"A Wholesale Murder Plot and They’re Working Fast!"
I went to APE with just a few priorities on my agenda. One of them was to visit the RE/Search Publications table and pick up a few treasures from my long-lost youth. Yeah, I hung out with weirdos, but they were the kind of weirdos whose weirdness you couldn’t accurately gauge by just looking at ‘em. To most people, we looked perhaps a little disheveled, but mostly normal. We wouldn’t be the first to go in a Purge, but perhaps would be saved for the second or third round. Stealth weirdo, as it was.
I was lucky enough to pick up the omnibus of RE/Search #4/5 and the INDUSTRIAL CULTURE HANDBOOK, which had recently been reissued as a hardcover edition. This was back in the days before say, Nine Inch Nails, when being into this stuff was perhaps the equivalent of being in beatnik culture in the fifties (as opposed to the Maynard G. Krebsian sixities). I’d make regular trips up to AMOK books with friends, both in its original location waaay down Sunset and then at the newer location on Franklin (or was it Vermont) closer to the center of the city. Drive up, chew on gas fumes for a couple hours, load up on Tommyburgers and soda right out of the can, hang around and get in touch with my inner freak. Stand next to Tim Leary and try to reconcile his counterculture godhead with the earthbound Leary who left his family and became a jailhouse stooge. Then step outside to the crumbling beauty of the dregs of Sunset (almost Silverlake) before gentrification struck in the 90s. Good times.
Anyways, to V. Vale of RE/Search, thanks for bringing back a little of that to my jaded older self.
Also on the list was grabbing a copy of I SHALL DESTROY ALL THE CIVILIZED PLANETS, the new Fantagraphics collection of Fletcher Hanks’ comic work. I wasn’t familiar with any of this until some scans began to surface last year or so, and were pointed out by folks like Dirk Deppey and I think even Tom Spurgeon. I was simultaneously repulsed and sucked into the work that I saw. Hank’s work isn’t good by most any objective standard. But then that’s the point of Art Brut, isn’t it? Not that Hanks would’ve classified it as such, but then when does authorial intent really figure into how the work is received years after the creator’s death?
I haven’t yet finished the book, but I’ve gotten a pretty good taste of things (and there’s no pretense of story and only the merest plot, so I’m pretty sure that there isn’t going to be an astounding revelation at the end that’ll change my view of the book – though I did skip ahead to the comics afterword by Paul Karasik, which was both sad and revealing.) Hanks’ comics are literally astounding. Every single panel is awash with weird revelation and framed by logic that only could make sense in dream or hallucination. Grotesque anatomy and Old-Testament retribution dress up in Flash Gordon leotards and gaze at one another through telescopic eyepieces. New York is destroyed and rebuilt many times over, within the space of a single gutter at times. Gravity is a mere inconvenience and crime never pays. The jungle is protected by a bombshell blonde with a skull for a face and Stardust (imagine the Golden Age Superman crossed with the Spectre) individually tailors punishment for every miscreant he comes across, simultaneously setting a template for both superhero power fantasy and EC-style horror tracts.
There’s a whole lot of crazy in this book. It’s as idiosyncratic as it is idiotic genius. Not for everyone, but for those who want a taste of the unusual, it comes highly recommended. Every panel offers its own little gemstone of crude, repulsive wonder.
As for APE, I also wanted to stop by at the Allen Spiegel Fine Arts table and take a peek at the new book by Baron Storey which was shipped just this week. Allen seemed somehow surprised that people even knew about it, much less were coming up to the table and asking to see it. Such is the power of the Internet, friends.
And yes, even I succumb to peer pressure from time to time. I bought the second volume of the SCOTT PILGRIM books. I read the first one and liked the cartooning quite a bit, but found the story was a little too much slacker wish-fulfilment for me. But I’m willing to give the second volume a chance.
After a lunch at the Holy Grill (thankfully there’s good food within walking distance of the Concourse now), the “Pagan” cheeseburger with bacon, if you’re curious, and some time to hang out with (ex-)blogger Ian Brill and JK Parkin from Newsarama’s blog (and yes, the omnipresent Mack Daddy G, aka Graeme McMillian) I headed back to get a look at the rest of the show, since I’d only been there for time to head up one of the main aisles. Oh, and as aside to Ian, I’ll be posting my thoughts on VANISHING POINT hopefully this week, so you better watch that toot sweet, as they say en Francais.
Things seemed much busier than in years past, probably the busiest show in the 5 years that I’ve been coming. I don’t know how the merchants/creators were doing at the show, but it seemed to be going pretty well. Of course, there were some pretty big names in both current and “classic” indy comics this year, so that may account for the big turnout. Crowd density on Saturday seemed to be approaching Wondercon-like numbers, and the heat/stuffiness index in the hall was certainly on the order of just about any big show I’d been to. So, anecdotal evidence seems to point to thriving interest for these sorts of shows and the comics, sorry, comix, that they’re showcasing.
My last stop at the show was to say hello to Larry over at AiT/PlanetLar, to catch up a bit and congratulate him on his impending fatherhood. Best wishes to both Larry and Mimi. I was tempted to grab the first couple of minis of THE HOMELESS CHANNEL, but those’ll be out in a couple of weeks as a single volume, so I held off. I expect good things from it.
Made a brief stop off at The Isotope to catch up on my monthlies (a smaller and smaller pile as events conspire and I just wait for trades now) and to get a birthday present for my mom (the ALL-STAR SUPERMAN hardcover which just came out, which seems to draw some of its lineage from Fletcher Hanks’ work, or at least you can see it from where Morrison/Quitely stand.) Then it was braving the rains and the traffic and tollbridges as I slid my way back home.