Almost Silent
Written & Illustrated by Jason
Translated by Kim Thompson
Published by Fantagraphics

Four of Jason’s past comics – Meow, Baby!; Tell Me Something; You Can’t Get There From Here; and The Living and the Dead – get compiled into one 300-page hardcover in Almost Silent.  True to the title, most of the comics within operate in pantomime, though text appears more often than you might expect.

First of all, I have to say how much I enjoy the format.  Fantagraphics has done a fine job with this book, with a striking cover, sturdy spine, and essentially giving me everything I want in my comic books in terms of collected treatment.  Lots and lots of pages in a portable size – Almost Silent looks and feels like a book, slips into a murse easily, and can easily be read on mass transit, in a waiting room or surreptitiously at your desk during work (not that I did, but one could).

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Werewolves of Montpellier
Written & Illustrated by Jason
Translated by Kim Thompson
Published by Fantagraphics

Ostensibly about a jewel thief who dresses as a werewolf running afoul of real werewolves, Jason’s Werewolves of Montpellier stands out as yet another genre-mashing, hilarious send-up from the superb one-named cartoonist.  In truth, while the werewolves’ presence is noteworthy, most of the book is given over to the wry and awkward social interactions of Jason’s protagonist.

Fueled by Jason’s staccato panels (eight panel-grids on every page, without variation) and dry, humdrum-of-life pacing, Werewolves of Montpellier revels in examining the routines of Sven, the book’s erstwhile hero.  Whether it’s debating with a friend what parts of women to stare at or engaging in awkward dates with girls who realize he’s in love with another woman, Sven’s interactions are clumsy and forced, but intentionally and entertainingly so.

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As cartoonist Jim Woodring explains in this video explaining his proposed giant steel dip pen and penholder project, the steel dip pen is a very difficult tool to master.

If you’ve ever seen any of Woodring’s work, like the recent graphic novel Weathercraft, then you’ll probably agree that Woodring has mastered it. But is he going to just rest on his laurels, content with his mastery of the steel dip pen?

No, Jim Woodring seeks even bigger challenges, and if there aren’t any bigger steel dip pens for Woodring to challenge, then he’s just going to go ahead and create a giant steel dip pen to wrestle with.

That’s sort of the gist of this project. “I want to draw public attention to this beautiful piece of ancient technology and at the same time create an art object that will be the nucleus of public performances,” Woodring explains in the video, in which he also briefly touches on the history of the pen and elaborates its virtues.

He wants to create a 16-inch nib to mount on a six-foot holder, and, in addition to creating the pen itself and addressing the engineering challenges it will present—steel dip pens weren’t meant to be that huge, after all—he figures he’ll need  “a whole gallon of black acrylic ink” and “an eraser the size of a brick” and “a chunk of graphite the size of a plumber’s candle,” plus penty of large sheets of Bristol.

Visit the first link in the post to learn more about the project, and see how you might be able to help raise the $4,500 Woodring figures he’ll need. Or just to marvel at Woodring’s artistic audacity. [Vial Flog!]

Prince Valiant v.2: 1939-1940
Written & Illustrated by Hal Foster
Published by Fantagraphics

If you read Wednesday Comics, you should know that the entire venture – particularly Gibbons and Sook’s Kamandi strip – owes its existence to Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant.  Those enormous pages were standard for Foster’s acclaimed strip, and the entire narrative approach and illustrative technique used in Kamandi was done in homage to Valiant.  Fantagraphics is now reprinting those classic Prince Valiant strips, having recently released the years 1939 and 1940.  It’s a great opportunity to find out why Foster’s influence is still being felt and acknowledged seventy years later.

In this second (the first covered the strip’s first two years, 1937-1938), beautifully designed hardcover volume, printed at the originals’ full-size to show off the full glory of Foster’s detailed Sunday pages, readers will find Prince Valiant aiding King Arthur in defense of England, working alongside his father to recapture the throne of his homeland Thule, and then sallying forth on adventures into the heart of Europe.  Long campaigns against Hun invaders and a jaunt into the seat of the crumbling Roman Empire, Rome itself, occupy the second year of strips collected here.

