WORDS

Lorsque nous vivions ensemble - Kazuo Kamimura

2012-01-15T20:55:00.000-08:00

I’ve been reading the first volume of Kazuo Kamimura’s When We Lived Together and am pretty into it so far (I’m on page 509, but the full series is over 2,000 pages!). These comics apparently were originally published in the early seventies and they have a great energy. The episodic story, so far, concerns a young couple living together and the ups and downs of their relationship. It’s interesting, because the story switches between the voice of the man and woman, so you get two perspectives, two different views, sometimes over the course of just a few pages. So there are two main characters, a couple... that’s not something I remember seeing too often, if at all.

I also really like the artwork. The style is raw, but sometimes very elegant too. Kazuo Kamimura isn’t afraid to switch things up and over the course of a just a few pages the surface techniques can change from cross-hatched, to zip-a-tone, to grey wash shadowing, to a more stark black and white brush style. It works. The art feels very alive.

The struggles of the young couple are captivating and the stories mostly ring true. At times, it definitely feels autobiographical. The man works as a freelance illustrator and the woman works in graphic design. Two creative people together can make for an explosive situation. When the tone occasionally becomes a little more poetic / metaphoric - those moments are somewhat less convincing. Overall though, I’m really digging it and feel sure I’ll end up reading all three volumes before the month is out.

What other comics I’m into these days...

2012-01-04T20:30:00.000-08:00

Besides classic comic strip reprints, and some old comic book reprints, like the Barks that just started coming out, and the John Stanley stuff from Drawn and Quarterly, pretty much the only other comics I’m into these days are Japanese comic reprints. Another whole overwhelming world of comics. The main series I’m into and reading right now are Mitsuru Adachi’s Cross Game and Touch, Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys and whatever Osamu Tezuka is coming out - I’m currently trying to pick up all his Black Jacks (just got the first 5 of 17), though I haven’t had time to start reading them yet. I am about halfway through the second volume of his Princess Knight, which I’m really enjoying. I’m also about two-thirds through the first of four 1,500 page collections of Sanpei Shirato’s Kamui-Den (French language edition) - at first it didn’t grab me, but lately I’ve gotten super into it. Over the holidays I also picked up the seventh volume of Taiyou Matsumoto’s Le Samourai Bamboo and all three volumes of Kazuo Kamimura’s Lorsque Nous Vivions Ensemble - another huge collection that stretches out over 2,100 pages. Haven’t had time to start reading those last two yet either, but really looking forward to them. It does seem to me that French language publishers seem to publish more interesting, classic Japanese comics than English publishers. I kind of wonder why things seem to have worked out like that. Even some great contemporary stuff, like 20th Century Boys, was translated into French much earlier - the 22nd and final volume was published in February of 2007 in France, while in the US, Viz has just last month published volume 18.

Classic Comic Strip Reprints

2012-01-02T22:51:00.000-08:00

There are so many high-quality classic comic strips coming out right now, it’s really amazing and overwhelming. In a way, to me, they seem to have come out of nowhere, but I guess it’s a trend that has taken off over the last five years or so. Unfortunately, I’ve already fallen frustratingly behind. The main one I’m into right now is Dick Tracy, but I only started reading it last spring and have only just got into volume two. I’m staggered to think they've already published twelve of these and a couple of them seem to have already gone out of print and are getting pricey. Definitely it’s one of my 2012 goals to start trying to catch up on my classic strip reading and pick up those volumes before they disappear. I’m also reading the Little Orphan Annie collections, but am only about halfway through the first book (there are seven so far!), and the second book of Walt and Skeezix Gasoline Alley (there are five).

I also recently picked up the first two Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse strip collections, the new Johnny Hazard package, and started reading the Captain Easy Sunday strips. That’s a lot of comics! I need to pick up the rest of those Popeye reprints too (I only have the first two). I’m hoping 2012 will be a year filled with the reading of some of these huge collections. I probably want to put more time into that than reading regular books for the first time in a long, long time. At least that's how I've felt the last few weeks. It's always a challenge to find the time and balance for all this stuff I would like to read and do.

The Sun A Small Star

2011-12-13T11:17:00.000-08:00

"I lie here with you, but you're not here / 'cause I open my eyes."

ON THE READING OF BOOKS

2011-10-19T20:45:00.000-07:00

For me, reading books is the main thing I want to do with my time. There are so many books I want to read, sometimes it hurts.

As far as I know, I’ve always loved books. One of my earliest memories is of a teacher surprised at what I was reading in third grade, saying it was far too advanced for me. Of course, it wasn’t. Even at that early age, I wanted to push myself and I wanted to learn the secrets hidden in books. I wanted to read everything. Maybe I still do.

