some comics i got recently

mome fall 2005
glossy, beautifully constructed 1/4ly anthology from fantagraphix, 15 artists or so, mostly shit...really really pointless and boring indie autobiographical shit in adrian tomine/dan clowes mode: (a guy feeding pigeons, a girl meeting her mother) or in scratch and scrawl julie doucet/chester brown mode...a chester brown comic about a friend od'ing on heroin that had less emotion and less drama then the ones about the cd he bought, a sophie crumb that was as fake and pseduo-transgressive as any jt leroy, with a cloying and sentimental ending, some mocking of obvious targets, some useless pop oddness, really mostly disposable...

except: anders nilson short story, an art historical/abstract exploration of form, but also of realtionships and humanity, 10 pages of sqaures and circles, with a narrative underneath, it made me sad and made me keep loving how strange and thourough his enchantment with the edges of comix are---equal parts ellsworth kelly and charles schultz, may be the best comic ive read all year. also in troduced to david heatley, who is like harvey darger doing harvey comix...its really bright, colourful, cute, normal funny animal innocent kids stuff, and then interupted with kiddie fucking, incest, hustler magazine and christ on the cross--this impure freudian working out, and im not sure how explotive it is.

also got
poor sailor, from the mousspant story, almost silent, this little sqaure thing, spare and lovely, a snow storm is indicated by four blank pages, several panels of intimacy, (of a man and a woman in bed, of them making a house, of woods and chickens) and several of isloation, landscapes and ships on sea...i dont want to ruin it, but actually is not as cute as it seems

david b's one from the new ignatz line has a poor and unguided narrative, that is basicalyl a rip off of the genius eplipetic, and the drawing has a chaotic, horryfing nightmare imagery that becomes claustrophobic and exhausting, it is hard to read...

the thing that marks its brilliance though, is a secton of about 6 pages, called the ways of war, that made me frightened and uncomfortable, a manic and destructive history of the war in biafra, the plain news of history is countered with black/red images, that are iconic, but never easy: corpses, igbo masks, bayonets gouging eyes, a man set on fire and a man in a mask...it has a panelling that is encorprated themtically, the man who is crucided makes a section into four panels, a heavy man rests on his outstretched arms, underneath, a general looks forward, a mask of malvenlonce behind him, the man on fire has a beast scissoring his insides, like an ibis and a frog...one of the pages has a starbing skeltion arching over miltary strong arms, who contains a crocidle running munitions...another has dozens of skeltions, fire, soilders and bombs in the folds of a decorative pink forrest--im not explaining it well, of courseits too strange and personal a text, too self containted to write about--but its horrorfying.
it also colludes conolial and post colonial sources in a unique way (i counted classical egyption, igbo, ibio, henri rossoueu(sp), radical german and french woodcuts, mexican death imagery, anti veitnam agirprop from the americas, keith harring, the haida and irqouis...)

i t hink that his art is better then his sotrytelling, but it is so frighenting and distended, its worth seeing