Customer Reviews

'85

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Danny Simmons certainly knows about the 80s art world and he uses this tale to make some very clear points about the racism and the dirtier-than-thou aesthetics of that time period when contrasted with the actual danger of the Lower East Side. However, his tour guide through the art world is Crow, a junky and thief (although we don't get to see much drug use on his part) who talks like a blaxploitation character. Dialogue is hard and it's not always easy to make a character sound natural, but I wonder if Simmons is even trying. Crow spends most of his time being insulted by white art dealers or freaking out over transvestites. Instead of an amoral creep, he's a blank slate for Danny Simmons to show the story of the art world.

The story is pretty simple. Crow steals his friend's painting and instead of selling it on the street corner, he ends up getting noticed by art curators. For three days he rises in the art world to the point where they are holding showings and selling his painting. He sees many people in the art world and they tell him their perspectives.

What makes this title interesting is Danny Simmmons' strange decision to place himself in the narrative. He is the friend who is being stolen from. His cousin is Russel Simmons who shows up at one point to decry the lack of black representation in the art world itself - which is a roundabout plug for his galleries. Although the narrative itself feels false, the actual people and galleries is most likely genuine and even if it's a guided tour through 80s art scene, the tour is fascinating in its own right.

Kindle in general appears to be useless for graphic novels, unless Amazon decides to deliver them in MUCH higher resolution. With this issue, you get stamp-sized pages, which, if you magnify them, are so low-res that it is virtually impossible to read the text. Other users have filed similar complaints about other GN.
I would strongly advise against buying ANY graphic novel for the Kindle until Amazon has fixed this problem.

Crow Shade, a junkie and a thief, is our guide to this tour of the Manhattan art scene during the Reagan years. As the book opens, Crow has just stolen some art from his friend Danny's apartment. Danny is a talented painter, and Crow has the idea of selling his works on the street to get some money for rent and drugs. He passes the paintings off as his own and gets his first taste of the bizarre bohemia of the art world.

A friend introduces Crow to the beautiful Candy, who agrees to represent his artwork. This is the time of rampant street art, mixed in with a pre-Giuliani cleaning of the city, and Simmons and Hughes have a lot of fun making sure they recreate the scene in '85. The city comes alive in all its hedonistic, savage glory, a debaucherous cauldron of earthly delights and decadences. But Crow is no stranger to the city's seedy underbelly himself, even if he comes at it from the less rarefied air of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuy. All in all, he spends just three days there, but it's enough to send him on a new path in life. In three days, he manages to go from art thief to artist, and the luck that has gotten him this far in life manages to pull him somewhere new and unexpected.

Crow as a protagonist is tough to dislike, even though he gives you so many reasons to resist him. He's a con and a cheat, but he's honest about his dishonesty, in his own way. The son of a police officer who committed suicide in the early '70s, he's engaging for his flawed view on life, his sense of entitlement and his offbeat ethical side, which still manages to shine through. He's no role model, and this is no morality play--but still he's someone with a nature that is imminently relatable.

Simmons and Hughes have based '85 on Simmons's novel Three Days as the Crow Flies, but familiarity with that previous work isn't needed to enjoy '85--although maybe a crash helmet is. It's a rocky landing back in time nearly a quarter of a century, but Simmons and Floyd capture it all well. Making your way on the streets of New York in 1985 was hardly easy, and there's no reason a book about it should be any less tough. That it's such a powerful and evocative tale is an extra treat.

-- John Hogan

This was my first time reading a graphic novel and I must say that this one was good. I loved the drawing and the story was very entertaining.

'85 has a comic book look, with an urban fiction feel. The perpetrator is a struggling junkie known simply as Crow. To support his habit he steals several of his friend, Danny's paintings. His intent is to sell them, split the earnings with Danny, and take care of his own needs. Crow makes his connection and is starting to move the art, but he is exposed to a slightly different world and gets caught up in more than he can handle. An art dealer assumes Crow is the artist, and wants to buy the psychedelic drawings, but he also wants to market Crow's rough, primitive image. Crow feels a moment of guilt, but not enough to end the ruse. He looses focus on his original plans and finds himself waist-deep in a world of sex, drugs and cold-blooded deals. When Danny discovers the paintings are missing Crow knows there friendship is doomed.

Author, Danny Simmons and Illustrator, Floyd Hughes have combined their eclectic artistries and capitalized on the seductive sex and drugs scene in New York, in the 1980s. '85 is filled with graphic and evocative black-and-white imagery and authentic street-smart dialogue. I did not get a full grip on the moral of the story, but the story still captures a time and place when street culture and the art scene came together in a strange way. The theme of '85 brings to life an eerie side of art and urban life.

Reviewed by aNN
of The RAWSISTAZ(tm) Reviewers

Really liked. It was really weird and unique, and ecclectic! Fast shipping, professional packaging.