Recently, several unrelated events led me to dive into many hours of comics-reading within the space of a few weeks:
- The discovery, while helping to clean out the apartment of a friend’s deceased relative, of a huge pile of early 2000s porno DVDs.
- My first ever pilgrimage to Mile High Comics in Denver, Colorado—the biggest comics retailer in the country.
- My first trip to the Oakland library since before the covid apocalypse.
- My inheriting of a whole bookcase worth of graphic novels from a cousin of mine who passed away.
When I say it all together like that, it adds up to a hell of an October. But I digress.
In some cases the comics I read were new to me, and in others I was returning after several years to work I’d read before. What follows are my thoughts on a few of the works I read. No plot spoilers per se, but if the possibility of spoilers is a major concern in your life, you’re probably reading the wrong blog.
The Filth – Grant Morrison & Chris Weston
I’m a huge fan of Morrison’s work, and I’ve read this book at least a dozen times. In a career that has been defined by entertaining, groundbreaking work of great metaphorical and metaphysical depth, I regard this title as the pinnacle of that career. All the major themes of Morrison’s writing are sewn together into a perfect tapestry. I think The Filth is Morrison’s greatest work. Weston was the best possible artist to bring the script to life.
The Filth is bizarre, confusing, crude, and frequently disgusting… but it’s also hilarious, poignant, heartfelt, and intelligent. This is Morrison at the top of his craft, working the kind of magic only comics can create, and it strikes a perfect tone on every note it hits. The Filth does what all of the best stories do: it gives you something new to take away every time you revisit it. What Twin Peaks is to the soap opera, The Filth is to the superhero.
I also credit The Filth with curing me of a horrid porn addiction back when I first read it in 2005. Astonishingly, the opening text of the collected addition claims the book’s ability to do just that.
When I read it this time around, it was a much-needed medicine for very different reasons—after digging through the belongings of two different dead men in as many months, this story was a reminder that to scour the filth is a job of utmost importance, and only certain people have what it takes. Reading this helped me recover from encountering everything from drugs to porn to sex toys to journal entries of despair.
Habibi – Craig Thompson
I’ve been hearing about how good Craig Thompson’s work is for years, but I’d never read any of his stuff. I used to date a woman back in the early ’00s who fell in love with his graphic novel Blankets; at the time, I had no interest in comics about the struggles of young love, because I was too stressed out from living them.
At some point I encountered a summary or a review of Habibi, enough to know the book was full of rape and abuse. That really put me off. A female friend read it and confirmed my suspicions, but also told me how great it was. I wasn’t convinced.
Then, I inherited a copy, and both the hardbound cover and the art inside looked so elegant that I decided to satisfy my curiosity.
Holy shit! I have a lot of feelings about this book. First off, as a cartoonist and a lifelong comics fan, I have to say that Habibi is absolutely masterful. From the perspective of craft, Thompson is simply one of the best to ever do it. The art, the page designs, the lettering, the storytelling, the character designs, the integration of Middle Eastern religion and folklore… all of it is Ab.So.Lute.Ly. FLAWLESS.
Among his other strengths, Thompson clearly understands something that nowadays is almost a lost art: he understands that lettering is just as much a part of the page design as rest of the art. After more than twenty years of comics’ nearly universal surrender to the mechanical mediocrity of digital lettering, it’s deeply satisfying to discover an artist who is not only still doing the real deal, but also knows how to use it to enhance the mood and themes of the story.
With all due respect to writers, pencillers, inkers, and Ye Olden hand-letterers, the folks who can do all of those things—and do them well—are in a whole different class of skill. Thompson is in the top ranks of that class, and Habibi is a masterwork.
After reading Habibi, I feel about Thompson as a cartoonist the same way I feel about Neil Gaiman as a writer—this motherfucker is so good, I’m angry about it. It is the fury and frustration of knowing that no matter how dope you are on the court, you’ll never be Michael Jordan or Stephen Curry.
That said, this work, in its very perfection, is also a perfect example of how unfortunate it is that comics continue to be almost totally dominated by the work of white men. While this book glows with a genuine love for Islamic and Middle Eastern culture, it is still cursed by some ugly things under the surface.
To read Habibi was to subject myself to hundreds of pages and countless hours of a brown woman being beaten, raped, and brutalized. This was the fate of the protagonist, who also has a borderline incestuous relationship with a son/brother/husband/lover character—an escaped black slave who is likewise beaten, raped, and brutalized, up to and including having his dick cut off and becoming a transvestite.
As if all that wasn’t enough, the book also includes a joke about one of the black slave men having a huge dick. Wow, Bob, wow.
Once you know what you’re seeing, you can never stop seeing it. I’m way too familiar with the history and pathologies of “western civilization” (global invaders) to see this work as anything other than what it is: the exorcising of a white man’s sexual id through the illustrated bodies of the “exotic other.” On that level, it is repulsive. There were many times I had to put the book down because that shit was making me sick.
