Train to Shanghai is a travelogue that tells the story of a rail trip within the larger context of the narrator's extended stay in China. Jackson's approach appears to be to tell the story of an event that is indicative of most of the character's time in China as opposed to the most unique event to take place during that time. The presumed logic would be that by telling a story that is typical of that period in the protagonist's life, the reader would be left with a clear impression of that period. The author drives this point home when, on the last page, the narrator wakes up in his new Shanghai hotel room and thinks, "Wow! I'm in China! I often feel this excited in the morning." This sentence ties the related story to the larger, untold story of the narrator's time in China. The word "often" marks it as being an event similar in scope and tone to the other events of which that time period is comprised.

The fundamental flaw in this approach is that the routineness of the event that makes the story a microcosm of the larger experience also makes the story trivial. There is nothing that makes the trip to Shanghai more special than the character's time in Harbin, or his time in Shanghai after the trip. The narrator makes reference to having lost his job in Harbin and needing to find a job in Shanghai, but gives no details. Either of these stories, the story of how he lost his job or the story of finding a new job in Shanghai may have proven more fertile ground for storytelling. The story of the trip is apparently meant to showcase a time when the narrator felt deeply alienated and alone, but the lack of opportunities for the character to communicate with other character forces the story to be too internal, taking place almost entirely in the mind of the narrator or in absurdly strained conversations with other characters born out of necessity. In the end, the reader understands the narrator's feelings of alienation and loneliness in a foreign land, but none of the excitement of which he speaks.

If Train to Shanghai is guilty of dragging the reader through an unremarkable story, My Uncle Jeff is guilty of the same transgression to a greater degree. The strip is a deeply flawed look at a one-day family gathering, and its focus is never quite clear.

Hurd, as narrator, spends a great deal of time talking to the reader about his Uncle Jeff, but not much time talking to Jeff or showing him doing anything. The first page displays Jeff standing side by side with Hurd's father. The narrator notes the differences between the two, spends a great deal of time talking about his father, then dismisses the story of his own strained relationship with that character as, "Another story for another time." The father is never dealt with in any meaningful way again. He has only one line of dialogue in the ensuing story.

On the next page, Hurd and his wife arrive at his grandfather's house and are greeted by the family. One page later, he is sidetracked with a detailed family tree describing the relatives that make up his mother's side of the family. The problem is that no one from his mother's family is in My Uncle Jeff. On page two, Hurd says of Jeff, "He is my favorite uncle and he never hurt me." In order to stress the importance of this, he uses the family tree to show how many people in his mother's family have hurt him and those close to him. Stopping a story in its tracks to give a roll call of the characters in a story with a large cast would be a mistake, but an understandable one. One can assume that the author, not feeling that he has enough space or time to present the personalities of the characters within the frame of the story, would feel that he could more gracefully step outside of the story to accomplish that goal. The author would be wrong in doing so, but his logic would be clear. Stopping the story for two pages to give character sketches of 13 characters the reader will never see again is, however, nor as forgivable. The effect Hurd strives to extract from those two pages could have been accomplished with more grace and efficiency elsewhere, and in fact is unnecessary to the story told here. The sentence alone, "He is my favorite uncle and he never hurt me," implies that other people have hurt him, and that in the narrator's world the fact that Jeff has not is enough to make him his favorite uncle.

This early mistake sends the reader stumbling into the family gathering around that the story frames. His grandfather is dying, and his parents, aunts and uncles have gathered to discuss what should be done regarding his care. It is implied that they have all come from great distances for this meeting, but it is not clear why it was necessary for everyone to meet in person, as no resolution is ever found and the problem is never directly addressed by the story.

One could pick at My Uncle Jeff on a page-by-page basis and find fault with some detail on almost every page. The principal players all arrive from great distances on one day, and inexplicably leave the next. Jeff, for financial reasons, was not able to come to New York from Florida a year ago to be at Hurd's wedding, but somehow is able to come to Pennsylvania to bear witness to an argument among his siblings in which neither he nor the narrator ever take part. Hurd arrives with his wife, but she is not seen again until they leave the next day. During the time in which she goes unseen, Damon escapes from the family argument with two of his uncles to go to a bar, presumably leaving his wife alone with his extended family as they argue over who should take responsibility for his ill grandfather. The argument itself is usually shown from a visually obstructed angle, often in the background of another character. Dialogue from the argument comes only during a brief sequence in which fragments from this discussion are shown in captions next to characters' heads. These fragments do not directly correlate with one another. They are instead banal accusatory remarks meant to show only that an argument is going on, not to reveal the details of that argument.

