The Voyeurs by Gabrielle Bell

Gabrielle goes to France and Japan with filmmaker Michele Gondry, who intends to make a movie of her last comic Cecil & Jordan. Along the way she illustrates the many annoyances of her life, ranging from computer addiction to bad food. She goes to get her laptop fixed, and now she’s freaking out that it’ll take five days. For anyone under 35 years old, five days with no computer is like going cold turkey after a 10 year crack habit. Like most of Generation-Y, she can’t live without the internet, but after five days without it, she kind of likes it. She asks the store to remove the air card so she’ll never use the web again, and they say “just turn it off.” But she can’t. The only guy she knows that doesn’t use the internet is a homeless man.

Woman Rebel

Peter Bagge wastes no time in telling the story of Margaret Sanger, the controversial birth control advocate. From the very first page he uses his manic, large-mouthed style to portray Sanger’s frustration. She was from an era where women were expected to be slaves to their husbands, and if the husband couldn’t feed the wife and kids, well too bad. Women had no recourse. Her alcoholic ner-do-well father preached socialism, while his wife got sick from repeated pregnancies (some of which she miscarried). Obviously, her father’s ideals of freedom didn’t extend to his wife and kids.

One of the reasons Peter Bagge’s drawings work so well is that they never seem to stand still. They always appear to be flapping around and yelling, which is exactly how things would’ve been. Sanger was fighting with her husband throughout their marriage, and when she worked on the Lower East Side, it was bombardment of sight and sound. It gets funny when she meets Havelock Ellis and George Bernard Shaw, because the characters are not manic at all. The dialogue between her and Ellis is hilarious because it’s completely dry; Ellis states his life choices matter-of-factly (they’d be seen as bizarre even today) to the shock of the conservative Sanger. She reacts just as I expect when Ellis says “I am only aroused at the sight of a woman urinating, then I masturbate.” It was the kind of news that would give the average American a heart attack.

Those of you that loved Bagge’s Hate comic will love his colorful, wild, and exciting here. He’s crafted an enjoyable and engaging biography of Sanger, a very controversial woman in US history. But I have one suggestion for Bagge, and it’s to make a comic about Anthony Comstock. That man features prominently in this book, and despite his reputation as the king of prudes, his life story and his antics were interesting.

I can just imagine Comstock pouring over one of Sanger’s pamphlets, sweat running down his face, and yelling “vagina, oh my god, what a horrible word!”

The Comical Tragedy of Mister Punch

I never could understand why Punch and Judy are a kiddie show act. Not only are they the creepiest puppets ever, but the plots of the stories deserve an R rating; punch spends the whole show beating his wife, throwing the baby down the stairs, and tormenting everyone he can. I used to see Punch and Judy shows in England, and I sat through them out of stubbornness. The urge to run away was overwhelming.

The story here is equally creepy; a little boy spends the summer with his grandfather at his creepy seaside amusement park, and along comes a creepy Punch and Judy showman to make things creepier. In contrast to the boy is the showman’s assistant, a teenager who looks as though the job is the only thing keeping him out of jail (and not for too long, judging by his outlook.) While the boy is both fascinated and frightened by the showman and the carnival (and his grandfather, for that matter) the teen sees right through the whole thing. He knows that the show and the carnival are relics of a bygone era.

Only Dave McKean could illustrate something as frightening as this. By combining photos with hand-drawn illustration, he creates a haunting, lurid backdrop reminiscent of Jan Svankmajer’s animation. For those of you unfamiliar with Dave McKean, he’s the guy that did the Sandman covers in the 1990’s, and those things used to give me nightmares. Sandman was DC’s foray into mature-themed material, and Mister Punch would fit right at home in there.

A little research tells me that Punch comes from Pulcinello, a character from Italian puppet shows, and his name means “chicken” thanks to his massive nose and a voice like a rooster’s squawk. He’s violent, deceptive, and when confronted with something he’s done, he’ll feign ignorance and/or stupidity. He’s usually paired with Arleccino (or Harlequin in English), his agile trickster alter-ego, who I might add is descended from a more demonic character of legend (hence the multicolored costume.)

No matter how much English kids love this guy, I can’t look Punch in the face without getting creeped out. Those beady eyes, the leering grin, he is scary.