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Percy Gloom
Written & Illustrated by Cathy Malkasian
Published by Fantagraphics

Malkasian’s new book, the excellent Temperance, recently shipped to stores, but I’m a little behind and also just read her first: Percy Gloom.  Percy Glooms tells of the titular character’s journey to a new town and a new job, but more importantly, deals with dreams and practicalities, and with life against death.  Making hard choices lies at Percy Gloom’s heart.

Percy himself, a bashful, short fellow, dreams of writing cautionary copy – explaining to everyone all the many possible dangers of – well, anything.  Hair brushes, for example, may damage your hearing if jammed into an ear canal. His meeting with a young woman named Tammy, who obsesses over the ephemeral quality of life, the brief passage of moments after which our loved ones are no more a part of our life, pushes Percy outside his own comfort zone.  The inevitable risks and outcomes of life unfurl over the remaining pages, as Percy learns what life is for.

Witty and subtle, Malkasian’s script refuses to bludgeon readers with its theme.  Instead, she allows Percy to encounter a variety of characters, each one poking and prodding him toward the limits of his social comforts. The slow and deliberate pacing reveals changes in Percy’s thinking or clues into the people he encounters in each panel.  It’s almost manga-like in the way Malkasian uses silent panels of landscapes, cities and other physical objects to establish the tone of the Percy’s world.

Malkasian’s illustrations, soft and organic, detailed and nuanced, give the narrative the air of a parable.  The entire look of the book is built on clean curves and delicately shaded textures, and the fanciful designs of Percy’s world enhance the sense of a Percy Gloom being a classic parable.

Percy Gloom is a moving, engaging, enlightening book.  It’s exactly the sort of comic readers should be demanding – thoughtful and intelligent, a beautifully drawn narrative that unfolds its layers over the course of multiple readings.  Cathy Malkasian’s produced two winning graphic novels, and she’s clearly a talent that deserves a far wider readership.

Tales Designed to Thrizzle #6
Written & Illustrated by Michael Kupperman
Published by Fantagraphics

Honestly, this brand of retro-camp isn’t really my bag, but I can’t deny that Michael Kupperman knows his way around the comics.

First of all, Kupperman draws the hell out of every page.  The “Juggle Princess” sequence recalls classic adventure comics, with brightly colored protagonists moving over monochrome backgrounds in dynamic ballets of action.  Strong line work captures the pristine silliness of Jungle Girl, jungle heroine and fashion magazine publisher, aided by a chimp-hawk duo against unbelievable foes.

Other sequences in Tales Designed to Thrizzle #6 include post-modern wallpaper ideas, the Richie Rich parody Willie Wealth (Kupperman does a superb Warren Kremer pastiche) and a darkly humored thriller about the history and importance of drainage juxtaposed against an “aging” theatre actress’s plight.

Fake ads, an Armageddon-inspired Mark Twain/Albert Einstein team-up, and a dismissal of books round out Kupperman’s offerings in this installment.

Every sequence looks excellent, dramatically staged and rendered in clear, strong lines.  Kupperman uses blacks to add strong accents to each page, and alters his style to give each sequence the appropriate flavor.  Strong primary coloring enforces the power of the line art.

Tales Designed to Thrizzle #6 looks great.  The script hits all the right marks.  If you’re the type of reader who enjoys self-referential nods to the comics of yesteryear, Kupperman’s title sets the standard all such titles should shoot for.

Popeye: Plunder Island
Written & Illustrated by E.C. Segar
Published by Fantagraphics

Fantagraphics’ fourth oversized collection of Elzie Segar’s legendary Thimble Theatre strips, famous as the birth place of Segar’s notorious Popeye the Sailor, continues the winning standard set by earlier editions.

Well, honestly, Plunder Island comes up slightly short of the brilliance set by previous Popeye strips, if only because Segar pushes J. Wellington Wimpy so heavily in the Sunday pages.  I seem to be in a minority, and I can’t quite put my finger on why, but the repetitious themes of Wimpy’s mooching exhaust me.  The payoff is slight and easily predictable.

