Ah Cochise. Greatest of the Apache warriors, or at least my favorite. Also very entertaining to draw. Also a great murderer, like most of the U.S. Army and pretty much everyone else in this country in the 19th century. I wouldn’t say I’m particularly LESS patriotic than the next guy, especially now that my country has elected a black president who is TOTALLY AWESOME, but I will say this: reading up on Indian wars will really punch your patriotism right in the nuts. Not to mention disembowelling your love of great Apache warriors. Whew!

Click on the image above or right here to enjoy a painful nut-punch and disembowelling!

Wow, it’s Christmas. 

When I was a kid this was like the focal point of my existence:  thinking about Christmas, wondering what I’d get for Christmas, judging my Christmas against reports of my friends’ various Christmas’s, etc.  On December 26th the year would turn into a tragically, infinitely long timeline, with the next Christmas somewhere invisible over the horizon.  How could a young imagination ever know how little time 364 days really was?

I have spent a lot of my life thinking about self-control, self-improvement, self-involvement and other ways to use your mind to subtly alter the quality of life. I would do my best to forget that there even was such a thing at Christmas, hoping that suddenly I’d wake up and it would be November–high season for Christmas anticipation!  But just a casual glance at a Sears Roebuck catalog, which my mother got for some reason (she would NEVER buy something that wasn’t deeply discounted) would start my Christmas longing up afresh.  One year I carefully laid out on graph paper my dream BMX bicycle, with annotations for all the accoutrements–including disc wheel covers, personalized license plate, pedal flair thingies, etc.–and casually left it lying in various places around the house.  Such as:  the kitchen table, on top of all the telephones at different times, in the driver’s seat of my mom’s car…  Something about Christmas inspired impossible dreams of avarice in me.

And I have to say that my family was really good at Christmas.  My mother missed no opportunity to remind us of how poor we were, et cetera and so forth, and how this Christmas would be particularly dismal, and so on.  But every year there would dozens of gifts under the tree.  Most of them wouldn’t be exactly ”brand-new”, but my mom was a pro at cleverly boxing things for maximum impact, making sure a certain yard-sale-acquired toy had all of its accessories, etc.

Today, as adults, we have an unspoken tradition (as I bet many families do) of making somewhat tedious but not unpleasant small-talk about each gift for about 3 minutes after it is opened and vocally appreciated by the recipient:

GIFTEE:  “Oh, this is exactly the same color as that pillowcase I like so much.  It’s PERFECT!”

GIFTER:  “Well I’d heard you say that Miss Simpson at church was loving hers, and of course I know how you love that pillowcase!”

Besides being (I think) very classy of us, it has the secondary benefit of really stretching out the time it takes to open presents.  This surely must hearken back to our habits back when I was a kid.  There were five Harbin sons and daughters (there still are), although there were 8 years between me and my next older sibling, so my younger sister and I were kind of the stars.  In order to make the gifts “last” longer, we would cycle through the entire family–seven people!!–as we opened gifts, so each person would be in the spotlight for a little bit, and everyone else would coo and ahh and make polite noises. 

Now this all sounds polite, but it surely was not.  I mean, speaking from a 7-year-old’s perspective, nothing could make less sense than looking at a big stack of presents–it’s here man Christmas is here it’s really happening!!!–and NOT opening them right away, immediately, as fast as you can. 

One Christmas in particular, I must have really been making a nuisance of myself, whining and puling and just generally finding it grossly insulting that the other 6 people in the family should have timed their own Christmas’s to rudely coincide with my own.

My father is not generally a harsh or cruel man, and rarely punished us.  I only make this assertion because I told this story to a friend the other day, and they looked a little concerned, as if I’d revealed some buried memory of child abuse or something.  Not so!  But on this particular Christmas I’m describing, after I’d really made myself insufferable, he did something which I will remember until I die, and one of the better lessons I’ve learned in life.

My dad stopped everything.  He shut down Christmas and said, “Okay everybody look at Dusty.  We’re going to let Dusty open all his presents.  Pile up all your presents, Dusty.”  I already had of course, and while I was confused, I was still too greedy to realize how I was being tricked.  “Okay go ahead and open them all up while we watch.  Everybody watch Dusty open up his presents.”  I mean, SRSLY?  It’s funny how well I can remember my own reactions to this–I really remember being confused but delighted, like I imagined sweepstakes winners felt when confronted at their doors by those giant checks:  “I’ve never won anything in my life!!!” 

