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Krumpholz, Karl Christian – The Lighthouse in the City Volume 11
The Lighthouse in the City Volume 11
The sample image below is for everybody who has a cat that got just a little too curious about the shower/bath that their owner was taken, resulting in a trail of wetness going through the house in a panicked fashion. Seems to be a thing that every cat needs to figure out for themselves. Oh hi, it’s time for a new volume of Karl’s autobiographical series! This one cover September 2022 through the end of the year, and (no spoilers, but kind of a spoiler, I suppose) this is the last volume he’s going to be doing for a while. Completely understandable, and he’s lasted longer than most who attempt the daily diary strip. I’m curious to see what he does with this new bounty of free time. So what’s this particular volume about, you ask? There are of course several adventures with Oola (both real and imagined), some strips about his time at a few conventions, more tragedy in his personal life (he was on a rough string of losing friends and family members for a while), observations from his walks around the neighborhood, getting through a rough cold (and still making comics through it), and so very much more. Which seems like a copout on the part of a “professional” reviewer, but the man has over 130 pages of strips in here and I’m not going to bloodlessly boil them down to their essences. This is the 11th volume, after all. The man is a hell of a storyteller (and an artist; the level of detail in these strips considering that they’re produced daily is staggering), so I’m guessing that you’re already on board for his comics at this point. If not, it would probably be kind of funny if you jumped on with the final volume of this three year journey. He was nice enough to send me his earlier volumes (that I hadn’t reviewed) a while back, so maybe I’ll review a couple of those randomly while I wait to see what he comes up with next. Will it be odd to talk about those, especially the BO (Before Oola) days? Yeah, probably. We’ll see. Meanwhile, this is yet another solid entry in this series, which you should be checking out already. $12
Krumpholz, Karl Christian – It’s Oola!
It’s Oola!
Less than a year in their household, and Oola already has her own comic. I see big things ahead for this cat! If you’re not familiar with Lighthouse in the City (Karl’s ongoing daily strip series), Oola came onto the scene in November of 2021, several months after both of the cats who had been with them for many years passed away. She made an instant and gigantic impact in their (the other half of “their” is Kelly, his partner) lives, so naturally Karl decided to put together this collection of strips where she was the star of the show. Is it technically kosher for me to review a book where I’ve probably already read half of the strips in other comics? Well, since I don’t have a boss, the only one to decide that is me, and my answer is: when it comes to cats, all rules go out the window. Reviewing something like this, as is the case with the vast majority of comics involving cats, my objectivity goes out the window, so if you’re looking for a detailed, erudite review about the linework and the meaning behind certain strips, move right along. What does that crazy cat get up to in here? Without giving too much away, there’s her introduction to the house, some odd leftover behaviors from her early life on the street, her Halloween cat arched back (the same thing my old cat, Sassafrasquatch (20 year mascot of this website), used to do), the futility of their trying to sleep when she wanted to play, her great escape, her SECOND great escape, what always happens when glass items on a mantle and a cat come together, and several strips based on great comics artists from when Karl was overdosing on comics with just himself and Oola in the house. I was also fascinated by the single image strip of her sitting on a hardcover collection of comics with one of those fabric bookmarks attached to the spine. Somehow she was just sitting there and NOT attacking the bookmark, so I can only assume that he was taking some artistic liberties with that strip. It’s a funny and adorable comic, what more do you want? Check it out already! Unless you hate cats, in which case I can’t believe you read this far into the review. Oh, one last note for Karl and Kelly: I noticed a small continuity error. In the first strip, while you two were discussing whether or not the time was right for another cat, you mentioned getting a pair of cats. But (as of this writing, anyway) you still just have the one cat. Any plans to rectify that? $6
Krumpholz, Karl Christian – The Lighthouse in the City Volume 8
The Lighthouse in the City Volume 8
