Thanks again to Hurricane Nancy for such trippy and beautiful art! I have respectfully, with her permission, added color. I hope you enjoy this latest installment! Let’s all relax, however we like, and contemplate this piece.
If wise animals, non-human animals, were left to dividing up the planet, we could all breathe a big sigh of relief. But humans, often mistaken as the wisest of all animals, have the last say and wreak havoc. You know what wreaking havoc is all about, right? It’s a strange term but it’s pretty clear as to what it describes, despite the arcane wording. Animals, the ones that get to regularly roam free naked and uninhibited, are the ones we must listen to. If we humans can do that, perhaps we’ll have really gained some wisdom to see us through our next slouching towards redemption.
Art by Hurricane Nancy. Color by Henry Chamberlain.
Here is a variation on Hurricane Nancy‘s Lion and Snake from our previous visit. This time around we add a duck for good luck. I really have to hand it to the artist for such an uninhibited and lively style. Nancy’s art invites the viewer the enter a dream space and wander around! I add color to Nancy’s art at my own risk but with her permission. That said, I hope you like it. Hurricane Nancy adds her own touch of pizzazz here at Comics Grinder and she is always welcome.
Hello, friends, Hurricane Nancy graces the site with another Making Changes comic strip. This one is entitled, “Leaving Home Planet.” Here are some notes from Nancy on this comic strip:
“Leaving the Planet is the old story, your parent kicks you out to go to college some such thing and on the planet of the Teddy bears there is public transportation to the college planet (and others not in this strip). So our teddy goes. There are sentient beings from other places.
The teddy also hooks up with a gal from another planet at college and heads back to teddy planet with her and their kid. By public interstellar transportation.”
Be sure to visit Hurricane Nancy at her website right here.
There’s a hint of the great alt-comics artist Steve Weissman in the work of emerging talent Freddy Funbuns. Okay, stick with me. If you know who Steve Weissman is then you earn extra bonus points and qualify for the coveted place of honor among the true comics cognoscenti. And, if not, that’s why I’m here! My point is that I want to stress that the cartoonist I’m about to share with you has a nice bag of tricks to play with. I don’t always enjoy gross-out comics but I see a method to the madness. In fact, I direct your attention to the Morbidly Beautiful site for a fine example of some other Funbuns comics laced with a hillbilly horror theme.
To say that Freddy Funbuns loves crude humor is putting it mildly. Where does it come from? Well, look around you: from South Park to your latest meme. Some will ignore it or dismiss it. Others will embrace it or at least appreciate it. In the spirit of the hillbilly horror genre, this comic chronicles the misadventures of a loser couple, Darvis, a 38-year-old morbidly obese man-child and his girlfriend, a 51-year-old woman he met on Tinder, known only as “Babe.” Between the two of them, it’s a glorious celebration of bodily functions, ill-advised sex acts, and food porn. It’s definitely not for everyone but this stuff has its fans because when Funbuns sees a red light, he instinctively floors it. For the record, what Funbuns is doing is brilliant whether or not you can stomach too much crude humor. And it’s not relentless either. Funbuns will take a relative pause here and there with more gentle weirdness.
It’s a dog’s life.
One example of a quieter moment has Darvis enjoying the sunshine and contemplating having more freedom while working from home. It allows him time to walk..the plant. Not the dog? No, not the dog who really needs to go outside! This joke could easily make it past any censor from any animated series. Maybe it’s a good example of Funbuns at a more restrained level. Your mileage may vary.
Can’t we all just have a little fun?
Yet another more quiet moment has Darvis and Babe just trying to act normal and have a nice day out. It almost happens. There’s a bit of tacky conversation. Then there’s the anticipation of getting to their fun destination. Finally, there’s the big let-down and time to blame someone for failed plans. We’ve all been there…and it’s very funny.
