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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
Our author learns: Don't mess with Texas! Feel the Lone Star love, and grab this last-minute shopping list of the year's best comics and graphic novels for all the mods, rockers, punks and Texans on your list.
Dec 23, 2004 | OK, it's holiday time, which means that most of you probably are too busy creeping through the malls of America to read this column -- or anything else, for that matter. But dig in below for some stellar stocking-stuffers, because I've got a phat list of graphic novels that's got something for your friends, your 'rents, your S.O., your kids, your cat and your parakeet. Call it a best-of-2004 compilation or call it a shopping list. Because this is America, and you can say whatever the hell you want.
Unless it's about Texas, where fragile egos bruise -- a tad hypocritically, I would argue, considering all the trash they talk -- at the slightest joke. That's an angular jab at those who didn't approve too much of my disappointment -- OK, outright disbelief -- over Don DeLillo's archival papers getting shipped to the Ransom Center at the University of Texas. Katherine Pelletier, the archivist who worked hard to get the "White Noise" author's goods to Austin, even wrote politely to inform me that no one in New York, DeLillo's hometown, stepped forward to claim the author's miscellany as its own, letting me know along the way that I unfairly "obliterate[d] the difference between those who treasure the lessons of history through art and literature and those who may wreak havoc on our culture." And I thought no one read my column!
Another righteous dude from Austin told me off for the same transgression, arguing correctly that the city is a "bastion of liberalism" that "[my] kind" -- by that, I suppose he meant people from Long Beach, Calif., like Snoop Dogg -- think only exist north of the Mason-Dixon line.
I thought long and hard about both accusations -- before falling asleep from the mental strain. Look, I have nothing but love for Pelletier and my Mason-Dixon heckler -- after all, without Austin, Texas might descend into a gay-bashing, creationism-teaching, Clear Channel-owned, Halliburton-nurturing, oil-funded, red-state dystopia. Whoops, too late!
In all seriousness, cultural figures as diverse as Gibby Haynes, Richard Linklater, Jim Hightower, Mars Volta, And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, and many more go a long way toward redeeming Texas in my eyes -- and they've received my undying loyalty, unwavering support and press coverage. But with a Texas-based administration screwing the nation out of the lives of its sucker-punched youth, waist deep in Iraq's Big Muddy -- not to mention trillions of dollars by the time 2008 rolls around -- while sheltering unrepentant punks like Tom DeLay, Clear Channel, Kenneth Lay and countless more, you've got to cut me some slack for calling out the Lone Star faithful as red-state reactionaries. And remember, this is coming from a guy whose own state was taken over by the Terminator. (Yes, if you're wondering, I am pissed off that the Texas Longhorns screwed my California Golden Bears out of a BCS bowl bid. But of course I'm a professional and that's not affecting my attitude at all!)
"Eightball #23"
By Daniel Clowes
42 pages
Fantagraphics
Order from the publisher
Some of you might be sick of seeing Fantagraphics' name in my column, but don't kill the messenger. They continue to turn out some of the most compelling comic narratives of our time, including this 23rd installment of Daniel Clowes' award-winning "Eightball" series.
This time around, "Eightball" focuses on a troubled boy named Andy who, after taking a drag on a cigarette offered to him by a troublemaking best friend named Louie, wakes up a superhero. But this isn't "Spider-Man"; Andy's troubled past and outcast pal Louie come back to haunt him. All hell breaks loose once Andy receives a working Death Ray gun in the mail, at which point Louie recruits his friend-turned-Superman to kill off the neighborhood crooks and bullies.
