2024-03: Love and Mercy, That's What You Need Tonight
Hello! Haven’t spoken in close to two months. How are you doing?
Personally, I’ve actually been, surprisingly, fairly well. I took a vacation in May, which was frankly much needed; I went to London, where I bought an obscene amount of books, saw a lot of comics folks, and saw the Mountain Goats live in concert (my third time), then I went off to Dublin, where I bought an obscene amount of books, saw a couple of comics folks, and saw the Mountain Goats live in concert (you do the math). I posted my video of John Darnielle covering the Pogues during the solo section, which was a lovely little surprise; I might post the other video I got, of him playing “Going to Palestine,” sometime soon. If you know me, you know just how fond I am of the Mountain Goats, and the whole trip was essentially planned around the two concerts, but honestly seeing people was the major highlight — I honestly don’t see a lot of people here at home, and I only really see my comics friends at conventions, so it was good to hang out with people in a capacity that allowed us to actually be, well, people. That was good. Things are good.
WHAT I'M WRITING
Comics
I posted a new comic a last week, titled “Diaphanoids,” drawn and lettered by the tremendous Anna Bow. Anna has been a favorite of mine for some time now, ever since I read her graphic novel with Sloane Leong, Graveneye (TKO, 2021), and when she told me she wanted to make a comic together I obviously leapt at the opportunity. I’m very fond of how this one came out — Anna had initially sent me a list of potential directions, and Phil Tippett’s transcendent movie Mad God was on there, and somehow I gravitated toward that one. There’s some Michael DeForge in there as well, as I suspect there often is in my recent writing. There is something fun about writing a truly incorrigibly fucked situation.
You can read it on Bluesky or Twitter, or get a high-res .pdf of it on a pay-what-you-want basis on Gumroad. There’s also a ‘process edition’ available, with some of Anna’s layouts and unlettered art and my script. Here are the first two pages, just to get the appetite going:
I’m working on more short comics which will hopefully be ready before the end of the year. I wrote a new short last week—an autobio short, if you can believe it—and there’s a couple of already-written scripts waiting on artists. I get antsy, but the wait is worth it.
Criticism
I’ve had a few pieces published since we last spoke. For TCJ, I wrote about Beth Hetland’s excellent tonal heightening and faltering emotional core in Tender, and the historical revisionism in the curation of Frank Johnson: Secret Pioneer of American Comics (eds. Keith Mayerson and Chris Byrne).
Coming up next are pieces on the early non-Hilda shorts of Luke Pearson (as collected by Gosh! Comics under the title How Long Have I Been Lying Here?), Yamada Murasaki’s Second Hand Love (tr. Ryan Holmberg, Drawn and Quarterly, 2024), the anthology Peep curated by Sammy Harkham and Steven Weissman (Brain Dead, 2024), and the 50th issue of kuš!’s š! anthology.
As you can see, I’ve been keeping busy.
WHAT I'M READING
Oh, gosh, where do I start. Let’s see…
Comics
Ping Pong by Matsumoto Taiyō (originally 1996-1997) Eng. tr. Michael Arias, Viz, 2020)
This was a lot of fun. I’m very fond of Matsumoto (I’d previously loved his Tekkonkinkreet and No. 5, and am currently greatly enjoying Tokyo These Days), and this one was a striking, propulsive bit of character work. My one problem with it is somewhat inherent to Matsumoto’s work, which is his approach to kinesis; he conveys sweeping excitement very well, but it becomes the baseline very quickly, at the expense of particulars, which means that you don’t really experience much of the game itself, which I find a bit of a shame. Still, certainly more than worth a read.
Teratoid Heights by Mat Brinkman (originally published 2003, ‘Museum Edition’ from Hollow Press, 2019)
I’d seen this book at London comic shops a couple of times and never really lingered on it, but then a couple of months ago I saw a tweet about Brinkman that stuck with me enough that I finally picked this one up. I had a genuine blast with it, and, what’s more, when I read it I thought to myself, Huh, this is a bit like my comic with Anna, unexpectedly, though more whimsical than desolate. It’s not something I’d ever experienced the likes of, this — part Tippett, part Aardman, part Jim Woodring, but all appearing to originate within itself, with some lovely, almost woodcut-like cartooning.
