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The Wild Kingdom
The new master of Comics Experimentalism returns with his Everyman, Glenn Ganges
Standing out among his contemporaries, Kevin Huizenga's subtle mastery of the medium has earned him countless accolades and awards. His comics are at once straightforward and experimental, serious and funny. His character is the suburban everyman Glenn Ganges, a modern-day Dagwood Bumstead, who tackles and stumbles with such heady topics as mysticism and science. In TheWild Kingdom , Glenn Ganges blindly interacts with the nature of his suburban dead houseplants, a recipe for gray squirrel brain, and pigeons eating discarded French fries in the parking lot of a fast-food joint. Huizenga juxtaposes Glenn's ignorance of his surroundings with television commercials highlighting society's needs for cure-all pharmaceuticals and "hot new things" like teeth whiteners. Starting off wordless, The Wild Kingdom grows more complex page by page, ending with encyclopedic entries, biographical excerpts, anthropologic flowcharts, and a cataclysmic encounter of nature and technology.
Standing out among his contemporaries, Kevin Huizenga's subtle mastery of the medium has earned him countless accolades and awards. His comics are at once straightforward and experimental, serious and funny. His character is the suburban everyman Glenn Ganges, a modern-day Dagwood Bumstead, who tackles and stumbles with such heady topics as mysticism and science. In TheWild Kingdom , Glenn Ganges blindly interacts with the nature of his suburban dead houseplants, a recipe for gray squirrel brain, and pigeons eating discarded French fries in the parking lot of a fast-food joint. Huizenga juxtaposes Glenn's ignorance of his surroundings with television commercials highlighting society's needs for cure-all pharmaceuticals and "hot new things" like teeth whiteners. Starting off wordless, The Wild Kingdom grows more complex page by page, ending with encyclopedic entries, biographical excerpts, anthropologic flowcharts, and a cataclysmic encounter of nature and technology.
108 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
About the author
Kevin Huizenga
39 books92 followersKevin Huizenga was born in 1977 in Harvey, IL and spent most of his childhood in South Holland, IL, near Chicago. He attended college in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and moved to St. Louis in 2000 where he lives and works.
He began drawing comics in high school, xeroxing his first issue (with friends) at the neighborhood Jewel Osco in 1993. Since that time he's made approximately 30 more. In 2001 the Comics Journal named him "Minimalism Cartoonist of the Year" and called #14 of his "Supermonster" mini-comic series "one of the best comics of any kind released in 2001."
In 2001 he also started the Catastrophe Shop http://www.usscatastrophe.com, an online shop for self-published mini-comics (now run by Dan Zettwoch http://www.usscatastrophe.com/zettwoch/).
He began drawing comics in high school, xeroxing his first issue (with friends) at the neighborhood Jewel Osco in 1993. Since that time he's made approximately 30 more. In 2001 the Comics Journal named him "Minimalism Cartoonist of the Year" and called #14 of his "Supermonster" mini-comic series "one of the best comics of any kind released in 2001."
In 2001 he also started the Catastrophe Shop http://www.usscatastrophe.com, an online shop for self-published mini-comics (now run by Dan Zettwoch http://www.usscatastrophe.com/zettwoch/).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews
February 22, 2019
Interesting and strange. There really isn't a story to summarize here. It's clearly a case of comics as art. There are themes and recurring images, but no plot or anything. Huizenga has a nice cartoony style that gives the illusion of approachability. “It looks kind of like Archie or something,” you say to yourself. “I’ll bet it's really funny. I’ll just read some of it …” But the effect is a lot like reading Nancy if Nancy were done by Bill Griffith or perhaps Jim Woodring.
It's fun and all, but perhaps something of an acquired taste.
It's fun and all, but perhaps something of an acquired taste.
September 18, 2011
"The Wild Kingdom" is a reprint of a series of strips Kevin Huizenga compiled in 2000 and reprinted again in 2006. This time they're given the deluxe edition as they're collected in hardback, though the book is almost pocket sized.
Inside the strips revolve around the theme of the natural world and humanity's correlation to it. About half of the book features no words as we see Glen Ganges go about his daily life but seeing animals do the same. He encounters squirrels, birds, his cat and whatnot forage for food, wander about, follow things.
