Just Fucked


by

Friday, June 18, 2010


Right up front let’s admit this: Wally Gropius is a terrifying comic book and everyone reading this should buy it immediately. Tim Hensley has crammed more horror into these 64 pages than any comic in recent memory. There is body horror, money horror, sex horror, parental horror, incest horror, school horror. Pretty much every feeling that lies just below the surface even now. We’re all supposed to be grown up, and the pangs of adolescence should be safely at bay, but they never really are, and I get the feeling that Hensley knows and can articulate each and every one. It is also a terrifying book to talk about, because its level of craft is so high, its surface so impenetrable, that it’s like trying to write about Kubrick or something: You know it’s all in there, but it’s hard to find a foothold. And worse, nearly any attempt to write about the comic basically turns me into a Dan Clowes comics-blowhard (if I’m not one already). Of course, none of this would be terribly interesting if it weren’t so funny. Wally Gropius is at its most basic level, the story of a guy who wants to get the girl, the girl who fucks him in both senses, and the fathers that fuck them both. This is a lot of fuckery for one comic. But there it is.

And the reason I’m sitting in front of a screen on an otherwise balmy Friday afternoon when I should be down the road at Sycamore drinking beer in the garden is that after a long day of accounting work, irritating editorial conversations and a single glass of gin, I felt like if I didn’t say something about this book my head might explode. So, the surface: Hensley’s drawings (related at first to 1960s garbage teen comics but then suddenly to Chester Gould in design and every so often, so help me, Rory Hayes, in terms of spatial abstractions) are so fluid and articulate that it’s hard to believe he could or does draw or even hand-write any other way. That is, unlike other cartoonists or illustrators who try on a certain aesthetic (ex. 1: “Pin-Up” section in recent book by Indiana Jones), Hensley isn’t trying it on or adapting it: In his hands it’s a complete language. It’s a bracing, enervating way of making comics because there’s so much dissonance between what I want to read the lines as and what the drawings those lines form actually mean.

So while the characters in the page at left telegraph “hippie,” “butler,” “teenager,” each acts out emotional extremes not at all limited to staying on model. The hippie is someone else entirely and Wally is genius, idiot, torture incarnate, lover, and rocker. And through all of those things he comes alive in a peculiar way — you never lose sight of the fact that he’s a cartoon character but he’s a character that seems indelible and in need of reading — as if not moving through each of the continuing, ever-building episodes in the book would doom him to some inanimate stasis. I am also impressed by Hensley’s cartoon spaces. He uses color and isolated objects to imply depth (the dark depths of long hallways I see in Hayes) and then shifts them from panel to panel to keep the action just off kilter enough. It’s a post-modern notion of space in a book with a modernist surname, and so on. But really it’s a stunning effect, turning the focus forever back onto these characters.

This is, if you haven’t guessed already, an impossibly dense book that rewards reading and re-reading and reading again. And this internet form, this odd thing where I’m unable to really write as substantively as I’d like (a total cop-out, really) to because of money and time and all those practical things, is perhaps the least ideal place of all to take on such a heady book. But I needed to start somewhere. Dash wrote about it well last fall and Ken Parille has been keeping a running commentary of sorts. Maybe we can get a conversation going here on this drawing, this space, the depth of the emotion, the damn format, and all the other things that make up this perfect book. I thought long and hard about what to write about today, to be honest, and while this is charming in a youthful way (and I don’t for a second mean that in a condescending way — I admire the verve and love for the medium on display, but just don’t recognize the artists and publishers being referred to — they’re not the ones I know, and it’s not a history I engage with) that tempts me to write something alternately inspirational and downbeat, no good can come of it. I’d rather just talk about comics and refer interested parties instead to this.

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15 Responses to “Just Fucked”
  1. Brian Nicholson says:

    I also tried to write about this and felt like I was only skimming the surface. I get lost as to working out what the book’s conclusion means thematically as an extension of what came before it. Money changes hands through ill-gotten means, Huey Lewis wears a wedding dress, and the vault is found empty. The story ends, capitalism doesn’t; the book remains on the shelf as a thing unto itself in a manner similar to how a new Archie comic comes out every month. I think a big part of the comic is the unspoken fact that comics are a commercial form, and that all these variations on the teen comic that now form the book’s common language came about because some of them were successful in the marketplace. Now those books aren’t coming out, except for Archie, but it’s understood as a recognizable formula- the same way capitalism keeps going the same way it has been going in the face of diminishing resources to mine.

