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Post by eheitner on Jun 15, 2023 14:28:04 GMT
That short is collected in the hardcover Girl Crazy I have! That's a super interesting point about the pacing; I didn't think of it as "aggressive" so much as surreal or dream-like; like he's just giving you these images and bits that suggest some vast weirdness that is never explained. It also helps with the "pop" element, to me, because I read it as "don't worry about the details! don't worry about the baggage and the back story! just have fun! here's the highlights, no fat, just the good stuff!" Which sort of matches how his art gets pared down visually...like, how can he just get the story beats out as quickly as possible with no connection. Unfortunately, I think it flattens the art into being so diagrammatic I start to lose visual interest eventually (like, Loverboys was where I really felt it).
Also: it allows the hints of darker stuff to exist without being too blatant
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Post by owaddled on Jun 15, 2023 15:48:03 GMT
It's like he's using the superhero language of fight scenes the same way he uses sex/pornography tropes now - employed quasi-ironically, pandering to an idea of what it's what the audience wants, while obviously still compelled by it himself, but also over-indulging in it as a formal system so it no longer functions in the same way.
(I hadn't thought this was what he was going for with all the pornographic visual language in the later stuff before, just sort of found it confusing. Anyone else have any words for it?)
I should try to track down Twilight Children.
I'm curious what you mean by 'sex/pornography' tropes. Pornography has visual language tropes, but sex itself? The Garden of Flesh certainly feels like 'porn', and Blubber is often about people making porn. But in Blubber there isn't a lot of the 'fill in the blanks' pacing that he's using in mainline Love and Rockets these days. Also I don't feel like it's pandering, Blubber feels like 'a challenge to prudes'/'a call to people on the same wavelength'. Do the majority of porn watchers want to see a little person crush a faun to death between her balloon sized breasts?
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Post by arecomicsevengood on Jun 15, 2023 16:00:52 GMT
It's like he's using the superhero language of fight scenes the same way he uses sex/pornography tropes now - employed quasi-ironically, pandering to an idea of what it's what the audience wants, while obviously still compelled by it himself, but also over-indulging in it as a formal system so it no longer functions in the same way.
(I hadn't thought this was what he was going for with all the pornographic visual language in the later stuff before, just sort of found it confusing. Anyone else have any words for it?)
I'm curious what you mean by 'sex/pornography' tropes. Pornography has visual language tropes, but sex itself? The Garden of Flesh certainly feels like 'porn', and Blubber is often about people making porn. But in Blubber there isn't a lot of the 'fill in the blanks' pacing that he's using in mainline Love and Rockets these days. Also I don't feel like it's pandering, Blubber feels like 'a challenge to prudes'/'a call to people on the same wavelength'. Do the majority of porn watchers want to see a little person crush a faun to death between her balloon sized breasts?
I meant that, while Blubber is filled with sex, it doesn't really feel "pornographic" to me, in that it's not erotic at all. BUT there is that one panel where the characters are like "Is anybody reading this?" "Just dudes, and they've all got boners!" bit of jokey fourth-wall breaking which I nonetheless found confusing because it's not sexy at all. There's also a decent amount of sex in Psychodrama Illustrated, as well as exaggerated anatomy that feels like it's, as much as it's based in cartooning, would have to be informed by weird niche sexual fetish stuff seen online moreso than any "exploitation" film the narratives are referencing.
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Post by owaddled on Jun 15, 2023 16:05:39 GMT
That short is collected in the hardcover Girl Crazy I have! That's a super interesting point about the pacing; I didn't think of it as "aggressive" so much as surreal or dream-like; like he's just giving you these images and bits that suggest some vast weirdness that is never explained. It also helps with the "pop" element, to me, because I read it as "don't worry about the details! don't worry about the baggage and the back story! just have fun! here's the highlights, no fat, just the good stuff!" Which sort of matches how his art gets pared down visually...like, how can he just get the story beats out as quickly as possible with no connection. Unfortunately, I think it flattens the art into being so diagrammatic I start to lose visual interest eventually (like, Loverboys was where I really felt it).
