There are multiple directions from where you may have become familiar with the contributions of cartoonist David Ziggy Greene. Perhaps it was from his groundbreaking graphic reportage series Scene & Heard in the pages of Private Eye. Or perhaps you know him as the founder of Small Press Day, still going strong a decade later. Alternatively you may have been a visitor to his much missed London bookshop JAM. And, of course, you might be a longtime fan of his comics work, either self-published or in anthologies like Dirty Rotten Comics or the French publications where his particular style found its natural home. It’s that latter side we’re focussing on today with his career retrospective collection Vintage: The Definitive Comics Collection 2009-2025.
Vintage brings together shorter-form strips with longer minicomics work from that time (with an additional bonus of a comic Greene created back when he was just 13!). It’s a showcase for his particular brand of malleable, elastic cartooning; a cast of pliable, caricatured players, all unlikely physicality and expressive stretchability.
Much of the material herein has an absurdist quality; a man who collects his belly button fluff and brings it up as a son after it gains sentience, for example. In ‘Snow Trap’ two record shop employees chase a thief through a snowstorm, and in ‘Rubber Sandwich’ where a cop goes undercover in a table tennis club. And then there’s ‘Picacho Del Diablo’ with its violent slapstick, supernatural sinkholes, and goat-themed mountain quest. All very different in premise and yet all linked by a sense of underlying silliness across the contents of the book.
There are clever uses of the language of comics here too. ‘Library Talk’ seems an obvious play on both its environment and use of speech balloons at a first glance, and yet it’s the kind of clever use of the form that only seems self-evident once someone has been perceptive enough to employ it. And the superb comedy pacing and unlikely punchline of ‘Hush’ (below) is a joy to behold in an absolute gem of a strip.
More recent work here is the short strip ‘Windows’ which is a complete change of pace for Greene, tonally and in terms of presentation. There’s something almost Eisner-esque about this tale told in panels which are all simply the actual windows into people’s homes. Characters are only hinted at but these little vignettes into lives point to wider existences just outside our reach, asking us to imagine what we don’t see as much as observe what we do. It’s a neat premise that could easily be expanded into something longer, and one hopes that Greene does indeed go that route.
Vintage is testament to the inventive imagination of one of our most underappreciated cartoonists in the UK, and a welcome celebration of nearly two decades of his work.
David Ziggy Greene (W/A) • Self-published, £10.00
Review by Andy Oliver
