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progAfter finishing some contract work at the Diesel, ducked into MacIntyre & Moore to wait out the rain, and bought some comics they had lying around.
* A 1970s collection of Howard Cruse's "Barefootz". I had heard of this strip, but hadn't actually seen it on paper before. I know it more as a contemporary of other cartoons from the era that I adore. Indeed, these early examples aren't very good, and the art style's a little creepy. A newcomer probably won't realize that the main character is not supposed to be a little boy, though if you read far enough in from any given point this will become clear soon enough. Think "Peanuts" with T&A and occasional bouts of graphic sex.
* "God's Bosom", a collection of strips about the post-Columbian history of Texas, by Jack Jackson. Published in 1995 but reprinting a lot of stuff from the 1970s through the 1990s. This guy's work is new to me! He's got the scratchy-scratchy style that marks him as a member of the R. Crumb underground school, but more specifically reminds me a lot of John Severin's work (in "Cracked" and elsewhere). A bit heavy on multi-panel layouts of stomach-churning depictions of atrocities, though. Barf.
* "40 Hour Man", a hefty 2006 memoir written by Stephen Beaupre, with comics-style illustrations on on every page by Steve Lafler. I think I'll like it; it's a chronicle of every job the writer had, from a stockboy in the 1970s through his layoff at Lycos. Oddly, folded into the front cover (I only now notice!) is a letter that makes it clear this was a review copy sent to The Dig, a Boston-area indie weekly. That it ended up in a used bookshop with the letter still there makes me a little sad. If I end up writing a proper review here, I'll point the authors at it. Shrug.
* A 1970s collection of Howard Cruse's "Barefootz". I had heard of this strip, but hadn't actually seen it on paper before. I know it more as a contemporary of other cartoons from the era that I adore. Indeed, these early examples aren't very good, and the art style's a little creepy. A newcomer probably won't realize that the main character is not supposed to be a little boy, though if you read far enough in from any given point this will become clear soon enough. Think "Peanuts" with T&A and occasional bouts of graphic sex.
* "God's Bosom", a collection of strips about the post-Columbian history of Texas, by Jack Jackson. Published in 1995 but reprinting a lot of stuff from the 1970s through the 1990s. This guy's work is new to me! He's got the scratchy-scratchy style that marks him as a member of the R. Crumb underground school, but more specifically reminds me a lot of John Severin's work (in "Cracked" and elsewhere). A bit heavy on multi-panel layouts of stomach-churning depictions of atrocities, though. Barf.
* "40 Hour Man", a hefty 2006 memoir written by Stephen Beaupre, with comics-style illustrations on on every page by Steve Lafler. I think I'll like it; it's a chronicle of every job the writer had, from a stockboy in the 1970s through his layoff at Lycos. Oddly, folded into the front cover (I only now notice!) is a letter that makes it clear this was a review copy sent to The Dig, a Boston-area indie weekly. That it ended up in a used bookshop with the letter still there makes me a little sad. If I end up writing a proper review here, I'll point the authors at it. Shrug.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-11 08:52 pm (UTC)Love your Mr. Spook icon. If I had to name my top ten favorite comic books of all time, Tales of the Beanworld would definitely be among them.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-11 09:16 pm (UTC)I discovered the Beanworld when I got really into comics around 1990, at exactly the age when finding things like can be a life-altering experience. I could have done worse! (And somewhere in the shelf behind my head is a copy of the issue with my own "Do-it-Youself Beanworld" submission printed in it. Too bad I misplaced the autographed award certificate I got...)
40 Hour Man GN
Date: 2008-01-05 03:30 am (UTC)I am the publisher of the book, and I was in Portland OR at Powell's (a great bookstore), and found a used copy of 40 Hour Man with a PR letter to a local Portland radio station still tucked into the cover. It amused me no end, but I took the letter out of the book and threw it out in the adjacent cafe.
The book actually garnered it's share of great mentions and reviews in journals grand and not so grand, but it sure did not set the world on fire.
Steve Lafler