Category: Graphic Autobiography

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Adulthood is a Myth – A “Sarah’s Scribbles” Collection


By Sarah Andersen (Andrews McMeel)
ISBN: 978-1-44947-419-5 (PB/Digital edition)

Scary times need radical solutions, but in lieu of that and considering how helpless we all are, all I can suggest is burying yourself in a book (gallows pun not intended). Here’s one that is both funny and incisive and is available online either in physical form or digitally. Moreover, as it’s about – and by – a Millennial, all us old sods who lived through a few crises can chortle and feel smugly superior in the knowledge that problems such as these in here are transitory and shall also pass. That one was deliberate…

Sarah’s Scribbles started in 2013 as a webcomic (first on Tumblr, and latterly Facebook, Instagram and Line Webtoon) before going legit in 2016 in as a book from Andrews McMeel. Adulthood is a Myth was followed by Big Mushy Happy Lump in 2017, Herding Cats in 2018 and Oddball in 2021. Every collection won that year’s Goodreads Choice Award. That’s because the strips and lead character are accessible, personable, relatable and fetchingly funny.

Autobiographical to a degree I’m unqualified to assess and distressed to acknowledge, what you get are pithy observational comedy gag strips with a semi-surreal undertone about the thoughts and (mostly) inactions of an arty student who lives with an exceptionally critical but ultimately supportive rabbit. Think of it as pictorial inner monologue from a very nervous and unconfident teen, roaring and giddy with hormones and expectations she can’t possibly hope to meet and indoctrinated with standards she can’t let go of…

As well as casual interactions with her peers, major causes of cartoon comment include projections of her eventual senility and decrepitude (‘Me in the Future’), social anxiety, body issues, relationships, housework, fashion, awkwardness, bingeing and attraction through episodes with such enticing titles as ‘Nightmares for Introverts’, ‘When to Change/Wash’, ‘Things I Know’, ‘Habits of the Common Bookworm’, ‘Getting Drunk (For Beginners)’, ‘Social Media in Real Life’, ‘What I Eat on a Typical Day’, ‘5 Phrases that make My Blood Run Colder than Ice’, ‘Watching Stuff’, ‘Things that make me Feel Safe’ and ‘Benefits of Stealing Boys’ Hoodies’.

On less excoriating days you’ll share her views on ‘Normal People’ versus ‘Me’, ‘How Graduating Feels’, ‘Internet Comment Threads’, ‘Folding Laundry’, ‘The Introvert’s Brain’, ‘How to know Your Partner is Serious about the Future’, and the potential of ‘The Future’, so that’s pretty much a view on everything to deal with…

Sarah Andersen was a student at the Maryland Institute College of Art before this took over her life so she knows the value of Extra Credits. That’s why this tome includes lots of strips created specifically for the collection so if you’ve been following her on the interwebs, you’ll still miss some good stuff if you don’t get this delirious delight.
© 2016 by Sarah Andersen. All rights reserved.

Born today in 1887: cartoonist and animator Paul Terry (Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle), and DC’s ubiquitous cartoonist Henry Boltinoff in 1914. In 1944 writer/director Don Glut (The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor, Tragg and the Sky Gods, Captain America, The Invaders, Star Wars, Vampirella) appeared, as did William Messner-Loebs (Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire, Wonder Woman, The Flash) in 1949, with Gerry Shamray (American Splendor) popping by in 1957.

In 2000 we lost mega-talented multi-skilled miracle worker George Roussos (Batman, Air Wave, Fantastic Four, every comic at Marvel and DC in the 1980s).

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Nuts


By Gahan Wilson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-454-2 (HB/Digital edition

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Born on February 18th 1930 and dying November 21st 2019, Gahan Allen Wilson was an illustrator, cartoonist, essayist and author who always had his eyes and heart set on the future. According to Gary Groth, the artist/author grew up reading comic strips as much as fantasy fiction.

It always showed.

The mordantly macabre, acerbically wry and surreal draughtsman tickled funnybones and twanged nerves with his darkly dry graphic confections from the 1960s onwards; contributing superb spoofs, sparklingly horrific and satirically suspenseful drawings and strips and panels as a celebrated regular contributor in such major magazines as Playboy, Collier’s, The New Yorker and others. He also wrote cutting edge science fiction for Again Dangerous Visions, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Twilight Zone Magazine and Realms of Fantasy as well as contributing criticism, book and film reviews for them all.

In an extremely broad and long career he wore dozens of creative hats, even embracing the modern digital universe by creating – with Byron Preiss – his own supernatural computer game Gahan Wilson’s the Ultimate Haunted House.

When National Lampoon first began its devastatingly satirical (geez, do modern folk even recognize satire anymore?) all-out attack on the American Dream, Wilson was invited to contribute a regular strip to their comics section. His sublimely semi-autobiographical, darkly hilarious paean to lost childhood ran from 1972 and until 1981 and was collected as Nuts, another superb compilation from this publisher that you should own and share. Few people – me included – knew that during that period he also, apparently more for fun and relaxation than profit, produced his own syndicated Sunday strip feature. For two years – beginning on March 3rd 1974 – Gahan Wilson Sunday Comics appeared in a small cross-section of newspapers from Boston to Los Angeles and, as with all his work, it bucked a trend.

At a time when most cartoonists were seeking a daily continuity strip, building a readership and eking jokes out with sensible parsimony, Wilson let himself go hog-wild, generating a half-dozen or so single-shot gags every Sabbath, blending his signature weird, wild monsters, uncanny aliens and unsavoury scenes with straight family humour, animal crackers, topical themes and cynically socio-politically astute observations.

Looking at them here it’s clear to me that his intent was to have fun and make himself laugh as much or even more than his readership: capturing those moments when an idea or notion gave him pause to giggle whilst going about his day job…

I’m not going to waste time describing individual cartoons: there are just too many and despite being a fascinating snapshot of ancient life, they’re almost all still outrageously funny in the way and manner that Gary Larson’s Far Side was a scant six years later.

I will say that even whilst generating a storm of humorous, apparently unconnected one-offs, consummate professional Wilson couldn’t restrain himself and eventually the jokes achieved an underlying shape and tone with recurring motifs (clocks, beasts, wallpaper, etc), and features-within-the-feature such as The Creep and Future Funnies…

Here, generally a single-page complete graphic epigram “star” a grotty little chubby homunculus dubbed The Kid. This fabulous monochrome (and occasionally colour) collection gathers that complete serial for collectors and potential addicts in a perfect package that readers will dip into over and over again.

Taking his lead from popular sickly-sweet strips about or starring little children and the brilliant but definitely not jejune Peanuts (which was populated, to all intents and purposes, with teeny-weeny neurotic middle-aged midgets), Wilson sought to do the exact opposite and attempt to access the fear, frustration, confusion and unalloyed joy of being a young, impressionable, powerless, curious and demanding…

… and magnificently succeeded.

