bookshelves: to-read
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bookshelves: favourites
Encyclopedia Brown. The Hardy Boys. Nancy Drew. The Bobbsey Twins. And... Billy Argo?
You probably don't remember Billy from your pre-teen reading days. That's because he makes his literary debut in The Boy Detective Fails, at the age of 30. Ordinarily, one would think that being 30 years of age would make it unlikely for Billy Argo to be a "boy detective," but this isn't an ordinary book about some ordinary boy. This one is "special," if you catch my drift. The author manages to take on a genre while remaining somewhat outside of it, and brought about clichéd characters while keeping them decidedly original.
As a child, Billy Argo (along with his sister Caroline and neighbour friend Fenton) spearheaded many investigations which had baffled local authorities, much to the chagrin of the sheepish mayor - counterfeiting rings, serial arson, the occasional brutal murder, etc. Rare was the week which passed by without an appearance of the trio on the front page of the newspaper, pantomiming just how the bust went down. Yes, Billy was a criminal genius, with his child's detective kit and the unfaltering support of his two peers.
And of course, there wouldn't be much of a story if there didn't come a day when all that changes. And it does. Billy grows up and goes to college, leaving Caroline and Fenton alone in this little town to realize just how much they had relied upon the Boy Detective's brilliance. They try to solve one final case on their own...
Thus, their lives are changed forever.
With all the potential to become yet another "shocking" modern-day morality tale, author Joe Meno takes this simple tale and deliberately twists the internal logic of the book. While no fourth walls are broken, the laws of physics frequently are (when local buildings begin to vanish without a trace, and ethereal spirits haunt the psyhcologically tormented Boy Detective, for example), leading the reader into a surreal world where nothing really makes much sense - and yet familiar, as if living in a fog of metaphor.
Written in the style of a classic "child detective" story with a decidedly grown-up spin, The Boy Detective Fails will have the reader not so much trying to solve the cases as they arise, but trying to figure out what's going on below the surface of Billy's madness, and within his small world. There is a bleakness to the Boy Detective's world, a darkness which can't be avoided, however there are also little treasures to be found within. All hope is not abandoned, but instead hidden in several undisclosed locations.
Honestly, this is ultimately more satisfying than the childhood whodunnits of our youth, where the characters never age, past lessons never really remembered, and good always triumphs over bad. The world is never like that. And while the world is certainly not at all as it appears in The Boy Detective Fails, it makes no attempt to mask its absurdity from the reader.
And does "the Boy Detective" fail? That part's subjective. In the traditional sense, and to himself, he surely does. To the rest of us, though... I'm not so convinced that he has. The oft-quoted H.L. Menckin (with a line reprinted in this novel) said that genius is "the ability to prolong one's childhood." As far as that goes, it would be impossible to say that Boy Detective Billy Argo has failed in anything.
(*"Like watching baby birds fall out of the nest," says one friend who has read the book. Hard to argue with that sentiment.) ]]>
bookshelves: favourites
A self-taught outsider in the sequential arts realm, Mark Beyer's graphical work has been notorious for appearing in free urban weeklies from the late 1980s to early 1990s. His best known work consists of a surreal, subterranean-inspired comic strip series. Collected for the first time (outside of crumbling newspaper clippings stashed in a shoebox in some dark hiding place), Beyer's quasi-popular "Amy & Jordan" strip has finally made it to store shelves, in black-and-white hardcover format. Indeed, while the tome is a bleak, gothic compilation which almost certainly isn't for everyone, it is (at its nicest) morbidly compelling.
Each strip is a study in urban alienation, with no oasis for Jordan or his sadistically-inclined roommate Amy throughout. The dead-end lives of the two protagonists continue unabated as the outside world invades and attacks them from the inside, page after agonizing page. Dealing with such light-hearted and universal subjects as premature death, prolonged starvation and mortal childhood illness, Beyer pries open every dismal, dry-rotted cask of the imagination, slyly smirking the whole while. The reader becomes a part of the assault, eyes incapable of averting, all the while whimpering, "Please... no more!"
And no two Amy & Jordan strips are alike, thanks to Beyer's unique paneling techniques. Every strip features its own style of frame, as if each panel were a piece of art interdependent of the other, yet isolated from all other strips within the book.
For fans who like their independent comic strips macabre (such as James Kochalka's now defunct Deadbear: Circus Detective) Amy & Jordan is the perfect compliment.
(*Though this has been my fourth read-through of this book, it seems that I have only had the capacity to recognize five or six specific strips upon review. So, in essence, the book remained 99% entirely new to me with each subsequent reading. Amy + Jordan has managed to become akin to a "living document." It is the kind of book only found in dreams. ...or perhaps nightmares?) ]]>
bookshelves: favourites, thrift-store-finds
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The time-worn literary cliché “It was a dark and stormy night...” has been re-adapted for this compilation of kiddie comix. And while the theme of a “dark and silly night” sounds clever and cute... well, it's cute, at least.
Comix legend Art Spiegelman and his wife Francoise Mouly compiled and edited this oversized “Little Lit” book of sixteen famed artists/writers of varying degrees. Most have had some experience in children's literature (Where's Waldo? creator Martin Handford, for instance, illustrated the endpapers of the book, and fictional children's author Lemony Snicket “wrote” one of the entries within), while others merely toned down their work so as to make it more palatable for a youthful audience (such as Gahan Wilson, who is actually credited inside as being a cartoonist for Playboy magazine). Spiegelman himself designed and illustrated the book covers – but none of the creative content within is his.