Also: it allows the hints of darker stuff to exist without being too blatant
Gilbert leaving stuff out is one of my favorite things about his current work. It makes the stories go down smoothly; you're just getting bits here and there. It can be satisfying enough to read it as is but maybe not life changing. Though when I stop to think about what happened in-between the scenes the comics become richer. The last page of Chance in Hell is the most blatant. However I love how he makes all of his characters unreliable self-reporters in the current Love and Rockets comics. My favorite example is from the first New Stories comic with Killer where she constantly tells people she wasn't dumped. And later stories where she constantly tells people she wasn't naked in King Vampire. But no one really believes her and Gilbert doesn't always give us enough evidence one way or another to know who is right. Just like watching an argument between strangers in real life. Though I understand that isn't what everyone wants in their fiction. It works for me as an antidote to a lot of modern genre comics where EVERYTHING is explained.
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Post by owaddled on Jun 15, 2023 16:17:29 GMT
I meant that, while Blubber is filled with sex, it doesn't really feel "pornographic" to me, in that it's not erotic at all. BUT there is that one panel where the characters are like "Is anybody reading this?" "Just dudes, and they've all got boners!" bit of jokey fourth-wall breaking which I nonetheless found confusing because it's not sexy at all. There's also a decent amount of sex in Psychodrama Illustrated, as well as exaggerated anatomy that feels like it's, as much as it's based in cartooning, would have to be informed by weird niche sexual fetish stuff seen online moreso than any "exploitation" film the narratives are referencing.
I've always felt like the exaggerated anatomy is first and foremost him tweaking people that can't get past Luba and Fritz's boobs. "Oh you think all I do is draw people with big boobs? Well here's unrealistically big nipples, big butts, big penises etc." Then he took the time to come up with an outlandish story explanation for it all. What I think makes it worthwhile is that it works thematically with Fritz and others trying to cling to fame by giving their fans 'more of what they want'. And on the metatextual flip-side it's Beto kind of rejecting fame/acclaim by flexing his freedom to do what he pleases and giving fans of his more literary/serious work less of what they want. ALLLL that being said, 'quasi-ironic' might be the best way to put it. There is a lot of playing with audiences expectations at work.
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Post by eheitner on Jun 15, 2023 17:13:53 GMT
I also would take it as partly a sheer joy of cartooning thing of like, look what I can do to bodies, look what I can make them do!
Not to be terribly one-note, but I remember reading an interview awhile ago where he talks about the "thin line" style coming from working at near-print size, ie not enlarged, so he can just zip through stuff, and its obvious the guy has got a Kirby-like urge to just create create create and get it out as quickly as he can, but it was also financially motivated, and it really made me think: ok, here's Gilbert Hernandez, I think on most cartoon-heads' short list for Greatest Living Cartoonist? How much does he actually make a year? What do those books bring in?
Obviously most of the English-speaking world has no clue who he is, but still.
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Post by owaddled on Jun 15, 2023 17:41:44 GMT
I'm so curious about the actual 'drawing at a table' work and financials for him. I've seen him mention in interviews that he works every day. Though we only see about what? 80 new pages in a good a year from him?
I say "only" but that might actually be a prolific amount compared to his peers. This is incredibly reductive but: Clowes' Patience came out 7 years ago and Fantagraphics' website says Monica is going to be 106 pages. So did Clowes do 15 pages a year?
This isn't to dump on Clowes, it's to make fun of myself for wanting more than 80 pages from Gilbert.
I too wonder how much the books bring in. They don't get the fanfare of "NEW CLOWES" because Fanta only releases his "B-Movie" stories in collection. There hasn't been a collection of Fritz/Luba stories in standalone graphic novel form since High Soft Lisp in 2010. (A lot of this is his own doing though because he hasn't written stories in a way that's easily put into a graphic novel since then).
It makes sense though, if he doesn't feel like trying to play at making "big, important" graphic novels anymore, then (relatively) pumping out stuff with the thin-line is the way to go.
I'm still sad that Love and Rockets #13 came out 2 months ago and I've seen barely any discussion on it.
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Post by eheitner on Jun 15, 2023 19:25:39 GMT
I'm so curious about the actual 'drawing at a table' work and financials for him. I've seen him mention in interviews that he works every day. Though we only see about what? 80 new pages in a good a year from him? I say "only" but that might actually be a prolific amount compared to his peers. This is incredibly reductive but: Clowes' Patience came out 7 years ago and Fantagraphics' website says Monica is going to be 106 pages. So did Clowes do 15 pages a year? Is there any alt-cartoonist of his generation (or younger) who is putting out new pages at the rate Beto is?
I have been waiting to digest the new L&R; I kinda think I need to re-read the last couple (maybe since the end of "This Is How You See Me"). Don't wait for me tho!
