DAN CLOWES’ ALTERNATIVE CLASSIC MEANWHILE 741.5 LIKE A VELVET R. Sikor- yak 741.5 GLOVE CAST IN IRON NOV 2017— NO. ELEVEN PLUS...CHRIS WARE’S MONUMENTAL MONOGRAPH Jason Aaron Cameron Stewart D.J. Bryant’s Clowes Crandall Reed Cran- dall Gwenpool The Comics & Graphic Novel Bulletin of You see his work every time you or- der Jimmy Johns sandwiches & chips. Critics’ darling, an artist’s artist, Chris Ware is the most famous cartoonist you’ve never heard of. But his influ- ence—on other cartoonists, graphic designers, even engineers—is as over- sized as, well, this book about his ca- reer. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the newly decorated traffic light control boxes downtown, beseech- ing pedestrians to pull their heads One of the formative works of deeper mysteries. Puzzling, out of their apps. They’re pure Ware. modern American comics, Like A perverse, at turns haunting Velvet Glove Cast in Iron is a study and nauseating, Clowes’ first Writer Jamie Rhodes spent sev- eral months living onsite at in opposites: the surreal rendered graphic novel was serialized Scotney Castle in Kent, England. MO banal, the banal twisted into the in his periodical Eightball (To “I walked the ancient hol- surreal. Against the bland back- see how the story originally loways,” he writes. “I sat ground of a vacant heartland, appeared, check out The Com- amongst the old castle ruins..” damaged people pursue sick de- plete Eightball, Volumes 1 & 2, That depth of fascination bears NO fruit in A Castle in England sires. There is no authority, no available from Beaumont and (Nobrow). The history of the one in control. The cops are no Tates Creek). Even after 29 castle is described in five chap- better than the crazies they hunt, years, Velvet Glove still packs a ters drawn by five different car- Through his periodical The GR as the crazies prepare for Harum punch. Reserve a copy today! toonists, from the brutish line Acme Novelty Library and of Isaac Lenkiewicz regarding Like A Velvet Glove Scarum, the ultimate war between his award-winning graphic the medieval peasant revolts to novels Jimmy Corrigan and man and woman. A vast and an- William Exley’s dashing brush- Cast in Iron Building Stories, Ware has AP cient conspiracy hides behind the work on “The Smuggler” to By Daniel Clowes (Fantagraphics) explored his concept of goofy smile of a supermarket mas- Becky Palmer’s lovely use of 741.5 C626l / Central—Eastside comics as “a linguistic, cot, and the hideous spawn of a sfumato in the Victorian chap- ter. Elsewhere and –when, for- (not) an illustrative form, a H godlike merman takes your order mer Brooklynite Julie Wertz col- system of drawing based at the local diner. Acromegalic lects her architectural drawings- more on the transparency radio hosts...shirtless testosterone cum-historical comics for of reading than on the un- BY certainty of seeing.” Ex- junkies...that little girl with the Harper’s and the New Yorker in CHRIS Tenements, Towers & Trash panding the visual lan- pipe: What does it all mean? Per- (Black Dog & Leventhal). Wertz guage of comics, Ware has WARE haps ask the swami who holds charmingly draws people like a taken inspiration from old court in the men’s room of the child, but her buildings are textbooks and encyclope- (RIZZOLI) amazing, from “Independent dias, maps and blueprints, derelict theater showing the enig- CENTRAL matic film Like A Velvet Glove Cast Bookstores of NYC” to the com- the exploded drawings of parisons of New York streets technical design, the ver- . in Iron. Our hero Clay Loudermilk then and now. Spoiler alert: bose and ornate advertis- (panel right) asks, and his pursuit they’re much more boring now. ing of the early 20th centu- HUGE s of the answers leads him into ry, even the hand-lettered ’ covers of ancient ragtime 78s. Ware’s artistic odyssey from fanboy to alternative Baking With Kafka: Comics by Tom Gauld trend-setter is covered in (Drawn & Quarterly) Beaumont — Central — Eastside is no exception. This exhaustive detail in Mono- “Socrates with Time Machine and Dinosaur Egg”. The Monstrous graph. Written in his typi- Fishmonger and Malignant Barista. “JG Ballard’s Books for Chil- cally self-effacing prose, dren.” If you’re already laughing or just intrigued, then check out s a daunting object. It Baking With Kafka (Drawn & Quarterly), the latest collection of Tom Ware’s recollections are ’ Gauld’s literary laff-riots for England’s finest newspaper, the Guardi- accompanied by