A tender biographical tribute to an artist’s inspiration.
A graphic narrative illuminates the transformation of the real-life Schlitzie the Pinhead into the widely syndicated Zippy.
Griffith (Invisible Ink: My Mother’s Affair with a Famous Cartoonist, 2015) tells two stories here. The first is, as best as he could research, the life of a Bronx boy with an oddly shaped head and a childlike sunniness that would rarely diminish as he aged. When he was 8 or so, he was sold by his parents to a “traveling sideshow.” As such sideshows became exceedingly popular within the circus industry, he went by various names and personas, generally exotic, occasionally female—e.g., “Darwin’s Missing Link,” “Last of the Incas” “Tik-Tak the Aztec Girl.” He might have been lost to posterity if Hollywood hadn’t beckoned, with director Tod Browning featuring him in the sensationally received and controversial Freaks (1932). During its preview, writes the author, “a lot of people got up and ran out. They didn’t walk out. They ran out.” It was decades before the film would be proclaimed a classic—and a fledgling art student saw a midnight screening and found his career changed: “I’d just been handed ‘subject matter,’ ” writes Griffith, who relates both Schlitzie’s story and his own in the same large-paneled caricature that would mark his development of the “Zippy” strip. “Little did I know at the time,” he writes, “but I’d just set myself on a lifelong career drawing my version of Schlitzie.” The figure who had inspired him didn’t fare so well, as circus popularity declined and freak shows faced legal challenges for exploiting the mentally impaired. Schlitzie was committed to a mental institution after being deprived of his way of making a living, but he was subsequently released to a former circus colleague. The internet belatedly aided Griffith’s research, and he was able to connect with those who had known Schlitzie in his prime: “He could be a delight…like a happy child,” remembered one. He died in 1971.
A tender biographical tribute to an artist’s inspiration.Pub Date: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3501-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.
The Book of Genesis as imagined by a veteran voice of underground comics.
R. Crumb’s pass at the opening chapters of the Bible isn’t nearly the act of heresy the comic artist’s reputation might suggest. In fact, the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural is fastidiously respectful. Crumb took pains to preserve every word of Genesis—drawing from numerous source texts, but mainly Robert Alter’s translation, The Five Books of Moses (2004)—and he clearly did his homework on the clothing, shelter and landscapes that surrounded Noah, Abraham and Isaac. This dedication to faithful representation makes the book, as Crumb writes in his introduction, a “straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.” But his efforts are in their own way irreverent, and Crumb feels no particular need to deify even the most divine characters. God Himself is not much taller than Adam and Eve, and instead of omnisciently imparting orders and judgment He stands beside them in Eden, speaking to them directly. Jacob wrestles not with an angel, as is so often depicted in paintings, but with a man who looks not much different from himself. The women are uniformly Crumbian, voluptuous Earth goddesses who are both sexualized and strong-willed. (The endnotes offer a close study of the kinds of power women wielded in Genesis.) The downside of fitting all the text in is that many pages are packed tight with small panels, and too rarely—as with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—does Crumb expand his lens and treat signature events dramatically. Even the Flood is fairly restrained, though the exodus of the animals from the Ark is beautifully detailed. The author’s respect for Genesis is admirable, but it may leave readers wishing he had taken a few more chances with his interpretation, as when he draws the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a provocative half-man/half-lizard. On the whole, though, the book is largely a tribute to Crumb’s immense talents as a draftsman and stubborn adherence to the script.
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-393-06102-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.
A new life and book arise from the ashes of a devastating California wildfire.
These days, it seems the fires will never end. They wreaked destruction over central California in the latter months of 2018, dominating headlines for weeks, barely a year after Fies (Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, 2009) lost nearly everything to the fires that raged through Northern California. The result is a vividly journalistic graphic narrative of resilience in the face of tragedy, an account of recent history that seems timely as ever. “A two-story house full of our lives was a two-foot heap of dead smoking ash,” writes the author about his first return to survey the damage. The matter-of-fact tone of the reportage makes some of the flights of creative imagination seem more extraordinary—particularly a nihilistic, two-page centerpiece of a psychological solar system in which “the fire is our black hole,” and “some veer too near and are drawn into despair, depression, divorce, even suicide,” while “others are gravitationally flung entirely out of our solar system to other cities or states, and never seen again.” Yet the stories that dominate the narrative are those of the survivors, who were part of the community and would be part of whatever community would be built to take its place across the charred landscape. Interspersed with the author’s own account are those from others, many retirees, some suffering from physical or mental afflictions. Each is rendered in a couple pages of text except one from a fellow cartoonist, who draws his own. The project began with an online comic when Fies did the only thing he could as his life was reduced to ash and rubble. More than 3 million readers saw it; this expanded version will hopefully extend its reach.
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3585-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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