In Lowlife, Ed Brubaker portrays the frustration and cynicism of disenchanted slacker kids finding excitement in their uneventful lives. Brubaker presents his antiheroes with a great deal of poignancy. In the first story of The Portable Lowlife (Aeon), unenthused buddies Tommy and James go to a nightclub. Tommy has been lovesick over a girl. “You’ve got no right to be mad,” James tells him. “You weren’t really going out with her anyway… . You were just having sex with her for a few weeks…” At the bar, Brubaker has a field day with Tommy’s drunkenness. To a band on stage, Tommy screams, “You guys fuckin’ suck!!” and then stage-dives — but no one catches him. He then calls the bouncer’s girlfriend the most dreaded “c” word, and pays for it by falling bloodily to the floor. The Lowlife stories are a tough act to follow.

Brubaker’s latest work, Prez, is a different kind of comic book. Illustrated by Eric Shanower — who collaborated with Brubaker in An Accidental Death (Fantagraphics) — Prez looks more realistic. But while Prez is realistically illustrated, it’s a fairy tale. It recounts, through a first-person narrative, a journey to find Prez, the country’s first teen president. One of the three young men on the search is P.J., the son of Prez (P.J. being short for “Prez Junior”), who is determined to find his father. P.J. represents a sort of grunge “everyman,” but one who cannot escape the much larger pop culture. In the end, Prez Sr. becomes the ultimate example of this counterculture everyman.

In reading Prez, anyone familiar with the late Kurt Cobain, Nirvana, and grunge music will find heavy-handed references to this aspect of youth culture. The most annoying of these references is the story’s subtitle, “Smells Like Teen President.” (Yes, just like Nirvana’s hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”) Also annoying is P.J.’s resemblance to Cobain. With all the press that surrounded Cobain’s untimely suicide, it’s hard to believe DC/Vertigo would go this far with a Nirvana fetish.

In Brubaker’s and Shanower’s work, Prez, like Cobain, was a regular guy before reaching stardom. His downfall is documented. As the narrator George says, “He retired and went into seclusion. Everything’s supposedly gone to hell since then…” George also talks about P.J.’s problems. Not necessarily a grunge band, The Valentine Sisters featured P.J. as vocalist. He sings, “You laughed at me cuz I tried to take you seriously… You think you got something no one can see…” P.J. gets involved with alcohol. He says, “Don’t you see? No matter what we do, it just doesn’t make a difference… There’s nothing there… It’s all just phony fucking shit… My life is shit.” Sound familiar? It’s the stereotypical grunge or punk kid whose life is crumbling. P.J. plunges downward. Says George: “The fall from what seems like a secure place to where you’ve lost nearly everything doesn’t actually take all that long. Pretty soon, I ended up with P.J. on my couch.”

After reading in the National Enquirer that Prez has been spotted in a small-town diner, the three buddies set out in search of him. They meet a pretty young woman who tells them the newspaper changed the facts. She offers to take them to the real diner where he was seen, and tells them that she is Mary, “the waitress from the article.” Mary tells them that Prez was dressed in a worn-out denim jacket and had a thick beard. She heard him say, “They’re never gonna give people the care they need. That’d put the insurance companies out of business, and that’s just not gonna happen… This country sold itself out a long time ago, and that’s a grave we’ll never climb out of …”

P.J. is left bewildered over the whereabouts of his father, and Mary invites the three to sleep over. At Mary’s place, P.J. and his buddies learn she has a fascination with serial killers. She shows them her photo collection, saying, “I guess I am kind of an oddity around here. That’s why I want to go to San Francisco.” Again, her interest in serial killers is no real surprise — plenty of young people share it. She says, “To me these people did something really unique. Some of them even made an art out of it… It’s just another method of self-expression. And think about it… This is a phenomenon that’s totally unique to 20th-century America. Serial killers came into existence in the later part of the ’50s in the U.S… _I think that says a lot about our country right there.”

The next stop is Steadfast, Maine: Prez’s hometown, and a place that has become a Disneyland of Prez memorabilia. As they roam the Prez mansion, they see pictures of Prez with Elvis and other cel-ebrities. George says, “Here he is with the singer from Echo and the Bunnymen — man, Prez was cool.” The third member of the group, Jason, replies, “No, I think that’s the guy from The Cure.” The three buddies eventually become disgusted with the glittery way Prez’ life is being showcased for tourists. “They might as well call it ‘Prezville’ or something,” P.J. says.

