Our Little Wild Time

Earlier this year, I read and reviewed Steady Rollin', a collection of autobiographical comics by Fred Noland, which I loved. I got this book, Our Little Wild Time, as part of Fantagraphics' annual sale, and I could not wait to dig into it. It is a collection of mostly fictional works, originally published as mini-comics, about murderers, cholos playing putt-putt, drug addicts, and artist George Grosz. What I admire most about this book is its frenetic energy. These stories may be brief ones, but they are impactful and impressive.

Also, Noland draws some of the best faces in comics. Growing up, I was obsessed with reading Basil Wolverton's Wolvertoons book with its variety of fantastic and grotesque portraits, and Our Little Wild Time is right up there with its gallery of mugs. Just take a look at these:

Fred Noland is a working artist who has worked for many prominent magazines and media venues. In addition to Steady Rollin', he made a short graphic biography of Major Taylor, the bicyclist who was one of the USA's first global superstar athletes, and has been working on a longer one that will be published later this year.

I was not able to find many reviews of this book online, which is a shame because I feel it deserves wider recognition. Ryan Carey called it a "solid" if "dated" collection of tales, a book to grab when he wants "to be entertained by something seedy, sleazy and, at its best, maybe even a little dangerous."

Our Little Wild Time was published by Fantagraphics, and they offer a preview and more information about it here. This book features a fair amount of nudity, sex, and violence and is recommended from readers mature enough to deal with those things.

Crazy for You

I recently took advantage of Fantagraphics' annual Fantabucks sale, and Crazy for You is the first book I've received and read from them. It contains two short stories written by novelist Paul Theroux and adapted by Steve Lafler, who has been making comics for decades. His most notable creation is Dog Boy and I have also really enjoyed a number of his smaller works as well. Theroux and Lafler speak of their collaboration here in this interview.

The first tale in this book is "Minor Watt," about a wealthy man who decides that he is going to deal with a divorce and economic recession by destroying precious artworks that he owns and buys. It was a roller-coaster ride of events that left me guessing how things would resolve. It lampoons contemporary art dealers and culture while also following a man's descent into madness.

The second story in the book is "Siamese Nights," about an aging businessman named Boyd who is sent by his company to Bangkok. He is an amateur artist who tours the town, sketching buildings and sites to bring home to his wife in Maine. He's also near retirement, and at first, he avoids socializing and going to bars with his younger colleagues. Eventually he joins them and meets a katoey named Song. He begins an affair with her and becomes obsessed, which complicates his marriage as well as his work situation. 

I found both stories compelling, even if the second trucks in exoticism. The artwork brings a strong sense of character, action, and passion to the events of each tale. These stories are also weirdly almost anthropological looks at later-life crises and male mania, including how emotional and social constraints can become warped, troubling, and destructive. These stories might be pitched at a specific mature audience, but I feel that they are well-rendered and thought-provoking.

The reviews I have read about this book have been conflicted. Steve Baxi called it a "mixed bag" and concluded, "I think 'Minor Watt' is worth the price of admission, but after that there’s plenty of other comics by Lafler and short stories by Theroux worth reading." William Schwartz pondered who the audience for graphic versions of these stories is and wrote that "the combination comes out like a well-aged Roy Lichtenstein, petty drama blown up to such an extent it’s hard to tell who’s laughing at who."

Crazy for You was published by Fantagraphics, and they offer a preview and more information here. This book contains profanity, nudity, and sexual situations and is recommended for readers mature enough to deal with them.

Hot Comb

Like Fights, Hot Comb is a book that explores childhood, race, and growing through an unique lens, in this case hair care. It is a collection of eight short stories set in different times and places where young African-American women navigate their families, relationships, and worlds.

The title story is a great example of what this book entails. It is a tale of Ebony, as a fifth grade girl who wants to have her hair permed because she thinks it will stop her classmates from teasing her. She finally convinces her mother to let her do it, and what follows is a complex web of emotions. Her mother is ambivalent, against her daughter messing with her natural hair but also capitulating, and also saddened by her growing up and becoming more independent. Ebony gets her world broadened with her experiences at the beauty shop, learning more about how to take care of her hair and also about how people talk to each other there. She is excited but also surprised by how painful and laborious the process is. Also, she just can't keep from touching her newly transformed hair.

