54 thoughts on “Every Autobiographical Comic Ever”

  5. For anyone who might not know: the first four panels are a hilariously on-target mockery of David Heatley’s “My Sex Life” autobio comics story. Where Heatley indeed features everyone he ever “did it” with; while ramming it “home,” notes how a dildo isn’t “doing it” for him any more, then goes shopping for a bigger one…

    (He self-censored many panels of that when reprinting the story in the “My Brain is Hanging Upside Down” hardcover…)

  6. No, no; I meant if it’s wrong to love the comic, I don’t want to be right.

    It seems like there’s more anal penetration than in most political cartooning. But maybe I just don’t follow political cartooning closely enough….

  7. Hee. I was thinking of something like a sign saying “OIL CRISIS” on a cartoon character in some situation currently being reported, to which the audience is supposed to chuckle in agreement.

  8. Mike, (counting the intro) I believe panel 2 is most directly Joe Matt. Panel 5 is Heatley. 6 is Brunetti. Panels 3 and 4 apply to a whole lot of them. 8 and 9, David B. 10, Eddie Campbell. But one could easily generalize from any of the points.

  10. Noah:

    “It seems like there’s more anal penetration than in most political cartooning.”

    But isn’t that a fault in political cartooning, rather than in Johnny Ryan?

    Ask the average American — or, heck, the average world citizen — and I assure you that “anal penetration” is at the top of the list detailing dealings with politicos.

  11. Mostly dumping on David Heatley’s asinine comics. And it worked! Look everybody, no more David Heatley comics! The system works.

  12. Step 1. to enjoying autobio comics is probably caring about other people . . . Deriving voyeuristic pleasure from learning the intimate details of other people’s lives helps too. Or psychoanalytical pleasure at picking them apart.

    I find these motivations come and go for me in waves . . . They seem really good when I’m in a receptive mood but really bad if I’m feelin’ self-absorbed and jaded.

    But likewise, I go through moods where it’s pseudo-objective, pseudo-sociological things that are bothering me. Anyways, I don’t think any of the traits highlighted here are particularly bad. They just exist for a particular audience/mood.

  13. I don’t know how current is current for Twitter-addicted Y-Z generations but Heatley’s story in the oversized Kramers Ergot 7 was brilliant, very weird and resonant, certainly in the vein of his dream stories but without the distancing frame of announcing it’s a dream (which is one possible avenue into the antiquated genre known as “fiction”.)

  14. David Heatley has a lot of talent, and more than just one idea. Autobiographical comics deserve derision, however, as they are generally less about learning anything about oneself or the world and more about directly sculpting a statue of oneself out of one’s feces, and worshipping it. Everything about the genius cult that should be denounced is present in one handy target in the autobiographical comics genre.

  15. The problem with this characterization is that many autobiographical cartoonists also have a strong interest in biography. Look at David Collier’s signature mingling of the genres, Crumb’s adaptations of Pekar and Boswell, Brunetti’s biographical strips, David B.’s interest in his brother and all those weird cosmologies, Chester Brown’s Louis Riel, and Art Spiegelman’s focus on his dad.

    But let’s not be so hermetically focused on comics… if Bert is going to denounce autobiographical cartoonists as self-idolaters, can we hear him do the same for Thomas Merton and St. Augustine? Where did those egotists get off thinking God and the reading public wanted to hear so much about them?

  16. I’m pretty sure Bert is talking not about autobiography as a genre, but about autobiographical comics as a genre. If you can’t see the difference, I probably can’t help you…but autobio comics definitely have particular interests and tics that don’t have much of anything to do with (for example) St. Augustine’s use of the narrative of his own life to explicate the Christian experience of sin and glorify God.

    I mean, bringing up someone like St. Augustine or James Baldwin or Mark Twain or any of the great autobiographical writers of history — to me that doesn’t elevate autobio comics for the most part. It makes them look worse.

    There are always some exceptions, of course. I still think Likewise is one of the greatest comics ever.

  18. I brought up Augustine for essentially inventing the genre, its roots in the conversion narrative (shades of Paul) and its guiding notion of confession to an omniscient, omnipresent deity; I think it’s interesting that a genre of minute self-analysis had its initial justification in that context. Noah only seems to be distinguishing Augustine for being Christian.

