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Nick Gazin's Comic Book Love-In #29

Hey Everybody,It's me, Nick Gazin, your cartoon pal. There have been a few neat pieces of comic-related news recently.

Hey Everybody,

It's me, Nick Gazin, your cartoon pal. There have been a few neat pieces of comic-related news recently.

- Frances Bean Cobain has a tattoo of an Al Columbia drawing. That's pretty boss.

- In other Nirvana related comic news, Jonathan Bennett did a comic about Nevermind for Spin's Facebook page.

- Also, here's this Studio Ghibli four-minute test pilot that was made in the late 80s. They weren't involved in the final film, but this sure is pretty.

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I guess that's the news. Here are some reviews of recent books. I've been making my individual reviews longer and talking about less and less books in each column lately, so here are a bunch, just to change up the pace.


#1
Prison Pit Book 3
Johnny Ryan
Fantagraphics
Johnny Ryan's third Prison Pit is out. It seems like he tries to make the story go slower and slower with each book. In the first one we were introduced to Cannibal Fuckface and saw him get tossed into the Prison Pit, which is some sort of planet where all the worst monster men are sent. He has a bunch of insane fights and a lot of beautifully gross things happen. The second book had more of the same, except he was encased in a robot suit that controlled his actions and some other junk happened that I don't remember.

Volume three begins with a Steve Aoki-looking guy falling into the Prison Pit and telling a bunch of giant monster men that he's looking for our hero, C.F. They decide to kill his ass, but he wastes them all with panache. Then he transforms into the scariest monster Johnny Ryan could come up with and he transforms his opponents into slave beasts before opening up a chasm in the planet and directing them to find Cannibal Fuckface in it. The second half of the book is about C.F. floating in a void and entering a spikey, angular satellite structure only to find his arm encased in some force field. Then: more fighting that is both beautiful and grotesque.

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I find myself wondering how long Prison Pit can continue. I don't really know what's going on beyond a series of beautiful, awesome things, but that's reason enough for me to continue loving it.

#2
Krazy Kat & The Art of George Herriman
Craig Yoe
Abrams Comicarts
Craig Yoe lives in a castle with some of the greatest original comic art you could ever hope to see. He used to work for Jim Henson, and these days he's this guy who puts out a lot of books and has a memorable bowl cut with a strip of hair coming down in front of his face. Although Craig is a huge fan of all sorts of really old comics, it's pretty clear that for him Krazy Kat is the end all, be all. His living room is designed to look like Kokonino, and he has a gigantic original Sunday page from Krazy Kat over his mantle with daily strip art scattered around the walls.

This book is page after page of beautifully photographed and mostly unpublished Herriman art. There's some writing, too, but I haven't read it yet. The art is like a beautiful black hole and I'm guessing that the words Craig wrote are probably like, ”Isn't this good?!” I don't need some book to tell me Krazy Kat is good, I already know it. Just give me the pictures.

Another notable thing about this book is that the introduction was written by Bill Watterson, the JD Salinger of the comics medium. We all love him so much and just want to see what he's making. He couldn't have stopped drawing after Calvin and Hobbes ended. We saw that Cul de Sac portrait he did a few months back, and then there's this intro in which he writes about his appreciation for Krazy Kat. For many people this introduction alone is worth the price of the book.

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This is a pretty perfect book. The layout's nice and the subject is perfect and it even has Bill Watterson's words in it. The only thing I found a little tacky was Craig Yoe shoving the Krazy Kat figurines he designed onto a page of photos of 100-year-old Krazy Kat merchandise. I've done some similar things, but not in a fancy hardcover book about a genius.

#3
Patti Smith 1969 – 1976
Judy Lynn
Abrams

Boy, there sure have been a lot of books about Patti Smith coming out lately. Tom Waits, too. There are a lot of photos of Patti Smith standing around and a few of her living spaces. There are some really great ones of Robert Mapplethorpe looking into the camera with that lost look in his eyes. Most of the photos in this book are good and some are better than that, but I feel like it would be stronger if it was half as long. There isn't enough variety for me to think this book is great.

#4
Sibyl-Anne Vs. Raticus
R. Macherot
Fantagraphics
This is a reprint of an old European comic about a bunch of animals living in a forest. I guess it's a little like the Smurfs in some ways. I normally like when Fantagraphics reprints something, but I found this pretty dull. The art and story didn't grab me in any way. Maybe it works differently on European brains.

#5
The Man Cave Book
Mike Yost and Jeff Wilser
Harper Collins

and

Crap At My Parents' House
Joel Dovev
Abrams
I find it weird that two books so similar in all ways could come out at the same time independent of each other. The Man Cave Book is about depressing, dingy, windowless sheds and dens that married men have filled with ugly crap their wives don't like. The Crap At My Parents House is a series of photos of things that the author's parents own. Most of it is not weird or interesting. Both of these books would be OK Tumblrs. I don't know how they managed to get published. What's most amazing is that they're both about dingy interior spaces, are the exact same size, and have very similar covers. Lazy minds think alike.

NICK GAZIN