Amid all the weirdness, there’s the artist plotting his next move. I think the reference to Goya on the cover of Volume Three speaks to this artistic process going on behind the scenes. What will Funbuns do next? Time will tell! The intellect and the heart is in the right place. The crude humor wears thin over the long haul but sometimes you just can’t turn away. And sometimes everything lines up and the whole thing is spot on. Here is to more of those kind of teachable moments.
Hello, dear friends, it is a great pleasure to have Hurricane Nancy (Nancy Burton), a true comics legend, join us here at Comics Grinder with occasional comics art. Now, some say Hurricane Nancy was the very first female underground comix artist and that may very well be true. Burton’s work goes back to the East Village Other, circa 1966. Trailblazer Trina Robbins names Burton as an inspiration to move forward with her wimmen’s comix movement. In fact, Burton was a founding member of Robbins’s all-women comic book series, It Ain’t Me, Babe, which began in 1970.
In order to secure her life’s work is enjoyed by fewer generations, Burton recently donated 65 pieces of her original underground comix art to The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. The donated originals include early unpublished work; her art from the Gentles Tripout strip, which began in the East Village Other in 1966; and 1969’s Busy Boxes from Gothic Blimpworks. Writer Alex Dueben is editing a monograph about Burton set to be published by Fantagraphics, which collects work from throughout her career and includes an expansive interview detailing her life and artistic output. Dueben connected Burton and Associate Curator Caitlin McGurk, at Ohio State, after Burton expressed a desire for the material to be preserved.
“The Big Mermaid Wakes Up”
In more recent years, Nancy Burton has returned to creating artwork. It is an honor that Comics Grinder has been chosen as a venue to feature Hurricane Nancy! We begin with the artwork at the very top, Terrible Toys Totem Pole. We also have the first installment to an on-going comic strip, Making Changes, this one is entitled, “The Big Mermaid Wakes Up.”
Be sure to visit Hurricane Nancy at her website right here.
To learn more about the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum and view the collections, visit cartoons.osu.edu.
Sharon Rudahl was at the forefront of underground comix as a founder of Wimmen’s Comix, the first on-going comic drawn exclusively by women, beginning in the 1970s. Since then, she has created a range of fascinating underground comix including Crystal Night, which was reprinted in full in Dan Nadel’s Art In Time collection. Rudahl has created two graphic novels, A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman and A Graphic Biography of Paul Robeson: Ballad of an American. Read my review here. It is a pleasure to get a chance to share this conversation with you.
Ballad of an American: A Graphic Biography of Paul Robeson
I began our talk by mentioning that Sharon marched with Martin Luther King Jr. as a teenager. I said that it appears that she has always been an activist. To that Sharon said that she’s found herself speaking out as often as possible. In fact, Sharon began her career as a cartoonist with anti-Vietnam War underground newspapers. She’s been active ever since and has participated in numerous publications and exhibitions in dozens of countries over the last 50 years. Always a fighter, she proved to be just the right person to take on a graphic biography of another social justice warrior, Emma Goldman.
A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman. by Sharon Rudahl. edited by Paul Buhle. The New Press. 2007. 115pp. $17.95
Emma Goldman (1869-1940) is not an obvious choice for the subject of a graphic novel. Unless you’re into political science, you probably have never heard of her. But since when is it an obstacle to read a book about someone you’ve never heard of? It’s absolutely not an obstacle. More of an invitation. You see, Emma Goldman was a trailblazing anarchist who became known as “Red Emma” and, when she was deported from the United States in 1919, J. Edgar Hoover called her “one of the most dangerous women in America.” Comic artist Sharon Rudahl brings Emma Goldman to life in her graphic novel. It was a pleasure to review Rudahl’s graphic novel on Paul Robeson. You can read that here. And it seemed only natural to take one more look back to her graphic novel on Emma Goldman.
