I’ve been writing about comics a good bit at Montevidayo. Just put up an interview with Blaise Larmee.  Enjoy.

A few months ago, I read Dash Shaw‘s Bottomless Belly Button, which is an excellent book.  It’s a long comic that is particularly novelistic in an almost Victorian sense (in the vein of other contemporary novels like Jonathn Franzen’s The Corrections).  He experiments with several highly stylized modernistic tropes, which are sometime incredibly successful (Peter’s frog aspect, a reflection of his self-image) and other times affected or slightly irritating (frequent written description in the place of emanata or onomatopoeia).  While I think the case for Bottomless Belly Button has been overstated in the unfortunate glut of “year-end lists,” it is certainly a book worth reading, and its flaws are all commendable ones that are a result of an attempt to stretch the confines of comic vocabulary.  It shows that Shaw is an evolving artist who is headed in a very right direction.

His next long work, Body World, is now available – in whole – at his website.  I’ve actually waited to read Body World, until it was finished. (This thinking – I’m sure – flies in the face of comic-day serial purists.  But, you know what, that’s not how I learned to read comic books.) Just last night, I finally read the prelude, and it’s amazing.  It’s what webcomics should be.  His use of borderless color and hand-done effects in conjunction with Photoshop is incredibly impressive.  It makes the rare case for substantial use of computer drawing (coloring).  The regular panel and long-scrolling pages read very naturally.  (I’ll be interested in comparing this to the print version which, I believe, will have a spine at the top and will be published later this year.)  My plan is to read a chapter a day over the next few weeks.  I’m really excited about this one.

The Beeswax folks from Oakland just put out their new issue and it’s beautiful.  Go and get it here.  These things are hand-bound with letterpress covers. The covers feature this amazing drawing by my friend Lydia Conklin, and more of her comics are inside.  It also features three more stories from my cycle The Complete Collection of people, places & things. There is a host of other great fiction, poetry and meta-literature from this lot:

Kelly Davio • Elizabeth Eslami • Crag Hill • Jason Jordan • Shane Michalik • Edward Mullany • Kristine Ong Muslim • Ray Skjelbred • Michael Spring • Jim Steel • Kat Steiger • Brendan Todt • Jess Wigent

Excerpt from "Just One Second" by Lydia Conklin

When I hold a thing like Beeswax, it makes me want to create something small and limited and tactile and right.  I get really excited by limitlessness of what we can do with Action,Yes and the web, our ability to leave ideas of form and hierarchy behind us. But sometimes I want rules and containment.  This recent boom of literature-art presses is very exciting to me, similar to the explosion of online journals a few years back.  All these things seem to be indicative of the dying off of sales rankings, big publishing, print runs and other literary indicators that are so antithetical to artistic creation.  Large industries are dying off, but these creations that depend on little capital are thriving; people continue to create just to create.

Here’s a couple of panels from a story that I’m just about finishing up.  It’s called “The Remains.”  I’ve been having a tough time with the resolution but I think I’ve finally cracked it.  My idea is that this story will be in the first in a series of “episodes” on which I’m collaborating with Johannes. I’ve begun thumbnailing the next few stories, which will make up a section I see as “The Awakening of the Genius Child Orchestra.”

The comic that I’m anticipating more than any other right now is Ben Brookshire’s The Universe War.  It’s his first comic and it’s devastating. And he doesn’t even draw.  You can follow the pages as he finishes them here. I can’t wait until I can hold this thing in my hands.

Also, check out Ben’s collage postcards here.