Ballad of the Beardies

I have never pretended to be the luckiest girl in the world when it comes to the menfolk. The reasons for my lack of success are legion (complete lack of personal charms, still trying to find that elusive combination of unibrow and accordion-playing ability, etc.)

So, today's tale will be another tale of woe, but this time one of woeful amusement instead of woeful horror.

There's an adorable café near my house, seemingly populated at all hours by an endless array of healthy BC folks wearing scarves, Cowichan sweaters and typing on the Macs. (Full disclosure: I write this in that self-same café on a Mac, but am wearing a striped hoodie.)

A few weeks ago, I had what I thought was a torrid smile affair with a charmingly bearded chap sitting next to me on the couch. He smiled at me, I smiled at him, then briefly considered asking him about the article he was reading in the Times-Colonist.

Of course, I didn't, but I held high hopes that Beardy would reappear in the café eventually. Would we move on to complete sentences at some point? Why, no, I have my reputation to consider, after all. But he didn't! Oh, there were other beards, but they didn't belong to my Beardy.

Oh so I thought.

Eventually I realized that nearly every patron, save the mustachioed hippie with the bubble wand, is a tall, handsome white dude with some kind of fuzzy facial outgrowth. I could have seen my Beardy a thousand times AND NEVER EVEN KNOWN. And maybe I did. So, I wrote Beardy off and decided to pursue my next dream: becoming Mrs. Comic Book Store.

And then I found out that Mr. Comic Book Store is married and has a child. Stay tuned next week for another episode of "Ill-Advised Days of our Lives."

In Defence of the Pet Shop Boys

It has recently come to my attention that some people are not as respectful of The Pet Shop Boy as they ought to be.



To which I say: SHAME. I love the boys for two reasons. The first is that the only friendly employee at the Montreal VIA station once sang part of "Opportunities" to me, completely poker-faced, as various and generally irate people milled about.



The second is that they're a legitimately good act. Don't be fooled by the high production values and superficial lyrics. The Pet Shop Boys know they're singing to the dark, empty - but most of all lonely - heart of the city.

The Plastic and the Glory of Seth

Seth is an interesting case. Sometimes I feel like I love his book covers more so than his actual books. His art is so pristine, so gracefully curvaceous, that I sometimes want to crumple it up, just so it can be a little bit messier and a lot more real.

Take, for example, this Dorothy Parker cover for Penguin. It's the perfect match, really. Surface sophistication with a bitter little centre (did Seth make her a little bit drunk? I think so.) Like all good covers, it economically sums up both the content of a book and the worldview of its author.

Now, compare with Wimbledon Green. Wimbledown is a beautifully-designed book in all ways. The foil on the cloth cover, the comfortable weight in your hands, you really couldn't ask for a more beautiful object to look at and to hold. But to read? As much as I like Seth, I sometimes feel as if his art is too perfect. Something a little more raggedy gives you space to fill in what's happening in between panels, whereas Seth's art is so pristine that each panel ends up frozen.

Then again, there are worse things than ending up in a stasis that's so damn pretty. And I think Seth does well when he works from a topic that is closer to his heart, like illustrating his father's stories in Bannock and Black Beans, or, uh, writing in shades of acute depression, as he does in Clyde Fans. It's when he follows the path of his cartooning idols, with elaborate plots and Chris Ware-style formatting, a little too closely that things begin to feel overly mannered.

Normally, I wouldn't be writing semi-critically about Seth. He lives in my hometown and I feel a certain amount of Guelph solidarity with him. However, my mild concerns with his work are becoming more acute ones I hold for art comics as a whole. Just as comics are breaking into popular and academic respectability, the stories many of their creators tell are becoming more artificial. Without a strong interest in the work of Doug Wright or a strong stomach for autobiographical blather (the black and white books I think of as the "Straight White Guys Buying Milk" genre), I'm not sure how much interest the Drawn and Quarterly catalogue will hold. And with the choice of vision seemingly split between looking at the past (Seth), or at one's own navel (Jeffrey Brown), I wonder who in comics is looking towards the future.

I started this post after reading a post at the excellent Comics Comics. I may not agree with all of their evaluations, but they're always convincingly phrased and educational. Jeet Heer, who wrote about Seth for that blog, also has an excellent piece in this month's Walrus about Stuart McLean. So good that it almost made me re-evaluate my intense, flaming hatred for The Vinyl Café. Almost.

Back In Pulp

One of the nice things about having gainful employment - besides not being able to watch back to back episodes of Sue Thomas F.B.Eye and Oprah, which means not having to justify doing so - is having ready money. No more lentils every day for a week. No more hoping your hair looks charmingly tousled instead of desperately in need of a cut.

And one of the nicest things is being able to buy comic books. When you're unemployed, spending four to six dollars on twenty-page bundles of paper does not seem the wisest investment one could make. At least, it didn't to me, which meant I stopped buying comics. And like missing one day's worth of soap operas, missing a month or more of comics is a bad idea.

Why? 'Cause, all of a sudden, you'll find yourself in the middle of the comic book store, wondering since when was Wolfsbane knocked up. And you'll be more judgmental of yourself for not knowing the answer to that question, than you are for knowing who the hell Wolfsbane is in the first place.

I've been trying to get caught up on some of the series I was following before the Great Poorening, and so far I'm almost up to speed on Berlin (since when did that start publishing again? I feel like it was on hiatus forever), The Unwritten and Sweet Tooth.

And honestly, if you're not reading Sweet Tooth yet, you should be. I know I've become kind of an annoying proselytizer for this book, but I don't feel guilty. It has an unrelentingly grim post-apocalyptic world, but still finds room for isolated notes of human (and mutant) warmth. And thus it deserves all the flogging it can handle. READ IT!