Weekly Treats!

You may want to sell your uneaten Easter eggs because this week features an avalanche of new books and comics. Okay; let's take a deep breath for the highlights:

Art Of Daniel Clowes Modern Cartoonists HC (Abrams Comicarts) including his best known illustrations plus rare, previously unseen work.

Unterzakhn (Schocken Books) by Leela Corman about immigrant life on New York's Lower East Side at the turn of the 20th-century, as seen through the eyes of twin sisters whose lives take radically and tragically different paths.

Pete and Miriam (Boom) by Rich Tommaso is a coming of age character story about the bond of friendship. This was a well-received title at Angouleme. 

Severed (Image) HC is an excellent horror title from the scourching hot Scott Snyder & Attila Futaki. It's 1916 and sharp-toothed man haunts the highways. When 12 year-old Jack Garron runs away from home, his quest for the American Dream becomes a... nightmare.

Batman Incorporated vol. 1 (DC) HC collects a meaty eight issues of Grant Morrison & Yanick Paquette's tale of a force of worldwide Batmen.

The Strange Talent Of Luther Strode vol 1 (Image) by Justin Jordan & Tradd Moore. About an "average geek" who sends off for an exercise course from the back of an old comic book. What he gets is the instruction manual from a murder cult as old as mankind...


And finally Dollhouse: Epitaphs (Dark Horse) by series writers Andrew Chambliss, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jed Whedon.

For the Weekly Treats we can focus on some number 1's:

Marvel Universe Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes #1 (Marvel) is a new all ages title written by the the Cartoon show writer Christopher Yost and illustrated by Adam Dekraker. Batman: Arkam Unhinged #1 (DC) continues the video game tie-in. America's Got Powers #1 (Image) by Jonathan Ross & Bryan Hitch spins Hunger Games with super-powers. Secret #1 (Image) is another new series by Jonathan Hickman & Ryan Bodenheim, this time filed under Espionage Thriller. But Secret Service #1 (Icon) just about pips everyone to the post for big release though if only because it's from Mark Millar & Dave Gibbons featuring spies, hoodies and Mark Hamill. Finally, not a number one but featured due to hot sales on the previous issue Saga #2 (Image) by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples as Marko and Alana must now protect their newborn girl from the lethal killers dispatched to destroy their family.

Books of the Year! Death-Ray

 

Have you read Daniel Clowes Death-Ray (Jonathan Cape) yet? Are you considering it? Have you read it and loved it aware that there's so much going on under the surface?

Daniel Clowes work really does justify critical analysis and it always fares well.  Which is why I thoroughly recommend flicking here to TheComicsJournal for the Death-Ray Discussion forum as it kicks off with an excellent break-down of comments including the use of pink and yellow, the use of the unreliable narrator and how about this example below that he entitles The Great Easily-Overlooked Moment:

The story is full of them. One of my favorites is Clowes’s use of the “non-character reaction shot.” After Andy reveals his tragic family history, Louie has no response, failing to sympathize with Andy’s plight. (This failure condemns Louie, the story’s true villain—a sidekick motivated by jealousy of the hero’s power.) The media image—George Jetson’s pained face on the TV—provides the appropriate “reaction shot” to Andy’s revelation. Why is it that we let the media and cartoons do our feeling for us?

Even if you have no interest in Death-Ray - amongst the finest superhero books ever written in my opinion - it really is worth reading for a window into appreciating comics as an art form rather than just telling stories.

Simon Pegg's subliminal Death Ray promotion

Swoon Soon-ish! The Death-Ray

Talking of highly anticipated books, it's that man Daniel Clowes again...

Not 'til October I'm afraid.

Gawd bless Drawn & Quarterly. Sniff.

Swoon Now! Mister Wonderful

 

In case you weren't just a little bit surprised to read Adrian Tomine doing something sweet, funny and kind of romantic in Scenes From An Impending Marriage, Daniel Clowes now completes the double-whammy. Well I suppose it's not that much of a shock seeing as how each of his books offers something different but coming relatively close after Wilson (see here) and particularly as Mister Wonderful (Jonathan Cape) begins with a lonely older man in a cafe struggling with low self-esteem as he waits the arrival of a blind date, my brain was set in Clowes = Existensial Angst mode albeit nicely observed and efficiently executed.