But yes- the book is indeed cute. It's the kind of book that would get a child's immediate attention, and draw him or her into the reading thereof. That is, perhaps, the greatest strength of the title. As for re-readability for an adult (or even for a reading aloud with a child), the book shows its weaknesses. It comes across as a comics-only version of Highlights for Children, complete with a What's-the-Difference-type game, a Where's Waldo?-esque character hunt (two of them, counting both sets of endpapers), and even Maakies creator Tony Millionaire gets in on the fun with a one-page story comprised of six mixed-up panels for the kids to rearrange in a logical sequence.
Amazingly, Spiegelman discovered a classic piece by the late Basil Wolverton which is entirely appropriate for a juvenile audience – that is to say, a fun romp which is not likely to induce nightmares in the particularly impressionable. This inclusion serves to differentiate the book from so many others aimed at children, making it something of an introduction into the vibrant world of classic Underground Comix. So the book does have something to recommend it above and beyond typical fare for the young.
So, it is cute. And yes, it is moderately silly - it elicits a giggle or two.
This, however, is not a monthly magazine, with a reasonable cover price for its audience (i.e. Young children and parents thereof). This slender tome is priced at about twenty bucks. The question remains: Is “cute” worth the investment?
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Bren
read and liked
Emelia's
review of Little Lit: It Was a Dark and Silly Night... (Little Lit):
"Just warning you, this one is not as good as the rest. In my opinion, at least.. "
"Just warning you, this one is not as good as the rest. In my opinion, at least.. "
Bren
read and liked
Bubba's
review of Little Lit: It Was a Dark and Silly Night... (Little Lit):
"More like a dark and acid-dropping night. At least I hope that there was acid involved. If not, then there is no excuse for the books' unfunny weirdness. "
"More like a dark and acid-dropping night. At least I hope that there was acid involved. If not, then there is no excuse for the books' unfunny weirdness. "
Bren
read and liked
Snorkle's
review of Little Lit: It Was a Dark and Silly Night... (Little Lit):
"This book weird. Really weird. I did not like it at all. Most of the stories were pointless, shallow, strange, and even creepy. I found most of the illustrations vulgar or just lame. I read this book and was actually annoyed that I had just wast...more "
"This book weird. Really weird. I did not like it at all. Most of the stories were pointless, shallow, strange, and even creepy. I found most of the illustrations vulgar or just lame. I read this book and was actually annoyed that I had just wast...more "
bookshelves: favourites
Anybody having grown up on the periphery of American pop-culture during the 1980s will have heard of Mark Newgarden's output – if not the man himself. Ostensibly the creator behind such so-called “junk culture” as Topps trading cards (Garbage Pail Kids, Wacky Packs, Toxic High School, and others), mastermind behind certain novelty candy items, and contributor to free independent “weeklies” comix sections.
A hefty portion of his work is displayed in We All Die Alone - work stemming from his work with “The Little Nun” (a mute geometrically-formulated Roman Catholic postulate who finds herself out of her established element, and then silently prays – perhaps the most predictable yet astute punchline in all of comixdom), through his “Little Stories” (a short-short-story “caption” beneath an otherwise wordless ambiguous comic illustration), and work with multi-corporate mascot “It's Em (tm)!”
As the title of this book would suggest, We All Die Alone is not the raucous reprint edition that many comic strips would see. Newcastle himself runs the polarized emotional gamut linking rejoicing with ruination. And so does his work. “We all die alone,” announces the punchline of several of his comix. Who can argue this? And it is this ultimate sad truth, coupled with the Funniest Drawings in the World, from which the book derives its esoteric, intrinsically damaging, humour.
Dan Nadel introduces the book with an anecdote from Newcastle regarding his own childhood, which perfectly encapsulates the material to follow: “I'd be perched in front of the TV, transfixed by The Three Stooges and laughing along at the magnificent abuse like any normal kid, when [my grandfather:]'d enter the room and begin haranguing me: 'What are you doing? How can you watch those men? How can you laugh? Those men are dead! Those men are dead!' Of course, that made it all much funnier.”
And a little further on, Newcastle uses the Word of God to further expand upon this thesis: “The heart of the wise is in the House of Mourning: But the heart of fools is in the House of Mirth.” Virtually impossible not to snicker at the material whilst keeping this Ecclesiastical gem in mind.
Finally, the book concludes with a sampling of the “junk culture” which raised Newcastle. The full-colour glossy representations of scraps of paper, clippings from various sources, and photos of found anomalies (horrifyingly cute ceramic works, for instance) give the feel of one who is surreptitiously rummaging through a man's coffee table drawer, or disregarded file cabinet drawer. The obvious deterrent to this sensation is that here Newcastle is inviting the reader to poke around, to nose about, through his private collection of trash and garbage, and annotates each treasure-in-miniature with information as to what it is, and why it means the world to him.
The terrible, terrible truth may be that we all really do die alone. But at least we'll have spent some time in this world together with those who create such throw-away culture upon which so many of our childhoods have been sculpted.
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