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Blindspot #2

Let’s all take a moment to mourn the death of the individual comic. Oh, not in the small press world, as mini comics are still all over the place. I mean more any of the established publishers, like Top Shelf, Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, those types of folks. Joseph includes a rejection letter from Fantagraphics in this one that is probably the worst kind of rejection letter: they loved his work (with a few suggestions for improvements), but since there is just no market for single issues there’s not a thing they can do to help him. It will be a different story when he gets enough material for a collection, possibly, but for now his only option is to either self publish or let his work pile up until he can put it in a graphic novel. Overall I don’t mind this trend, as I’m happy to wait a couple of years between large books, but it really sucks for books like this which fit perfectly as single issues and might be a bit of a mess as a collected book. Anyway, this comic has a few stories, all new for this issue (the lack of a new Ace Goddard story is explained on the back cover). He starts off with a letters page, and I must confess that I do miss a good letters page. The first story is a delightful romp (I don’t think I’ve ever used that in a review, and if I did it was misapplied like it is here) through the mind a genius in his own head, a young man who gets annoyed with his audiences while playing his guitar at open mic nights and ends up putting six months and a ton of money into his dream project. The ending is a thing of beauty and says a lot about the power of any positive reinforcement. Next up is a date gone horribly wrong, with a social sin that there is just no coming back from. The bulk of the comic is next, and it’s the story of an older man who feels like control of his life is slipping away, as he’s ignored at work and notices that the options of jobs for older men are getting worse all the time. He tries a few desperate ploys, they mostly don’t go well, and I’ll leave the rest of it to the reader. Finally there are two short pieces, about a cheery security guard and Joseph’s sadly brief time working with Harvey Pekar. Joseph ended up drawing the last (?) thing Harvey wrote, a book on Cleveland, and I’m really curious to see it. Anyway yes, this is another solid issue, and you should buy it if you really do support such things. If you don’t or are indifferent, there’s always the inevitable collected edition, or at least there will be if Joseph doesn’t give up hope due to lack of support of his individual issues. Do you really want to risk that? $5

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Blindspot #1

It’s a question at the back of my mind whenever I read a small press comic: just how cynical is this creator in understanding how likely he/she is in making any kind of a living at this?  Most of them seem to know that they’re making comics for themselves and a small group of loyal and inquisitive people and will probably never make a living off of it, but then again most of them seem to be (admirably) hoping for the best, that they can eventually make a living off of their art.  This question comes up in Joseph’s introduction to this comic, a brilliant little scene that has him standing in front of a fancypants backdrop, explaining to his audience that he is going to be taking them on a journey.  Then his roommate pops in with reality, that the backdrop is a sham and that nobody buys individual comics any more and by the time he gets his serialized graphic novel put together, that craze will probably be over too.  Ok, maybe that or a variation of that has been done before, but I thought it was a great way to get things started.  From there we have his eventual serialized graphic novel called Ace Goddard Livin’ Legend, which is all about a glam rock icon from back in the day who’s been trying to put out a new album for years.  As he is now a joke, nobody was interested in such a thing, and the panels the record executive and his assistant spend explaining to Ace that his only chance now is to do a “greatest hits” album and accept the fact that he’s seen as a joke to the world at large.  This has all kinds of potential, and I can only hope that he was exaggerating about how long it would take him to put that story together.  I checked his website and he’s going to spend the next 6 months or so completing a graphic novel he was working on with Harvey Pekar, so it may be awhile.  There’s also only 7 pages of this story in this issue, so it might be a REALLY long time.  Other stories in here include a tale about a woman who has been on a string of awful blind dates, a conversation in a record store about whether there is an objective truth in musical taste or if it’s all in the ear of the beholder, a man happily walking into work on a Monday morning getting gradually smashed to bits, a rich asshole at an art show who tries to impress a pretty woman, and Joseph’s tale of trying to break through the wall of comics in the online world and make an impression.  There’s also a funny strip on the back cover, but I’m leaving some mystery for you people who want to buy the book.  As for the look of the book, there’s not a hint of amateurishness about it.  Joseph has clearly been doing this for a long time, or maybe he’s just supernaturally gifted, but there’s some damned fine artwork going on here.  Some of the early pages have some unerased pencil lines for the lettering, a pet peeve of mine, but it’s faint enough that I probably wouldn’t even notice it if I wasn’t such a dick about it.  It’s worth a look, that’s what I’m trying to say here.  $4.50