PICK OF THE MONTH

BEG THE QUESTION, by Bob Fingerman, from Fantagraphics
Hardcover: AUG02 2107, pg. 292, $24.95

"Ever wonder what happened to Rob & Sylvia?" asks the ad, and indeed I have. Fingerman's comic MINIMUM WAGE was one of my favourite titles of the '90s, but as the decade ended so did the comic - without ever really concluding. The last issue stopped, maddeningly, just hours before the two principals were to marry.

So what did happen? It turns out that Bob Fingerman has been retooling the entire series into the seamless graphic novel he always intended it to be. He's substantially re-drawn and edited every page, says the ad, and has added grey tones as well. And he's added forty new pages of story. (He must have junked a lot too, but I can see why - MINIMUM WAGE was always a rambling slice-of-life book, never long on structure.)

When people talk about MINIMUM WAGE, they tend to focus on Fingerman's portrayal of New York, which Dana Gould called "surgically accurate" and Mike Mignola said was "so real you could smell it". Fingerman caricatures the whole city with the same sure hand and pitiless eye with which he caricatures its inhabitants. What invests it with energy is Fingerman's obvious discomfort with the extremes of New York - like Linus in PEANUTS, Fingerman loves mankind but can't stand people. Which helps explain why a man who supports himself by drawing pornography voted for Rudy Giuliani. Twice. (He later recanted in the comic's letter column.)

However, that's not really the point of the book. MINIMUM WAGE/BEG THE QUESTION is about urban neurosis, true, but first and foremost it's a romance. Rob and Sylvia are a classic mismatch - he's a snarky and buttoned-down Jew, she's a sensual and mood-swing-prone Italian. They struggle to make their livings, they have fights that gust up out of nowhere, and they have sex. Lots and lots of sex. Fingerman's frank portrayal of sex as a normal everyday part of life is one of the most refreshing things about this book. (And it's a good way to get you to buy it, isn't it, you beady-eyed rascal you?) There is a (sometimes irritating) supporting cast, but they aren't that important. This is Rob & Sylvia's show.

Gould also said, "you don't have to crane your neck to see yourself in [Fingerman's] world". It's because he gets the details right. It's because he's got such great empathy for his characters, and for the city they love despite the sleaze and the squalor and the random cruelty of it. And it's because he's funny as a bastard. This is an important work in comics that almost got lost. Don't let it get lost again.

DARK HORSE

REVEAL #1, by various
AUG02 0017, pg. 28, $6.95

At first, this looks like an average Dark Horse anthology, headlined by stuff like BUFFY and LONE WOLF AND CUB 2100. But then you hit the last sentence of the solicitation: "We are also proud to present a two-page comic strip by the most important artist of the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso." Huh? It also includes strips by Craig Thompson (GOODBYE CHUNKY RICE), uncanny mimic R. Sikoryak (here doing WAITING FOR GODOT in the style of BEAVIS & BUTTHEAD), and nobody else of interest to arts-comics fans. Bizarre.

AMERICAN SPLENDOR: UNSUNG HERO #3 (of 3), by Harvey Pekar & David Collier
AUG02 0023, pg. 32, $3.99

The conclusion of the biography of Pekar's friend, Vietnam veteran Robert McNeill. Pekar is the man who made comic books safe for everyday life; you really should pay attention.

DC COMICS / ARCADE COMICS

One's the sequel to the most successful series of 10 years ago; the other's the sequel to the most successful miniseries of 15 years ago. One's written by a guy named Millar; the other's written by a guy named Miller. Liefeld had a secretary named Batman; Miller had a secretary with a name like one of those YOUNGBLOOD guys, you know, whatsisface, the one with the oversized shoulder pads and lots of teeth. But beyond these uncanny coincidences, how do the two biggest projects this month in commercial comics, THE DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN collection and YOUNGBLOOD: BLOODSPORT #1, stack up?

Final Score: A tie, damn the luck. So which should you buy? To find out, just send me a $125 consulting fee care of this publication, and I'll give you a personalised recommendation, hand printed with antique Sharpies on an acid-free archival-quality cocktail napkin, suitable for framing.

DC COMICS

GLOBAL FREQUENCY #1 (of 12), by Warren Ellis and Garry Leach
AUG02 0270, pg. 84, $2.95

Don't call it a comeback; little new has been seen from Warren Ellis for the past year, but not because he hasn't been working - a lot of what he's been working on should start hitting stores this autumn. First up is GLOBAL FREQUENCY, about a secret rescue agency in which the saviours are, superficially at least, ordinary people.