Dense, claustrophobic, intense and trenchantly funny, these self-contained strips range from satire to slapstick to agonising irony, linking up over the years to form a fascinating catalogue of growing older in the USA: a fearfully faithful alternate view of childhood and most importantly, of how we adults choose to recall and process those distant days…

Each strip begins with the question “Remember how…?” or “One of the…” or some equally folksy enquiry before unveiling bafflement, bewilderment, night-terrors or a deeply-scarring embarrassment which haunts us till doomsday, all wrapped in a comradely band-of-brothers, shared-coping-mechanism whimsy that is both moving and quintessentially nostalgic.

Topics include the unremitting horror of germs; sudden death; being ill; inappropriate movies; forced visits; grandparents; things adults do that they don’t want you to see; unexplained noises; the butcher’s shop; accidents and rusty nails; things in closets; doctors and needles; dying pets; Santa Claus; seasonal disappointments; summer camp; sleep; bodily functions; school and lessons (two completely different things); fungus; bikes and toys; haircuts; comic books; deaths of relatives; hot weather; candy; overhearing things you shouldn’t; stranger danger; hobby-kits and glue; daydreaming; babies and so many other incomprehensible daily pitfalls on the treacherous path to maturity…

Peppered also with full page, hilariously annotated diagrams of such places of enduring childhood fascination as ‘The Alley’, ‘The Kit for Camp Tall Lone Tree’, ‘Mr. Schultz’s Cigar Store’, ‘The Movie Theater Seat’, ‘Table Set Up For Making Models’, ‘The Doctor’s Waiting Room’, ‘The Closet’, ‘The Sick Bed’ and ‘The Private Drawer’, this glorious procession also covers occasions of heartbreaking poignancy and those stunning, blue moon moments of serendipity and triumph when everything is oh-so-briefly perfect…

Complete with a 3-D strip and ‘Nuts to You’ – a comprehensive appreciation and history by Gary Groth – this funny, sad, chilling and sublimely true picture-passport to growing up is unmissable cartoon gold.
© Fantagraphics Books. All Nuts strips © 2011 Gahan Wilson. All rights reserved.

Today in 1917, Golden Age writer/editor Ruth Roche was born, followed by forgotten genius Joe Maneely in 1926, Gahan Wilson in 1930, Johnny Hart in 1931 and both comic book artist Doug Mahnke and cartoonist Mark Bodé in 1963.

We lost Belgian megastar and Marcinelle School founder Willy Maltaite (“Will”) in 2000 and lifelong multi-style achiever Bob Oksner in 2007.

Comics wise, UK standby Radio Fun (published since 1938) folded today in 1961 and Power Comic Fantastic launched today in 1967.

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Escape from Special


By Miss Lasko-Gross (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-804-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

Little Melissa is a very difficult child: smart and constantly questioning her unconventional parents (easy-going hippie-types) as well as the guards and inmates at her elementary school (both intransigent teachers and status-obsessed kids). Even at six years old, she’s a fiercely independent thinker – the kind of kid modern parents usually dope with Ritalin.

She flounders in all the arenas of childhood, consequently being moved from school to school. She has a child-therapist and like many smart, creative kids has problems with reading. Painfully self-aware but ultimately adamantine, Melissa must endure the social horrors of Special Education.

But please don’t think this is a book about the crushing of a spirit. Whether on a tour-bus with her so-very-hip ‘n’ cool folks, fumbling with classmates or fighting off nightmares, this is a series of skits and sketches that affirm Melissa’s vibrant character: one which can adapt but will never buckle. Illustrated in a powerful primitivist – almost naivest – illustrative style and symbology, the little girl endures and overcomes in tales that are charming, sad, funny, reassuring and just plain strange.

Miss (that’s her name now – she changed it) Lasko-Gross has produced graphic narrative for most of her life, editing the Pratt Institute’s Static Fish comic book, working in Mauled, House of Twelve 2.0, Legal Action Comics, Aim and others whilst generally living the kind of life that finds its way onto the pages of fabulous books like this one. This book was followed by notional sequel A Mess of Everything and in 2015 macabre religious funny animal opus Henni which should also be on the must-see list of every thinking comics consumer.

The powerfully direct stories in Escape from “Special” are of such a high calibre that they’re far beyond some new or trendy genre and demand to be seen by a greater audience who don’t even care if their reading matter has pictures or not. These tales are in the same category as American Splendor, Maus and Persepolis with words wedded to pictures that you’ll revel in for years to come.
© 2006 Miss Lasko-Gross. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1902 Red Ryder co-creator Fred Harman was born, as was Spirou originator “Rob-Vel” (François Robert Velter) in 1909. In 1928 Frank Frazetta joined the party, with Scots script wizard Alan Grant popping along in 1942, just like Jo Duffy in 1954. Two years later Timothy Truman was born, as was French star David B. in 1959. Somehow all that doesn’t really balance the scales as today in 1989 Osamu Tezuka laid down his pens and brushes for the last time.

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Fallen Words


By Yoshihiro Tatsumi, translated by Jocelyne Allen (Drawn & Quarterly)
ISBN: 978-1-77046-074-4 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in really really less enlightened times.

After half a century of virtual obscurity, crafting brilliantly incisive and powerfully personal tales of modern humanity on the margins and on the edge, Yoshihiro Tatsumi (10th June 1935 – 7th March 7, 2015) found “overnight success” in 2009 with his glorious autobiographical work A Drifting Life.

To describe his dark, bleak vignettes of raw real life, in 1957 Tatsumi devised the term Gekiga or “dramatic pictures”, practically if not actually inventing the genre of adult, realistic, socially aware and literary comics stories in Japan. He began his career after WWII, at a time when sequential narratives or “manga” literally meant “Irresponsible” or “Foolish Pictures”: a flashy and fanciful form of cheap, escapist entertainment targeted specifically at children (and the simple-minded) in the years immediately following the cessation of hostilities.

His tales continued in a never-ending progression, detailing the minutiae and momentum of Japanese popular culture and, with his star assured in the manga firmament, turned to a far older aspect of his country’s artistic heritage for this project.

The traditional performance art of Rakugo seems to combine many elements British observers would recognise: reverentially combining familiar tales told many times over such as morality or mystery plays with instructive fables and especially shaggy dog stories. Just like Christmas pantomimes, the art derives from how the story is revamped, retold and re-expressed – although the ending (punchline?) is sacrosanct and must always be delivered in its purest, untrammelled form…

Developing out of the far older Karukuchi and Kobanashi shows, Rakugo was first accepted as a discrete performance style accessible to the lower classes around 1780 CE, during the Edo Period, and going on to establish itself as a popular entertainment which still thrives today, regarded as a type of intimate comedy drama act in Vaudeville theatres.

As with all Japanese art-forms and disciplines, Rakuga is highly structured, strictured and codified, with many off-shoots and subgenres abounding, but basically it’s a one-man show where a storyteller (Rakugoka or Hanashika) relates a broad, widely embellished tale of Old Japan, acting all the parts from a sitting position, with only a paper fan (Sensu) and hand-cloth (Tenegui).

