Little Lulu: The World's Best Comic Book One-Shot (Free Comic Book Day 2019)

I don't think I would have given Little Lulu and her portly pal Tubby the time of day if it wasn't for two sources. First was the writings of Fred Hembeck in his massive omnibus. In his collection of writings, Hembeck fondly reminisces of the comic strip quite often. I felt if it's good enough for Mr. Hembeck, whom I actually play a music trivia game against online, then it's good enough for me. Only I didn't have any Little Lulu stuff on hand to read.

Then I was reunited with a copy of the 1981 museum quality collection: A Smithsonian Book of Comics. There was a bunch of Little Lulu and Tubby stories. All of them hilarious! While I did feel that there was more of them than some of the other characters and artists to be fairly represented in that volume, I didn't run into a single stinker of the comic strip creation from the artist known as Marge.

This Free Comic Book Day offering from Drawn and Quarterly is yet another comic that I meant to provide the members of my school's comic book club and lost within the cluttered mire of my backseat. As we're on a road trip this week, I had to get the car completely cleaned out and that's when I ran into this. 

Little Lulu: The World's Best Comic Book is an assortment of strips and stories taken from Drawn and Quarterly's 2019 and earlier line of Little Lulu and Tubby treasuries. The works of artist John Stanley are featured in this issue. Next to Marge, Stanley is perhaps the franchise's most well known cartoonist. He's Little Lulu's Carl Barks. I've read some of Stanley's non-Lulu material and wasn't blown away by it. Those works felt too childish for me. But here, it felt like I was taken back to the 1940s where kids had free range of the neighborhood and creativity and imagination at play was what kept children occupied compared to the soul sucking TV, video games and cell phones of today.

The best story is the opener in which Lulu looks forward to scaring Tubby with the new mask she bought. Only Tubby has one too. In fact, it seems that all of the kids in town have the same mask!

Another memorable adventure sees Tubby trying to find gold with a divining rod. It's got a lot of great one liners. Some fantastic observations that only come from the mouths of precocious babes. And a heartwarming ending. 

I'm really thinking that I'm going to take advantage of some of these collections, if I can ever find them for a fantastic deal. John Stanley really knows how to write dialogue like a child. He's got that innocence mixed with heavy doses of cynicism and prosecution like Harper Lee did so masterfully in To Kill A Mockingbird. I can see now why he's considered a legend of comic book cartooning!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

Wilson

When it's just a series of vignettes, this graphic novel is absolutely great. It's almost like Daniel Clowes made his version of a mid-aged Charlie Brown reflecting on the ways his life didn't turn out so great. If you look at the main character Wilson from profile, he's got a big, fat round head with a tuft of hair at the front of his head that looks just like Charlie Brown. Wilson has a puppy dog that looks like a beagle. And when you see Wilson showing blissful affection for the baseball field where he played little league, there's no question that this is Clowes doing Peanuts without getting in trouble for copyright infringement! 

After I learned that Daniel Clowes' reading of a biography about Charles Schulz was part of the inspiration for this book, I think I hit the nail on the head. Another inspiration for Wilson was Clowes' experience of his father's terminal cancer. It's at the point that the story becomes less a series of one-pagers, that could be read separately, and now into a story about Wilson trying to find his ex-wife and his daughter that was given up for adoption. And here is where Wilson loses its charm.

I guess you could imagine that Wilson's ex-wife is Peppermint Patty or Lucy. However, as Wilson becomes more of a narrative, the mystique that this book is about an aging Charlie Brown diminishes. See the artwork changes with every page. Sometimes it's realistic. Sometimes it's a cartoon. When Wilson begins like we're seeing the different faces of the main character with each changing page. Having the story become more linear abolishes that innovative beginning. After Wilson's father dies, it feels like a totally different book and I just wasn't a fan of that second act.

The works of Daniel Clowes are like the films of Wes Anderson. It's stylized. Formulaic. The work of an auteur. It's also not everyone's cup of tea. To me, Daniel Clowes stuff is like bubble tea. I love the creamy, sweet top part, mixed with giant tapioca pearls. But once I am through with the liquid, there's all these extra pearls that I just get tired of. That's what happened to me by the time I got to the final 77th page of this Drawn & Quarterly published graphic novel. 

Rating: 6 out of 10 stars.

Marble Season (2023 Comic Book & Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

From the look at 2013's Marble Season, one can see a fight about to break out. However, based on the name of the title, the about to begin melee is not over the classic kids game of marbles. 