It's difficult to make sense of the second half. Advertising is criticised, Huizenga talks about Nobel Prize winning author Maurice Maeterlinck who won the 1911 Literature prize and wrote about the natural world. There are several pages of made up birds and then a silent strip involving a dead bird and the destruction of a small town.
Like his previous book "Curses", Huizenga mixes some pleasant strips with abstract works and experiments with text and layout. Also like "Curses" it's difficult to see what the purpose is. It's an interesting read and has some moments in the short book that hold your attention but ultimately it's somewhat pretentious approach is a bit exhausting and the book suffers because of it. Not a bad comic book but not one I would say is essential reading.
Inside the strips revolve around the theme of the natural world and humanity's correlation to it. About half of the book features no words as we see Glen Ganges go about his daily life but seeing animals do the same. He encounters squirrels, birds, his cat and whatnot forage for food, wander about, follow things.
It's difficult to make sense of the second half. Advertising is criticised, Huizenga talks about Nobel Prize winning author Maurice Maeterlinck who won the 1911 Literature prize and wrote about the natural world. There are several pages of made up birds and then a silent strip involving a dead bird and the destruction of a small town.
Like his previous book "Curses", Huizenga mixes some pleasant strips with abstract works and experiments with text and layout. Also like "Curses" it's difficult to see what the purpose is. It's an interesting read and has some moments in the short book that hold your attention but ultimately it's somewhat pretentious approach is a bit exhausting and the book suffers because of it. Not a bad comic book but not one I would say is essential reading.
May 11, 2015
My library tells me: "... original collection during the fall of 1999 and early 2000 (self-published as Super-monsters #12) ... In 2006, an expanded edition of the work was published by Drawn & Quarterly as Or Else #4"-- In 2010, this was released as a still expanded hardcover as a tenth anniversary edition.
The Wild Kingdom would appear to be a PBS Nature special and the intro sets it up that way, and there is a fake index that follows it. The idea would seem to be a technical introduction to various aspects of the natural world… and that is what happens. Man's effect on nature is central, but thank goodness it is not a scientific guide, but a sort of amusing and poetic and sometimes absurd series of meditations or brief anecdotes (more like prose poems) about man and nature. There's a selection from an essay by Maeterlinck on The Life of the Bee. There's index card sized clip out (snip on the dots) informational snippets about birds and fish and animals. There's whimsical reflections on catastrophe… Some of it reminds me of Seth, only less nostalgic and more absurd and less stylized, but with that combination of warmth and quirkiness.
When I read Curses 3-4 years ago I didn't really get it, and may still not get it. But I am starting to warm to his art everywhere I see it. There's something gentle and quirky and pleasantly inviting about it for me.
The Wild Kingdom would appear to be a PBS Nature special and the intro sets it up that way, and there is a fake index that follows it. The idea would seem to be a technical introduction to various aspects of the natural world… and that is what happens. Man's effect on nature is central, but thank goodness it is not a scientific guide, but a sort of amusing and poetic and sometimes absurd series of meditations or brief anecdotes (more like prose poems) about man and nature. There's a selection from an essay by Maeterlinck on The Life of the Bee. There's index card sized clip out (snip on the dots) informational snippets about birds and fish and animals. There's whimsical reflections on catastrophe… Some of it reminds me of Seth, only less nostalgic and more absurd and less stylized, but with that combination of warmth and quirkiness.
When I read Curses 3-4 years ago I didn't really get it, and may still not get it. But I am starting to warm to his art everywhere I see it. There's something gentle and quirky and pleasantly inviting about it for me.
September 6, 2010
great but sad because I've been looking forward to this for a long time w/o realizing it's a reprint of material I've read before in Or Else.
This is Huizenga at his least restrained -- rapid-fire bursts of cartooning that cohere around a handful of themes: 21st-century marketing strategies, the mysteries of the natural world, and the helplessness of critters in the face of forces too big for them to perceive. There's a lot of humour in the book, though it is undercut by a persistent melancholia. Huizenga's sequencing of panels/pages/chapters seems guided more by intuition than logic, and I reckon that it must be read in a similar spirit. Straight-ahead domestic narratives are interrupted by mysterious charts and diagrams, unidentified talking heads, and fanciful drawings of mutant birds; this method seems to mirror the passage of thought rather than the passage of time. The cartoonist's clean, energetic, minimal mark-making conveys ideas and emotions that are colossal and complex. The Wild Kingdom's cataclysmic final pages might seem bleak; but with the proper attitude, one might read them as a breathless presentation of the latest and most exciting scientific discovery.
