Most contemporary art-comics look like they were more fun to make than they are to read, but the trend toward overpriced collections of page-long mixed-media scrawling has produced a few exciting hybrids of comics and fine art. Lynda Barry's offbeat collection What It Is (Drawn & Quarterly) makes a fine case in point. In short illustrated essays, Barry reminisces about how her interest in art and writing developed from childhood to young adulthood, and she muses about how and why creativity becomes a more self-conscious, unnatural act as we get older. In between the essays, Barry presents page after page of striking collages on which she's written questions designed to get readers to pick up pens and make their own art. What It Is borders on the shapeless and even pretentious, but Barry's down-to-earth prose style and earnest interest in a deeper understanding makes the book cumulatively moving. It isn't just a comic; it's a conversation piece… A-
Ray Fenwick's single-page mixed-media cartoons are a little less high-minded than Barry's, although they do prove that this emerging form of comics may have multiple applications. Fenwick's Hall Of Best Knowledge (Fantagraphics) takes the form of a correspondence course, delivering oblique lessons on the nature of "genius" (or, alternately, why today's class has been "cancelled") in illuminated squares. The tone is similar to the fine print in Chris Ware's comics, but not as funny. Still, Fenwick finds ways to make text-heavy pages graphically pleasing, and when he's ready to do more with this technique than just wax ironic, he'll have a solid artistic foundation in place… B-
Does Kurt Busiek really take so much time between issues of Astro City because of his health, or is it because he knows people get a lot more excited over each new issue because they're released so unpredictably? Either way, Beautie: An Astro City Character Special (Wildstorm) isn't as worth the wait as some installments of the series have been, except for those who have really been holding their breath to learn the backstory of Beautie, Astro City's weirdly Barbie-doll-esque superheroine. The one-shot doesn't particularly expand on the ongoing story of Busiek's superhero-packed city; it's an origin story, pure and simple. That said, there's a recognizable Busiek poignancy to Beautie, essentially a super-strong, life-sized Barbie doll who has no emotions or physical needs, but recognizes that there's something vast missing in her life; she brushes off her peers' attempts to socialize, and turns down amorous men with the flat, unchanging statement "My skin is ferro-styrene over an omnitanium frame. My breast and buttocks are rigid. And I have no genitalia." Like so much of Busiek's work, this story functions on a second level, as her search for answers about her past becomes a philosophical search for what comes next after the basic needs are met. It's a fans-only project, since newcomers won't know the character or setting, and casual Astro City would probably like some kind of action or forward momentum, but Busiek's many die-hard adherents will probably be delighted just to see his hand still in the Astro City game… B-
The latest in Vertical's reprints of classic manga by Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka is printed in the Japanese style, to read left-to-right and from the back of the book to the front, instead of being digitally flopped to read Western-style, right-to-left. Some companies consistently prefer the un-flopped method as truer to the original page compositions, while others flop most books so they'll be more accessible to American audiences, and only present "original format" books when the artwork makes it necessary. But there's nothing particularly elaborate or special about Dororo Volume 1 that warrants the original-format treatment; it isn't nearly as visually elaborate or painterly as Tezuka's Buddha books, which Vertical released in Western format. The series, serialized in a popular Japanese manga periodical in the late '60s, represents some of Tezuka's most basic work, with his simple, bobble-headed characters fighting similarly simple monsters amid simple landscapes, in basic, boxy page layouts. The story, however, is exceptionally chilling. A government official offers his unborn son to 48 demons in exchange for temporal power. They take him at his word, and his child is born missing 48 body parts; it's a faceless, limbless, voiceless larval thing. But a kindly doctor takes pity on the child, raises it as his own, and builds it prosthetic limbs and a face. When they're both haunted by spirits, the boy, Hyakkimaru, sets out on a quest to kill the 48 demons and reclaim his body from them. Along the way, he runs into a despised boy thief named Dororo, and they form a weird partnership, based as much on outward mutual contempt as companionship. In typical Tezuka fashion, the story wanders all over the place, devolving into episodic explorations of the supernatural landscapes of local towns, in a way that would doubtless inspire modern creators like Rumiko Takahashi and Stan Sakai. It also inspired a 2007 Japanese film adaptation (with two sequels on the way), a late-'60s anime series, and a 2004 PlayStation game called Blood Will Tell. For all this, the storytelling is unassuming and basic, but the premise and Tezuka's eerie renditions of larval Hyakkimaru and the monsters that come after him is unusually effective and chilling, especially considering his usual streamlined, Kewpie-doll characters… B
