My Cat Said I Could Stay Home Today

I usually try to get out pretty regularly. Staying home too much isn’t great for my mental health, but over this past week, I have been keeping it close to home. I skipped going to Lucky’s for a launch for Marc Bell’s new book, which I regret. It looked like a great event, and Lucky’s is such a great comic store. Since moving into their new space, they have really been knocking it out with great events. Dave Cooper and Bryan Lee O’Malley are both doing events over the next couple of months. They will also be supporting the upcoming screenings of Paying For It, with Chester Brown in attendance to sign books. I am really looking forward to seeing it. The director, Sook-Yin Lee, is pretty dynamic person (and subject in the film), who is uniquely able to bring this story to life. Chester’s experience isn’t singular and it’s important to have smart engaging work sharing different narratives about the oldest profession.

If you want to send something for me to read, please see below.

Inkstuds
#2147 – 720 Sixth St
New Westminster, BC
V3L 3C5
Canada

and only if you are mailing from the United States

Robin McConnell
1685 H Street # 27043
Blaine, WA 98230
United States

or email me inkstuds@inkstuds.com. As well, I have active want lists of comics I am searching for, please reach out if you are looking to sell comics or downsize your collection. I am going to use this space to continue to explore the oddities that I come across through my many years of collecting.

New Charles Burns! Final Cut is freshly out from Pantheon books, and it’s a real page turner. This is a good year to be a fan of Charles Burns, between this and the release of Kommix from Fantagraphics earlier this summer, it’s a bumper crop of one of my favorite cartoonists. While Kommix was firmly present in surreal post-punk/post-tintin world of the grotesque, imaginative and unusual, Final Cut is very quiet and humble book. Originally published in a number of volumes in France over the past several years, Final Cut is masterpiece in comics. The story is relatively straight forward and simple, but visually, Burns is shining through to a whole new level. There was a really neat jam book between Burns and French artist Killoffer that came out probably 10 years ago or so. It was filled with powerful black and inky drawings that melded the 2 artists beautifully. I thought I knew who was who in the book, but Final Cut has thrown me for a loop in terms of the different ways Burns is pushing himself in the book, really pushing the visual tonality to see so much. And while I did say the book is simple, it’s simple but also very subtle. It’s about people and experiences, and the truth that we know for ourselves, and how others experience their own reality. I couldn’t put the book down. He created these characters and situations that leave so much open and space for us to think about and reflect.

Crusher Loves Bleeder Bleeder Loves Crusher is Patrick Keck’s latest work and collaboration, this time working with Thomas Stemrich. I love Keck’s drawings. He is delightfully visceral and at the same time having fun. You can tell that he is really enjoying himself drawing this book. How can he push something like a mosquito bite to be as over the top as possible. There’s this great scene of small press horror comics folks in the pacific north west, with guys like Max Clotfelter and Josh Simmons. Patrick fits nicely between those two, the humor and ridiculous of Clotfelter while still making a horrible reality like Simmons. This comic is about pushing the line of what is ok and permissible in moral quandaries while also quite funny and gross. Published as part of the Fantagraphics Underground line of comics, it’s great to see space given for such bizarre work.

Anna Haifisch is another all time great cartoonist for me. Also published by Fantagraphics in their Underground line, Ready America is more of an artbook than a comic. You can pull through a narrative of reflecting on the visual impact of American Consumerism, but not in a judgmental way, but more like admiring the aesthetic. Haifisch takes what she see’s and processes it for her own artistic world. There is something I love about her work, where it’s all connects, not in like a purposeful extravagant narrative way, but more in this is beautiful growing tapestry of art being processed and reimagined. She recently had a sizeable exhibition at the Tomi Ungerer Museum in Strasborg. It looked so immersive in the way that her work was blown up and presented. Ready America came from her time spent at residency in Los Angeles a couple of years ago, and it’s really fascinating to see how she repurposes what she saw and experienced and bring into a whole different life.

