Rolling SERIOUS GRAPHIC LITERATURE Thread for Comics in 2016

one more for you regarding PTSD and life and grandiosity
http://www.fantagraphics.com/soldiersheart/
highly highly recommended; carol tyler is one of the greats

http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/cr_holiday_interview_10_carol_tyler/
http://www.tcj.com/reviews/soldiers-heart-the-campaign-to-understand-my-wwii-veteran-father-a-daughters-memoir/

put in for You'll Never Know vol. 1 at my local library, i gather that book is the collected trilogy

btw love that cover for Disappearance Diary, sold

yes, 'soldier's heart' is the collected three volume set of Tyler's masterwork.

disappearance diary is an autobiographical story of a man who becomes a popular manga artist, cracks under the pressure of the work and alcoholism, then drops out entirely and opts into homelessness. Following an interim period of physical labor, he cleaned up and created a cartoony silly story of his deep depression. it's pretty special.

http://gwillowwilson.com/post/138315140383/art-and-money

Maybe should have gone in a marvel thread but I don't follow those, so here it sits.

New 3-D Frank book is out (my copy is on the way, will report back). It sounds like the 3-D has been very meticulously finessed to suit Woodring's art. So psyched.

did everyone hear about the latest angouleme shitshow?
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2016/01/angouleme-organizers-criticized-for-presenting-fake-awards/

Saw the 3D Frank book screened as a "movie" at Short Run last year. Unsurprisingly, the Unifactor and Woodring's linework are both excellently suited to 3D.

Alvin Buenaventura has passed away. I'm shocked by this.

That's sad; he was a powerful voice and young.

Oh good, Chester Brown is doing ANOTHER graphic novel about how waaaaay cool prostitution is, this time all about how the Bible is actually all pro-prostitute and every woman in it was actually a prostitute if you just read it right

He really is a creepy little shit

You've read it?

Toronto (or at least parts of it) has a pretty respectful culture towards sex work and the rights of sex workers. That's a good thing and I don't think Brown is creepy for putting together two books about it. He is plenty odd for other reason though.

I've never really delved into Brown's work but this single line from his wiki bio kind of made me put my head in my hands

Brown began to question traditional male–female relations after he had read Cerebus #186, which contained an essay attacking the modern state of such relations.

ed the happy clown is like next level genius, all of which said genius was completely flushed down the toilet when he became obsessed with sex workers and started making comics about it.

Toronto (or at least parts of it) has a pretty respectful culture towards sex work and the rights of sex workers.

I have no problem with that, and I do a fair bit of work with sex workers and their advocates myself, it's just the sleazy men who use them and then try to justify it all at great length with reddit-style logic that shits me

I own "Paying For It" and think it's a pretty great piece of work - very odd, occasionally funny, def unusual. The art is great. The more polemical appendices (which clearly owe a debt to Sim on some level) v much less so. Apart from Seth's riposte, which is (as usual) hilarious.

That being said, if this "graphic novel about how waaaaay cool prostitution is, this time all about how the Bible is actually all pro-prostitute and every woman in it was actually a prostitute if you just read it right" description is at all accurate I don't think I'm going to be much interested in reading it, it just sounds gross. Chester seems to have fallen into this weird developmental predicament where he figured out he couldn't function within society's traditional framework, found a way out of that, and now is on a mission to prove that his solution is actually a solution for everybody, if only we all weren't such sheeple. He resents his initial alienation, and wants to connect with others by making them go through the same process he went through - locate their unhappiness within failed sexual relations, discover how awesome prostitution is, attempt to reshape society accordingly. And you can see him grappling, in his own sort of intellectually honest way, with countervailing points of view but at bottom he seems to not grasp that there's *not* a single path to happiness for everyone, there are such things as successful non-transactional monogamous sexual relationships, people's unhappiness/loneliness is not going to be magically washed away by everyone engaging in prostitution. I don't really give a fuck what he does, I'm fine with legalizing sex work and affording legal and financial protection to prostitutes, but the proselitizing about it as some sort of social panacea is just presumptuous and creepy.

Also Ed the Happy Clown is a masterpiece, everyone knows that right? cool

of seth, chester brown, and joe matt, i wouldn't have predicted chester brown ending up the "sleazy one"

ha I am v curious to read Joe's next book whenever it finally comes out

his whole porn obsession/guilt trip seems so pre-internet/90s these days

I'm a little disappointed with the 3-D Frank book inasmuch as I thought it was an actual new story instead of just isolated images, but Woodring is one of the few comics artists whose art books I buy so I'm not actually disappointed. And the 3-D is without a doubt the best anaglyph 3-D I've ever seen. The paper stock is thick enough that you can tap the back of a page and watch all of the individual elements in the image wobble briefly. It's pretty impressive.