    I don’t know how useful critiquing art through a Marxist lens is, in general, but for a comedy/horror story about wealth that ends abruptly, it seems to make sense. In this reading, the ending marks the transition of the Bush presidency to Obama- hippie costumes are worn, a check made out to the IRS is given to criminals, etc. Does the empty money vault symbolize massive debts to foreign countries?

    The talk of national anthems brings patriotism to mind, “brass and intestinal fortitude with a picture postcard of the local geography. Our own country’s anthem is a about the flag enduring through warfare.

    Meanwhile, the bit of wordplay on display in the page shown here “1.5 cotillion dollars” refers to balls held to announce upper-class daughters arrival in society. It both works in the same way the sound effects do, (like “Quid!” as the sound of kicking to roll a red carpet out) as well as maybe being foreshadowing of the teenage girl that steals the money.

    Could the incest gag be taken as a reference to inbreeding among the aristocracy as a means of holding onto wealth?

    I think it’s also worth noting that Hensley’s SImpsons one-pager was similarly dense with meaning, a really funny nightmare of a collage that signals that he can do this kind of masterpiece again and only needs a form to riff on. The Kramers Ergot 7 page is an adaptation of found material that nonetheless feels thematically resonant with Gropius in its conspiracies, bizarre language, sex, etc. Then there’s that Paper Rodeo parody of early twentieth century editorial cartooning which is both funny as a conceptual gag and, right now, is feeling like a key to the whole of his current project- it’s like he’s inspired by the lunacy of outsider art (by which I include broadsheets on telephone poles) to make political cartoons about a political climate loaded with so much meaning and contradiction that it’s insane and overwhelming and feels like a conspiracy.

  2. Eric Reynolds says:

    Wow, thanks, Dan. Wally is one of my very favorite books ever, and I’m extremely proud to have had a minor hand in bringing it to existence. I’ve been a huge fan of Tim’s for a long time (I published him in Dirty Stories over ten years ago), so reading this from you is making my day. I still find his work somewhat difficult to write about, like you. You compared him to Kubrick, I would agree, or maybe something like Lynch’s Inland Empire. But I think you nailed it: “In his hands it’s a complete language. It’s a bracing, enervating way of making comics because there’s so much dissonance between what I want to read the lines as and what the drawings those lines form actually mean.”

  3. jimrugg says:

    This is my favorite comic so far this year. I’ve been trying to write about it for awhile and have lacked the coherence and articulation necessary to do it justice.

    I like the “complete language” description. The relationship between words and pictures is so sophisticated and unique that it feels like we should have an entire body of work to study that leads to this volume. This symbiotic relationship is one of my favorite elements of Clowes’ work, but Hensley either takes it to an extreme (even absurd) level or goes in a different direction entirely than Clowes. I hate to make the Clowes mention because I think it may diminish what Hensley does here. I had high expectations for this book going in, and was still shocked by it.

    Rereading this book has been one of my favorite comics experiences in a long time. I love it.

  4. Ken says:

    Dan,

    I agree. And thanks for linking to my post. I have a longer post about the book version here:
    http://blogflumer.blogspot.com/2010/06/my-cola-silo-is-out-back-wally-gropius.html

    and Tim contibutes to the comments section.

    You mentioned “sex horror,” and the way the books deals wth this is one of my favorite aspects:
    Gropius tells a strange story about sexual desire and sublimation. One of Wally’s songs argues for teenagers redirecting their urges into a sport (there’s that metaphor again), in this case a marathon ping pong session that must end in frustrated teens spewing vomit, which perhaps functions as a “surrogate oral ejaculate”: the body will ‘out’ its desire in some way. This part of the narrative about human nature and self-censorship — like much of the book, really — lives on the edge of cartoony comedy and disturbing revelation. The book’s approach is all the more profound because it blends ‘funny’ and ‘upsetting,’ such as when Jillian beats the shit out of Wally: it’s a “boy meets girl, girl beats boy” story . . .

    The book deals with many such “issues,” and could be read in a number of “serious” ways: as parable about celebrity; a meditation on female suffering, histrionics, and culture (or a reimagining of teen Sturm und Drang in the “Bieber-fever” media climate of the early 21st century); a critique of beliefs underlying the popularity of sports and connection between sports and patriotism (or an exploration of a nationalistic sentimentalism); a harsh critique of misdirected mothering; etc . . . While I think it’d be fine to see the book as “about” these things (as a parody that criticizes or even mocks some of its subjects), this approach also seems misrepresentative. . . There’s a weird tension between the book’s appealing surfaces and its “content” that disrupts attempts (at least my attempts) at generalizing about the comic.