Equal parts humorous monologue, sitcom and stand-up act (or more accurately “kneel-down comedy”, since the Rakugoka never rises from the formal Seiza position) the crucial element is always delivery of the traditional ochi or punchline; inviolate, eagerly anticipated and already deeply ingrained in audience members and baffled foreign onlookers…

As is only fitting, these tales are presented in the traditional back to front, right to left Japanese format with a copious section of notes and commentary, plus an ‘Afterword’ from Mr. Tatsumi himself, and I’d be doing potential readers an immense disservice by being too detailed in my plot descriptions, so I’ll be both brief and vague from now on… as if any of you could tell the difference…

‘The Innkeeper’s Fortune’ relates the salutary events following the arrival of an immensely rich man at a lowly hostel, and what happens after – against his express desires – he wins a paltry 1000 Ryo in a lottery, whilst the ‘New Year Festival’ only serves to remind one reluctant father what a noisome burden his rowdy ungrateful son is…

An itinerant young artist cannot pay his inn bill and, as a promissory note, paints a screen with birds so lifelike they fly off the paper every morning. The populace are willing to pay good money to see the daily ‘Escape of the Sparrows’, more than the bill ever came to.

…And then one day another far more experienced artist wishes to see the screen…

When a dutiful merchant succumbs to the temptations of his trade and engages a mistress, she quickly consumes all his attention, leading to his poor neglected wife trying to kill the homewrecker with sorcery. Soon both women are dead and the merchant is plagued by their ‘Fiery Spirits’, after which ‘Making the Rounds’ details one night in a brothel where four clients are growing increasingly impatient: incensed by the non-appearance of the woman they’ve already paid for…

‘The Rooster Crows’ details the fate of a proud and puritanical young man tricked into visiting a brothel by his friends, whilst a poor and untrained man becomes an infallible doctor after entering into a bargain with ‘The God of Death’. This superb book of fables concludes with the sorry story of a lazy fishmonger who loved to drink, but whose life changed when he found a wallet full of money whilst fishing on ‘Shibahama’ beach – or was it just a dream?

With these “Eight Moral Comedies” Tatsumi succeeded – at least to my naive Western eyes – in translating a phenomenon where plot is so familiar as to be an inconvenience, but where an individual performance on the night is paramount, into a beguiling, charming and yes, funny paean to a uniquely egalitarian entertainment. That bit of graphic literary legerdemain proved him to be a true and responsible guardian of Japanese culture, ancient or modern, and begs the question: why is this glorious tome out of print and not available digitally?
Art and stories © 2009, 2012 Yoshihiro Tatsumi. This edition © 2012 Drawn & Quarterly. All rights reserved.

Today in 1874 pioneering Canadian cartoonist animator and comics creator Vital Achille Raoul Barré was born, just like Belgian Spirou editor Thierry Martens in 1942. One year later American scripter Steve Skeates (T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Aquaman, Hawk & Dove) arrived, but we had to wait until 1958 for Jeph Loeb (Batman: The Long Halloween, loads of others).

On the debit side today in 1977, we lost Bob Brown (Space Ranger, Challengers of the Unknown, Batman, Daredevil, The Avengers) and in 1982 Henry cartoonist John Liney, who can be properly appreciated by seeing Henry Speaks for Himself.

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What I Did


By Jason, translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-414-6 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Absurdly Enchanting Comics Capers… 9/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic, comedic and ironic effect.

Born in 1965 in Molde, Norway, John Arne Sæterøy is known by enigmatic, utilitarian nom de plume Jason. The shy & retiring auteur first took the path to cartoon superstardom in 1995, once debut graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) won Norway’s biggest comics prize: the Sproing Award. From 1987 he had contributed to alternate/indie magazine KonK while studying graphic design and illustration at Oslo’s Art Academy.

From there he took on Norway’s National School of Arts and, on graduating in 1994, founded his own comic – Mjau Mjau. Constantly refining his style into a potent form of meaning-mined anthropomorphic minimalism, Jason cited Lewis Trondheim, Jim Woodring & Tex Avery as primary influences. He moved to Copenhagen, working at Studio Gimle alongside Ole Comoll Christensen (Excreta, Mar Mysteriet Surn/Mayday Mysteries, Den Anden Praesident, Det Tredje Ojet) & Peter Snejbjerg (Den skjulte protocol/The Hidden Protocol, World War X, Tarzan, Books of Magic, Batman: Detective 27). Jason’s efforts were internationally recognised, making waves in France, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Germany and other Scandinavian countries as well as the Americas. He won another Sproing in 2001 – for self-published series Mjau Mjau – and in 2002 turned nigh-exclusively to producing graphic novels. He won even more major awards.

His breadth of interest is wide & deep: comics, movies, animated cartoons, music, literature art history and pulp fiction all feature equally with no sense of rank or hierarchy. Jason’s puckish, egalitarian mixing & matching of inspirational sources always and inevitably produces picture-treatises well worth a reader’s time. Over a succession of tales he has built and re-employed a repertory company of stock characters to explore deceptively simplistic milieux based on classic archetypes distilled from movies, childhood yarns, historical and literary favourites. These all role-play in deliciously absurd and surreal sagas centred on his preferred themes of relationships and loneliness. Latterly, Jason returned to such “found” players as he built his own highly esoteric universe, and even has a whole bizarre bunch of them “team-up” or clash…

As always, visual/verbal bon mots unfold in beguiling, sparse-dialogued (or even, as here, silently pantomimic) progressions, with compellingly formal page layouts rendered in a pared back stripped-down interpretation of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style: solid blacks, thick outlines dominating settings of seductive monochrome simplicity augmented by a beguiling palette of stark pastels and muted primary colours.

A master of short-form illustrated tales, many Jason yarns have been released as snappy little albums perfect for later inclusion in longer anthology collections like this one which gathers a triptych of his very best. The majority of tales brim with bleak isolation, swamped by a signature surreality. They are, as warned, largely populated with cinematically-inspired, darkly comedic, charmingly macabre animal people ruminating on inescapable concerns whilst re-enacting bizarrely cast, bestial movie tributes

This sterling hard cover compilation gathers ‘Hey, Wait…’, ‘Sshhhh!’ and ‘The Iron Wagon’ which first appeared in Mjau Mjau between 1997 & 2001, and if you’re keeping score, the reviews and illustrations are taken from the 2018 second edition…

The volume opens with an eerie and glorious and wildly funny paean to boyhood friendships – in the manner of the movie Stand By Me – as young Bjorn and Jon enjoy a life of perfect childhood until a tragic accident ends the idyll and reshapes them forever. Life, however, goes on, but for one of the lads it’s an existence populated forever onwards with ghosts and visions…

Jason’s work always jumps directly into the reader’s brain and heart, using the beastly and unnatural to gently pose eternal questions about basic human needs in a soft but relentless quest for answers. That you don’t ever notice the deep stuff because of the clever gags and safe, familiar funny-animal characters should indicate just how good a cartoonist he is…

‘Sshhhh!’ is a delightfully evocative romantic melodrama created without words: a bittersweet extended tale of boy-bird meeting girl-bird in a world overly populated with spooks and ghouls and skeletons but afflicted far more harshly by missed chances, loneliness and regret.