But I sure did open those presents.  And the family still made those noises of appreciation, and my older sister took photos of everything as usual, and then I was done.  No more presents.  I remember looking around, poking under other boxes–maybe I’d missed one?  “Okay, now it’s your turn, Shawna.”  And Christmas went on without me.

Now again:  this sounds very cruel in retrospect.  But when you’re wrangling 5 kids, and one of them is ruining it for the other 4, you have to make hard choices.  When I’d realized my awful mistake, the waterworks began, and I ended up getting sent to my room–on Christmas morning–to play with my suddenly very uninteresting pile of toys. 

If anticipating Christmas is hard, then listening to Christmas go on without you is really rough.  But to this day, I am a tireless and energetic slower-downer of Christmas morning.  No gift goes without its due, and each person gets plenty of time to open, appreciate, and discuss that gift.  “Come to think of it, I think this goes with my blue pillowcase, too!” 

And maybe weirdly, to this day that’s one of my favorite Christmas memories–after that I really appreciated Christmas.  While I’m sure I still thought of it as a time to rack up new loot, and still made lengthy and pain-staking Christmas diagrams for my mother to find, if nothing else my dad taught me that Christmas was about more that just getting presents–it was about being with my family.  This is the kind of lesson that dads are good at teaching, and I hope that one day I’ll be able to teach my own children the same thing.

But it sucks that I’m blogging on Christmas morning instead of opening gifts with my family.

Now up in the STRIP section is a new installment of my exceptionally unfunny series “Everything’s Better As Comics.” This time I laser in on the 1983 concert film “Delirious,” by Eddie Murphy. It may just be nostalgia, but this movie is still monstrously impressive–Eddie was at the top of his game back then, with delivery and timing that just could not be improved on. What happened?

When I was in high school I had an audio tape of the concert, which I listened to constantly and can still recite from verbatim. I would listen to it on headphones and just cry laughing–I thought of stand-up comedy as a real art-form, largely because of Eddie Murphy. Today–well, not so much.

Although: maybe it was just the time, but “Delirious” is CHOCK full of all sorts of homophobic slurs, which kind of messes up the rhythm now. When you’re in high school the idea of Mr. T telling someone to–well, it involves his butt–is pretty funny, but now… I don’t know. And in the light of Murphy’s transvestite-prostitute troubles a few years ago, it’s even more suspicious.

And by “suspicious” I mean HILARIOUS. Enjoy the strip.

Aaron Renier made me do it:

Merry Christmas, Internet!

I’m going to be late to work, but I wanted to mention a couple of things quickly:

1) HOLY CRAP! Last night I finished dinner and an episode of The Wire (good God it’s so good), came back to the computer to get some work done, and there in my RSS folder was a post on the popular/excellent Drawn.ca blog entitled “Dustin Harbin“! OMG that’s like my favorite title ever! Drawn is run by John Martz and Matt Forsythe, and in its short life has become a real gallery of incredible illustrators, cartoonists, and animators. Maybe I’m making a lot of it, but I’m incredibly flattered to be included there.

2) HOLY CRAP! Also last night, at almost the exact same time, I was apparently mentioned on Warren Ellis’ Twitter feed. This might sound ridiculous to some of you, but if you’re familiar with Warren Ellis’ popularity on the the Internet (did you know he is king of same?), then you’ll understand why my site pretty much shut down under all the traffic. And now this morning I’m mentioned on his site as well. I love it!

To those of you reading this blog for the first time from either of these sources, I bid you a shy, clumsy welcome, and hope you’ll hang around as I continue to post strips, blog about nothing at all, and blush occasionally at your attention. Huzzah!

3) HOLY CRAP! It is now official: I will be teaching a continuing education class at our local Central Piedmont Community College, on cartooning. Before you react in mortified shock, I’ll be teaching the excellent book by Jessica Abel and Matt Madden, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures–so it doesn’t matter how good a cartoonist I am.

In order for the class to be economically viable, I think they have to hit a minimum enrollment for it to happen at all. If you live in the area and are interested in taking the class, here is the pertinent info:

GRX-7110-01 CREATING COMIC BOOKS
01/10/2009 – 02/28/2009, Saturdays, 9am – 12pm
Central Piedmont Community College
Harper Campus, Room 345

I believe the cost is $180 or so. I promise to do a good job.

My apologies right off the bat to anyone who is unfamiliar with Warren Ellis:

Suffice it to say, he’s an extra popular comics writer, who has an enormous persona online.  Since I think way back when Al Gore invented the Internet–he’s abandoned more networks and communities than most people have heard of. 

