Posting just to Post

I think I posted it years ago and for some reason thought of it again today. Google tells me it is from the webcomic Slow Wave

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Wave

Interesting interview here : http://www.tcj.com/the-jesse-reklaw-interview/

A New find of an Early Cartoonist - Cliff Sterret

I happened up a book of this guy's cartoons and to conserve money I will just make not of him here rather than buy the book

He has such and interesting look

https://animationresources.org/category/cliff-sterrett/

A Graphic Life

The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I happen to visit a comic book store today and bought this knowing only that Jonathan Ames wrote the series Bored to Death.

Engaging but perhaps a little predictable. His drinking led him from bad to worse as one tends to expect with this sort of story. Still, a good example of a graphic autobiography. And the artwork by Dean Haspiel fits wonderfully.



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Paying For It

Paying for It by Chester Brown
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Interesting but passionless graphic memoir about being a “John”. Given his declaration of the failure of romantic love (at lease for him) I suppose it is natural that this who story is passionless. Chester Brown is a very analytical kind of guy, even when dealing with his...well, with his penis. Even at the end where he admits having feelings for and being (at least on his part) monogamous with a prostitute it is very thought out and clearly decided upon. I suspect, but don't know, that he is a libertarian of the Randian ilk since his thinking is what I think an “Objectivist” is like.

But there is really only one part that directly points to a libertarian world view , where he is discussing with Seth the morality of prostitution and mad thought balloons erupt over Chester's head as Seth presents some straw man argument against prostitution. Up to that time the graphically presented conversations for and against paying for sex were at a personal level and seemed more honest. I get it, you have to put up with your “liberal” friends and their faulty thinking.

So, I liked it. But 200 and some pages of very controlled drawings about how you came to know and use hookers is a strain. He is a different type of cartoonist (I hope he doesn't mind the term). I think of comic books, graphic novels and such as a medium of some exaggeration but with Brown it is the reverse. So maybe it is just me rebelling against what I see as going against the whole reason for telling stories in a ”comic book” format. I think all the frames are the same and the margins are so big it makes the graphic flow seem all the more distant. And the type is so small I feel like reading with a magnifying glass, although that might be because my eyesight is growing worse.

Thinking about the book I feel the visual story telling is better than I first thought, probably since the feel of the book is so analytical that you might miss that it is graphically told.

The thing is, I heard him interviewed and he told of as a teenager wanting to drawing superhero comics which I see as very expressive and often over top or even “cartoon-ish” in their expression. But this book has the feel of a an emotional star collapsing in on itself with all emotion and passion becoming more and more compressed and restrained. Then there are all the hand lettered footnotes about prostitution which I skipped. The felt like it was just him trying to justify his views and actions, but why bundle that with a bunch of drawings. But, that is just me.

Just after this I read Stitches by David Smalls, which is a wildly different book (review to follow) but I felt like he really used drawings as an integral part of the story telling. But, still..read this book.

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A Graphic Contract

The Contract with God Trilogy: Life on Dropsie Avenue by Will Eisner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I finally got around to reading Contract With God and the rest of the trilogy. Often named as a milestone in the development of the graphic novel, I found the title book to be the weakest. Contract With God seems to me a little forced. Would anybody really think a contract you write yourself would get a binding result from God. Eisner full all of the books with Jewish flavor which I probably shouldn't comment on. BUT, I kind of thought Jewish history was filled with God's people having unfair experiences in their lives. Why should this one guy feel he is different? And the other stories in the first book also seemed a little too simplistic.

The other two books A Life Force and Dropsie Avenue are less stilted and overall they are more complex. The stories and the characters have much more depth.

The graphic part of the book is...well, maybe it is perfect. Not that the drawings are anatomically perfect (although I can't say) but the cinematography, or whatever you call it in graphic novels, is conventional where it needs to be, and inventive is the same sense. But it never takes away from the story, which the the “perfect” part I was talking about.

I've always had a “problem” with Eisner's drawing. It looks so relaxed, as if he just dashed it off, much like the scene in Amadeus where Salieri realizes Mozart never has to rewrite the music he puts to paper. Perhaps Eisner slaved meticulously over each frame, but it always looks so fluid it burns me up that anybody can pull it off.

The only thing that distracted me in Neighborhood, The: Dropsie Avenue is that in the entire history of the neighborhood there is no example of gentrification as we think of it now. But still a very nice work.

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Story Time

OK I'm changing the the blog plan again. I started with Animation, Aikido and Spanish. Then I changed animation to video and now although I haven't worked on Spanish for many months I STILL PLAN to get back to sometime, BUT I am now changing video to to visual art with an emphasis on comics, or more specifically “autobiography comic”. I'm taking my cue from such works as Persepolis, Jeffery Brown, Chester Brown and others.

I'm using Manga Studio Debut 3.0 and although I've had it a while I was uncertain whether it would do what I needed. It doesn't have the precision of pen and paper but the joy of just being able to copy and paste parts at will. It uses layers in the same way may other graphic application do, so that is also pretty convenient.

At this point in my life I just not willing to spend th time to lovingly draw panel after panel. Anyway the rough drawing was easy with the Wacom tablet but I didn't know if it would look OK once I “inked” it. YES it is crude, but that is my frame of mind now, that is me and I just don't have the wherewithal to craft it into something beautiful,

Anyway, above is one page of inked results, and I'm pretty pleased. I still need to put the classic comic panels in to clearly divide the flow. But my whole effort is to be simplistic in the story and the presentation.

I'm starting with a Zen retreat I once when to during my “Zen Years” that tells a bit of what it is like to practice Zen but admit idly just from my unique perspective.

Below is the example of what the rough work looks like.