My Troubles With Women by Robert Crumb

Crumb didn’t have any troubles with women. He was simply an awkward kid in the Eisenhower era, bullied by a macho-shithead father and neglected by a weak mother. It was an era when bookish, artistic kids were ridiculed, and football players were idolized (not much has changed, has it?) by the girls. Artistic types got beaten up, and Goth culture was another 40 years away. If Crumb were born in 1984, I bet he would’ve had his nose, lips and eyebrows pierced by the time he was a sophomore!

Crumb has always portrayed himself as a wussy perverted goofball, but look at what he’s accomplished: he created some wonderful comic characters, illustrated a classic rock album cover, drew a great comic about Franz Kafka (that literature professors use in their courses) and paid his bills with his art. How many people can brag about that? Sure, he never got the girls back in high school, but what became of them by the time this comic was published in the 1980’s? As for they jocks who bullied him and his brother, they probably ended up working for low pay in a steel mill.

My own troubles with women weren’t much different. I was an awkward kid, and had no success in dating. But so what? The girl I had a crush on had a nose bigger than mine (and she smelled), and when I saw her again 10 years later, her nose was thin and crooked thanks to a botched nose job. At least she didn’t stink. All I could think of was “jeez, is this the girl I used to fantasize about?”

Let’s face it folks, high school is lousy. You have the constant pressure, stupid cliques, social competitiveness, and bullies (usually the rich kids, because their parents always buy them out of trouble) and everyone’s telling you what to do. That’s why I never believed Michael Jackson’s crap when he said “I never got to have a childhood.”

Being a kid stinks, Jacko. You didn’t miss anything.

Our Cancer Year by Harvey Pekar (well it's his story, ain't it?) and Joyce Brabner (might as well give her some credit for not killing the protagonist)

I am NOT a fan of Harvey Pekar and I don’t believe I can ever be one. He’s the most self-indulgent character I’ve ever read about (thankfully I’ve never had to meet him face to face) and despite what everyone else says, I DO NOT believe he’s a good writer. He’s the kind of person you never invite to your party because his negativity spoils everyone’s good mood. Don’t feel bad, he wouldn’t want to go to your party anyway, because he thinks that parties are strictly for money-crazed prom queens, and they’ll ruin his bad mood, which he has carefully cultivated.

If you’re wondering why I spent $10 on a used copy of this book, it’s because I was fascinated by the idea of Harvey Pekar having cancer. Now wait, I’m not saying that cancer is interesting or funny, I just wondered if his outlook would change. Would he keep on being negative and unpleasant, or would he realize that life isn’t bad by comparison? Would he develop an appreciation for life that cancer survivors usually have? Would his wife be able to put up with it?

There answer to everything is no. Cancer turns the typical whining Harvey Pekar into whining Harvey Pekar on steroids! Not a day goes by during this year of cancer treatment that he doesn’t announce his impending death. I don’t know how his wife puts up with it for so long; there’s nothing in their marriage that’s worth staying in it for. At least she has her hobbies and her interests, or she’d go crazy.

I love comics, but I hate Pekar’s American Splendor. If it weren’t for Robert Crumb, this guy would’ve been just another ambitionless file clerk in Cleveland. Pekar seems to prefer when things are bad, because when they’re good, he can’t claim that life stinks. He reminds me of Oscar the Grouch, who’s only happy when people aren’t nice to him. But at least Oscar the Grouch has personality. Pekar, on the other hand, bores me to death. Thank god Letterman had the good sense to dump him from his show.

Building Stories by Chris Ware

“Machines,” I said to myself, the first time I saw Chris Ware’s cartoons. They looked so mechanical I didn’t believe they were hand-drawn. That was why I could tell right away that Building Stories all about ennui (constant loneliness and solitude, if you haven’t got a dictionary.)

When Building Stories came out in the NY Times, I couldn’t tell much about the woman in his cartoons, because she was always sitting at the window looking out. With this deluxe edition, I can see that she’s missing half a leg, overweight, lonely no matter where she is. This is the kind of loneliness that gives you cabin fever, and the only reason she doesn’t have cabin fever is that she isn’t really alone. She lives on the third floor of a Chicago tenement, but doesn’t interact with the people around her at all.

