The Six Sidekicks of Trigger Keaton

I am a huge fan of both Kyle Starks and Chris Schweizer's comics, having read pretty much all of the books they've made (click on their names in the labels, you'll see!). They are friends in real life and frequent collaborators, and in The Six Sidekicks of Trigger Keaton they once again make an enjoyable and well-plotted action/murder mystery. The titular Trigger Keaton is an actor in adventure shows, a horribly behaved Chuck Norris type and grade A jerk, leaving a path of verbal abuse, wounded egos, and broken noses in his wake. He's got a long-term studio contract so that he appears in many different series, only his cantankerous disposition, hard drinking, and penchant for wounding stuntmen means that they are short-lived despite their popularity.

Someone has finally had enough, and they take Trigger out to pasture, but staged it as a suicide. The six actors who played his sidekicks are some of the only people who come to his funeral, and when some of them question his death, they all end up involved in a disjointed and haphazard investigation.  

These unlikely sleuths have a difficult time gelling as a squad, and their bickering is one of the bright spots of this book. The book also features lots of snappy dialogue, several carefully constructed combat scenes, and myriad pop culture references to fictional shows, including ads, movie posters, interviews, and previews. Also, the mystery plots features lots of red herrings to keep the reader guessing. This series is a real labor of love and a joy to read, especially as a child of the 1980s where many of the pop culture references come from. 

Trigger being Trigger.

All of the reviews I have read about it have praised this critically under-rated series. I agree with Sean Kleefeld who wrote, "On top of being a fun set of characters and an interesting concept, the story is told very well." Aussiemoose gushed that "the 6 Sidekicks of Trigger Keaton has everything you could possibly want in a graphic novel." Joe concluded that there is "so much packed into each issue, none of the characters or ideas feel underbaked, it all feels so fleshed out and has made for an incredibly fufilling reading experience that everyone should check out!"

The Six Sidekicks of Trigger Keaton was published by Image Comics, and they offer previews and more info about it here. This book features copious amounts of profanity and violence, so it is suggested for folks who can handle that.

Child Star

Brian "Box" Brown is one of my favorite comics creators, and his prior graphic novels have been nonfiction looks at Andre the Giant, Andy Kaufman, Tetris, and Cannabis. All of these books were very well researched and obvious labors of love. His latest book is fictional, but it is based in reality and is also obviously well-sourced and personal. Child Star focuses on Owen Eugene, who displays both humor and charisma from a very young age and becomes a huge celebrity.

His life and career is clearly modeled on a melange of people such as Gary Coleman, Emmanuel Lewis, and Macaulay Culkin, but I don't think one would have to know that to enjoy this book. I am knowledgeable enough to get the references to real-life events, but I feel that readers who are not up on 1980s sitcoms and movies would just read this book as a prolonged examination of a person's life. Owen stars in commercials at first but quickly graduates into a hit TV series as well as several movies, cartoons, and other commercial venues in the form of lunchboxes and toys. And, of course, he came up with a catch-phrase that propelled him into the public consciousness but became an anchor as he grew older. Along his path through stardom, he touches a lot of people's lives.

As you can see from the excerpts above, the narrative plays out in multiple forms. There is one level of commentary that runs as a documentary, showcasing the actors, parents, and other people in Owen's life in a series of interviews. Then, there are also lengthy excerpts from fictional TV programs and movies that Owen starred in (which are colored in red, so you can tell the difference from reality).

What is impressive to me about this book is how well it plays like a documentary, with elaborate scenes from his various star vehicles included in extended excerpts. The book plays out in multiple parts, detailing Owen's rise to fame, his stream of successes, his struggles with finding work as he grew older, his disillusionment with the business side of showbiz, his fragile health situation, his dis-junction from his parents, and his eventual late-life slide into obscurity and tabloid fodder. The lengths that Brown went to in fleshing out and realizing this character and his world are extremely impressive. Also I should note the level of affection Brown has for his subject matter. Even though the TV shows and movies depicted have a tongue-in-cheek quality, this book does not parody or mock Owen, holding him in esteem while showing the pitfalls many child stars experienced. As a fan of 1980s and 1990s popular culture, I really enjoyed this book.

All the reviews I have read about this book have been positive. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly summed up, "This in-the-know skewering of celebrity and pop culture will entertain children of the ’80s as well as their own children." In a starred review in Library Journal, Douglas Rednour remarked that it was "thought provoking and poignant yet honest in its humanity." Paul's Picks called it "an impressively dense and thorough look at the child star phenomenon." Brown speaks more about his work on Child Star in this interview.

Child Star was published by First Second, and they offer a preview and much more here.

All the Answers

I am a big fan of Michael Kupperman's comics. Tales Designed to Thrizzle was one of my favorite series, and I adored the humor of Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010. His combination of deadpan faces with absurd, surreal imagery and situations have consistently cracked me up. I even have a print of his "Are Comics Serious Literature" on my office wall. So when I learned he had a full length graphic novel forthcoming, I was jazzed. When I found out it was a serious, nonfiction work, I was intrigued even further. This book, All the Answers did not disappoint in any way. It's a fantastic, gripping, and thought-provoking work.

This book is mostly a biography of his father, Joel Kupperman, a famous child prodigy who starred on a radio/TV show called Quiz Kids. He began on the show from age 6 and became a break-out star who toured the country and met many famous people for more than a decade. He had a gift for mathematics and could do algebra problems in his head with relative ease. There was a backlash from being so familiar and appearing so perfect, not to mention pressures from being in the public spotlight for so long, and later in life he basically shut the whole episode away. Joel Kupperman went on to become a successful philosophy professor, mostly interested in exploring ethics, but he refused to engage with any part of his prior life. This situation also affected how he raised his own children, and we see the long-term effects in this book.

The detached art style responsible for the humor in Michael Kupperman's earlier works here plays in a much more dramatic way, communicating the detached way that the older Kupperman treated his own family. The title of the book has a double meaning, one linked to Joel's ability to always come up with the correct solution, but the second is more ironic. In the end Michael Kupperman has lots of questions about his father's life and motivations that lie unanswered. What is more, he constantly questions whether bringing all these issues into the light via this book is a good idea. In the end, this book is a meditation about families, how they relate to each other, and the roles of parents with their children. It also has a lot to say about the functions of popular culture and the early days of television. It is wonderfully provocative and affecting, an excellent biography, history, memoir, and autobiography all in one.

If you would like to learn more about Kupperman's inspirations and work on this book, check out this interview with the Comics Alternative.

All of the reviews I have read of this book sing its praises. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review and wrote that the combination of art and text "help turn an already incredible story into an electrifyingly fast-paced, yet intimate memoir about family secrets and the price children can pay for their parents’ ambitions." Rob Clough concluded his review, "He told his father’s story as authentically as he could, but the fact that he had the guts to admit that this didn’t lead to a magical catharsis doesn’t puncture a hole in the narrative; it simply grounds it in reality." Greg Hunter called it "a brave piece of storytelling."

All the Answers was published by Gallery 13, and they offer more info about it here.