These comic tales are strictly for adults but allow us all to look at the world through wide-open young eyes. This is especially true of the final tale in this collection – a slyly beguiling adaptation of a classic detective story from 1909, but enhanced to a macabre degree by the easy cartooning, skilled use of silence and moment and a two-tone colour palette.

As you’d expect of a classic “Scandi-crime drama” ‘The Iron Wagon’ is a clever, enthralling and deeply dark mystery yarn originally written by Stein Riverton, and has the same quality of cold yet harnessed stillness which makes the Swedish television adaptations of Henning Mankell’s Wallander so superior to those English-language interpretations. Here, the stylised artwork is delivered in formalised page layouts; solid blacks, thick lines and settings of seductive simplicity are augmented here by stunning Deep Red overlays to enhance the Hard Black and Genteel White he usually prefers.

In the coastal retreat of Hvalen a desperate author is haunted by ghosts and nightmares. However, the townsfolk are all too engrossed with the death of the game warden on the Gjaernes Estate to notice or care. The family seems cursed with constant troubles. First the old man was lost at sea, now the murder of Warden Blinde just as he was betrothed to Hilde Gjaernes blights the farm. People are talking, saying it’s all the fault of the long dead grandfather who lost his fortune and life dabbling with weird inventions…

Even now, sensitive souls still hear his accursed Iron Wagon roaring through the night, presaging another death in the village…

Luckily there are more sensible folk abroad to summon a detective from Kristiania (Oslo), but Asbjørn Krag is not the kind of policeman anybody was anticipating and as the young writer becomes enmired in the horrific unfolding events, he realises that not only over-imaginative fools hear things.

In the depths of the night’s stillness he too shudders at the roaring din of the Iron Wagon…

Moody, suspenseful and utterly engrossing, this would be a terrific yarn even without Jason’s superbly understated art, but in combination the result is pure dynamite.

This collection – despite being “merely” early works – resonates with the artist’s signature themes and shines with his visual dexterity. It’s one of Jason’s very best and will warm the cockles of any fan’s heart.
All characters, stories, and artwork © 2010 Jason. All rights reserved.

Today in 1900 cartoonist Otto Soglow was born; he’s most revered for The Little King strip. Someone else utterly neglected by modern comics publishers is wartime patriot and Anglo-Canadian creator Jon Stables AKA Jon St. Ables (get it?) who carried most of the creative workload at Maple Leaf Comics until it closed down in 1946. As he was born in 1912, he had to find other artistic outlets until his death in 1999. And he did.

A year earlier (in 1998, okay?) we lost the astounding Joe Orlando. The editor who saved DC in the late 1960s through his horror comics revival was also a superb illustrator, gag-guy and story-man, as you could see in Judgment Day and Other Stories or any of the superb DC horror comics editions we’ve covered over the decades.

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Little Nothings volumes 1-4: The Curse of the Umbrella, The Prisoner Syndrome, Uneasy Happiness, My Shadow in the Distance



By Lewis Trondheim, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM/ComicsLit)
ISBN: vol. 1: 978-1-56163-523-8 (Album PB), vol. 2: 978-1-56163-548-1 (Album PB),

vol. 3: 978-1-56163-576-4(Album PB), 978-1-56163-523-8 (Album PB),

I first became aware of Lewis Trondheim’s subtly enchanting vignettes in Fantagraphics’ Mome comics anthologies rather than through its internet presence and it’s a constant and utter delight for this old duffer (me, not him) to see this blend of cartoon philosophy, personal introspection, whimsical inquiry and foible-filled observations gathered into such handy tomes for constant re-reading. With over 100 books sporting his name (which isn’t actually Lewis Trondheim but Laurent Chabosy), the writer/artist/editor/educator is one of Europe’s most prolific comics creators: illustrating his own work, overseeing animated cartoons of such print successes as La Mouche (The Fly) and Kaput and Zösky or editing younger readers books (Dargaud’s series Shampooing).

His most famous works are global hits Les Formidables Aventures de Lapinot (translated as The Spiffy Adventures of McConey), Infinity 8, Ralph Azam and, with Joann Sfar, epic nested fantasy series Donjon as seen anglicised as Dungeon, Dungeon: Parade, Dungeon: Monstres, Dungeon: the Early Years et al. In his spare time he has written for satirical magazine Psikopat and provided scripts for the continent’s most popular artists, such as Fabrice Parme, Manu Larcenet, José Parrondo and Thierry Robin. Trondheim is, of course, a cartoonist of uncanny wit: piercing, gentle perspicacity, comforting affability and self-deprecating empathy, and prefers to control scrupulously what is known and said about him…

Some while ago the well-travelled graphic introvert began drawing a deliciously intimate cartoon blog wherein all the people Trondheim knows are rendered as anthropomorphised animals (with him a dowdy, parrot-beaked actor/director) which has been edited into a series of enchanting full-colour albums. Page after page of introspective, whimsical, querulous and enticingly intriguing reportage has emerged since.

Volume 1 – The Curse of the Umbrella – features ruminations on gardening and possessing a vegetable death-touch; introduces his family; examines a love-hate relationship with technology and computer games, also covering the dramas of becoming first time cat-owners at an advanced (human) age. Similarly scrutinised are hypochondria and the internet’s impact as an enabler of such recurs, as also work-processes for the self-employed, snacks, keeping fit, memory, death, bird-poop, the weather and travel to comics events in exotic locations such as the Reunion Islands and Edinburgh.

The daily bulletins explore little events and really big themes and there are also purely visual moments that you just have to see to appreciate and get…

In second volume The Prisoner Syndrome, the cascade of cartoon delights continues with more of the same whilst adding summer beach madness, floating with the fishes, exploring volcanoes, ecology and hotel wastefulness, comic convention memory (so different from the regular kind). There’s animal antics, travel, energy-saving, visiting Africa, Guadeloupe, Romania and London, the differences between men and women, global political crises and the heartbreaking helplessness and inevitable consequences of seeing your pet die.

Third stanza Uneasy Happiness sees our absurdly bird-faced gentleman amicably nit-picking and further musing his way through the life of an old and successful comic creator: travelling to conventions, making stories and dealing with the distressingly peculiar modern world, especially focusing on his increasing hoarding proclivities, concerns over his creative and financial legacy, mice in the bookshelves and packing…

The ruminations and anti-dramas regularly range from his inability to de-clutter (every comic maven’s weakness!), toilet etiquette (public and private), gadgets, marriage, parenthood, the actual science in TV shows, how mad are cats, brilliant ideas that come when you’re asleep, computers (again and still!), and getting old, all interspersed with reactions to the many wonderful places he has visited on the comics convention circuit (Venice, Portugal, Fiji, Australia and others in this volume alone).

My Shadow in the Distance was the fourth Little Nothings accumulation of deliciously rendered watercolour epigrams…

This collection focuses heavily on Trondheim’s global peregrinations – with and without his family – to such far-flung places as Iceland, America (for an extended and hilariously unsettling family vacation spanning New York to Las Vegas), Quebec & Canada, Germany, Prague, Madrid, Italy, Corsica, Argentina, Ushuaia, Antarctica and Africa, with all attendant joys and night-terrors such voyages engender for him.

