Review: MANIFESTO ITEMS #10 by David Lasky

Manifesto Items #10 by David Lasky

Manifesto Items #10. by David Lasky. self-published. Seattle, 2020. 60pp. $10.

When I find a worthy subject, I’ll add a dash or two of me into the mix. In this case, I present to you an ongoing series by cartoonist David Lasky. What I like about it is that I see some of my own passions. I guess, off and on, I’ve been following Lasky’s work for over twenty years. He’s a dedicated guy and he’s created some wonderful moments in comics through his various comic books and mini-comics. Where Lasky has trodded, so have I. The indie landscape is a very rocky road where you keep on truckin’ and, maybe with a little help from your friends, see what you can get.

Paul Gauguin used to ask, “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” These are the sort of big questions that pepper a lot of indie comics and done well a la Lasky. The Lasky universe is one that nibbles at a vast array of mystery and wonder and then finds a spot or two to feast upon and then dutifully report back to the hive. It’s a groovy gentle world of observations, hearty calls to action, and melancholic ruminations. Of course, we want to see more of this in comics but maybe some readers don’t even know what they’re missing until they stumble upon a Lasky gem. Well, with all that said, this latest Lasky work collects a bunch of quirky and offbeat content, as I’ve just suggested.

We begin with, well, it’s a little hard to say. It’s more like one little thing happens that leads to another slightly bigger little thing: a collage poem starts off with Bela Logosi and then gives way to a homage to comics and a tribute to the late great Tom Spurgeon; one exquisite corpse bends to another; tributes to cats lead to tributes to The Beatles; and, as we move along, some diehard fans might spot items that have appeared elsewhere like a page from an anthology about the US border patrol or comics from a workshop at Seattle’s Hugo House.

Walt Whitman a la Lasky

And then we’re hit with something special, like Lasky’s ode to Walt Whitman. Some of Lasky’s favorite, and best, work is literary adaption. For this collection, he provides a generous stretch of comics from Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”

A saucer in search of a cup.

Taken in as a whole, the slow rhythm of alternating images, the searching quality of it all, disparate items, enigmatic and uncanny,  it all adds up to a David Lasky experience. It’s like mashing up sleepy Garrison Keillor with a touch of sly David Lynch. Case in point: A Lasky comic that depicts someone looking amused upon seeing flying saucers but actually more disturbed when they beam up her cup of coffee. I suspect that Lasky was zoning into a stream-of-consciousness experiment–his mind zeroed in on saucers and couldn’t resist matching it up with a cup. I’ll have to ask David about it the next chance I get or he is more than welcome to leave an answer in the comments section. Your observations are also most welcome.

So, as I say, this is weird art for art’s sake, good ole fashioned unapologetically offbeat stuff. The humor is so dry that a slight wind could knock it over. But that’s what makes it so distinctive. That is what I am attracted to since my humor can veer off into very dry territory. Maybe David and I have that in common. We’re both rather sensitive souls I’ll have you know. Maybe it’s something in the Pacific Northwest air that we’ve been breathing into our lungs all of these overcast years. Something about it that compels a cartoonist to match a flying saucer with a cup of coffee.

Visit David Lasky right here.