Yay! Barack Obama is our next President, and a new millenium of peace and prosperity have arrived! To celebrate this moment of transcendent bliss, I thought I would turn away from the dark side, and write about things I actually liked about the newest issue of TCJ (that’s issue 293, by the by.)

First, HU’s own Tom Crippen has an interview with Alex Robinson. I didn’t read the whole thing, and probably won’t…and I don’t know that Robinson’s twenty/thirtysomething storytelling ensemble dramas necessarily sound all that engaging. But holy crap can the guy draw. He’s got the kind of linework that I associate with classic illustration, or with someone like Hank Ketcham. Dramatic use of solid blacks, detailed cross-hatching, elegant panel variations, vivid character designs; it’s really a joy to look at. I’m especially partial to one panel showing a lap dog in close-up, defined with quick, short curvy strokes, while behind him rises a lightly rendered but vivid classical arch, and over to the side a fence and silhouettes of trees, made up of both solid blacks and vituoso cross-hatching. I’m not used to seeing that kind of craftsmanship and thought in alternative comics; it makes me all giddy.

I also very much liked Steven Grant’s review of Joe Kubert’s Tor. Even if he has trouble spelling my name, Grant is always a thoughtful and knowledgeable writer, and for those (like me) who are largely unfamiliar with Kubert’s work, he provides a fascinating sketch and evaluation of the man’s career. I wish Grant wrote more often for TCJ. He does have his own column over at Comic Book Resources, though, which is worth checking out.

I was also very taken with Rob Vollmar’s short review of Doctor Thirteen, which was smart and cleverly written, and made me want to pick up the title. I especially liked the line “Doctor Thirteen’s one-note-samba of disbelieving every incredible thing occurring around him turns out to be pretty catchy.” I wish I’d written that.

Tim O’Neil’s review of the latest Jamie Hernandez volume is also nicely done. I haven’t really liked the stuff of Jaime’s I’ve read, but O’Neil makes me want to give it another try.

The comics reprint in this issue is a portfolio of work by the graduating class of the Center for Cartoon Studies. None of these exactly thrilled me…but it’s great to see TCJ supporting young cartoonists. I often enjoy the reprints of out-of-copyright strips, but taking a chance on something more recent on occasion seems like an excellent move.

I have, incidentally, finally put two and two together, and figured out that the Chris Mautner who writes for TCJ is the same Chris Mautner who writes for Newsarama. A little slow on the uptake, me. Anyway, I do quite like Chris’ writing whatever the forum; an acid review of a comics edition of Proust in this TCJ issue is especially entertaining.

Also, I’ve bitched in the past about TCJs spotty manga coverage. I should therefore acknowledge that I think they’re doing better. This issue, in particular, has a number of manga reviews. There’s my (of course, brilliant) review of Hideko Azuma’s “Disappearance Diary”, but there’s also a very smart review by Rob Vollmar of classic manga-ka Keiko Takemiya’s fantasy manga “Andromeda Stories”. (One caveat: Vollmar says that Takemiya’s “Kaze to Ki no Uta” probably won’t be translated because it’s “length and frank exploration of homoeroitc themes make it an unlikely candidate for translation in an American manga market still dominated by teenage readers.” Length may be an issue…but there’s a lively and expanding market for gay-themed manga (especially yaoi) in the U.S. And, yes, I think a significant portion of that market includes teen girls.)

Best of all, though, and maybe the highpoint of the issue, are some beautiful reproductions of pages from Yuicki Yokoyama’s Travel, with an intro by HU’s own Bill Randall [Update: the intro in question is to the section in TCJ, not to the book itself. Sorry for any confusion!] I’m a sucker for intricate patterning, and…well, see for yourself:

I especially like that waterfall image, which connects Yokoyama’s almost-abstractions to the slice-of-life landscape tradition of Japanese prints. The book is over 200 pages of images like this(!) I think I’m going to have to drop my $20 on it…..

Oh, yes, and finally…Ken Smith, TCJ’s resident philosopher-crank, seems to be back in his usual place at the end of the issue after a brief hiatus. As always, he sneers at the growing barbarism of our culture while he fractures the English language with philistine obliviousness. It’s kind of comforting to folks like me to know that, even in our new golden age, there will still be a space for crotchety cultural critics, no matter how self-parodic. Cheers, Ken. Keep the flame burning for all of us.

Update: In keeping with the New Era of Snarklessness, I’ve also got a positive review of Lilli Carrés Lagoon here.

It took me an hour and a half to cast my ballot in Chicago, half a block from Barack Obama’s house, where, thanks to the Electoral College concocted by our senile and drooling founding fathers, my vote matters, basically, not at all. But forget that. By this evening, if all goes well, my neighbor will be President Elect, and a new era of prosperity and peace will have begun. Snark, then, will be no more…so I thought I’d get the last little bit out of my system while the getting is good.

As I mentioned in the last post, I’ve been poking at the latest Comics Journal (that’s 293 for those keeping track.) The major interview this time round is with S. Clay Wilson, ye’olde underground cartoonist. It’s conducted by Bob Levin.

I’d never really given much thought to Wilson; when I’d seen his stuff before my reaction tended to be, “eh…whatever.” His art pretty much blurred into the overall underground aesthetic. I’m somewhat partial to crowded images, but his drawing didn’t do anything special for me, and the subject-matter seemed kind of rote — I don’t know. I guess I figured if it left me alone, I’d return the favor.