As ever, the auteur highlights the ways in which humans vary whilst remaining intrinsically similar – although only my own German forebears could possibly have devised such a brilliant method of enhancing and yet sanitising men’s urinal experiences…

Trondheim also finds time and space to ponder the inevitable decline in quality of movie sequels; roaming credit-card charges; his health, travel etiquette and preparation; the pitfalls of snacking; airports everywhere; the urge to eavesdrop; varying quality of hotels; weather & climate; forgetfulness; comics conventions; fans & professionals; personal space & getting old; skiing holidays; making your own music and what cats are good for before concluding with an extended if rather grotesque episode covering nasal polyp surgery and his inevitable overreaction to it…

All genteelly re-coloured for book publication, Little Nothings is easily one of the most comforting, compelling biographical comics series ever created: gently contemplative, subtly pleasing and ineffably something no fan of any advanced or significant vintage would care to miss. I once more strongly suggest that if you need a little non-theological, un-theosophical yet hilariously existential spiritual refreshment you take advantage of these visual bon mots toot da sweet and with the utmost alacrity…
© 2009-2010 Trondheim. English translation © 2010, 2011 NBM. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1934, Batman, Phantom and Aquaman artist Don Newton was born. In 1977 landmark UK comic Action was controversially cancelled. In 2003 US artist John Tartaglione died. He was a solid journeyman best know now for his inking during the 1960s and 1970s but he was good at his job and should be lauded for it. Go Google or scroll about on this blog for more.

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Approximate Continuum Comics


By Lewis Trondheim, edited & translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-410-8 (TPB)

With well over 100 books sporting his name (which isn’t actually Lewis Trondheim but Laurent Chabosy), the writer/artist/editor and educator is one of Europe’s most prolific comics creators: illustrating his own work and working with the industry’s top artists; overseeing animated cartoons of print successes like La Mouche (The Fly) and Kaput and Zösky and even editing younger readers book series Shampooing for Dargaud. His most famous works are the global hits Les Formidables Aventures de Lapinot (translated as The Spiffy Adventures of McConey) and, with Joann Sfar, the Donjon (Dungeon) series of nested fantasy epics (see the translated Dungeon: Parade, Dungeon: Monstres and Dungeon: the Early Years).

Tireless and prolific, he has written for everything from satirical magazine Psikopat to Le Journal de Spirou and Walt Disney. His scripts for the continent’s most popular artists include Le Roi Catastrophe and Vénézia with Fabrice Parme, Les Cosmonautes du futur (Manu Larcenet), Allez Raconte and Papa Raconte (José Parrondo), Politique étrangère (with Jochen Gerner and which Trondheim adapted into an opera in 2009) and Petit Pére Noël (Thierry Robin).

He is a cartoonist of uncanny wit, piercing, gentle perspicacity, comforting affability and self-deprecating empathy who prefers to control scrupulously what is known and said about him…

I first became aware of Lewis Trondheim’s subtly engaging comics mannerism in Fantagraphics’ Mome anthologies which reprinted excerpts of his utterly entrancing comics blog Little Nothings, wherein Trondheim’s friends and acquaintances, rendered and simultaneously masked as anthropomorphised animals (with him a dowdy, parrot-beaked central figure) revisit episodes of his life, flavoured with philosophy, personal introspection, whimsical inquiry and foible-filled observations.

These mini-treats were gathered into four terrific tomes of drawn diaries for constant re-reading (Little Nothings: Curse of the Umbrella, The Prisoner Syndrome, Uneasy Happiness and My Shadow in the Distance). You might still find the first three available as collected gift set Bigger Nothings…

However, before all that, in 1993 Trondheim first explored the idea as a 4-issue American-styled comic book project and those prototypical slices of wry and winning reportage are finally available in a translated black and white softcover collection. Some of the very first autobiographical works on the French bande dessinée scene, these little gems were a genuine game-changer for cartoonists and storytellers, prompting a rise in personal stories that has generated many works to rival the best of Harvey Pekar himself and created a new (sub)genre of graphic narrative…

In this collected Approximate Continuum Comics the signature blend of visualised introspection and self-condemnatory flagellation finds the younger Trondheim questioning his own professional integrity; violently and graphically wish-fulfilling his way through rush-hour crowds (haven’t we all?); planning – for which read risk-assessing – his forthcoming marriage and dealing with his unfathomable Japanese publisher during the early days of creating his multi-media hit La Mouche.

He regularly gets lost in his own free-associating daydreams and rightly fears being castigated by his own conscience for swimming in megalomania, indecisiveness, forthrightness and deference. Trondheim’s many inner voices don’t like him very much: there are myriad incidences of self-abuse where his alternate egos beat the crap out of him; counterbalanced with gloriously loaded “real-world” episodes where he lampoons and embarrasses his fellow studio-mates of publishing collective L’Association. (To be fair these are fabulously balanced by a marvellous section at the book’s end where such maligned and injured creative colleagues as David B., Emile Bravo, Didier Tronchet, Jean-Christophe Menu, Killofer & Philippe Dupuy among others, as well as civilian friends, his wife Brigitte and even his mother all get a trenchant and routinely hilarious right-to-reply.)

The first inklings of the artist’s perennial problems with technology in general and computer games in particular appear here, as do many childhood memoirs and sundry diatribes against people and places either experienced or sometimes only imagined. One of the best sequences concerns the trip-of-a-lifetime to America (first of many, but he didn’t know that then…) and his apparent inability to think of one single strip idea about it, only surpassed by his behaviour at a raucous party held in his beloved studio.

During the course of these cartoon capers, Trondheim married his fiancée, sired his first child and moved into a new home, but although these major events are thoroughly and compellingly covered they still pale into insignificance against the spectacular battles against his inevitably spreading paunch, obsessively mean-spirited self-criticism and the thunderbolt-like occasional phone call from his mum. …And whenever that’s no longer painful enough there’s always the violent physical assaults and punishment-beatings from his inner selves…

Personal favourites of mine include Les petits riens, Tiny Tyrant, Ralph Azham, Mr. O, Archives of Lost Issues, Mister I, Infinity 8 and A.L.I.E.E.E.N. but if you fancy other kinds of fare, Trondheim’s probably covered whatever you fancy and done it with wit and aplomb…

Superbly skilled at switching imperceptibly from broad self-parody to cripplingly honest and  painful personal revelation; wild surrealism to powerful reportage and from clever humorous observation to howling existentialist inquisition, Trondheim’s cartoon interior catalogue is always a supremely rewarding and enjoyable experience and, as these ancient texts prove, always has been…
© 2001 Lewis Trondheim and Cornélius. This edition © 2011 Fantagraphics Books. All Rights Reserved.

