The Complete BLAMMO Vol. 1

Blammo #1-5

by Noah Van Sciver

Collecting issues 1-5 of Noah Van Sciver's long-running comic series, Blammo.

Genres: Comics

Paperback

First published January 1, 2021

About the author

[copied from: http://nvansciver.wordpress.com/about/]

I am THE one and only Noah Van Sciver, cartoonist/comic strip artist and illustrator. I’m best known for my alternative comic book series Blammo and my weekly comic strip 4 Questions which appears every week in the alternative newspaper Westword. My work has appeared in The Best American comics 2011, Mad magazine, Sunstone, The Comics Journal, MOME and numerous comics anthologies. I’m currently hard at work on my first graphic novel The Hypo which will be published by Fantagraphics books upon its completion. I’m a cancer and I hate seafood, and adventure.

Reviews

[J.T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think Noah Van Sciver has been threatening to never reprint his early issues of Blammo for some time, so I'm glad publisher Dan Stafford was able to convince him otherwise. I stumbled on Van Sciver's comics back around Blammo #2 and have been a devoted follower since.

Looking back at his earliest work, you can definitely see the potential, but his skill as both a writer and artist have improved dramatically over the years. I love complete collections like this specifically because of that: you get to watch the artist develop.

I'm also appreciative that Van Sciver provided some context and other info in the notes section at the end of the book. He's put out quite a few autobiographical comics about his life growing up in a large, impoverished Morman family, but new readers will undoubtedly appreciate the insight this background provides to his headspace while drawing early Blammo.

I lost my early issues of Blammo to The Great Bed Bug Infestation Incident of 2008, so I'm overjoyed to have access to them again (and get to read the first issue, which I was never able to find).

[Keith Schnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first got interested in Noah Van Sciver's work through Fante Bukowski, although I imagine I was probably seeing individual pages and panels on Tumblr or something quite early in his career, at about the time that these first five issues of Blammo were being published. In any case, at this time he was (as he makes clear so frequently) a struggling independent cartoonist who would not have been aware of the success that awaited him, which makes his drive and artistic commitment especially remarkable. The Robert Crumb influence, and that of the other original underground cartoonists of the 1960s and '70s, is strongly visible here, both in the writing and in the artwork, and the author is clearly experimenting with a variety of styles until he finds one that he likes. None of them is exactly like the one that he would ultimately adopt for his graphic novels, which makes the process of developing a style all the more interesting to watch. These would have been great to pick up as $4 zines in a vaguely subversive bookstore, as God intended, but finding this compilation in a thrift store was almost as good. If you like Van Sciver's later work, this is a fun trip back in time; if you read this and don't like it, don't let that turn you off to his other stuff, which is naturally more polished.

[Hannah Garden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading all this old work was fun. This sounds backhanded but seeing someone's old awful work when you love their more developed stuff so much is just a very satisfying thing. It's like knowing that everyone was once a baby and it gives you hope. And what's "awful" in this work is still fascinating, funny, and awesome, so who even cares if stuff is awful, it's kind of a meaningless thing to say. Anyway Van Sciver has been in my top five favs for a long time and this collection just underlines that.

[John “Hoss” · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of Noah’s earliest comics. I missed out on these early issues and started getting Blammo around issue 7 or 8. You can see Noah working out ideas and the humor is pretty good. It’s really nice to read this collection and I’m thankful for Kilgore and Noah for releasing this book.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Van Sciver’s early years of bitter struggle. Behold as he develops his comics chops.

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good stories here. Always great to watch an author find their voice.

I only wish it had more negativity, personally.