An Anthology of Graphic Fiction


Since I was a little kid, I’ve read comics. From my cousin’s collection, I grew into a fan of Batman, the X-Men, Spider-Man and G.I. Joe, the usual suspects. But, remote as we were and with only a meager grocery store shelf to choose from, my comic intake was vastly limited. My comics reading followed the same sort of arc as the music I listened to: once I went to college and escaped the entrapment of “All Country All the Time,” my tastes expanded. Still, there was a lot out there that I was missing.

Photobucket - Video and Image HostingOnly in the past couple years, as I’ve come into reviewing comics as a real gig, have I started wanting to learn more about the vast world of creators who live somewhere between the newspaper comics page and comic books as we regularly think of them. I mean Chris Ware, R. Crumb, Kim Deitch, George Herriman, Seth and the like. Working mostly in black and white, these folks took illustrated storytelling along strange paths, showing the medium’s capacity in a different sort of light. And when it came down to it, I knew diddly squat about them.

So, both personally and professionally, it was a treat to find An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons & True Stories (Yale Press, $28) in the mail recently. Edited by illustrator/writer Ivan Brunetti, the book is a 400-page compilation of works from the most influential and famed creators in this genre. With generally a few pages for each of the more than 60 contributors, it’s an easy introduction into what people who practice and celebrate this style would probably call “intellectual cartooning.”

The contents are easily appreciable. For one, most artists have a pretty wildly divergent style, so that simply from an artistic point of view it’s a fun book to flip through, to see creators from a hundred years apart set beside each other, to see how the form developed, and what different techniques people have employed. Also, these are the best of the best, at least as far as I know, which isn’t all that far. I’d say my favorites are probably Joe Sacco, David Collier, Debbie Drechsler, Sammy Harkham, James Sturm and Jim Woodring. Photobucket - Video and Image HostingAlso, there’s a great story by Seth that just sort of meanders along (see right).

The book isn’t a perfect work, though. Aside from a lengthy introduction from Brunetti that wavers between “cartoons are so silly” and “cartoons are the most important art form, ever,” there’s almost no analysis of graphic fiction, as he calls it. There’s a nice essay by Charles Schultz, and a strip by Art Spiegelman about some time he spent with Schultz, but there’s almost nothing to guide a novice reader like myself through the works and explain where each creator fits into the larger picture. And, because the pieces aren’t posted chronologically, it’s a struggle to find any continuity.

A minor annoyance I came across a few times was how some creators were given many pages (for instance, Julie Doucet gets eight pages when she didn’t deserve so many), while Brunetti complained that he didn’t have enough space to include more authors. Still, it’s a good book and worth a read, if you’re looking for an introduction.