Blab! Vol. 9

Blab! #9

by Monte Beauchamp

The preeminent anthology of the graphic arts, BLAB!'s list of contributors past and present reads like a Who's Who of the contemporary visual art world. Each issue functions on its own as a remarkable primer of contemporary cartooning and design. BLAB! focuses on creating stand-alone collections that assure the very best level of craftsmanship at all levels, whether it is the cartooning, printing, writing, or design. Both Print: America's Graphic Design Magazine and Graphis recently published lengthy features on the spectacular art and design of BLAB! 11.Includes: Sala, Baseman, Northeast, Ware, Boris Artzybasheff retrospective: "The Art of the Dell Mystery, " etc.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Stewart Tame]

As always, Blab is one of the more eclectic comics anthologies to have ever been published. While maintaining firm roots in the underground, it also sought the High Art status of the legendary Raw.

In rereading these, I’m noticing more text pieces than I remember. In my head Blab started out as a mostly text fanzine devoted to EC and underground comics that morphed into an all art comics anthology, but I’m seeing two longer prose pieces--one fiction and one non--as well as two artistically lavish shorter articles, one devoted to the glories of early Dell paperbacks, and the other to the peculiar genius of artist Boris Artzybasheff.

The two stories from this issue that loom largest in my memory are “Exorcise” by Peter Kuper, and “Valse Mecanique” by Peter Hoey and Charles Paul Freund.

Blab is always quite fun, particularly for fans of Raw-style anthologies. Recommended!