Tough Films For The Rough Crowd

  Man, it’s been awhile. Not as long a while as the gap — no, make that gulf — between Casanova Frankenstein’s The Adventures Of Tad Martin #5 and The Adventures Of Tad Martin #sicksicksix, a book that was literally a couple of decades in the making, but still — four or five years, by…

  In point of fact, this is probably the sort of comic that I’m predisposed to dislike: It’s not just that I don’t give much of a shit about G.I. Joe and didn’t even when I was at the age where I was supposed to, it’s that exercises soaked in nostalgia don’t…

    And so the first (arguably) “major” release of 2019 in the “alternative” comics world is upon us — never mind that Charles Forsman and Max de Radigues’ Hobo Mom is actually about five years old and is just now being released in an English-language version, publisher Fantagraphics Books is…

    Growing up is hard, whoever you are — but odds are that no matter how hard your adolescent years were, they weren’t as hard as Pearl’s. Or should that be Ancco’s?   Precisely how autobiographical Bad Friends is seems to be a bit of an open question — the book (originally…

  I. I have a recurring dream about a house. My house, to be specific, but not really: There are extra rooms I’ve never seen before, large walk-in closets that my wife and I both wish we had but don’t, cavernous storage spaces with nothing in them — hell, one…

    By any standard of measure, cartoonist L. Nichols’ recent Secret Acres-published comics memoir, Flocks, is a bit of a curious beast — for one thing, Nichols chooses to portray himself (or, earlier on, herself — I hope the pronoun is appropriate given his gender presentation at that point in…

      What will the future hold? What changes, subtle or otherwise, will it usher in? How will it alter the essential character of our lives? And, perhaps most importantly — what will it look like? Yumi Sakugawa has thought about these questions thoroughly, deeply. She’s considered how the past,…

    More quiet than a whisper, louder than a thunderclap, Alyssa Berg’s riso-printed comics collection Recollection seeps into the mind through the eyes, heart, and subconscious simultaneously, bypassing entirely the gatekeeping functions of the rational mind in favor of something deeper, more profound, more fundamentally true. It never ceases to amaze,…

    It’s that time of the year again, to go over all that’s come out over the last 12 months and choose favorites. And that’s the key word here, “favorites” — I didn’t read everything that came out in 2018 (who could?), and so make no pretenses to being…

    In a way, I suppose, it makes sense that a cartoonist as image-conscious as Benjamin Marra would find “inspiration” in the ultimate story of excess and artifice, American Psycho, but for a guy who’s spent most of his career deliberately confounding readers as to how much of what he’s doing…

    Even by the low standards of licensed toy properties, the Go-Bots don’t get much respect. Yeah, sure, they’ve had some animation revivals (even, I think, a feature-length film or two of the straight-to-video variety) and some comic books here and there, but a lot of that — while…

    For more years than I care to admit, I was a compulsive moviegoer. I can kid myself and say it was all in pursuit of material for my Trash Film Guru blog (still a going concern, although now only updated a couple/few times a month as opposed to all…

  On Monday, November 26th, Fantagraphics Books is running a one-day-only “Cyber Monday” sale featuring 40% off nearly everything in their online store — and since they’ve published some of the very best comics to come out this year (as is their custom) , now is the time to sock…

    Here’s the thing: if I were an editor or publisher, and cartoonist D. Bradford Gambles submitted his new mini, A Lone Deer At The End Of The World, to me — I confess that I’d probably be tempted to reject it. The book’s just too obvious, I’d tell myself (and…

    French cartoonist Yvan Guillo, better known under his nom de plume of Samplerman, has a technique like no other — and it’s one that leaves me in a real quandary. Digitally manipulating pre-existing (primarily Golden Age, and most likely all public domain) comic book illustrations into hitherto-unforeseen, and uniformly…

    At this point in the history of the comics medium — hell, at this point in the history of art in general — irony, particularly humorous irony, by all rights really shouldn’t work anymore. It certainly doesn’t deserve to, the vast majority of the time it doesn’t, and I’m generally…

    When you can construct a fully-formed, emotionally resonant, deeply poignant comics memoir in just 40 pages, you’re probably an extraordinary cartoonist. When you can do it in 40 panels? Then take a well-deserved bow, because you’re downright otherworldly. Now, before you mention it, rest assured that I’m fully aware that it’s…

    My dating experience entirely pre-dates the “Tinder Era,” a fact for which I’m eternally grateful — and who wouldn’t be? After all, as embarrassing as it may be for many people of my generation to confess to their offspring that that they met their other parent at a…

If you’re going to San Francisco — Fuck the “flowers in your hair” stuff and forget the “gentle people” — you’d do better to keep an eye out for the speed freaks, junkies, pickpockets, gutter-dwelling lowlifes, psychotic serial killers, devil-worshipers, and predators of every stripe. The Mamas And The Papas…

    We’ve all been there — dead-end job, dead-end love life, dead-end existence. In his previous autobiographical minis, Chicago-based cartoonist Mike Freiheit has dwelt on these issues in exacting (and often hilarious) detail, but in his longest work to date, the impressive and ambitious graphic novel (parts of which…

      Not to sound too dramatic — or maybe that should be melodramatic — right out of the gate, but it strikes me that any way you look at it, the much-vaunted “age of reason” is over.   Oh, sure, social and political commentators have been telling us at least…

    It goes without saying that whenever somebody reasonably well-known from another field of creative endeavor entirely “makes the leap” over to comics, a certain hardened, crusty rump of fandom will view said transition (however temporary) with suspicion. Less so, I’m guessing, when it’s a literary personage like, I…

      Toward the tail end of 2017 — yeah, I know, I’m still playing a little bit of “catch-up” here and there, sue me — the always-interesting Retrofit Comics/Big Planet Comics publishing co-venture released one of the more thoroughly engrossing books of the year, cartoonist/painter Tara Booth’s How To…

      “In a town like Twin Peaks,” the promotional advertisements for David Lynch’s TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME informed us, “no one is innocent.” Of course, when his foolishly-lambasted masterpiece (for my money, at any rate) hit theaters back in 1992, Lynch had already made something of a career…