I Love Led Zeppelin [Paperback]

Ellen Forney (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 5, 2006

2007 Eisner Award nominee, Best Reality-Based Work: the long-awaited collection of strips, characterized by bold, sensual brushstrokes and striking images of powerful, butt-kicking women. Forney's collaborators range from her Grandma Florence to comedian Margaret Cho.

I Love Led Zeppelin is a long-awaited collection of strips by the Harvey and Eisner Award-nominated cartoonist Ellen Forney. This book includes full-page comics published in prestigious weeklies such as the L.A. Weekly and Seattle's The Stranger, as well as the leading feminist magazine Bust, and the Oxford American. Her strips are characterized by bold, sensual brushstrokes and striking images of powerful, butt-kicking women. While most of the stories sprang from Forney's own inspiration, some are collaborations with such luminaries as comedian Margaret Cho, novelist (and Al Gore's daughter) Kristin Gore, writer and editor Dan Savage, writers David Schmader and Tamara Paris, Forney's beloved Grandma Florence, and Camille Paglia. Several of Forney's strips fall into the "How-To" category, although this is not your standard advice column fare: topics range from the practical ("How to Tip Your Server") to the whimsical ("How to Twirl Your Tassles in Opposite Directions") to the fascinating but hopefully never-needed ("How to Sew On an Amputated Finger"). Other strips include "The Final Soundtrack," a death fantasy involving blood, glamour, and Led Zeppelin; "How to Smoke Pot and Stay Out of Jail"; "How to Talk About Drugs with Your Kid"; "How to Fuck a Woman with Your Hands"; "How to Be a Fabulous Fag Hag" (an illustrated interview with Margaret Cho); "Seattle's Erotic Landmarks"; and "Memories of Love," a graphic tour of Courtney Love's rise and fall of celebritydom.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Following up her Harvey and Eisner-nominated collection Monkey Food with this impressive collection, Forney captures in a few bold, clear strokes of her pen essential parts of her life and those of the people around her. Though these comics have no overarching theme, they fit together seamlessly to form a portrait of some of the joys of alternative lifestyles. The first section is a collection of "how-to" comics, on everything from folding Old Glory at a military funeral to smoking pot without serving time. The how-tos are both humorous and oddly informative, as in diagrams of how to sew on an amputated finger. Forney follows these eclectic but engrossing pages with longer comics, many drawing on interviews. She collaborates with a few well-known names (Margaret Cho, Dan Savage), but Forney's exuberance always acts as a filter to bring the emotion into sharp relief. Some of the most memorable comics are simple exercises in line and form, like "Trapeze," a wordless but graceful view of a woman on a trapeze, armpit hair and all. I Love Led Zeppelin shows Forney's versatility in narrative and artistic style, but more than anything else shows her natural talent as a storyteller. (Aug.)
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Review

This gleeful book collects a bunch of Forney's "how-to" comics, which are more entertaining than they are practical. For instance, on one page she shows us how to reattach an amputated finger—we may never need to know this information, but it certainly makes an awesome comic! I love Forney's bright colors, high energy and seemingly boundless well of ideas. This big book could make a good gift, too. (Whitney Matheson - USA Today )

Forney composes big, beautiful scenes, sometimes sketching whole narratives in a single panorama. (The Stranger )

Sweet, funny, and refreshing. (Trina Robbins, author of From Girls to Girrrlz )

Forney's pro-bisexual politics and endearing drawings have been benefiting the renowned Northwestern alternative weekly The Stranger for years... Don't miss her fishnet stockings, either. (Girlfriends )

This mixture of openness and strength makes her work... extremely powerful and relatable, and probably very necessary for your bookshelf. (Largehearted Boy )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books; 1st Fantagraphics Books Ed edition (July 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560977302
• ISBN-13: 978-1560977308
• Product Dimensions: 11.9 x 8.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,333,993 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How to be an Ellen Forney fan, April 28, 2008

By 

Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: I Love Led Zeppelin (Paperback)

There are certain expectations that you bring to different authors and artists. When it comes to comix, for example, you go into a reading of R. Crumb knowing that he excels at exploring the inner landscape. If you read Harvey Pekar, you know that he's going to take you to a richer appreciation of the quotidian. Art Spiegelman's work, you know, will hit you in your moral gut.

But if there's one thing that stands out about Ellen Forney's work, it's that it doesn't lend itself to easy expectations. Sometimes she comes across as a hip, cool, punk. At other times, she seems like the girl next door. One minute she's an incredibly sexy, excitingly creative avant gardist. The next she's a chronicler of the mundane. There's very little that's predictable about her work, and that's part of what makes it so intriguing and so illuminating.

In I Love Led Zeppelin, Forney presents her work in 4 different categories: "How to" guides ("How to Be a Fabulous Fag Hag," "How to Tip Your Server," and "How to _____ a Woman with your Hands"); More Short Comics, including the hilarious and poignant "The Light Snow Became a Blizzard," "Walking with Carol," and my favorite, "Wednesday Morning Yoga"; '92-'94, with "My Date with Camille Paglia" leading the pack; and Collaborations, with themes ranging from star-struck fans to sexual coming of age.

Forney's artwork is clean and incredibly expressive given the minimum of pen strokes she uses. She has a good eye, both for drawing and for focusing in on the funny, joyous, alarming, and profound moments hidden away in the stuff of everyday life. Like Harvey Pekar, she sees the deep significance in what's too often dismissed as insignificant. Unlike Pekar, though, she seems to have an uncomplicated love of life, an exuberant appetite for fun and celebration, that makes her work both insightful and fun.

So: how do you be an Ellen Forney fan? Read her stuff without expectations and preconceptions, and enjoy the ride. Oh, and one more thing: loving Led Zeppelin wouldn't hurt.

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Those who love Zeppelin will soon betray Floyd..., January 19, 2007

By 

Tyler C. Robinson (Gainesville, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I Love Led Zeppelin (Paperback)

It's funny and informative. I reattached my own severed finger with the help of one particular cartoon.