Word: comix
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Late in summer the bounteous season, fills both the larder and the comix shelf. One year ago TIME.comix did a roundup of interesting anthology books and this season has produced another crop. This time we focus on the products of a burgeoning trend in comix: small, boutique publishers who have found the gospel of production values. Presses like Avodah and AdHouse are now giving lush, full-color, square-bound, heavy-paper-stock treatment to those artists who only recently knew only photocopy carbon and staples. Leapfrogging comix into the realm of fine arts, this new attention to the aesthetics...
...boils down to one man, Sammy Harkham, a big, bearded guy in his twenties who means to knock you out with aesthetic overload. "Ergot" is not a book to take on a plane to lose yourself in a great story. Many of the contributions couldn't even be called comix and most of the rest have nonsensical, free-associative narratives. Collage and full-page illustration mix with the likes of Jeffrey Brown's "Don't Look Them in the Eye," a recollection of every encounter he's ever had with a vagrant. Of the 25 or so contributors, others include...
...possible to find the key to a life's mysteries or an artist's work? That's the tantalizing question asked both by and of Chris Ware, the lauded comix author of "Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth." The question appears in the form of two new books by Ware, "Quimby the Mouse," (Fantagraphics Books; 68pp.; $24.95) and "The Acme Novelty Date Book" (Drawn & Quarterly; 208 pp.; $39.95). The first collects the author's published works from the early 1990s, while he was still a student. The "Date Book" contains excerpts from the artist's sketchbooks kept between...
Form has always been Ware's forte and "Quimby the Mouse" shows off some of his earliest experiments with it. Ware may be our most committed creator of comix as art. For one thing, he demands high production values for his books. The "Quimby" book must be the most gorgeous graphic novel ever published. It has gold ink embossed in the hardcover, with thick paper and an exquisite mix of color and black and white strips. The "Date Book" likewise has come out as a hardcover with top-notch production, including a placeholder ribbon. A tantalizing sketchbook page from...
...near-perfectly formed strips that have never been seen before. Any artist or Ware aficionado will find it extremely interesting, though the uninitiated may be somewhat baffled by it. Frankly, this criticism extends to Ware's finished work as well, including "Quimby the Mouse." It takes a very high comix-reading level to appreciate Ware's more ambitious layouts...