Pretty Pictures and Clever Quips

A recent and growing obsession of mine has been reading comics..not your typical D.C or Marvel superhero-type fare, more like graphic novels with either bitter realistic characters and their mis-adventures, or completely bizarre and surreal strips about nothing in particular. Here's a list of the comics that I currently own:

Michelle's Comics!


Daniel Clowes : Quite possibly my favorite author of the moment, the tone of alot of his work has been mirrored in my life recently and I can't exactly STOP reading his comics...like I said its a growing obsession.

- Ghost World Shocks me that this comic was written by a man, and Enid Coleslaw (main character) is an anagram of Daniel Clowes. (Is also one of my favorite movies)

- 20th Century Eightball Collection of short stories and strips from Clowes's comic book series Eightball. The story 'Art School Confidential' will soon be a movie too.

- David Boring is anything but. While he isn't stereotypical comic book superhero, David has alot of superhero-like qualities, and his sidekick the lesbian-wise-cracking-best-friend Dot.

- Ice Haven Ice Haven is a wonderful little graphic novel centered around the town of Ice Haven and its bizarre inhabitants, the whole novel inspired by 1924 murderers Leopold and Loeb.

- Like a velvet glove cast in iron I have yet to read this

- Caricature I have yet to read this

Robert Crumb: A really messed up sexual deviant, blues-lovin', motherfucking, strange strange man who is interesting enough to have a documentary about him. (same director did Ghost World)

- The R. Crumb Handbook This is a sort of compliation of Crumbs older strips and newer return to comics.

- Complete Crumb Comics: The Early Years of Bitter Struggle (Complete Crumb Comics, Vol 1) is the first in a series from Crumbs comic strip that ran from 1958-1962. I hope to get the complete collection someday.

And the others...

- American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar a very depressing yet amusing look at Harvey Pekar's miserable life. Yet another one of my favorite movies.

- Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth An amazing comics that spans four generations and a century of sad, sad men, penned and inked by Chris Ware.

- 32 Stories : The Complete Optic Nerve Mini-Comics Adrian Tomine's complete comic strip Optic Nerve, published from 1991-1995.