{"id":9035,"date":"2012-10-16T08:00:05","date_gmt":"2012-10-16T08:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=9035"},"modified":"2012-10-15T16:35:30","modified_gmt":"2012-10-15T16:35:30","slug":"everything-together-collected-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2012\/10\/16\/everything-together-collected-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything Together – Collected Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Sammy Harkham<\/strong> (Picturebox)
\nISBN: 978-0-98515-950-4<\/p>\n

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: the only gift a real comics lover will need this year\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 9\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some cartoonists, like some rock-stars, movie-makers – and indeed exponents of every art-form – make big headlines and meteorically hit the public attention early in their careers whilst others soldier on in the background, relishing the untroubled obscurity and assiduously building a body of brilliant, well-regarded work that the even the shooting stars are envious of.<\/p>\n

Such a creator is Sammy Harkham. Born in Los Angelesin 1980, he spent his teen-age years in Australiaand developed a pathological love of the comics medium which first surfaced after he created the astounding and multi-award winning anthology Kramers Ergot <\/strong>in the opening moments of the 21st<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

Since the 1980s, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Underground\u00e2\u20ac\u009d creators and cartoonists of adult and mature English-language comics have begun to find mainstream and popular acceptance by re-branding themselves as alternative or Avant Garde: crafting European-style personal tales rather than chasing mass-entertainment goals.<\/p>\n

Soon self-published mini-comics and fanzines were augmented if not supplanted by groundbreaking anthologies which served to disseminate the best of the best in challenging, no-holds-barred sequential art.<\/p>\n

Following on the groundbreaking heels of Raw<\/strong> and its descendants, Kramers Ergot<\/strong> launched as a 48-page mini-comic in 2000. Harkham nurtured the publication over 8 years, as it evolved a vari-format, anything-goes visual and intellectual banquet equal-billing talented newcomers and many of the world’s greatest pencil-pushers old and new. In 2008, the hard-working editor suspended publication with #7 – a huge-scaled (536x414mm) 96-page deluxe hardback featuring 60 of the art-form’s most beguiling stars. Harkham recently returned to his billion megawatt baby with an 8th<\/sup> volume in 2011.<\/p>\n

The occasional compendium offered to artists an utterly free intellectual outlet and more nurturing creative environment and featured superb works by a multitude of graphic storymakers, but was also an outlet for Harkham’s own fabulously eclectic and enthralling comic strips. Now his many of his sublimely rendered, addictively intriguing, creatively-inspirational cartoons stories are gathered in an entrancing softcover collection no mature aficionado should be without.<\/p>\n

Everything Together<\/strong> comprises superbly challenging cartoon opuses and short pieces plus some quirky, ultra-brief vignettes, and the only grudging criticism I can offer is that some of the very best of them are printed, really, really small – but even that’s not an insurmountable problem since he’s an artist’s artist, capable of stunning line-economy and clear narrative and, as a bit of an old doodler too (quite, quite venerable, in fact), I possess a magnifying lens in my battered old art box\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Always a master of understated nuance and the necessarily unsaid, with an uncanny ability to find stories in any place, Harkham’s Finest Comics originally appeared in Vice<\/strong>, Mome<\/strong>, Drawn & Quarterly Showcase<\/strong>, Kramers Ergot<\/strong>, Crickets<\/strong> and elsewhere, and kick off here with the quietly hilarious art-challenged world-conqueror and sup-par cartoonist ‘Napoleon!’<\/em><\/p>\n

Next, Harkham deliciously demythologises the Biblical Jewish experience with the wry, dry ‘Elisha’<\/em> and then changes pace by packing in a bunch of those teeny-weeny tales on a single page of ‘Indicia Comics’<\/em> that includes Attack of the Frankensteins!<\/em>, Cab Ride<\/em>, Cartoonist<\/em>, Pickton Grocery Line<\/em> and more.<\/p>\n

A longer exploration of life in South Australia in 1995 follows as bemused idle kid Iris<\/em> fretfully whiles away another dull summer with cadged cigarettes, illicit booze, unwise boyfriends and basic buddy-bonding in the eerily laconic and mesmerising ‘Somersaulting’<\/em>. Immediately after the uncompromising single-pager, ‘Mother Fucker’<\/em> focuses on a day-trip with Iris’s absentee dad and ‘Maximum Destruction’<\/em> offers a furiously delightful tribute to Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are<\/strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Most of the stories are in assorted limited half-tones (black, white and another colour) but – and only when he thinks it appropriate – Harkham delves splendidly into his glorious full-spectrum palette, beginning with the idyllic ‘Knut Hamsen Dept:’<\/em> and the surreal desert crime caper ‘Give Up’<\/em> before concluding with the oddly lyrical ‘Golem Comics’<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In black and blue and white ‘Poor Sailor’<\/em> details how frustrated dreams, daily routine and dissatisfaction can destroy a perfect life, ‘Cartoonists in Cars’<\/em> provides a portmanteau of telling revelations and ‘Frank S. Santoro, Sr.’<\/em> details the non-events of a cold night in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n

A telling moment of domesticity and ancestral history is examined in the poor, hard-pressed Jewish Shtetl of ‘Lubavitch, Ukraine, 1876’<\/em> whilst contemporary ennui informs the creepy ‘Sitting Outside, Watching Baby’<\/em> after which ‘Free Comics’<\/em> bundles together another batch of spellbinding mini-cartoon moments such Gary Panter<\/em>, I am Happy Every Moment of Every Day<\/em>, Clowes + Huizenga<\/em>, Pregnant Alley<\/em> and this tantalising tome concludes with ‘The New Yorker Story’<\/em>, a darkly enticing literary romance of diluted passion and ascendant aesthetics\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Punctuated with loads of evocative pin-ups and easily blending love, absurdity, mania, wry wit, hate, indifference, reportage, apathy, resignation, whimsy and honest hope when nothing else is left, Everything Together<\/strong> perfectly showcases the deep thought and carefully considered visual elucidation of a master craftsman whose renown is at last catching up with his diligence and sheer talent.
\n\u00c2\u00a9 2012 S. Harkham. All rights reserved.
\nEverything Together<\/strong> is published in the UK on October 25th<\/sup> 2012<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sammy Harkham (Picturebox) ISBN: 978-0-98515-950-4 Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: the only gift a real comics lover will need this year\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 9\/10 Some cartoonists, like some rock-stars, movie-makers – and indeed exponents of every art-form – make big headlines and meteorically hit the public attention early in their careers whilst others soldier on in the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Everything Together – Collected Stories”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[90,3,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cartooning-classics","category-comics","category-mature-reading"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-2lJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}