Item number 4 on my list of Things That Would Make the World a Better Place: if the illustration adorning the cover of the Ivan Brunetti-edited AN ANTHOLOGY OF GRAPHIC FICTION, CARTOONS, & TRUE STORIES – depicting a melting-pot crowd reading comics – were to come true.
America doesn’t appreciate comics as an art form. It’s a point I’ve hammered home time and again, but it’s never more apparent after witnessing the decades of work on display in Brunetti’s massive – and massively pleasing – collection, from Krazy Kat to today, and issued by Yale University Press, no less. Note that these selections stake no titular claim to being the “best”; as Brunetti writes in his introduction, these are just the comics he revisits most often. His taste proves a hair shy of impeccable.
Clearly, Brunetti – an accomplished cartoonist in his own right – has an all-encompassing love for the medium, as the book reprints strips and stories both old and new, mainstream and underground, primitive and complex, funny and sad, innocent and sexual, safe and daring, optimistic and bleak, comforting and disturbing. Representing the former among those incongruous pairs are Ernie Bushmiller’s “Nancy,” George Hand Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts.” Schulz is also paid all-deserving tribute to in pieces from Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware and Seth; their reverence is so touching – and Schulz’s mission so genuine – that it nearly brought a tear to my eye.
But my orbs were dried by the twisted laughs found in Kaz’s “Underworld” or Tony Millionaire’s “Maakies,” and the more honest ones by James Kolchaka and John Porcellino. A book that simultaneously honors the roots planted by Harvey Kurtzman and the buds that resulted from Charles Burns, Adrian Tomine and the Hernandez Brothers demonstrates remarkable breadth, with more than 75 contributors in all.
A beautiful book in presentation as well as content, the ANTHOLOGY OF GRAPHIC FICTION closes with Daniel Clowes’ startling good “Gynecology.” While not his best-known work, it’s the perfect example of how a strong, adult story can be told as much through pictures as words – working together, with neither side thrown to sacrifice. I may have come across some of these selections before in previous collections like MCSWEENEY’S #13, but this – a real wrist-strainer, heavy as it is – is one that trumps them all. –Rod Lott
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