It seems that both Ebony and her mom pay some price from the perm, and what becomes painful for Ebony is that all her efforts do not pan out as she expected at school. This story works in multiple ways, as a coming of age tale, as a family relationship story, and even as a contemporary fable. It is packed with emotion, humor, and humanity, and it introduces the reader to a great many themes that crop up in the following stories.

Other stories in this volume include "Big Ma," "My Lil Sister Lena," and the generational tensions of "Sisters and Daughters." They are all noteworthy for how many emotional and cultural issues they touch upon. The "Lena" story in particular, about how her sister was the only black girl on her swim team and was dramatically changed by her teammates' attention to how her hair changed when it got wet. They all invaded her privacy and space and were compelled to touch it, which created a sense of anxiety that manifested in self-harm.

As you can see from the excerpts, the art here is packed with all sorts of energy. This book has an emotional wallop, and I love how it plays with line work that is sometime simple and strong and other times tangled and complex (like hair!). Also there are framing images, parody ads for various hair care products that act as interstitials that inform the identity politics of the stories. They show how central and varied the seemingly mundane matter of hair care is for these characters. And how much pressure there is to alter themselves to conform to constructed ideals of beauty.

This book's creator Ebony Flowers is a cartoonist, ethnographer, and teacher. One of her mentors along the way was Lynda Barry, one of the greatest comics creators in my opinion, and I feel that her work packs as much a punch as Barry's, in spirit and not in any derivative way. She has won a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, and she speaks about her work on Hot Comb in this interview as well as this one.

All of the reviews I have read about this book have been full of acclaim. In a starred review Publishers Weekly called is a book "rich with both sorrow and celebration." John Seven wrote, "What makes it so special is the way she wraps these elements around larger themes of race without ever making you feel like you are reading A Very Important Work With A Heavy Purpose." In a starred review from School Library Journal, Desiree Thomas summed it up, "Ideal for most public and school libraries." Paul Lai also has lots of great insights in this podcast episode.

Hot Comb was published by Drawn & Quarterly, and they offer a preview and more info about it here.

Girl Town

An Eisner Award-nominated book, Girl Town is a collection of five stories that highlight different aspects of women's lives through fantasy and science fiction tropes. Two of these tales, "Radishes" and "Diana's Electric Tongue," won Ignatz Awards in the past.

The stories in this collection are:

• The titular tale is about a couple of cliques of women I'd describe as frenemies. 

• "Radishes" is about two friends playing hooky at a unique outdoor market.
• "Diana's Electric Tongue" is the longest narrative in the book by far, and it is about a woman with a robot boyfriend and a troubled past relationship.

• "The Big Burning House" is a visually ambitious, interesting mix of fandom, podcasting, and social media.
• "Please Sleep Over" is about a divorcée and her girlfriend house-sitting where she grew up.

The visual styles of each story differ, and what unites them is the way that the people in them grapple with and try to mask their emotions. I loved how this book portrayed characters trying to stay strong and put forth a happy/positive face in times of adversity or trauma. Each story hinges on a moment or moments when that mask slips and the pain and emotion shine through. I loved these little moments and was moved by them, which speaks to the craft and skill in both plotting an impactful tale while also perfectly complementing the plot with drawings that carried lots of emotional weight. This is a book full of pain and beauty, each story one to savor.

Carolyn Nowak is the celebrated author of this book, and she has also published another adult comic titled No Better Words. If you check out her Patreon page you can see more about her work and future projects. She speaks more about her work on this book in this interview.

All of the reviews* I have read about this book have been positive. Publishers Weekly opined that "the full collection represents the emergence of a promising new comics talent." Kirkus Reviews concluded, "Nowak creates raw female characters and, by spotlighting them, demands that they be seen." Rob Clough wrote, "Nowak makes her work seem lighthearted and even breezy on the surface, but the reality is that her work is emotionally and intellectually dense." Alex Hoffman wrote that "these comics are weird, a little off kilter, different than expected."

Girl Town was published by Top Shelf, and they offer a preview and more here.

A review copy was provided by the publisher.

