Heresy at the comics shop

I'm starting to feel more at home when I visit comics stores these days, by which I mean that I can comfortably swap artists' and writers' last names with the proprietors and clerks, and I often know who we're talking about.

But I committed a heresy today when checking out with my purchases of the two hardcover collections you see here. One thing I like about these two books, I said to the woman working the cash register, is that they're nothing but story: no extra crap.

I understand that extra material in hardcover comics collections and trade paperbacks may interest hardcore comicheads, but, as I wrote after reading the "definitive edition" of the fine Queen and Country espionage/soap opera comic, the third omnibus of which collects four fewer issues than do the first two omnibuses:

"The modern comic-book industry sells and resells the same stories, publishing `special editions' and bundling books into collections and collections into mega-collections, adding scripts, sketches and other extras at each step to flesh out the page count and entice potential buyers who have already read the stories elsewhere."

But that didn't matter because the clerk still gave me the sort of frozen smile I'd have got if I'd broken wind at a formal dinner. I got a kick out of her discomfort, but maybe you should be careful about what you say when buying comics.

Back to the books I bought before I farted in the temple: If You Steal by the one-named Norwegian cartoonist Jason, whose Left Bank Gang, which I read a few years ago, brings Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and James Joyce together in Paris as anthropomorphic animals who plan a bank heist (I dare to try to resist that premise), and the first volume of Jacques Tardi 's The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec. Crime fiction readers may know Tardi for his graphic-novel adaptations of Jean-Patrick Manchette's noir classics. I'll report back when I've read them.

© Peter Rozovsky 2016

Authors as anthropomorphic animals, plus more Musil

And now back to crime fiction, The Left Bank Gang. Well, it's a comic book. And it brings Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and James Joyce together in Paris—as anthropomorphic animals who plan a bank heist. And the four, joined by Gertrude Stein and Zelda Fitzgerald in supporting roles, are cartoonists rather than writers. That allows dialogue like:

"Did you see the piece by Stein in `This Quarter'?"

"Naw, I can't stand her comics."

 "They are unreadable."

"I kind of like them."

"They're shit."

The book, by the one-named Norwegian cartoonist Jason, is like Woody Allen's "A Twenties Memory," only flatter, more matter of fact, and just is a funny in its poking fun at our fascination with the Lost Generation.

But you didn't think you were through with Robert Musil, did you? Here are a few more gems from The Man Without Qualities:

"Now, as it happened, Ulrich was not accustomed to regard the State as anything but a hotel in which one was entitled to civility and service, and he objected to the tone in which he had been addressed."

 *

 “Such a composer cannot be either a conspirator or a politician. If he were, his genius for light music would be unthinkable. And nothing irrational happens in the history of the world.”

 *

"Understanding reality is exclusively a matter for the historico-political thinker. For him the present time follows the battle of Mohács or of Lietzen as the entrée follows the soup."

 *

"It was perhaps not only Count Leinsdorf’s feelings that were given wings by a certain vague metaphorical quality that lessened the sense of reality. For there is an elevating and magnifying power in vagueness."

*

 “I give you my solemn word,” Ulrich replied gravely, “that neither I nor anyone else knows what ‘the true’ is. But I can assure you it is on the point of realisation.”

And, most contemporary-seeming in 2012 from this book written between 1930 and 1942:

“`Tell me, what do you understand by ‘true patriotism’, ‘true progress’ and ‘true Austria’?”

"Startled out of his mood and yet still in the spirit of it, Ulrich answered in the style in which he had always carried on conversation with Fischel: `The P.I.C.'

“`The P.I.C.?' Director Fischel repeated the letters in all innocence, this time not thinking that it was a joke, for although such abbreviations were then not yet as numerous as today, they were familiar from cartels and trusts, and they were very confidence-inspiring." 

© Peter Rozovsky 2012