This is Huizenga at his least restrained -- rapid-fire bursts of cartooning that cohere around a handful of themes: 21st-century marketing strategies, the mysteries of the natural world, and the helplessness of critters in the face of forces too big for them to perceive. There's a lot of humour in the book, though it is undercut by a persistent melancholia. Huizenga's sequencing of panels/pages/chapters seems guided more by intuition than logic, and I reckon that it must be read in a similar spirit. Straight-ahead domestic narratives are interrupted by mysterious charts and diagrams, unidentified talking heads, and fanciful drawings of mutant birds; this method seems to mirror the passage of thought rather than the passage of time. The cartoonist's clean, energetic, minimal mark-making conveys ideas and emotions that are colossal and complex. The Wild Kingdom's cataclysmic final pages might seem bleak; but with the proper attitude, one might read them as a breathless presentation of the latest and most exciting scientific discovery.
April 8, 2021
This feels like revisiting an old friend. When I first started becoming interested in mini comics - about the time a copy of Jeffrey Brown’s Clumsy fell on my head in Nottingham’s Forbidden Planet in about January 2004 - Huizenga’s comics were always the ones that felt most fascinating to me. I ordered bunches of his stuff from his distribution page USS Catastrophe, from Supermonster and beyond, and because we’re roughly the same age I found the development of his ideas and his art kind of especially fascinating.
Huizenga’s genius is to combine something of the philosophical and allegorical themes of someone like Anders Nilsen but with his everyman hero, Glen Ganges, sort of placing the wilder and stranger threads in a more realistic context along the lines of that zen genius of comic art, John Porcellino and his King Cat books. Another genius from my days as a USS Catastrophe punter was Warren Craghead who treads a similar path, but who manages to boil down these ideas to their very essential basics. They fascinate me because they are so unlike anything I could ever do or articulate, but have a strange hold over me that I find really powerful and moving.
I’m not sure this is a book you can really understand until you have read it carefully, several times over. There are themes and messages broken up like a sort of mosaic, which the reader then has to contextualise and manoeuvre through. It’s playful, it’s surreal, it’s gorgeously drawn - taking Porcellino’s simple abstractions via Herge - and feels like a mystery you unpeel on each reading. Some of Huizenga’s mini comics are thrillingly experimental with the format, and because this is a book it doesn’t quite have that side of his art, but it also manages to incorporate red herrings and found art and... so much more
I feel like I’m being breathlessly enthusiastic and not wildly coherent, but it’s lovely to suddenly be plunged back to the thrill of sixteen odd years ago (which is terrifying) and getting another package in the post. I would never have believed that I would end up making comics myself, but this book feels like a Proustian Madeleine of sorts that takes me back to the before times. It’s wonderful
Huizenga’s genius is to combine something of the philosophical and allegorical themes of someone like Anders Nilsen but with his everyman hero, Glen Ganges, sort of placing the wilder and stranger threads in a more realistic context along the lines of that zen genius of comic art, John Porcellino and his King Cat books. Another genius from my days as a USS Catastrophe punter was Warren Craghead who treads a similar path, but who manages to boil down these ideas to their very essential basics. They fascinate me because they are so unlike anything I could ever do or articulate, but have a strange hold over me that I find really powerful and moving.
I’m not sure this is a book you can really understand until you have read it carefully, several times over. There are themes and messages broken up like a sort of mosaic, which the reader then has to contextualise and manoeuvre through. It’s playful, it’s surreal, it’s gorgeously drawn - taking Porcellino’s simple abstractions via Herge - and feels like a mystery you unpeel on each reading. Some of Huizenga’s mini comics are thrillingly experimental with the format, and because this is a book it doesn’t quite have that side of his art, but it also manages to incorporate red herrings and found art and... so much more
I feel like I’m being breathlessly enthusiastic and not wildly coherent, but it’s lovely to suddenly be plunged back to the thrill of sixteen odd years ago (which is terrifying) and getting another package in the post. I would never have believed that I would end up making comics myself, but this book feels like a Proustian Madeleine of sorts that takes me back to the before times. It’s wonderful
August 7, 2012
There were a few moments I chuckled, but for the most part, I just didn't get it. Maybe I'm not intellectual enough to appreciate it, or maybe I just get bored too easily. Regardless, my favorite thing about this one was it was short.