However a third of the way through the book and I found myself enjoying the company of these characters - something I never really did in Wilson. By two thirds I had found that I was reading something that was actually sweet, funny and kind of romantic. It wasn't because there was a dramatic change of tone, it was just that Clowes had beautifully navigated the book along the delicate balance between tragedy and comedy. Wilson was doing something similar by presenting a joke per page type format but I felt it was deliberately subverting the form and the comedy had a cynical edge. 

If you've never read a book by Daniel Clowes this may be a good starting point despite the fact that it doesn't represent the prevailing tone of his work. It does offer his familiar archetypes of character struggling for a sense of purpose in life whilst painfully aware of their failings, as well as displaying Clowes' expert use of the meduim deploying stylistic tweaks, such as the central character's internal monologue box overlapping the conversation bubbles or the nice couple of panels depicting the end of the female character's previous relationship when there was nothing actually said. And I think regular readers of Clowes will find the book rewarding - as if this is the book that breathes out and relaxes with genuine note of hope.

Mister Wonderful was originally commissioned by the New York Times and published in a serialised form which accounts for the landscape format (although it is hardcover and it's larger than Ice Haven) and slightly awkward pacing of the narrative. It also means that some of the online interviews about the project are a little dated but still worth looking at (see here). It really is nice to have new Daniel Clowes books in the shop again and his catalogue of work is looking varied and important, more so than ever.

Mister Wonderful is due out on 14th April.

Revisiting Wilson and Love & Rockets New Stories vol. 3

Two clear highlights from 2010 were Wilson by Daniel Clowes and Love & Rockets New Stories volume 3 by the Hernandez brothers. If you have read either or both of these titles you may be interested in the two extensive interviews with Clowes and Jaime Hernandez regarding both these titles, posted on The Comics Reporter.

Presuming on his Senses! Wilson

"It's not too much to say that Clowes' best work has the emotional resonance and mordant humor of literary satires such as Portnoy's Complaint and The Catcher in the Rye." – Marc Weingarten, San Francisco Magazine "Clowes has explored the tedium and mystery of contemporary American life with more wit and insight than most novelists or filmmakers." – A.O. Scott, The New York Times A new Daniel Clowes book is something to pay attention to particularly as the likes of Ghost World and David Boring seem so long ago now. In Wilson (Drawn & Quarterly), Clowes once again exposes a character who feels dislocated from everyday life. This time the story is told in one-page, six-or-seven panel scenes. Also the art style changes throughout dipping into references to other comic artists but always managing to return enough to his own style. Given that the story takes place over several years of one mans life, Wilson feels like a book by someone wishing to reflect on cartoon history, after all every cartoonist of any note uses different styles and techniques to deal with the same important concerns regarding life and mortality. It feels, for example like Peanuts taken to the extreme, Charlie Brown all grown up (he even has his own dog, famous amongst the locals). Another artist whose work is evoked is Seth. His two most recent books - George Sprott and Wimbledon Green - use a similar structure of building the story of a characters life through seemingly random moments so that if you dip into the book it seems almost lightweight but as you progress depths emerge. For example a scene later in the book shows Wilson sat with two people by a lake. This has poignancy because of something Wilson has said in an apparently throw away manner earlier in the story though Clowes is never crass enough to remind you. 

The one-page storytelling demands a punchline of some description, sometimes its a joke, sometimes its a valuable character insight. On the whole I didn't find the jokes particularly funny but, strangely that seemed to be the point as with Wilson's nihilistic, undermining of life, he sees the absurdity in everything but can't turn it into wonder and joy. It would be easy to appreciate rather than enjoy a book such this - the central character or his world isn't especially pleasant - but in many respects that is the challenge of the book for both creator and reader. It seemed to me that Clowes is trying to reach out to the unreachable, to form bonds. To make the character too sympathetic would defeat the object. Clowes even goes as far as appearing to be keeping us at arms length from Wilson by showing his moments of vulnerability by either drawing him in a more cartoon-like manner or showing him in silhouette. However your opinion of the character isn't as important as your engagement in his story and even from the opening page I felt that Clowes was always attempting to provoke a reaction. And the two white pages at the back? The quiet after the storm? The moment of health after illness that Wilson himself talks about at one point. Allowing a moment to appreciate and reflect on Wilson. The book is in hardcover, costs £13 and can be previewed here.