Stop Forgetting to Remember:
The Autobiography of Walter Kurtz
Crown
Peter Kuper gets into the autobio comics boom with this must-read graphic novel telling large chunks of his life story or, rather, the life story of “Walter Kurtz,” his comic-book avatar/stand-in who, like Kuper, lives in New York, makes his living as a cartoonist and illustrator and is awaiting the birth of a child (while midwifing this very work into existence).
Not knowing Kuper personally, it’s hard to tell how much of Kurtz is Kuper, but it hardly matters; the work is more revelatory about the man making it than any of the various confessions about his misspent youth—which he categorizes as “(very little) sex, (way too many) drugs and rock ‘n’ roll”—his past relationships, his history of masturbation and his becoming an adult and father.
At the very least, the Kurtz conceit is more amusing, as the character essentially hosts the graphic novel, addressing readers directly, pulling out a prop pipe to tell stories and summoning settings and characters around him. Between the direct address and the marginal notes with arrows pointing out additional jokes, it’s an enormously satisfying read, the sort of story that can only be told in the comics medium, which is perhaps the best criterion by which to judge a comic.
Kuper, probably best known for his adaptations of classics The Jungle and Metamorphosis, gets his title from an observation about becoming a parent—in focusing on the present and their child’s future, too many people tend to forget their own childhood and the life that led them to that point.
The Aviary
AdHouse Books
Jamie Tanner’s deadpan absurd graphic novel is a collection of short stories which increasingly intertwine, sharing characters and plot lines until the book has evolved from a dark and fairly stand-alone twist-ending fairy tale to a labyrinthine story before your eyes as you read.
Tanner shares some of director David Lynch’s sensibility, from subject matter to storytelling style to that same vibe that radiates from Lynch’s weirdest work, the one that induces the confused feeling that maybe the work seems so strange because the creator has such a unique set of ideas that are being communicated in a highly idiosyncratic way. Or that maybe he’s just f--king with you for laughs. (Tanner is a lot less stingy with the laughs, however, making me suspect the latter.)
The title comes from one of the characters who crosses into almost every story, the Quiet Bird-Man, who begins as a doll of a man with a bird’s head, but later takes different forms, always communicating with increasingly sinister blinks. Then there’s the monkey man with the pencil-thin moustache who declares everything “an erotic masterpiece,” and the cyborg penguin crime scene photographer and, well, you get the idea.
Tanner’s formally structured and reserved black and white artwork and dry delivery make for a completely straight-faced presentation. It’s hilarious, but it’s not presented as a comedy, which, of course, makes it even funnier.
Exit Wounds
Drawn and Quarterly
Israeli cartoonist Rutu Modan offers up a subtle exploration of personal and national identity, one so subtle that it works perfectly well on a purely surface level as an unlikely romance and a slice-of-life exploration of day-to-day life in Israel.
Our protagonist is Koby Franco, a young taxi driver who lives and works with his aunt and uncle, and who has long been estranged from his father, a cipher of a man.
Koby’s forced to think about his father again by Numi, a young woman his own age who believes that one of the unidentified victims of a recent bombing is actually Koby’s father, whom she was in a relationship with.
Reluctantly, he joins her search for his possibly dead but definitely missing dad, and along the way he contemplates his father’s existence and, through him, his own identity (and, if you want to look hard enough, the identity of modern Israelis and human beings in general).
Modan’s art is flat and just minimalist enough to seem effortlessly representational, and it boasts the bright, vibrant colors that give her narrative a visual pop.