I've been bogged down by both the
obligations of teaching as well as this tendon issue in my elbow, so
I haven't been writing reviews of late (that, and I've been
questioning why I'm even doing it). I do want to take a few moments, though, to point to a few books that I wanted to give some
positive press to.
Honey #1
(Celine Loup)
Honey #1 was not what I expected it to
be at all, and it's so much the better for that. It's an
anthropomorphic bee story, sort of, in which the honey bees all look
like cover models for Vogue in the 1920's and one or two of them
suffer from existential ennui. Like I said, it was not what I
expected (although, to be honest, I'm not really sure what my
expectations were).
Celine Loup does some amazing things
with her art in this book, most notably with her use of color to
accentuate mood and add dynamism to her pages. In terms of
storytelling, just when I thought the book might be teetering on
ham-fisted melodrama, Loup throws another curve into her narrative
which kept me eagerly turning pages a'plenty.
After reading Honey #1, I will never
look at butterflies in the same way again. Also, Loup has
exponentially added to my fear of wasps. Thanks for that.
You can purchase a copy of Honey #1
here.
Herman the Hot Dog #2
(Haleigh Buck, Hey Boy! Comics)
When the cover of your book sports both
a nervous looking hot dog wearing sneakers and knee socks and it's
emblazoned with a “Mature Audiences ONLY!” admonition, you're
already playing the hype game at a top-shelf level. The problem with
this kind of hype, though, is it usually masks something unworthy of
that kind of sonorousness. NOT SO with Herman the Hot Dog #2.
Right out of the gate, Buck spares no
decorum or sensibilities with a story called “Jeers of a Clown”
that starts off as a story about trying to increase a television
station's ratings but then veers off into places that I just can't
even talk about – it's offensive, it's wrong on so many levels –
but it's tear-inducing funny. It's not often that I find myself
sitting alone in my house with a book in my hands and laughing so
loudly that I scare my dog. I mean, I seriously let loose a
thundering guffaw. When was the last time you let loose one of those?
Buck finishes up Herman the Hot Dog #2
with a couple of seriously wonked shorts in which Herman the
Hot Dog … well... it's just some seriously, wonderfully fucked up
shit that you just got to see for yourself.
This kind of humor may not be to
everyone's taste (wait, I think I just made a pun), but it worked in
my head something good. It's hot dog humor taken to the next level.
Too Dark To See
(Julia
Gfrörer,
Thuban Press)
I'm
a big fan of Julia Gfrörer's work. Her book, Black is the Color, is
still one of the best comics that I've reviewed. Gfrörer's line work
and storytelling are consistently first rate in terms of their
ability to attract and disgust simultaneously. With little effort,
she brings you into these vivid worlds redolent with a dark sexuality
and the fragrance of relationships souring, and just when you think
you are comfortable with where she has brought you, she kicks you in
the head with some anachronistic or out-of-left-field moment that
leaves you unsure of your footing in the real world.
Her
2011 mini-comic Too Dark To See is a perfect example of Gfrörer's
talents. Here is all you need to know about this artist in one small
book. It is a Gfrörer book insomuch as everything is on the verge of
collapse, and yet out of this miasma of despair, something completely
alien to your expectation occurs to twist the ending into something
else. Not necessarily happy, but not horrific either. Gfrörer ends
Too Dark To See in an entirely different place than where you ever
could have expected to go when it first began.
And
it doesn't ring false or unnatural. It just makes its own sort of
illogically logical sense within the world of the book. It's
voyeuristic as much as it is participatory. And that's what Gfrörer
does best. She forces you to be inactively engaged and then
highly-charged emotionally cold. I know that doesn't make any sense,
but it's the best I can do when dropped in the liminal space she
creates.
Too
Dark To See is another book that you really need to read for yourself
to understand even slightly what I am talking about.
You
can pick up a copy here.
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