You should buy it!

Best American Comics 2007 collects comics published from late 2005 to late 2006, and packages them up with a beautiful cover and dust jacket drawn by David Heatley, one of the contributors.

The list of artists is impressive, and the book pulls stories from creators whose approaches to the form differ wildly in both content and execution. There are autobiographical “slice-o-life” comics, psychedelic mind-benders, fiction, creative non-fiction and more, and the way they’re sequenced makes a nice continuously varied read. It is, in essence, a sampler, and while you won’t like everything—I certainly didn’t—there is a good chance you’ll find something that moves you, maybe even blows your mind.

Which is what happened to me. I was making my way through the book, and when I came to “Kramers Ergot”, a comic by collective Paper Rad, something happened. I was reading in bed, all slumped down and tucked in, but halfway through the story I realized I was sitting up straight as though I was in a chair, book in my lap and legs crossed. I took it as a sign, and I’ve since drained my paypal account and funneled what little I have into getting more stuff from these guys. And while not everything had me popping up off my back, there are certainly lots of people who I now know I need to investigate further, like David Heatley, Kim Deitch, Lauren Weinstein and Tim Hensley.

This sampler style book is perfect as a jumping off point for finding more of the stuff you love. If I was a true comics devotee, I’d have read most of these when they were originally published in anthologies like Mome, Kramers Ergot or The Ganzfeld, but then I would have missed out on some of the other work that I might not have seen otherwise. I may be a comics world poseur, but I’m a poseur who has some amazing Paper Rad stuff coming to him in the mail, so I’ll get over it.

You should buy it!

Right off the hop, I have three questions. First, Is it a conflict of interest to write about something that I was involved in? Second, I think that only applies to professionals, am I right about that? Lastly, are people who write blogs “professionals”? If I am to answer those questions in reverse order, I would say that bloggers are amateurs, conflict of interest (or any ethical code) is only something the pros need to worry about and that it’s okay for me to write about this book.

I shouldn’t really worry about conflict of interest though, as I only did the inside covers, but it was enough to get me a couple copies. Once you see the book it should be clear that this is a pretty impressive score on my part. It’s lavishly produced, with a foil-stamped, cloth-bound hardcover, gilt (gold painted) edges, immaculate printing and lovely paper. It’s stunning to look at, but dudes, DUDES, we haven’t even opened it yet!

Inside Beasts!, ninety different artists, illustrators, designers and picture-makers are each given a page to depict a mythological or folkloric beast. Along with each full page you’re given a short history of said creature. The images concocted are as varied as the artists represented, but what took me by surprise was how consistently great the work was. I could easily rip out two thirds of this book and frame it. In fact, that sounds like a pretty rad idea. If I had a beautiful mahogany-walled private study I would hang the beasts done by Esther Pearl Watson, Mat Brinkman (obviously I’m crushing on him), Corey Lunn, Marc Bell, Mizda Wana, Bwana Spoons, Justin B. Williams, Maxwell Loren Holyoke-Hirsch and Souther Salazar. Later I would tear them down out of jealousy, but until then, wow. Beautiful.

You should buy it!

A year or so ago a friend let me borrow a PBS series about contemporary art called Art:21, and it was there that I was introduced to the work of Trenton Doyle Hancock. Introduced sounds wrong, too genteel, because really, I mean, he kind of tore a whole in my brain. The paintings and prints he does are these dense, colourful narratives from a complex universe he’s created, with characters and plots that have an almost biblical feel. Then, to hear him talk about these characters and stories, it lets you see just how developed this whole story is. He’s making comics, but they’re taking the form of paintings, with action so complex that you wish you had a guide to what was going on.

Tooling around on the Picturebox site one day, I found this very guide, created by Trenton Doyle Hancock himself. The book was inspired by, and even laid out like, The Official Marvel Handbook of the Marvel Universe, which was a guidebook to all the super-heroes and villains from Marvel comics, so it’s a nice little nod to Hancock’s comics influence. Inside he gives full descriptions of all the characters in his paintings. He documents their history, intelligence, aliases, affiliations and everything else you could ever need to know, and it never ruins the mystery, it just enriches the experience of enjoying his work. It’s rare that you get to peek into the world an artist imagines, so the whole thing feel like a privilege, as though you found Hancock’s private notes in a drawer somewhere.

You should buy it!

Some people use the phrase “art comic” as a kind of slur, but not you and I, no. We are better than those fools, because we realize that art comics pack up two fantastic things and put them together in one beautiful, slightly pulsating package. We love art, and we also love comics, do we really have to choose a side? Are we in grade six again? Can I stop saying we at this point?

Weee!

So anyways, Teratoid Heights is a comic by Mat Brinkman, an alumni of an influential art/comics collective Fort Thunder which also includes another great comic creator, Brian Chippendale. By the time I found Fort Thunder it was already gone, but I’ve snapped up as much of their output as I can afford.

In Teratoid Heights, each short comic takes a simple action or idea and gives life to it through a cast of surreal, sometimes grotesque characters. The experience of reading it is like observing people in another world through a telescope, because it’s almost silent, and the things you’re seeing are the kinds of activites creatures do when they aren’t being watched, which is very satisfying.

I’m always searching for art that gives me both something I understand and something I don’t. I like the feeling of being pleasantly out of sorts, and this book does that beautifully. It all seems remotely familiar, but there are key differences from what your familiar with, and wait, what is that blob with the umbilical cord doing? What’s going on? Yes! Give me more!

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If I am being completely honest, which I think you deserve, I find most visually focused/coffeetable books painful. The ones I love throw me in to fits of envious rage, and after slamming them shut I usually mope around for a good couple hours, sullen and jealous. And have you seen the prices of some of them? For me, it’s like buying an expensive cologne, spraying it in my eyes and then beating myself senseless with the bottle.

However, for some reason, books related to the world of comics don’t seem to bother me. I have no idea why, and I try not to think about it. So in order to avoid triggering any sort of episode, I’m going to stick to comics, ones that I’ve read recently and loved.

Oh, and please do call them comics. The only people who call them graphic novels are those who are secretly unsure if it’s cool to read comics. I mean, if you’re going to find another name, make up a better one, like totally literary totally serious graphic picture narratives. Or read them while drinking single malt scotch and polishing a monocle, that way nobody will question your intelligence.

All right, enough of that. Let’s party with some comics and comic-related books!
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You should buy it! (by emailing pancakemahoney@gmail.com)

This is a little collection of mini-comics, doodles and drawings by Laura Park that when taken as a whole kind of reads like a character sketch of it’s author. Sometimes that sense of autobiography is blatant, sometimes it’s buried, which makes for a great reading experience because you sort of bounce from the very personal to the more symbolic.

It’s a fairly melancholy affair, but sweetly so, and the truly hilarious and weird moments she throws into the mix—her cat’s anus says hi, for instance—give it the feel of a well rounded meal. I know that meal metaphor is a bit lame, but it actually makes sense because, wait for it, she also includes a recipe for onigiri! Did I just mention a meal right after talking about how her cat’s anus talks? I did. You can handle it though.

Lastly (should have been firstly) her drawing style is lovely, as you can see, both intense and playful like the stories themselves. Oh, and it’s a bit wrinkled—the actual book that is—but not because that’s how it came in the mail. I spilled a glass of water on it. I know, I know, but look, I’m not some professional book reviewer, all right? Gimme a break. Plus, I rescued it so quickly that my brain forced my hands into action before I even knew what was going on. That has to be a good sign.