Customer Reviews

Life of the Party

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If you don't know the work of Mary Fleener, you should. She has a unique style of art, which she calls "cubismo." She breaks down the basic tenets of cubism for the comic page. It is a wild, wonderful, exciting art style. Tho the cover is a bit deceptive, as Fleener is very adept at producing a readable, literate comic book, with characters that look normal, and with very readable action and movement. The cover is one of her fantastic stand alone works.

This is a collection of Mary Fleener's work previously published in anthology comix. Her work has appeared in many adult titles. If you are a fan of Fleener's, you may already have read many of the stories in this book. The book is a hundred and fifty pages long, with over twenty stories. I had not read many of them, and the ones I had read, I enjoyed re-reading. Her stuff is scattered thruout my comic collection, so it was nice to have it all in a TPB.

Fleener's autobiographix, as she calls them, are quite good - and this is from somebody who is sick to death of the trend, but Fleener was one of the pioneers of autobiographical comics, along with Dori Seda, Aline Kominsky-Crumb and other bedrocks of the comix field. Fleener is a higly literate writer, and her stories are generally that, stories with a beginning, middle and end. Only one or two stories are rambling, disconnected barely strung together pieces of memory. Additionally, Fleener has actually had the kind of life that bears writing about; she has experienced all kinds of strange things, met all sorts of extreme people, and had various adventures - and yes, be warned, there are drugs and drinking involved, tho not exclusively, and the partying life is neither glorified, nor are these cautionary tales. Fleener also has had a penchant for making bad decisions, which, tho painful for her to live through, she turned into entertaining fun for us. There are times when reading these stories that I would grip the pages, and like that moment in a horror movie where you know the protagonist is doing something stupid, but you can't turn away, I would know that she was about to really get into deep trouble.

Fleener also avoids the awful, melodramatic, angst ridden, whining that often accompanies biographical cartoons. No, Mary just gives it to you strait, with little psychological tripe - the emotions in the comix are the emotions of the situation at the time, rather than the rueful commentary of looking back. When emotions are at their highest, is when the cubismo takes over the most. Fleener's work is in black and white, and she is very good at high contrast. She will split a character's face in half, or use geometric shapes to break down facial features. She will give you several angles of a face at once, and if a character is being dishonest, she will show that visually, by drawing them "two faced."

These comic stories span about twenty years, so you can see Fleener's style change, though the order of the stories was chosen for artistic reasons. They are neither in chronological order in their creation, nor in the period of time they took place in Mary's life, but they are put in an order that makes sense creatively. As Fleener got older, she got more interested in depth in her art, and sometimes she played down the cubistic effects, in order to work more with three dimensionality, panoramic views, and background scenery. The art in the stories during her transition period are the weakest. When she finally conquers the new territory, and finds a way to blend it with her original, heavily cubist style, the results are astounding.

The reproductions are up to Fantagraphics usual high standards. Card stock cover, with beautiful colors, heavy stock true white paper, rich dark black ink, with beautiful line reproduction quality, and well covered blacks. Fantagraphics products are so high quality, it makes you want to read the book. They sort of cast a spell on you, and you can't help but want to pick it up, just to see the rich black ink. A beautiful book, with wonderful comic stories. Fleener is one of our top comic book artists, with an original art style, and a highly literate writing style.