It's fueled by Ellis' well-known atheism and his distaste for superheroes, and it's meant as a sort of antidote to the AUTHORITY. Not that there will be any shortage of enormous world-threatening horrors and big explosions. Which suits me just fine. Each of the 12 issues will be self-contained, each will have a different setting, and each will be drawn by a different artist (the roster announced so far: Steve Dillon, Gene Ha, Glenn Fabry and David Lloyd).

TRANSMETROPOLITAN VOL. 7: SPIDER'S THRASH, by Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson and Rodney Ramos
AUG02 0297, pg. 89, $14.95

Also from Ellis: This is the book where Spider Jerusalem becomes - literally, not just figuratively - an 'outlaw journalist'. This is also the last hurrah for Ellis' world-building meanderings. From here on in, the conspiracy plot kicks in in earnest, and there's no more sightseeing, but instead a headlong rush toward the inevitable.

Also this month: the last AUTHORITY collection. But why bother?

IMAGE COMICS

PARADIGM #2, by Matthew Cashel and Jeremy Haun
AUG02 1211, pg. 120, $3.50
Website: www.paradigmcomic.com

New issue of the formerly self-published comic. If you like the photo-realistic art and things-are-not-what-they-seem plot of STRANGEHAVEN, you'll want to give this a shot.

ABSENCE OF INK COMIC PRESS
Website: www.absenceofink.com

POP GUN WAR #5, by Farel Dalrymple
AUG02 1766, pg. 208, $2.50

New issue of the strange, beautifully-drawn Xeric-winning comic about the boy with wings.

ADHOUSE BOOKS
Website: www.adhousebooks.com

PULPATOON PILGRIMAGE, by Joel Priddy
AUG02 1784, pg. 211, $12.95

Now this is the sort of surprise that makes reading PREVIEWS worthwhile: a new original graphic novel by a new cartoonist, from a new publisher. PULPATOON PILGRIMAGE is a handsome book, inside and out - the art is tight, simple and effortlessly clear, and Priddy has a particular flair for lighting effects.

What's it about? It's about a robot, a minotaur and a plant, on a journey of unspecified purpose, but really, judging from the first chapter, which Adhouse has posted online, it's about friendship and loss, similar in tone to GOODBYE CHUNKY RICE by Craig Thompson (who gives a glowing blurb for the ad). Please do check it out. In an industry that penalises the new, this book deserves your attention.

(A pulpatoon, by the way, is an archaic word for a type of delicate confectionery or cake made with fruit pulp.)

ALTERNATIVE COMICS
Website: http://www.indyworld.com/altcomics/

BOGUS DEAD, by various
AUG02 1797, pg. 214, $9.95

Here's a first: an anthology focused entirely on zombies. 144 pages, over 40 cartoonists, of whom the best known, by my accounting, are James Kochalka, Tom Hart, Megan Kelso and Jim Mahfood. Looks to be played mainly for laughs.

BIPOLAR #3, by Tomer & Assaf Hanuka, with Etgar Keret
AUG02 1801, pg. 217, $2.95
Website: www.thanuka.com

And speaking of the undead: half this issue is taken up by an instalment of "Pizzeria Kamikaze," by Assaf Hanuka and Actus member Etgar Keret, in which the place that suicides go after they die turns out to be pretty much like the place they left. In the other half, Tomer Hanuka continues to do things that defy my attempts to explain them...

AMAZE INK (SLAVE LABOR GRAPHICS)

LIKEWISE #1, by Ariel Schrag
AUG02 1804, pg. 218, $4.95 (magazine sized, 40 pages)

Ariel Schrag makes me feel old. She's a science nerd, a dyke, and a cartoonist who's been writing about her life almost as fast as she's been living it. LIKEWISE covers her senior year in high school, and she's already done three other graphic novels covering the previous three years. And she's barely into her twenties! Damn it, she's several years younger than I am!

I know what you're thinking. The stereotype of autobiographical comics, particularly those set in high school, is that they're melancholy, morbidly introspective affairs. But, blessedly, it appears that Schrag is one of those rare cartoonists who, on balance, had a good time in high school.

It no doubt helped that she had permissive parents and lived in a famously liberal city; there's probably no easier place in America to come out as a teenage lesbian than Berkeley, California. Not that there wasn't plenty of tumult in Schrag's adolescence - there was, and she's nakedly, compulsively honest about it - it's just that, as you can tell by a glance at her bubbly, unforced artwork, she sees no glamour in being glum. Which makes a nice change.

More than that I can't say - I'm embarrassed to admit that I never thought to investigate Schrag's work before now. But I will point you towards two excellent reviews of Schrag's previous book, POTENTIAL, at The Village Voice and SAVANT. If these don't make you curious, I can't think what could.