In Prez, Brubaker and Shanower portray a youth culture in search of meaning. Although this tale is interestingly woven, the portrayal of the grunge-inspired youth culture (a youth culture that has surely by now been consumed by the larger pop culture) is predictable and stereotypical, from the Nirvana references to the pissed-off and victimized attitudes of its characters.

In contrast, the youth culture in Brubaker’s Lowlife stories is driven by a genuine counterculture. In one of the Lowlife stories, Tommy lies in his bed under a poster of Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, a key undergound film. But in Prez, much more commercial examples of art provide the backdrop for the young men’s experiences. In Prez, the Lemonheads and Nirvana — once at home in the underground — are now products of the commercialism that is actually posing as an underground culture. Brubaker doesn’t quite acknowledge this, and instead portrays that culture as the true underground. Prez, once reared in the counterculture, is now finally a product of this commercialism — although much to his own dismay.

Peter Wagner’s Reading Iconotexts uses the theories of intertextuality, discourse analysis, semiotics and deconstruction to make sense of cultural objects which mingle pictures and words (“iconotexts”). Wagner’s examples are all from 18th Century Europe, but they provide models of how these tools might also be used to analyze comic books and pornography and to improve comics historiography. Wagner’s prime examples of iconotexts are the celebrated engravings of proto-cartoonists William Hogarth (1697-1764). Wagner is an expert on 18th century erotica, and includes obscene prints from the period of the French Revolution as another type of iconotext which he examines.

Most of the standard histories of the comic book medium praise William Hogarth, but in ways which makes Hogarth’s work seem dull. Usually they describe his prints as a step toward the invention of the comic strip, asking that we notice that his pictures were richly detailed, didactic, and set in a narrative sequence. Wagner approaches Hogarth’s engraving as supreme examples of “intertextuality.” The theory of intertextuality “insists that a text cannot exist as a hermetic or self-sufficient entity, and hence cannot function as a closed system.” In Hogarth’s drawings, every small detail can be decoded as referring to other texts or images or specific individuals or events, and “many of his prints cannot be understood without a thorough knowledge of the personal and political feuds fought in the contemporary press.” Wagner provides enough examples of such meaningful detail in the visual and verbal elements of Hogarth’s work to fire the imagination.

Several things deflate the excitement of this project. One objection that Wagner anticipates is that his reading of Hogarth’s prints “yield results that are not strikingly different in kind from those in more traditional kinds of studies (e.g., Paulson’s books on Hogarth).” Another is that although the though of Hogarth’s prints as a “semiotician’s paradise” in which every tiny element works as a footnote is delicious, a careful reader must resist making indiscriminate speculations, forced analogies, loose associations, and the tendency to see contrasts, reminders, evocations and references everywhere. (I adapted this latter objection from something comics historian David Kunzle said about a different scholar’s study of Hogarth.)

In his defense against the first objection, Wagner emphasizes the theoretical differences which mark his study. The first of these is that Wagner rejects interpreting works, such as Hogarth’s prints, on the shaky foundation of what the artists supposedly intended when creating the piece, in favor of a “discourse analysis.” In Wagner’s book, studying Hogarth’s intertextual references as part of a “discourse analysis” seems to mean discounting most of the evidence that is available and pertinent to interpreting Hogarth’s intentions. One appeal of discourse analysis as a tool for studying comic books and pornography is that the creators of these texts have frequently been anonymous or have left little record of their intentions or have been driven by such intentions as “getting their pages in on time” which do not yield much analytical insight into their work. These texts do make intertextual references which are clear to most readers, yet can become mysterious within a few years as contemporary personalities and events are forgotten. On the other hand, comic books and pornography present a much sparser array of intertextual references than Hogarth did.

Regarding the second objection, since Wagner does not claim to be cataloging the references and allusions that Hogarth consciously inserted into his work, that frees him to see any references in as many places as he cares to look, with the usual proviso that readers will find some of his interpretations more convincing or interesting than others.