Snake Eyes (1990, 1992, 2001) was a comix anthology (editors: Glenn Head and Kaz) with some of the best comix talent going on at the time. It’s a great place to get a sense of what independent comics are about. It seems like we have subcultures within subcultures in the world of indie comics. Some cartoonists prefer a more soft approach while others need a harder one, and everything in between. So, with that in mind, we’ll explore the pages of Issue 3 of Snake Eyes. We will also take a look at a separate project, that ties in with what I’m talking about, Glenn Head’s Avenue D, from 1986.
Glenn Head’s Snowman in Snake Eyes
In an interview focusing on Snake Eyes, Glenn Head made the distinction between short-form comics and long-form graphic novels. For him, at the time (2001), he seemed to be saying that he found comics to be packed with energy and immediacy, while graphic novels had fallen into more of a form for a slower-paced drama to unfold. I think that is a subject for discussion than can always be added to byway of various comparisons and further refinement of articulating what it means to do comics as opposed to graphic novels. Basically, we know. But it’s always fun to discuss. And, sometimes, I wonder if we’re all on the same page! Seriously, the notion of comics is extremely broad if you include any and all possible forms, literally throwing in the kitchen sink for good measure.
Glenn Head is part of that select group of auteur cartoonists who has steadily been building up a body of work, with its surrealist bent and underground comix influence, that reaches the level of art. Much of his work, as creator and/or editor, has appeared in various comix anthologies: Bad News, Snake Eyes, Hotwire, and R. Crumb’s Weirdo magazine. And so it makes sense that Head has steadily been climbing the Mt. Everest of comix, the grand ole graphic novel.
Chicago: Searching and learning.
Most aspiring cartoonists will never follow through on creating their very own full-length, full-bodied (sorry, no stick figures) autobiographical graphic novel, the pinnacle of auteur cartoonist ambition. However, where there is a will, there is a way. Glenn Head has done this particular feat twice. The most diligent of cartoonists would do well to follow closely what Head’s been up to with his last two books, observe how they oddly mirror each other, one a variation on the other. What I’m talking about is Head’s 2015 graphic novel, Chicago: A Comix Memoir, which was regarded as Head’s coming-of-age magnum opus. Well, he’s followed that up with his latest work, Chartwell Manor, which is another coming-of-age magnum opus: same protagonist and life struggles but, nearly twice as long, more refined, and pivoting off a different focal point.
Chicago: Father and daughter moment.
As I leaf through this graphic novel, I am struck by all the intricate line work, all the meticulous detail, and all the frenetic energy. There’s a marvelous dance with death (and life!) going on, almost spinning out of control, and yet very well balanced. The artist is in the lead. Death will have to wait its turn. If we try to compare both books, Chartwell Manor is perhaps more focused and detailed, not to take anything away from Chicago. While the Glen character in the first book is going through a series of dark episodes, including an interlude with a troubled woman, it is the second book that confronts what is the root cause of Glen’s instability and struggle. The significance of this root cause is underscored by the fact it is not mentioned at all in the first book. The harrowing events of being molested at a boarding school, by the headmaster no less, are not afforded even one panel in the first book. But, by astonishing contrast, the boarding school IS the second book, covering most pages.
Glen with a gun. You keep feeding the underground comix beast.
Sordid content, twisted and unabashed, all that very messy human stuff, is only hinted at in most mainstream graphic novels. Whatever the case, great work will emerge, sometimes from a big traditional publisher. But, aside from self-published work, the really gritty stuff comes from the smaller niche publishers. Among that set, Fantagraphics is a leader in the United States. In fact, it has cultivated a particular vibe that, along with a high standard of excellence, places it in a unique position. Much angst going back to underground comix of the sixties finds a home there. This particular point of view, this grungy campy swagger, has had plenty of time to ferment into a brand. Those who are part of it find themselves deeply enmeshed in a scene: part way of life; part putting on an act. But what is an act and what is real? That’s part of the mystique. What matters in the end is the end result, a work that aspires to something bigger, a work of art.
Demons to be exorcised.
