Word: comix
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...dark cloud rolled over the indie comix horizon this past week when LPC Group, a retail bookstore distributor with many comix clients filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Topnotch publishers such as Drawn and Quarterly, Oni, and Highwater Books, who exist on very slim margins, found themselves suddenly unable to collect monies owed them by LPC. Top Shelf, the Marietta, Georgia-based publisher of "From Hell," the comicbook inspiration for the Johnny Depp movie of last year, was compelled to release an extraordinary electronic plea for $20,000 in direct purchases to save it from going under...
Were Top Shelf to fold we might never again see the likes of such special works as "Stripburek: Comics from the Other Europe," (Stripburger; 216pp.; $17.95) a collection of Eastern European comix imported by Top Shelf. Produced by the same group that did a strange and wonderful box of mini-comix last year (see TIME.comix review), "Stripburek" is a more straightforward collection of over fifty black and white works translated into English. Comix from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, the Ukraine and Yugoslavia are all here...
...Reading "Stripburek" gives the impression that the Iron Curtain resulted in a kind of comix Galapagos where the avant-garde, poetical and parable possibilities of comix evolved in unexploited splendor. Danijel Zezelj's "Petrified Tree" uses high-contrast, slashing brushwork to interpret a poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Lucie Markvartova's "Switch On-Off" builds a story out of all the buttons a finger must push throughout the day. Many pieces are like Wostok and Grabowski's fantastical "Daddy Where Are You," about a little girl who follows Daddy's beard through all manner of obstacles only to find...
...Grip" uses the 1950s crime, horror and sci-fi genre comicbooks as the guide for a new, postmodern comix narrative. Hernandez sets the tone by beginning each of the five issues with a full-page mock cover of a 10-cent pulp book: "Grip of Fear," "Grippingly Romantic Western Mystery," etc. But once inside, the rules have clearly changed. Freaks, unrepentant violence, monsters and sex have been jumbled into a dizzy story that sends up the genres it revels in as much as it honors them...
...Gross, creepy, sexy, action-packed and weird, "Grip: The Strange World of Men," completely satisfies your basic comix needs. For years Gilbert Hernandez has weaved the themes of pulp comicbooks into his narratives. Now he has put them all into one story. DC says it plans on collecting the series into a paperback but doesn't have it on schedule yet. Though it would be a relief to read this series without all the intrusive videogame ads you might not want to hold out for this top-notch comicbook...