Ganges #2

Kevin Huizenga
Ganges #2

Fantagraphics, 2008

Glen Ganges returnes in the second volume of «Ganges». This collection includes two short stories. The first is a computer game. The player himself, though, will not appear, before us only the screen with a strange toy on it (and indeed it is not clear, is there player at all). After the hieroglyphs we see a choice of players, and the hero is someone like a hedgehog, but with long human legs. This hedgehog-man begins to hit other obscure characters. The meaning of this story in general and its inclusion in this collection may well have remained a mystery if it were not for one thing. The thing is that you do not need to look for a meaning there, when you can see what figures Huizenga draws. The figures, which are built from computer characters, are similar to figures of the Aztecs, the structure of a human cell and a key to unraveling the mysteries of the universe, at the same time. You have never been under hypnosis? So Huizenga’s art proficiency hypnotize you, just try it.





The second story in the book, «Glenn Ganges in Pulverize», is an unexpected continuation of the first one. This computer game is the game that all the office staff, where Ganges works, plays. In the late 90's an Internet start-up begins, something like Yahoo, pre-doomed to failure, and Ganges and his colleagues tried to make money on the internet. And just a whole day (and staying at work past midnight) the entire office was playing a computer game on the network. There were not hedgehog-mans, it was something like a shooter where players only shooting at each other. "Pulverize" gradually began to replace reality for Ganges. About this comic a lot can be said like "our whole life is a game», and this will be true, but more true to saywill be that all good things must come to an end, you’ve played, and that's enough. And the moral is simple: not work joins people together, but fun.

Ganges #1

Kevin Huizenga
Ganges #1

Fantagraphics/Coconino, 2006

Glenn Ganges - the protagonist of the first volume of the series «Ganges» - is a dreamer, an eccentric, a loving husband, but first and foremost a restless man. Meaningless details do not give rest to him, he makes a mountain out of a molehill, and his fantasies replace the reality. Five stories under one cover are the five pieces of a day in the life of Ganges. These fragments were not worth any attention to, if their hero was someone else, not Glenn Ganges. Ganges goes to the library. Ganges returns home. Ganges sits next to his wife while she works at the computer. Ganges goes to sleep. Ganges is asleep.



But Huizenga splash with something each of these individual stories (although the book is done in only three colors: black, white and shades of green). On the way to the library Ganges moves in time. Then he sees the cyclist, throwing trash on the road, and moves ahead in the future of the cyclist. Then he argues with his wife because of the song. Then he goes to bed and thinks what love is. Ganges himself steps into the background, replacing himself by his own imagination. And all those themes and issues that Ganges raises in conversations with his wife or, more commonly, with himself, how serious they wouldn’t be, you can’t take them seriously. Last, night, part of the book, when Ganges and his wife go to sleep, is the most sophisticated in terms of art. There is no division between the panels, Ganges’ ideas are moving and moving, not letting him fall asleep, and the darkness are enveloping here, but not sleepy.



I’d like to meet this Ganges.

Toys in the Basement

Stephane Blanquet
Toys in the Basement

Fantagraphics, 2010

At a costume party for young children a boy sits on the couch alone: instead of a pirate costume his mom bought him a costume of pink bunny, and now the other kids laugh at him. Another boy, a bespectacled cock with a comb on his head, complains that he has a broken leg and asks the Rabbit-boy to come down to the basement to check his girlfriend dressed as a cat, she somehow delayed. When the Rabbit comes down to the basement, the Cat-girl shows him to dump toys. Basement is full of old broken toys for destruction. Toys, however, begin to move, and the green bear, without one eye and with damaged head, takes a boy and a girl for real toys, not the costumed children. The bear and the other toy, armless superhero, say the children that they need to be rescued and they all dig a tunnel to crawl back to where all broken toys hide. Children are in a big danger.

This slim graphic novel is nominally novel for children, but the art of the Frenchman Blanquet takes a children's story to an unexpected level. Costumes worn by the boy and girl, are as if one whole with the children so that children look like more as an animals capable of violence without explication. Not without reason toys are so afraid of children: a mangled dolls know who made them disabled, who scoffed at them. All faces of those heroes of the novel, both children and toys, has some wild expression, both horror and disgust.

