If you’d told me in 1998 that a decade later, I’d still be hearing Alice DeeJay’s “Better Off Alone” on the radio, I would have laughed in a manner akin to a hyena on nitrous.
Per Dash Shaw’s recommendation at the beginning, I paced my reading of the book, taking in each of its three parts on a separate evening, and finished it just a few moments before writing this. It sounds so well-trod: an aging couple gathers the clan together one last time to announce their divorce after 40 years, but Dash Shaw’s deceptively primitive art and use of new layout and pacing techniques on the page, when combined with some brilliantly naturalistic, casual dialogue that still managed to say something with every line, has produced a book that is easily the best graphic novel of the year so far. It’s a million little moments that create a greater whole, a triumph of the form that is going to echo in my mind for quite some time. Bottomless Belly Button is a book that made me laugh, think, smile, and finally, over a ten-page sequence at the end, weep like I’ve not in a very, very long time.
This 720-page book has delivered on the promise that so many other examples of the medium have whispered in my ear, from Eisner’s A Contract With God to Bechdel’s Fun Home. Of course, it’s not quite perfect – no book with this much ambition could ever be – but that only magnifies the sense of honesty and forthrightness that informs the work throughout. Dash Shaw may be an artist and storyteller of the highest caliber, but his work here is refreshingly free of facade or ironic distance. Recommended very, very highly. In fact, this may be the Great American Graphic Novel I’d been waiting so long for.
There’s preview pages over on Dash Shaw’s site, and it’s available on Amazon.com at a steep discount. Don’t trust me? Trust Spurge.
And then there was the time that Lydia was sent into purgatory.
If you’re not familiar with SearchMe, it’s a new search engine that uses an iTunes-like view of webpages so you can look at a site before clicking over. It’s a pretty radical change in the way search has worked in the past and with offerings like the “stacks” function shown above with some random pages from the “comic books” search, I can’t help but think they’re onto something major.
(Sorry, this is probably something that isn’t that interesting to anyone who isn’t me, but c’mon, that’s slick.)
This is probably the best 24-hour comic I’ve seen.
Also, you might not actually be able to read this complete Afrodosiac-meets-Dracula comic because of the tiny, tiny images used, but at least you know it’s out there and will appear in the upcoming Meathaus anthology.
With Star Trek, particularly The Next Generation, featuring what amounts to a socialist society (no money, the Federation is essentially the UN done right, equal rights and diversity) as its core, I wonder why the fanbase features so many conservatives.
As promised, here’s the staff picks for the week of June 25th, and you’ll have strips for the rest of the week! Hoorah! There’s also a correction to Friday’s strip, thanks to comments by Ed Brubaker.
Someone, somewhere, has written Jay-Z/Kanye slash fiction.
…which means you’ll get three strips back-to-back, bam-bam-bam after the picks. New storyline, two weeks or so, the kids are gonna love it, I swear.
Here’s the video for “Way Out” by Apparat with Ellen Allien. I’ve been digging a lot of Allien’s productions since picking up her mix for Fabric a couple of months ago. With Apparat, things went a bit more melodic than her normally banging production would make apparent, plus there’s robots and stuff.
What does it mean when you can’t recall issue numbers anymore?
Greg Gillis makes records under the pseudonym Girl Talk. What Gillis does is popularly known as a “mashup” but where many people are happy to take two or three songs, beatmatch them in Ableton, and create melodic tracks like the Kelly Clarkson/Depeche Mode mashup “Since You Been Gahan,” Gilis takes twenty or more to create a 4-minute survey of pop music, snatching bits from Queen, Tones on Tail, Paula Cole, and The Cure and creating something that’s not so much a whole as an amalgam of moments – bits of things that you know (and like, at least out of context) played in a very tight sequence. His music is schizophrenic and celebratory, occasionally recontextualizing material in surprising ways (the clipped strings and sped-up symphony of “Girl/Boy Song” by Aphex Twin under Rich Boy’s “Throw Some D’s,”) but it generally consisting of Ginnis putting something familiar with against something else the audience is likely to know to create a pleasing fifteen or twenty seconds of synchronicity, like the swingbeat smash “No Diggity” meeting Kanye’s “Flashing Lights” in “Still Here.” While I’ve been enjoying Girl Talk’s latest, Feed The Animals, quite a lot, it feels disposable in a way I was having trouble putting my finger on, until I was in the middle of the last trade of Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men.