Booming post shakey. It's deeply depressing to me that I can barely muster up the will to read someone who was once so incredibly electrifying to me. Also, this here is a v particular pitfall for independent cartoonists, with our decades of self enforced alone time and delight in total control of our built worlds:

Chester seems to have fallen into this weird developmental predicament where he figured out he couldn't function within society's traditional framework, found a way out of that, and now is on a mission to prove that his solution is actually a solution for everybody, if only we all weren't such sheeple.

applies to Sim, Ditko, probably a bunch of others

Great post upthread Shakey.

I'm not sure about the whole "sex work is fine but speaking about it is gross" idea. Why not? There's no pressure to agree.

I think Brown has a long, long way to go before he hits Sim/Ditko levels of oddballery.

Great post upthread Shakey.

OTM

Why not? There's no pressure to agree.

it's p clear Chet wants to convert readers to his POV. "Paying For It" succeeds in spite of that polemical undertone. idk if this next book will pull off the same trick.

I'd say it succeeds *because* of the awkward polemical tone - I mean, I didn't like it either, but it took me to a weird emotional space as a reader, which felt like it was more interesting than if he'd made a better effort to be even-handed.

Obviously at the extreme end of that, my argument is nonsense, because you end up with something like Reads in Cerebus, where my weird emotional space was "Please shut the fuck up, Dave."

Paying For It is trying to convince, but not convert, imo.

ha I am v curious to read Joe's next book whenever it finally comes out

This is never happening, the 13 sort-of-finished pages in D&Q25 are all he's done in a decade.

oh you cynic

I liked those 13 pages

I should hit you guys up to determine a couple must-buys when I stop by the D&Q store in a few months

post a list of everything they have in stock?

maybe I should restrict it to "things released on D&Q or within the last two years"

it's a pretty well-stocked store

but yeah, I will see if I can get one of everything

I'm not sure about the whole "sex work is fine but speaking about it is gross" idea. Why not? There's no pressure to agree.

no one said this.

chester is gross because he sees these women in a robotic inhuman sort of way. they are just there for him to fulfill his biological need, down to him not even drawing faces on them. how is that not gross?

down to him not even drawing faces on them

the rationale he provides for this (primarily wanting to protect their identities iirc) makes sense on the surface but is also kind of laughable. Like, he thinks portraying them as faceless automatons is preferable/more respectful/more honest or "accurate" than just drawing them with fictionalized features. I'm sure Chet would argue against their depiction as being "inhuman" but then (as Seth notes) we're dealing with someone who does not really seem entirely human himself.

Among D&Q books from the last few years, Michael DeForge's "Ant Colony," Jillian Tamaki's "Supermutant Magic Academy," Kerascoet and Fabien Vehlmann's "Beautiful Darkness," and John Porcellino's "Hospital Suite" stand out.
xxp

but yeah, I will see if I can get one of everything

this was my point, it's a bookshop! if you're only looking for D&Q-published stuff that's much easier to recommend on. But also, you could buy these at bookshops in your own country?

Chester sees everybody as weird automatons because he himself is a weird automaton - this is what makes the book so compelling. Hiding the women's faces out of safety concerns is one of the factors that gives the work its distinct tone - it tells us something about the author's processing of ideas, it's unsettling but oughtn't be read as hateful or wilfully reductive.

The book would be enormously worse if not for the developments near the end, and for Brown's seeking Seth's rebuttal. But both of those are part of the work, and provide essential context.

imo the idea of Chester being creepy or just a dude who seems automaton-like is a matter of how much social deviance you accept in your peers and in society at large. There are a large number of social roles where acting that way reads as quirky to others but not threatening, but also a number of spaces where people acting in that way are threatening due to the inability to tell the difference, in the viewer, between someone who has different boundaries and someone who does not respect boundaries.

my offhand travel purchases are usually a couple books that I can toss in my smaller bag that I carry around when traveling, and honestly I almost grabbed Paying for It the last time I was at D&Q! if it hasn't been read by then, it might make it in the bag.

you should read it!

Hiding the women's faces out of safety concerns is one of the factors that gives the work its distinct tone - it tells us something about the author's processing of ideas, it's unsettling but oughtn't be read as hateful or wilfully reductive.

Totally.

Sounds interesting, you guys have convinced me to give that book a try

it's def worth reading

i'll cosign the recommendation. it is strange + bizarre but also compelling (partially bc of how bizarre the author is).

Yeah, another recommendation here.

I wonder if it actually changed any ILX readers' minds in regards to sex work

just curious

idk if it changed my mind - i went in feeling pretty neutral on the topic but thinking that legalizing it would probably lead to better outcomes and came out the same way, just a bit more certain that legalization is the right decision. i think he does make some compelling arguments - but how many ilxors really believe that we should be legislating morality?

My reaction was p much the same as yours. But I was unconvinced by a lot of his ruminations on, say, the fallacy of romantic love, or how prostitution should be totally unregulated, untaxed etc.