After chapters on the front matter of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, picture framing, and Hogarth’s prints, Wagner addresses “Obscenity and Body Language in the French Revolution.” The dustjacket for this book shows a teasingly-cropped engraving of the princesse de Lamballe fingering Marie-Antoinette (the uncropped engraving is reproduced as figure 88). Wagner rejects interpretations of this smut as primarily political or liberating, partly because of his consistent distaste for “hierarchies of meaning” which reduce muddle by assigning central importance to some elements and reducing others to marginality. Wagner’s interest is in approaching works unconstrained by modern classificatory schemes in order to reconstruct some of the mentalités expressed in them: “Rather than being mono-dimensional and genre-specific (political or pornographic, fictional or factual), these works are “impure” (in a literary and moral sense) and semantically ambiguous, and they cannot fully be comprehended in terms of binary concepts.” This is a helpful point of departure for speculating about the meaning of contemporary sex comics and magazines (although perhaps not directly useful for those trying to convince courts that particular titles are not classifiable as pornography).

A mean-spirited temptation when reading works driven primarily by theoretical concerns is to boil them down until they disappear as pure gas. When faced with this temptation, one does well to remember the idea of “différance” which refers to “the subtle ways in which meaning is never [emphasis added] really clarified but constantly postponed and deferred from one signifier to another…” Wagner’s study is a generously footnoted scrap of a larger fabric. He took the word “iconotext” from Michael Nerlich, “intertextuality” from Julia Kristeva, “discourse analysis” from Michael Foucault, “différance” from Jacques Derrida, and so forth.

In a sense, Re-Zoom is exactly the type of comic you would expect a regular book publisher to print. It is a wordless book with 31 full-page panels and therefore quirky enough to appeal to the uninitiated comic book reader or even lazy picture book glancer. In fact, Publisher’s Weekly, in a typical piece of ignorant hyperbole, calls it a “startling experience.” The truth, however, is that there is absolutely nothing new or innovative about Re-Zoom. Its central conceit of showing “a series of scenes, each one from further away” has been used in a number of artforms including comics, most notably by Robert Crumb. As for the wordless, full page panels, they are so common nowadays as to suggest that they are merely an excuse to avoid proper dialogue or plotting. In an artform where the true artists are trying to delineate new structures and methods of storytelling, this kind of “innovation” does not justify itself. Certainly, the pictures in Istvan Banyai’s book are well drawn and the story well executed, but if there is no meaning behind the images Banyai has given, then Re-Zoom should be seen as no more than an interesting novelty, a rather expensive excuse to tickle readers.

In the first few pages of Re-Zoom we are first shown a hunter (depicted as a cave painting) shooting a mammoth with a bow and arrow followed by the revelation that this image is actually printed on a watch owned by an archaeologist, who in turn is seen to be obtaining some rubbing from a wall covered with hieroglyphics. These hieroglyphics are then seen to be lodged within a pyramidal space before this is revealed to be the top of an obelisk, in particular the one at the Place de la Concorde. The obelisk is then shown to be merely part of a larger poster (dated 1836) upon which the attentions of a number of citizens in period dress are focused. They are presumably celebrating the arrival of the obelisk in Paris, the obelisk of Luxor having been presented to Louis Philippe in 1831. Following this, the whole set-up is revealed to be a movie set. The focus is pulled back, further revealing that the set is situated within a jungle, perhaps in India since we see Alfred Hitchcock riding on an elephant beside an Indian Raja.

There is a semblance of a coherent message in all of this. The first few pages bring us through an early history of art or maybe even of comics. We have the progression through cave painting to hieroglyphics and finally the age of television and the movies. Similarly, there is the suggestion of movement through time. Banyai brings us from the prehistoric era to the time of the Egyptians through to the time of the French Revolution and then to the British Raja and the Americas.

More interestingly, there is also always some degree of logic linking each full page frame. Firstly, an archaeologist might be expected to wear a watch depicting cave paintings. Furthermore, the initial image of a bowsman or hunter could easily be taken as a depiction of Orion. This links in with the possible astronomical basis of the pyramids.

The hunter as a dispenser of death is a further link to the hieroglyphs being deciphered by the archaeologist as these are taken from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. In the act of deciphering these hieroglyphs, the archaeologist brings us into a netherworld where the souls of the unrighteous are weighed against a feather, found wanting and devoured by a crocodile. In pulling back from this scene, we are taken through a tiny portal at the tip of the obelisk into the wide expanse of the heavens. Here the Goodyear blimp is like a latter day representation of the all-seeing eye of Ra carved at the top of the obelisk.

