The Best American Comics 2006.

[starlady]

The Best American Comics 2006. Ed. Harvey Pekar. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.

Somehow I got this gorgeous book for only $3. In the spirit of sharing, I gave it to my friend K, because she will get better use of it. But I read it cover-to-cover before I gave it to her, and it's pretty awesome.

I really liked series editor Annie Elizabeth Moore's preface; she follows Scott McCloud in defining comics as an art form combining words and pictures in sequence, intended for mechanical reproduction (obligatory wave to Walter Benjamin goes here). She also writes that,

In fact, comics defy literature: they openly refuse to obey its rules, entirely recreating what we know of language. Yet the sheer range of storytelling forms explored and presented in this volume defiantly mimic what we accept as literature anyway. […] And if that is what we can agree is meant by "written work"–that it can be read–then this collection's merit as literature will stand on its own.

And, in fact, it does.

Since the 2006 volume (the first in the series) collects material published in 2005, which is…five years ago now, the volume necessarily is very much of that particular depressing cultural moment. There are comics here dealing with the war in Iraq, the Republican convention in New York City in 2004 ([opinion on that cynical gesture redacted]), the advent of gay marriage and the execution of a death-row inmate. One of the absolute standouts, "Nakedness and Power" by Seth Tobocman, Terisa Turner, and Leigh Brownhill, chronicles the struggles of rural Nigerian women and their allies for economic justice, political representation, and peace, over the last 20 years. Theirs is a cautionary but ultimately an inspiring tale.

I also really liked Jesse Reklaw's "Thirteen Cats of My Childhood," which chronicles his family's slow-motion disintegration via the cats they kept. Family dysfunction is a theme in these works; R. Crumb's "Walkin' The Streets" had me literally crying with appalled laughter. Ben Katchor's "Goner Pillow Company" was obscurely touching; I also really liked Rebecca Dart's "Rabbit-Head", which has to be the most visually innovative piece in the book. Another common theme is the deconstruction of superheroes, whether they be Joel Priddy's Onion Jack, Gilbert Shelton's Wonder Wart-Hog, or Lilli Carré's Paul Bunyan. Lynda Barry's "Two Questions" is a brilliant mediation on creativity, and Chris Ware's "Comics: A History" is priceless.

A lot of these comics are laugh-outloud funny, but the humor is very sharp-edged. I wonder whether that's a consequence of the time or just of cartoonists being a jaded, cynical bunch with unhappy childhoods (to take their comics as biographical truth), or whether this is how alternative comics these days defines itself against manga and Marvel + DC. Something of all three? In any case, I'd love to read the newer entries in the series (and I live in hope that they'll have more women represented).

Comments

[recessional]

And the stuff I've read mires down with vicious observations of the nastiest parts of humanity, mockery of anyone that doesn't fit into what the author thinks of as valuable, morbid attention to any emotional dissonance, an obnoxious obsession with the emotional landscape of the white-middle-class-dissaffected-American and what of it could be called "playfulness" is either the kind demonstrated by the people who made my young life miserable, or set up purely to make sure the Thing That's Going To Happen is more tragic or Hearttugging, and is thus obnoxiously manipulative to me.

But some people don't like Beethoven. So, you know. (Which is to say that nobody is obliged to share my distaste, nor my reading; the statement is just drawn from my experience.)