I picked up this volume of Young Witches when I was in Portland, shopping in the underground bunker also known as Future Dreams. I probably paid more than I should for it, but Eros line from Fantagraphics is getting more and more difficult to find. It’s funny to think that back in the 90s, this line of comics kept the company going and there must be so many comics out there, but they are increasingly hard to come by. The quality on Eros comics varies wildly. I picked this book because it’s by Solano Lopez. He is one of the greatest cartoonists to come out of Argentina. His work on The Eternaut is incredibly important. I once had a roommate that was obsessed with this book in an unhealthy way. He would reproduce a drawing of eyes from the book and blew them up and covered the door to his bedroom with them. It was odd. I hope that Fanta decides to start reprinting older work again at some point. Birdland by Beto Hernandez was one of the early Eros comics and important part of his greater work, and would be great to see it get attention again.

Taiyo Matsumoto latest work, Tokyo These Days, was really refreshing and touching. The story of a manga editor that retires early after his critically acclaimed magazine is cancelled due to sales and finds himself at a cross roads when he has time on his hands. It’s an unvarnished look into the people behind the work. The Mangaka, their assistances, their families, the publishers and lastly, the unique relationship with editors. He really brings forward a wide of experiences faced by artists, internal doubts, the crush of criticism and the comradery of colleagues. It’s the impact of defeat that stands out to me, and something I have been thinking about a lot lately. I had a conversation with former TCJ writer, Chris Brayshaw recently, about the balance of conscious art-criticism and crossing that line into gleefully ripping work apart. Comics are hard and the challenges really seep into the soul of those that make them, with words stinging more than they should. There are characters in these works by Matsumoto that struggle with how to move forward and rely on so much support, it would be interesting to hear about where his own experiences and challenges have come and how he has navigated through while making such profound works. There is an idealism in the book about the connection between creative freedom and emotional fulfilment, pushing to do the best work for yourself and in turn the best work for connecting with the reader.

Protoplas-Hiss is by Herb Rivera. Printed in 2001, with work in the collection dating back to 1993. I don’t remember how I got this comic, it has just been sitting on my shelves for a while. A quick google search finds me nothing about this comic or the creator. There is a phone number on the inside cover for a Florida area code. It’s very much a 90s black and white comic. It’s got some grotesque, jokes that have not aged well, but the drawing is something else. He does these really imaginative doodles, creating these weird settings and people. It’s a really out there book by someone that likely spent a lot of time on each page, especially the cover. When I am searching for old comics, something like this is a gold mine to me. Who did it and what happened to them? The more I dig into comics history, the more unknown stories that are out there of anonymous people pouring themselves into something and just disappearing.

Processing: 100 Comics That Got Me Through It by Tara Booth is a heavy brick of a book that takes you through Booth’s most difficult and revealing internal monologues. Her instagram has a substantial following and has featured her comics and illustration work that is filled with powerful colour and personality. I have loved Booth’s work for years and it’s nice to see Drawn and Quarterly putting out such a strong book by her. As I am going through own difficult mental health process this year, there was some pieces in the book that I really connected with. She is able to share the hardest things we are thinking with such a deft sense of humour.

I got these comics as part of a big order from Bootleg books when I ordered the fabulous Peephole anthology. Because I have to send most of my US orders to a US address to pick up, I try to bulk up my orders to really make it worth it. Bootleg books has a nice assortment of really forward looking modern comics. The first is This Place Sucks So Much by Tana Oshima, a memoir mini comic about difficult time in their life. It’s got a great style to it that is quite immediate and flows around the page nicely. The story is really well put together, capturing a moment in time and living through difficulty. The other comic I read, The Mad Scientist by Monica Caicedo is much less straight forward. It collection of colour drawings linking to shorter story work that is expressively written in these big bulbous letters. It is quite a clever mini comic the way that all the work is connected.

And lastly, I read a Batman comic. This is a new crossover with long running Italian character, Dylan Dog. The creative team is all Italian and seemingly free from the constraints of corporate continuity. This was a really fun read. It’s silly and acknowledges that it’s just a dumb Batman comic, not pretending to be anything more.