bookshelves: to-read
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Bren
took the never-ending book quiz.
| questions answered: | 355 |
| correct: | 205 (57.7%) |
| skipped: | 22 |
| best streak: | 9 |
| questions added: | 0 |
Aside from his penchant for obnoxiously-oversized books, Art Spiegelman demands shelf space in any comics aficionado's abode. With Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!, the reader is actually presented with a fusion of two separate books - his infamous $8.95 foray into underground comix, 1977's Breakdowns (which features the appropriately-sized "Hell Planet" story seen by most readers in Maus, which is itself a vastly extended version of the three-page 1972 "Maus" story as it reappears in Breakdowns), as well as the Portrait (sidling up alongside the glossy covers of Breakdowns in the form of memoirs, diversions, and addendum to the observations inked in the companion, Breakdowns).
While it is Portrait which has gained the most attention of recent critics (due, undoubtedly, to its fresher, original content), the republication of Breakdowns is an event unto itself: The first few thousand copies were ruined due to sloppy printing practices, and the ones which followed were compacted in size, rendering the artwork almost as if it were a vodun shrunken head.
The pieces work together, with the former focusing on the studies of the latter from time to time, although they are more contrasting than similar. Portrait is highly linear, with a comprehensive view on the youthful Spiegelman and his tenuous step into adulthood. Breakdowns, released shortly after the artist's nervous collapse in the 1970s, features much more esoteric work, an art-based release with special attention given to the experimentation of the form. Clearly, one expects less of a "story"-of-sorts from it... although it is not altogether devoid of cohesive narrative. There remains a special avant garde element rarely pursued in this modern age of comics. There can be no "dirty nostalgia" which can presently recreate those earlier days of underground comix.
Now, whatever happened to Jay Lynch? ]]>
Well, since the book editted by Ariel Schrag (Stuck in the Middle: 17 Comics from an Unpleasant Age) was recently banned from students in a Sioux Falls, South Dakota school district... maybe we can read that one? :) ]]>
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