Customer Reviews

Autobiographix (Dark Horse Collections)

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The participants in this anthology (a mix of comics legends and younger talent) were asked to create an original piece of work based on something that they personally experienced. The sixteen pieces, like every anthology, be it fiction, non-fiction, or sequential art, are a mixed bag that different readers will have very different reactions to. Personally, I've never been a fan of prose forms of memoir or autobiography genres, so I held little hope for this collection. Naturally enough, many of the contributors took up some theme relating to art and creation. Some of these work, like modern legend Frank Miller's amusing "Man With Pen in Head" (about going to the premiere of the awful Daredevil movie) or Eddie ("From Hell") Campbell's thoughtful and self-explanatory"I Have Lost My Sense of Humor". Alas, others of these lapse into sheer cheesiness (especially grandmaster Will Eisner's "The Day I Became A Professional" and Will Stout's "Eyes") or pretentiousness (Paul Hornshemeier's "Of This Much We Are Certain").

The best pieces are those that tell straightforward personal anecdotes with a bit of humor or some kind of insight. Fabio Moon & Gabriel Ba's "Qu'est-ce Que C'est?" is a great piece about being away from home and the vulnerability that brings, it's also my favorite from an artistic standpoint. Sergio Aragones contributes a funny story in his signature Mad Magazine visual style about the time he met Richard Nixon and traded signed copies of books. Bill Morrison's charmingly drawn reminisces about his childhood fascination with "Batman" is cute, if not particularly provocative. Linda Medley's "Recess" is kind of weak in the art department, but has really sharp dialogue to make up for it. Some of the other personal stories tried a little too hard and ended up being kind of pretentious, such as Paul Chadwick's "The Building That Didn't Explode", Metaphrog's "A Traveller's Tale", and Jason Lutes' "Rules To Live By" (although I still love his clean visual style).

The rest of the pieces are kind of throwaways that don't leave much of an impact. Diana Schitz's "Tuesday Night at the Jazz Club" features the wild art of Arnold Pander, but otherwise, the three pages left me flat. Matt Wagner's "Comic Book Chef" is a lame effort in recipe presentation with pretty unengaging art. Stan Sakai's "France" is a straightforward account of his trip to a comic convention in France, with a lame punch line. Ultimately, there were enough decent bits to pull me through the bad parts, and it's not a bad way to sample the styles of a bunch of different sequential artists to see what one might like. I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for Fabio Moon & Gabriel Ba.