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Thursday, September 9, 2010
Three for Tuesday
David Sandlin, R. Crumb, and Steven Weissman
Alphabetical Ballad of Carnality
Words and pictures by David Sandlin
Published by Fantagraphics
Hardcover, 32 pages of full color art for $14.95
Equally grotesque and beautiful, Sandlin has created an A to Z adults only cautionary tale fueled by old country songs, naked women, booze, and violence. It’s really that simple. Each page represents a letter of the alphabet, taking the reader deeper into Sandlin’s vice-riddled fairy tale. He lulls the reader into a cocoon of depravity, only to rip you out of your comfort zone with the letter Z.
Sandlin’s art has been featured in Monte Beauchamp’s Blab books in smaller doses. Here it’s all Sandlin, all the time. The images are alternatively hilarious, alarming, and ridiculous. Sandlin uses vibrant colors to further excite the senses. Very obvious imagery floats in the foreground and background of each page. Dollar signs, whisky bottles, shotguns, and boobs are featured on almost every page, but occasionally he lets a page just breathe. Like this page devoted to H:
The storyline of Ballad leans toward the heavy handed, but if you read it as a cautionary tale of a sinner who has tasted sweet redemption, the heavy dose of rhyming makes more sense. This would make a great coffee table book for $14.95, but it’s not the deepest thing you’ll read this year.
The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb
Words and pictures by Robert Crumb
Published by MQ Publications
Hardcover, 112 pages of black and white art for $30.00
The idea behind The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb, explained in the artist’s foreword, is to present a collection of drawings featuring Crumb’s less abrasive, overtly sexual, side. With tongue firmly in cheek the publishers mumble that women can’t relate to Crumb’s work. So, there’s this new collection with Crumb on the cover walking through the woods with a sketchpad and a striped tabby cat in his arms. The book works to a certain degree. You won’t find any large, floppy penises dangling out the window, and the percentage of thick-legged, big-bottomed women drawings is noticeably less. But there’s still this organic feel to this work that reminds you of his other art.
In , Crumb focuses on still life drawings, portraits of people with clothes on (think of his wonderful drawings of blues musicians), and some really well drawn scenery. What’s obvious in this collection is that he is very adept at capturing the depth of his subject. His sketchy style highlights shadow and texture in a way that few others can successfully emulate. Several pages of French neighborhoods are almost more realistic than any photograph. Look at the detail of these bricks and stones.
In his work, Crumb is always very human – a painfully flawed human with a non-working filter when it comes to deciding what subjects are taboo. He’s glaringly real and often hilarious, and his crudeness is part of why we love his work. It’s real. But here, he’s much more reserved – almost loving. Through his drawings he dotes on his wife and daughter. His wife Aline poses in several designer dresses and her sweetness and insecurities are laid bare.
This is a solid collection showing the softer side of Crumb, and one you can leave lying around that won’t frighten friends and relatives not accustomed to his rougher moments. Even without letting loose, Crumb still manages to find some life in random corners, streets, in the eyes of kittens, and old yearbook photos. In the end, it’s the quality of his line that sets his work apart, regardless of subject matter.
Chewing Gum in Church
Words and pictures by Steven Weissman
Published by Fantagraphics
Softcover, 94 pages of full color art for $14.95
It’s difficult not to think of the Peanuts strip when reading Chewing Gum in Church. The cast is entirely made up of big-headed kids and the occasional animal. The humor is dark, like early Peanuts strips could be, but it’s more mean spirited.
The same group of characters float through most of the strips – Pull Apart Boy, Chubby Cheeks, Lit’l Bloody the Vampire Boy, X-Ray Spense, and Kid Medusa.
Kid Medusa has an on again off again adventure where insects attack her. Maybe they are retaliating for this strip:
Anyway, Kid Medusa gets bitten and stung until she swells up. She swells up a lot and takes a little trip as the book ends. Despite it’s meanness, Chewing Gum in Church is pretty damn cute. It may be the “out of the mouths of babes” thing, but it’s hard to stay horrified at these little bastards for long. One minute they leave a bird to die, and then the next you feel kind of sorry for them. This disconnect between the grotesque and the cute is a function of both the art and the underlying reminder that kids are kind of cruel and gross.
Weissman’s art is full color and he makes the most of his vivid palette. A sky is almost as likely to be pink or orange as it’s likely to be blue. Background colors vibrate and change from panel to panel, often within the same page. The page borders also cycle through a sequence of soft pastel colors. The big heads of the characters are usually the thickest lines on the page, meaning the big-headed kids appear even more childlike, regardless of what type of havoc they wreak on the page.
One additional note: this is a well-packaged book. Many of Fantagraphics books have adopted this very tasteful, but colorful look. It reminded me a bit of the pin-up soft cover books from the last couple of years, and it’s because of the book design of Jacob Covey. He has a great sense of color and what it does to a book package, and it’s very evident in this little softcover.
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April 22, 2008:
February 4, 2008:
November 20, 2006:
A Comic-Con without the Captain
