R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book by Robert Crumb 1998

            The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book blew my mind and not in that painfully clichéd way referential to the 60’s; I mean it actually had an impact on me. The almost abrasively honest subject matter depicted by Crumb was eye opening to say the least. His classic stuff was pretty funny but the best part, hands down, was the retrospective on his own life, where he sits in a velvet robe with that little pig and recounts his adventures, commenting on all the conventions of the times he lived through as well as giving a candid look into his life. The recounting of his sexual adventures was definitely less than savory, but secretly i thought it was great. The segment where he goes over the rise and fall of the hippie movement was especially interesting and I saw a lot of parallels between it and my generation. In another 20 or 30 years I hope to see someone’s hilarious and biting commentary on the generation who got passed the “save the world” ball and fumbled around with it. It was interesting reading and writing about this after the Bush Junta. The two together entice my imagination to project itself into the future. I’d be interested to find other comics that do the same kind of commentary on this level like the Bush Junta.

Ripple A Predilection for Tina by Dave Cooper 2004

Ripple details the very strange sexual (mis)adventure of a slightly depressed illustrator. From a general perspective this is similar to the cat lady story from Through the Habitrails, but Ripple is much more twisted and graphic. The protagonist who of course hates his job illustrates all the commonplace garbage we normally see in advertising until he gets a grant for a project on erotica. He rejects the idea of using a model he might expect to find in a magazine or other media outlet and instead searches for more of a “real” woman, one with features that could make anyone get their money’s worth of Photoshop. He ends up with a curvy, slightly manipulative and considerably younger woman (or girl) whom he develops a sexual attraction towards. Under the guise, if you can call it that, of erotic art, he draws her in sexual situations and gradually developes a relationship with her. He’s always thinking of some excuse to get her to come by and once she’s there he looks for a reason too get her to stay longer. The protagonist is needy and showers the girl with attention, which she in turn abuses. The situation gets weirder and weirder until the girl, fickle minded and unattached decides to leave. If I’m perfectly honest, I wasn’t disinterested, but I have to admit the whole thing was kind of gross and twisted. I felt bad for the protagonist who was too much of a mess to notice all the red flags. I’m also curious as to how “fictional” the story was. I’m inclined to believe that at least some of it was based, even loosely, on the author’s own experiences.

Riceboy by Evan Dahm 2008

            Despite how quickly it reads, rice boy was actually a pretty epic tale. A lot of the structure was pretty run-of-the-mill though; the hero’s call to action, his initial refusal and later acceptance, a quest with goals, save the world type of deal. The illustrations were also very simple in the way the drawing is handled but the characterizations and personalities were strong which contrasted the typical structure and gave it some uniqueness. Rice boy was the simplest drawing of them all, made of only a circle head and organic rectangular body, no arms or legs, or mouth even. His humility made him very easy to follow as a protagonist and gave the story a pleasant quaintness. He always greets people, and sometimes monsters politely. There was also another protagonist called The One Electronic, who was quite original. His face was a circular tv screen and in each panel that showed his face, a different black ad white still from movie or cartoon was depicted on the screen. I enjoyed following rice boy through all these imaginative environments. With each stop on his quest he would meet an equally imaginative character. At one point he meets a “woman” or female humanoid creature, who grows a tiny tree in the palm of her hand that dies and bursts into flames, which she uses to light her pipe. This type of innovation on the characters and environments (such as the matchstick woods) made the simplicity engaging. Apparently its available digitally and is part of a larger world with more stories, short ones and epics. I’ll have to check out the others at rice-boy.com to see if they’re as good or better.

BlackLung by Chris Wright 2012

            Now that I’m writing about it, I look back and realize that the Blacklung universe was very very strange, and I think I took it pretty lightly while I was reading it. For starters, it was violent; a child gets murdered by a street person within the first few pages. Although, at the time it didn’t seem too shocking, partly because of the illustration style. They all kind of look like ragdolls with some of the faces stitched together with different pieces of cloth, and everyones hands and feet were significantly larger than their heads, all of which made it all cartoonish and underplayed all the violence. With pirates and street thugs, Blacklung was straight out of a 10-year old boy’s imagination. The story’s protagonist is a rather jaded schoolteacher who seems unaffected when he hears about the child murder. This event though seemingly unrelated actually causes him to end up in the bad part of town right when a couple of gang members are executing a plan to assassinate another gang member. The protagonist and his associate, who is also partly to blame for their ending up here, are caught in the ensuing scuffle. The associate is murdered while the protagonist is kidnapped and taken aboard a pirate ship where he spends the remainder of the novel. There are few aboard the ship who protect him from the others. He eventually get’s on the captains good side when it is discovered that he is literate. The captain employs him to take dictation for his memoirs. As if he had a choice, the schoolteacher tags along with the pirates while they do pirate things, rape, pillage, murder, etc. Eventually all the notable characters, save the schoolteacher, go mad or get murdered or both, leaving the teacher, for all practical purposes, alone. He has no ties to any of the other pirate who are still alive and as a result they decide to leave him on an island. End novel. It was an interesting read but I’m not sure I got anything insightful from it.

