought.  What seemed to me to be an abrupt ending is fitting but as a stand-alone reading experience I just don't feel like I'm ready to make a final call on this one.

Rasl, Pub. Cartoon Books, Owner Jeff Smith
     Jeff Smith Writer/Illustrator.
(Sci-Fi, Noir, Wild-Ride) 3.5 out of 5
     Jeff Smith is a solid contender for the role of the inheritor Eisner's place as the preeminent graphic storyteller. Over the years of his work on Bone he has honed his page-layouts, panelization, panel composition and illustration to a seamless narrative engine.  Unlike Bone, Rasl is unapologetic aimed at a mature audience in genera that I have followed closely in the past (not entirely unlike Tansmetropolitan, Atomic Robo, B.P.R.D. and SCUD the Disposable Assassin).  That said there are two things are standing in the way of me given these books a much higher rating.  First is unlike Bone, Rasl is not a feta comply.  Although, have read about as many pages of both series I know I can finish Bone at any time (probably mid to late June) and because of other reviews I know it will never jump the shark.  To unstand the other objection I want to go back to those other four noir/dystopain visions.  Ellis' dialogue in Tansmetropolitan is heavily influenced by the disjointed gonzo prose, Atomic Robo's narrative timeline disorderly jumps from point to point to accommodate the mode and mood of the storytelling, Guy Davis artwork in B.P.R.D. is unapologetic un-pretty (like all of his work)  forcing the reader to be aware that they are entering a space that he created and SCUD the Disposable Assassin does all three.  While Smith content in Rasl is neither smooth nor pretty his artistic mastery is both.  On further reflection, I will say there is something that can be disjointing or disorientating about his panelization.  He opens some scenes with panels that give either little or misleading information that can give similar feel to mid to early David Lynch films.  Anyway, I will be keeping an eye on Rasl and even if he never produce more I will be returning to these books.

Transit, Pub. Image, Owner Ted Mckeever
     Ted Mckeever Writer/Illustrator.
(Expressionistic, Noir, Dystopian) 3 out of 5
      This book came about as highly recommend as possible from the folks from http://indiespinnerrack.blogspot.com.  I honestly didn't care for it, which is possibly hypocritical of me in light of my review Rasl.  After the first issue it is clearly a perfect marriage of form and content. Once he got past a little cartoon playfulness, his artwork took on a simple but harsh expressionist line work that screamed out that this is a dark world filled with unsavory characters with awful agendas.  While I admire it as stands today (I can't imagine how mind blowing it would have been in the early 80s), I real never got into partly because I never got attached to any of the characters.  I am taking my time with Eddy Current and will hopefully have more to say about that.

Arkham Asylum: Madness, Pub. and Owner DC
     Sam Keith Writer/Illustrator.  Michelle Madsen & Dave Stewart Colorist.
(Character-Driven, Horror, Warmer than Expected) 4 out of 5
     By way of an apology to the tone of this blog, I need to say to things.  First there has been long standing suicide pack between readers and the major publishers of supper hero comic books.  Innovation along with any attempted to reach outside of the base readership has been met with suspension or betrayal.  One thing that sets this book apart is that this is Joker story that sans-batman, and spends more time with ordinary people trying to get through a rough (extremely rough) day at work   The second part of my apology is that Mister Keith singular vision has found a place in works in every corner of comic book landscape.  The division between indie and mainstream as well as those between contractor and auteur don't seem as relent when looking over Sam Keith portfolio.  Keith gives no more or less of himself to this than any other project.  It is a solid horror story with some of the same slow pacing and explosions into the strange that I except form the Maxx or Zero Girl.  It also has some touching monument.  Keith has an ability to inject the warmth and playfulness of his self owned and/or directed work into work he did for other writers.  I haven't read his work for Marvel but the over seriousness of his short run and Sandman and Dark Horse's Aliens are both improved by the wild playfulness of his art.  While Time-Warner by way of DC doesn't need or particular want your $19.99 or $13.59 on Amazon, they  have given us a book that is uniquely a product of Keith vision and those are few and to far between.