xmas is shit and chanukah is 8 days of shit...

...says the asshole who parroted happy holidays in every encounter yesterday. mostly stems from realizing that half of the city is still working through the semiprecious hours while I moan and complain that I only get let off 15 minutes early from the nine-to-five. so its happy holidays, a syrupy, cough-inducing mix of pity and fraternity shucked at the bypassing world like a smileyface cigarette butt.

anyway, people should probably read The Wretch by Phil Hester.

as i dig the flakes out of my sleepy comixless eyes of late I find myself digging in that new futureland version of bargain bins, the Amazon secondhand market. I myself have sold a few things in it, it's really quite weird. less swaggery and cutthroat than eBay, it's a bunch of losers with dusty old things sitting around waiting for the next one to jump. "$6.99? I'm selling mine for $6.49 BEEYTCH!" what the fuck is it even worth it, you end up spending at least an hour on tape and cardboard and the slackjaws at the post office and that shitty saturday morning line because you work all week, all for 6 bucks, a pie slice for the Amazonians, you're basically working a minimum wage side job so you can feel a little productive about getting rid of the useless shit in your house you should be getting rid of anyway.

i digress and only blather all this to say that the secondhand market is a great place to buy the comics you shoulda been reading for the past year rather than playing with yourself and job hunting but the economy is watery baby shit and that's a whole other blog post.

The Wretch is the kinda comic that brings up old shaggy blooms, makes you young again and even gives you chills. It's one of those tales that's more about the town than its hero, more about the flow of visual narrative than verbose chunks of text, more about constructing its own mechanics and rules than pursuing another tired power fantasy with a protagonist chomping EXTRA hard on his cigarette.

Its hero is a kind of scrappy, mute homunculus, empowered by his (her/its?) neighborhood's dreams, by the sincerity of its children, by the charitable and protective nature The Wretch seems to thrive on (maybe that and cookies). The full breadth of power accessible to the hero and the full measure of his faith in the adult world (the tales revolve around youths in trouble) is never quite revealed but that's clearly part of the picture show.

I will say that I don't quite grok the god stuff that seemed to kinda sneak in near the end. Maybe it's cuz I've been reading Christopher Hitchens lately and the beartrap has been cleaned and is highly sensitive, but it stuck out at me. Some might read it and say Hester is beating you over the head with it, some might feel the whiff of a nerf bat. I felt the latter, I think Creature Tech by Doug Tennapel threw way more at you and I still thoroughly enjoyed that. I suppose its curious and worth mentioning that Volume 1's tale ends on somewhat of a deistic tone, but I suppose that's debatable too. We are dealing with the commerce of superhero comics, of gods and similar stuff, and Hester is so refreshingly playful with the grammar of it that the flow seems to be drawn naturally to these ends, for whatever reasons he has.

(suppose I could google him and find that he's fucking Stephanie Meyer and praying for gays to burn in hell but something tells me he's a straight-up cat)

All in all, The Wretch is good stuff with eyeball massaging B&W art. It's worth the price of admission for the "Snow" story alone. and I got it on the cheap...'cept Hester didn't see a cent of it, some lowballing Amazon bastard did. Sorry brother.

I did buy Deep Sleeper back in the day fresh and ordered at the comic shop like a good boy. If anyone hasn't read it you missed out on one of Oni Press's early gems.

tour

The walkways diversify
You find yourself courting 9th ave with caustic meander
Weighing the varied meager shames of the day so in a
flowing maneuver you are already walking towards tide and
surrendering to the virus flux of shove and handle

drift

graffiti slogans bubble like air cozy under wheatpastes
a spiral notebook of crumpled pages brick and paint and
elongated dusty industrial
refuse in the alleys contradicting discount store gossamer garbage bags
everything an installation
everything INSTALLED positioned drafted diagrammed hung mad like
nabokovs frustrated child pulling hair at the encumbrance of
meaning

it's become impossible to read
pull the book out and fret the pages with so
little time to produce dreams feel wasted on the mysteries of others

i've learned that looking through the windows is sabotage
old in a gray chair
spend lunch breaks following babel in long strides
walking letters in the rain austere in an
old army coat plucked eye brows and a
haircut of fatuous lies this

perseverance is for frauds but you'd never know
the way i can walk by myself for hours