Broken Frontier

Ivan Brunetti, the cartoonist most famous for his Schizo series published by Fantagraphics and his New Yorker illustrations, steps into the role of editor for An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons and True Stories, Vol 2. Under a beautiful Daniel Clowes cover, he has compiled a gargantuan volume of comics of 75 alternative creators - some more famous than others - and throws in some classic comic strips and other historical material just to show us what he likes about the comic art form. Some flowers would also have been nice Ivan, but I'll take the killer weight graphic anthology of the year too.

There's a very eclectic range of artists here, ranging from the intricate storytelling of Chris Ware to the sketchbook style doodle work of C.F. and everything in between. You would be driving yourself mad trying to put all the creators in the book in a logical flow. So Brunetti took the only rational approach: he followed his gut. He is the main man here so whatever he likes, goes. Shying away from the academic approach but rather organising the flow according to intuition and intent, reflecting the creative process itself. Brunetti talks about dynamic equilibrium in his introduction for the book and it seems very apt. Paul Klee posed the term: seeing nature and art as a relationship of opposites, not as a static balance but in a unstable, dynamic equilibrium. "Only," Klee said, "when one and two are set harshly against each other does three become necessary, in turn, to transform this harshness into harmony" (source). And that is definitely the feel of this anthology. You don't have to like it all but upon closing the book, sampling some pages or just leafing through it, you get the feeling that this is important stuff.

In an interview, Brunetti has stated that "the focus lies on static images on a printed page that have the illusion of coming alive". And for me this statement works wonderfully because just like in real live, I instantly liked some, instantly hated others and some had to grown on me, just like people, just like situations. You start to get to know the way the artists see the world and sometimes it clicks - either it opens up your mind or it makes you look in a different way. The point of art according to Brunetti is to open people's eyes and mind, adding a little empathy to the world. And I certainly liked comics a whole lot more when I closed the covers of this book.

There are a lot of regular inhabitants of that dark side of the  moon we call the alternative comics scene: Chris Ware, Seth, Kevin Huizinga, Harvey Pekar, Robert Crumb, Richard Sala, Adrian Tomine etc. But for every tingling name there's also an unknown peeping from behind a rock like C.F., Eugene Teal, Paper Rad, Onsmith, Cole Johnson, Elinor Norflus etc. Stories range from biography to small tales to porn to autobiography to outright bizarre meanderings. The settled names turn in their settled styles though (don't get me wrong, a regular Adrian Tomine feature is still an excellent comic) and the real surprises lie in the unknown. Richard Sikoryak surprises with 1950s Action Comics covers parodies, Cole Johnson's intimate panels evoke a dream like tale of puberty, etc. There's frankly too much to mention. It's. 400. Pages. Long.

I personally found myself meandering mostly through the beginning and end of the volume. The middle part of the book seems to take delight in sometimes rather crude and childish drawings, going more for atmosphere and a specific anarchic mindset than making great comics. Better excercise those wrists and arm muscles though, this is one heavy sucka. And be sure to have a good strong reading light shining. The type is sometimes so small in these comics that you have to really squint to read it. The shrinkage due to reprinting from so many sources and so many different sizes does the comics no good. And you know how alt comics love their text blocks.

Ivan Brunetti has topped himself this year - how long did it take him to compile this anyway? - with An anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons and True Stories, Vol: 2. A mad and intimate ride through the North American comics scene of the last five years. It's an intuitive roller coaster of a read, foregoing cataloguing the diverse comics to a non-linear reading experience that speaks from the heart instead of the head. This is Brunetti's lovefest to all comics and non-comics readers.

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An anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons and True Stories, Vol: 2 is published by Yale University Press, is 400 pages long and retails at $28.00.