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Walking Jam from blissy ann higgs on Vimeo.

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BOYS
Ron Rege (and Joan Reidy)
Highwater Books, 2000
24 pages

Here’s an example, for me, of a perfect comic book. Twenty single page stories, poems really, of shine-y teenage wonderment told from a girl’s POV. Short little narrative voice-overs accompany spare stylized symbols of figures carefully arranged. It all feels so casual, like a private notebook but each page is dense and an architectural marvel of design and sequencing. The stories feel more real because of the playful drawings, and the facial expressions and emotions of the characters ring true because the text is so reserved, powerful. Printed on pink paper with blue ink, it feels like a girl’s diary but there’s an edge to it and thats whats always surprising about Rege for me whenever I really look at him. Maybe it’s all the sex talk but there’s a darkness there, a shadow world that is visible beneath the smiling exterior. The subject matter is in perfect counter-point to the incredibly articulated drawing, and also reveals, tenderly, that those hapless, embarrassing and sometimes dark moments of burning youth are best related with humor.

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Here’s a spread from the kinda rare Big Numbers #2 by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz published by Mad Love back in 1990. Big Numbers was, for me, impenetrable to read, like some overcrowded black and white photographic contact sheet. The series was never finished and honestly I never really read it. I would just pull it off the shelf every now and then and look at the art. I like Sienkiewicz’s energy and line but this book was too stilted, modeled, posed. Yet there are some great formal devices that he uses that feel right to me, that are successful simply as two page spreads. There’s an affinity for direct observation drawing and for realism, photographic realism, that I find pleasing and balanced. The images also reflect the character’s inner subjective view through varying the media and the approach, and that is really a strength of Sienkiewicz’s which fascinates me still.

The issue itself though is a little too formal for my taste and veers into straight up fumetti but it is an interesting mix of drawing and photography. A big influence on the Dave McKean school of cartooning, and sort of responsible for jump starting the last 15 years of photo-realist comics–Big Numbers is what you thought, what I thought, was going to be like a graduate class in the best comics had to offer in 1989: Moore and Sienkiewicz. Maybe it would have been great, but after trying to read the two existing issues, I started to wonder if they both were just totally burnt out by then. They both had almost ten years of monthly or semi-monthly deadlines (something I could never measure or fathom) and were simply dead. Reading it feels like trying to make your way through a crowded funeral parlor. Sorry, mates.

Okay, wait, I take that back. It’s an inspired work, but there is this lack of motion, of movement that adds to the density. Beyond the incredible glass shattering sequence in the first issue, it’s basically a quiet European film of a comic. I’m sure Moore’s script was pretty intense and Sienkiewicz does a decent job of mixing and matching talking heads and word balloons with these formal devices that “open up” the page and let it breathe a little. But again because of the photographic sources, there is always this middle ground focus where every character is shot from the waist up, gesturing. There will be two pages of dense talking head panels and then some sharp detailed sketch within a scene (like above) that is very focused, not only in technical articulation but in feeling. They show great restraint and balance and then release into sketchy memory. The pages are clean in their black white and grey purity but somehow the palette only adds to the gloomy claustrophobia of its rigid structure and square format. Big Numbers, just plods on and on formally like this and ultimately feels like a straight-jacket.

When the series tanked, Sienkiewicz just decided to go the other way and do finishes on Sal Buscema pencils for Spider-man. Buscema would do really light breakdowns and Bill would just go nuts on the flourishes. I remember them being totally off the wall.

Anyways, anybody know what happened after the second issue came out? Wasn’t Tundra going to continue publishing it?

——————
at top, detail of two page spread of Big Numbers #2, pages 4 and 5. The top image is what I see first when I open to this spread, which is the top of page 5, natch. Then my eye goes over to the top of the left page. So, I’m just focusing on the stuff that really moves my eye around formally. There are elements to the spread that don’t relate to the mirroring of the dinner table scenes, so I didn’t scan the whole spread, cool? Cool.

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I bought this off of the cartoonist, er sorry, the painter Steve Rude last year at San Diego. I wish he would do a whole comic in this thumbnail style. The page is just 8.5 x 11—look at the confidence in those lines!

(This one’s for Kevin)

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Here’s yet another event (Tim & Frank, can I go home yet?) for you to fathom. Come join us tomorrow. This should actually be awesome.

