Those idle months when Jeffrey Brown fans were left to wonder about the cartoonist’s next book release date are no more: Top Shelf has begun the seasonal publication of Brown’s Sulk series.  The steady schedule should now be one book about every 3-4 months. Hurrah!

When considering how prolific Brown’s cartooning career has been, and how devoted his fan base tends to be, it’s almost surprising that serialization of his work didn’t happen sooner.  Kudos to Top Shelf for realizing the potential.

For those of us who met and loved Brown’s work through autobiographical stories, this April keep your eyes and wallets peeled for the release of a new JB title Funny Misshapen Body (published by Touchstone).  The stories run from high school through art school and more or less unfold the story of how he became a cartoonist.

In the meantime, slake your thirst for new material by reading Brown’s latest Cross Hatch Guest Strip.

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Fuzz and Pluck
by Ted Stearn
Fantagraphics

One thing you have to be ready for if you read Fuzz and Pluck, you’re going to laugh. I semi-guarantee this – if I can offer guarantees as a book reviewer, I would like to guarantee Fuzz and Pluck with this statement: it’s funny. I stand behind that statement. Let’s look at it: a plucked rooster and a discarded stuffed bear walking down the road. Yes, this is very much a part of it. They embark on their journey. “I’m tired,” says Fuzz. “Oh come on,” Pluck demands, “what do you think you have two legs for?”

When all other avenues to truth and justice are exhausted and a man must amuse himself, yet he has ideals – beliefs about life and beauty – lofty things, that must be delivered with due justice and truth, he has no other recourse than to make art. An artist must not go lax on his ideals, no matter the subject. Be your subject a plucked rooster, justice must be done by it. Be it a stuffed bear, okay, take comfort. Let’s examine a moment the relationship between Fuzz and Pluck. The perfect passive aggressive couple: Fuzz and Pluck. A pissed rooster – hey, he’s a plucked rooster: he’s good reason to be angry. And a stuffed bear, prone to doubt and insecurity. The repartee between these two is funny because they are exaggerations of our own inner poles: between the part of us who wants to get things done and now – and has the necessary aggression to do what needs be done – and that part of our self that has doubts, lacks initiative and wants to be safe, protected, and hey, maybe the sex object of a rich suburban housewife. Read the rest of this entry »

[Above: With furry fury, Cerebus rides.  Below: News is gleaned by Cross Hatch spies.]

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Jin & Jam
By Hellen Jo
Sparkplug

Kids can be cruel—especially to one another. There’s really no revelation in that statement. Surely we’ve all been tormented by peers in some form or another.  For better or worse, it’s a key part of the process of growing up—for the cast of teenage nihilists that populate the first issue of Hellen Jo’s new Sparkplug series, however, it’s something of a way of life.

There’s a strange rhythm to Jin & Jam. It’s hardly noticeable at first, just slightly off the norm. Jo introduces Jam first, gnawing on a greasy McDonald’s hamburger on the sidewalk in front of a church on a Sunday morning. Next to her is Hank, in ripped jeans and long hair, reclining, knees up, puffing on a cigarette. These kids are clearly troublemakers.  Jam, on the other hand, makes her first appearance well-dressed, stepping out of church. She berates the two hoodlums for loitering. The dichotomy between the titular characters is made fairly clear early on.

The first sure sign that we’re operating slightly off the norm here is a quick visual cue—panels of Jin and Jam on a background of fish floating by, for no immediately discernable reason—it’s easy to write such visual digressions off, however, as Jo’s art is clearly steeped heavily in a manga tradition—one that’s never been too heavily invested in the laws of reality. Moments later, Jin upsets the black and white character balance by snatching an unlit cigarette into her bible for later consumption. There are no truly “good” characters in Jin & Jam, at seems, just different shades of “bad.”

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Why I Killed Peter
By Alfred and Olivier Ka
NBM

NBM doesn’t offer much to go on. There’s the title of course—loaded but cryptic—suitable perhaps for a B movie thriller or a murder mystery. On the cover is a simple silhouette of a shadowy figure—Peter perhaps? The other side of the book offers only a quick pull quote from the text: “Peter is a liberal priest. He’s cool. He’s funny. He’s not a priest, he’s like a regular guy. It’s like I have a new uncle. A great one, who laughs, who sings, who tickles.” The back flap, meanwhile, offers a less than modest note from publisher NBM, that reads, in part, “Novels in the true sense [are] about exploring our lives, our feelings, our experiences…Here are the most intelligent comics the world has to offer.”

It’s a sad sign of the world’s current state, perhaps, that from these dissonant elements, we can glean some sense of the subject matter contained herein—the self-serious copy, a shadowy figure, a tickling priest. Pulling the pieces together, it becomes pretty clear why the company opted to forgo a straight-forward summary for the back of the book. After all, this is not sort of subject matter that moves comics in the direct market world. For that matter, Why I Killed Peter isn’t the kind of book that tends to draw a lot of sales from casual comic shop browsing. Rather, it’s the manner of book whose success traditionally hinges on industry buzz and critical acclaim. Fortunately for NBM, it’s likely to garner both.

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After more than 20 years spent working in the world of cartooning, Bob Fingerman has seemingly worked in just about ever aspect of the field. Over the years his professional path has taken him from magazines like Cracked and Screwed to the world of literature, with his recent debut prose novel, the neurotic vampire tale, Bottomfeeder.

In between, Fingerman has also created a diverse oeuvre of sequential works, including the semi-autobiographical Beg the Question, the schoolyard zombie book Recess Pieces, and a stint working on Eastman and Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

In this second part of our interview with Fingerman, we delve into the artist’s early career, from porno mags, to memoir, to everyone’s favorite quartet of crime fighting reptiles.

[Part One]
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