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The Year's Best Comic Books

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from: Ruben Bolling

Sunny-Side-Up Criticism

Posted Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2000, at 2:02 PM ET

Dearest Ted,

Settle down, big fella. My response to your point about David Boring's use of storyline was not an attempt to spin your comments against the book. I was simply ... responding to your point.

But your outrageous retaliatory accusation that I've given positive assessments to all four books as a scheme to score review copies in the future demands an immediate and decisive response: It's quite true. Getting my first taste of the sweet nectar of advance review copies on this assignment has been intoxicating, and I will stop at nothing to get more. However, you'll recall that I made a disclosure on this point in my previous posting, and as you well know, once a writer has disclosed a journalistic bias, he has full prosecutorial immunity and cannot be attacked on those grounds. (Which reminds me, I'd also like to make full journalistic disclosure that in the early 1980s I killed seven hitchhikers in Montana and Idaho. Whew.) Anyway, I'm not a Professional Critic, so I have no compulsion to maintain a certain thumbs-down to thumbs-up ratio in order to protect my hip superiority; if I like four books (four books presented as Slate's Best Comic Books of the Year!), then I like four books.

Now, if you'll pardon my brazen obsequiousness, I'll go on to post my fifth positive appraisal: I thought that your comments on Ware's Jimmy Corrigan were extremely articulate and well-reasoned and raised valid points. I don't think anyone can reach a definitive, objective conclusion on whether this is a worthy piece of art (further evidence that I'm not a Professional Critic).

You're right that it is somber, slow, and at times, abstruse. This may keep it out of the grasp of many readers, and that is a shame. (Although I'm puzzled about how you can simultaneously say that it's a "lowest-common-denominator" success and a Ulysses-like impenetrable opus.) Each panel may have a cold, detached look to it, but the cumulative effect is to produce a work that is as heartfelt and soulful as any I've read.

I certainly did not find the plot "trite and predictable." First, I don't think that your example, a supposedly banal revelation that Jimmy's mom sold sexual favors for cash, even occurred. Unless I missed something (and I guess one of us did--there is an awful lot of reality-shifting), it was Jimmy's great-grandfather, back in the 1890s, who broke up with a girlfriend by getting one last fling in before he snuck out with his young son, leaving a 10-spot on the dresser (one of many touching scenes involving the traumatized and abused boy). But in any case, I found each plot turn and revelation to be not only genuinely surprising but also consistent with the book's themes.

You draw a pretty good analogy between Ware and a film director who keeps using jarring technical gimmicks. But the difference here is that I found Ware's use of the format "tricks" to be absolutely meaningful and in full service to the mood and story, a rare achievement.

And I disagree with your point that Ware's illustrations of the Exposition's architecture amounted to nothing more than pointless flexing of draftsmanship muscle. In fact, I think that they exemplify how Ware consistently puts that muscle to superb thematic use; the grandiose edifices, and the noble values that underlie their construction, perfectly contrasted the petty and monstrous things that the tiny human figures below and within were doing to each other. It is on the rooftop edge of the beatifically rendered "largest building in the world" that Jimmy's great-grandfather commits his ultimate act of cowardly betrayal against his young son.

But, hey, if this story that I found deeply complex and fraught with meaning left you cold, no amount of analysis is going to convince you otherwise.

To wrap up, I won't undertake a ranking of my recommendations regarding the books discussed; have I said enough times that I'm not Reviewing these books, just offering my comments and impressions? But I do want to briefly make a point about the unique power of the graphic novel. To borrow your analogy of the cartoonist to the film director, I think any director would kill to have the control over his art that a cartoonist has. Unlike the collaborative dramatic arts, the cartoonist has total, godlike control over every element of the work--from plot and script, to the "actors'" physical appearance, and every detail of performance, to lighting and color, down to the very folds of a tablecloth. The ability to express a personal vision in this medium is therefore unparalleled, and when it succeeds on an ambitious scale, it's as stunning an accomplishment as can be achieved in any art form.

The comics industry is forever asking itself why the world never takes us seriously (i.e., why aren't we all media superstars with photographic tours of our palatial homes gracing the pages of People magazine?). Sure, we have our Peanuts and Maus breakthroughs, but we still feel compelled to yell into the wind our tired refrain, "Comics aren't just for kids anymore!" Well, those who miss out on four books like these (and, in my view, Jimmy Corrigan in particular) are denying themselves the opportunity to experience a uniquely vital form of literature.