*There is also the infamous The Comics Journal review, though I consider it the same way that Charles Hatfield does in his comment (scroll down). It's a lame, sexist, dismissive review that holds Nowak to an unreasonable standard.

In the Future, We Are Dead

I got this book as part of backing Birdcage Bottom Books' Kickstarter for 2018. In the Future, We Are Dead is a collection of nine short stories about death. They are rendered in black, white, blue, and red, via color pencils, and I was quite taken with the artwork. It is mostly done in a realistic style, which combined well with the prose to create great effects. In the excerpt below, for example, it punctuates a thoughtful, philosophic moment with a hilarious, if dark, counterpoint.

This book explores a topic that touches all of our lives, and I feel that Müller's comics are at once deeply personal and also surprisingly universal. I felt with her as she described the deep fears she felt as a child about death and the potential afterlife. Not only was she preoccupied by the potential terrible causes of death, including sickness, nuclear war, or grave injury, but she also wondered about what would happen after.

These various stories touch on different periods of her life, and it was fascinating for me to see just how her thinking transformed over the course of the book. She began to imagine the ghosts of her relatives in her grandparents' living room, which had formerly been used a place for viewing the recently deceased.

She pondered the fate of mummified Buddhists while she practiced  yoga and struggled with the corpse pose (Savasana). She thought about her relationship with an elderly neighbor and how personal and distant it was. She also explored her familial relationships, particularly at her father's funeral, and when she attempted to view her own life through the eyes of her brother. I found this book to be profoundly thoughtful, relatable, and personable. It is an impressive North American debut, a graphic novel that explores both life and death in excellent fashion.

You can learn much more about this book's creator Eva Müller and her work by visiting her website. I am looking forward to checking out more of her comics as they become available in the US.

All of the reviews I have read of this book have been glowing. Publishers Weekly concluded, "This reflective graphic novel looks the Grim Reaper in the face—and sees that he isn’t an enemy, after all." John Seven called it "a work of self-scrutiny that finds profundity by finding the commonality in what can seem so personal and singular to us." Robin Enrico called it "a strong North American debut for Müller as it showcases her artistic abilities and the breadth of her storytelling."

In the Future, We Are Dead was published by Birdcage Bottom Books, and they offer a preview and more information about it here. I also found another preview, featuring different pages here.

I Am Young

I Am Young is a dazzling collection of short stories that use music as a springboard to explore people's relationships to others and themselves. It features one larger narrative that is broken up throughout the book. That story is about Miriam and George, who meet at a Beatles concert in the 1960s and fall in love. Their relationship does not really work out, though they do check in with each other from time to time over the span of decades, sort of When Harry Met Sally-style, but (SPOILER) without the happy ending. The Beatles are a backdrop to their interactions, as they check in after pivotal events such as John Lennon's assassination and George Harrison's death. The story is presented in black in white in a "big eye" cartoon style, and I love how these comics feature both characters' voices in letters to each other that appear on the top and bottom of each page. I think this format requires going back and looking at these pages multiple times, but I feel that it was very rewarding to do so.

Other stories in this book appear in color and in slightly different styles. They center on other characters and they music they listen to, but I feel thematically they are linked by issues of longing, searching for one's place in the world, and also exploring life in general. In "Baby Fat" a young woman named Roberta marries her friend Pepe in order to get him a draft deferment. For him, it involves no romance, but she wants something more out of it that does not deliver. For both, the relationship does not play out as expected.

"K.M. & R.P. & MCMLXXI (1971)" is about two young women in high school who bond over Tom Jones, Camus, and literature. Both strive to be novelists one day, but there are some strains and anxieties about life after school that drive a wedge into their friendship.

"Nana" depicts an exchange between two high school teenagers who are into The Carpenters. Even though they share a love for that group, they are divided by social status, as one girl is very popular and the other more marginalized. I loved how this story in particular represented how music can play a part in joining and dividing people.

"Alvin" is set in the 1980s and is about an African-American, teen-aged boy who is into Chuck Berry. He is able to intellectualize his fandom and speak against why it's not inherently nostalgic, but even though he is into rock-and-roll, he is still out of touch with his peers. The reasons why seem partly to lie in racial terms, and the complex ways that a person can find himself separated from others while employing a strong sense of identity are both fascinating to watch in terms of character and more social considerations.

