Comic Books

I've flirted a little bit with comics and graphic novels for most of my life. As a kid, I read the Tintin books, which we picked up in collection form when we traveled to England and borrowed from the library when we got home. I read my dad's copies of The Beano, which included the British version of Dennis the Menace. And I read Raymond Briggs's Father Christmas books, as well as a series of children's biographies illustrated by Peyo.

In college, I read and loved Maus I and Maus II, but I don't remember seeking out other books in graphic form (I guess few existed at that time).

Then, about five years ago, while visiting my friend Shannon in Burlington, Vermont, I came across the graphic novel section in The Crow Bookshop, and that's when my slow-burning interest exploded. I bought The Squirrel Mother, by Megan Kelso, and a copy of Kevin Huizenga's Or Else, and John Porcellino's Perfect Example. That set me off on a binge that spanned many books and authors: Alison Bechdel, Gabrielle Bell, Marjane Satrapi, Jessica Abel, and later Craig Thompson and Lucy Knisley... I periodically quit reading graphic books for financial reasons: I like to own my books, and because I read graphic books too quickly and feel compelled to keep buying more, it gets expensive.

Anyway, I had been off graphic novels since last year, when I read (and loved) Lucy Knisley's French Milk. But two Christmas gifts set me off again. My boyfriend bought me the Muppet Snow White series of four issues, and my parents bought Kate T. Williamson's A Year in Japan from my Amazon wish list. Williamson set me off on graphic novels/memoirs/short stories again, and the Muppet comics opened up a whole new obsession. Before Luke got me the Muppet comics, I had owned just a few single-issue comic books, and those were ones that would become adult graphic novels (two from Jessica Abel's La Perdida series, one from her Artbabe series, and a couple of the previously mentioned Or Else issues).

I have a serious predilection for collecting, which I try to keep under control by periodically thinning the various herds and trying to stay out of stores (especially bookstores). So I was worried that I would fall down the rabbit hole with the Muppet comics, and I basically have. Luckily they're not very expensive ($2.99 an issue) and fairly limited (maybe 25 issues currently in print, with some kind of licensing issue that might prevent Boom Kids from producing more).

But really, how could I not fall in love with the Muppet comics (and then the Fraggle ones, and now the Smurfs)? The Muppets are joyful, loveable, funny, and they remind me of my childhood, when I watched the Muppet Show (which I called Goofy People!) with my parents. (I also remember seeing the various 80s Muppet movies at the drive-in theater, and the Muppet Christmas Carol may be my favorite Christmas movie.)

I'm hoping to write many more commentaries/annotations/reviews here in the next few months, so I wanted this post to serve as a bit of introduction for my ongoing obsession for stories in the graphic form.

Am I interested in graphic books mainly because I can read and absorb them so quickly, thereby feeling accomplished at having finished something? Is it because I don't think of myself as a visual artist, so this is not something that I feel I would be able to do myself? Yes, but also it's the graphic novel community, which is fairly new and evolving quickly. Artists can still put out new, raw, kind of crappy drawings for public consumption, and readers can see those artists getting more and more skilled with each successive book. I like that, and I like the ethos of "art for art's sake" that pervades a lot of (most of?) this work. I get the feeling that these artists would be doing exactly the same work whether they got paid for it or not, and I like that. I like being around those people, even if my connection to them is only as an engaged reader. I think that's mainly why I fell so deeply in love with the graphic form when I had just finished my MFA in Fiction. I wanted something joyful, non-academic, inclusive. Five years later, that's still what I'm most drawn to (ha!) about the graphic form.