For children who are reading this book, toys have been brought in a completely different light than they are accustomed to see them. They live and they have an instinct for survival, too.

This surrealist book by writer-artist Blanquet brings to the young reader a simple message: retribution will come, and you never know from which side.

Mome vol. 1 and Mome vol. 2

Mome vol. 1
Ed. by Gary Groth and Eric Reynolds

Fantagraphics, 2005

Mome vol. 2
Ed. by Gary Groth and Eric Reynolds

Fantagraphics, 2005

«Mome» is an anthology of comics coming out four times a year. This year the twentieth volume arrived on the shelves, and I'll start with the first two books.
Anthologies have their advantages and disadvantages. They open up new names (at the same time allowing to read works of already well-known authors), they can be read from beginning to the end, or starting with any story, stories in them are usually short, so they do not overtire even those who have distracted attention. By cons I would took the lack of completeness of some stories: to see what will happen next, you need to buy the next volume. And if you started with the second, then it is unclear how this or that story began. It would be much better to print the fully finished stories. (We should also mention that in addition to comics, there are also long and fairly thoughtful interviews with someone from the contributor of the book.)
In the first and the second volume there are a lot of things to enjoy. Stories differ both in length (there are one-page strips, too) and in narrative technique.

In the first volume in a simple black-and-white depiction of «I Feel Nothing» Gabrielle Bell presents her protagonist, a young girl who called to visit, just to sit, a young man, kind of a rich drug addict. In the midst of the evening the young man invites the girl to become his girlfriend, sniffing with powder, to quit work and sit at home all day in his company. This is a story, perhaps, in the vein of Jeffrey Brown (he is in this book, too), even in style. Brown himself is presented here in «Part Time». It is very funny story about how Brown makes procrastination at the time, as he is pressing by deadlines. It is great comics, not even just comics, but metacomics! His comic strip in the second book is a real mystery. What not takes away from Brown is his self-irony.

Direct narration in the first volume is also in Sophie Crumb’s comics. She is represented by three things here. The first, «Eddy Bear Takes His Share», is a short story about how a girl brings home a beggar. The second, «Tanya», is about almost the same thing - the mysterious corners of life (Crumb writes and offers us a graphic story of the history of our compatriot trapped in the U.S. in the hope of a happy life). Crumb’s stories are almost always about one thing, but this is understandable: her comic are parables with clearly derived moral. Andrice Arp in both volumes contributed graphic stories on the material of Japanese mythology. They are well drawn, but they don’t have enough energy. In a completely insane way drawn story of Kurt Wolfgang «Passing Before Life's Very Eyes». These are memories of the old man, already almost breathing his last, and here in front of his eyes sweeping the whole his life. This is a comic about the opposition: in Wolfgang’s each fragment of page vie angel and devil, Robinson Crusoe and Friday, the old man and a young man, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. This is a story in yellow tones on how quickly you live and quickly die. In «Mome vol. 2" Wolfgang has more mundane story about two young punks in 1977. In the second book Martin Cendreda (in vol. 1 he had great one-page strips) has story «The Magic Marker» about, well, a magic marker, a kind of analogue of a magic wand. Of course, possession of a marker does not bring brightens to a faceless character, who looks like Pinocchio.

Two of the most bizarre stories in the first two volumes of «Mome» are "221 Sycamore Ave» by John Pham and «Overpeck» by David Heatley. Overpeck is the name of a town, where live a girl-duck that walks down the street completely naked, eternally quarreling Negro children, drawing pictures autistic girl. In Heatley’s all the time something moves, flashes, and the pages are like a scattering of colored beads in the form of dogs, bicycles, broken swings, trees. The three parallel storylines unfolds in this story. Where they will lead to, it is not clear, but it is still terribly entertaining. "221 Sycamore Ave» is drawn as if the comic book was made by the drawing teacher: solid right rectangles, circles, and prospects. In the first part we are introduced to a girl named Mildred Lee, which makes the lessons, and then crawls under the table and stays there. In a room at the same time there is the most mysterious character of all that are found in two books - a man-bag. All the time he just sits on the couch and never says anything. Soon, we are presented another hero, Vrej Sarkissian, who enjoys all the smells of the outside world.
In these two books there are a lot of interesting and confusing, enjoyable and intriguing.

