Burn Collector #14
By Al Burian
In its purest form, a zine ought be regarded as a clearing house for ideas, a thrown against the wall approach to literature, largely—or, more preferably, entirely—devoid of outside editorial oversight. Its an approach that Al Burian has seemingly become rather comfortable with, one which manifests itself in issue 14 of Burn Collector more than in many other recent issues of the seminal Chicago zine.
While Burian’s near-poetic true life tales have long been the selling point of his sporadic publication, there’s a clear joy in the seeming abandon with which the author culled together the rather dissonant approaches into a single volume. The issue begins in a fairly standard manner, with musings on the Chicago Transit Authority (not the band) and the happy resurgence of house shows in the area. All the while, however, the pieces are supplemented with Burian’s own crudely-drawn strips, sometimes complimenting the text, and other times simply playing out as their own contextual tangents.
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The Lady’s Murder
by Eliza Frye
Self-published
Eliza Frye has an overwhelming talent for constructing beautiful images. I sat next to her at APE in 2009 and was totally awestruck by her work. Dumbstruck even. Still, fans kept flocking to her table, chatting her up, and I wondered ‘How does anyone know what to say to someone whose artwork is so goddamn gorgeous?’ Fandom is an art all its own, I tell you.
Her background as an illustrator and character artist comes across strongly in projects like The Lady’s Murder. In it, she takes a rather sexy poem from S. Albert Chatman and uses his idea to build a bony story structure from which her gorgeous art hangs lush and wild.
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Copper
By Kazu Kibuishi
Graphix
At the close of Amulet: Book One, there’s a clear sense that the reader is standing on the cusp of something huge—author Kazu Kibuishi has offered up mere hints of the world he plans to explore over the course of his story. The sheer possibility of scope is reason enough to be compelled to pick up further volumes of the story, and—along with Kibishi’s stunningly rendered fantasy artwork—has led artist like Jeff Smith to declare themselves big fans of his work.
The expectation of such scope is also something a detriment upon picking up Copper. Where much of Amulet’s appeal lies largely in Kibuishi’s slow but steady reveal, Copper’s stories subscribe to a form of storytelling akin to that of the syndicated strip. Each story in the book presents a new universe for the titular boy explorer and his worried but obedient talking dog, Fred. And then, after a page or two, that window is closed and our protagonists are back at square one in a new world.
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Market Day
By James Sturm
Drawn & Quarterly
“How would all of this come together as a single rug?” Mendleman asks himself, wandering through the bustling rows of his local market, in search of some place that might purchase the hand-woven goods slung over his should. At this moment, it becomes clear that Market Day is more than simply a story about a struggling craftsman in early 20th century eastern Europe. It’s the story of an artist—an allegory, really, for the seemingly perpetual struggle of the artist community. It’s a struggle which author James Sturm—and, likely nearly every other 21st century cartoonist—has no doubt grappled with at some point in his career.
The next two pages form a spread, in which the market’s bodies and buildings melt away, forming a rug pattern. Mendleman draws the inspiration for his craft from the world around him, and his reward is the admiration of his peers-it’s a currency that serves little use when there is a pregnant wife to support at home—one whose physical shortcomings assure that she’ll never be able to contribute meaningfully to the economic well-being of the couple’s growing family.
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Driven by Lemons
By Joshua Cotter
Adhouse
There’s nothing new, of course, in the idea of issuing one’s sketchbook for the world to see. The release of Robert Crumb and Chris Ware’s volumes helped set the bar for modern, commercially released cartoonist sketchbooks, and a handful of books, including, most recently Peter Kuper’s Diario de Oaxaca and Al Columbia’s Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days, have helped redefined the parameters of the space.
Where once sketchbooks were conceived of as private works—the visual equivalent, perhaps, of a personal diary—the line has since been blurred. Today a sketchbook can prove every bit as successful a commercial endevour as a graphic novel, so it should come as no surprise that contemporary artists often begin them with the ultimate goal of releasing them largely intact.
Joshua Cotter showed me Driven By Lemons for the first time in an uncompleted form at SPX 2008. I had been downright ecstatic in my praise of Skyscrapers of the Midwest, and in a couple of months would place the book atop my year end list. Cotter happily presented a little sketchbook with methodically detailed pages, fluttering between narrative and abstraction. It was a downright sight to behold, even while a good chunk of its pages remained blank.
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In this second part of our conversation with the Cold Heat artist, we discuss the art of teaching comics to the indie crowd, form versus function, and indoctrinating Brooklyn teenagers into the world of comics.
[Part One]
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[Above, Katie Skelly's hospital orientation. Below, helllloooooo Dispatch.]
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Smile
By Raina Telgemeier
Graphix
There are few things so universal in a young person’s life as a fear of the dentist. Even for those who have managed to coast by with little more than a twice-yearly cleaning, there’s a certain dread that inevitably comes with entire process. While Raina Telgemeier insists in her author’s note that she’s “not afraid of dentists or dental work,” one can only imagine the effect that the artist’s own real-life “dental drama” had on her formative years.
In a sense, her own experiences in the world of dentistry were rather atypical, a fairly straightforward experience with the orthodontist having been hijacked when she tripped and fell on the way to a friend’s house, knocking out her two front teeth. What followed were several years of increasingly complex dental procedures–a slew of retainers, false teeth, and professionals with unpronouncable job descriptions, save for the ever-familiar -dontist suffix. In all, it’s enough to make the vast majority of us thankful for our relatively painless experiences in the dentist’s chair.
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UTU
by Malachi Ward
Self-published
It seems weirdly appropriate to review this book on Christmas Eve. I hope you will enjoy the irony.
UTU is beautiful comic book set in two worlds: the highly techno-savvy future and the mystical, superstitious past. The book’s author Malachi Ward claims it is his “finest and only work to date.” For a first comic, I’d say it’s pretty ambitious, but successful. Definitely worth a look.
UTU is about a guy who is able to move between time periods, but has no control over either. In 5102 B.C.E. he is the god of gods, UTU, who nobody seems to respect, and in the future he is just some lonely guy who can’t even pull a girl at the bar.
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Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary
By Justin Green
McSweeney’s
“It’s nice to have accolades,” writes the author, in the afterword to this latest edition, “even if they are not quite true.” Justin Green is being modest, of course. The past 37 years have, perhaps, taught the artist how to accept a compliment—even if he doesn’t entirely buy into its validity. But even with just under four decades’ worth of lauds, there’s no doubt still something downright overwhelming in McSweeney’s lovingly compiled tribute to Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary.
Let’s start, naturally, with the back cover, wherein, of the four names present, Chris Ware is unquestionable the least well known. The indie comics god gladly caps off his blurb with the words “Thank God for Binky Brown. And Thank God for Justin Green.” Robert Crumb similarly gushes, writing, in part, “Justin Green is the first and the best!” The exclamation mark is his. The other two quotes? They’re not verbose—or earnest—but, well, they’re from Kurt Vonnegut and Federico Fellini.
And then there’s the matter of the foreword, penned by Art Spiegelman, a long time Green fan who in many ways helped proved the impetus for this book. The Maus author, it seems, has some difficulty keeping his enthusiasm for the work to a single page.
For those of us who entered the fray long after Binky Brown first went out of print, such unbridled passion from the pens of heroes is perhaps a touch overwhelming—especially on the heels of years of critical fawning for the work that “started it all.”
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Reviews | bheater February 9, 2010 | 
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