Word: comix
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SHANGRI-LA - Greetings from the freezing hot, lush deserts of the world's most overpopulated wasteland. It seemed only fitting, after all, to take a presidential-style "working vacation" when filing a column about travel comix. Though comix' combination of art and narrative is ideally suited to travel books, only a handful have appeared, probably as a result of the medium's longtime marginalization. Suddenly, though, a group of works - two books and one comix series - have appeared with travel as the central theme. By traipsing through them, we can map out the route to the golden spires and around...
...first stop is Justin Hall's comix series "True Travel Tales" (All Thumbs Press; 48 pages; $4), the third issue of which appeared a few months ago. Hall approaches travel writing from an unusual angle by adapting and illustrating other people's stories. The first two issues collected short, anecdotal tales of (mis)adventure. One story involves a young punk rocker on her way to San Francisco who, on a stop at Bryce Canyon, Utah, decides to clamber down the rock face rather than follow the "hippies" down the trail, to predictably disastrous results. In another a man cruises...
...sensation of being transported to other places and cultures through the unique language of comix, look no further than Craig Thompson's "Carnet de Voyage" (Top Shelf; 224 pages; $15). Creator of the lauded and successful graphic novel "Blankets," Thompson's introductory insistence that "Carnet" is not his "next book," tries to disarm any critics, but he needn't have worried. Seemingly unedited, "Carnet" chronicles, in the form of an engrossing diary sketchbook, Thompson's European author tour, with a side trip to Morocco, during the spring of 2004. With all of its pages drawn from life, here at last...
...Race, where Phoney introduces a "mystery cow" - actually Smiley in a costume - convincing the locals to go for this sucker bet over the favorite: Gran'ma Ben(!). The final race turns into a raucously funny slapstick worthy of a classic Chuck Jones cartoon. "Bone" keeps the comic in comix, without being juvenile, in a smart but universally funny way that has become all too rare in the form...
...Though it may be brief, In the Shadow of No Towers synthesizes Art Spiegelman's incomparable talents for personal history and comix theory into a timely and unique work of art. Using the medium's past to explore new kinds of expression, the book captures the visual experimentation of the old strips and updates them to modern times. What a treat to see Spiegelman back in his element. Let us hope it doesn?t take another atrocity to keep him going...