Do not be a mome, read these first-rate collections of comics.

The Living and the Dead

Jason
The Living and the Dead

Fantagraphics, 2006

In this novel (2006) a native of Norway the cartoonist Jason does not change itself not a bit: the hero again is a loser; a quiet life in the novel is broken by otherworldly forces, again; the dream of a not available woman; again all the people are animals-like. But this time - and this is for the first time - the usual ingredients, put together as if in the same proportions, do not formed into something that can give pleasure to the reader.

Sad dishwasher from one of cafe, whole life of his stretches from change to change, each time returning home, dreams of a thin prostitute, but only a thick one flirts with him: he does not have enough money for a thin. The girl has not a too sweet life: her pimp beats her, and at home every day a cold bed waits for her. It is obvious, they should finally fall in love with each other, and zombies suddenly began to climb out of their graves help the man and the girl with that.

Besides this romantic story, there are no more in this book. The novel ends so fast (only 50 pages) that there is no question of any details in person relationships. The appearance of zombies is not given any more or less intelligible explanation, so this is just a pretext to bring the single characters together. The final becomes apparent about to the 20th page, which is quite strange, considering how Jason in his other works made a plot more complicated closer to the end. Nothing of the kind: even heroes have no charming in this graphic novel.

It's quite sad, but probably true: even the most talented authors should have sometime failures. This is such a case.

Werewolves of Montpellier

Jason
Werewolves of Montpellier

Fantagraphics, 2010

Artist and author of no less than a dozen graphic novels Norwegian Jason in his work almost always uses the same scheme: a lonely and somewhat suffering hero lives, dying of boredom, a woman who seems not with the hero, but always has feelings to him, hidden under the animal skin (all Jason’s heroes are personified animals), their meeting, longing. The author seems not enough satisfied with just drama (rather melodrama), because of that he always makes his short novels thrillers, adding criminal component. At this time, the werewolves are called to stir the surface of the novel.

Boring hero that does not dissolve in a haze of uneventful life (though later he explains that it pushed his case from his youth), at night changes into werewolf and travel on the roofs of houses, climbs in the window, plundering tenants. Werewolf mask serves him like a cover and a scare track just in case, if the apartment owners suddenly would catch him for the crime. After one of the burglaries his picture, where he jumps from roof to roof falls in the newspaper. Fake werewolf did not think that the city has a clan of real werewolves that do not welcome the appearance of an impostor. They ask the weary robber to leave the city.

«Werewolves of Montpellier» is a sad and even somewhat funny novel about the fact that loneliness is not hiding under the mask. Is this novel better or worse than other works of Jason? Probably not. Despite repeated methods in his books, novels are utterly worth reading. If you have a werewolf friend, buy him this book. If you don’t, buy two.

Temperance

Cathy Malkasian
Temperance

(Fantagraphics, 2010)

In the first, the shortest, part of this long comic story a man with a very angry face chops down trees by huge ax. He is watched by the two girls, one small with bulbous nose, the second higher, reminding, have put her on the pages of a fantasy novel, a princess of distant kingdom. Little, whose name is Minerva, names a man Pa, the high one says that he is not their father. Soon, Pa beckons to Peggy, the high. Instead of talking on the souls Pa shows the power and, it seems, just about rapes his own daughter. But a traveler in a straw hat, appeared from somewhere, prevents it. The girl hides in the woods, and Pa and wanderer begin to beat each other. Pa however cuts down the defender and makes her daughter to cut off the traveler's leg with an ax. She refuses, and then Pa himself does it, leaving the girl with a young man lying in a pool of blood. All the rest of the book the two of them will play the loving couple: a young man loses memory.