toys, fami- Monograph an. A follow-up to 2013’s You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack (still ly photos, original draw- available from Beaumont and Central), Baking… continues Gauld’s ings, detailed sketches, and run of culture vulture riffs on “Major Styles in Troll Bridge Architec- plans for home-made ma- ture” and “This Season’s Hot New Publishing Trend: SPINSTERS!” chines. It’s a monumental Baking with Kafka is smart and funny—and funny because it’s smart! journey through the life Chris Chris Ware has always comics pushed formats. the boundaries book is a slab of paper and ink, measuring more of than 13 inches wide and 18 inches tall and weighing just under ten pounds. It and mind of a bashful titan. As artistically ambitious as he is personally timorous, MEANWHILE comic books. Published in the over-sized format of Marvel’s “Treasury” editions of the 1970s, The Unquotable Trump (Drawn & Quarterly) reprints the mini-comic creat- ed during the 2016 campaign by R. Sikor- yak, the master mimic behind this year’s Terms and Conditions (still available from Beaumont, Central & Eastside). Sikoryak parodies Trump and his verbiage as a series of comic book covers from through- out the history of the medium, from Pea- nuts to Mr. Natural, Spawn to Baby Huey, Giant-Size Super-Villain Team-Up to Pic- ture Stories from the Bible, each and every one using Trump’s own words. Online, the most re-shared of these images has been Nasty Woman, a reproduction of a WW2 era issue of Wonder Woman. Diana of Themyscira has had a great 2017, but she’s not the only superheroine to break out. Even as more established characters What is reality? The question that has duced writer Jason (Southern Bastards) consumed philosophers through the ages Aaron. Rendered by the unforgiving art of is an easy one for cartoonists to answer: Cameron Stewart, the madness of the Viet Reality is what I put on the page. Some Nam War is experienced by two farm boys, realities are more unreal than others, one an American grunt, the other a volun- though. D.J. Bryant’s artwork is pretty real- teer for the Army of North Vietnam. Both istic, sleek and detailed yet alienated and see things on the battlefield that others do dreamlike, the unholy spawn of Clowes not. The American is haunted by the war- and Crandall. A series of stories connected maimed ghosts of the GIs who came be- more by ambience than plot, Unreal City fore him while the Vietnamese soldier (Fantagraphics) explores how reality can sees the spirits of his slain countrymen. A be distorted by love and lust. So it’s defi- savage indictment of the War that none- nitely not for the kiddies! Frankly, artists theless respects the combatants, The aren’t the only ones who create their own Other Side is available at Central and reality. For good or ill, politicians do it, too. Eastside. Meanwhile, some of the best And few have bent and burnished the truth agitprop for the Good War can be found in like the current President of these United TwoMorrow’s Reed Crandall: Illustrator of States, Donald Trump. Showbiz has always the Comics. The Golden Age great drew been a part of American politics tics, and the best Uncle Sam ever, even better than few have understood the biz of show like Jimmy Flagg. From WW2 heroes like Black- Trump. His bombastic personality was a hawk and Doll Man to his gorgeously grue- good fit for professional wrestling and some work for EC and Warren, Reed Cran- reality television- and an even better fit for dall set a global standard for comics art! had their titles cancelled (Sorry, Scarlet Witch! See ya in the movies, Black Widow!), Gwenpool soldiers on. Trapped in the Mar- vel Universe after the multiverse collapsed (don’t ask), nerdy girl and former citizen of the real world Gwen Poole decides the only way to survive her new home is to put on a costume and join the fray as The Unbelieva- ble Gwenpool! Pictured above, her first collection, Believe It (Marvel), actually came out in 2016. But LPL has the rest of this hilariously written and beautifully drawn series, which is a two-fisted hoot, and actu- ally kind of sweet for being so manically meta-fictional. Convinced the world she’s living in isn’t really real — I mean, one of her few friends is a talking duck, can you blame her? - Gwenpool takes courage from that sense of unreality. Her way of dealing with a dangerous world isn’t that uncommon, as shown by The Other Side (Image), a hard- cover special edition of the comic that intro- .