Skimming about in this TCjinterview really allowed my indifference and irritation to grow and take meaningful shape. Obviously, I don’t know what S. Clay Wilson is actually like. But the persona he’s got going here for public consumption is pretty thoroughly insufferable — from the name dropping to the constant I’m-really-too-cool-to-be-doing-this-let’s-just-get-drunk schtick to his defensive “Art is therapy” crap when Bob Levin mentions that somebody doesn’t like his work. Though the interview makes clear that Williams does read a lot and looks at a lot of art, the one influence he’s willing to specifically cop to, the thing he says that taught him that comics could be about anything, is acid.

And, on closer inspection of his work, that really makes sense. His drawings do have a cartoony energy, and they can occasionally make me smile. But overall, they look like he hasn’t really thought about much of anything, ever, and then he dropped a bunch of acid and suddenly had this amazing insight that all the incredibly mundane stuff in his head was really…far out! He’s exploring the limits of his imagination, and finding those limits extremely quickly — he doesn’t even need to take a sandwich or a bottle of water. The sex and violence is so repetitive and staid it makes the latest lame super-hero pamphlet look like a work of idiosyncratic genius. Hey…it’s a demon…and it’s fucking a woman in the ass! And…there are some scabby pirates! Wow, this is sure something else, isn’t it?

In the interview, Wilson gets compared to Bosch — but the thing about Bosch (and, for that matter, about Crumb) is that their cluttered images (A) resolve into a whole with some compositional integrity, and (B)have individual details which show invention, or at least thought. In Wilson’s pictures, it’s just a bunch of frat-boy gross-out and off-color clichés bunged together as best they can fit. It’s lazy and deeply unimaginative. The misogyny is the least of the troubles; sure it’s degrading to women, but really it’s so consistently pedestrian that it’s degrading to everyone. It’s degrading to demons.

I guess I should be grateful; it’s always good to be reminded of the extent to which the baby boomers are a blight on the landscape. Wilson genuflects to the 60s zeitgeist so obsequiously that it’s a miracle his spine isn’t permanently curved. The interview is all about self-aggrandizement; Wilson talks about making money, he talks about fame, he talks about personal fulfillment via the therapeutic act of drawing boring pictures of demons having sex and then about how he sells those pictures for money and gets famous. Parading your banal inner-life for fun and profit — the beats and hippies sure gave us the gift that keeps on giving. It kind of makes you want to join the Moral Majority, not out of outrage, but simply because those folks have to be more fun than this droning wannabe crank.

So reading the new issue (293) of The Comics Journal, one thing that caught my eye was fellow HU blogger Bill Randall’s review of a couple of new Chris Ware titles, the Acme Novelty Date Book and Acme Novelty Library #18. Bill’s review begins with a discussion of Ware’s penchant for self-critique in the Datebook, which is basically a sketchbook/diary. Bill says:

Among its snippets of comics and drawings, it contains diary passages of unrelenting self-criticism…. I hesitate to do more than note that these passages record, with bald honesty, a portion of Ware’s inner life. They are complex, conflicted and self-obsessed. They likely mix honesty with self-deception. Having never met the man, much less related to him over time, I can’t say for certain. nothing in these passages, however, strikes me as particularly unusual. Such feelings are common; only the bravery, or foolishness, of making them public is not. Some readers, especially fellow cartoonists jealous of his success, will grow impatient with them. Others will likely feel great sympathy.

I don’t think you have to be jealous of Ware to think that his constant whining is stupid. I mean, it’s incredibly self-absorbed and just indecent to be going on and on all the time about how bad your art is. Newsflash here — nobody cares if your art is bad or good. It just doesn’t matter that much. We’ve all got our own troubles. Do the best you can and fucking move on. Really, wailing on and on…it’s not a whole lot different than constantly talking about how great you are. It’s in horrible taste, and it’s boring and it kind of suggests that you don’t care about anyone but yourself.

I want to make clear here — this isn’t about Ware’s personal life. As Bill says, all artists have moments (or more than moments) of self-doubt, and really, how you relate to your own art in the privacy of your own home is strictly your business. But Ware’s self-flagellation is a central part of his public persona. It’s tied up in his presentation of himself as an honest, deep artist; it’s a central theme in the work and aesthetic of the sincere, deep-feeling, alt-cartoonist mafia which he more or less helms. Basically, it’s how he fetishizes tedium and selfishness as aesthetic goals. It’s pernicious, and it deserves to be hooted.

Of the latest Acme Novelty, Bill writes:

Scott McCloud’s criticism in Reinventing Comics that “Ware’s outrageously complex pages often do no more than deliver a single morbid “gas” as payoff,” off-targe then, now applies not at all. The pages remain outrageously complex, like the task of sorting through one’s life. Though difficult to read, the overall effect is neither morbid nor a gag. It is simply a wish that this young woman would see the good in herself.

I disagree with the McCloud quote too, but for almost opposite reasons. A lot of Ware’s early work was, at least somewhat, gag driven; a lot of it was morbid. Gags and morbidity were what gave it a lot of its energy and appeal; it was darkly, blackly funny, and often mean-spiritedly satirical. Now, though, it’s much more about lit-fic sincere meaningfulness. Oh, the complicated sadness…. Oh, the humanity…. As a result, where Ware used to consistently delight me, my reaction to his work over the last few years has ranged from loathing (the horrible Branford the Bee series) to more sedate disappointment and mistrust (which is pretty much my reaction to the Building Stories series, which Bill discusses in his review.)

*******
I’m not sure I’ve told this story before, but…several years ago I was at a party/art event thing to see my friend’s work. As it happened,I’d just purchased an issue of TCJ. I didn’t have anywhere to put it, so I was carrying it. A woman saw me with it and asked what it was, and I told her, and my friend then outed me by telling her that I wrote for the magazine. To which she responded, “Oh…so that means you write about whether you like Chris Ware or not, right?”

The truth hurts.

Update: More on TCJ 293 here.