Palookaville Twenty (Graphic Novel)

by Seth

Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly (October 12, 2010).

Hardcover, 88 pages  

Normally I don’t review single issues of a series, but with issue 20 of Palookavile the format of the comic changed. Moving from a bi-annual (more or less) standard comic format of 25 some odd pages and a glossy cover to an expanded hardbacked semi-annual edition of over one hundred pages. For me, that qualifies it for a review.

The comic is the playground of Canadian cartoonist Seth, the alter-ego of Gregory Gallant. It’s won awards for this and that and is loads of fun if you like off-beat stories of people suffering from depression and loneliness, and protagonists who can never quite fit in with society- an illustrated Kafka if you like. All of these are some of my favorite themes.

Of course, this might not the best time to jump into the series as the primary story is part 11 of his Clyde Fans series. It is the ongoing story of two brothers (one an introvert, the other an extrovert) as they watch their electric fan business go under in the face of competition from the air conditioning industry. Strange as that sounds, it is a compelling and very human look at the failure of life and how people emotionally deal with it.

Along with this is one of his confessional auto-biographical pieces where he explores his Kafkaesque journey through life, not understanding how others fit in so well and hating those that do. It is a commonplace piece among his fellow Canadian cartoonists Chester Brown and Joe Matt. Like most of his work, it is well drawn and expertly paced, and certainly made me feel better about how I relate to society.

Added to it, maybe in order to pad up the length, are a number of faces and names from his sketch book and an expose of model city (called Dominion City) he constructed and has been on display in various art galleries. In his essay, he explains that the city was originally intended as the backdrop for a story, but he grew to be more interested in the city and its development than the characters. Eventually the people were dropped, pages and pages of material on the city was produced and Seth began making models to go along with it, just so he had a sense of proportion as he kept adding to it. Somewhere along the way, he states, it moved from hobby to artistic endeavor.

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Troll Bridge (Fantasy) (Graphic Novel)

by Neil Gaiman (Writer) and Colleen Doran (Illustrator)

Publisher: Dark Horse Books (OCtober 18th, 2016). 

Hardcover, 64 pages. 

Based on a short story by Neil Gaiman of American Gods and Sandman fame; and drawn by Colleen Doran of lesser known A Distant Soil fame. While not initially intended as a graphic novel, her incandescent art blends perfectly with the tone of the original text.

In his standard technique of taking old legends and putting a modern tint on them, we have the dark fairy tale story of a boy who drifts away from the world (or to a strange part of it) and encounters a troll who demands payment of “eating his life” in exchange for the boy walking across the troll’s bridge.

The boy, Jack, is no helpless protagonist. He attempts to trick the troll several times and finally manages to put him off until a later date. Very often in these stories, the monster is a dunce and easily deceived, but there’s something else going on here. What Gaiman does is take the story beyond its confines and stretches it out to its natural conclusion decades later. Here Jack, always the snarky trickster, has ruined his life before meeting the monster again.

And for those who do pick up this book the unexplained phrase “fol rol de ol rol” is used twice in the text. It has two meanings. The first is an noun meaning a gaudy trinket or piece of jewelry having little actual value. The other is a nonsense phrase used in classical folk music, like tra-la-la or sha-na-na.

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Desperadoes (Western) (Graphic Novels)

by Cromwell & J. Ruffner

Publisher: Heavy Metal/Tundra (1992)

Hardcover, 86 pages

An over-the-top pseudo-western about three women desperadoes, The Prickler, Bertha Lou, and Razorblade, on the run from a motorized bounty hunter, Anatasia Fokoff, and her pet hyena. As you can tell from the names this is meant to be a tongue-in-cheek tale, but with a lot of violence attached as well.

The trio of heroines are violent representations of the three furies of Greek Mythology. Aged appropriately apart, they tear a bloody swath through an American West that never was. They fight everyone in their path to gain the mythic pot o’ gold of the West- the great train heist where a million dollars of gold is being shipped.