I’m forty-one years old, and despite reading books at a fairly steady clip, I feel like I’ve barely managed to scratch the surface of what’s out there. For the most part, that’s a fine feeling, knowing I’ll never run out of books I want to read, but it’s also sort of a sad feeling, knowing there’s so much I’ll never get to read that I’d like to someday be able to read. At the reasonable pace of 100 books a year, if I make it to an average lifespan, that means I can read about 3,000 more books. In a way that sounds like a lot, but then when I think about how I already have 1,000 plus books saved on various online wishlists - a few thousand books really sounds like not even a drop in the bucket. I’d also like the chance to re-read a lot of the books I’ve read before. As I’ve grown older, and experienced more, I’ve really gotten a much deeper feeling about just how quickly time moves and disappears. This is where I sigh.

Book culture in the USA has changed a lot since I’ve been around. I remember all the little, neighborhood bookstores that used to exist, and the specialty bookstores. I remember when the small chain bookstores came in and I remember when the big bookstore chains came in and drove the small bookstores out of business, and I remember when the giant online retailers came into existence, with their massive discounts that drove most of the last struggling small bookstores out of business and eventually even the giant chain bookstores. Online retailers have made our cities worse. Now we’ve got electronic books coming in full force and I’m worried as hell about what that means for the future. In my mind, this whole path the business of books has gone down has been the wrong path. For me, it’s not just the textual content of books that’s magic, but the actual physical book object that you pull from a shelf, hold in your hands, feel, flip through - that real thing is something of value - is something else I hope we don’t lose too. Books stores were magical places, today they barely seem to exist. The closest bookstore to where I live now is around ten miles away. Just a few years ago there were at least three bookstores within walking distance of where I lived. Ten or so years before that there was also a mystery bookstore, two science fiction bookstores and several used bookstores within walking distance from here.

I love that a room in my apartment is slowly filling up with books. I love being able to walk in there and look at all the different spines, and look at the cover art. To have a physical reminder of the books I’ve read and maybe will re-read. In a way, to feel like I’m creating my own little bookstore to replace those that have vanished. To replace the real bookstore I’d have loved to have opened, if that wasn’t only a fool’s dream in this messed up situation.

The supposed convenience one gains with electronic books, doesn’t make up for the magic one loses when the real physical object doesn’t exist. Electronic books aren’t really about making reading more convenient. For the most part, electronic books are about making certain people and corporations as much money as possible, as easily as possible. We’re losing the magic and it bums me out. It’s bad enough to see print going purely digital, but now that comic books seem to be going that way too - uhg, it’s too awful for me to even write about. This is something I’ve become more and more convinced of lately, going digital is a huge error. I’m hoping more people will start to realize what we’re being tricked into giving up in the name of convenience, enough people that we can save physical books and start bringing a great book culture back to life.

All the best people I’ve known in my life have loved books and reading. I love getting tips from them on what books to read next, interesting authors, hearing about what they want to read next or have just read. I love talking about what I just read and recommending books to people. I love looking over the book lists of people I know and adding the books they recommend to my wishlist. Finding out as much as I can about the secret, ever expanding worlds in literature. How it seems like each book leads to more books, other books by the same author or books they talked about in their books, or books that book reminded you of, or books that influenced that author you just read, or books influenced by that book. It’s all a mixed up, crazy mess, that you can thankfully never get to the bottom of. There’s never any end to books and what you can find in them. Where they can take you. What they can expose you to. I feel really sorry for people that don’t get it.

Because books are usually just one person’s vision, I feel like books are where you can find the most pure and interesting window to look through into our culture, history and future. Such a great way to expand your mind, it puzzles me that more people don’t seem to want to dig in. It’s weird!

After I wake up in the morning I love to have some coffee and read for at least thirty minutes. I usually take my book with me to work and read on my lunch break. When I get home from work, guess what, I like to sit down and read for an hour or so, and sometimes that’s what I like to do for the rest of the night. Sometimes I feel like the other things I do in the day are just a way to give my eyes a bit of a rest and to not read so much, so fast, that I’m not absorbing what I’m reading enough. Which happens sometimes, because I’m too often dreaming about the next books I’m going to read, than the one right in front of me. When it comes to books, I’m endlessly hungry and always thinking of the meals to come. In any case, it’s what keeps me getting out of bed in the morning.