AVATAR PRESS

MAGIC WORDS, by Alan Moore and various
Softcover: AUG02 1862, pg. 236, $6.95

Avatar bills this as the first in "a new line of graphic novels" by Moore. Technically, it's not really a graphic novel - it's a selection of some of his songs, poems and writings, picked by Moore himself and adapted by "an amazing group of European [mostly Spanish] artists never before seen in America!" They had no trouble fitting in with Avatar's aesthetic, judging by that mortifying soft-porn cover. Yes, yes, it directly illustrates a scene from one of the songs, but Christ, they couldn't have offered a tamer alternative, as with Garth Ennis' DICKS? When the fuck was the last time Avatar published a comic with only one cover?

CLIB'S BOY COMICS
Website: www.yunque.com/tom

TRUE STORY, SWEAR TO GOD #4: DISCOVERIES, by Tom Beland
AUG02 1992, pg. 261, $2.95

More true romance from the utterly besotted Tom Beland. This is a book of modest but rare virtues: honest sentiment, a graceful line, guilelessness. Reading this is as refreshing as hearing a Tommy Dorsey song come on the radio.

DRAWN & QUARTERLY
Website: www.drawnandquarterly.com

LOUIS RIEL #8, by Chester Brown
AUG02 2042, pg. 276, $2.95

The latest chapter in Brown's fine biography of Riel, the 19th-century half-Indian messianic rebel, often called the most controversial figure in Canadian history. This issue, the violence Riel had been dreading comes to a head, as the government decides to send in the army and crush his insurrection for good...

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS

In addition to BEG THE QUESTION, there's:

BLAB VOL. 13, by various
AUG02 2106, pg. 292, $19.95

New issue of the frighteningly beautiful anthology of the graphic arts. On the cartoon side, this issue boasts the return of political firebrand Peter Kuper (THE SYSTEM), and maybe, depending on whether you trust Amazon or Previews, of the supremely creepy Al Columbia (THE BIOLOGIC SHOW), who has done the best work of his life for the magazine.

HATE ANNUAL #3, by Peter Bagge
AUG02 2114, pg. 294, $3.95

This is the only dose of Bagge we get, these days (with the exception of oddities like that SPIDER-MAN one-shot Marvel had him do - I still can't fully wrap my head around that). This one will not only have a new Buddy Bradley story, but also a new 20-page story starring Chet & Bunny Leeway, the hypercritical reluctant-suburbanites from his NEAT STUFF days and my favourites among his neglected characters. Give 'em their own series, Pete!

ZIPPY ANNUAL 2002, by Bill Griffith
AUG02 2112, pg. 294, $19.95
Website: www.zippythepinhead.com

ZIPPY is best consumed in small doses daily, I suspect, as nature intended. In concentrated book form, there's a lot of giant roadside attractions, diners, and verbigeration for one sitting. It works best as a bit of dada smuggled into the grey confines of your daily newspaper. But let's face it, your newspaper probably doesn't carry it. What it probably does carry is a lot of bland suburban marketing-driven factory-manufactured strips whose original creators died or lost interest decades ago. If that's true, here's your antidote.

THE COMICS JOURNAL #248
AUG02 2110, pg. 292, $6.95

Featured interviewees with mainstream classicist and NEXUS creator Steve Rude, and indie minimalist Andi Watson, much loved round these parts.

THE COMICS JOURNAL LIBRARY VOL. 1: JACK KIRBY
AUG02 2111, pg. 294, $18.95

This is a new printing, as the first run, the ad tells us, sold out in a week. Excellent.

The JOURNAL has long been comics' best source for definitive interviews and critical essays; this book attractively packages all their material on Kirby, with an unflinching emphasis on creators' rights, along with new material and rare artwork.

PANELS #1 and #2 PACK, edited by John Benson
AUG02 2113, pg. 294, $9.95

This is one of the JOURNAL's few precursors, an intelligent magazine about comics from the late '70s, an even more dispiriting time for comics than for popular culture in general. Issue #1 has interviews with Will Eisner (THE SPIRIT), Jules Feiffer, and Bill Griffith (ZIPPY), who at the time had only recently become nationally syndicated. Issue #2 has a comprehensive on 'the good duck artist' Carl Barks, and an analysis of Harvey Kurtzman's EC war comics.

GREEN DOOR STUDIOS

CUCKOO VOL. 1, by Madison Clell
AUG02 2166, pg. 300, $13.85
Website: www.cuckoocomic.com

Collects all 13 issues of the autobio comic by Clell, who suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder (or, more properly, Dissociative Identity Disorder). It's messy as all hell, as you might imagine, but if you can look past that, it's an education, and Clell keeps things interesting by using all sorts of storytelling techniques.