What makes that title successful frequently transcends the (undeniable) craft applied to the material – it’s that sense of seeing something familiar treated slightly differently. Astonishing features a team that is very much “our” X-Men: Cyclops. Wolverine, Colossus, Beast, and Kitty Pryde along with Emma Frost go and have big loud adventures, exchange quips, and very rarely do something that’s a genuine surprise to the readers. This is franchise superhero comics at their best. Even the ending, which features an blatantly set-up solution to the whole “bad guys firing a fuck-off huge bullet at the planet” problem, manages to make one gape a bit, thanks to John Cassaday’s ability to render the most unbelievable moments in a down-to-earth fashion. It’s well-done and a great example of the X-genre, but at the same time it feels hollow, especially when compared to another trade paperback release from this week, Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba’s The Umbrella Academy.
It’s simultaneously difficult to understand and completely believable that The Umbrella Academy is Gerard Way’s first major comics work. Way’s comics-related output was limited to some material with Boneyard Press in his teens and some work for Cartoon Network prior to forming the hugely-popular My Chemical Romance, whose rapid rise to the top of the modern rock charts left little time for the medium. There’s a freshness to The Umbrella Academy that’s undeniable, even if one detects notes of Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Bob Haney’s batshit scripting in this high-concept story of a tight-knit superpowered “family” who share a tragic past. It’s unclear if it’s unabashed enthusiasm combined with ideas that have been gestating in Way’s head for years or if the tone and world presented are calculatedly different from other takes on the superhero, but where Astonishing X-Men is a remixed and mashed-up take on what’s gone before, The Umbrella Academy is something set firmly in its own world.
While it’s clear why so many enjoy Astonishing X-Men and The Sinestro Corps War and All-Star Superman for their very nicely-done takes on corporate-owned characters, the experience can seem a bit hollow, particularly during times like the present, when every editorially-mandated event is hyped to the nth degree and things that should be straightforward, fun adventure comics become recycled 10 o’clock drama cliches with some spandex thrown in for variety. Even at their most enthralling peaks, it’s blatantly clear that no permanent change will ever occur and that the status quo of seventy years of superhero storytelling and that the audience likes it that way. They want new versions of things they’ve enjoyed in the past, mashed-up beats and hands-in-the-air moments, not original compositions that are unfamiliar and require something besides appreciation for what has happened before.
This one’s like 90% Birdie’s bubbling hatred and disbelief in how comics bloggers and journalists try to make sense of the numbers provided by Diamond, Marvel, DC, M’tunga of the Hill Tribe, and a drunken, leering Bob Saget.
This week was one of the textbook examples of “Not Much Goin’ On For Ol’ Kevin” in the singles. Only three titles found their way into my bag, and I’m not going to talk about one of them because what can someone say about the middle chapter of a DMZ storyline other than “Brian Wood seems to know what he’s doing with this”? So, here’s…
There’s a very good bit in this issue that shows how Ellis manages to nail characters in ways that are almost subliminal. The director of Anna Mercury’s agency explains what’s going on to the new governmental leader. It involves parallel worlds, strange physics, and Anna Mercury’s role in making sure the status quo is kept. He’s impatient, unable to explain everything in soundbites, and leaves the poor man flummoxed as hell, much like the readers, and that’s good enough. We sort of have a vague idea what’s going on, now let’s get back to Anna shooting the hell out of people. Yes, it’s got bits of Planetary in its DNA, particularly when you compare Anna to Jakita Wagner, but it’s got just enough new stuff to convince me to pick up the eventual trade.
Jeff Parker + Arnim Zola = Love. Yes, it’s just that simple. Ig Guara’s art has a few moments where it just shines, particularly around the comedic beats, even if his action storytelling needs just a bit of work. This single issue perfect example of light superhero entertainment that is very comfortable with what it is and manages to engage readers at just about any possible age group. Here’s a preview so you can figure out if you want to pick it up next week.
Wow, this is short this week. I better come up with something that’ll earn those links.
Oh! I know!
Best of luck to Sean Whitmore and Brandon Hanvey with their new strip for Comics Should Be Good. I look forward to seeing future installments, particularly as Hanvey’s clean cartooning has been enjoyed by the staff here at BeaucoupKevin towers in the past.