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The Complete Crumb Comics volumes 1 & 2: The Early Years of Bitter Struggle & Some More Early Years of Bitter Struggle


By Robert Crumb and Charles Crumb (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-0-93019-343-0 (HB vol 1) 978-0-93019-362-8 (TPB vol 1)

ISBN: 978-0-93019-373-7(HB vol 2) 978-0-93019-362-1 (TPB vol 2)

These books employ Discriminatory Content for comedic and dramatic effect.

Immensely divisive but a key figure in the evolution of comics as an art form, Robert Crumb was born today 81 years ago. He is a unique creative force in the world of cartooning with as many detractors as devotees. His uncompromising, excoriating, neurotic introspections, pictorial rants and invectives unceasingly picked away at societal scabs and peeked behind forbidden curtains for his own benefit, but he has always happily shared his unwholesome discoveries with anybody who takes the time to look. Last time I looked, he’s still going strong…

In 1987 Fantagraphics Books began the nigh-impossible task of collating, collecting and publishing the chronological totality of the artist’s vast output. The earliest volumes have been constantly described as the least commercial and, as far as I know, remain out of print, but contrary as ever, I’m reviewing them anyway before the highly controversial but inarguably art-form enfant terrible/bête noir/shining hope finally puts down his pens forever. A noted critic of Donald Trump, he might well be hanging on just for the sheer satisfaction of outliving ol’ Taco-scabby paws…

The son of a career soldier, Robert Dennis Crumb was born in Philadelphia in 1943 into a functionally broken family. He was one of five kids who all found different ways to escape their parents’ shattering problems and comics were always paramount amongst them.

As had his older brother Charles, Robert immersed himself in strips and cartoons of the day; not simply reading but feverishly creating his own. Harvey Kurtzman, Carl Barks and John Stanley were particularly influential, but so were newspaper artists like E.C. Segar, Gene Ahern, Rube Goldberg, Bud (Mutt and Jeff) Fisher, Billy (Barney Google), De Beck, George (Sad Sack) Baker and Sidney (The Gumps) Smith, as well as illustrators like C.E. Brock and the wildly imaginative and surreal 1930’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts.

Defensive and introspective, young Robert pursued art and slavish self-control through religion with equal desperation. His early spiritual repression and flagrant, hubristic celibacy constantly warred with his body’s growing needs…

Escaping a stormy early life, he married young and began working in-house at the American Greeting Cards Company. He discovered like minds in the growing counterculture movement and discovered LSD. In 1967 Crumb relocated to California to become an early star of Underground Commix. As such he found plenty of willing hippie chicks to assuage his fevered mind and hormonal body whilst reinventing the very nature of cartooning with such creations as Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, Devil Girl and a host of others. The rest is history…

Those tortured formative years provide the meat of first volume The Early Years of Bitter Struggle, which, after ‘Right Up to the Edge’ – a comprehensive background history and introduction from lifelong confidante Marty Pahls – begins revealing the troubled master-in-waiting’s amazingly proficient childhood strips from self-published Foo #1-3 (a mini-comic project passionately produced by Robert and older brother Charles from September to November 1958).

Rendered in pencils, pens and whatever else was handy; inextricably wedded to those aforementioned funnybooks, strips and animated shorts cited above, the mirthful merry-go-round opens with ‘Report From the Brussels World’s Fair!’ and ‘My Encounter With Dracula!’: frantic, frenetic pastiches of the artists’ adored Mad magazine material, with Robert already using a graphic avatar of himself for narrative purposes. Closely following are the satirical ‘Clod of the Month Award’, ‘Khrushchev Visits U.S.!!’ and ‘Noah’s Ark’.

From 1959, ‘Treasure Island Days’ is a rambling gag-encrusted shaggy dog Russian Roulette experiment created by the lads each concocting a page and challenging the other to respond and continue the unending epic, after which ‘Cat Life’ followed family pet Fred’s fanciful antics from September 1959 to February 1960 before morphing (maybe “anthropomorphing”) into an early incarnation of Fritz the Cat in ‘Robin Hood’…

That laconic stream of cartoon-consciousness resolved into raucous, increasingly edgy saga ‘Animal Town’ followed here by a very impressive pin-up ‘Fuzzy and Brombo’, before a central full-colour section provides a selection of spoof covers. Four ‘R. Crumb Almanac’ images – all actually parts of letters to Pahls – are complemented by three lovely ‘Arcade’ covers, swiftly followed by a return to narrative monochrome and ‘A Christmas Tale’ which saw Crumb’s confused and frustrated sexuality begin to assert itself in his still deceptively mild-mannered work.

A progression of 11 single-page strips produced between December 1960 – May 1961 precedes 3 separate returns to an increasingly mature and wanton ‘Animal Town’ – all slowly developing the beast who would become Crumb’s first star, until Fritz bows out in favour of ‘Mabel’ – a prototypical big and irresistible woman of the type Crumb would legendarily have trouble with – before  this initial volume concludes with another authorial starring role in the Jules Feiffer/Explainers-inspired ‘A Sad Comic Strip’ from March 1962.

 

Second volume Some More Early Years of Bitter Struggle continues the odyssey after another Pahls reminiscence – ‘The Best Location in the Nation…’ describes a swiftly maturing deeply unsatisfied Crumb’s jump from unhappy home to the unsatisfying world of work. ‘Little Billy Bean’ (April 1962) returns to the hapless, loveless nebbish of ‘A Sad Comic Strip’ whilst ‘Fun with Jim and Mabel’ revisits Crumb’s bulky, morally-challenged amazon prior to focus shifting to her diminutive and feeble companion ‘Jim’.

Next, an almost fully-realised ‘Fritz the Cat’ finally gets it on in a triptych of saucy soft-core escapades from R. Crumb’s self-generated Arcade mini-comic project. From this point on, the varied and exponentially impressive breadth of Crumb’s output becomes increasingly riddled with his frequently hard-to-embrace themes and declamatory, potentially offensive visual vocabulary as his strips grope towards a creator’s long-sought personal artistic apotheosis.

His most intimate and disturbing idiosyncrasies regarding sex, women, ethnicity, personal worth and self-expression all start to surface here…

Therefore, if intemperate language, putative blasphemy, cartoon nudity, fetishism and comedic fornication are liable to upset you or those legally responsible for you, stop reading this review right here and don’t seek out the book.

Working in the production department of a vast greetings card company gave the insular Crumb access to new toys and new inspiration as seen in the collection of ‘Roberta Smith, Office Girl’ gag strips from American Greetings Corporation Late News Bulletins (November 1963 – April 1964), followed here by another Fritz exploit enigmatically entitled ‘R. Crumb Comics and Stories’ which includes just a soupcon of raunchy cartoon incest, so keep the smelling salts handy…

A selection of beautiful sketchbook pages comes next and a full-colour soiree of faux covers: letters to Pahls and Mike Britt disguised as ‘Farb’ and ‘Note’ front images as well as a brace of Arcade covers and the portentously evocative front of R. Crumb’s Comics and Stories #1 from April 1964. The rest of this pivotal collection is given over to 30 more pages culled from the artist’s sketchbooks: a vast and varied compilation ably displaying Crumb’s incredible virtuosity and proving that if he had been able to suppress his creative questing Robert could easily have settled for a lucrative career in any one of a number of graphic disciplines from illustrator to animator to jobbing comic book hack.