October 10, 2012
Not a big fan of this guy's art but he is undeniably a master of the medium. I like the way he conveys the abject absurdity of the culture.
December 10, 2023
A collection of reprinted strips which mostly revolve around the nature and the complicated relationship humans have with it. Formatted somewhat like a textbook or bestiary, but in comic form, and with apropos to fictional television programs like the titular "Wild Kingdom" complete with commercial breaks, this represents one of Huizenga's more creatively designed books. A chunk of the strips feature the everyman character Glenn Ganges who observes the consequences of an industrialized society's impact on the animal world and nature, but the stories themselves lack the innovative dream-like quality to many of the other Ganges stories. A lot of The Wild Kingdom is composed of wordless strips with sparse designs, which does act as a bit of a contrast to Huizenga's other works that feature more unique compositions.
The commercial sequences are the strongest aspect to the book which does nail the themes of societal segregation from their natural surroundings. These portions work as biting satire of contemporary marketing while also highlighting the growing gap between man and nature. The jokes are fairly funny, though it's the underlying grimness of the reality that gives the book an overall absurdist edge to it. Huizenga's ability to mix his clean, aesthetic designs with abstract and offbeat narratives has always been impressive, and though it isn't quite as sharp here, it mostly lands well.
The commercial sequences are the strongest aspect to the book which does nail the themes of societal segregation from their natural surroundings. These portions work as biting satire of contemporary marketing while also highlighting the growing gap between man and nature. The jokes are fairly funny, though it's the underlying grimness of the reality that gives the book an overall absurdist edge to it. Huizenga's ability to mix his clean, aesthetic designs with abstract and offbeat narratives has always been impressive, and though it isn't quite as sharp here, it mostly lands well.
August 14, 2016
I picked this up knowing nothing about it.
I read it once, slept and reread it after reflection after waking. I read some reviews, and then I read it again.
I realised that despite the fairly nice artwork and pacing between the panels it conveys absolutely nothing worthwhile. I often laugh aloud a lot when reading to overly dark or genuine stuff, but I read this in silence. The sense of humour was off, the jokes were bad. I can try explain. As in, the only truly comical thing about this is its incoherence, but that as a device only works if it's not continuous and therefore expected. If there was something truly sincere, meaningful or emotional in the middle of this I might have laughed, because without that (for the same reason), this is not absurd at all but just nonsense. Or maybe it was just the delivery... I thrive in absurdist humour and found books like Breakfast Of Champions non-stop hilarious and that was similarly wacky.
I wondered whether this is an example of something which people who are self-conscious about their 'intelligence' or 'edginess' say is good or cool as a joke to see whether other people agree. I'm feeling confident enough not to venture with the 'maybe I'm not the intended audience or smart enough' card.
The fact that this was made hardback makes me seriously consider the motive for people to buy a hardback book... can one really judge anything about a book by its cover?
Though I library loaned this, today, in the back of my mind, I will be thinking of more unsatisfying ways of spending $20.
I read it once, slept and reread it after reflection after waking. I read some reviews, and then I read it again.
I realised that despite the fairly nice artwork and pacing between the panels it conveys absolutely nothing worthwhile. I often laugh aloud a lot when reading to overly dark or genuine stuff, but I read this in silence. The sense of humour was off, the jokes were bad. I can try explain. As in, the only truly comical thing about this is its incoherence, but that as a device only works if it's not continuous and therefore expected. If there was something truly sincere, meaningful or emotional in the middle of this I might have laughed, because without that (for the same reason), this is not absurd at all but just nonsense. Or maybe it was just the delivery... I thrive in absurdist humour and found books like Breakfast Of Champions non-stop hilarious and that was similarly wacky.
I wondered whether this is an example of something which people who are self-conscious about their 'intelligence' or 'edginess' say is good or cool as a joke to see whether other people agree. I'm feeling confident enough not to venture with the 'maybe I'm not the intended audience or smart enough' card.
