Word: comix
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Since most comix artists lead lives sitting behind a drawing board, the best comix autobiography either explores the commonality of our lives, or tells really good anecdotes. Within the last two months the Cleveland-based artist J. Backderf, who signs his work "Derf," has released two outstanding examples of the latter. "Trashed" (Slave Labor Graphics; 48pp.; $6.95) recounts his days as a college-drop-out garbage man. "My Friend Dahmer" (Derfcity Comics; 24pp.; $2.95) tells of Backderf's remarkable high-school relationship with notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. The funniest book of the year so far, followed by the creepiest...
...filled refrigerators, shake maggots out of their hair before lunch, and then watch in horror as they forget to set the parking brake and their truck barrels downhill without them. All the while, with smart storytelling skill Derf moves "Trashed" beyond the merely repulsive. Unlike so many anecdotal autobio comix it has a narrative arc. After a full year of sanitation service Derf and his pal realize that school wasn't so bad after all. "Trash, I hate to admit, made a man out of me," he says...
...Derf's skill as cartoonist and storyteller make "Trashed" and "My Friend Dahmer" two of the most entertaining autobiographical comix I have ever read. By far the more enjoyable read, "Trashed" rivals Charles Bukowski's novel, "Factotum" for minimum-wage comedy. "Dahmer," on the other hand, has its own sort of disgusting verisimilitude. It turns out that Jeffrey Dahmer once got paid to "act" spastic in a middle-American shopping mall, and did it for two hours to the utter obliviousness of the authorities. You couldn't make this stuff...
There's also a sense of history that rarely appears in American comix. Jacek Fras mixes collage with silly cartoon characters in a story that takes place during the Polish resistance against the Nazis. Jurcan & Cvek's "Condemned Ideas" examines the failure of ideologies from Fascism to Communism to Capitalism. But the most unifying trait turns out to be a kind of dark, absurdist sensibility. In Goran Feniks' "A Weird Story," a man takes care of some paperwork while plummeting to his death from an airplane explosion. There's ample amounts of satire and schadenfruede, but little humor...
...Graphically and narratively many of the pieces in "Stripburek" will be a challenge for even the most experienced and patient of American comix readers. Ultimately it's a good thing and I'd hate to be denied it. Happily, within twelve hours of Top Shelf's plea comix fans had rallied to the cause, saving the publisher from demise. The consequences for other publishers remain to be seen...