Published by Heavy Metal, the illustrated magazine. This was one of a series of graphic novels put out by the company in the 90s. The art is cartoons, but still grittiness enough so that the violent action still has impact. But the color palette is the biggest visual draw. It perfectly blends to create a muddy, bloody atmosphere.

In the style of Mad Marginals, at the bottom of each page is a silent vignette of people moving across to the West. Their travel begins light and quickly becomes more cab more desperate. On the opposite page an ever growing collection of vultures looks on and licks their lips at the carnage.

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Shanty Irish (Autobiography) (Crime)

by Jim Tully, Paul J. Bauer (Introduction)

Publisher: Black Squirrel Books (June 2, 2009).

Softcover, 320 pages

“A wife, six children, two cows, a hog, a blind mare and a sense of sad humor, where my Father’s only possessions.  We lived in a log house, in and out the windows which the crows of trouble flew.

My Father was a gorilla-built man. His arms were long and crooked. The ends of his carrot-shaped mustache touched his shoulder blades. It gave his mouth an appearance of ferocity not in the heart. Squat, agile, and muscular, he weighed nearly one hundred and ninety pounds. His shoulders were early stooped, as from carrying the inherited burdens of a thousand dead Irish peasants.”

Jim Tully, along with Dashiell Hammet, was the creator of the hard-boiled style of American writing. This style was later picked up and refined by Ernest Hemingway, H. L. Menchen, and Raymond Chandler. But Tully stands out from all these others in the fact that they simply wrote in the style, while he lived it.

Author Jim Tully

Originally published in 1927, Shanty Irish, like the other novel of his I reviewed, Beggars of Life, this is an autobiographical tale of his life before writing. While the other book dwelled on his life on the road, Shanty Irish, is about the author’s growing up dirt poor in a log cabin in the late 19th century Ohio.

The term Shanty Irish is a derogatory term for poor and uneducated members of the race. As opposed to the Lace Curtain Irish who rose in power, education, and prosperity in America. The equivalent today would be the pejorative “white trash”. Of course, even being educated didn’t stop the old world of America from looking down on the Irish, as the old joke goes-

Q: “What’s the difference between Shanty and Lace Curtain Irish?”

A: “Lace Curtain Irish move the dishes out of the way before they piss in the sink.”

Like many of the old time autobiographies, the author gives a statement of facts as he saw them, but rarely offers any personal emotional insight or comment of his own. This is him relating stories from the past as he saw it, not a pity party for himself. It's what differs this book from Angela's Ashes, Tully offers no pathos for his own childhood.


The author with Charlie Chaplin. If you don't know which is which, punch yourself in the face.

Central to the action is the clan patriarch, his grandfather, Old Hughie Tully. A large boisterous alcoholic who spent most of his later days telling tall tales in saloons in exchange for drinks. Tully's own father was a cold-eyed distant ditch digger. Horse thieves and fraudsters polluted both sides of the family. Poverty was their bumper crop. They were so poor that after his mother died, Tully was placed in an orphanage for six years. All of it potentially heartbreaking, but Tully is a man about it. You would never have known it affected him at all.

Now as to how accurate the book is. That's difficult to tell. Nothing obvious sticks out as false, but Tully was six during the first half of the book, then went to the orphanage and didn't emerge until he was twelve. Thus he had to rely heavily on other's memories. So, a touch of exaggeration, a smidge of the big fish story, was bound to slip in, but that does not mean this isn’t a worthwhile look into a long dead America.

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Cyberantics (Science Fiction) (Graphic Novel)

by Jerry Prosser & Rick Geary

Published: Dark Horse Comic (September 1, 1992).

Hardcover, 64 pages.

This is a very weird spin-off from the Aliens franchise (specifically Aliens: Hive) as it is more of a children's book rather than a grim tale of alien xenomorphs gestating their way through a future humanity that has lost touch with what it means to be human.

