This was the year for some very significant comics, notably Monica by Daniel Clowes and Blood of the Virgin by Sammy Harkham. Those two titles alone represent comics at its best in any year.
Tag Archives: Entertainment
BEN KATCHOR by Benjamin Fraser book review
Ben Katchor. By Benjamin Fraser. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2023. 130pp, $20.00
Guest Review by Paul Buhle
Filed under Ben Katchor, Comics, Paul Buhle
Hurricane Nancy: A JOYFUL and FUN Holiday Season
Let’s Have a Great 2024! Color by Henry Chamberlain.
This just in from the news desk at Comics Grinder, our intrepid artist friend, Hurricane Nancy is here to report that all is well and is wishing you all a great new year and holiday!
Visit Hurricane Nancy here and pick up some art soon! Let’s try to keep it trippy and real in 2024!
Have a JOYFUL and FUN Holiday season!!!
Filed under Art, Comics, Hurricane Nancy
SOPHIE’S WORLD: Volume II comics review
Sophie’s World: a Graphic Novel about the History of Philosophy, Volume II: From Descartes to the Present Day. SelfMadeHero, London, 2023. 260pp. $29.95. Scripted by Vincent Zabus, based on the novel by Jostein Gaarder, drawing by Nicoby, color by Philippe Ory, translation by Edward Gauvin.
Guest Review by Paul Buhle
The publishing of novels is, of course, centuries old, in thousands of languages, and even after the competition of radio, television and the Internet, a hugely successful commercial business. By notable contrast, the Graphic Novel owes its prominence to the 1990s, in the US at least, and despite the awards handed out by various institutions, perhaps it came too late to find a secure footing.
Hardly had the virtual ink dried on a distribution deal for Fantagraphics in the late 1990s, when video games had begun to eat at the lower-age edge. According to some close observers, the age average of the adult reader has meanwhile continued to rise, as gainfully employed adults, 30 or over, take to GNs as a newer version of the “art book” seen for generations on the coffee tables of sophisticates. Perhaps these two trends might balance out, or perhaps not. Parents and grandparents may need, in the years ahead, to force educational comics on their pre-adolescents, an experiment rarely altogether successful. Art Spiegelman insisted, long ago, that with the demise of the daily funny pages, comics as a form of expressive entertainment had lost its practical basis, and would be forced into the world of art and even the museum.
Still, the market for self-improvement or “encouraged self-improvement” is likely to be large for some time to come. A French original translated into English for SelfMadeHero in the UK, Sophie’s World: A Graphic Novel about the History of Philosophy, saw its first volume covering the Ancient World to Descartes. According to this volume’s final page, the literary original was a world-wide best seller, prompting the Norwegian author, Josein Gaarder, to donate a large chunk of the royalties to sustainable environmental development. His heart is in the right place.
Scriptwriter Vincent Zabus, adapting a novel by Jostein Gaarder, is obviously adept and Nicoby, as the artist calls herself, more than talented. And yet, color (in the volume, “Colours”) by Philppe Ory, may be the best feature or at least the most striking one, a splash of primaries with plenty of black. Harvey Kurtzman used to say that only the old German-American craftsmen could get color signature right, the coloring work itself done by top craftsmen (sometimes craftswomen) in the artists’ section of the comics trade. Presumably, technology has made all this easier.
Our protagonist is an adolescent of perhaps fifteen, interacting with someone who could be her granddad. She is constantly in motion, climbing, jumping or running rings around him, while the two come across philosophers who say their own piece. After a while, actually on p.123, she realizes that she is herself a created character and her creator happens to be the father of her bestie or presumed bestie, the adolescent who happens to be very “real.”
This volume takes up the story from the famous (was he typically French?) chap looking inward to his mental cogitations, up to the present. Decartes thus yields to Locke, Hume, Spinoza and Hobbes, who should scare our teenager rather more than he does, and then onward to Rousseau, obviously a favorite of the author in his quest for freedom. Going onward to Voltaire, we even see the French Revolution (not its counterpart in Haiti: Black history is absent), then on to Romanticism and Appolinaire, seemingly another French choice.