Crumb’s subtle mastery of his art form and obsessive need to expose his most hidden depths and every perceived defect – in himself and the world around him – has always been an unquenchable fire of challenging comedy and riotous rumination, and these initial tomes are the secret to understanding the creative causes, if not the artistic affectations of this unique craftsman and auteur.

This superb series charting the perplexing pen-and-ink pilgrim’s progress was the perfect vehicle to introduce any (over 18) newcomers to the world of grown up comics. And if you need a way in yourself, seek out these books and the other fifteen as soon as conceivably possible. Or, just perhaps, Fantagraphics could unleash them all again and include digital editions for these artistic pearls of immeasurable price…
Report From the Brussels World’s Fair!, My Encounter With Dracula!, Clod of the Month Award, Khrushchev Visits U.S.!! & Noah’s Ark © 1980 Robert and Charles Crumb. Other art and stories © 1969, 1974, 1978, 1987, 1988 Robert Crumb. All rights reserved.

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Barefoot Gen volume 10: Never Give Up


By Keiji Nakazawa (Last Gasp)
ISBN: 978-0-86719-601-6 (TPB) 978-0-86719-840-9 (HB/School Edition)

Whilst we are all commemorating the 80th anniversary of VJ Day (the Americans hold theirs on September 2nd), it’s only appropriate to remember how that war ended and what victory and defeat meant to a world forever changed after the conclusion. In comics, that means Keiji Nakazawa and Hadashi no Gen. A standby of anti-nuclear movements since first release in 1983, new hardback editions combining two paperback editions per volume are underway and will be on sale from January 15th 2026 – if we manage to live that long. You could wait or even check out our past reviews or simply save your time & energy by buying the still-available 10 tank?bon set right now.

After many years of struggle the entire piecemeal epic semi-autobiographical saga was remastered as an unabridged and uncompromising 10-volume English-language translation by Last Gasp under the auspices of Project Gen: a multinational organisation dedicated to peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons. Constantly revised and refined by its creator until his death from lung cancer in December 2012, Barefoot Gen is the quintessential anti-war tract and plea to humanity for peace. The combined volumes are angry and uncompromising, and never forgive those who seek to perpetuate greed, mendacity and bloody-handed stupidity.

Hadashi no Gen was first seen in Japan in 1973, serialised in Gekkan Shōnen Janpu Jampu (Monthly Boys Jump) following an occasional 1972 series of stand-alone stories in various magazines which included Kuroi Ame ni Utarete (Struck by Black Rain) and Aru Hi Totsuzen (One Day, Suddenly).

The scattered tales eventually led Shonen Jump’s editor Tadasu Nagano to commission 45-page Ore wa Mita (I Saw It) for a Monthly Jump special devoted to autobiographical works. Nagano clearly recognised that the author – an actual survivor of the world’s first atomic atrocity – had much more to say which readers needed to see and commissioned the serial which has grown into this stunning landmark epic.

The tale was always controversial in a country which still generally prefers to ignore rather than confront past mistakes and indiscretions and, after 18 months, Hadashi no Gen was removed from Jump, transferring firstly to Shimin (Citizen), then Bunka Hyåron (Cultural Criticism), and Kyåiku Hyåron (Educational Criticism). Just like his indomitable hero, Keiji Nakazawa never gave up and his persistence led to a first Japanese book collection in 1975, translated by the newly-constituted Project Gen team into Russian, English and other languages including Norwegian, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, Indonesian, Tagalog and Esperanto.

Born in March 14th 1939 and changed forever on August 6th 1945, the hibakusha (“atom bomb survivor”) author first completed his account in 1985 and his telling testament of survival has since been adapted into live-action & anime films; operas; musicals and live television dramas; each spreading the message across every continent and all generations.

Today we’re looking again at the concluding volume which brings the story of irrepressible, ebullient Gen and his friends to a close. One last time we see the forceful vitality of a select band of bomb survivors pitted against the constant shadow of tragedy which implacably dogs them in the city slowly recovering from nuclear conflagration.

Here the indomitable idealistic individualist, having finally found a way to express his anger and effectively fight back against the idiocies and injustices of a world which lets Atom bombs fall but is seemingly incapable of learning from its mistakes, at last strikes back at the demagogues and monsters who still keep the bad old ways alive… even after their people suffered the most hideous of consequences…

Barefoot Gen: Never Give Up begins following an inspirational ‘Gen’s Message: A Plea for Nuclear Abolition’ by the Translators & Editors and – as previously – the other end of this monochrome paperback balances the essay with a biography of the author and invaluable data ‘About Project Gen’…

The graphic manifesto resumes in March 1953 as Gen prepares for his school graduation ceremony, despite seldom attending that hidebound institution over the past few years. Fellow bomb orphans Ryuta and quietly stolid Musubi – who have shared Gen’s shabby shack for years – are also in high spirits. They have been constantly selling dresses made by radiation-scarred outcast Katsuko on Hiroshima’s rebuilt street corners, diligently saving the proceeds until she has enough money to open a shop. Now the manager of one of the big stores wants to buy all the clothes they can manufacture to sell in his fashionable venues…

At the Graduation Ceremony Gen once again loses his temper when the faculty begin memorialising the past and celebrating the failed regime of the empire. Later, his savage confrontation with teachers and visiting dignitaries sparks a minor student revolution. For many of the juvenile delinquents it’s also an opportunity to inflict some long-delayed retribution on the educational bullies who have oppressed and beaten them for years…

Encouragingly, however, not all parents and attending adults take the teachers’ side, and a potentially murderous confrontation is (rather violently) defused by Gen. The boy’s life then changes forever when he bumps into a young woman and is instantly smitten. His pursuit of Mitsuko will bring him into conflict with her brutal father, former employer and unrepentant war-lover Nakao who is now a highly successful businessman going places in the reconstructed city…

Gen has been studying with elderly artist Seiga Amano, learning the skills his own father would have passed on had he not died in 1945. The mentor/father-figure encourages his protégé to pursue Mitsuko… and it costs them both their jobs. However, the seeming setback is in fact liberating and before long the star-crossed youngsters are in a fevered euphoria of first love. So engaged is Gen that he is not there when stolid Musubi is targeted by a cruel Yakuza honeytrap who addicts him to drugs before fleecing him of all Katsuko’s hard-earned savings…

With a happy ending so close he can touch it, Gen is dragged back down to earth by a trio of tragedies which leave him near-broken and all alone. The legacies of the bombing have again cost him almost everything…

After a horrendous bout of death and vengeance-taking, Gen seems to have nothing to live for, but the despondent young man is saved by aged Amano who rekindles his spirit and wisely advises him to get out of Hiroshima and start his real life in the world beyond it…

Keiji Nakazawa’s broad cartoon art style has often been subject of heated discussion; his simplified Disney-esque rendering felt by some to be at odds with the subject matter, and perhaps diluting the impact of the message. I’d like to categorically refute that.