But either way, he’s the subject of this week’s strip, which is a good one if you’re familiar with him, and if not–well, it doesn’t look bad, so just enjoy that part.  I’m still working on Indians, don’t worry.  Also, I’ve got some other news I need to finalize before I share it, but let’s just say it involves 1) America’s Youth, and 2) around $700.  Score!

I just sent off the re-lettered Spanish translation (actually Galician, which somehow sounds even cooler, right?) of my Death of the Monolith strip. I’m not sure how concepts like “mountain-rape” will transfer to this new, more romantic language, but I must presume it will be INCREDIBLE.

For publication in BARSOWIA #13, published by the Polaqia artist collective in Spain. Many thanks to David Rubin, who invited me to be a part of the magazine, AND was one of the unholy triumvirate of the THE DAUGHTER OF GENERAL MELEE, along with me and Javier Olivares, which won last year’s Fistacuffs.

You know, I was finishing dinner, getting ready to come back here to my office and continue research for a series of strips about famous Indians (the Native American kind, not the “real” kind).  Before I could summon the energy to get up from the sofa, the episode of Andy Griffith I was watching ended and out of nowhere the Charlie Brown Christmas special came on. This is a terrible thing to come on if you’re not expecting it. You really need to prepare yourself emotionally–I could feel my eyes start burning practically from the opening credits.

And the thing is, the Charlie Brown Christmas special is hardly a wonderment of innovation, right? Voiced by stuttering children, edited by a person who was clearly drunk or insane or both, and featuring some of the most baldly, unapologetically heart-on-sleeve writing you can imagine–it’s hard to imagine that this ever got made. Clearly the fact that Charles Schulz was already swinging some heavy money bags back in ‘65 had a lot to do with it; but if Peanuts is one of the most influential, nuanced, and downright graceful pieces of cartooning ever, then the Charlie Brown Christmas is its polar opposite.

And still with the water works.  What gives?  It never even occurred to me to get up and NOT watch it.  When I was a kid it wasn’t Christmas until this special had come on.  I would start scanning the TV Guide for it in November, still excited from the just-viewed “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!”.  I loved it then, and for some reason I love it now.  It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t love it, who doesn’t instantly melt a little when they hear that lonely, plaintive “Christmas Time Is Here…” song start up, like God’s own orphans warbling out their lonesome carols. 

What is it about this weird mishmash of a cartoon special that resonates so much with, of all people, children?  Within the first few minutes of the thing, Sally turns to Linus and utters, in her real-little-girl voice, the title of this post, in reference to what she expects to get for Christmas.  And just seconds later, after Charlie Brown tells psychiatrist Lucy that he’s depressed–literally, he says, “I feel depressed.  I know I should be happy, but I’m not”–she comes back with this gem:

“I think we’d better pinpoint your fears.  If we can find out what you’re afraid of, then we can label it.” 

What child ever got  that?  I’m sure I didn’t–that’s practically over my head today, and I’m 34 years old.  The first 10 minutes of the special are filled with zingers like that, some even more depressing.  And I don’t mean to say I think the thing was so well-written that a kid couldn’t get it.  I think this thing was terribly written.  But still, there I sit on the sofa, still with some cream-style corn drying on my lip, knowing I’m going to break down once Linus makes his speech near the end. 

I watch this thing pretty much every year, if I’m lucky.  To me, there’s almost nothing that more perfectly sums up the awful sense of loss, of wistful longing, that separates childhood and adulthood.  Trying to remember what it felt like to be a kid, to have no responsibility, to suffer the mercurial joys and assaults that childhood–and especially other kids–can wield; it’s almost impossible.  The Charlie Brown Christmas special is a thing made by grown men, especially one grown man who would spend his life trying to explain, or at least cope with, his own sadness.  I think that’s what makes it still special somehow, 30 years after seeing it for the first time, and 43 years after it was made–these old Charlie Brown TV specials are basically a bunch of grown adults getting together and trying to approximate childhood.  There’s virtually no artifice in the thing at all–they’re certainly not trying to sell something, or at least weren’t at that point. 

And for all its warts and infirmities, it does something amazing and beautiful.  Maybe it’s the faltering voices of children reading their lines, or the ramshackle way the thing is put together.  But whatever the reason, this scene lays me out every time:

You can’t argue with tears. Tears mean you lose, if you’re trying to analyze, or be snarky, or whatever smart-guy thing you thought you had in mind. It’s kind of nice, and kind of terrible, that crying a little bit during the Charlie Brown Christmas special, with creamed-corn still in your beard, is a yearly Christmas tradition. I mean, show me somebody whose life isn’t kind of nice and kind of terrible, and I will show you someone who is not a fan of Charlie Brown.