Human Target: Final Cut by Peter Milligan, Javier Pulido, Dave Stewart 2002

            Human target was like a thriller movie, and appropriately so. Hollywood assassinations and a human chameleon protagonist made for a pretty wild ride. There’s a serial killer going around targeting celebrities. First he sends a note, like a ransom note before the kidnapping, demanding money, pay up or die. As if they’re used to these kinds of veiled threats, most shrug it off, until the killer delivers. That’s where our protagonist, Christopher Chance, comes in, a very literal human chameleon. He surgically adorns the persona of the celebrity under threat and waits for the opportunity to turn the tables and apprehend the culprit, taking acting to a whole new level. I was quite taken with Milligan’s writing. He takes you inside Chance’s head where countless plastic surgeries and deep role immersion have taken a significant psychological toll. Chance struggles with who he is/was outside of his work, where he has to quite literally become another person. Murder, mystery, scandal, drama, this book had it all. I cant tell if the Hollywood setting was ironic, clever or both. When I explained the plot to someone else after reading, I realized how implausible it all was. Though, I think it’s some indicator of success that I really didn’t care or even consider that while reading and I genuinely enjoyed it.

Jar of Fools by Jason Lutes 2001

Jar of Fools was simultaneously a tale of dejection and hope. All the major characters were pretty down on their luck.

There’s Ernie, the protagonist, a failing magician and budding alcoholic,

Esther, his ex girlfriend who physically took her anger out on a number of aux. characters,

Al Flosso, a veteran magician gradually losing his mental faculties, as the elderly generally do,

Nathan Lender, a homeless con man and single father
and Claire Lender, nathan’s daughter and the story’s source of hope and redemption.

For a story about the ceaseless uphill struggle known as life and those who dance dangerously close to its gutter, this story was surprisingly light and provided much relief from the well crafted tension. Beneath the surface level subject matter of magicianship, there lies some interesting insight into generational struggles and changing times. Al is a veteran from an era more accepting of the vaudeville lifestyle, he’s got all the tricks. He passed some of them on to Ernie but the changing times and general stuggles of light have rendered them lackluster in his hands. Al spends a good portion of the novel trying to help Ernie get it together. Nathan is maybe a bit older than Ernie but he was probably too old and jaded to be inspired by Flosso in his prime like Ernie probably was. Nathan’s magicianship has “devolved” into con artistry out of survival. The confluence of the two is where the important of Claire comes in. She represents/has potential & hope, everyone becomes pressed with the need to pass all their knowledge on to her so that maybe she can make it out of the hole they all seem to be swimming in. The ending is symbolic of this as Esther drives off with Claire, as if Al, Ernie and Nathan have done all they could for her.

Bush Junta 25 Cartoonists on the Mayberry Machiavelli and the Abuse of Power by Gary Groth and Mack White 2005

            Reading the Bush Junta was definitely the most eye-opening graphic novel I have ever read. It provided well-researched insights into the various political escapades and affairs of the Bush family and associates through the second half of the 20^th century. It gave me a new perspective on my country and coming out of it, I begin to have a fuller understanding of how I fit in to it all. It was like zooming out to see the larger influences and personal agendas that ripple out to affect someone as uninvolved as me. At first glance one might assume this book is just one long political cartoon but there are actually a few distinct things that separate it from the genre. In political cartooning, opinions are stated using the dialogue between characters or captions or just the overall use of text. In the Bush Junta however, the text was reserved for fact only; all wording was remarkably unbiased. This created a pocket in which subtle commentary is made through use of caricature and the more strictly visual elements. Topics covered in the Bush Junta include the Bush family history, including its connections to the Nazi regime, The Nixon & Reagan administrations, Iran-contra, Donald Rumsfeld, Abu Gharib, Carl Rove, and much more. It was like cliff notes for the American Government on either side of Clinton, and I feel more prepared and inclined to vote in 2016.