Banyai also toys with the myth of Seth and Osiris in which Isis, in gathering the dismembered components of her husband’s body, does not fail to collect his phallus as well. Seth’s birth (he sprang from e side of his mother, Nut, the sky goddess) is as violent as the initial stirrings of Banyai’s book in which yet another mythical figure shoots a prehistoric and extinct animal. In the myth’s resolution, Horus in defeating his father’s murderer, becomes the ruler of the earth while Osiris becomes the master of the netherworld. Seth, however, becomes the ruler of the lands outside the ordered world. The one-time god of chaos and of the anomalous becomes an attendant of the sun-god and thus of a world of order. One could say that Banyai’s picture book is an embodiment of these principles.

The transition into the next part of the book comes by way of a casket decorated with an Indian motif. In this scene, an Indian Raja is seen to be placing a flower to his mouth, perhaps in reference to Homer’s Lotus-eaters, who in eating of the lotus tree forgot about their homes and friends, wishing only to live a life of indolence. This is followed by the rather cunning juxtaposition of a simple Indian boat and Columbus’ Santa Maria. This seeming discrepancy is explained in the next frame when we see a black boy pushing a toy New Orleans steamboat into a small, man-made pond. Banyai has thus brought in a sort of historical expedition into the new world by means of some toy boats and the gradual revelation of small parts of a larger panel.

At this point, a new argument presents itself as we discover that all that has gone on before are merely oils on a canvas within an artist’s studio. This is like a sly wink from Banyai reminding his readers of what he is doing. The painter, who looks nothing like Banyai’s self-portrait on the inside notes of his book, turns out to be Degas, but for some reason he seems to be residing in a modern building, one which might have been designed by someone like Le Corbusier. What’s more the building seems to be surrounded rather incongruously by a Japanese landscape. The image of a modern building in Japanese surroundings is then revealed to be an illustration on a fan held by a geisha listening to her Walkman.

In this way, logic reasserts itself, for all these images feed of each other in a totally rational way. The Impressionists were influenced by a Japan enjoying a new openness and the present-day Japanese have in turn shown a fascination for Impressionism. This cross-fertilization of cultures is reflected in the modern export of Japanese technology into Western Civilization. This is not meant to be a strong philosophical point, but merely a method of sustaining a sense of normality out of exotic situations. The final frames of Banyai’s story of a ride in an underground train, the passengers of which include Charles Lindbergh, Marilyn Monroe, Albert Einstein and Picasso, is like an evocation of all that has gone on before. We have representatives from the world of exploration, the movies, science and fine art all engrossed in a tube journey through time, art and Banyai’s cultural influences.

Re-Zoom is an enjoyable read but lacks any true merit. It is also far too expensive at $14 (that’s just about two-thirds the price of something like Mister Punch). Its failings probably reside in its author’s less than comprehensive knowledge of the modern-day comic art scene. Like someone producing a very capable cubist painting in the late 20th century, Banyai’s work lacks the excitement and verve of cutting edge comics. It remains, however, the prerogative of publishers to waste money in whatever they choose.

Neil Gaiman has won so many fucking awards for his work on The Sandman that he’s probably had to build an extra fireplace in his house. Legions of malnourished, goth-rocking java-junkies have carefully cultivated Death tans, formed fan clubs about the Dream King, written poetry about and to him, carved character likenesses in their foreheads, devoted Masters theses to “The Dreaming,” and sparked cyberspace debates over whether Robert Smith or Trent Reznor should get the lead in the feature film. It’s enough to make you think that maybe this Gaiman guy’s a pretty good writer. Well, he is, but The Sandman is arguably his least inspired endeavor in the medium and the disproportionate amount of praise it’s received in comparison to more personal and artistically successful efforts like Mr. Punch, Signal To Noise or Violent Cases is puzzling if not grossly negligent. The Sandman received 13 Eisner nominations in 1994 alone. This year, Mr. Punch received zero nominations. Current X-Men penciller-for-hire Chris Bachalo received Eisner nominations for the Death miniseries while Dave McKean was shut out for the lavishly-painted Mr. Punch. It’s an insult to Gaiman and McKean and only serves to mitigate the critical acclaim they’ve received thus far. All of the hyperbole that bullshit artists such as Comics Buyer’s Guide like to spout about how a writer like Neil Gaiman can help erase the stigma of comics as escapist children’s fare doesn’t amount to jack when you’re either not able or not willing to pull your head out of your genre-obsessed asshole long enough to recognize that work which would best erase said stigma. “They isolate their heads and stay in their safety zones,” as Brian Wilson sung in “Hang On To Your Ego.” It’s the continual embracing of those safety zones which makes me resent The Sandman far more than I’ll ever be able to appreciate it. If it were left up to the comic book industry, Art Spiegelman would have received his Pulitzer for his work on Topps’ Garbage Pail Kids trading cards rather than Maus. Even the Motion Picture Academy, hardly a pillar of integrity when it comes to recognizing “art,” was lucid enough to give all those Awards to Spielberg for Schindler’s List rather than Jurassic Park, which is about as apt an analogy I can make to explain why, as fucked as the “real world” is, the comics industry could take a few lessons from it and realize that the mainstream of comics (read: superheroes) are fringy by any standards other than its own.