The tone is hopeful and happy, brought on primarily by the art of Rick Geary, whose style (even when depicting brutal scenes) is cute and friendly. Cyberantics is about the adventures of a cybernetic ant who goes out into a hive to begin exploring and finds love and happiness, while rescuing a larva queen from slavery in another ant hive. Interspersed throughout the story are annotations on physiology of ants, technical notes on the AI unit in the cybernetic ant, and background information on the man himself. It ends with a detailed bio of the fictional genius Stanislaw Miakovski.

Aliens: Hive is about Stanislaw Miakovski, a cybernetic and AI expert, is a beautiful young thief has approached him to use his experience and expertise to create a cybernetic alien to sneak into an alien hive and steal the rare and valuable alien jelly. She goes to him because she read this book, Cyberantics, as a child.

Despite the grim origins of the story, this is a fun little book, and would actually be a good gift for any young children interested in science fiction.

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Chopper: Song of the Surfer (Science Fiction) (Graphic Novel)

by John Wagner & Colin MacNeil

Publisher: Time Warner Books UK (1990)

Softcover, 96 pages

From the pages of Judge Dredd comes Chopper. He, like Judge Anderson, Red Razors, Judge Death, and many others, we're semi-successful spin-offs of 2000 AD’s most successful character.

Written by John Wagner right after ending his long-standing collaboration with Alan Grant, the story carries on all the great traditions of the Cursed Earth of Judge Dredd - without the big man himself. It is deeply satirical of modern day society, in this case our obsession with sports, and how a player is so often tossed away and forgotten the moment he no longer is useful. Along with comes the standard ultra-violence standard in Judge Dredd and which attracts most if it's readership. Let's face it, without ridiculous amounts of violence, symbolizing the breakdown of society and the insanity inherent in it, then the Judge Dredd stories would just be a guy on a hoverbike snarling at people while passing out traffic tickets.

Chopper began as a villain in the Judge Dredd series, in the now-classic Unamerican Graffiti storyline, as the most prolific graffiti artist in mega-city one. Of course it ended up with him being tossed into the notorious iso-cubes of the city. He broke out several years later only to become a sky-surfer, which is exactly what it sounds like, which became his defining characteristic for the rest of his stories.

Eventually his exploits and illegal surfing led him to being exiled into the Oz, the remains of Australia, and he has spent several years wandering about the big empty. After his friend dies, he drifts back to surfing and enters Supersurf 11, the biggest event in the sport, only now it has become a violent death race with no guarantee of survivors. Chopper, realizing his life has no purpose without the sport, enters. The race goes on with as close to a near-perfect ending as any of these 2000 AD stories have.

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

The Fun Never Stops!: An Anthology of Comic Art 1991-2006 (Humor) (Graphic Novel)

by Drew Friedman, Daniel Clowes (Foreward), Ben Swartz (Introduction). 

Publisher: Fantagraphics (January 1, 2007)

Softcover, 144 page

This will be a short review because there's very little I can say about the material in this book which cannot be seen from the illustrations provided. In fact, you reading now have probably already made up your mind on whether you're going to buy this volume.

I've never met anyone who didn't like Friedman's work, or seen anyone, or smelled anyone (I assume they would stink of sour milk and Bengay), and that's because it's almost impossible not to be blown away by the skill and detail clearly visible in each panel. Each portrait is riddled with life, bringing out the humanity and innate cultural ugliness in each person. No one is too might and mighty not to be brought down a few pegs by Friedman’s work.

As Daniel Clowes points out in his introduction Friedman’ charactures are somehow more real than actual photographs of the subjects. In this volume covering his career from 1991-2006 (but not his pieces for Heavy Metal unfortunately), Friedman collects numerous portraits of famous people, satirical strips with obscure pop culture references, and an entire section devoted to The Duke of Eltingville- a rare creation of his own.  Also included is a lengthy biography of the man, detailing his first publishing efforts with Weirdo, his rise to success and his problems with Joe Franklin and Woody Allen.

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.