It’s a convention familiar to better comics going all the way back to Little Nemo that allows our fictive adolescent to jump through panels as she moves across history. Perhaps the test of this comic’s intellectual acuity happens when we meet Hegel, who explains the dialectic without calling it dialectical. Instead, he points to a stream as the steam of historical change, with history itself “the slow awakening of thought.” (p.143). Let us say that this touches the main point of dialectics but leaves a lot to be desired. Hegel himself described his predecessor, the mystic Silesian cobbler Jakob Böhme, as the “complete German philosopher,” and others would say that Böhme, a child of the Radical Reformation (which also escapes mention), was also the godfather of German Romanticism. Perhaps too complicated a story to be told here. Never mind.
The stormier landscape of Kierkegaard offers a more dramatic informant (for all of three pages) and a real sense of the “subjective truth.” But with Marx comes the artist’s boldest and, if not perhaps the best, at least the most heartfelt effort. She goes “through the looking glass” like Alice, but actually plunges through a poster of Marx dawn roughly on a wall, following him as he describes structure and superstructure, the division of labor, class struggle and the estrangement of the proletariat from its own creation. Her mentor explains that the Russian version went “dreadfully astray” but that the prospects for a good use of Marxism remain—if they also remain vague. We grasp at some point the ecological catastrophe facing her own generation, but not the source in the crimes of capital, in all its varied forms.
This is, nevertheless, bold for a kid’s book or as bold as we can reasonably expect. Darwin, Freud and Sartre eventually yield to Simone De Beauvoir (the first woman in the list of giants), who has a lot to say. Compared to her, Camus is a cigarette-puffing introvert who thankfully does not offer his dim view of Algerians and their right for independence from the French empire.
Given the inevitable limits, Sophie’s World is engaging and useful, certainly a model of sorts for handling many large ideas in a fairly brief space.
Paul Buhle is an editor of more than twenty non-fiction, historical comics.
Filed under Comics, Comics Reviews, Paul Buhle
The Girl Who Handcuffed Houdini by Cynthia von Buhler comics review
Minky Woodcock: The Girl Who Handcuffed Houdini. by Cynthia von Buhler. Titan Comics. 2018. 112pp. $24.99
Having reviewed the Tesla book, it only makes sense for me to go back and review the Houdini book, the first in Cynthia von Buhler’s Minky Woodcock crime noir series. I like how von Buhler gives both men the treatment by exposing their peculiarities and destructive tendencies. In the case of Houdini, he was hell bent on demolishing the industry of seances, spiritualism and fortune telling. That kind of intense zeal triggers deadly enemies. Our story begins when, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, one of spiritualism’s biggest defenders, wishes to enlist the detective agency of Woodcock & Son to get to the bottom of Houdini’s own supposed magical powers.
From Murray Hill to Park Avenue to Montreal.
The only problem is that Minky Woodcock is the only one available and not exactly Sir Arthur’s first choice. Be that as it may, Minky manages to not only ingratiate herself with Doyle but with Houdini and his wife, Bess. Minky gets in so deep that she’s even trading places with the most notorious of seance mavens, Margery of Boston, who is famous for presiding nude over her events and emitting mysterious protoplasmic fumes from her body. Margery has a way of intruding into personal spaces that her collaborators find intoxicating. All except for Minky, who easily sees through Margery’s scam.
It’s a delight to have gone back and read this first book in the series as I appreciate all the more von Buhler’s storytelling and artwork. If it’s not clear by now, this book is for mature readers, starting with older and wiser teens. This is in the best tradition of pulp fiction with its own sense of discretion, most interested in achieving a light entertainment. That brings to mind master illustrator Robert McGinnis, known for his iconic movie posters (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Odd Couple and James Bond), who provides the cover art for the first single issue to the Houdini story. And, with that image, in all its wildly vintage sensibility, you get a quick idea of the marvelously retro content you will find inside. So, if that’s your cup of tea, then you’ve found a very special blend.
Filed under Comics, Comics Reviews
NAKED: The Confessions of a Normal Woman graphic novel review
Naked: The Confessions of a Normal Woman. Pow Pow. 2023. 161pp. $24.95
The auto-bio genre is alive and well. It never really went away, just like figurative painting. There are these cyclical declarations on art that certain things are dead until proven wrong. No one is ever going to stop bringing up their take on the human condition in comics, movies, books or whatever content we are compelled to consume and criticize. Bring in the topic of sex and, are you kidding me? Of course, artists of all stripes have something to say on the subject. Enter cartoonist Eloise Marseille and her coming-of-age misadventures. She shares her sex life with you, every last bit of it in her still young life, providing perhaps a guidebook for those coming up the ranks.
