Page 45 Review by Mark
This is both a labour of love, a love letter from the editor to comics and a possible reason as to why we haven't had a new ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY in ages. McSweeney's is a quarterly literary anthology set up by Dave Eggers and it seems to vary in format from issue to issue. Possibly you'll get a set of books, sometimes it comes with a cd or dvd, this time Chris Ware is editing/curating and has made it into a beautiful object filled with great comics. It's a sometimes surprising mix with mostly well-known creators, some from the early twentieth century and a few rising stars. Mostly it's new contributions but there are some reprints, although very few readers will recognise all of them.
We'll start, as if contemplating a elegantly wrapped gift, with the dust jacket. If you saw the JIMMY CORRIGAN hardcover you'll remember the dust jacket that folded out to be a double-sided poster complementing the book itself. And when you're doing the same thing here, two mini comics fall out of the folds, tiny little things. It's almost churlish to mention them and spoil the fun. One by John Porcellino (reprinting some recent King Cat stories) and the other is new work by Ron Regé jr, adapting the transcription of an interrogation of a failed Israeli suicide bomber. Some pages have Regé showing three points of view: the table where the police interview the girl, their faces at the sides of each panel and Ron's reaction in-between those panels. He's still developing his own personal comics language, a further step from last year's excellent YEAST HOIST: DOES MUSIC MAKE YOU CRY? After checking the spine binding I was half-surprised to see that there wasn't another mini squirreled away.
Okay, back to the dust jacket. We'll ignore the gold foil stamping for the moment and point out that it's a double-sided broadsheet-sized spread of new Chris Ware comics. And they're all about making comics, reading comics, the history of comics. His introduction (like his introduction to Walt Holcombe's KING OF PERSIA) compares the medium (when at its best) to film and literature. Not saying that it will do the job of the others but that creatively it can hold its own. At the start there's a quote from Nabokov saying that he thinks in images, not in text. Obvious now it's been said. You get more Ware comics scattered through the intro and a traditionally heartbreaking four-pager from Nest magazine.
So, what new stuff do we have here? Robert Crumb and Daniel Clowes contribute new colour works. Clowes' has me longing for the new EIGHTBALL and is made to look like a chapter from a larger work but you build up the rest yourself. Jim Woodring gives you one of his most gorgeous watercolour pages, a new Frank strip with Pupshaw materialising out of the morning magic hour. Makes me want to get up early. Well, almost. Lynda Barry draws her formative stages, Gary Panter shows you a dream of his studio (and is granted the inside of the dust jacket to run riot), while Richard Sala's 'Strange Question' is a sweetly rendered nightmare.
Joe Sacco, Seth, Chester Brown, Adrian Tomine, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez and Charles Burns all include excerpts from their latest work. Rather than a fault of the book, this is one of its greatest strengths. We get asked for a book that has a sample of all this sort of stuff, a primer to Fantagraphics/Drawn & Quarterly/Top Shelf books and this fills that need. If you've tried, say, JIMMY CORRIGAN, MAUS, GHOST WORLD and want to find something similar then this is a great gateway. ot only is it an elegant, elaborate hardcover at a decent price, it's also an introduction to some of the greatest names producing comics at the moment. And you get pieces on trailblazers such as Rodolphe Töpffer, George Herriman, Charles Schultz, Bud Fisher. Want more? How about new Julie Doucet, Ben Katchor, Joe Matt, Kim Deitch and a preview of IN THE SHADOW OF NO TOWERS by Art Spiegelman? The first appearance of some Jeffrey Brown strips? Ivan Brunetti and Mark Newgarden?
Ware can only be congratulated for compiling such a collection, pieced together so that it flows seamlessly featuring many different styles of artwork and writing. In a way, this is a history of comics. You want this book.