DIFFERENT TRAINS

2011-10-08T10:59:00.000-07:00

I’m always thinking a lot about time, how quickly it seems to past, how to best spend it, how to find more of it, how to hold onto it. I’m always thinking a lot about routine, waking up, going to work. When is a routine good or bad? How to break out of a bad routine?

Sometimes I think it’s those routines we fall into that make the weeks go so fast. But I kind of like a lot of things about my routine too, my morning coffee and 30-60 minutes of reading, my walk to work, trying to get there and settled by nine o’clock so I can listen to Alex Dutilh’s Open Jazz radio program and add more things to my wishlist that I can’t afford.

Open Jazz is a great way to start my work day. I’ve been listening to it off and on for a year or two, but have only really REALLY gotten into trying to listen to it every weekday morning since the beginning of September. The presenter, Dutilh’s enthusiasm for jazz is catching and he plays a great mix from the earliest releases to the most recent. Almost every show has at least one tune I’ve never heard before that really grabs me. I’m loving the music he plays, but also hearing and learning new stuff every morning, getting an even bigger view into music. By ten o’clock when the show is over, I usually feel like I actually accomplished something worth getting out of bed for more than just going to work and making the rent. The much broader access we have to what’s going on around the world thanks to the Internet is one of the very few ways things have definitely gotten better in the last twenty years. If we take advantage of it.

Episodes of Open Jazz can be listened to here (click on the headphones symbol next to (ré)écouter or go to the archives for the last week’s worth of shows)...

Some other stuff...

I thought this interview with Maurice Sendak in the Guardian was pretty interesting, as honestly I knew nothing of his story, only really Where the Wild Things Are.

but it led me to listen to this recent, extremely raw interview he did on Fresh Air that was pretty upsetting (upsetting to hear somebody so upset, emotional and raw on the subject of being 81 and having lost so many of the people who were close to him)...

The Sarah Records discography...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Records_catalogue

I'm going to try to go see all this Masterworks of Italian Neo-Realism film series coming up at the UCLA Film & TV archive, October 15th - November 16th. I've seen probably half of them before, but I'm ready to see them again on the big screen - really looking forward to it. As much as I love TCM or watching movies in the comfort of my own home, I feel like I get much more into it when it's out at a theater - it's more effort, but always more memorable than just putting on a tape. I haven't been seeing as many movies in the theater for the last few years, and that bums me out. One of many things I'm trying to slowly fix & get back on track.

ON THE SUBJECT OF MY FRIEND, DYLAN WILLIAMS

2011-09-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

It’s confusing. Right now I don’t really want to write anything about Dylan, because, frankly, it hurts too much, but at the same time, I don’t want to not write anything about Dylan, because he’s worth writing and thinking about. And it’s all I can think about right now, anyway. And maybe it’s better to write a little of this out. A little, but I feel like I could write a book.

One of the things about Dylan, it seems to me, is that he loved life, culture, art and people more than anybody else I’ve ever known. That’s one of the things that bums me out the most, that somebody who seemed to appreciate so much being in the world, ended up pulling a pretty short straw.

Maybe it’s a little funny, but I can’t even remember exactly when or how I met Dylan. Probably in 1993? Maybe he wrote me a letter, or maybe I met him in Comic Relief? My first distinct memory is meeting him in Berkeley and going to a Puppy Toss meeting. I’d had a comic book or two published by then, but comics for me was also a very isolated, weird thing I was trying to do. This was pretty much my first exposure to a whole group of creative people trying to work together and encourage each other to accomplish art - collectively - and it kind of blew my mind. I didn’t really understand the community aspect, but even way back then, I think that was something important to Dylan - not just his own work, but the other people around him. Not just in Berkeley and San Francisco, but the weird people all around the world doing this stuff that Puppy Toss tried to help distribute through their own massive catalog and mail order operations. This wasn’t about making money, but about supporting what you loved and believed in, and thereby changing the world in little, but important ways. And it seems to me that Dylan loved comics, and the comics community, more that anybody I’ve ever met.

I really got to know Dylan over the next couple of years, when we were both working at Comic Relief on Haight Street in San Francisco. In a way, this was the most vibrant period of my life, when the world seemed to really expand before me and I dived in. A lot of what I learned during that period, I learned because of my friendship with Dylan. He was a bit of a culture pusher and I was starving. For instance with comics. Up till then my idea of comics was pretty much Hate, Eightball, Love and Rockets and Weirdo Robert Crumb, but Dylan’s enthusiasm and vast knowledge of the classics was infectious and opened up my mind to a diverse selection of cartoonists like John Stanley, Bernie Kreigstein and Hergé. He took me out to Bill Blackbeard’s newspaper strip museum and we looked through giant, beautiful, turn of the century newspaper comics. In fact, we were talking about just this when I was briefly visiting with him in Portland this July - how back in the 90s and earlier you really needed to talk to people, put in some effort and have some good guides to learn what you wanted to know and how that has changed so much this last decade, thanks or curses to the Internet - how you can now find out about pretty much anything and with much more depth with just a few clicks of a mouse. I think he was worried about the distance this was creating between people - I know it worries me (at the same time as I embrace it).