The daily sequences, more focused on Popeye and his English-mangling, extreme-punching, heart-of-gold antics, mixing adventure and humor in balanced measure, are more to my tastes.  I’m not sure why Popeye’s gimmick is less bothersome than Wimpy’s – mostly I suspect that there’s just a little more range in the jokes focused on Popeye.  The gags are still well within a certain realm, but Segar was more able to vary the formula when working on the dailies.  Wimpy’s only relationship is with hamburgers, after all. Popeye manages to juggle Olive and June VanRipple, as well as friendships with Mr. VanRipple, Castor Oyl and Toar, while discovering Plunder Island, saving King Blozo’s kingdom (again) and establishing his own country, Spinachova.

Fantagraphics’ enormous format remains among the best-looking strip reprints available.  The Sunday pages are published in full-size glory, complete with the (fairly tepid) accompanying Sappo strip Segar created to run with Popeye.  To match the largeness of the Sunday pages, Fantagraphics puts six dailies – a full week – on each page, giving an incredible density and even matching the weekly pacing of the strips in a condensed manner.  The artwork reproduction is very strong throughout.

Anyway, the gags in the dailies remain of a type, but Segar mixes the formula to keep things fresh, and his comical character designs continue to be strong, suiting his slapstick pacing.  If you were to ask me to recommend a classic newspaper strip, Popeye would easily be among the top five.  Given the vast range and sheer number of strips that have existed, Segar’s incredibly high standard continues as a standard-bearer.

King of the Flies vol. 1: Hallorave
Written by Michel Pirus
Illustrated by Mezzo (Pascal Mesenburg)
Translated by Helge Dascher & John Kadlecek
Published by Fantagraphics

A bleak, heavily noir tale of ennui, sex and drugs, King of the Flies tells of four teens, Eric, Marie, Sal and Denis, and a handful of adults connected to them, whose lives unfold in interlocking short stories.

The first installment of three European albums, Hallorave bursts with depravity and ugliness.  The few characters who aren’t intentionally using another are either willingly being used or simply oblivious to their abusive ways.

King of the Flies centers around the character Eric (who narrates four of the ten chapters), but is really a tale of lives intersecting.  Six separate characters take a turn as the lead, and each focuses largely on scoring a hit, getting ahead in some illegal manner or getting into the pants of someone they’re lusting for.

It is self-loathing, disaffection at its finest.  At the book’s most fascinating, Pirus takes inside each person’s head and examines their ability to justify their actions, some via rationalizing, some through ignorance, some through simple narcissistic arrogance.  When Eric starts dating Marie before breaking off his relationship with Sal, Pirus swings through all three characters’ vantage points, showing the indifference each feels for the other, yet the pride that demands respect.

One of my favorite aspects to most European albums that I’ve read is how easy to read most are.  Three-tiered grids lock the story into a precise rhythm, an inexorable progression of windows into these lives, providing readers with precision storytelling and pacing.  Captions are placed squarely at the top or bottom of a given panel, so there’s no confusion about which sequence to read the text in.  Even novice comics readers can move smoothly from text to art, panel to panel, and traffic the flow of information easily.

Mezzo, the series illustrator, sticks to a dark color palette, refusing to allow any sunshine into the lives of the characters.  By using variety of angles, including occasionally severe zooms and long shots, Mezzo keeps the story visually engaging, and shows the range of his illustrative prowess.  Every character and every backdrop is rendered with an eye toward its downtrodden humanity, packed full of deliberate details (from the decor of a room to the blowing of autumn leaves) and sagging, hollow-eyed humanity.

If you’re looking for a light-hearted pick-me-up, King of the Flies vol.1: Hallorave is not it.  If, however, you’re looking for a darkly compelling, twisted, beautifully illustrated account of the broken souls and self-absorbed nihilism, Pirus and Mezzo’s album is about as good as you’ll find in the comics field.  It’s a stunning piece of fiction, beautifully crafted in its prose, pacing, artistry and crushing understanding of humanity’s ugliness.

Culture Corner
Written & Illustrated by Basil Wolverton
Published by Fantagraphics

If you’re a Basil Wolverton fan, you’ll want to pick this book up.  If you’re not, or are mostly unfamiliar with his work, Culture Corner is not the ideal place to start.  Culture Corner was a half-page gag strip created by Wolverton for various Fawcett comics publications, including Whiz Comics and others.