Judge Dredd: Necropolis by John Wagner, Carlos Ezquerra, and Tom Frame (2000AD, 1990)
I don’t talk about it much, preferring as I do to go on about the more indie stuff, but the thing is: John Wagner’s Judge Dredd really is fucking good. Like, a lot more than you would expect compared to much of the corporate baseline on the other side of the Atlantic. And Ezquerra… it took me a long time to properly appreciate him, until I realized just how much Steve Dillon was informed by him. Necropolis, though, kind of came out of nowhere for me. Ezquerra has always had the tension between his frenetic layouts and very ‘earthly’ linework, but here he takes his heightening to a brand new level, with some truly astonishing coloring that you don’t really see elsewhere. One wonders if Dash Shaw has read this.
Men I Trust by Tommi Parrish (Fantagraphics, 2022)
Ah, this was lovely. I think I mentioned last time that I had read Parrish’s Perfect Hair, and I loved this later effort as well. One thing I wasn’t expecting to see that at least three bits here were initially published as standalone short stories; I had originally read the page above (and the sequence surrounding it) as a black-and-white piece in the Australia issue of š! (which by the way is generally a great issue of a great anthology that you should pick up), for instance, and at the time it floored me as its own piece. You don’t get the sense, though, that Parrish did any reworking or refitting; it all flows wonderfully. I’m looking forward to reading The Lie and How We Told It, as well as anything else they might do in the future.
Second Hand Love by Yamada Murasaki (originally published 1983-1987, Eng. tr. by Ryan Holmberg, Drawn and Quarterly, 2024)
I know I said a review of this is coming soon, so I won’t say too much, but Yamada Murasaki’s really is something special. A granular approach to life, contrasted by a sweeping, pared-down-to-the-max cartooning sensibility. Pick this up, whenever you can.
Peep (anthology curated by Sammy Harkham and Steven Weissman, Brain Dead, 2024)
Another ‘review coming soon’ one, but I just want to say I enjoyed it more than I expected I would. I have something of a love-hate relationship with Harkham’s much-lauded anthology series Kramers Ergot—a case of differing sensibilities more than anything—but this one had a lot more heart than the preceding Kramers, and a few truly astonishing stories. Sophia Foster-Dimino’s piece is a highlight, but then again her work always is.
Hell Baby by Hino Hideshi (Eng. tr. Hiroo Yamagata, Blast Books, 1995)
Let me say this, first and foremost: Hino is maybe the best creator of ‘sickos’ manga I’ve ever encountered. His heightened tonality and propulsion, the viscosity of his ink work, and the tight, closed-system structuring… ah, this is a treat. Small-press manga-in-translation publisher Star Fruit Books has signed what I understand is an exclusive-for-life deal for Hino’s translations, which I’m delighted by, because it means more people can experience this sort of truly mad comics. God bless.
Cheat Sheets by Tiger Tateishi (Nieves/50 Watt, 2023)
Another book I picked up in London, which is a gem. Somewhere between the destabilization-of-realism of Chinese cartoonist Woshibai (whose work I wrote about for SOLRAD last year) and the contrived slapstick of Antonio Prohias, resulting in really charming pure-cartooning, which bears the materiality of line in mind more than, I think, most other cartoonists.
Honorable mentions, if only because I can keep listing comics all day: The Boy in Question by Michael DeForge (Space Face Books, 2013); Eight-Lane Runaways by Henry McCausland (Fantagraphics, 2020); Clearwater by Aaron Losty (self-published, 2024); Coyote Doggirl by Lisa Hanawalt (Drawn and Quarterly, 2018).