    I’m not sure what tics he’s referring to, but Augustine was pretty candid about his youthful concupiscence, and the element of sordid self-revelation in these comics owes a lot to the Christian confessional tradition. Arguably Portnoy’s Complaint takes inspiration from that too, Jewish and nominally fictitious as it is.

    I’m still unsatisfied as to the distinction between autobio comics and the autobiographical genre. Charges like the lack of the reliability that the mode claims and justification by sordidness apply to the whole category of literary memoirs. My examples of the biographical interests of autobio cartoonists would seem to defend the comics wing against being particularly solipsistic.

  19. You don’t need to refer to me in the third person. I’m right here, y’know?

    The Christian confessional tradition that Augustine was in was quite a lot different than what comics autobio writers are doing, not least because he had a point. That’s the case also for someone like James Baldwin, who used his own life history as a prism through which to examine race and politics and art. Or there’s someone like Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, where it’s more memoir, and the point is to talk about…well, Life on the Mississippi. Etc.

    Autobio comics like those Johnny is satirizing — David Heatley, Joe Matt, Jeff Brown, etc. — tend to fetishize their own utter lack of anything to say. It’s just about their own degradation/quotidian nothing and that’s supposed to be validating or interesting. You can say, “well it’s like Augustine without the Christianity,” but the Christianity is kind of important — even the point. You take that away and replace it with no point, and you have no point. Again, if you can’t tell the difference between autobio comics and St. Augustine or autobiography that doesn’t suck, I don’t know how to help you.

    And no, saying that autobio creators do other things occasionally is not an effective defense. Jeff Brown does genre and humor comics, and they are sometimes entertaining, but the fact remains that his autobio work is really utter dreck, and that that has a lot to do with the genre. Genres have their own logic and their own teleology; that’s why they’re genres. The indictment of autobio comics is an indictment of a genre, not of individuals. Saying that folks do interesting stuff outside of the genre doesn’t validate the genre; it just makes it all the more clear what an utter pit it is that otherwise talented people consistently create their worst work within it.

    I don’t know…if you want to be more irritated, you could read this, and also this.

  20. Sorry I missed all that.

    I wouldn’t say that other autobiographical narratives have no responsibility, and thus no blame, for the failure of autobiographical comics. But the difference between extraordinary experiences outside of oneself and extremely ordinary experiences entirely in one’s head (even if other people occasionally bump against the bubble) is a big deal. Augustine has his problems, but he had a lot to say via the Confessions. You take away God, or history, or any rootedness in anything besides your inherent interestingness, and it becomes entirely what it once was only in part– an excuse for the narcissism of the reader.

  21. I didn’t want to look as if I was talking to funny animal books or whoever else intruded while I was composing my opus.

    Points: we can take multiple autobio comics and say the same for each. I’m not rising to Jeffrey Brown’s defense. Joe Matt uses his life history to examine addiction, hoarding, and relationships. David Heatley uses it to examine race, gender, and sexual identity. Worthy subjects all, and your examples ignore every example I provided.

    Your claim of Augustine being nothing without the Christianity would make the autobiographical genre nothing. Come on, you went to college. Surely you allow the traditional view that he helped shape the interior, psychological focus of the genre. Your claim not only of essential difference between autobio comics and Augustine but of the best autobiography and Augustine is a slight to Augustine.

    I’ll buy that Christian claims (Jesus was the son of God, rose from the dead, if I believe these things I will join a special community of the saved) are irreducibly different in themselves, but that doesn’t mean there’s no continuity between Christian thinkers and people who don’t agree with those planks (that’s Western intellectual history), and falling back on that essential difference will cut against you every time you assert the superiority of Christian stuff. You can’t have it both ways.

    “And no, saying that autobio creators do other things occasionally is not an effective defense… Saying that folks do interesting stuff outside of the genre doesn’t validate the genre; it just makes it all the more clear what an utter pit it is that otherwise talented people consistently create their worst work within it.“

    Have you read any of the comics I described? My point is that autobiography and biography mingle in those cartoonists in ways that can’t be separated. Collier shifts between his personal experiences and the histories of the places he’s in and the lives of historical figures, not “occasionally” but as a rule. Crumb creates a problem of category; can you deny that his “Boswell’s London Journal” is an autobiographical comic? Brunetti’s Schizo #4 is an oversized broadsheet of single-page strips that are either about him or historical figures. Does it suck on every page about himself and turn good when he’s talking about Kierkegaard, Mondrian, Lewton, et al? So far you have provided a sweeping dismissal of self-examination in comics. Would they be better if I drew a Christian conversion on a post-it note and added it to each?