The style springs from his earliest influence, Osamu Tezuka, Father of Anime & God of Manga who began his career in 1946 and whose works – Shin Takarajima/New Treasure Island, Tetsuwan Atomu/Astro Boy and so many more – assuaged some of the grim realities of being hibakusha, providing escape, hope and even a career path to the young illustrator. Even at its most bleak and traumatic the epic never forgets to shade horror with humour and counterpoint crushing loss with fiery idealism and enthusiasm.

As such the clear line, solid black forms and abstracted visual motifs act as tolerable symbols for much of the horror in this parable. The art defuses but never dilutes the horror of the tragedy and its aftermath. The reader has to be brought through the tale to receive the message and for that purpose drawings are accurate, simplified and effective. The intent is not to repel (and to be honest, even as they are they’re still pretty hard to take) but to inform, to warn.

Shocking. Momentous. Bleak and violent but ultimately astoundingly uplifting, Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen is without peer and its legacy will be pervasive and long-lasting. So now you’ve been warned, buy this old book. Buy the entire series. Buy the new editions as they come out. Tell everyone you know about it. Barefoot Gen is an indisputable classic and should be available to absolutely everyone.
© 2009 Keiji Nakazawa. All rights reserved.

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Willie and Joe: The WWII Years


By Bill Mauldin, edited by Todd DePastino (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-439-9 (PB/Digital edition) 978-1-56097-838-1 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

During World War II a talented, ambitious young man named William Henry “Bill” Mauldin (29/10/1921 – 22/01/2003) fought “Over There” with the 45th Division of the United States Infantry, as well as many other fine units of the army. He learned to hate war and love his brothers in arms – and the American fighting man loved him back. During his time in the service he produced civilian cartoons for the Oklahoma City Times and The Oklahoman, and devastatingly, intimately effective and authentic material for his Company Periodical, 45th Division News. He also drew for Yank and Stars and Stripes: the US Armed Forces newspapers. Soon after starting, his cartoons were being reproduced in newspapers across Europe and America. They mostly featured two slovenly “dogfaces” – a term he popularised – offering their informed, trenchant and laconic view of the war from the muddied tip of the sharpest of Sharp Ends…

Willie and Joe, much to the dismay of the brassbound, spit-&-polish military martinets and diplomatic doctrinaires, became the unshakable, everlasting image of the American soldier: continually exposing in all ways and manners the stuff upper echelons of the army would prefer remained top secret. Not war secrets, but how the men at arms lived, felt and died. Willie and Joe even became the subject of two films (Up Front -1951 and Back at the Front – 1952) whilst Willie made the cover of Time magazine in 1945, when 23-year old Mauldin won his first Pulitzer Prize. If you’ve ever read a Bob Kanigher war story – especially any Sgt Rock and Easy Company – the cast are all wearing their war the Willie and Joe way…

In 1945, a collection of his drawings, accompanied by a powerfully understated and heartfelt documentary essay, was published by Henry Holt and Co. Up Front was a sensation, telling the American public about the experiences of their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands in a way no historian would or did. A biography, Back Home, followed in 1947.

Mauldin’s anti-war, anti-Idiots-in-Charge-of-War views became increasingly unpopular during the Cold War between East and West that followed “The Big One” and, despite being a certified War Hero, Mauldin’s increasingly political cartoon work fell out of favour (those efforts are the subject companion volume Willie & Joe: Back Home). Mauldin left the increasing hostile and oversight-ridden business to become a journalist and illustrator. He became a film actor for a while (appearing in, amongst other movies, Red Badge of Courage with veteran war hero Audie Murphy) then worked as a war correspondent during the Korean War and – after an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 1956 – finally returned to newspaper cartooning in 1958.

Mauldin retired in 1991 after a long, glittering and award-studded career. He only drew Willie and Joe four times in that entire period (for an article on the “New Army” for Life magazine; for the funerals of “Soldier’s Generals” Omar Bradley and George C. Marshall and to eulogize fellow war cartoonist Milton Caniff). His fondest wish had been to kill the iconic dogfaces off on the final day of World War II, but Stars and Stripes vetoed it…

The Willie and Joe characters and cartoons are some of the most enduring and honest symbols of all military history. Every Veterans Day in Peanuts from 1969 to 1999, fellow veteran Charles Schulz had Snoopy turn up at Mauldin’s house to drink root beers and tell war stories with an old pal. When you read any DC war comic you’re looking at Mauldin’s legacy. Archie Goodwin even cheekily drafted the shabby professionals for a couple of classy guest-shots in Star-Spangled War Stories (see Showcase Presents the Unknown Soldier please link to 3rd June 2020).

This immense, mostly monochrome paperback (which includes some very rare colour/sepia items) compendium comes in at 704 pages: 229 x 178mm for the physical copy or any size you want if you get the digital edition, assembling all his known wartime cartoons as originally released in two hardback editions in 2008. It features not only the iconic dogface duo, but also the drawings, illustrations, sketches and gags that led, over 8 years of army life, to their creation.

Mauldin produced most of his work for Regimental and Company newspapers whilst actually under fire, perfectly capturing the life and context of fellow soldiers – also under battlefield conditions – and shared a glimpse of that unique and bizarre existence to their families and civilians at large, despite constant military censorship and even face-to-face confrontations with Generals.

George Patton was perennially incensed at the image the cartoonist presented to the world, but fortunately Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower – if not a fan – knew the strategic and morale value of Mauldin’s Star Spangled Banter and Up Front features with those indomitable everymen Willie and Joe…

This far removed in time, many of the pieces here might need historical context for modern readers and such is comprehensively provided by the Notes section to the rear. Also included are unpublished pieces and pages, early cartoon works, and rare notes, drafts and sketches. Most strips, composites and full-page gags, however, are sublimely transparent in their message and meaning: lampooning entrenched stupidity and cupidity, administrative inefficiency and sheer military bloody-mindedness. They highlight equally the miraculous perseverance and unquenchable determination of ordinary guys to get the job done while defending their only inalienable right: to gripe and goof off whenever the brass weren’t around…

Most importantly, Mauldin never patronised civilians or demonised the enemy: the German and Italian combatants and civilians are usually in the same dismal boat as “Our Boys” and only the war and its brass-bound conductors are worthy of his ink-smeared ire…

Alternating crushing cynicism, moral outrage, gallows humour, absurdist observation, shared miseries, staggering sentimentality and the total shock and awe of still being alive every morning, this cartoon catalogue of the Last Just War is a truly breathtaking collection that no fan, art-lover, historian or humanitarian can afford to miss.

… And it will make you cry and laugh out loud too.

With a fascinating biography of Mauldin that is as compelling as his art, the mordant wit and desperate camaraderie of his work is more important than ever in an age where increasingly cold and distant brass-hats and politicians send ever-more innocent lambs to further foreign fields for slaughter. With this volume and the aforementioned Willie & Joe: Back Home, we must finally be able to restore the man and his works to the apex of graphic consciousness, because tragically, it looks like his message is never going to be outdated, or learned from by the idiots in charge who most need to hear it…
© 2011 the Estate of William Mauldin. All right reserved.