Ted, I agree that it will be a shame when we go back to performing these slugfests in private and for free. Maybe I should refuse to discuss a comic with you unless you've given me a free review copy.

But our time has come to an end, the first New England leaves are turning, and I've got to go out back and chop wood for the coming winter.

Yours,
Ruben

P.S.: I told you that if you ever told anyone about my Bruce Springsteen CDs, I'd tell everybody about that time I caught you kissing Judy behind the coats after Social Studies, so consider us even.

the book club
entries
123456
from: Ruben Bolling

Sunny-Side-Up Criticism

Posted Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2000, at 2:02 PM ET
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The Beauty Supply District, by Ben Katchor and David Boring, by Daniel ClowesRuben Bolling creates the weekly comic strip “Tom the Dancing Bug,” which is distributed to 70 publications, including the Village Voice, the Washington Post, and Salon.com. Ted Rall's cartoons appear in the Village Voice, the New York Times, and more than 100 other publications. This week, they discuss four new comics books: Ben Katchor's The Beauty Supply District (click here to buy it); Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (click here to buy it); Daniel Clowes' David Boring (click here to buy it); and Ilan Stavans' Latino USA: A Cartoon History (click here to buy it).
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Reader Comments from The Fray:


If I may add the obvious to the two gentlemen's discussion of the work of Ben Katchor: the guy loves cities, especially New York. Sweetly and without irony--thank God. Even if you don't have the pleasure to hear him state that flat out in one of his charming lectures, it's obvious from his strips, which are all about the semi-hidden pleasures of cities past and present, the type of odd niches that can exist only when there is a large and cosmopolitan population. In many cases, the context of his work, the detailed street backgrounds, are the main subject. So if you don't like cities, like perhaps Mr Rall, Julius Knipl probably won't work for you.

--George Grella

(To reply, click here.)

[And there was more enthusiasm for Katchor: Michael Lewyn agreed with Mr Grella, saying "When I read Mr Katchor and then I realize that I don't live in NYC, I want to start crying." And Adam Morrow thought he "brings to life all of the wonderful historical details that one ignores in daily life--the fact that each stranger you pass on the street has a fascinating story to tell (as does every fire escape and curbstone), and that this is a story you will never get to hear. Katchor gives his readers a glimpse of what those stories might be."]


I was the staff editorial cartoonist for City Pages, the alternative weekly in Minneapolis, for ten years. I looked at the possibility of syndicating my stuff to the alternative weeklies around the country. But I gave up on the idea because I soon discovered that the editors of those papers were basically so left-brained, so verbal, as to qualify as right-hemisphere-retards. They were utterly visually illiterate, had no appreciation for anything except words words words. Unfortunately for those of us artists who are politically far left of center, the most verbal, least visually intelligent editors in the country seem to be those who are most politically to the left. I think this malady has spread to many of the editors of mainstream dailies, as well, many of whom can't see the value in any kind of cartoon that isn't almost entirely word-based. In a true cartoon, the words and images interact in such a way that neither the words or images by themselves deliver the message of the cartoon. In a true cartoon, you have to look at the picture and read the words for it to even make any sense at all. In Rall's "cartoons", like those of Tom Tomorrow, Groening, Lynda Barry, et al, the images are unnecessary. This is why the Left in America will never pose any real threat to the status quo: their visual stupidity puts them out of touch with the masses.

--Wag

(To reply, click here.)


[Note from the Fray Editor: This Book Club brought a lot of very knowledgeable comics fans into The Fray, showing varying levels of enthusiasm. Reuben Nisenfield said "it's like Griffin and Sabine by Kevin Smith". Many were concerned to distinguish between comic books and comic strips collected into a book. There was this spirited defense of Chris Ware's work from Walter Biggins, and praise for Daniel Clowes too.

In general, Ted Rall proved to be a--how best to put this?--thought-provoking critic with the Fray-going public, perhaps even controversial. Try this ("sloppy vendetta journalism") or this ("one of the strangest critics I have ever read") or this ("A more interesting topic might be: Why are Ted Rall's cartoons so frequently based on demonstrably false premises?") And here, Danny Hellman says Rall sued him for making a joke about him--we suggest you read it before posting anything too rude about Mr Rall.]

(9/2)

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