The fact that this was made hardback makes me seriously consider the motive for people to buy a hardback book... can one really judge anything about a book by its cover?
Though I library loaned this, today, in the back of my mind, I will be thinking of more unsatisfying ways of spending $20.
August 13, 2011
Este quadrinho contém tanto ruído de informação e experimentalismo narrativo que ou você pode considerar o autor alguém que não está falando nada com nada ou um sujeito sagaz. Prefiro pensar que trata-se do segundo caso, pois o ritmo quase incosciente do desvelar dos quadros, do que se é mostrado gratuitamente e das conexões aparentemente dissonantes entre partes sucessivas tornam a abordagem abstrata - o que é algo um tanto unusual para quadrinhos e merece aqui reconhecimento. O tema é o reino animal na vida contemporânea e, pensando nisso, o enfoque escolhido faz muito sentido - evidencia a loucura e o caos que a natureza encontrou a partir de seu distanciamento e, consequentemente, maior choque com homem moderno. Para uma abordagem tão abstrata quanto esta sobre o mesmo tema, porém menos frenética e mais contemplativa, recomendo o trabalho de Yuichi Yokoyama.
Read
December 4, 2011Not sure I can give this a starred rating. I read it twice through in one sitting. It made me chuckle at various points. I have no idea what it's trying to say. Commercialism, nature, death were the obvious themes.
There is no narrative, which isn't so much a problem, but there's not really any connective tissue that holds the whole thing together. Still, I'm certainly intrigued by it, and I'm sure it will continue to insert itself into my thoughts now and again in the next few weeks. Not sure who I would recommend this to, but I'm sure there are people out there who would love to read it.
There is no narrative, which isn't so much a problem, but there's not really any connective tissue that holds the whole thing together. Still, I'm certainly intrigued by it, and I'm sure it will continue to insert itself into my thoughts now and again in the next few weeks. Not sure who I would recommend this to, but I'm sure there are people out there who would love to read it.
July 1, 2011
I really enjoyed this strange look
at the world
around us
... ?
at the world
around us
... ?
November 6, 2014
1.5
There is a fine line between experimental and non-linear wankery. Since it is non-linear that fine line is a squiggle.
There is a fine line between experimental and non-linear wankery. Since it is non-linear that fine line is a squiggle.
May 26, 2018
If you're looking for humorous, not funny but humorous(?), slice of life comics that are drawn expertly but don't really engage your brain or your heart, this might be perfect for you. A guy gets bit by a bug, and kills that type of bug later, a person doesn't like an apple so he throws it to a squirrel, a pigeon gets diarrhea from french fries and ultimately gets run over by a car, a guy saves a bug from his house and later a cat kills it. Those are a good chunk of the stories in the book. If the synopses appeal to you, you should 100% grab this book because the art is great. But, for me, I found no reason why I would ever go back and reread these.
I recommend it for people who wish New Yorker cartoons were longer.
I recommend it for people who wish New Yorker cartoons were longer.
February 23, 2020
A collection of strips from Drawn and Quarterly. This is an experimental work using the cypher of Glen Ganges. The author explores the natural world and man's interaction with it. How he dominates and how he is affected by it. A lot of the material is very symbolic, but there is something for everyone in this book.
August 20, 2020
A collection of strips from Drawn and Quarterly. This is an experimental work using the cypher of Glen Ganges. The author explores the natural world and man's interaction with it. How he dominates and how he is affected by it. A lot of the material is very symbolic, but there is something for everyone in this book
July 1, 2017
I stumbled upon this book used and fell in love with the title. I wanted a bit more of the wild in this, but I like how Huizenga plays with the idea of the wild in neighborhoods and in regular, mostly suburban life.
April 5, 2024
Entropy Inc.
Interesting take on life. It gives one something to think about. The pacing is snappy. Some stories are of satirical bent. Humorous? A bit. You want some abstraction, this is for you.
Interesting take on life. It gives one something to think about. The pacing is snappy. Some stories are of satirical bent. Humorous? A bit. You want some abstraction, this is for you.
April 5, 2018
Couldn't get into this one. Short bits, natural cycles, goofy short observations or gags. Good art, but the scripts string together too much randomness to really connect with me.
August 11, 2018
Poetic and cerebral, but a bit too nihilistic for me
April 14, 2019
Well that was... something.