An honest confusion.
Don’t let the title of the book fool you. Marseille is not really claiming to be “normal” as much as she is sharing her struggle with moving past any labels. As a young person who is navigating what it’s all about, Marseille revels in sharing a messy and honest confusion. Like countless other cartoonists who have come before, and will come in the future, Marseille is putting it out there: life can be complicated; people make mistakes; ultimately, if people know what’s good for them, they will trust their feelings. And, so, for example, Marseille depicts her coming to terms with her attraction to women. In the end, it’s not a big deal.
The artwork in this comic is very appealing, minimal and elegant. The two-color palette of red and blue is perfect. Color and design, pacing and composition, all work well in advancing the narrative. There’s a lot to unpack here: numerous tender and vulnerable moments, along with various points to be made about society, sex, and relationships. Through it all, Marseille confides in the reader in the way a best friend will dish about what’s been going on in their life. This is an excellent book, in the best spirit of the auto-bio tradition, from a new talent with a lot to say.
Filed under Comics, Comics Reviews
The Girl Who Electrified Tesla by Cynthia Von Buhler comics review
Minky Woodcock: The Girl Who Electrified Tesla, Issue 2. Written and illustrated by Cynthia von Buhler, 2021 (Hard Case Crime/Titan Comics) 110pp. $24.99. (Above cover art by Robert McGinnis)
I spotted this ravishing pulpy cover and I immediately made a mental note, “Tesla girl!” I was just doing my usual navigating and took a second look at Cynthia Von Buhler’s Instagram account. The idea of a really quirky take on Nikola Tesla via comics appealed to me. Over the years, Tesla has become a genre all to itself open to new and fun interpretations. This title does not disappoint and led me down an array of intriguing paths.
Cynthia von Buhler is a genuine art geek, to put it bluntly. This comic truly lives up to its promise by thoughtfully doing all the necessary prep work in order to deliver something authentic. I felt that Tesla was really alive on the page, skulking around Bryant Park and whispering sweet nothings to his pigeon wife. Indeed, the mad scientist never married and did develop a curious attachment to pigeons. That peculiarity and many more are faithfully depicted by von Buhler. This respect for the subject matter compliments the crime thriller that ensues.
Feeding the pigeons in Bryant Park.
What von Buhler manages to do is juggle a number of tantalizing facts. It is New York City, circa 1943: Nazis are creeping in the shadows in pursuit of Tesla’s mysterious Death Ray; Josephine Baker, the beautiful bisexual jazz singer and dancer is performing and spying; John Trump (uncle to Donald) is a doctor with plans of his own to take Tesla’s secret weapon. Add to the mix our protagonist, the diehard detective Minky Woodcock determined to crack the biggest case of her career involving the fate of the planet and, for good measure, a chance to bed none other than Josephine Baker.
Agatha steps in!
The artwork throughout is a delightful homage to gritty pulp fiction, with a steamy semi-realistic quality and a larger-than-life pop culture vibe. There’s both a static and dynamic quality at play, like woodcuts or dolls that have come to life, very eerie and fascinating. Many of the scenes, in fact, would make for beautiful stand-alone paintings. Ultimately, the art naturally fits the book, keeping pace with the narrative. I think of it as moving at a gumshoe detective novel pace: at times melancholy; at other turns, dramatic and intense. Which leads me to mention that, after reading this one, you are going to want more. In fact, there is plenty more to choose from, both in graphic novel format and prose since von Buhler’s book is part of something bigger, the world of Hard Case Crime, featuring work by such modern masters as Stephen King and golden age giants as Ray Bradbury. And, with that in mind, do seek out this gem of a graphic novel by Cynthia von Buhler.
Filed under Comics, Graphic Novel Reviews, Nikola Tesla
MONICA by Daniel Clowes graphic novel review
Monica. By Daniel Clowes. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2023. 106pp, $30.
Guest review by Paul Buhle
This has been quite a year for determinedly offbeat comic artist Dan Clowes. An interview in the New Yorker followed by a strong review beginning on the front page of the New York Times Book Review, not to mention an NPR interview, nailed down the point: Clowes has hit the big time.