Prose
Fiction
Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories by Italo Calvino (Eng. tr. Tim Parks, Random House, 1993)
If I had to list the artists who most inform my writing, Calvino would be very near the top of the list, and this collection was a great reminder of why. I had some issues with Parks’ translation (I much prefer William Weaver’s Calvino translations), but what he conveys well is how much the man relishes in the language of story, in the telling of it, in the discovery of mode. If that’s not enough, just go and seek out “World Memory,” a genuine pleasure that really reminded me of Alan Moore’s short-form stuff.
Open Throat by Henry Hoke
Good news! This book annoyed me. More specifically: it is a book that has very specific linguistic intent (the non-human protagonist’s functionally-alien emulation of human language), but not the skill to do it, making some of its transliterative choices feel arbitrary. I am told it works better as an audiobook, but as a written book it simply did not come together for me. I suspect it would work better as a comic by someone like the aforementioned Dash Shaw, or Joe Kessler — someone who knows who to emphasize sensory information.
Nonfiction
Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White by Michael Tisserand (HarperCollins, 2017)
I’ve been very into George Herriman’s Krazy Kat in the the past months, and this biography was very compellingly written and well-researched. It particularly succeeded at portraying Herriman as an actual person, and a deeply insecure one at that. Well worth seeking out.
There is No Ethan by Anna Akbari (Grand Central, 2024)
An entirely different sort of read, but about as compelling, is this great chronicling of a particularly prolific catfisher, before the term became an MTV show that made everyone engage with online paramours with more trepidation. Akbari’s writing has a very strong flow to it, and I found myself taking far fewer breaks from reading than I usually do (which is saying something, as my brain is wracked by focus issues). Straightforward, but not at all predictable or dry.
WHAT I'M WATCHING
Hacks
TV is something of an out-of-sight-out-of-mind artform for me, which means that I sometimes forget about how good Hacks is. But the third season was the best one yet, as it really seems to have perfected the formula of the dramedy duo, with a striking balance between “I can make this person better” and “this person is making me worse.” Love it.
Kinds of Kindness
I’ve loved Yorgos Lanthimos for a long time, and this was one hell of a piece of work. It’s tricky, because it’s three short films tied up into one, but only two of them (the first and the third) really feel like they are of a piece; the middle one is great on its own, but did not feel quite in place. Nonetheless, Lanthimos is maybe the best at cinematic bleakness, and after a somewhat tame outing in Poor Things this is him at his grimiest once again. Yes! Ha ha ha… yes!
Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion
Oh, this is a special one. It manages to play both angles of the same issue—the institutionalization of sadism into system and the application of ideology as post-hoc justification—and knock both of these out of the park, in no small part thanks to a stunning performance from Gian Maria Volonté, who only mostly keeps his composure as a cool sociopath until he is revealed to be truly, hopelessly pathetic. One wonders if John Wagner has seen this one.
WHAT I’M LISTENING TO
Adult Mom - Momentary Lapse of Happily
I’d listened to the opening track of this one, “Be Your Own 3AM,” many times before, and in fact I’d go so far as to say that it’s one of the best songs of the last decade, but somehow I only just got around to actually listening to the full album. Well, folks: I love it. A gorgeously tender little thing which feels like it would have been a much bigger deal if it had come out just three years later; very much in line with Phoebe Bridgers’ Stranger in the Alps (another bona fide banger).
Christian Lee Hutson - “After Hours”
One of my favorite singer-songwriters, of the ‘sad boy with acoustic guitar’ mold (an evergreen if there ever was one), has announced a new album, which I’m very much looking forward to. He’s also announced a European tour which coincides with this year’s Thought Bubble, which means I’m going to have to do something about that. Hmm hmm hmm.
SILLY LITTLE GUY
A very special little guy for you, from all the way out in Glendalough, Ireland.
What, that’s not enough for you? Alright, let’s have another one from Dublin.
CONCLUSION
That’s it from me, I think. I’m going to see a local production of Waiting for Godot tonight, which I’m very excited about; one of my favorite plays, and it’s my first time seeing a live production. What about you? Any fun plans? Can I join?
Until next time: peace be with you, folks.