Each half page has Wolverton’s narrator, Croucher K. Conk, Q.O.C. (Queer Old Coot), introducing a daily dilemma – the need to trim unruly eyebrows, how to prevent the loss of a hat on a windy day, how to cure flat feet, etc.  After presenting one or two comic possibilities that fail for similarly comic reasons, Wolverton solves each problem with an even more outlandish possibility.

Culture Corner is one of Wolverton’s earliest professional works, begun in the mid-1940s.  As such, the gags aren’t as fully developed as later, legendary Wolverton strips, and the freakish figures he’s famed for haven’t yet achieved their full gory glory.

It’s a Basil Wolverton strip, though, so Culture Corner still looks great, and is packed full of outrageously exaggerated anatomy and grotesquery.  The gags may have some humor for younger readers, but there’s not much there for adults.  Given the lack of existing original artwork, Fantagraphics’ reproduction is quite good.  The right-hand sheet shows a strip as it appeared in Whiz or a contemporary, while the left page reproduces (when available) Wolverton’s original sketch of the same strip.  There are few variations between the two forms, though the occasional editorial interference or self-impelled revision does offer some minor insight into Wolverton’s creativity.

The pencil drawings appear clear and clean, showing readers just how developed Wolverton’s line work was at the beginning of his career.  The published strips have color runs and misprints, as well as heavy, primary color schemes (universally) common to comics of their time.  The printing, however, is good throughout.  Wolverton fans will certainly appreciate having this material in as good a form as presented here.

The book also includes a section of rejected (by Fawcett or Wolverton himself) strips in pencil form, a must-have for Wolverton aficionados.

Culture Corner remains a curiosity in comic book history, rarely remembered, rarely seen, but Basil Wolverton’s status as an important figure in humor cartooning is unimpeachable.  Thus, anybody wanting to understand the development of the medium and the evolution of comedy cartooning should pick up Culture Corner to see how Wolverton began the road to comic book legend.  Most of the strips have never been seen by today’s readers, and the sheer number of unpublished penciled sketches makes this book a true rarity and a must-have.

Locas II: Maggie, Hopey and Ray
Written & Illustrated by Jamie Hernandez
Published by Fantagraphics

Somehow, some way, Jamie Hernandez is getting better and better.  Love & Rockets, since its debut in 1981, blazed a standard for brilliant, personal and engaging comic book storytelling, and Locas, the first gigantic hardcover compilation of Jamie’s “Maggie and Hopey” stories, stands as one of the highlights of my life as a reader.  Now, unbelievably, Locas II exceeds the original’s standard.

The high concept remains the same, a continuing series of sketches, short stories and longer narratives chronicling the lives of two Mexican-American women in southern California: Margarita Luisa “Maggie” Chascarrillo and Esperanza Leticia “Hopey” Glass.  The former’s a mechanic, the latter in search of a new vocation after a run as a poor bass guitarist for equally poor punk bands.  Sometimes they’re lovers, sometimes not. In Locas II, as the subtitle suggests, Maggie’s one-time paramour Ray Dominguez steps forward to assume a leading role as well.

All three of the protagonists finds themselves in similar territory, yet uniquely their own.  Their carefree misspent youth behind them, each of the three leads finds her or himself pondering their choices, the place in the world they’ve built for themselves, and fighting against (and to gain) some level of “adultness.”  Hopey’s working through a failing relationship and about to take on a new job as, gasp, a teacher (teacher’s assistant!).  Trapped in a less-than-rewarding position as a building super, Maggie’s dealing with neurotic tenants and even more neurotic friends.  Frequent incursions from despondent childhood friend Izzy and new drama-queen-on-the-block Vivian prevent Maggie from finding any stability outside of her regular phone conversations with old pal Hopey.  Ray…, well, he’s hanging out with trouble-seeking Doyle and wrong-crowd Viv.  He longs for the comfort of his times with Maggie, but can’t seem to keep from falling in with people who are anything but easy going and low key.