  5. dogbreath says:

    Great post. This book makes an interesting pair with Pim and Francie, I think. Both are deconstructing comics while creating bizarre worlds made of strange pictures and many levels of ideas, but one by way of Max Fleischer, the other house style Archie. I also thought of Joost Swarte while reading Wally Gropius a lot (and, strangely, Six Hundred and Seventy-Six Apparitions of Kiloffer).

    The Lynch comparison is more than apt as well. Particularly the opening scenes of Blue Velvet, which wouldn’t seem out of place in Gropius.

  6. Gabe Fowler says:

    This book is an everlasting gobstoppper of comics information, and reading it straight through would tweak even the strongest brain. I have been struggling to successfully recommend it to customers because I can’t break it down into a blurb. Obviously that’s a positive attribute, but if anyone wants to take a crack at a sincere one-sentence summary for a non-comics reader I would be grateful. [The summary must also express the intangible genius of the thing]

  7. Ben Jones/Tim Hensley/Yuichi Yokoyama

  8. Jeet Heer says:

    Wally Gropius is a great book but one that, although it offers a great deal of pleasure on your first read, needs to be repeatedly re-read and nibbled at to fully appreciate. So I’m grateful to Dan (and the other commentators) for their thoughts. One immediate thought is that their is a radical disjunction between Hensley style and his content, and that’s a big part of what his work is about. When you first glance at his pages they look instantly understandable and inviting. But when you start reading it, you immediately thing, “what the hell??” This disjunction is not just Henlsey’s method, it’s also in some ways what his comics are about, the difference between surface and story.

  9. I.M.A. Pelican says:

    Also my favorite book of the year. . .beautiful, dare I say postmoddurn? comics… Hensley feels to me like a 2 decades-later blossoming of the iineage of RAW…the hardcore analysis and dismantling of comics language that defined that publication…but instead of doing that for its own sake….like in MacGuire’s strip or Sikoryak or Newgarden, he uses it as his method or a filter to tall his story through. irony’s not dead folks…whoopee!

  10. Tim Hensley says:

    I’m not sure what the etiquette is about posting on this, but I am extremely flattered and gratified and discomfited by all these reviews and comments! A sure antidote is to be back at the drawing table trying to figure out how to draw somebody right-handed holding a gun and realizing I can’t look at my own hand.
    One of the panels on the “Testosterone” page has this glaring magic wand Photoshop color fuck-up, and I just know Kubrick would’ve caught that. And when I went to a Jaime Hernandez signing he called me “the hardest working man in comics,” a funny reality check.
    I’m still glad to hear people like the book.

  11. Dan Nadel says:

    @Tim H: thanks for reading!

    @ Pelican a.k.a. M. Thurber; I have to disagree about the Raw comparison. It’s hard to generalize about Raw, but the main difference here is that Wally Gropius doesn’t seem ironic to me. Yes there’s initial disjunction between form and intended meaning, but after that shock of recognition, uou realize that Hensleys not aping any single artist and he’s even lumping multiple genres together. It’s ultimately a fully realized language, as opposed to a riff or ttake off on someone else’s thing. Everything seems to be operating from within the characters and language. And the best of the Raw branch/tendency you mention (i.e. Newgarden) was and is searing, personal stuff — not for its own sake. The lesser stuff… well, you have a point there, dude.

  12. i.m.a. pelican says:

    Dan- coming up with a definition of irony makes me sweat & feel like Winona Ryder in Reality Bites. I guess I just mean “disjunction” and “things that are not what they seem” which for me would be the surface pleasant pastel invitingness of Hensley’s book, vs. the gnarly ideas churning beneath.

    That post was very general and useless. But let me just mention this:

    The newly-trademarked-as-“Henslian”-background-elements-floating-in-space reminded me of the “Men in Black” sequence where Will Smith and Tommy Jones go into a void and billions of guns fly out on racks. (THE INTERNET?)

    another meaningless movie reference. Oh well its the internet where you can “Say Anything”sorry

  13. […] particularly novel to say about Tim Hensely’s WALLY GROPIUS– if you read Blog Flume or Comics Comics, as I imagine you must, I wouldn’t suggest to you that I have much to add to what those fine […]

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