Puppy Toss published some comics by me, I published some comics by Dylan. Then Dylan became a big part of the comics zine I was putting out (and later Slave Labor published some issues). For sure, without Dylan, those Slave Labor mags I (poorly) edited, would never have existed. He also pushed and encouraged me tremendously in my own efforts. Always gently prodding me to improve and keep going (especially when it was a real struggle for me). But also understanding, I think, in the different periods when I’ve had to step away.

He was a great person to talk to and we did get into hanging out after work, drinking coffee, and seeing all the old movies we could afford in San Francisco and Berkeley’s many rep theaters of the time. See, Dylan wasn’t just about comics and the comics community. For me at least, that became the least important thing (though I was still asking his advice about Dick Tracy volumes to pick up last December). He was also crazy about movies, music, books and art too (though he did often relate back what he learned from those other interests to his comics). Especially in later years, classic and art house movies became the area where we had the most common interests.

I’d say our closest period was in mid-1995 to mid-1996. A period of a lot of personal upheavel for both of us and a sort of course correction / rethink. It seems to me that this is when we hung out the most and had the longest, best conversations - along with connecting up with another key figure for the two of us, Frank Santoro. Many pints of coffee were drank at the cafe on Divisadero behind my apartment in the midnight hours. I do remember one late night in particular (like 3 a.m. late) when Dylan and I strolled up & down Divisadero to the bay and watched the waves in the moonlight.

But things changed fast... way too fast. Dylan had started working at the Castro Theatre. Frank split home to Pittsburgh. Comic Relief went out of business and I hit the road for a while too and ended up in North Carolina. So began the period of great letter writing! Frank was back in San Francisco. Dylan and Emily moved to Olympia. Frank was back in Pittsburgh. Somewhere in there Frank, Dylan and I met in Los Angeles for a week when I was out there to do some writing! This was when the three of us went to the Silent Movie Theater and saw some Laurel and Hardy shorts - one of the great movie going experiences of my life - and I never laughed so much.

In 1998 I tried moving back to San Francisco and spent three impossible months couch surfing and in misery, before giving up and heading “home” to Portland, Oregon. And like magic, Dylan and Emily also moved to Portland at right around the same time. Again we got to hang out, seeing movies, talking books and zines. Dylan could be such an inspiring person just to hang out with. He was also an amazingly hilarious shopper - he’d walk out of every bookstore with ten times more books than anybody else, even saying, he knew there wasn’t enough time to read but a small percentage of the books he was buying - they were just too compelling to pass up. Same with music - in those days, despite not having tons of money, he’d never buy one or even a few CDs or LPs, but always a huge stack - always great stuff. He was also the first person I knew who bought VHS tapes, and this was when they were expensive. He loved culture. He also really loved pot, and I do have a particularly fond memory of one afternoon spent with Dylan and Emily getting terribly stoned on some bridge in Portland and then going to see the Wizard of Oz(!) at the Lloyd Center Mall.

But, I don’t know, things weren’t really working out for me in Portland and in 1999 when I got a job offer in Los Angeles, I grabbed it. Also my brother lived in LA and Frank and Katie were moving there too - so it was appealing and I was sick of the rain. Of course Frank and Katie left for New York six months later, but that’s how it goes. Even more unfortunately, somewhere around this time Dylan and I had a bit of a falling out (probably my fault), which really hurt my heart, but I didn’t really know how to fix it. Maybe we never did quite fix it, but eventually we did re-connect (at a convention in San Francisco?) and he even ended up publishing some new comics he encouraged me to draw - I doubt they would have happened without him, for whatever that’s worth. In any case, those comics he published are the one’s where I think I finally figured out my own limitations as a creative person and am able to look back on them and feel okay, instead of the burning embarrassment of my 90s output (even if very few people rate my 00s work compared to the 90s stuff - oh well).