Is this as far as “alt-comics,” somewhere beyond the comic strip and the comic book, can go in becoming “mainstream”? It’s a good question, first raised properly by the reception of the comic art of R. Crumb, then of Art Spiegelman (whose looming presence remains above the scenery somehow), of Alison Bechdel, Joe Sacco and others. The work of Ben Katchor, who is now designing comic-like images for Paris Metro lines stretching into the villages of the countryside, might remind us that in France, comics can be art. Back in the US and despite the rising prestige (and commercial success) of some artists, their work remains….comic art! If, admittedly, viewed very differently from the comic art of old: fewer readers but more prestige, as cynics would say.
Clowes, part of the alternative comics that followed the collapse of the 1960s-70s underground comix, saw Ghost World, his creation, become the basis for a film about teenage angst, with himself as one of the scriptwriters. It was a first for comic scriptwriters, even if comic characters themselves had appeared in dozens of older Hollywood films, with several series of low-production films dedicated to the sagas of Blondie, Joe Palooka and even Captain Marvel (a kids’ serial).
These three series actually happened to have been scripted by Lefties who would go on the blacklist (except for the Captain Marvel series, whose writer became an affable Friendly Witness testifying against his former comrades), and lose their careers. The films themselves, now totally obscure, even have a curious, populistic social content, leaving one to wonder. What gives? Never mind. These ancient memories of comics adaptations are also buried beneath the tons of animated films from comics, seen especially at holiday times on television or via DVDs.
We are reminded, in an astute Comics Quarterly essay on Monica, that real-life artist Clowes was abandoned by his mother, and that “loneliness” is a continuing theme with a continuing expression in his aesthetics and a basis in personal life. Monica, the fictional subject of the comic is, to put it mildly, a troubled person. But Clowes is not telling anything so straightforward as autobiography. We experience the novel through her wavering consciousness, sometimes beyond her consciousness, which may be the most helpful of all hints.
“Foxhole,” the first of eight semi-discrete and separate chapters or episodes, goes back to the Vietnam War. A disillusioned GI from a poor background reflects on his disillusionment to his battlefield/jungle setting mate, who is from America’s wealthy classes, while they wait to kill or be killed. The trauma in these three pages is not going away. Indeed, the sense of apocalypse described is revisited, precisely, on the final panel of the book.
Other reviewers seem to run away from this particular as anything like central to the plot, and it makes sense. What we see through most of Monica is the results of the 1960s social breakdowns, the impossibility of a thriving counterculture measured in the broken homes and broken lives, crazed cults and children confused or, rather, disoriented for life. Cynical commentators have always viewed this human tragedy as a loss of traditional morals, socially enforced wage slavery, the dangers of drugs, etc. Clowes knows better, although he will not say so.
Our embittered GI returning, he thinks, to a quiet and happy life, is not. He’s the fiancee of our protagonist’s mother, but never her husband. His foxhole mate, a serious painter who has returned to the US first, turns out to be the actual biological father, or perhaps not. Monica’s mother Penny, a counterculture burnout, stumbles along through life, although she actually launches a business that, much later, her daughter can revive and expand successfully, something that brings no pleasure. The book’s sometime narrator, a friend to Penny, relates and reflects on a not-so-unusual confused single mom experience. And Monica emerges, episode after episode, not only damaged but keenly aware of being damaged. She a modern person, a modern woman, who does not accept fatalism, although to do so might have been a better strategy.
In the following vignette, the seemingly more fortunate one of the two GIs returns to his hometown, years later, and quickly realizes that crucial matters including his extended family and their small capitalist empire, have totally fallen apart. In this odd little world, Monica-the-comic becomes a perfectly recreated EC-comic horror story from the early 1950s, updated and upgraded artistically. And then the drugstore supernaturalism ends or perhaps drifts around, looking for a spot to land.
Monica the protagonist reemerges, alone in the world. Reviewers have found something special and intriguing, or at least narratively clear, in her listening to a radio left behind in a family cabin. The radio broadcasts, unbelievably but believably to her, feature the voice of her dead grandfather and allow her to have unsatisfied conversations with him. Although years dead, he is still an anti-Semite.
A few more vignettes and more than twenty years pass. Monica becomes a successful entrepreneur, but success only exposes the emptiness of her life. Her last-gasp effort finds her in a remote cult that manages to somehow be utterly boring, one more sixties offshoot full of conspiracy theories and compulsory collectivity. Successfully tracking down her mother is a total downer, as we might have expected.