Join us for a book release party and panel discussion featuring:

KIM DEITCH
BILL GRIFFITH
GEOFFREY HAYES
and moderator
DAN NADEL

Listing information:

WHAT: Book Release Party for WHERE DEMENTED WENTED: THE ART AND COMICS OF RORY HAYES, with panel discussion and Q&A
WHO: Dan Nadel, Kim Deitch, Bill Griffith & Geoffrey Hayes
WHERE: DESERT ISLAND • 540 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn, NY • 718.388.5087 • desertislandbrooklyn.com
WHEN: Friday, August 8, 7PM (discussion begins at 8PM)

FREE ADMISSION
An exclusive, limited-edition Hayes silkscreen will be available for this event.

The controversial cartoonist Rory Hayes was a self-taught dynamo of the underground comics revolution. Attracting equal parts derision and praise (the latter from the likes of R. Crumb and Bill Griffith), Hayes emerged as comics’ great primitive, drawing horror comics in a genuinely horrifying and hallucinatory manner (some have called him the Fletcher Hanks of the underground). He has influenced a generation of cartoonists, from RAW to Fort Thunder and back again.

On Friday, Aug. 8, on what would have been Hayes’ 59th birthday (Hayes died of a drug overdose in 1983), Desert Island and Fantagraphics Books will celebrate the life and art of Rory Hayes with a special evening celebrating the release of WHERE DEMENTED WENTED, the first-ever collection of Hayes’ legendary comics and art. Editor Dan Nadel (Gary Panter, The Wilco Book) will moderate a discussion of Hayes’ work with three men who knew and worked with Hayes: Kim Deitch (creator of Waldo the Cat), Bill Griffith (creator of Zippy the Pinhead), and Geoffrey Hayes (brother of Rory and author of the recent Benny and Penny from Toon Books).

WHERE DEMENTED WENTED: THE ART AND COMIX OF RORY HAYES is the first retrospective of Hayes’ career ever published, and features the best of his underground comics output alongside paintings, covers, and artifacts rarely seen by human eyes — as well as astounding, previously unprinted comics from his teenage years and movie posters for his numerous homemade films. The Art and Comix of Rory Hayes also serves as a biography and critique with a memoir of growing up with Rory by his brother, the illustrator Geoffrey Hayes, and a career-spanning essay by Edward Pouncey (a.k.a. Savage Pencil). Also included is a rare interview with Hayes himself.

“Rory Hayes was the real thing; a genuine ‘outsider’ artist. His work retains its raw, primitive power to this day, teetering precariously between chaos and control, madness and oddly endearing teddy bears.” – Bill Griffith

“A great American primitive.” – R. Crumb

WHERE DEMENTED WENTED:
THE ART AND COMICS OF RORY HAYES
Edited by Dan Nadel and Glenn Bray
Essays by Geoffrey Hayes and Edwin Pouncey
$22.99 Paperback Original
144 pages, black-and-white (with 48 pp. in color), 8” x 10”
ISBN 978-1-56097-923-4

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[Via Mike Sterling].

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This Wednedsay, Comics Comics 4 is finally in stores. Check this post for a list of the issue’s highlights. Does your favorite store carry Comics Comics? If not, ask them to order it!

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Now buy it! New Comics Comics for sale here!

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Just to fill out some of the details of Dan’s announcement and get more people psyched, here’s more info on what you’ll get with the latest issue of Comics Comics, debuting at San Diego this week:

* A cover story and interview with the mysterious Shaky Kane

* A package on legendary Topps man (and not-so-secret comics guru) Woody Gelman, drawing on research from Patrick Rosenkranz and featuring Art Spiegelman

* An editorial on the declining profile of traditional comic books by Sammy Harkham

* Giant comics and illustrations from Dan Zettwoch, Mike Reddy, and Jon Vermilyea

* Brian Chippendale on all the latest superhero comics

* Joe “Jog” McCulloch on Gerald Jablonski

* Aragones-style marginal comics from PShaw!

* An exploration of Kentaro Miura‘s totally bonkers manga Berserk

* A list from an anonymous but highly regarded cartoonist

* Contributions from Eamon Espey and Benjamin Marra

* More!

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Oh boy, Comics Comics 4 will debut at Comic-Con! This one’s got Shaky Kane, Dan Zettwoch, Woody Gelman, Brian Chippendale, Sammy Harkham, Joe McCulloch, Mike Reddy, PShaw!, Eamon Espey, Benjamin Marra, Berserk, and much much more (well, just a little more). Come by and grab one and argue about Alex Ross with us! PictureBox — booth 1630.