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.

Blankets by Craig Thompson

After reading Craig Thompson’s Habib, where a little girl marries an older man (considered rape in most countries) I could see that he obviously connects with kids who are getting screwed, which is what this story is about. He and his brother live in the attic and share a bed, and if they make a sound, their abusive father will lock one of them in a closet. Don’t bother screaming that there are spiders in there or you’re afraid of the dark, because a guy who locks his kids in the closet won’t give a damn what they’re going through. If you wonder what motivates his parents to act like this, one word: RELIGION! Their parents are nutjob Christian fundamentalists, and they lay a massive guilt trip on the poor kid when he’s caught drawing a nude woman.

Because his parents are so strict, he doesn’t learn to make decisions. He gets beaten up at school by the older boys, then molested at home by a teenage boy who babysits for the family. The parents send him to some stupid Christian camp during the winter break (what kind of kid wants to spend his winter break at camp?) and he gets bullied there too. That is, until at age 16, when he meets a bunch of teenage misfits who flip the bird at authority. One of them, a girl named Raine, takes a liking to him, and that’s where the dynamic suddenly changes.

Raine’s family is even more messed up than Craig’s. She has two adopted siblings, both of whom are retarded, and the burden of caring for them falls on her. The parents are totally oblivious, and her older sister Julie is a narcissist. If that’s not annoying enough, she and her husband take their parenting duties lightly; they’re always looking for an excuse to dump their baby so they can party.

The title Blankets comes from the fact that he and his brother sleep in the same bed, until the parents decide to spend more money getting them their own. But in some ways, Craig is left in limbo. It takes him a long time to really think for himself, and perhaps Raine's family is the spur to leave home. Maybe he thinks that this is how he’ll end up if he stays. Being stuck taking care of his parents doesn’t sound fun, does it?

The drawings in this comic are extremely realistic, despite his use of sharp lines. It reminded me of El Greco’s paintings, with their gaunt, hollow-cheeked figures and depressed faces. The style works perfectly here. After all, Blankets is a depressing story about depressed people.

Jessica Farm

One of the things about comics that annoys some readers is that you can get away with quite a lot. This story would make no sense as a novel; a teenage girl gets up, talks to imaginary friends, plays in an imaginary home on her way to breakfast, all with no point.

If you like David Lynch's movies, you'll probably like this book, but othetwise, it'll be hit-or-miss.

Maus: A Survivor's Tale

Vladek Spiegelman had great business sense, and he used it to survive. He survived on it as a young salesman, and as a prisoner of war, and as a victim of Hitler’s death camps.

    Fast forward 40 years. Vladek is old and cranky. His son, with whom he isn’t close, wants to hear (and tell others) his father’s story. He knows his father is angry; after all, he grew up with this man’s stinginess, crankiness, and lack of empathy for anyone. But he’ll soon see that there’s a part missing. Although his father is alive, part of him died when he “survived.”

When I was growing up in the 1980’s, I knew many Holocaust survivors. They were either glad to be alive or full of anger. Some were eager to tell their stories to the young; others carried the scars deep inside. For many years (perhaps until the 1970’s) it was almost taboo for the survivors to talk about what happened. The children of Holocaust survivors have a lot of emotional baggage.

    Vadek Spiegelman is one such survivor. He kept himself alive using his great business sense and his “street smarts.” He knew when to speak up and when to remain invisible, and used these abilities to help anyone who needed him. In fact he risked his life to save people when even his own relatives turned their backs on him.

    But Vladek’s survival skills couldn’t save everyone. His father, his oldest son, his sister, and countless other relatives didn’t survive. You wonder if Vladek feels guilty for not dying. Does he feel ashamed that he kept himself alive while his friends and family were killed? Does Vladek have “survivor’s guilt”?

    Artistically, the book is unique. Spiegelman draws the Jews as mice, the Nazis as cats, the Poles as pigs, the Americans as dogs, French as frogs, and so on. The use of animal faces is great for this story because it highlights the aggression of the Holocaust. Vladek is essentially a mouse hiding from a marauding cat, and the Poles are these big, aggressive men who don’t want the Jews around. If you need to clarify, there’s a scene in Maus Book II where a Polish capo rages “Jew, you just got here and you’re ready to do business!” The Poles are portrayed as pigs who don’t want mice in their stall. The Poles don’t get off light in this story.

    When I read Roger Ebert’s review of The Killing Fields I was reminded a little of Maus. Ebert wrote “In a Hollywood epic, Shamberg would go back into Cambodia to rescue his friend, accompanied by mercenaries, but in this movie, all he can do is make phone calls and write letters.” That’s what Maus is about, and it’s also what Schindler’s List, Hotel Rwanda, and The Pianist are about. In the middle of a genocide, you have to survive by your wits. Armed resistance worked in Sobibor and Treblanka, but it didn’t happen in most death camps; the camps were patrolled by guns and dogs, and the prisoners were weak from starvation. Hostile Polish towns surrounded the camps. They were made for nobody to escape.

    In the second book, Art Spiegelman talks about survivor’s guilt. Would he respect his father as much if he hadn’t survived? Does death equal losing the fight? Vladek may have survived the war (as did his wife) but his spirit didn’t. Did his father hate himself for not saving more of his relatives? He certainly did more than his cousins did, who betrayed him. When Art asks his father “He didn’t want to help you? But he was family, wasn’t he?” Vladek replies “it was every person for himself.” You have to wonder if maybe Vladek had lost faith in humanity too?

    I recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn more about Jewish history and the Holocaust. Spiegelman has done a great service, not only to the comics medium, but also to Holocaust studies. He captures the feeling of the camps, with the dirt, filth, and cold, and sometimes I can almost smell the stench.