PortaJohnny:
The Best of Angry Youth Comix Fantagraphics Books

Liverpool Fantasy
By Larry Kirwan
Thunder’s Mouth Press
Look, it’s the official gayest book we’ve ever received for review! This “alternative history” of the Beatles has them breaking up right after Please Please Me (that was really early if you didn’t know). Paul goes to Vegas to be a lounge singer. George becomes a Jesuit priest. John is on the dole and all. Ringo is boring, too. The scary level of fandom on display here is ripe for a sociological study. Kirwan makes the editor of Mojo look like a teenage girl with only two CD singles in her collection, and the only people who enjoy this will be similar sad cases and the odd person (like me) who is so fascinated by it that they can’t put it down until it’s over. To wit: Liverpool Fantasy is the literary equivalent of compulsively checking car wrecks for human remains. Even weirder is that the author sings in that band Black 47.
ERIK LAVOIE


Not for Rent
Conversations with Creative Activists in the U.K.
Evil Twin Publications
The smell of patchouli, body odor, hand-rolled smokes and righteous indignation wafts out of the pages of Not for Rent, and we love it. This book is a collection of interviews with the crustiest punks in all of the U.K., where the crustiest punks in the world (besides maybe Amsterdam) live. Squatters, bike punks, radical eco-activists, riot grrls, bands like Chumbawumba and Red Monkey—all are included. The interviews are friendly and dangerously smart, and formatted in a way that will be very comforting to anybody who owes some of their adolescent mindblowing to the golden age of San Francisco’s Re/Search Books imprint. Not for Rent is a true labor of love and an ode to some of the bravest and funnest souls of contemporary times. You try living in lovely Birmingham without a toilet or heat, besieged by police dogs, just to defend your beliefs. Get this book right from the makers at www.eviltwinpublications.com.
ERIK LAVOIE

 

No Title Here
Photographs by Jeff Mermelsteinpower
House Books
Dear Aspiring Snapshot Photographer: Hang up your fucking jock because Jeff Mermelstein has won the race and you will never touch his shit. These photos are that good. A New Jersey native, Mermelstein has taken pictures for Life, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. His work is funny but never heavy-handed, and often enticingly surreal. There is a dual edge of journalism and art in his photos, which makes them tons more valuable than just one or the other alone. I can think of no other photographer who makes a bar mitzvah look like the party of the century, or manages to photograph an armadillo race and not make it look like he is patronizing his subjects. You should see the picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Barbara Bush, and some middle-aged aerobics babes. Shit is trippy.
ERIK LAVOIE

 

Overbite Fantagraphics Books Art & Beauty Magazine Fantagraphics Books Cursiv Giant Robot Shrimpy and Paul Highwater Books ESSAY DIE ONE