Indie Graphic Novel Reviews

Brian Wood's "Demo": A Steaming Pile of Self-indulgence

on to the second most overrated man in comics.

"Demo" (AiT/Planet Lar) has been hailed as one of the greatest, if not the greatest graphic novels published last year. The numerous awards given & the musing of comic book critics everywhere compelled me to try it out. I had purchased a single issue of "Demo" from my then local comic book store that I thought was mediocre but charming in its concept. I was more than happy to leave it at that when the acclaim started rolling in. Then the collection was solicited, & there was that damn tagline: "For those that wish Jim Jarmusch directed the X-Men movies." Damn. "That's a good line," I thought to myself. In Alan Moore's "How to Write Comics", Moore discusses the comic book writers' use of cinematic technique, but also derides it for its limitations. Comic books being written in the 2000s, are still being confined by the story-telling techniques Hitchcock invented during the middle of last century. Moore claims, among other things, that if a comic book writer were so intent to utilize the techniques of the cinematic medium in order to advance, s/he would have to start watching more modern films. Now, I'm a sucker for Jarmusch. "Down by Law" is one of my favorite movies of all time. He uses the broad strokes & pacing of European film makers such as Wim Wenders while maintaining the quaintness of Americana, at once making out to be something foreign as well as familiar. His story-telling is so inherently visual, making every bit of dialogue precious. Because of his tendency to move things along slowly & w/out much fanfare, many people new to Jarmusch feel that his films leave them wondering exactly what happened, if anything at all. He has a tendency to explore characters in-depthly w/out really explaining how or why things play out the way they do, only to end on a sour, unresolved note. Now, in "Demo", Wood tries to use many of these same techniques that make Jarmusch's films so striking, but winds up falling so short because the use of these techniques that he apparently does not understand fully comes across as being extremely contrived. "Demo" addresses the idea of young superhumans as merely "human", which is admirable, but the effort to make these characters as human as possible makes them completely impossible to relate to as more than a one-dimensional representation of an idea that holds no relevance to our own existence. 17-20 year old men & womyn do not talk like 14 year old goth girls I would have wanted to date when I was 12. 14 year old goth girls don't even talk like 14 year old goth girls. They only talk like that when they are writing in their journals. Wood will use the broad stroke technique of no dialouge w/ sluggish pacing to strike the reader, but follows it w/ a 5 page speech from some cigarette smoking school girl about how "fucked up" the world is & how all human beings are essentially flawed & doomed to fail. I didn't know that! I really needed an unbelivable character in a comic book to explain that truth to me as if i were a 10 year old, w/ as many swear words & self-pittying quips as possible. & honestly, does anyone ever refer to themselves as "slackers" anymore? I get the point. These are supposed to be kids. They're too disgusted w/ having discovered the darkness of the human condition to force themselves to see any kind of silver-lining. Maybe as a point of self-mocking, Wood's characters who work dead-end graveyard-shift jobs are forced to grow up & move on w/ their lives (i.e. go to trade school; write a novel?), while one member of their crew is so disgusted w/ his friends giving up on the "Slacker Manifesto" that each of them signed while in detention during high school that he assaults them. At the end of the story, this character is left going to work alone but is greeted by a new group of kids very simlar to him & his friends that are still young enough to want the same things out of life that he wants. They look up to him as a member of the old-guard. While completely absurd & ridiculous, I can't help but feel that Wood himself is that character out to attract an audience of young adolescents only to convince them of his poignant genious, while most of his peers have already left behind writing about such pettiness. It's unconvincing. The book's one saving grace is Becky Cloonan's beautiful & diverse illustration work, changing styles for each story while maintaining a consitent tone & aesthetic throughout the whole book. I feel, however, that this dichotomy of tactful illustration & tactless dialogue only adds to the unbalanced nature of the book.

Seth's "Wimbledon Green: The Greatest Comic Book Collector in the World": Fans on Fandom
I've been a fan of Seth's style of illustrate storytelling ever since I stayed up all night & read through a friend's copy of "It's a Good Life if You Don't Weaken"(Drawn & Quarterly). I was struck by the ornate nature of not only his illustration but the story he was telling. I picked up the first volume of "Clyde Fans"(Drawn & Quarterly), & much to my pleasure, it was a lot more of the same. There was this whistful nature of history, memory, & nostalgia beautifully illustrated through the use of flashbacks & narratation. The first half of that book is nothing more than an old man telling the history of his father's fan distribution business while walking around his apartment while we see old photographs hanging in the background, while the second half is a flashback story that the previous character only alludes to. This tasteful use of the non-linear narrative is used again by Seth in "Wimbledon Green". In the foreward Seth talks about being influenced by a book he had read about the obsessive culture of book collectors, & how he could relate to that culture through being a fan of comic books. By drawing on the differences & similarities of each community, Seth creates a cast of satirically based characters that remind us of classic comic book stories from the 1950s. What is interesting to me, is that there are often moments in the book where the characters describe fictional comic books use of classic plot devices to the point of redundancy, while Seth uses these same plot devices to create parallels between these beloved comic book characters & his own star characters that we come to love in much the same way. The art takes on a slightly rounder cartoony feel, instead of the lean lines of previous work inspired by old 1940s New Yorker cartoons. Another interesting point that is brought up in the foreward is that this entire book had been done during Seth's free time in his sketchbook over the course of about a year, although you'd never realize it from looking at the illustration. The art retains the simplicity of something created leisurely, but never appears rough or unfinished. The simple coloring, basically 2 or 3 different watercolor shades of green/brown, enriches the art w/out complicating it w/ too many layers. It should also go w/out saying that the design for the cover & the cardstock used for the interior are beautiful. Drawn & Quarterly always puts out quality books, & it should be no surprise that this is one of them.

Neil Kleid's "Brownsville": The real Murder INC.

"Brownsville" (NBM) is the story of New York based Jewish gangster Allie Tanennbaum who went on to start the Union County Water Company in NJ, highlighted by other iconic characters like Abe Reles, Louis Lepke Buchalter, Dutch Shcultz, & more. The book debuted, fittingly, at the New York ComiCon, put out by NBM Publishing. The story is more tragic than anything, w/ just as much violence as can be expected from any non-fiction gangster story. There are moments when we become disgusted w/ these characters, & then there are moments when we really feel for them & pity them. But the star of the show is always "Allie Boy" Tanennbaum, whose perspective Kleid uses to tell this story. Years jump around, & it is often hard to tell which character is which, but the impact of the story is so strong that none of this diminishes it. This book was a quick & easy read because it was so compelling, but never falters in the complexity of any of the characters or the story. The narrative jumps around non-linearly while remaining chronologically straight-foward in a manner so artful that it's hard to believe that none of this was made up by Kleid himself. This book has it all: strong creative storytelling; beautiful illustration; great characters; blood, guts, death & a touching ending. I am definatley going to check out more work published by NBM & more work written by Neil Kleid.