NBM

ODDBALLZ #4, by Lewis Trondheim & Manu Larcenet
AUG02 2249, pg. 316, $2.95

Why yes, I am going to keep yammering on about this until you're all sick of it. Trondheim's work is funny and delightful, the kind of quality groundlevel work we always talk about needing. Read the previews of issue #1 and tell me if I lie.

Yes, these stories have been chopped up for serialisation; yes, the colour has been turned to tones of grey. But when Fantagraphics tried publishing full-colour Trondheim albums at not-unreasonable prices, they lost their shirts. This is one of those cases where, if you wait for the collection, there might not ever be one. Issues #1-3 are offered again this month, with the codes AUG02 2250-2 respectively. Each is $2.95.

ONI PRESS
Website: www.onipress.com

POUNDED, by Brian Wood and Steve Rolston
AUG02 2273, pg. 320, $8.95

POUNDED got off to a spirited start, I thought, a little reminiscent of the 'Follow That Dream!' arc from HATE. Rolston's cartoony art, though a little blunt, captured the scene nicely. Everything seemed to be going so well and then it just... fizzled.

To explain how, I have to give away the plot. So:

EVERYTHING SPOILED AHEAD

Heavy Parker, trust-funded phoney "punk rock king" of Vancouver, misuses a naïve, straight-arrow young girl named Missy who's fallen in love with him. She goes off to college in New York, falls in with some genuine roughneck punks, and sics them on Heavy. They beat him up and throw him out of his penthouse apartment.

A solid, upstanding citizen would simply have them arrested, but Heavy can't because it's against the Punk Rock Code of Ethics. So instead he fights them again, gets in a few good shots this time, and gets himself arrested. Honour being satisfied, he wins back the respect of his bandmates and friends (including Missy - don't ask me how that works)... which proves that they're even phonier than he is, so he dumps them all. The joke of the series isn't really on Heavy after all.

It doesn't work, because there hadn't been any indication before the very end that they were phoney. Heavy's friends were perfectly justified in abandoning him. His bandmates had warned him about toying with Missy's affections, and if they abandoned him, it was only because There Are Some Battles A Man Has To Fight For Himself, which, though I'm no expert, seems to me entirely congruent with the Punk Rock Code of Ethics. Yes, some misdirection is necessary to execute a plot twist, but a book can't switch targets so abruptly in its last few pages.

At least this book attempts a twist, though - plot is usually not Wood's foremost concern. Look at COUSCOUS EXPRESS: a slightly spoiled girl named Olive resents her Old World immigrant parents. They get threatened by gangsters, Special helps save them, and then she appreciates them again. That's it. That's the whole story. The depth Steven Grant promises in the introduction never materialises.

Or look at CHANNEL ZERO, Wood's best-known book, which plot-wise goes from point A to point A. Charismatic media pirate Jennie 2.5 frets about being absorbed harmlessly back into the mass-media spectacle in the first chapter, and that is indeed what happens. The rest is all epilogue.

Wood's comics have style, urgency, interesting premises and some nice character touches. But I haven't yet read one that felt satisfying in the end.

SPARKPLUG COMICS
Website: www.sparkplugcomicbooks.com

ORCHID, by various
AUG02 2313, pg. 328, $8

This is tempting. ORCHID is an anthology of Victorian horror stories, including some by Poe and Saki, "adapted by ten top comic artists, including Xeric Award winners David Lasky, Ben Catmull and Dylan Williams". In comics, horror usually means buckets of blood, or EC-style trick-ending stories introduced with bad puns, or both (see SPLATTER COMIX, debuted just a few pages before this, which even copies the old EC Leroy Lettering). But by instead taking a low-key approach, ORCHID is shooting at something deeper and weirder and genuinely unsettling. Which is supposed to be the point, isn't it? You can see sample pages at the above-listed website.

TOP SHELF PRODUCTIONS
Website: www.topshelfcomix.com

HAPPY END, by Actus (with guest Anke Feuchenberger)
Hardcover: AUG02 2365, pg. 337, $21.95

Befuddle the denizens of your local comics & cards shop by ordering this, this year's annual project from Actus, an Israeli cartoonists collective. There's been a lot of good critical buzz on their recent books, and considering that HAPPY END is a 188-page full-colour hardcover, and wildly uncommercial at that, the price is really quite reasonable. For information on the contents, check out this review by Greg McElhatton, who obtained a copy three months early by means of dread and unnameable black arts.

Chris Ekman is a political cartoonist.

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