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On Saturday I got James Kochalka's new minicomics Reinventing Everything #1 + 2 in the mail. These were really great and I would recommend them. A little pricey maybe but I liked them a lot... the first one talks about processing all the 'noise' that surrounds us in the world and points out that there are rhythms to everything. It also has some good observations on video games and art. The second minicomic deals with James and his wife making a decision to have a child in the wake of 9/11. Both books seemed heartfelt, touching... the message of each was "don't fight life". Well my summary of both of these sucks to be honest, and I am not a reviewer, but they are both good minicomics, trust me.
I also reread Chester Brown's The Little Man on Saturday. I hadn't looked at any issues of Yummy Fur, or that book, for awhile and had forgotten how much I liked some of those stories. Chester Brown was probably my favorite cartoonist in the late 80s and early 90s. He is still one of my favorites, but there's just so much good stuff out there now, and I seem to be buying such crazy numbers of comics, I don't spend the time going over things like I once did. I also think the book he did for awhile in the mid-90s, Underwater, never quite caught on with me, and then I got excited about the likes of Jim Woodring and Chris Ware. Brown further confounded my expectations (in a good way) with Louis Riel... but reading The Little Man again reminded why I liked his work so much in the first place. It's a nice compilation of his work from minicomics, up through the final issues of Yummy Fur, minus all the Ed the Happy Clown stuff (I hear a reissue of an Ed book is coming next year from Drawn & Quarterly). There are also notes on each story included, which are brief but informative. Hm yeah so like I say I am no reviewer.
One other non-review of a comic book... I finally read the concluding issue of League of Extraordinary Gentleman volume 2. I did like the art but I got the sense that the story became much more about dropping references to other works, and making clever and perverse connections across 100+ years of fanciful stories, than anything else. Some of these little winking asides really stick out like sore thumbs in the story, too, like the thing about the gypsy woman and Rupert the Bear - even if you don't get the reference (I didn't) you can tell it is a clever thing to make some few in-the-know people chuckle. Same thing with the reference to Moreau's nephew. It all just got on my nerves after awhile. The actual narrative was mostly boring and predictable... still a few grotesque surprises (carried off well by the art) but a letdown overall.
I also reread Chester Brown's The Little Man on Saturday. I hadn't looked at any issues of Yummy Fur, or that book, for awhile and had forgotten how much I liked some of those stories. Chester Brown was probably my favorite cartoonist in the late 80s and early 90s. He is still one of my favorites, but there's just so much good stuff out there now, and I seem to be buying such crazy numbers of comics, I don't spend the time going over things like I once did. I also think the book he did for awhile in the mid-90s, Underwater, never quite caught on with me, and then I got excited about the likes of Jim Woodring and Chris Ware. Brown further confounded my expectations (in a good way) with Louis Riel... but reading The Little Man again reminded why I liked his work so much in the first place. It's a nice compilation of his work from minicomics, up through the final issues of Yummy Fur, minus all the Ed the Happy Clown stuff (I hear a reissue of an Ed book is coming next year from Drawn & Quarterly). There are also notes on each story included, which are brief but informative. Hm yeah so like I say I am no reviewer.
One other non-review of a comic book... I finally read the concluding issue of League of Extraordinary Gentleman volume 2. I did like the art but I got the sense that the story became much more about dropping references to other works, and making clever and perverse connections across 100+ years of fanciful stories, than anything else. Some of these little winking asides really stick out like sore thumbs in the story, too, like the thing about the gypsy woman and Rupert the Bear - even if you don't get the reference (I didn't) you can tell it is a clever thing to make some few in-the-know people chuckle. Same thing with the reference to Moreau's nephew. It all just got on my nerves after awhile. The actual narrative was mostly boring and predictable... still a few grotesque surprises (carried off well by the art) but a letdown overall.