    If you are not sufficiently devastated by the correctness of my reasoning this will finish the last of your defenses.

    http://www.webcomicsnation.com/benadams/

  23. ————————-
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    …Autobio comics like those Johnny is satirizing — David Heatley, Joe Matt, Jeff Brown, etc. — tend to fetishize their own utter lack of anything to say. It’s just about their own degradation/quotidian nothing and that’s supposed to be validating or interesting…
    —————————

    Yes; Heatley is talented, yet that story about his entire sex life was simply a mind-numbing series of encounters. With “Jerry Springer” level self-exposure, as meaningless as Chester Brown showing himself eating his own boogers.

    —————————–
    And no, saying that autobio creators do other things occasionally is not an effective defense. Jeff Brown does genre and humor comics, and they are sometimes entertaining, but the fact remains that his autobio work is really utter dreck, and that that has a lot to do with the genre. Genres have their own logic and their own teleology; that’s why they’re genres. The indictment of autobio comics is an indictment of a genre, not of individuals. Saying that folks do interesting stuff outside of the genre doesn’t validate the genre; it just makes it all the more clear what an utter pit it is that otherwise talented people consistently create their worst work within it.
    —————————-

    Certainly there’s the psychology at work that “this happened to me, therefore it’s important.” (Recall how famously boring listening to other peoples’ dreams is supposed to be. Yet, how much people love to tell them! Last night’s was a doozy; must…resist…)

    One of the greatest comics is “Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binky_Brown_Meets_the_Holy_Virgin_Mary ). Not only autobiography, but brilliantly using the medium for depicting Justin Green’s youthful obsessions.

    In a less vivid tonality, Harvey Pekar did some nice slice-of-life stuff, giving weight to everyday experience. But some stories (Harvey unclogs a toilet!) were beyond insubstantial.

    Dori Seda ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dori_Seda ), though, could do a comics story about bathing her overgrown, moronically cheery dog, Tona, and make it painfully hilarious, in a “Lucille Ball in underground comics” fashion. (Spoiler Alert: The fresh-bathed dog ends up prancing in delight, while Dori — naked to do the job — ends up exhausted, her whole body and apartment wet, reeking and covered in dog hair.)

    Dennis Eichhorn’s “Real Stuff” autobio comics stories (like those of Spain) were unique in that he actually had an active, adventurous life. (One can hear Joe Matt complaining: “Hey, masturbating 30 times a day is pretty ‘active’ too!”) Not philosophically thoughtful, but lively, fascinating fare.

    ——————————
    zagzug says:

    …Joe Matt uses his life history to examine addiction, hoarding, and relationships. David Heatley uses it to examine race, gender, and sexual identity. Worthy subjects all, and your examples ignore every example I provided.
    ——————————–

    But, there is a difference between simply depicting and “examining.”

    ——————————–
    ex·am·ine

    1. to inspect or scrutinize carefully: to examine a prospective purchase.

    2. to observe, test, or investigate (a person’s body or any part of it), especially in order to evaluate general health or determine the cause of illness.

    3. to inquire into or investigate: to examine one’s motives.
    ——————————-
    (The relevant definitions from dictionary.com)

    Does Matt (all whose comics I’ve purchased and enjoyed) ever show an iota of self-awareness about his own failings and obsessions, does he try and analyze why he does such-and-such, behaves in such a fashion?

    Similarly, does Heatley inquire about what drives him to do this-and-that? About race, his “observations” are limited to showing how some black kids (or guys; his cartooning style tends to infantilize, so it’s hard to judge ages) he meets up with are assholes.

    For that matter, Crumb — hardly a world-class thinker, for all his talent — is similarly unreflective and unenlightening in his autobio work. As Kenneth Smith rightly noted, it’s pretty “adolescent”; only Crumb’s remarkable cartooning prowess provides a candy-coating to the stories’ “empty calories.”

  24. “Your claim of Augustine being nothing without the Christianity would make the autobiographical genre nothing.”