Marble Season is a semi-autobiographical look at the childhood of Gilbert Hernandez. More of a series of glimpses in the lives of a group of school kids that live in an interracial neighborhood in Southern California. Set sometime in the early 1960s, these vignettes reflect a nostalgic love for the music, TV shows and films, games, comic books and especially that childlike wonder of growing up.

The title for this book actually is about the events that transpired during a child's book-ended experience with the game of marbles. At the beginning of this book, main-character Huey, a Hispanic boy of around the age of 10, is teaching a young girl how to play the game. To help her practice, Huey gives the girl one of his marbles. Once Huey leaves, the child promptly swallows the glass ball. At the end of this graphic novel, Huey is informed that the little girl had to be hospitalized after swallowing several more marbles! Everything that happens in-between is the official Marble Season game card.

Author and artist Gilbert Hernandez is one of the founding fathers of the second generation of underground comics. In 1981, Gilbert, along with brothers Jaime and Mario, created the groundbreaking comic Love and Rockets. In issue #3, Gilbert introduced readers to the magical land of Palomar. Set in a fictional Latina American village, Gilbert's Palomar is a land out of time, free of modern day technology, led by a fiercely independent young woman named Luba.

2014's Bumperhead is a rough follow-up to Marble Season. The book doesn't have any of the main characters from this book. But like the first book, Bumperhead is set in Oxnard, Gilbert Hernandez' hometown, and all of the adults are mysteriously absent. Critics liken both stories as a sort of mature, lifelike Peanuts. And if you take a look at Huey's baby brother, he sure does look like a tiny version of Charlie Brown. However more adult Marble Season may be considered to the Charles Schulz comic strip, this work is nothing compared to the more explicit subject material covered in Herandez' Love and Rockets and further body of work. 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Completing this review completes Task #19 (Main Character is a Minority) of the 2023 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.

Fire!!: The Zora Neale Hurston Story (2022 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

Prior to reading this biographical graphic novel by Peter Bagge, I wouldn't have been able to tell you who Zore Neale Hurston was. Without multiple choice, I would have put money on her being a singer and I would have lost. But thanks to my local library and my comic book and graphic novel reading challenge, I feel that I've greatly enriched myself by learning about the talented but scandal ridden African American writer, researcher and playwright. 

Zora Neale Hurston was perhaps the major female influence of the Harlem Renaissance. A known storyteller, Hurston completed her education by researching and collecting African American folklore and culture in the deep South, particularly in her home state of Florida. Her studies introduced a number of wealthy white patrons who funded her education and research. As a result, Hurston became a student of voodoo priestesses and witch doctors as well introduced to a variety of lifestyles contrary to her strict Southern Baptist upbringing.

In her spare time, Hurston wrote several semi-biographical novels including her most famous work, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston was not afraid to use native dialect or set her stories in the middle of immense poverty and discrimination. Hurston's blunt portrayal of pre-World War II black lifestyle and culture inspired many to praise her truthfulness while fellow leaders of the Harlem Renaissance, like W.E.B. Dubois, criticized Hurston for perpetuating black stereotypes to white readers. Regardless of who supported her or stood in opposition to her, Zora Neal Hurston was not afraid to speak her truth. 

 

Peter Bagge's look at the life of Zora Neale Hurston seems more like a scrapbook of the writer's life instead of a full on biography. Since the writer has been dead for over 60 years, it isn't a spoiler to mention that Bagge glosses over Hurston's death. On one page,she is suffering from early stages of heart disease. The next page jumps 13 years to long after she's been dead and buried. 

 

I'm not sure why this is. Peter Bagge has an extensive notes section in the back of the book that requires a magnifying glass to read it. I would imagine if you used a 12 point font, the notes section would be longer than the 70 some odd pages of the graphic novel portion of the book. Bagge mentions often (in the notes) that record keeping of blacks in the days of Jim Crow and later just weren’t all that great. It could be that Peter Bagge was trying to reflect that as many of the interviews Hurston gave about herself and her childhood were jumbled collections of stories and personal history.

 

I enjoyed this book very much. I felt that I learned a lot about a period in history that was basically overlooked in my high school and middle school classes. I also understood some perspectives on race a little better. And now if you were to bet me on who Zora Neale Hurston was, I'd beat the house every time.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Completing this review completes Task #18 (That's a memoir/biography) of the 2022 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.