Page 45 Review by Stephen
Kochalka is a thinker. Anyone who can put down page after page of daily diary observation in comicbook form is going to have something to say, and lo and behold, here he says it. In fact the first two, single-page chapters (Craft Is The Enemy and Craft Is Not A Friend) were the first I'd ever heard of James, being letters he wrote to THE COMICS JOURNAL back when I had time to read the magazine cover to cover. They were contentious enough to make me remember his surname, that's for sure, and without the body of work he can now rightly feel proud to have produced, back then it did sound a little... self-serving? It sounded to some like he was dismissing the level of craft that, say, Jim Woodring brings to each page of his work, but that wasn't what James was getting at. He was reaffirming the accessibility of the comicbook medium, by which I mean all you need is a pen, paper and something worth saying and then you too can - and should - create a comic. It's the punk attitude of "anyone can do it" combined with something similar to what Dave Sim has always said: that if you worry too much about making every page perfect, of not releasing your work until you can draw like Leonardo Da Vinci, then you're probably never going to produce it at all. In order to improve, you need to forge on - which is what James did, as it transpires.
The meat of this book consists of some almost poetic ruminations on life, love, parenthood and art, often with the self-demonstrative skill of Scott McCloud's UNDERSTANDING COMICS, for when James begins talking about melody and rhythm, he practises it on paper with the same gentle brilliance he manages throughout.