    I don’t really understand this reasoning. First, I’m pretty sure Augustine would argue that he was nothing without the Christianity; that’s arguably the point of the confessions. Secondly, I talked about ways in which the autobiographical genre can have different kinds of content — James Baldwin, Mark Twain, (or Anthony Trollope…or I’d argue Likewise.) The point isn’t that it has to be Christian; the point is that if it’s deliberately validated by its own embrace of quotidian dreariness, then it’s not very good.

    I don’t think it’s true that Heatley explores sexuality. A list of one’s encounters, as Mike says, doesn’t seem like exploration to me; just like listing.

    Re: address in comments thread. Usually you can quote a line and then it’s clear who you’re addressing (as in this); or you can say “Noah: ” and go on.

    Third person’s okay too I guess if you really feel that’s preferable; it seems odd to me, but it’s not that big a deal, obviously.

  26. Paying For It says quite a bit about society and contains many cultural, etc., implications, even if one doesn’t like the book. Seems wrong to lump Chester Brown with the just masturbating crowd. But Ryan’s strip also attacks the socially/philosophically/aesthetically inclined autobio comics, too, not just the ones that depict booger eating and jacking off, so that debate about Augustine vs. autobio comics seems moot. They all suck, even if drawn by a saint.

  27. Also– the other temptation, besides aestheticized masturbation (literal or otherwise) is to expose yourself to institutional discipline, qua Foucault. Autobiographical comics are self-glorification as well as self-annihilation– David’s sex comic has plenty to do with that Christian history– Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, Ignatius Loyola, etc. Not to mention the Marquis de Sade, etc., qua Barthes.

    The confession is an intrusive indexical instrument of control that we now carry around in our heads. Thus their curious emptiness, as well as the voyeuristic appeal. Especially when devoid of any content, or ethics, or narrative.

  29. This is a new low for the miserable hatefest and a pretty pathetic excuse for a HU post….”reprinting” a comic page by someone complaining about other comics

  31. Noah: “Charles, I agree Paying for It is different. I don’t think it’s very good, but it does have something to say.”

    And so did The Playboy and Fuck.

    As for the validity of the autobio genre, two words: Fabrice Neaud. But I shouldn’t say such things on an American blog, I guess…

  32. I’ve got 4 volumes of Neaud on vacation with me to reread this week. I’lll add Dominique Goblet to the list for validity of the genre. Fair Semblant C’est Mentir is great.

  33. My favorite Goblet is Souvenir d’une journée parfaite.

    They’re not as great as Neaud and Goblet, but you may also enjoy (if you haven’t already): Journal d’un album by Dupuy and Berberian; Livret de famille by Jean-Christophe Menu; Approximativement by Lewis Trondheim. I don’t remember if it’s autobio or not, but I vaguely remember liking Hanté by Philippe Dupuy.

  34. Step 1: cut out panels 2, 3 and 4.
    Step 2: draw a turban and beard on the guy
    Step 3: draw a swastika on the dildo
    Step 4: replace the dialogue with random combinations of hot-button words (e.g. rape, the KKK, piss, Jesus Christ)

    Congratulations: you’ve got every Johnny Ryan comic ever!

    …also, I’m surprised no one has yet jumped to Eddie Campbell’s defence. People really seem to like those Alec comics.

  35. ————————
    Charles Reece says:

    …But Ryan’s strip also attacks the socially/philosophically/aesthetically inclined autobio comics, too, not just the ones that depict booger eating and jacking off, so that debate about Augustine vs. autobio comics seems moot. They all suck, even if drawn by a saint.
    ————————-

    True, but whaddaya expect from Ryan, complexity? A deft, rapier-like jab at the offending spot, or the THWACK! of a caveman’s club?

    ————————–
    James says:

    This is a new low for the miserable hatefest and a pretty pathetic excuse for a HU post….”reprinting” a comic page by someone complaining about other comics.
    —————————

    As Roy Batty the replicant put it…“That’s the spirit!”

    (True, I’d been excited when seeing the topic listing: “Johnny Ryan wrote an article for HU?”)

  36. Sorry about that, Mike. I was hoping Johnny would do a new strip for us…but he felt like he’d already done takedowns of all the comics he hated. (Funnily enough, Suat said something similar….)

  37. Oh, I get it now. Someone hates something, and the comment thread is where you hate them for hating something. Thus an appreciation for the comics-blog-as-essential-virtual-experience is realized.

    I hate this comment thread!

    Dildo!

