Time Clock


By Leslie Stein (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-930-1

Help Wanted: Girl cartoonist seeks meaning of contemporary existence and like-minded individuals to share bewilderment and revelations with.

Interests/Hobbies include: drinking, counting sand, growing stuff, antiquing for pop culture “trash”, drinking, meaningful conversations with musical instruments, playing board games with same, recreational herbal intoxicants, reminiscing about wild-times with gal-pals and old cronies, drinking, visiting difficult relatives.

Employment: unwanted but regrettably necessary. Although not native to the Big City, is extremely adaptable and will do anything – unless it’s hard, boring or she sucks at it…

After graduating from the New York School of Visual Arts, Leslie Stein began producing astonishingly addictive cartoon strips in the self-published Yeah, It Is. Winning a Xeric Grant for her efforts, she then started an even better comicbook entitled Eye of the Majestic Creature: blending autobiographical self-discovery, surreal free-association, philosophical ruminations, nostalgic reminiscences and devastatingly dry wit to describe modern life as filtered through her seductive meta-fictional interior landscape. She is a creator who sees things as they really aren’t, but makes them authentic and even desirable to anyone willing to pay attention…

This long-awaited third volume resumes Stein’s airy, eccentric and engaging pictorial mood-music as her mythologized autobiography continues to reveal the history and ambitions (for want of a better term) of Larrybear – a girl deliberately and determinedly on her own, trying to establish her uniquely singular way of getting by.

Eschewing chronological narrative for an easy, breezy raconteur’s epigrammatic delivery, illustrated in loose, free-flowing line-work, detailed stippling, hypnotic pattern-building or even honest-to-gosh representational line-drawing, Stein operates under the credo of “whatever works, works” – and she’s not wrong…

Larrybear makes friends easily: bums, winos, weirdoes, dropouts, misfits, non-English-speaking co-workers and especially inanimate objects. Her bestest buddy is her talking guitar/flatmate Marshmallow, one of the many odd fellow travellers who all aggregate around her, briefly sharing her outré interests and latest dreams.

However Larrybear doesn’t want an average life, just more experiences, less hassle and affable companions to share it all with.

This latest graphic dinner party starts with another Friday at work. After scrupulously completing her wage-slave tasks, she heads off to show her latest creation at the long-awaited Sand Counters Convention.

The guy at the next table next is annoying but okay, and she’s touched when venerable old Sand Counter Henry Peet admires her work but, after seeing über-stylist Tim Heerling swanking and lapping up the adulation of the audience, she is mysteriously moved and decides that now she has a new nemesis…

And in the meantime, stay-at-home stringed instrument Marshmallow – feeling unfulfilled – takes up baking to shorten the incessant loneliness…

A second untitled segment then finds Larrybear hanging out with old pal Boris, sharing stories and intoxicants, but still blithely unaware of how he feels about her…

After months of prevaricating, and whilst still enduring dreams about that Heerling guy, our aimless star finally relocates to the countryside where she, Marshmallow and the rest of her animated instrument collection enjoy a life of bucolic fulfilment and idle contemplation until they can’t stand it any more…

This superbly quirky diversion then concludes with ‘Boy’ as Larrybear learns that living miles from the nearest bar and being unable to drive is severely impacting her drinking time, whilst having competition-quality sand delivered is a huge mistake…

All too soon however, she’s back in her natural environment, dealing booze to drunks and sharing their buzz, just as the biggest storm in living memory threatens to close up the city…

All delivered in a mesmerising, oversized (292 x 204 mm) monochrome package, these incisive, absurdist, whimsically charming and visually intoxicating invitations into a singularly creative mind and fabulous alternative reality offer truly memorable walks on the wild side. For a gloriously rewarding and exceptionally enticing cartoon experience – one no serious fan of fun and narrative art can afford to miss – you simply must spend a few hours with a Time Clock.
© 2016 Leslie Stein. All rights reserved.