Dancing with death can tire you out so it’s good to pace yourself. The reader will see the satisfaction that comes from someone working on their craft. On one level, it’s the very act of working on a big project, whatever the content, that sustains an ambitious cartoonist. This is a graphic novel focusing on Head experiencing abuse at Chartwell Manor, a boarding school, and the years of living with that, a lifetime of living with that. This book provides a latter day underground cartoonist like Head another chance to push his style further, to level up his connection to the past, compared to all the great soul-baring cartoonists who have come before: Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Bill Griffith, Art Spiegelman, Jack Jackson, S. Clay Wilson, Robert Williams, and so on. It’s feeding, what I call, a “persistence of style.” Like he does in Chicago, Head can evoke an extended passage about him as a young and troubled youth, walking around naked in his family home with a loaded gun, aiming it at his head and pulling the trigger, and the act of creating that into comix is not necessarily a cathartic act, as much as it’s an artistic act. That’s not to belittle at all what happened to Head at Chartwell Manor. There are definitely demons to be exorcised. That’s just to point out that Head would be a lesser artist if his main aim was to have his graphic novel simply be a therapeutic act. It’s a complicated and thoroughly fascinating journey to explore the past while navigating your way to creating art.
Chartwell Manor: A rare moment of quiet joy.
There are key moments in the book, during and after Head’s time at Chartwell Manor where he talks to his parents and tries to let them know about the horror. In an early scene, while Head is still a student there, it seems like the parents are right on the verge of knowing but don’t want to know. It’s one of those instances when you wonder if something was said between the panels. Other moments, depicted from years later, also leave the reader wondering what the parents are aware of and what they are in denial about. It’s an ambiguous thread running throughout–and done to great effect.
Where there is a will,…
All those dirty little secrets that seem to have no way of getting out! And then they do. Ways are found to vent out frustration. It’s no exaggeration to say that underground comix have a lot to do with venting out frustration! The whole autobio comics genre has weathered various cycles of backlash, unfairly labeled as heavy-handed and a way for cartoonists to use it as therapy to work out personal problems. But, at the end of the day, most readers are fine to take the risk that some work will fall short while some will rise to the highest level. Honestly, any artist worth their salt, is going to tackle some form of autobiography. And, hey, all comics of this sort, in one form or another, is a story reflecting back to its creator.
…there is a way.
It’s important to note that each book has its lighter moments. In Chartwell Manor, those moments are mostly concerned with the process of creating comics. Chicago has a more experimental vibe, even whimsical at times, as when Head stumbles upon a visit to Chicago by Muhammad Ali and nearly gets his block knocked off. The point is that Head is in a wonderful place. Like any artist at this stage of their career, Head has a treasure trove to work from, plenty to return to for future books. With Chicago and Chartwell Manor, readers can see for themselves two distinct ways of presenting similar facts and the promise of what lies ahead.
Of all the restless ruminations occupying the mind and the tools of the alternative comics artist, none has so strayed so far from the funny-pages mainstream as the memoir. If commerial artists showed themselves at all, it might have been a fleeting glance at a generic father and son in a landscape (famous Frank O, King Sunday page drawings) or a banalization of social relations (Dennis the Menace, Family Circle and about a million others), Justin Green’s “Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary,” with the artist’s own mental breakdowns on view, opened up a dramatically different way forward. As taken most famously by Art Spiegelman in Maus, but also by Alison Bechdel in the slightly fictionalized Fun Home, by Lynda Barry in her recollections of severely troubled childhood, Aline Kominsky’s bodily self-contempt, Joe Sacco’s personal travels thorugh war zones, or by Marjane Sartrapi’s Persepolis, to name only some of the best known—these are rightly among the most celebrated comics of recent decades.