  42. Referencing the Chris Ware thread– don’t all the bad autobio comics (so, not the French ones I’ve not read) represent a deviation from the mediocre mean– so therefore those artists should all just keep making autobio comics and then they’ll get better through the power of randomness?

  43. I don’t mind autobiographical comics all that much if the cartoonist involved had an interesting variety of life experiences, ala Marjane Satrapi in “Persepolis.”

    But when some 20-something schlep still living with his/her mom and dad and hasn’t seen the world beyond a 500-mile radius of their home town, nine times out of 10 such an auto-bio comic is going to be a yawner, and/or will follow the sensationalistic framework shown above.

  44. Yes. And not only is there lack of life experience, but of the perspective, wisdom that such experience hopefully brings.

    Without that, what is there left for a young creator to add interest, drama to a piece? “Jerry Springer”-level self-revelation. Or “emo” pulling at the heartstrings:

    (NSFW) http://www.page45.com/store/9780971359765two.jpg

    Not to pick too much on Jeffrey Brown, though; “Clumsy” was rather sweet, and I’d prefer to read his stuff than 99% of Adrian Tomine’s, any day!

    S’more autobio comics come to mind: with David B.’s “Epileptic,” we had a great comics artist dealing with a dramatic subject.

    And Ariel Schrag’s “tetralogy Awkward, Definition, Potential, and Likewise, about discovering her sexual identity in high school, was unusual in having been mostly completed while in high school” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiographical_comics ) was pretty remarkable. While her drawing style was still developing, her talent shone through, illuminating all it touched.

  45. Geez, Mike, you still have this Ahab-like hate-on for Tomine? Noah should’ve tapped you for the Anniversary…!

    Myself, I can take him or leave him…mostly ‘take’.

  46. Noah, if you show no sign of having read the major entries in the genre AND admit that Paying For It evades your charge of solipsism and vacuity it’s obvious that you have nothing to say about these comics. PFI manages to be about something but The Playboy, I Never Liked You, Epileptic, Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary, Spent, and everything by Collier don’t? Or do they, Mr. Expert Prosecutor of the autobiographical genre in comics? On what are you basing your conclusion?

    You’re not even making a comparison with Baldwin and Twain, far-fetched as that would be, if you’re unable to bring the comics in question into the comparison; you’re only totem-shaking names from your English syllabus. Why don’t you put in a request for some rain while you’re at it?

    My point about Augustine was that claiming that his most famous work is nothing without the Christianity would mean that non-Christian writers couldn’t have picked up anything meaningful from working on the model of his Confessions; but they did. Your claim of stark, tautological otherness would disqualify his cultural influence, which did extend beyond only Christian writers. Don’t know how much more plainly I can put it.

    Bert, are you saying that the confessional tradition is mechanical self-punishment emptied of its meaning without the Christianity? This seems like an opinion that didn’t require all the jargon and Foucault references. Your other reply: “the difference between extraordinary experiences outside of oneself and extremely ordinary experiences entirely in one’s head” strikes me as a highly simplistic binary between “outside oneself” (encountering Jesus) to “in one’s head” (anything else). And what about Binky Brown?

    As with Noah, I don’t find your judgment of empty solipsism convincing at all when so many autobio comics, including the ones I listed, are obviously about encounters with people and situations outside the author’s head. You’re only bringing the charge of solipsism on yourself when you continue making sweeping judgments of autobiographical comics when so many revolve around encounters with other people and problems in such straightforward ways as to fit into the Library of Congress cataloguing. Or is your performance intended as an ironic takedown of shoddy, self-absorbed critics of autobio comics who embody their own accusations?

    Mike, I think Matt’s comics are his way of examining those issues, just an examination by means of dramatic enactment, a form that shows, and leaves room to make up one’s mind, rather than tells, as in an essay-in-comics format (which I don’t think I’ve ever seen done very well, but regardless would not be intrinsically superior, just different.)

  47. Again, as I’ve said before, part of the problem with disliking something is that you tend not to be interested in reading them. I’ve really probably read as many autobio comics as I ever need to thanks. Reading more would just piss me off further, I’m pretty sure.