No better prescription exists for today's conflicted feelings about war and soldiering than Bill Mauldin's World War II cartoons for Stars And Stripes, the Army newspaper. Fantagraphics' glorious collection Willie And Joe: The WWII Years, edited by Mauldin biographer Todd DePastino, presents more than 600 cartoons in two sturdy slipcovered volumes. The first volume ranges from Mauldin's earliest drawings for Oklahoma newspapers through his work for the 45th Division News, chronicling war games in Louisiana and the long wait to be shipped to the front in Europe. But it's in volume II, when Mauldin begins covering combat in the brutal, largely overlooked Italian campaign, that his drawings suddenly crystallize into essential reportage. The cartoonist identified fiercely with infantrymen, and lashed out at the officer corps and military police who seemingly conspired to make their lives miserable. A typical drawing showed MPs waiting with "off limits" signs as the battle still rages for control of a Sicilian village, reflecting the enlisted men's anger that they were excluded from enjoying the pleasures of the town that they were liberating. Mauldin's multitudinous ethnic caricatures in his early days coalesced under fire into two unshaven, stooped, terminally weary soldiers named Willie and Joe—figures who in their unconscious black humor, dramatized the lives of thousands of real "dogfaces." Foxhole life was a common theme; in one cartoon, Joe eyes his helmet as he and Willie hunch in a hole in the driving rain, and remarks, "Now that ya mention it, it does sound like the patter of rain on a tin roof." The inequities between the services stuck in Mauldin's craw as well. An Air Corps practice of rotating flyers out of combat after 50 missions inspired a cartoon with the caption "Congratulations, Joe—you've completed your fiftieth combat patrol. We'll put you on mortars for a while." The cartoons' underlying realism and sometimes raw, bleeding humor drew the ire of top brass, including General Patton, who raged that Mauldin's work undermined morale. But the artist was lucky enough to have defenders in nearly all ranks, and he continued to speak for his infantry buddies right through V-E day; in June 1945, Mauldin had Joe remark to Willie as they waited at the replacement depot for a ride home, "I don't remember no delays getting us overseas." Especially in the second volume, DePastino provides helpful endnotes explaining Army practices and relating the cartoons to Mauldin's frontline experiences. Although Willie and Joe became icons of World War II, Mauldin's work has been scattered and mostly unavailable until this loving collection. It's essential reading for a nation in search of its Greatest Generation. Far from creating demigods among men, Mauldin argues, combat exposes humankind's most stubborn flaws… A
Kevin Huizenga became a darling of the alternative-comics world the moment his stories about philosophical suburbanite Glenn Ganges crossed over from the minis to the indies. But not until the just-released Ganges #2 (Fantagraphics/Ignatz) and its anchor story "Pulverize" has Huizenga shown a maturity worthy of all the hyperbolic praise thrown his way. Aside from the self-indulgent 11-page abstraction that opens the issue—serving as a too-long introduction to "Pulverize"'s recurring theme of videogame surrealism— i>Ganges #2 largely eschews the forced absurdity and quasi-mysticism that have previously undercut Huizenga's vision of mundane everyday life. In its place comes a nuanced, poignant, straightforward story about Glenn Ganges' time at a dot-com startup in 1999 and 2000, and how the cyber-industry's "We're going to change the way business is done!" paradigm collapsed in a tumble of stock options, trade-magazine puff pieces, and long stretches of business hours spent playing first-person-shooter games. Huizenga paces the story precisely, and peppers it with note-perfect corporate-speak, establishing a world in which dreams get sabotaged one passive-aggressive move at a time. "Pulverize" both romanticizes what seemed like a golden age, and explains why it was phony to begin with. It's a masterful piece of comics storytelling… A-