KRACHMACHER #1
by Jim Campbell
($6.50,
Angry Jim)
Reviewed by Tim O'NeilImagine if Adrian Tomine decided to farm out an issue of
Optic Nerve to Michael Kupperman and you might get some idea of just what Jim Campbell is up to with the first issue of his
Krachmacher anthology. This is a really fun book, a witty and oddly touching collection of stories connected by an overriding sense of melancholy weirdness.
The lead feature is "At The Shore", featuring the adventures of a small group of high school students on a day-trip out to the beach. Our protagonist is Marianne, a good-natured but slightly peevish misfit with a pronounced overbite, who is constantly frustrated by her male friends' affection towards Elke. Elke is best described as a more competent, compelling and pretty version of Marianne herself, which certainly explains the resentment. If this sounds pretty normal, well, Marianne also has a tendency to tell odd stories about growing up in an underwater seaweed farm. This is the first chapter of an extended serial, and it leaves off right when things begin to get truly weird, with cars being swallowed into quicksand and strange snorkel-zombies creeping around the bottom of the page. (I know I probably sold the book just with the phrase "snorkel-zombies".)
The anthology is rounded out by a brief fable concerning an old man who saves the world from a vengeful robot and a "Firefox 46" story. "Firefox 46", continued from the pages of the
Meathaus series, concerns the pitiful adventures of a man named Cedrick, who wears a wolf hat, and his friend the pork roast. This should be the goofiest thing going — and don't get me wrong, it is damn goofy — but it also manages to achieve a high level of pathos. Cedrick is trying to woo a grocery store clerk who doesn't want to have anything to do with him. This courtship threatens to drive a wedge between Cedrick and the pork roast. The look of dejection on the pork roast's face is classic, as is the serenely beatific look of contentment when they are reunited.
Krachmacher is also presented in beautiful full color, understated throughout, creating a pleasing and unerringly subtle effect. Campbell knows how to create a delightfully substantial package, and I look forward to reading future issues. That he could create such honest and affecting human drama out of the adventures of a man with a wolf pelt for a hat and a pork roast is just one of those things we will have to accept in order to move on with our lives.
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TWENTY-EIGHT PAGES LOVINGLY BOUND WITH TWINE #9
by Christoph Meyer
($2.00 or trade from Christoph Meyer / PO Box 106 / Danville, OH / 43014 USA)
Reviewed by Rick BradfordLots of hand-on attention went into this zine. This is the Dental issue and under a nice linoleum block print and between the floss-bound covers you'll find 24 pages of dental fun. Dental questions from zinesters (answered by an actual dentist), a piece of fiction called "Dental Marionette" (my favorite part of the zine, I have to admit, because it's illustrated by Jim Conatser), a comic starring teeth, tooth stickers (ready to use!), Amish dentistry and other stuff. Certainly a unique theme and a fun one as well.
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BELLY BUTTON COMIX #2
by Sophie Crumb
($4.95, 32pp comic,
Fantagraphics Books)
Reviewed by Henry Chamberlain One artist I was interested in seeing at this year's MoCCA was Sophie Crumb. I had enjoyed her
Belly Button Comix when I got a copy at last year's APE. She was chatting with Jeffery Brown at APE but this time around I got a chance to see her uninterrupted. She looked lovely and was very charming, signed a copy of
Belly Button Comix #2 with her Za Za character smiling back at me, and graciously accepted a copy of my own comic. I think the challenge last year was to live up to the Crumb name with her debut book but now I think she makes clear in her latest book that she's her own person with her own original take on the world.
Sophie is very comfortable in her own skin even when she's relating to us how uncomfortable she can be in her own skin. She manages to harness what's compelling about autobio comix with the right amount of self-deprecation and self-revealing information. She is a young artist who sees the current bumps in the road of life as life lessons because that's exactly what they are. She's not going to pretend she's seen it all before she actually has. So, when she relates her story about a boyfriend with drug problems, she does it with honesty and integrity. She too falls flat on her ass and partakes of one too many recreational drugs but finds a way to stand back and question what's she's doing without sounding preachy.
The indie kid rage against the mainstream is handled very well. One of my favorite pages is "The Foul Mouth Sisters" that illustrates a conversation between Sophie and her friend, Emily. Both are laughing it up over the sheer fakery of the affluent Berkeley scene: how it's all too easy for some rich kid to buy himself a life as a hipster complete with expensive tattoos and piercings. "Berkeley, you can suck my anus! Haw Haw Haw," declares Emily. They both keep laughing until they return to a sense of gloom as they realize how completely surrounded they are by the poseurs they despise.
It is an "us against them" spirit that attracts Sophie to Johnny, a layabout if ever there was one but who is infused with an unmistakable animal energy and a kind heart. Not long before meeting up with Sophie, Johnny lived in the hallway of a school. Having just turned 30, this street kid rebel wants to give up drugs but he just can't quite manage to do it and pulls Sophie into a downward spiral. As much of a mess as it all is, she acknowledges the thrill in one telling panel: A narrative reads above a moment of sexual pleasure: "Even though the place was a dump and fallin' apart, and we had to pee in buckets, it still was pretty quaint..and there were mirrors! Arf. Arf." Say what you will, Sophie is telling us, there was something about Johnny. Ultimately, however, the thrill wears thin and Sophie ends up with something she desired but was determined not to contrive: a hard won life lesson.
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