    Paying For It is sort of an odd case. It is about something…and the something it’s about is an impassioned argument…for viewing human beings as solipsistic automatons. So it is an exception that tests the rule, but I don’t know that it exactly refutes it. My review of it is here if you’re interested. I think Maus (which oddly hasn’t been mentioned) is sort of similar; obviously it’s about the Holocaust, but it treats it as a way to add weight to personal angst/ familiar father-son issues. Sort of the inverse of Augustine (or James Badwin) where the specific illuminates or is meant to move outwards to social and spiritual issues.

    Along those lines, it seems like you could learn from Augustine that inner and outer are intertwined (for example); or that a life needs a guiding principle, or even that self isn’t all that important. Any of those things could be picked up by folks who weren’t Christians. Alternately, you could ditch the Christianity and not pick up anything else and conclude that quotidian solipsism is a joy forever.

    I think Bert’s point is that work on the self and obsession with the self is a way that people are linked to discourses of control; it’s regimentation, not freedom. This was the case in Augustine’s case too, obviously…but there’s a pretense that giving up the Christianity has allowed autobio comics — and the self more generally — to break free of institutions (certainly this is Chester Brown’s point/hope in Paying For It). Bert’s saying that that isn’t the case…that in fact, the contrary may be true, and the erasure of the control may make it all the more potent.

    Bert was speaking somewhat poetically, which may be why you found it difficult to follow; reading all those autobio comics can vitiate the taste, I guess.

    And I know that very mild dig will send you into a frenzy of ad hominem bile…but I couldn’t resist. I’ll see if I can do better on the next go round. In the mean time, I do appreciate your comments; I hadn’t really thought about the relationship between Augustine and Paying For It, for example, which I think is a pretty worthwhile comparison. So thanks for commenting. I’ll look forward to your next.

  48. Perhaps it is inappropriate for me to comment-on-a-comment that I “love” in this carnival of disdain? But Bert Stabler your “Dildo!” so perfectly illustrates your point about the creation of confessional texts that have a juridical relationship. Should that ‘dildo” exclamation be admonished?
    Of course, Augustine, party boy turned penitent, fits the bill exactly with the minutiae of carnality he describes and one might say that after all we are still reading those texts and so we must be interested. I mean even Foucault is kind of adding (legislatively) to the cascades of sex talk. I’m a little tired of all the wanking stories. God knows I don’t care who does it, but on reflection I don’t really want to read another story about it. It’s grimy. However, I think the call to generate sexio(e)texte is almost impossible to control and we may be stuck with it, at least until people get better jobs.
    Oh and I’m currently reading Rabelais btw.

    Dildo!

  49. ————————
    AB says:

    Geez, Mike, you still have this Ahab-like hate-on for Tomine? Noah should’ve tapped you for the Anniversary…!
    ————————-

    I dumped on Tomine so harshly and often at the TCJ message board that, alas, the enthusiasm isn’t as strong…

    As a bit of karmic balance, his autobiographical “Scenes from an Impending Marriage” ( http://www.amazon.com/Scenes-Impending-Marriage-Adrian-Tomine/dp/1770460349 ) sounded like a fine departure from the glum, anhedonic characters that infest his “serious” work. I bought it and was utterly delighted. Exquisitely designed, light and charming.

    Among his real-life wedding preparation events the book covered were:

    http://www.boingboing.net/images/registering.png

    http://drawn.ca/images/blog/tomine-20110308-215603.jpg

    http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JunrY951DgY/TX6cjlJ7QgI/AAAAAAAAKyI/KHdwWYcbJt0/s1600/03-14-2011%2B03%253B46%253B40PM.jpg

    http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ladjfjITVT1qa0z87.jpg

    http://www.casualoptimist.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/tomine3_custom.jpg

    (Tomine goes on to enumerate all the reasons why he detests that song. Later…)

    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bdVR-JIDi2g/TUDpPn5bMhI/AAAAAAAAU0I/Y1-whn184dQ/s1600/gnk.jpg

    Haw! And these incidents show how autobio comics can richly benefit from the splendid material that real life provides. Sorry, Adrian, but God (or Fate, or whatever “pulls the strings” of Life) comes up with better material and characters than you do…

    (The problem, though, is when trying to make a coherent narrative — and the longer, the more difficult it is — out of the messy variability of existence.)

  50. The problem with hating pop culture is that pop culture is based on hate … hate of thinking, hate of complexity, hate of adulthood.

    But it’s not a problem, it’s an opportunity: under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me.

  54. Pingback: The Comic Con Panel in My Brain | Stumptown Trade Review

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