That we find ourselves back in EC horror comics at the end is either the fulfillment of the prologue, one Vietnam vet to another predicting utter horror, or it is a general commentary about the average American life in the twenty first century. The consumer society drags on. Dreams of something different are apparently worse than confused. And we face the cosmos, on the cover of the book, searching for a meaning that is not there (on the back cover, more EC, but leaning toward the famed sci-fi series that borrowed heavily from Ray Bradbury.
The Vietnam War explanation to the book’s mysteries, to the mysteries in Daniel Clowes’s mind. Extraordinary crimes were done in our collective name, and someone must be punished. Then again, as mentioned elsewhere, the aesthetics, such as the darker tinting of pages treating trauma, may work just as well.
Paul Buhle is an editor of more than twenty non-fiction, historical comics.
Filed under Comics, Daniel Clowes, Graphic Novel Reviews
Anatomy of a Painting: Big Girl in Woods by Henry Chamberlain
Gaining a foothold on a new work.
***
Getting Closer to What You Want.
Here are a couple of process samples of a painting I’m working on. The idea is of a lone figure running away. She is a looming figure. The landscape is desolate and foreboding. Will she make it to her destination? Ideas come to us when we least expect it. I love the figure in all its aspects. Whenever possible, I will draw from life. I’ve been a model too and having that experience, I think, helps to elevate the work. After a certain point, you have developed so much muscle memory of drawing that you often will simply draw from memory and that results in some of the most spontaneous and authentic work.
With that in mind, I’m always open to commissions and have work for sale, either originals or prints. Just contact me for details. You can contact me here. And you can see some more of what I do here. I’m still considering what to sell and what not to sell. This project I’m showing you now will eventually be turned into a print. I will be busy next year, and the following years, with more comics and art conventions in the works. I will definitely be selling comics as well as prints at these events, etc. It just seemed a good time to post something about this activity and get the ball rolling some more. I continue to write, draw comics and make paintings!
Filed under Art, Comics, Henry Chamberlain
GIRL JUICE by Benji Nate comics review
Girl Juice. by Benji Nate. Drawn & Quarterly. 2023. 176 pp. $24.
Benji Nate has a wicked sense of humor and is easily one of the best cartoonists today in what is basically a gag comic strip format. Nate has a very loose and lively drawing style which compliments all the fun mayhem. It seems like an easy enough recipe to follow: young housemates figuring out life. And that’s just the beginning. It has to be more than just funny characters in funny situations–but not too much more. Girl Juice works at the highest and wackiest level: the combo of simplicity and silliness is sublime.
Let’s just say that Nate really owns this comic strip, loves and nurtures these characters, and let’s them come to life. It’s a group of four young women and anything can happen. Bunny is, by default and her aggressive personality, sort of the leader even though she appears to offer the least. Bunny doesn’t hold down a job or offer much moral support but she has a certain charm. Nana holds some sway over the group as the thoughtful one although she would prefer to remain in the margins and pursue her cartooning. Sadie and Tallulah are a couple and most likely will someday marry and move to the suburbs. For now, life is a party, if Bunny has anything to do with it.
All in all, I love the uninhibited spontaneity to this comic. Nate makes it feel like it all comes together so effortlessly. And, to some degree, I think it does but you have to have so many factors in place before you get there. So, it’s more of a yes and no when you come down to it. Yes, it can be relatively easy but, no, it actually does take time and care to do this right. From what I understand, Nate enjoys writing, drawing comics and painting in equal measure and I totally relate. Each is inextricably linked to process. So, there are imperfections along the way but, as a whole, the gestural and expressive quality that results is priceless.
Anyway, Nate has a massive fan base who already know how great, and funny, these comics are but, if you are new, then I highly recommend that you check them out. This book collects the latest set of stories. Let’s take a quick look at the camping story. As often happens, Bunny takes the lead, letting her impulsive libido take control. It was supposed to be a girls-night-out glamping but that takes a turn when boys are involved. Bunny’s radar gets the best of her and she’s determined to hook up with one of the guys at the very next campsite. In lesser hands, this scenario would have only gone so far. In this case, Nate has Bunny lost in the woods because of her lust. The other girls, in their attempt to find Bunny, are lost too and furious. Sadie’s comments say it all: “If I die because of Bunny, I swear I’m gonna kill her!” Ah, that’s how it’s done. Comedy gold. Girl Juice is 110% unforgettably hilarious.
Filed under Comics, Comics Reviews, Drawn & Quarterly