I guess Dylan and I weren’t as close in the 2000’s as we could have been. I was thinking about this, but we still hung out a fair lot and had some amazing times - particularly centered around movies. We actually met several times in in Berkeley for no other reason than to watch screenings at the PFA archive of silent Naruse films, Mizoguchi films and others (well, he was also there to visit his mom) and we both hung out with Landry Walker & Eric Jones (more old cartoonist friends) at their place for some amusing late nights (as Dylan snored and we played Mario Kart till dawn). Dylan also visited in LA to see film noirs for a week at the American Cinematheque and several other times. And of course we also hung out some at various comic shows in San Diego, San Francisco and Portland. Dylan was amazingly easy person to hang out with and talk to - even if we hadn’t talked for maybe a year, it felt like no time had passed - just a very comfortable and chill guy, especially in later years when I think maybe he really found himself after first fighting off cancer and getting super healthy (no drink, drugs or eventually even coffee - instead Tai Chi and jogging).

The thing about Dylan was he was really smart. He thought extremely deeply and when he made up his mind about something - he felt good with his decisions and he would act on them with pure conviction. That’s part of how he accomplished so much - so much more than anybody else I’ve ever met. And he would never budge (I know sometimes this annoyed certain people). But he had a vision of how he thought things should be and he didn’t tolerate bullshit or waste his time on things he didn’t believe in or feel were important. He had conviction, compassion and a genuine global vision. He really fought for what he thought best and spent his energy in directions he was convinced were positive.

The thing about Dylan was he was a really funny guy - not overly earnest or annoying - he accepted people for what they were. He loved a corny joke. I remember him laughing and giggling and chucking a lot. He loved the old fashioned comedy of Ernie Kovacs (and introduced me to him). But he had really broad tastes. He loved everything musical from hip-hop to country to metal and he knew a ton about it. He was engaged in life and getting the most possible out of it. He knew a ton about art and I treasured the times we visited museums together. I particularly remember the days we went to the Hammer Museum in LA where there was a René Magritte exhibit (I don’t think he cared for it), then all the way out to Pasadena to look at a bunch of Edgar Degas stuff (which he loved), and looking at a bunch of amazing Japanese prints and fashion at the Berkeley Art Museum.

This July, when I was taking a trip up to Portland Oregon to visit with my mom and step-dad and Polly, I of course also wrote Dylan to see if he would be around and have some free time (he was often travelling in these last years, to conventions or to visit scattered family). He wrote me back saying there was a problem. He’d been in the hospital, but not for cancer, for something else. He’d had serious, life saving surgery, and was pretty messed up - the recovery time was going to be six to nine months! But he was at home, and if he felt good enough, a visit would be great.

Luckily that July 18th he said felt good enough and I walked over to his and Emily’s nice little house and we got to have a good two hour visit. It had been a while, but conversation came as easy as ever. Yet I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t tough to see somebody who was normally so vibrant and healthy, now in such a frightfully thin and weakened state. To hear of the surgery and recovery process he was going through really made me feel for him (and Emily). We drank tea and chatted about books and soccer, and about his dislike of the movement towards digital culture and iBooks and digital comics and his belief in the superiority of print. Just a normal everyday kind of chat that I enjoyed very much. As I left, he propped himself up weakly from the couch and we shook hands, and I’m sure he said something like, and now we’ll try to stay in better touch. I left saddened by what he was having to go through, but at the same time, impressed by his strength and convinced in six to nine months he was going to be back to his old self, and doing the things he loved and cared about the most.

A little over a week later when I read there was more troubles and they didn’t know what it was, but he was back in the hospital and they were going to figure it out - I got pretty worried and Dylan was much in my thoughts. Later, when I read that they figured out what was really wrong this time and it was a return of the cancer I got REALLY worried. I’d just been watching my friend Alan going through chemotherapy and radiation treatments and saw how they diminished an incredibly healthy man to a very weak and frail man - cancer is a tough battle. In Dylan’s case I really was fearful for him, because he was already in such a tremendously weakened state - I worried, did he have the reserves to fight yet another battle. When another week or two passed and I read a new post from him on the Sparkplug Comic Books blog saying, “I figure I should check in and let people know I'm doing okay. I've got more treatments ahead but I'm doing well. And me and Sparkplug owe a giant thank you for all the help everyone has given us during me being conked out. I'm a lot less worried about the way things will go now,” for the first time in a long while I felt like, maybe things will be okay after all, and thought to myself, why are you always so negative Jeff...

A couple of days later, on Saturday September 10th, at around four in the afternoon I heard my phone ring, but I wasn’t able to pick it up in time. When I checked to see who had called and saw that it was Landry (one of Dylan’s oldest and closest friends, who hadn’t called me in ages), I knew. I didn’t have to call back, but I did. Felt like shit ever since.