I Am Young simultaneously does two things well: it made me think about people's situations and searches for identity, and it also moved me with their emotional states. I loved this book by M. Dean, and it is a strong and welcome introduction to her comics. She was the first recipient of the Creators for Creators grant, and she also created the webcomics The Girl Who Flew Away and Coming Soon: Regents Walk.

All the reviews I have read of this book have been positive. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review that concluded, "This stunning debut pulls off the rare feat of drawing about music with authenticity and charm." John Seven wrote about its complexities, noting, "It’s not a depiction of the importance of music in young folks, but an examination of its place in young identity and relationships." Etelka Lehoczky was lukewarm about some of these stories but impressed with M. Dean's art and concluded, "This book about the past makes you wonder what its author will do next." Derek and I also discussed this book on a recent episode of the Comics Alternative podcast.

I Am Young was published by Fantagraphics, and they offer a preview and more here.

A preview copy was provided by the publisher.

Kafkaesque

In case you had not noticed, last month I reviewed books with a horror bent, as we approached Halloween. Today's book is more in the vein of existential horror as it is a collection of adaptations of works by Franz Kafka, but it is also tinged with dark humor. The introduction to this book is a short essay about Kafka's multiple translations and how perhaps knowingly histrionic his prose was. I was unfamiliar with the vast majority of these stories, but I have to admit there is a dark sort of zaniness to a number of them, at least how they are presented here.

Two longer works, "The Burrow" and "In the Penal Colony," have been included in this collection, and they are substantive and moody explorations of political control and paranoia. "The Burrow" reads like a sick version of a Dr. Seuss tale, with a rodent constructing an elaborate series of tunnels to hoard its food, guard against intruders, and also hide from predators. "In the Penal Colony" is a sort of horror history with a nameless officer trying to convince a traveler about the utility of an elaborate and bloody public execution machine.

Otherwise, most of the tales in this book are relatively short, about 5-6 pages in length. They show people in various strained situations, often isolated or alienated by the powers-that-be. These powers are often capricious and draconian, resulting in injustice and unhappiness. For instance, in "The Helmsman" the man steering a ship is overcome and overthrown by a larger man who then assumes control of the boat. He attempts to assemble the rest of the passengers to address the situation and retake his place as pilot, but they don't care. They just accept the new helmsman without any resistance.

As you can see, the art for this story is an excellent complement  to the narrative. It was done with a scratchboard technique, so it resembles a woodcut done in an Expressionistic style. This type of art was a movement contemporary with Kafka, and the entire enterprise really captures the zeitgeist of the moment and I would also venture, of today, when it seems to many that the world is spiraling into discord and anxiety. I think of this book mostly as a series of tone poems expressing discomfort with the modern condition, and I think it would also be interesting to compare these adaptations to the source texts. They also stand by themselves very well.

Peter Kuper, the artist who has adapted these works is no stranger to Kafka, having done a graphic adaption of The Metamorphosis. He also published a few of these Kafka tales in his 1995 collection Give it Up! And Other Short Stories. Kuper has long had an interest in political causes and drawing socially charged cartoons. He co-founded the political comix magazine World War 3 Illustrated in 1980 and has also adapted the muckraking classic The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. A successful commercial artist, Kuper also has published work in a number of high profile magazines and currently draws the Spy Vs. Spy feature in Mad Magazine. He speaks about his work on Kafkaesque in this interview.

All of the reviews I have read have praised the book. Kirkus Reviews summed up, "A richly innovative interpretation that honors the source while expanding the material." Publishers Weekly concluded, "Kafka’s timeless work has never hit so hard, nor more artfully." Rich Barrett wrote, "Kuper creates an accessible gateway for Kafka amateurs and a varied sampling that may surprise you and possibly expand your own definition of what constitutes something as being 'Kafkaesque.'"

Kafkaesque was published by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., and they offer more info about it here.

The publisher provided a review copy.

Cecil & Jordan in New York

Cecil & Jordan in New York is a re-issue of a graphic short story collection, with a few hard-to-find additions. I had never read it before, and I was very glad to experience it with fresh eyes. This book's creator is Gabrielle Bell, a comics artist's comics artist who is revered by many (or at least many of the people I pay attention to). Her semi-autobiographical series Lucky is regarded by many of those folks as a stellar work of comics, a touchstone publication, and I am a big fan of her latest book Everything is Flammable.

