Jim Shorkey

Most of my current reading has been catching up on the magazine pile and the J.D.Salinger short stories from the site mentioned in an earlier post. There were a couple of comic related books that I did fit in a coup[le of weeks back.

Rebel Visions is a look at the underground comix that prospered in the sixties. I first started squeezing these comix between the superhero and horror comics I was reading at the time. I truly found some shocking but artists like Robert Crumb, Vaughan Bode and Richard Corben kept me returning to the downtown magazine store that fronted the adult store at the back. When Will Eisner’s Spirit appeared on the cover of Snarf I was confused at what was exactly the dividing line between the undergrounds and the more “adult” black and white horror comics from Warren and the humour mag National Lampoon. The confusion was exhilarating.

Fantagraphics has started translating and reissuing one of my favourite French comic artists, Jacques Tardi. “You Are There”  starts like some minimalists Beckett play about a man named There who’s life is totally contained to the top of the walls that divide a French Town that is actually independent with the country itself. The plot starts to fatten up and becomes more complicated and political. Not the direction I desired, but Tardi’s artwork was reason enough to finish it.