Pre-Fulbright Panic Attacks

I leave for Argentina in two weeks and two days.

Two weeks. And two days.

I complain constantly about having to live in Chicago (with my parents) while I wait for my Fulbright and real life to begin. But amid all that hemming and hawing I created life for myself. Services at the synagogue, an internship downtown, and friends have kept me occupied. Now, finally I feel settled in Chicago and I’m leaving. If you’ve talked with me these past few weeks, I’ve probably talked about this a thousand times. To get excited for my journey and leave my life in Chicago, I’ve been thinking about awesome things about Argentina, like my Argentine friends, empanadas and steak, cheap comics, amazing public transportation, and 70 degree weather.

One thing I said I would do before I left is to create a list of must-read comics. I obviously won’t be here to suggest comics, so I’m going to make a few lists of good comics to read:

Memoirs:

1. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

2. Funny Misshapen Body by Jeffrey Brown

3. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

4. Epileptic by David B.

5. American Splendor by Harvey Pekar

6. French Milk by Lucy Knisley

7. Understanding Israel in 60 Days or Less by Sarah Glidden

8. Maus by Art Spiegelman

9. Self-Loathing #2 by R. Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb

10. Safe Area Gorzade by Joe Sacco

Reinterpreting Batman

If you talk to me about comics for five minutes, I'll probably mention my distain for superheroes. So many superhero comics have convoluted plots, anatomically impossible females, too many fight scenes and not enough character development. That said, I sometimes enjoy Batman and really enjoy reinterpretations of Batman. Josh Simmons and Kate Beaton have come up with their own Batman stories. Beaton's frisky, flamboyant "Sexy" Batman is my favorite of the two, but Simmon's art is breathtakingly beautiful. Dear readers, look at the two comics below and tell me which one you like best!

From Hark! A Vagrant 295

Batman by Josh Simmons

(Go here to read the entire story)

Escaping to The Great Escape

This was the only picture I could find of The Great Escape

The peace of the holiday season is usually broken by the requisite visit with family in Louisville, Kentucky. I visit my grandfather in the nursing home, help my aunt organize piles of paper in her office, and sleep on deflating air mattresses. Spending time with family can get stressful, but luckily I have an escape: The Great Escape.

The Great Escape sells comic books, videos, music and other trappings of nerdom. I mainly go for the large collection of used indie and mainstream comics. I check over every shelf and ratty box at least a few times before making a selection. Sometimes I find a comic I’ve been meaning to buy for a while. Other times, I choose something promising that I haven’t encountered before. I bought Maus I and II there, as well as Kim Deitch’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams and Alias the Cat, and my favorite book by Gilbert Hernandez, Fear of Comics.

I bought an extremely odd assortment of comics this trip. My least expensive comic was Peter Kuper’s Comics Trips, costing a mere 66 cents. This book tracks Kuper’s eight-month travel through parts of Africa and Asia. I was fascinated by the combination of sketches, comics, and photos. My biggest issue with the book was that Kuper’s comic narrative ended in Africa, with no description of Asia. It seems as though Kuper, exhausted by too many months of travel (and diarrhea), gave up on his journal. And it sort of makes me angry that he would publish a half-completed story. But what am I complaining about? I bought it for 66 cents.

Much to my amazement, I found two comics by Carlos Trillo, one of my favorite Argentine writers. These comics are presents for Avery, so I can’t go into too much detail, but they were perfect examples of Trillo’s writing: grim, terrifying, with lots of violence and unhappy endings.

On a completely different bent, I also bought Owly: Flying Lessons and Scott Pilgrim Volume 4. The store was having a 30% off sale on everything, so I was able to afford new comics. Because these comics were not filled with graphic violence, I was able to share them with family members. I made my 29-year-old cousin read Owly with me and we translated all the pictorial dialogue into words, arguing about meaning. My sister and I decided to start collecting Scott Pilgrim after my friend Mark bought me the first issue as a present. We quote Scott’s ridiculous lines to each other at least two times a day.

In sum, the Great Escape is awesome and prevents me from going insane over the holiday. If any of you should happen to visit Louisville, check it out!

Macanudo: An Argentine Love Story

The front cover of Macanudo issue #1

I was fresh off the plane, only three days in Buenos Aires when I first read Macanudo by Liniers. I decided to study abroad in Argentina for three reasons:

1. It is a Spanish-speaking country

2. My Spanish teacher in college was from Argentina, and we read a lot about it

3. The cartoonist Quino.

I decided to spend 11 months in a country partially based off comics, so it makes sense that one of the first things I would do is try to find something to read. Macanudo was recommended to me by one of the young, hip language tutors when I told him about my love of comics. When I first started reading it, I understood some of the jokes. They were filled with slang and referenced aspects of Argentine culture I hadn’t encountered. I began to truly appreciate Macanudo after I had lived in Buenos Aires for a few months and acquired an Argentine boyfriend (a great cultural reference).

So I’ll write more about this story in a bit because I am falling asleep. I’m feeling under the weather and took a Tylenol PM about 20 minutes ago, which is extremely poor planning because right after I decided I wanted to write a blog post.

Suggestion of the moment: read Ivan Brunetti’s Misery Loves Comedy. It is simultaneously disgusting and hilarious. I laughed, felt nauseous and physically dirty, and laughed again. I wish I could describe some of the things I read in this post, but merely writing about some of the things he draws would get this blog a “NC17” rating.

My absolute favorite comic was “HRRLFK! 1,784 Things That Make Me Vomit” where Brunetti describes things from “Soporific, bland, lifeless, sub-moronic, sickeningly cute, unfunny ‘comic’ strips” to “Every single human being who has ever lived, is currently living, and/or will someday be born.” He states, oddly enough, that “Graphic cartoon depictions of vomiting” also makes him sick. Brunetti’s comics make him out to be a self-loathing, sexually perverse jerk, but he lives in Chicago (with three cats!) so I hope I get to meet him.

A relatively tame panel from Brunetti's "Everything Sucks" in Misery Loves Comedy