A charming, mixed-media portrait of the artist.
A two-part compilation of Blechman’s erudite essays and intellectual illustrations.
The author’s artistic mastery is on display twice over in this two-volume set: One collects a range of comics and artworks, including Blechman’s brilliantly unassuming covers for Story magazine. The other offers a generous selection of texts about animation, art history, and life as a commercial illustrator in New York City. In a pleasantly meandering style, Blechman writes and draws like a well-read, jaunty academic. His illustrations—often a single page, drawn in an “inquiring,” jittery pen—manage to crack open literary and religious mythologies with the perspective of a scholar who knows his subject so intimately that he’s earned room to play. In “The Power of Positive Thinking,” a struggling writer learns he can keep getting published as a critic if he churns out fluffy praise. “Our Daily Bread” tells of the economic success of an abbey of monks, renowned for its bakery and centuries-old recipes. In “Apologia,” Blechman discusses an ancient writer who penned a memoir “about the most celebrated heretic in Judea” and was later crucified. “But during the Spartacus uprising,” he writes, “6,000 slaves were crucified….So please,” he writes under a shrugging, smiling figure, “let’s put a single crucifixion in perspective.” In his essays, Blechman seeks his place among his peers. There is a story about Saul Steinberg’s widow and another about Steinberg’s assistant. Blechman lauds the great David Levine, whose cross-hatched caricatures adorn the New York Review of Books, and writes with back-patting reverence about professional peers like Jules Feiffer and Tomi Ungerer. These texts are warmly accessible and boast a delicate balance of admiration and kinship, and they leave no doubt about Blechman’s place among this pantheon of iconic illustrators. Some readers may not yet know the “90-goddamn-years-old” Blechman, and a biographical introduction is sorely missed in this collection, but it’s a thrill to piece together his story by contextualizing him among his subjects.
A charming, mixed-media portrait of the artist.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-68396-434-6
Page Count: 488
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
An accessible, informative journey through complex issues during turbulent times.
Immersion journalism in the form of a graphic narrative following a Syrian family on their immigration to America.
Originally published as a 22-part series in the New York Times that garnered a Pulitzer for editorial cartooning, the story of the Aldabaan family—first in exile in Jordan and then in New Haven, Connecticut—holds together well as a full-length book. Halpern and Sloan, who spent more than three years with the Aldabaans, movingly explore the family’s significant obstacles, paying special attention to teenage son Naji, whose desire for the ideal of the American dream was the strongest. While not minimizing the harshness of the repression that led them to journey to the U.S.—or the challenges they encountered after they arrived—the focus on the day-by-day adjustment of a typical teenager makes the narrative refreshingly tangible and free of political polemic. Still, the family arrived at New York’s JFK airport during extraordinarily political times: Nov. 8, 2016, the day that Donald Trump was elected. The plan had been for the entire extended family to move, but some had traveled while others awaited approval, a process that was hampered by Trump’s travel ban. The Aldabaans encountered the daunting odds that many immigrants face: find shelter and employment, become self-sustaining quickly, learn English, and adjust to a new culture and climate (Naji learned to shovel snow, which he had never seen). They also received anonymous death threats, and Naji wanted to buy a gun for protection. He asked himself, “Was this the great future you were talking about back in Jordan?” Yet with the assistance of selfless volunteers and a community of fellow immigrants, the Aldabaans persevered. The epilogue provides explanatory context and where-are-they-now accounts, and Sloan’s streamlined, uncluttered illustrations nicely complement the text, consistently emphasizing the humanity of each person.
An accessible, informative journey through complex issues during turbulent times.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-30559-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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
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