Dakin, Glenn – Abe: Wrong For All The Right Reasons

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Abe – Wrong for all the Right Reasons

You have no idea how much I needed this book today. Money problems, mostly, petty stuff that shouldn’t bother me as much as it does. This book showed (as many things do, if you look around) just how stupid it is to do anything but enjoy life. I’ve seen this book hailed as the book of the year, and I don’t see anything in this to argue with that statement. I’ve already read a lot of really great things this year and this has to be the best one. Abe is a character that Glenn created while he was in high school as the alter-ego of his “superhero”, Captain Oblivion. As he got older the cast of characters disappeared, but Abe remained, and Glenn has used him to express his philosophy about the world ever since. Here’s what Eddie Campbell has to say in his introduction, and I reprint it here because I couldn’t have said it better myself: “He’s arrived at a visual poetry, with the pictures distilled to deft strokes, playing the role of calligraphy.” I’ve called things pure poetry a few times before, and I’ve meant it every time, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a book where there’s so much to think about in every single panel. I had a smile on my face from the first page, and this is a thick book that will take up a very well spent afternoon sometime, if you sit down and enjoy it. I should also add that there’s no real continuing story here, just Abe in a variety of situations. The fact that it’s as good as it is without any real connecting thread shows just what a skill this man has. And most of the stuff is between 5 and 15 years old! There has to be a mountain of stuff out there from him to discover. Broke as hell or not, this book has put me in a fantastic mood. Now leave me alone, I’m going to drink some beer with my friends. Oh, and this was also probably the hardest book I’ve seen in terms of putting up samples, as there wasn’t much about this that I didn’t like, so here’s one of the short stories.