Stitches: A Memoir (Autobiography) (Graphic Novel)

by David Small   

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (September 13, 2010)

Hardcover, 336 pages

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“My mother died in 1970, age 58. Maturity, reflection, and some family research have unearthed a few facts, which give a slightly different picture of this taciturn and difficult person. Her physical problems were beyond what I could imagine or understand as a child. Because nothing in our family was ever discussed outright, I only became aware of them years after her death.”

Set in Detroit, Michigan, this autobiography of the semi-famous artist David Small. The author’s family, while seemingly successful on the surface, was a crucible of repressed desires and suppressed hate. The author had respiratory problems as a child and his father, a radiologist, attempted to cure it through x-rays and radiation therapy, which was a common practice back in the day. At fourteen he discovers a lump in his throat, which his parents let go for three years, until it is absolutely necessary to remove. By then it had developed into full blown cancer, and required the removal of his thyroid gland and half of his vocal cords.

If you can believe it, things go downhill from there. He realizes he’s trapped in a house where his father is aloof and his mother doesn’t love him. This leads to the usual juvenile delinquency and eventually a host of other revelations. The author’s only escape is to disappear into his art. I won’t mention them here, but all sorts of things begin to snap into place in this twisted, yet timeless, story. It must have been terrible to live through these events, but it certainly makes for riveting readings- I zipped through all 300-odd pages in a single night.

Art matches the story in tone and brevity. Less is more is the mantra of the visual portion of this memoir and it is certainly effective. Black strokes and grey tones belie a lifetime, family generations, of grey existences and mediocre compromises. It is a grimly uplifting tale, not one that offers much in the way of hope, but there is a slight glimmer at the end of the rainbow. Well worth a read.

  For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.

Brain Bats of Venus: The Life and Comics of Basil Wolverton (Biography) (Graphic Novel)

by Greg Sadowski (Author),  & Basil Wolverton  

Publisher: Fantagraphics; 1 edition

Hardcover, 432 pages 

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“If the comic books are to fall under rigid the censorship of a control-mad few, who, in their questionably infinite wisdom, imagine they know what is best for all of us, so must the newspaper strip be smothered by the same censorship.  Also the newspapers, magazines, books, and all publications. Freedom of the press would soon be only a pleasant memory.  

“Mysterious indeed are the contortions of the brain impulses, if any, of those who hatefully struggle to ban a book of harmless features like Mickey Mouse, while choosing to ignore the underhanded creators and distributors of lewd cartoon booklets advertised in scores of adult magazines. But of course mud shows up much better if it is slung into clean areas.” 

 Basil Wolverton, from his forward to A Defense of Comics.  

 This rather massive tome is the second volume in the biography of Basil Wolverton, the previous one being the just as thick, CreepingDeath From Neptune. Wolverton was one of the pioneers of the comic book industry. Like many of the comic book men, he started out as a failed comic strip artist for the newspaper - back in the day the funnies were where the real money dwelled. This book covers his material from 1942 to 1952, when Wolverton left the comic industry. But still I think there is a place for a third and final volume.  

Wolverton became known mostly as a humor writer. The majority of his work was published by Timely Comics - later to become Marvel Comics - in their juvenile and teenage comics. Madcap series like Tessie the Typist, Powerhouse Pepper, and Mystic Moot and his Magical Snoot (though the later one was done as a backup feature for Zatara by DC comics) were his stock in trade, but by the 1950s, sci-fi and horror had begun to dominate the field. Thus, the end of the book is filled with wonderfully reprinted old horror material, which marked (in my opinion) the highlight of his career.  

What you really want this volume for is the art. Wolverton was a master of the comic face, but that translated very easily over into horror and science fiction stories as well. There are hundreds of pages of remarkably grotesque material. This was during the height of his fame, when Wolverton won the Lil’ Abner contest to reveal the face of Leena the Hyena, reputedly the ugliest woman in the world. Wolverton won, hands down, with a disgusting portrait and his career briefly took a bump after that.  

What drags this book down is that the man himself didn’t have a very fun fast-paced life which makes for a riveting read. There is paragraph after paragraph of Wolverton sent this idea out, only to be turned down in a letter which states blah, blah, blah. Over and over. A lot could've been left out. The interesting thing is that much of the correspondence was with Stan Lee over at Timely, but even that is mostly boilerplate business talk. I skimmed though these portions of the book, just to get back to the amazing illustrations.  

  For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.

The Wipeout (Crime) (Graphic Novel)

by Francesca Ghermandi      

Publisher: Fantagraphics Books (March 05,2003) 

Softcover, 85 pages 

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The story is a straight up noir thriller with femme fatales, backstabs, and vicious twists. In fact, it's only the bizarre art style (beautiful but abstract) that sets it apart. Why these decisions were made is beyond me. The two, writing and art, seem incongruous at first but both are so good that they gel together.  

Research chemist Jim Tartaglia dreams of the riches that will be his when he finishes developing his new universal cleaning solvent. His wife, Bawl, dreams of purchasing and expensive, classy hair transplant to replace the cheap wooden one she's been forced to settle for. Virgin Prunes, their neighbor, has promised Jim she'll run away with him - if he helps her get rid of Chonfra, a wealthy entrepreneur who buys her affections.  