For all that I sometimes give artists grief who only put out a book every few years, it’s even trickier as a reviewer to keep up with the people who constantly produce comics. Karl was nice enough to to send along a half dozen or so books after I reviewed his fifth volume earlier this year, which then leads to the problem of what to review next. Read them all in order and talk about them? Nope, this time around I decided to review the most recent volume, with the hope of getting back to the earlier stuff at some undetermined point in the future. That never seems to work with me, but I live in hope! This collection covers October through December of 2021, and it also wraps up his second full year of daily strips. The level of detail he packs in these strips is astounding; I get that he’s able to illustrate for a living, but this is not a man who follows a simple formula for daily strips. Generally speaking, the four panels then out format is the most common for daily strips, but Karl is fine making a three or four page story out of the events of that day if that’ll make a better story. Granted, he also has a few strips that are silent sketches, but he even puts so much detail into those that I’d hardly call them an off-day. So, what’s going on in this volume? If you’re reading this in the far future you may have forgotten, but things are rough all over these days, and this volume reflects that reality. The first strips starts off with a quote from The Thin Man (the book by Dashiell Hammett) that ties into the madness of the vaccine deniers, so he’s right off to the races. There are just under 100 other strips in this book, dealing with loss (way too many of his friends passed away during this time period), hope, trying to get back to normal (i.e. being comfortable going out with friends again with not everybody wearing masks), and the introduction of a new cat in their lives, and this cat naturally ends up being the star of the show. Sure, I’m biased towards cats, but I’m also right. This feels like maybe as vague as I’ve ever been in describing a comic, but I am completely fine with that. This is a guy who’s wrapping up his second year of daily strips and frankly seems like he’s at the top of his game right now. They’re unlike most other daily strips I’ve read (the level of detail especially, but it’s also rare for a book like this to not ever feel repetitive) and I’m pretty comfortable recommending this to anybody. As to the question of which volume you should start with, that’s quite a bit tougher. Maybe pick the most eventful chunk of three months or so from your own life over 2020-2021 and see how his life was in comparison? That way if you enjoy the book you can always go back and read what came before and after it. Or just pick a number between 1 and 8 and get one at random. Give it a shot, is what I’m saying. $12
Krumpholz, Karl Christian – The Lighthouse in the City Volume 5
The Lighthouse in the City Volume 5
I’m going to get a bit nitpicky here at the start, so if you don’t want to read it, just skip ahead a few lines. Or if you don’t even want to be bothered doing that, I thoroughly enjoyed this, so take that information and go about your day. See that “Volume 5” up there? Yeah, I did that. It’s not listed on the cover, on the spine, not even on the inside with the title. But this IS the fifth volume, and since this is a collection of daily strips, that seems relevant if you were looking for the whole journey. Even worse, I don’t know if you can even get all the volumes. The first volume is listed through Birdcage Bottom Books, the fifth through Kilgore, but as for everything in the middle, a quick Google search has failed me. Maybe the thinking is that only obsessives read small press comics, so those types of folks would research before buying. It might even be correct! It just strikes me as odd, as a needless way to confuse people. See all that complaining? Didn’t mention the quality of the book even one time, did I? That’s because it’s delightful, right around the best of the daily strips I’ve seen. That’s for a simple reason: Karl doesn’t force it. This might seem basic, but some people who do daily strips seem like they’re performing at times, or pushing for something funny and/or insightful when the truth is that they don’t have much to say on that particular day. And that’s fine! Karl’s solution is given away a bit on that cover, as he has no problem silently narrating a small happening from the day, or the absolute lack of anything happening. He’s also not boxed in by the same format (generally four panels, single page with these sorts of things), as some strips are a few pages, some are a single panel, some are all over the place. Flipping through this book before I started reading it I assumed it was a regular graphic novel (this is also where the lack of numbering failed me) just from the wildly different looks of the pages. Anyway, finally, this book covers the period from January through March 2021, which is less than a year ago as I’m writing this. Some shit went down during this period, to put it mildly, but since everybody reading this went through it too, I won’t go through it again. It’s an engaging collection, with funny and sad strips (and everything in between), and it makes me want to scour the internet to find those missing volumes. Give it a shot, and yes, that’s especially for people who are sick of the daily diary strip format. This proves that it still can be done well with a little ingenuity. $12