October 9, 2019
One star
March 22, 2021
Provides a brief look at some of Huizenga's odds and ends that are only very loosely related to his Glenn Ganges comics.
March 17, 2026
No me he enterado de nada, artefacto extraño
August 21, 2026
There are interesting things in this book, but I prefer Curses and The River at Night.
February 5, 2016
http://morethansuperhumans.blogspot.c...
This digest-sized (5" x 6") collection is even more surreal than Huizenga's other works, making a description of the plot difficult. Broadly, this issue deals with the fates of some of nature's smaller creatures (such as squirrels and pigeons) in our modern, human-dominated world. Huizenga also satirizes the overblown, nearly impossible claims of advertisements, creates a few fictional kinds of apples (lifesaver gold, Eden's choice, etc.) and "fancy pigeons" (pouter, striker, golden king, etc.), and constructs a clever "evolutionary tree" of the Jesus and Darwin fish bumper stickers. There is a short, strange biography of (and excerpts by) the writer Maurice Maeterlinck, and the book ends with a story that terrifyingly illustrates the so-called butterfly effect of chaos theory.
I hesitate to call this volume esoteric, because I believe that even the strangest of Huizenga's work is accessible to the average reader, but The Wild Kingdom is definitely more experimental than most of his books. It also contains what is perhaps the most brilliant line in Huizenga's work, "I was saved from my own life!" a comment on the innumerable drug advertisements on television and in magazines.
This digest-sized (5" x 6") collection is even more surreal than Huizenga's other works, making a description of the plot difficult. Broadly, this issue deals with the fates of some of nature's smaller creatures (such as squirrels and pigeons) in our modern, human-dominated world. Huizenga also satirizes the overblown, nearly impossible claims of advertisements, creates a few fictional kinds of apples (lifesaver gold, Eden's choice, etc.) and "fancy pigeons" (pouter, striker, golden king, etc.), and constructs a clever "evolutionary tree" of the Jesus and Darwin fish bumper stickers. There is a short, strange biography of (and excerpts by) the writer Maurice Maeterlinck, and the book ends with a story that terrifyingly illustrates the so-called butterfly effect of chaos theory.
I hesitate to call this volume esoteric, because I believe that even the strangest of Huizenga's work is accessible to the average reader, but The Wild Kingdom is definitely more experimental than most of his books. It also contains what is perhaps the most brilliant line in Huizenga's work, "I was saved from my own life!" a comment on the innumerable drug advertisements on television and in magazines.
June 24, 2025
could have had a little more.
August 1, 2021
I picked this up without any context whatsoever and really enjoyed it. As other reviewers point out, the sequencing is somewhat non-linear; but images and themes do recur, and much as in life, the new juxtapositions are quite evocative. I'm left with a sense of the author looking for meaning at various levels of granularity and from multiple vantages. Is it here, in the science? Is it here, in a bit of dark humor? Is it here, in the raw moment-to-moment experience of existence? Is it here, in consumer capitalism? The perspective is at times stark, at times almost sentimental, and the rhythm between the two creates an overall quite melancholy vibe.
September 13, 2010
I think there that Huizenga is a genius. That said, I think the character Glenn Ganges is at his best when he is interacting with people. That's not to say the sort of silent film sequence with Glenn in this book isn't amazing (it is incredible), but the parts of this story that drift from Glenn into seeming abstraction just plain aren't as enjoyable as when Glenn is interacting with people. Absolute genius book, but I have to admit I was hoping for more of Glenn interacting with other characters than vignettes serving as "landmarks" along my own journey.
September 18, 2012
"The Wild Kingdom" had some winners, but contained mainly losers. It tried so hard to be a deep piece of work, but never became one. He was trying to say something about consumer culture, but really didn't say anything noteworthy.
I like Kevin Huizenga's work and can see how he got to where he is through some of these earlier pieces. I would have been happy paying 5 bucks for a zine containing work of this quality, but preordering this for $20 left me feeling like I shouldn't preorder future books by this author.
I like Kevin Huizenga's work and can see how he got to where he is through some of these earlier pieces. I would have been happy paying 5 bucks for a zine containing work of this quality, but preordering this for $20 left me feeling like I shouldn't preorder future books by this author.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews