Word: comix
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...turns out that Jason Shiga is not actually dead, but just living in Oakland, California. This will come as welcome news to comix fans who may have been alarmed at the coda of his 2000 book, "Double Happiness," which explained that he had committed suicide in a mental institution. Shiga has since explained this Puckish bit of misinformation as a marketing ploy which backfired. I'm glad he's still around because his creations, though woefully hard to find, are some of the most fun comicbooks I've read in a long while...
...creator of comix that can be at once funny, disturbing, thoughtful, deconstructed and cleverly put together, Jason Shiga deserves wider recognition, and not the kind you get when you commit suicide in a mental institution...
...twenty years when he will visit her and talk to her husband and give her "funny secret looks from across the table...and a tear will force its way from eye..." Thanks to Minnie's interest in drawing, "Diary" also has the unusual theme of showing a budding comix artist. Robert Crumb even makes a personal appearance...
...Besides the striking material, what sets "Diary" apart from other books about teenage girls is the art. In a typically daring move that will be sure to alienate both strict comix fans and non-comix readers alike, "Diary" is "an account in words and pictures," as the subtitle says. Mostly text, it reads like the diary of an artistically precocious teenager, including copious illustrations and occasionally turning into full-on comix. Some of the art is original to the time, but most of the it has been added by the adult Gloeckner...
...Gloeckner makes her living as a medical textbook illustrator, giving her late artwork an exacting eye for detail. Most of the singular illustrations are portraits of the book's characters. The comix sections either explicate events the diary only alludes to, as when Minnie and her best friend meet an older man for sex, or else they imagine scenes Minnie was not privy to, as when her mother confronts Monroe on her suspicions about the relationship with Minnie. Adding a different layer of challenge to the book, the switching from prose to comix feels like jumping between the sauna...