Jeff says little throughout the piece. The only feel for the character that the reader gets comes in the form of four short flashback sequences narrated by Hurd. Jeff contributes nothing to the story, and is nothing but the object of affection and pity from those around him. When Jeff buys Hurd and another character a beer in an overwrought bar scene, Hurd tells the reader, "My Uncle Jeff doesn't have much, but he does have his dignity. I wouldn't want to rob any man of that."

The most egregious error comes when, after the family gathering has dispersed, Jeff wins the lottery. A sequence follows in which Jeff and his father appear to be living in comfort together, a live-in nurse attending to Jeff's father. Just as quickly as this thread begins, it is squelched, just a dream that Hurd had in the car. And then the book ends. As inadvisable as it would be to have Jeff win the lottery, it was the only thing to happen in this story that would have diverted it from its hopelessly predictable path. To dismiss it as having been nothing but a dream is to thank the reader for their time by stabbing them in the face.

It should be noted that as bad as this story is, Hurd seems to have trouble sharing credit for it. The front cover notes only Hurd's name. Inside, however, Hurd is listed as writer. Pedro Camello is credited for the story's artwork, Juan Antonio for art direction and Kathryn Hurd as editor. Why a 26-page minicomic would need an editor or an art director is unknown, but their contributions were apparently considerable enough to note. Camello gets the shaft, however. His artwork is surprisingly expressive and one of the few joys in this book comes in poring over his drawings of Jeff. It is therefore inconceivable that Hurd would leave his name off the cover of the book, or that he would approach his lengthy afterword with such an air of self-importance: "There is so much work that goes into the production of any independent or self-produced book, that it can be overwhelming at times. I am fortunate in that while I did most of the work myself, I wasn't alone."

No, he wasn't alone. Someone else drew the damn book. And the artist isn't even the first person Hurd thanks. That is his wife, the editor. He then credits Camello with having produced a "beautifully drawn book," but after asserting two paragraphs earlier that he did most of the work himself, it sounds like Hurd is treating Camello as an employee, not a collaborator. Camello is also left off the author's biography page that follows the afterword. The amount of disrespect shown to a man who did Hurd a great favor by turning his weak writing into a comic is stupefying.

(Update, July 1st: The edition of this work reviewed was the minicomic version published in June 2002. Mr. Hurd told the JOURNAL that the credit issue has been resolved in the upcoming Alternative Comics-published edition.)

On the inside cover of Blind Mice #4, there is an, "Our story thus far," introduction:

Ocho, an alien missionary from the planet Crountoor, was sent to save Earth from itself. Along the way he befriends K.C. "Pitbull" Smith and Petey, a cigar smoking teddy bear. In Blind Mice #3, Ocho sees his half brother, Aaron. Aaron tells Ocho their father is dying back home on the planet Crountoor's. Ocho, Pitbull and Petey head over to the Tempe IHOP. Petey stays outside and gets abducted by a cigar manufacturer just as Ocho and Pitbull are leaving.

Given the snail's pace at which Blind Mice #4 moves, it is impossible to think that this much could have happened in the three previous installments. The characters in this issue do almost nothing in the first half of the book other than talk about how they need to talk about how they are going to find Petey. In the second half, Petey is found (he was just around the corner the whole time!) and Ocho gets a job as a bouncer at a bar. At least there is progress.

Blind Mice reads like a comic made for a small group of people inhabiting a particular social circle in the author's hometown. The story of the cosmic bouncer, smoking teddy and nose-picking psycho is suffocated by a need to constantly reference coffee houses, bands, bars, streets and people from Tempe, Ariz. The story is stopped dead at one point so that Ocho can talk to a member of The Scones. In a note at the bottom of the panel we learn that The Scones are, "The powerful coffee house band in the world," and are told to visit their Web site. When Ocho gets a job at a bar called Palapa, Mengel notes in another aside, "Thanks for all the good times, support, napkins to draw on and all the Diet Pepsi."

This strain manifests itself most notably in Mengel's insertion of himself into the strip. In Blind Mice, the character of Eric derails the story, constantly steering the other characters away from the action and towards conversations with people that the reader can't help but think must be the author's friends. If these are the people for whom Blind Mice is being produced, then that is fine. But for anyone else who may accidentally get their hands on a copy, it is infuriating.