If huge, blood-filled cysts in the rectums of traveling salesmen, chewed upon by hillbilly farmers until they burst steaming hot, brownish, stew-like fluid is as funny to you as it is me, then I’ve got a comic from Seattle to sell you. Smell of Steve Inc., a.k.a. Brian Sendelbach — seen in Dirty Plotte #8, Pictopia, and creator of such tasteless tomes as Box and Loose Teeth — is one comical son of a bitch. Screwed, the third Sendelbach mini from Heebee Jeebees, collects much of the artíst’s best work from the illustrious Screw magazine, which should give you a better idea of what you’re in for. Screwed echoes the finest virtues of the classic undergrounds — nihilism, sadism, scatology, graphic depictions of sex and violence, you know the routine — and as such may only appeal to a marginal few. Unlike, say, Mike Diana, Sendelbach can draw like a motherfucker and write stories that fit the bill. In a perfect world he’d be the one being shamelessly and vindictively persecuted by Nazi cocksucker moral purists. So, if you’re marginal, get Screwed.

Seven Presidents: The Art of Oliphant features select work of editorial cartooning legend Pat Oliphant collected in a manner that makes it a quality introduction to the Australia native’s 30-plus year career as one of America’s premier satirists. As the title suggests, the exhibit presents images of Presidents Johnson through Clinton, with accompanying essays by Wendy Wick Reaves describing Oliphant’s approach to each personality within the context of the individual presidencies. Reaves’ work is solid; she pays particular attention to the development of each caricature from first impressions to deadly, insightful conclusions - for example, the shrinking size of Jimmy Carter’s caricature over the course of his four years.
Those who are already familiar with Oliphant will find plenty to like in the unpublished art and non-cartoon material featured in the catalog. The most entertaining section by far is 11 pages of colorplates featuring Oliphant sculptures, with commentary by the artist. Several of the sculptures seem to have visual counterparts in the cartoons, while some add historical perspective, like a mid-’80s sculpture of Lyndon Johnson as a half-man/half-horse centaur. And Oliphant’s comments are often very funny. On Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan: “It’s not often that one gets a chance to sculpt an accountant. It’s not often that one wants to.”

Ever wish there was a comic book that told you about the public and private lives of your favorite pop stars? Well, Smell of Steve isn’t it. Rather, these two issues collect absurd stories populated by pudgy, cigar-chomping rock stars with names like Phil Collins and Sammy Hagar, who bear little or no resemblance to their real-life counterparts. The Phil Collins in these pages, for instance, was born with a hook hand and eyepatch, and had an early career as a cartoonist before becoming a rock star. These tales do not satirize their targets with the similitude of a Mad Magazine parody, but they do attack banal mainstream culture. In other words, it’s not so much Phil Collins that is at issue, but what he represents.

Smell of Steve is published by, appropriately enough, “Smell of Steve, Inc.”, which, as rumor has it, is a front for a young self-publishing cartoonist named Brian Sendelbach. SoS #1 is comprised of short pieces, mostly one or two pages long, with titles like “Rock Star Phil Collins Walks His Dog Wilkowski” and “Queen vs. Van Halen for the Future of the Moon!” This issue provides plenty of laughs, but the dreaded zero issue is the stronger of the two. Sub-titled “Me ’n’ Eric: A Parable for Our Times”, it features a twenty-one page epic depicting the early careers of Phil Collins and his friend Eric Clapton. Eric is a no-talent hack who builds an empire by stealing ideas from Phil, whether it be for comic books or music. “Me ’n’ Eric” is a tale of trust, betrayal, corporate exploitation of creative talent, the randomness of the universe, and shallow idealism.

The anarchic absurdity of Sendelbach’s work belies the perverse logic at its core. These are truly odd comics, and well worth tracking down.