Malkasian`s book contains all the variety of genres. This is quite a traditional fantasy (queen, clans, the expectation of war), and not quite a traditional fairy tale, and sometimes physiological sketch, and surreal painting, and even the kind of superhero comics (Pa here is just as the chief villain). Painted in two colors, the story of most of the book unfolds around the castle, where some people, whom Minerva, one of the daughters of Pa, leads by the nose for decades, live. She also hides from her husband Lester, an amnesiac, how he got into the castle. He does not remember anything and silly runs around the castle at night for the birds, considering them enemy spies.

In the final part of this graphic novel Malkasian seems, like Minerva, which had lost power over the husband and the city, lose the thread of the story. In the end without much logic, the author mixes Pa, Lester, who comeback part of his memories, missing Peggy, trees, birds, wooden doll, so you have to ask yourself: why then were two previous parts needed?

In the end Cathy Malkasian doesn't have enough madness to make the novel truly psychedelic, as well as lacked the ability to construct the plot. It would be a significant book about lies, self-destruction, pervasive evil, but it became just a fairy tale about how dangerous is sometimes to interfere in one's affairs.

I Killed Adolf Hitler

I Killed Adolf Hitler

By Jason

Fantagraphics, 2007

n a world where murder is committed by contract legitimately very often, to be a professional hitman is extremely boring. One of these killers in the law every day in his office accepts clients who desire to remove from this world their brothers, husbands, tesch, chiefs, and in the evening, after let someone put a bullet in the back, drinks beer alone at the bar, and at home, also absolutely one, prepars a simple dinner. When, after similar orders (changing only faces of clients and nothing else) he receives a tempting offer to kill Hitler, and, hoping to dispel the boredom, he is sent in time machine, the charging of which one should take 50 years, to Nazi Germany to kill Fuhrer. But things go awry.

Norwegian cartoonist Jason, whose books, like cakes, comics publisher Fantagraphics released one by one, in his works is correct one way: it is rather minimalist design, sparing of visual effects. Jason`s heroes look like animal species, but people inside. "I Killed Adolf Hitler" is a very dense novel, read all 50 pages at one go. Jason adds to the fantastic world a time travel, alternate history and elements of thriller, he also achieves the degree of melodramatic and sentimental, when they have not syrup, not drown in sugar. Down Führer, shaved his mustache, to the second plan, the author shows the return of old feelings between world-weary hitman and his former wife and does it so skillfully that even Hitler would have moved by.

As a result, at the end of the book all the sticks shoot (yet they had not shot in the book where the main character is a professional assassin), the time machine is used for the second time, and Hitler - yes, the title had not deceived. Almost.

The Left Bank Gang

The Left Bank Gang

by Jason

Fantagraphics, 2008

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway in Paris, brought together in the 20s. They go to the boxing fights, play ping-pong, drink in restaurants, discuss problems in their personal lives and fight. This could be perceived as a realistic novel, if not for one "but": four literary giants in the world, created by Jason, are not writers - but the artists drawing the comics. In this alternative history Dostoevsky has mentioned, too, as the author of graphic novels. Finally, when the four friends get tired of a dull life in Paris, which also does not apportion the writers money, they decide to go on a desperate step - to rob a bank.

All writers in this graphic novel are animals, as in all the books of Norwegian artist and author of many books, now published in English by Fantagraphics, Jason. And beside that it is a funny novel (Fitzgerald and Hemingway here, for example, in the literal sense measure, hum, their genitals), then it becomes even funnier when you look like two dogs speak, who, in general, perhaps the biggest writers of the XX century. Jason could not help but dilute the rather slow and boring, as the life of writers in Paris, story, dropping his heroes in a risky business, in which woman has been implicated.

The author shows a robbery rather complicated, but effectively, showing events on behalf of each of the characters individually. «The Left Bank Gang» is a modernist thriller, but with one flaw: painted four writers, and then let them into the criminal case, Jason eventually did not use the big names of his heroes. No connection between the first part, with life in restaurants and talk about comics, and the second one, the actual robbery. As it turns out that putting in place of writers even sailors of Sebastopol, nothing would not has changed in the book.

It is, nevertheless, a very exciting book. If mentioned masters of words were alive, they would not have minded to such stories about themselves.