What would The Godfather have looked like if it were done by Dustin Harbin?  Geez, I can’t count how many times I’ve heard just that question.  I’ve long suspected that a brilliant cast, incredible cinematography and editing, and a score like God’s own sad trumpet are little more than distractions from the story itself.  View, if you will, The Godfather in comics form:

Click the image or right darn here to view the strip.  Next week:  Indians!

Oh man, the year is almost gone.  Where did it go?  No matter; I’m glad to see it go.  If I could, I would kick 2008 in the pants and then pee on it while it was on the floor crying.  Take that, crappy year!  I’m looking forward to a fine 2009, with less bad things and more good things.  I’m thinking of tripling the number of good things in 2009, but that’s just a projection:  in these troubled times, double will be just fine. 

BUT regardless of 2008’s quality, I work for a comics store, organize a comics convention, and am a part-time cartoonist:  the Internet in general–and the ease of blogging in particular–DEMAND that I cobble together some ill-formed opinions and then share them, uninvited, with the world.  Please consider viewing these lonely opinions in this season of sharing.  And also consider that, regardless of my various faults, my taste in comics is ROCK SOLID:  I feel confident that you will enjoy EVERY SINGLE BOOK on this list, which is in roughly ascending order.

Okay, let’s get started!

10: WHAT IT IS by Lynda Barry
This is the first book by Lynda Barry I’ve ever read.  I never really had read her long running “Ernie Pook” comic, dismissively lumping it in with a bunch of other snarky alternative free-weekly comics. This was obviously a “What If We Invaded Iraq” -level mistake on my part. A pleasant mistake, as now I have numerous books to hunt down and purchase.  But within seconds of cracking the cover of this book, I knew this was the only book of its kind on the planet.  I don’t know how to explain it–the thing looks like a mess of collage and paint and post-it notes at first, but when you read it you IMMEDIATELY get the feeling of being connected directly to Lynda Barry’s SOUL somehow.  I know that sounds hokey, but I can’t think of another way to put it.  She spares no private corner of her persona, and the book–almost in a protective, motherly fashion–asks question after question with the idea of making you teach yourSELF how to think creatively, rather than merely showing you.  This book belongs in every library of every person, comics reader or no.

09: KRAMER’S ERGOT VOLUME 7 edited by Sammy Harkham and Alvin Buenaventura
I would probably place this much higher on the list, and I suspect that 10 years from now this will be the book of the DECADE.  But I’ve only leafed through it, and have not yet seen it, held it, read it.  I have been enormously excited about this book since I first heard about it, and have been more vocal than usual about this fact.  This would probably be #1 if I had the book in my hand already.

08: ORDINARY VICTORIES VOL 2 by Manu Larcenet
These freaking French guys are amazing.  NBM has really been publishing some great books this year, possibly goosed into activity by the even-more-superior offerings from First Second, which also publishes a lot of translated European comics.  Unfortunately, NBM books are terribly designed, so often you need to know a cartoonists’ work to buy the book–otherwise you would just pass the thing by on the rack.  I think we would sell this book in double digits easily if Volume 1 were only available.  Such a travesty.  Oh, I didn’t say anything about the book, did I?  Ooh, it’s good. 

07: GANGES #2 by Kevin Huizenga
Man, I love this guy.  Kevin Huizenga might be the cartoonist I’m most intimidated by in person, although he’s a nice guy, for sure.  But he’s obviously super-smart, and doesn’t talk much.  This is a great weakness for people like me who can’t stop talking in public:  my great Achilles heel is conversational silence.  Now you know.  Kevin’s books look deceptively simple, but resonate long, long, LONG after being read, regardless of the topic.  Which, in this case, in video games. 

06: LITTLE NOTHINGS by Lewis Trondheim
Also published by NBM, but not so bad looking.  This is a combination memoir/travelogue/rumination by one of the most prolific cartoonists in history, and is maybe the most pleasant book I’ve read all year.  Trondheim seems to get off as much in screwing with people as anything else, and his mercurial nature–combined with his excessive complaining and chronic hypochondria–lend an air of real humanity to the book.  It’s this humanity that elevates Little Nothings from standard autobio comics to something truly great; not to mention providing a picture of one of the world’s eminent cartoonists at a key point in his career and development as an artist.