Page excerpt from Chartwell Manor
To this list, add another: Chartwell Manor. As in the other memoir-comics, the artist recalls and recoils simultaneously. The story is told because the story must be told, a burden presumably lifted when it is completed and, at last, in print. We see on the cover that Robert Crumb has called it a masterpiece. Crumb himself, as is well known, suffered the beatings and humiation of his father, the military lifer. Drawing was an escape in search of survival (with a lot of help from Harvey Pekar, as it turned out). Head’s story is also a survivor’s story, typically American in some crucial ways: no war zones, no desperate poverty but deeply screwed up social relations and self-destructive habits.
Head is the kid in the 1960s with real artistic talent but no aptitude for school otherwise. His parents struggle, his mother with great sympathy for his plight, then decide to send him to a prep school/boarding school in his native New Jersey. There, to be brief, the schoolmaster turns out to be a pedophile as well as a self-righteous religiious hypocrite.The trauma suffered here connects with Hedd’s life in all the predictable ways including self-hatred, heavy drinking, strictly transactional womanizing, and decades of depression. The comaraderie of his fellow students at Chartwell didn’t help much at all and neither does his return to public school. It’s an unhappy and sometimes violent story, with a degree of bitterness in particular toward his father, the businessman, who considers manhood to be the art of taking blows without complaint, or (later on) without joining the alleged character weakness of joining AA.
He wants badly to explain to us, in a Foreword, that human behavior but epsecially sexual behavior and its consequences interests (better day, “obsesses”) him as an artist, and that he found himself attracted to the world of underground comics beause they gloriously exposed “what society insisted remain hidden.” His experiences, eating away at him for a large portion of his life, are a wound reopened.
Veteran readers of Head may properly regard this as the summa of his decades of creative work and of the tortured life of a rebellious artist in the post-1970 era when threats to the system seemed minor compared to self-harming impulses of the young and not-so-young.
They could also regard this as the summa of what can be called Punk Comics. Head described it perfecting in a YouTube interview with Noah van Sciver, but to summarize a bit: the dozen comic projects in Greater New York of the 1980s-90s, pulled together conceptually, so to speak, in Crumb’s own Weirdo magazine, published in distant California. Historians of comic art usually place Weirdo against RAW, because the first had no editorial policy whatsoever on skill, and the second was a high-concept Euro-American creation successful, as Ben Katchor has said, by proposing a new art form as a relative of French literature.
RAW set a new standard for comic art, while Weirdo is remembered mainly by specialists and Crumb devotees. But to put it that way obscures the path through DIY culture taken by a field of artists discovering themselves and their skills by plunging in, almost indifferent to the consequences. The excellent and revealing Book of Weirdo lays this out beautifully and should be basic reading in the history of the field.
But not to confine Head to the undertalented. Not at all. Born in 1958, raised in Brooklyn, Head became a student of Art Spiegelman at the School for Visual Arts in the early 1980s. Shifting with the times from Underground Comix to Alternative Comics, he published his own H in 1988, later expanded into a Fantagraphics book, contributed to a variety of anthologies and found a home-away-from-home amongst the crew at Robert Crumb’s and Aline Kominsky’s Weirdo magazine. His solo Chicago (2015) is a grim saga of a would-be comic artist facing a variety of despairing moods and self-destructive tendencies unavoided.
Chartwell Manor could rightly be called the details of predation, consequences and much-delayed redemption. The reader learns from page to page and panel to panel that if details have been invented to make the story work, the protagonist really is Head himself, and that the predatory, pedophile schoolmaster is as real as the bad vibes and drugs. Ever so slowly, as his own art pulls him out,
The art is very much Glenn Head art, straightforward but imaginative at the edges, figures exaggerated larger or thinner than in life, and particularly horrific characters, grotesquely semi-human. His use of the brush is decisive, as he explained in an interview on Noah van Sciver’s YouTube channel. Does he successfully capture himself, or the self of the comic? Perhaps this is a question better asked of the larger framework of the Punk comic genre. Self-abuse wears thin pretty fast, especially without a comic element, and at times, the pages seem to drag. But Head, the hard-working artist, has overcome Head, the punk. He has captured some version of himself convincingly.