Cartoon noir best describes The Wipeout. The cast of misfits may look like cute advertising mascots and cartoon figurines, but their passions are all too sordidly human. Francesca's hard-boiled fantasia dazzles in its lustrous palette, harking back to vintage Disney cells and Sixties Italian advertising illustration. Like the roller-coaster on the cover, its spiraling logic rattles around the tracks of your mind, long after you have woken up yourself. 

  For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.

Welcome to the Zone (Experimental Fiction) (Graphic Novel)

by David Chelsea 

Publisher: Kitchen Sink Pr; First Edition edition (February 1, 1995)

Softcover, 34 pages

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The Zone in this case is located in the East Village and is an inter-sectional area filled with homeless dregs, real estate vermin, cannibalistic aliens, misplaced robots, giant dogs, and struggling artistic types - deadbeat artists, actors, and musicians. Each character is an abstract of a person. Taken together the entire book creates a monstrous nighttime image of the New York underground art scene -desperate, superficial, and rife with wasted talent. The parallels to William Burroughs’s Interzone are obvious.

Apparently many of the characters are parodies of obscure “personalities” and actual events in the East Village at that time, but their relevance has been lost of time. I’m sure in that place in the mid to late nineties it had deeper meaning. However, it’s gone and good riddance. That perhaps makes the work even weirder now that time has erased its connection to reality. Like Alice in Wonderland, the more the original inspiration is obscured, the more absurdist it becomes.

What truly sets the work apart is the excellent pointillism here. It’s so detailed and so well done that it looks as if each panel was an almost nightmare to draw. Some of the comments I’ve seen about the book, state that the art gets in the way of the story or in differentiating between two characters, but that is ridiculous.

   For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Doing Life: Reflections of Men and Women Doing Life Sentences (True Crime) (Biography)

by Howard Zehr 

Publisher: Good Books; Original ed. edition (December 31, 1996)

Softcover, 124 pages

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“The men and women in this book are serving life sentences in Pennsylvania prisons. All have been convicted of homicide. Many have already served long sentences in prison. Most will die there. Pennsylvania is one of only a handful of states that mandates life imprisonment without possibility of parole for anyone convicted of first or second degree murder. For a lifer, the only possibility of release is commutation by the governor, an exceedingly rare event. Life sentences in Pennsylvania are real life sentences.”

In this book, fifty eight lifers from the Pennsylvania correctional system give their perspective on living at the government’s pleasure for the rest of their natural existences. A page sized photo of the inmate is provided, along with a quote from them, or a short essay. Their words deal little with the day-to-day reality of living in a prison system, but more on their philosophy of life now.

A lot of it is repetitious. Many have “found God”. All talk about the struggle to keep going and not fall into a black hole of despair. The sincerity of each is nearly impossible to ascertain. Where they putting on a front in hopes of bettering their chances for commutation? Maybe. Some seemed very self-involved, which may be a by-product of the prison environment. The stories I found most believable are the ones which discussed why they were in prison in the first place. Others were just sob stories.

The photographs are somewhat candid. Prisoners are not in prison fatigues nor are they shown in prison facilities. They are deliberately placed in street clothes in order to humanize them as, the author states, many people cannot see beyond the prison fatigues. And it works. If you randomly flip through the book, you would not automatically think you were gazing at a collection of killers.

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Herbie Archives Volume 3 (Humor) (Graphic Novel)

by Shane O'Shea (Author), Ogden Whitney (Artist) 

Publisher: Dark Horse (April 29, 2009)

Hardcover, 232 pages

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“It’s a bit difficult to consider Herbie volume by volume. After all, each story is self-contained - there are no ongoing subplots or themes. Each issue is instead a marvel of cartoon engineering: hermetically sealed entertaining. In fact, it’s the relentless imagination of writer Richard Hughes and artist Ogden Whitney that provides the engine here. Both veterans of comic books for almost three decades, by 1967 the due had written and drawn every conceivable kind of comic-book story… In Herbie, the duo found the ideal vehicle for their talents, combining, via Herbie’s godlike powers, all their seemingly favorite themes in single stories.”

-                       Dan Nadel from the introduction.

This final volume, which took me forever to find at a reasonable price, collects the final group of issues, 15 - 23. It’s not poor Herbie’s fault that he was cancelled. His entire publisher, American Comics Group, went belly up a month after issue 23. In fact, there were rumors of some lost Herbie stories floating around, but they’ve never been anything but rumors as far as I can tell. Thank goodness Dark Horse made these archive editions.

Herbie Popnecker is a squat round boy with coke-bottle glasses and a lollypop addiction. While simultaneously being irresistible to women, the lollypops give him special powers to beat foes up, travel through time, etc. Essentially any power he needs is wrapped up in a lollypop on his special belt- think 1960s Batman TV show utility belt. His father, on the other hand, is drawn like as a standard handsome protagonist of comic stories, but is revealed to be stupid, cowardly, and arrogant, who enjoys bullying his own son. A sort of revenge by the authors on all the pretty boys jocks from their past.

Humor books are not unusual for the comic industry (or weren’t unusual), but Herbie stands apart from them in style. That is, a dead-pan style. Normally I would’ve thought that it was impossible to achieve in sequential art, but Herbie is a perfect example of it. Because, while the events in stories are ridiculous beyond belief, the art is not done in a comic or “wacky” style. Instead it is drawn straight as it would be for any normal comic. It’s almost bland and casts the entire Compare the art to any 1960s superhero story and you will see it’s done as straight-forward as anyone of them. No little comic additions in the panel, just stark, minimalist art which accentuates the insanity of the script.

 For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.