05: CRICKETS #2 by Sammy Harkham
This book made me think for weeks and weeks after my initial and subsequent readings.  Not just the main story (Crickets is a one-man anthology, although the main “golem” story takes up the majority of its pages), but especially the final couple of pages, where in a small space Harkham insults one of his publishers and CREAMS another cartoonist and educator.  Why would someone do this?  What does it mean?  For another person, this would just be standard poo-slinging, but from someone of Sammy Harkham’s stature and influence, these questions take on different meaning.  Speaking for myself, Sammy might be my favorite cartoonist working today–the “Napoleon” strip on the inside front cover might be the best one-page strip I’ve ever read.  Amazing! 

04: POPEYE VOLUME 3: LET’S YOU AND HIM FIGHT! by E.C. Segar
Oh man, I’ve made no secret of my almost child-like delight in discovering Popeye.  I know I’m wasting all my superlatives in this “Best Of” list, but here’s one for Popeye:  I get a juicy discount at work, but still paid FULL PRICE for this book at SPX just to have it early, and was reading it the very night I returned.  From the strip itself to the design of the book, reading the new Popeye volume each year is the most pleasant reading experience of that year, period.  I will be very sad when I finish the last volume (#6, I think).

03: SKYSCRAPERS OF THE MIDWEST by Josh Cotter
I have a lot of friends who are cartoonists, but I’m really bad about reading their work for some reason.  I’ve known Josh Cotter for a couple of years, mainly through seeing him at conventions, but only finally made myself read Skyscrapers a few months ago, and mainly because I was going to be sharing a table with him at SPX, and would have been mortified to admit I hadn’t read it.  While I’d heard the book was incredibly sad (and it was), it wasn’t the sadness of it that impressed me so much.  This book was just plain well-CONCEIVED.  Without beating you over the head with it, Josh draws a picture of what it feels like to be a sad, lonely kid, in a world that only barely makes sense, and only for brief intervals.  This was definitely the most surprising book I read this year, although I do Josh a disservice to be so surprised at his obvious talent.  I shan’t be surprised again.

02: BOTTOMLESS BELLYBUTTON by Dash Shaw
Wow.  Seriously, wow.  This really should probably be the #1 book on this list, and for most of the year, it would have been.  I certainly pushed it on plenty of people that way.  While I like and respect Dash Shaw, I had never really connected with one of his works before.  Counter-intuitively, I bought this book because it was MASSIVE and looked great.  I do dumb things like that.  But from the moment I read the line on the title page suggesting that the reader take a break between each of the three parts of the book, I was hooked.  Why I can’t say, but suddenly I was engaged, and it never went away.  What looks like rough, hasty art in the first few pages becomes nuanced and perfect by its end, without ever changing.  Another must-read, and another entry for “Best of the Decade”.

01: GUS AND HIS GANG by Christophe Blain
Holy crap, this book blew me away.  I’ve been a fan of Blain’s, as well as his compatriots David B., Lewis Trondheim, Manu Larcenet, and pretty much all those L’Association guys, for awhile now.  I have a tendency toward hyperbole, BUT try this on:  this is a career-defining book by an already-great artist.  What seems at first like a loose collection of humorous-but-not-hilarious cowboy stories quickly becomes a character study of a gang of three bandits.  Blain’s cartooning seems at once effortless and extraordinary.  He does more with gesture, color, and line in a page than most cartoonists do in an entire book.  Oh, but those colors!  I finished this book wanting to splash color on everything:  deep colors; wild, bright, ugly colors; any colors, just as deep and as saturated as I could make them.  While I think that Bottomless Bellybutton is a better work, and certainly a better novel, this book was such an incredible shock that when I think of my favorite book of 2008, it comes to mind immediately.  What could be better than having TOO MANY good things to choose from?  A good year for comics, for sure.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: 
ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY VOL 19
BOURBON ISLAND 1730
SCORCHY SMITH
LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE
These are all almost certainly incredible books, but I haven’t read them yet, and feel weird calling them “BEST” anything. 

ALSO I can’t forget MOME #’s 11 and 12, both incredible, both featuring stories by Dash Shaw and Killoffer (I’m a serious Francophile for comics lately), as well as the hilarious “Truth Bear” stories by Ray Fenwick.  Plus a bunch of other stuff I’m forgetting.  If I could have taken the Dash Shaw story out of 11 and traded it with the one in 12, then 12 would have been one of the best books of the year, maybe in the top 3.