Silly Daddy back

Reading Silly Daddy is like tuning the radio, zipping past different stations, or maybe channel surfing through a dozen different programs, a dozen different genres but all springing from the same restless mind. This is one of my favourite autobio comics and maybe one of my favourite comics full stop. This should start with 'The Long Goodbye', about the end of Joe's marriage. There's one page in there, about the moment his wife said that she wanted a divorce, that still seems quite revolutionary. The panel in question has the two of them in a room, facing each other, sitting down. After she tells him there are a few faces to the right of his, but they're his face as well, each showing his reaction as the words sink into his brain. Not only does he keep the action in one panel but as the faces are disconnected they impart that out-of-body feeling that you get when you get any such news, that lightness of the skin and strange unconnectedness. You can see his heart breaking. Actually, I'm using melodramatic terms, quite unfair as he's got a deft touch that avoids such things. And that's just one panel.

This is no navel-gazing gazette either. When it suits him he transforms his family and himself into superheroes, his fine art training (possibly self-taught, I can't remember) coming through in the lithe limbs and feeling of weightlessness. Then there's the self-sufficency stories, about living within your means and doing what's right for your surroundings. Maybe we'll get to see the projected future Silly Daddy, the barcode tattooes, Joe and his daughter on the run from the corporations. I remember Dave Sim calling the book a great horror comic and at the time I couldn't work out what he meant. Was it Joe's view of the outside world or his fatherly love for his daughter? There's a lot of stuff about parenting in here. We get to see Maria from birth up to the age of 12. Her drawings pop up as the backgrounds to panels, her light keeps him going. Througout the book you can see his art becoming more assured, the linework more solid while keeping a tender quality that places the real and fabulous safely down on the page.