But still, I finished it. It was just too well-crafted, even if it was some ol’ bullshit. You can learn a lot from well-crafted bullshit.
And speaking of well-crafted bullshit…
The Watchmen – Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
It had been at least five or ten years since I last read this. Recently I picked it up at the library, then a couple weeks later I inherited two copies of it—one is an early hardbound edition (1988), and one is the same as the library copy, a 2018 softbound edition. In the newer edition, the coloring has been entirely re-done by computer. I’m not normally one to keep multiple copies of the same work, but in this case, there’s quite a difference between the two.
I first read The Watchmen in 1993, when I was thirteen. In retrospect, that probably wasn’t the best idea. I was not at all prepared for the moral complexity or sheer nihilistic cynicism of this book. I read it a few more times over the ensuing years, but I was never a big fan. Now that I’ve spent the last five years becoming more serious about studying the craft and methods of cartooning, I have a better appreciation of it, and I’m better able to articulate my criticisms.
I realize this is going to flatten some hats and raise some hackles, but I think The Watchmen is probably the most overrated comic of all time. True, it is undoubtedly great—the pacing is razor sharp, the world and characters are compelling, Gibbons’s “down-tempo” art is both technically masterful and perfect for the story, and the story itself is ambitious and morally complex. This book is genuine achievement. But for me, that’s as far as it goes.
Fans and critics alike have made much of the “literary” quality of this book, and they’ve fired plenty of semen into the air over how it “reinvented” comics and blah blah blah. Frankly, I find The Watchmen to be over-wrought, like it’s trying way too hard to be deep. As a result, many of the storytelling techniques are just barely on the proper side of corny, and a few are on the wrong side. It has the kind of self-consciously “highbrow” drip to it that can only be accomplished by a working-class Brit trying to prove to the world how smart he is… which is what Moore has spent most of his career doing.
I think Alan Moore’s interviews are far more interesting than much of his comics work—but then again, I have a soft spot for fringe-dwelling curmudgeons, being one myself. Some years ago I read an interview where, in response to a question about the impact of The Watchmen and its reputation as “Best Comic of All Time Ever,” Moore said something to the effect of: “After all these years, I would have hoped a comic would come along to knock The Watchmen off its pedestal. Alas, there are simply no creators of sufficient skill and genius to cast me from the throne. And even if there were, the readers are all too stupid to notice.” That’s not an exact quote, but it’s close enough.
First off, anyone who thinks this cynical wankjob is the best comic ever simply has no understanding of the true gonzo majesty of comics, nor the sheer cosmic bullshit of Western “literary” conceits. Either that, or they need to read a greater variety of comics. We’re talking about a medium that is versatile enough for Love & Rockets, Maus, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Zap Comics, Jughead, and Ghost Rider. Say what you will about the pulp absurdity of a flaming skeleton biker from Hell, but that’s the kind of story people will be telling around campfires long after Alan’s beard has turned to dust.
Second, The Watchmen got on its pedestal because of some very specific social, political, and economic circumstances. The baby industry of (American) comics publishing was just barely climbing out of its crib of disposable monthly magazines. We were living under the doom cloud of the Reagan years. Indy publishers, influenced by the underground comix of the ’60s and ’70s but with an eye on aboveground careers, were achieving great successes with unique and ambitious work. “Direct marketing” outlets, i.e. comic book stores, were reaching the height of their power in numbers. Superheroes were the big sellers, and they were ripe for new ideas; plenty of creators, in Europe and America, indy and corporate, were expanding the frontiers of the genre.
Then the King Nerd of the Old Empire came along and made geeks feel like their beloved medium was worthwhile after all, because he made it look smart for the masses—a royal triumph over a people desperate for validation.
*yawn*
Third, on any level you want to consider besides that of pretentiousness, there have been dozens of comics that crush The Watchmen like Godzilla in a shanty town. Just off the top of my head: Gaiman’s Sandman series, Morrison’s The Filth AND Seven Soldiers of Victory AND Final Crisis, Spiegelman’s Maus, Mignola’s entire Hellboy series, Thompson’s Habibi, everything Jaime and Gilberto Hernandezdid in the ’80s on Love & Rockets… the list goes on, especially for people whose taste in comics has a wider palette than Bang!-Pow!-Zoom!
For the record, I think Alan Moore’s best work was on Swamp Thing. He took a brilliantly pulpish monster mash and turned it into a masterpiece of poetic beauty and horror. He was also sblessed with some of the best artists in the game, including Rick Veitch and Alfredo Alcala. I may not be the biggest fan of Moore’s work in general, but I would kick an old man down a flight of stairs for a stack of original Swamp Thing pages from that era.
The Temple of DZA 