What sets this book apart from her other works is that it largely contains works of fiction. It contains 13 stories, which were mostly published in anthologies in the more formative years of her career. For me the most powerful one was "Felix," about a struggling artist who finds herself teaching drawing to the young son of a famous, successful artist. It features commentary on the world (and business) of art and undefined, palpable relationships between various characters. I found it deeply moving and somewhat troubling, with touches of irony and dark humor throughout.

I found this book to have a unique, idiosyncratic voice, with a keen sense of observation that colors many of the stories from this collection. The title story features a fantastic element, that a person can transform themselves into a chair, and the resolution is simultaneously sad and darkly humorous. Overall, throughout the book, it is the strongly defined characters situated in a random, often hostile world that really stands out to me. They are often positioned as outsiders, trying to somehow to fit in. Some try to forge connections with others, but they are often tentative, and the connections themselves strain, surprise, and often break. Nothing really comes easy for the characters in this book, but for the reader, I felt myself readily impressed by Bell's characters, storytelling, and world-creating abilities. She is a world-class comics maker.

I was not able to locate any reviews of this edition of the book, but the ones of a prior edition were mostly positive. Rob Clough wrote that "she's a master of subtlety, restraint, and repressed emotion--yet this volume sees her veering in some unusual, even fantastical, directions." Karin L. Cross was more critical of the stories collected here, stating that they, "though perceptively written and executed with technical skill, are weighed down by their relentlessly heavy mood and self-consciousness." Paul Doyle called the book "funny" and added that it "shows some inventive story telling ideas."

This expanded version of Cecil & Jordan in New York was published by uncivilized books, and they offer a preview and more info about it here.

A review copy was provided by the publisher.

Beverly

Beverly is a collection of short stories set in the recent past (the 1990s, I would guess) in a generic Midwestern suburb. Most of the stories come from the perspective of bored, somewhat surly, and capricious teens who want to drink, party, and have sex to allay their condition. The first story focuses on some workers stuck in a dull, thankless job that one guy takes way too seriously. I thought it was an interesting take on adolescent relationships, and I have to say it also felt like a time machine for me, taking me back to an uncomfortable and strangely familiar place.

The second tale, "The Saddest Story Ever Told," is about a family taking part in a focus group activity for a new television show. As you can see below, the whole enterprise is pretty mundane and the resulting disappointment is as muted as the color scheme of the entire book.

The rest of the stories in this book (about an uncomfortable family vacation, an alleged kidnapping, an encounter at a party between two estranged friends, and a creepy massage session) share in these themes of desperation, loss, awkward relationships, repressed sexuality, and submerged violence. They are also connected by some common characters, so there is a weird sense of continuity in play as well. Probably the best of these for me is the third tale, "The Lil' King," about that vacation. The disconnect between the parents and their children is to be expected, but the violence in the mute young son's daydreams is terrifying. Overall, I found the stories spare and compelling, and with details and events parceled out to maximize suspense and revelation. These are some finely crafted comics.

This book's creator Nick Drnaso has been nominated for multiple Ignatz Awards. He has published stories in various anthologies and works as a cartoonist and illustrator in Chicago. His artwork is very stylized and geometric, resembling a cross between Dan Clowes and Chris Ware, which is good company. He speaks more extensively about his work on this debut book in this interview.

All of the reviews I have read about this book indicate that the art and stories are artful but maybe appreciated by specific tastes. Publishers Weekly wrote, "The streets, houses, and people that populate the linked pieces of Drnaso’s blandly terrifying debut collection all share a soul-deadening, right-angled sameness that turns into its own kind of nightmare." Hillary Brown wrote that the comics work is deft but the stories are depressing perhaps to the point of being off-putting: "Even if all of this is true (it might be), the daily experience of living is rarely so unleavened by joy, and reading page after page of it makes one want to go turn on a Busby Berkeley musical to compensate." Dan Kois called it" uncomfortable, fascinating."

Beverly was published by Drawn & Quarterly, and they have preview images and more here. This should be apparent by now, but this is a book for mature readers and not meant for children.