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Post by owaddled on Jun 15, 2023 22:33:31 GMT
I can't think of anyone from his generation, though I'd love to be corrected. Hmm Jeff Smith with the Tuki comics? But a lot of that is work he already did on the web.
DeForge is still ridiculously productive. Leaving Richards Valley and Stunt in 2019, Familiar Face 2020, Heaven No Hell 2021, Birds Of Maine 2022 which was 464 pages.
Jon Allen with his Ohio is For Sale comics. Noah Van Sciver and Simon Hanselmann seem to always have a new book out.
I think both guys really brought it in Love and Rockets #13. Gilbert is letting himself play with all of his characters to sometimes darkly comedic effect and Jaime is creating new charming characters and giving the Tonta-verse some new dynamics.
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Post by arecomicsevengood on Jul 1, 2023 16:18:38 GMT
Seeing everybody rate Loverboys pretty low... I haven't read it, but just saw in the solicitation text that it's set in the town of Lagrimas, which is where the Little Ones story in Psychodrama Illustrated 3 and 4 took place. I didn't love that comic either, but I'm wondering if there's connections between them that improve the reading experience.
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Post by owaddled on Jul 1, 2023 19:11:57 GMT
Seeing everybody rate Loverboys pretty low... I haven't read it, but just saw in the solicitation text that it's set in the town of Lagrimas, which is where the Little Ones story in Psychodrama Illustrated 3 and 4 took place. I didn't love that comic either, but I'm wondering if there's connections between them that improve the reading experience. Love and Rockets Vol IV #10 has scenes from a 3rd Lagrimas movie called "Lagrimas Means Tears". On a purely textual level there are recurring characters that appear in all 3 of the Lagrimas stories. The connection between Rocky and Katya becomes the central topic. The issue also has an explanation from our friend Dr. Valus Droog that Lagrimas was one script by Doralis based on her life in Palomar. After Doralis died, Fritz got the rights and made the script into 3 movies. Producing Loverboys first then The Little Ones and Lagrimas Means Tears. I don't know what to call this layer. It's textual to Love and Rockets but metatextual to the Lagrimas stories? And I think it's interesting to see Fritz' character revealed through making these movies. How she plays different roles in each one, how she uses footage of her estranged sister, the time in her career when she made use of her dead niece's script. Related to the timing, Dr. Droog notes that there's an anti-Fritz league that questions these films as an attempt by Fritz for "a serious comeback" which feels like Gilbert commenting on his own career. I also read this as another example of Gilbert's truly metatextual pettiness. "Oh you like my work better when it's about life in a small town? And you hate Fritz? Well here are 'movies' by Fritz in a small town!" I say all this becaue I don't find the Lagrimas stories all that satisfying on their own. Really liked the first issue of The Little Ones but the ending felt flat. I'd still rather read them than a lot of comics though.
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Post by whitecomics on Jul 5, 2023 18:15:56 GMT
Just wanted to say that as someone who has fallen off Gilbert in recent years, and never have much cared for the B Movie work when I have tried it, I appreciated owaddled's window into the metatextual layer here which had completely escaped me. It's really compelling! And also totally does not convince me that I'd like the work itself any better if I tried it again!
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Post by owaddled on Jul 6, 2023 3:15:18 GMT
Just wanted to say that as someone who has fallen off Gilbert in recent years, and never have much cared for the B Movie work when I have tried it, I appreciated owaddled 's window into the metatextual layer here which had completely escaped me. It's really compelling! And also totally does not convince me that I'd like the work itself any better if I tried it again! I'm glad you appreciate the posts! Yeah it's definitely hard to recommend those books to anyone that's not a Beto freak. If there's ever a Canon #4 I hope to finally write about how Maria M. is a metatextual tragedy.
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Post by BubblesZine on Jul 17, 2023 12:49:07 GMT
Psychodrama Illustrated #6... he's done it again. Masterpiece!! Completely unhinged and crazy, beautiful drawings and raw excitement. I love this series.
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Post by owaddled on Jul 27, 2023 4:41:40 GMT
Psychodrama Illustrated #6... he's done it again. Masterpiece!! Completely unhinged and crazy, beautiful drawings and raw excitement. I love this series. It's a banger starting from the inside front cover with its 56(?) panel page of Fritz enduring. Being a Beto completist paid off seeing the Zaza pages from the Blubber hardcover recontextualized. The back cover is gorgeous and creates a link between the two feature stories. Am I crazy or does his art look like it could have been from L&R volume 2? The figures have more meat on them and the poses are more dynamic than I've seen in awhile. Well worth the wait!
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