The ironic thing about her story is that she feels left out, but the people around her are no better off. Her neighbors are in a bad relationship, the plumber is lonely and overweight, the previous tenant died alone in her apartment. Perhaps when you live in a city you don’t really get to know your neighbors? Then again, she doesn’t seem to know anybody in the suburb where she moves with her husband, whom she doesn’t like that much either. She marries the first guy she can, and he’s just as unattractive as she is and not much fun. He’s off on business all the time, and she’s stuck at home with their daughter. I wonder if the husband has Asperger’s Syndrome or OCD? Perhaps that explains why he feels more at home in his job than with his wife and kid. As for the kid, she’s very independent, which is a relief for the reader. If the main character is depressed and missing a leg, how would she deal with someone who’s emotionally needy? But the more independent the child becomes, the lonelier her mother feels.

Ware’s mechanical black lines are perfect for this cartoon. The human characters fit perfectly with the geometric backgrounds; it’s like they’re all cogs in a machine, and it’s all their own doing. Most of the characters in the story feel unfulfilled, but they don’t do anything to get out of it. By the time I’d read all the books in the package, I had zero sympathy for the characters.

For those of you wondering why the book comes in a heavy box, let me say this; it’s not a book, but several books plus a newspaper, a game board, a book, a magazine, a strip, and a ribbon. I thought it was like opening up a Milton Bradley board game, and by the time I reached the bottom of the box and found the fold-out board, I knew I was right. The series Building Stories is essentially a board game; the drawings are like game illustrations, and the story jumps from past to present and back the way you move your game piece when you lose a point.

I can relate to Building Stories. I live in a big pre-war apartment building in a city. I don’t know my neighbors, and they don’t know theirs. It can feel isolating sometimes. I see the same faces at the community board meetings, but I’ve never been friends with any of them. City people can be rather solitary. You can live in a city like this without ever interacting with the people around you. Everyone to their own devices, they say.

Box Office Poison

Back in the 1990’s, before the tech boom started, it wasn’t unusual for a recent college grad to work in a bookstore (or wait tables) while deciding what to do next. Years earlier it was unheard of, but in the Clinton era it was the norm. It all changed after 1997 with all the internet companies sprouting up, and 20 years later, it’s the norm again.

 

I read Box Office Poison way back in 1995 when it was a photocopied mini comic in the $1-box at Jim Hanley’s, and loved it. I could really relate to Sherman, the cranky title character who works in a bookstore, shares a Brooklyn apartment (with a very 1990’s couple), and likes weird girls. I loved the way the characters were all imperfect; the girls are short and have lanky hair, and they guys are frumpy and overweight. It was quite a contrast to Spider-Man, where every character looks gorgeous (even some of the villains look hot.)

 

The story begins with Sherman and his friend Ed moving his stuff into his new room. The two of them make for a funny pair; Sherman is tall, slim, and neatly groomed, while Ed is short, fat, goateed, and shaves his head. Then comes the new girlfriend, Dorothy Lestrade (yes, it is a reference to Sherlock Holmes) a woman with a shady past, who (to the reader and unfortunately not to Sherman) is obviously mentally unbalanced. The new apartment is in Carol Gardens, and keep in mind that this was before the “hipster” era, so you didn’t have all the great restaurants, theatres, stores, and whatnot. Whenever the characters go to a restaurant, it’s usually a diner or a basic Italian eatery. All the good restaurants were in Manhattan, and even as late as 2004, I remember Carol Gardens being sort of dull. I’m definitely going to assign this book if I’m teaching a class on New York history!

 

Alex Robinson crafted the perfect story of being young in the 1990’s, at a time when young people were “finding” Brooklyn, opting to cohabitate instead of getting married, and most important for this book, starting to appreciate comics that did not involve men in tights! As for the artwork, it’s all black and white line drawings, with a great use of shadows. After a childhood of comics with muscle-freaks leaping around in pantyhose, I was glad to find comics set in the real world. The only non-superhero comic we had at the time was Archie, and he was NEVER a realistic depiction of being a teen (nobody in that comic was short, overweight, sloppy, pimpled, gay, lesbian, alcoholic, addicted to drugs, homeless, etc.) We had Maus (thank heavens) and Tintin (even that falls short) but when Box Office Poison came out, I couldn’t get enough.

 

Unlike Archie, Sherman Davies has to pay his own bills, and unlike Veronica, his girlfriend has issues, and they can be scary! If Archie and Jughead were out of the house and living in shared apartments on a shoestring budget, this is probably how it would end up.