Yike.

*Nothing too much today. It's busy.

*I've got to hand it to Ivan Brunetti's An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories (god that title... you know something's up when editor Brunetti apologizes over it in his introduction and jacket designer Seth openly mocks it on the back cover): I'm never good with these bookstore/classroom/whatever targeted sampler books since I've almost always read 4/5 of their contents, but this one finally got me up off my ass and ordering Justin Green's Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary (currently contained in the retrospective book Justin Green's Binky Brown Sampler from Last Gasp), which is one of those hugely influential and beloved-by-artists works that I don't think a lot of people have actually read these days. Brunetti's book presents an excerpt, and it was more than enough to signal that this is no ossified relic of the underground days we're talking about here - this story is ready to work today, a fine day to partake of it.

And I'm glad I got it, because it's excellent work. Set mainly in the 1950's, baby boom child Binky confronts all sorts of strange feelings and odd urges as he comes of age with a psyche programmed to poison his enjoyment of anything. Hard-bitten, witty art, a careful dance between fiction and non-fiction (as the proper way to clear the mind for confession!), cascades of Catholic guilt and OCD and the strange games kids play... perfect! It's still amazingly immediate and compelling work today, and I'd totally recommend it.