< comics/x >
JAMES KOCHALKA'S SKETCHBOOK DIARIES Vol. 4
by James Kochalka
(96pp trade paperback, $7.95 from
Top Shelf Productions. Diaries
website)
Review by Alan Rankin
Hmm, as I was preparing to write this review, I reflected on the pointlessness of “reviewing” someone’s diary. A diary
by definition is personal, self-indulgent, and rooted in the context of the life it describes –
Sketchbook Diaries is all these things. At its best, the diary will convey the flavor of the author’s life, and sketch the important people in his world.
Diaries does this as well. But you can’t really review a diary in terms of “good” or “bad,” because a diary is its own independent creature, unlike a zine or a book. It succeeds or fails according to how well it meets the needs of its author, something no one else can determine.
Even comparing it to other diaries is no help.
Sketchbook Diaries shares its concept with other diary comics like Tim Doyle’s
Amazing Adult Fantasy, and both are entertaining, but that’s where the resemblance ends. In concept and execution, the two strips are as unlike as their Texas- and Vermont-based creators.
Reading some journals, it’s the cumulative effect of the whole work that gives you a sense of the author’s life. In Kochalka’s strip, on the other hand, it’s the individual moments that are most revealing. I especially like it when he sketches his wife’s ear or the back of her head in a semi-realistic style. The tenderness and care he puts into those drawings speaks volumes about the relationship between them.
Moments like these are scattered through other entries, where he’s obviously just goofing around. Consequently, the strip is a mixed bag, though ultimately rewarding. Watching Kochalka piss through the slats of a fence may not exactly enrich your life, but it’s worth it to witness him singing drunk on a bicycle at four in the morning, before hilariously wiping out.
Other favorite moments: Skinny dipping in San Diego. “This kid came at me holding a copy of
Catcher in the Rye. My first thought was that he was going to kill me.” Arguing with his wife about whether to announce their pregnancy in the diary – one of those cases where the book influences the life it’s chronicling. And this: “I regret wasting the last couple of days just being cranky. But last night, the night before my flight to Chicago, we made love like there was no tomorrow.”
[ Link to this review ]