Locas II then tells of three people reaching middle age, reflecting on their youthful misadventures, wondering if they’ve made the right choices, as well as how to deal with “the rest of their lives.”  Hernandez’s subtle scripting manages the delicate balance of threading surreal moments, dreams and the threat of violent wannabe gangsters (mostly of whom seem to intersect Viv’s life too regularly) through a quiet, layered and human drama.  Never dull thanks to Hernandez’s playful sense of reality and his engaging characters, Locas II dances through mid-life crises.

From sexual shenanigans to turgid professional responsibilities, the characters in Locas II confront their lives with a palpable mixture of disappointment, amazement, humor and love.  The complicated relationships between the cast, including Penny Century running from husband H.R. Costigan’s terminal illness and recollections of Izzy and Maggie’s childhoods, are never treated casually.  Each short narrative enlightens the dynamic between a set of characters, or with a character’s own self.

Always one of the business’s finest artists, Hernandez’s illustrations haven’t lost as step.  His bold, elegant line flows across each page, delineating his vision of the characters and their world.  Known for his beautiful women, Hernandez is also a master of nuanced character acting, and all the small details – from the lay of clothes to the interior of cars – are rendered with an eye to reality.  And he’s an impeccable storyteller, providing engaging “camera” work and clear, precise panel-to-panel transitions.

Even after thirty years, Jamie Hernandez continues to find things to say about life and love.  In Locas II: Maggie, Hopey and Ray, he’s crafted perhaps his most universal work to date, a saga of three people who’ve left behind the postures of their youth to stumble, unsure and hesitant, across the landscape of their adult lives.  It’s strange and scary, funny and sweet, confused and enlightening.  Locas II is a master as the top of his game, and a true comic book classic.

It Was the War of the Trenches
Written & Illustrated by Jacques Tardi
Translated by Kim Thompson
Published by Fantagraphics

There are two types of war stories: war as the great human drama, man accomplishing amazing feats in the most horrible of circumstances, or war as the great human tragedy, the ultimate loss of life without any rhyme or reason.  Tardi’s book fits very firmly into the latter category.

Published in France across a dozen years, It Was the War of the Trenches is not so much a story as a collection of scenes, segments of individual French soldiers’ lives in the World War I trenches.  Trenches is a book devoid of any glory; its protagonists are simply poor young men who join the military, suffer and die.  They’ve been caught up in a patriotic fervor or, bereft of other options, join to give their lives direction.

Showing the history and fears of its central character, each scene details how warfare runs contrary to man’s basic impetus for self-preservation.  Nobody wants to fight these battles, and few of the soldiers bear any ill will toward their foes.  Each is simply following orders, and failure to do so leads to – frequently in Trenches – the unfortunate end of the firing squad.  Tardi is able to often contrast the simple hopes of the soldiers, marriage, family, a trade, against the dilemma of their soldiering life, which leads inevitably to the loss of all their modest dreams.

Despite the intense tragedy of the circumstances, It Was the War of the Trenches feels a little slight at times.  Tardi makes good points, universal points, but several scenes feel clipped and others don’t drive as deeply into their protagonist as possible.  Although you recognize the human emotion that drives a young man to retreat when under fire, Tardi offers a too matter-of-fact presentation in certain sequences, and the firing squad caps too many segments with redundancy.

Expressive and open, Tardi’s characters are excellent caricatures, dropped amid detailed and ink-spattered landscapes that have been torn apart by explosives, shovels and rains.  The effect leaves the people, dirt-streaked and hunch-backed, expressively downtrodden, run down under anxiety and trauma. The opening 20 pages vary in layout, often using a design element to give the page an architectural appearance.  Afterward, the sequences having been created at different times, Tardi sticks to a rock-solid three tier, page-wide layout, enabling him to show the wide, scarred vistas of France.  Ink-soaked and gory, Tardi’s detailed renderings drive home the grotesquery of the war and the ordeal of the young men fighting in it.

While it doesn’t hit a home run in every section of its varied narratives, It Was the War of the Trenches creates an aura of loss, regret and terror.  If none of the individual young men Tardi tells of sticks long in the mind, rest assured that the cumulative experience of death and crushed dreams will leave its mark on every reader.

Sand & Fury: A ScreamQueen Adventure
Written & Illustrated by Ho Che Anderson
Published by Fantagraphics

After two ambitious, but not-quite-realized projects in King and Pop Life, Ho Che Anderson is taking another tack with his latest book, Sand & Fury: A ScreamQueen Adventure.  On the back cover blurb, Howard Chaykin describes the effect of Anderson’s book being “the illegitimate child of Faulkner and Lovecraft.”  The Lovecraft is readily apparent, though the book’s sexually charged, terse narrative reminds more of Jim Thompson than ole’ Billy Faulkner.

Of course, those literary comparisons connect most strongly to the book’s tone and subject matter; they’re not necessarily reflective of its quality as a narrative.

A confused and terrifying young woman, with little recollection of her past, serves as a Bien Sidhe, a folklore Banshee, howling over the recently deceased (sometimes causing those deaths with her scream).  As she wanders from encounter to encounter, a parallel story of a young, sexually aggressive business executive unfolds.  Anderson moves the two stories toward one another, until their connection becomes apparent and a violent climax comes due.

Problem is, the pacing and delivery of the story is choppy and difficult, often compensating for any real clarity or character with titillation and bondage sex scenes (nothing too hardcore, but more than you’ll see in an R film).  Rather than follow through on scenes setting up the characters’ relationships, Anderson switches to a sex club scene that fails to give any insight into the connections.  The Scream Queen never develops deeply enough to make her sympathetic.  The scratchy illustration doesn’t enable the reader to easily recognize the book’s fairly frequent time-shifts, so the timeline is muddled and indecisive.

In the end, the revelation of the connection between the queen and the exec is at once predictable and fitting, suited to the pulp-fiction tenor of the book.  The plot’s twisted darkness has a certain appeal, but Anderson’s script and art only confuse the matter.  Sand & Fury: A Scream Queen Adventure just doesn’t measure up to its influences.

The many virtues of one-named Norwegian cartoonist Jason’s work are well documented, but one of the less talked-about pleasures of Fantagraphics’ publication of it is how nice the books themselves look as objects.

Individually, the slim, 10-by-7-inch-ish volumes are all well designed and attractive looking, but all lined up next to one another on a shelf? Oh boy, that makes for a fine looking half-a-foot or so on one’s book shelf! So uniform, so orderly, so…perfect!

And then Low Moon came along, and while it’s contents were rock solid, Grade A, tip-top, master-level cartooning, the format itself broke the streak—it was shorter, squatter and much thicker. It was still a beautifully designed book, radiating that pleasant sense of positive aesthetics that comforts a bibliophile’s heart just know it’s around, but it broke the harmony of the Jason section of my book shelf.

Thank God then for Almost Silent, a new collection repackaging some of Fanta’s older Jason books—some of which are no longer in print in their original format—as an anthology the same size, shape and design as Low Moon. Problem solved!

(And yes, I realize I’m using a pretty broad, silly definition of the word “problem” here, and that I’m lucky that something like how graphic novels look lined up on a bookshelf is one of my worse problems on any given day).

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Joe Sacco is awesome: his books are gorgeous, and in this interview he gives an eloquent argument for a non-comics audience for using comics to tell stories. Love.

In Footnotes in Gaza: A Graphic Novel, Joe Sacco looks back at 1956 in Gaza, when one bloody day in Rafah left 111 Palestinians dead. He tells the story in intricate pictures as well as the words of the people who survived that day, and like his other graphic works, he combines journalism with cartooning to create a hybrid art form that not only relates a story, but transports the reader back there.

The Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Seattle will be hosting its 2010 preview exhibition this Saturday!

On display will include work from Tony Millionaire, Peter Bagge, Jim Woodring, Michael Kupperman, Jason, Gilbert Hernandez, and Richard Sala. New talent will include Joe Daly, Nate Neal, and Tim Hensley.

The event will take place from 6-9pm, coinciding with the Georgetown Art Attack.

Hans Rickheit’s “The Squirrel Machine,” published by Fantagraphics Books, is a beautiful 179 page hard cover graphic novel. It is an appropriate book to start out this new column since it sets the tone for the type of offbeat work that attracts me and I hope will interest you. The story involves two brothers who desire to build wondrous things but are destined to create monstrous gadgets made from animals.

Rickheit’s world of self-published works, notably the series, “Chrome Fetus Comics,” and the graphic novel, “Chloe,” follow the internal logic of dreams and do well by it. In “The Squirrel Machine,” a magical reality confronting a mundane reality leads to a lot of very real bumps and bruises. Edmund, for instance, may rely on a pair of goggles to filter out the world but does not fully realize how odd he looks to all the other schoolchildren, especially the bullies. It’s the turn of the last century, and while amazing technological advancements lie ahead, Edmund and his brother, William, are doomed to be grotesquely out of step.

The things that seem the most curious and promising may ultimately be the things best left alone. That is a line of reasoning Edmund and William refuse to follow. They are dreamers but do not know they are guided by nightmares. The Squirrel Machine, whatever it is, has its own needs and is certainly not going to tell these boys what’s good for them. Much is left to mystery in this book. We can let Rickheit’s exquisite drawings, with their ornate detail and patterning, speak for themselves. Down to separate panels, the art provides little gems of its own storytelling as in a notable scene of two lovers covered in snails.

“The Squirrel Machine” defies easy categorization, but I’d venture to say, “steampunk surrealism.” This is for mature readers as well as discriminating ones. And it’s also for those who love a good coming-of-age story. Edmund woos the local beauty by the most unconventional of means. William falls madly in love with the Pig Lady. Each will take a turn that will twist the fate of the other. The mundane won’t accept them and yet the magical is no more reliable. Very romantic and strange at the same time, like any good coming-of-age tale. Primarily, this is adult, dark and disturbing work provided to you in healthy doses.

You can purchase “The Squirrel Machine” from Fantagraphics Books and make sure to check out the marvelous Squirrel Machine site. You can find Comics Grinder here every Wednesday. And for further observations, you can always go to the Comics Grinder site.

Fantagraphics recently announced that they’ve struck a deal for seven (7) new books with writer/editor Greg Sadowski, who was responsible for Supermen!: The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941 and a couple of B. Krigstein-related works for the publisher.

The books will be published one a season, so seven of ‘em is really planning ahead, and should carry them through to fall of 2012 or so (I don’t even have my next seven blog posts planned yet).

Here’s what they have planned at the moment…

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Low Moon, the latest release of one-named  Norweigian  cartoonist Jason from Fantagraphics, is a hard book to review, as the previous sentence probably tells readers all they need to know about it.

Jason is one of the relatively few working artists that even a jaded, cynical, complain-first critic like me will happily declare a true master cartoonist, without reservation. Jason is—how to put this?—good. Really, really, really good. Good enough that even the very worst of his work that I’ve seen, a handful of the early pieces he’s done, collected in Pocket Full of Rain and Other Stories, are fascinating in light of what he would come to do after those works, and how they signal and reflect his future work.

So, Low Moon? It’s Jason. It’s new. It’s obviously really, really good, you know?

(Can I get away with a three-paragraph review? Or does that look too lazy? It does? Alright, alright; more after the jump then).

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Peter Bagge, author of Everyone is Stupid Except for Me and Other Astute Observations, will be hitting the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Seattle this Saturday!

From 7-9pm, the Gallery will show off some original artwork by Bagge, as he signs his new book. Following the event, the party will move on to next door neighbor Jules Maes Saloon, featuring Bagge’s “power pop combo” Can You Imagine?

Quick, think “autobiographical graphic novel.”

What comes to mind?  A black and white trade paperback, containing the intentionally rough, scratchy, simplified artwork of a twenty- or thirtysomething revealing intimate details of their love life? Maybe a black and white trade paperback version of a memoir, in which the middle-aged author discusses a particularly interesting aspect of his or her life, like coming to grips with a new child or dealing with a terrible disease?

Well, C. Tyler’s You’ll Never Know Book One: A Good and Decent Man (Fantagraphics Books) isn’t like that, nor is it much like any other autobio comic I’ve encountered.

The form of the book distinguishes it immediately. It’s a big, huge rectangle, a foot across, and 10.75 inches high, although it’s only 100 pages long, and the story is expected to continue into two more books. The form (like the amount of color) sets it apart from many of the works in its genre, but that’s no necessarily why it’s in that form—it also serves the story.

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