A lot of great art, regardless of medium, comes from a place of deep personal anguish. It only stands to reason, of course — profoundly disturbing imagery, writing, films, etc. are most authentically communicated by profoundly disturbed minds. But does that mean the artist in question can’t be having a good time making it, and that you as a reader or viewer can’t have fun experiencing it?

I ask this because, as the contents of the long-overdue career retrospective Please, God – Help Me Be Normal! (Mucus House Publications, 2021) make abundantly clear, something is up with John Trubee. the very title of his book is a cry for help, and it’s tough to blame the guy for having a constant urge to scream into the abyss. I mean, he sees things in a way that most of us simply don’t — hell, maybe he just sees things that most…

Crucially, in an extended scene that features a couple playing a game of ping-pong both literally and metaphorically, Bastien Vives fixes his focus solely on the man — not just what he’s doing, but what he’s saying, how he’s reacting, what he’s feeling. The woman, however, is both silent and invisible — and compared to the treatment women receive from the cartoonist in the rest of The Butchery (originally released in its native France in 2017, newly available in an English language edition from Fantagraphics with translation by Jenna Allen), trust me when I say this is a kindness. It’s better not be featured at all than it is to be depicted as, by turns, an unknowable mystery and a frigid, uncommunicative bitch.

Vives drew some heat for the rather “male gaze-y” nature of his recent collaborative graphic novel The Grand Odalisque, but it’s hard to say which…

At the risk of sounding grandiose, Austin English is a bit of a renaissance man in the truest sense of that term — through his utterly unique cartooning, his publishing efforts with Domino Books, his eclectic comics distribution service (I number myself among its regular customers), his position as editor of the must-read ‘zine But Is It — Comic Aht?, and his new wholesale venture, he’s one of the people most responsible for pushing this medium we all love forward in no small way. I recently had the chance to converse with him about where his various and sundry projects came from, where they’re at now, and where they’re going —

Four Color Apocalypse : For readers who may not be aware of Domino, what was the impetus behind its creation, and how long has it been a going concern now?

Austin English : I started Domino in 2011…

In 1983, Pink Floyd released The Final Cut, an album that hailed itself — in its own words —as “a requiem for the post-war dream by Roger Waters.” A none-too-subtle reaction to/commentary upon Thatcherism’s great betrayal of Britain’s national sacrifices during and after WWII upon a rotten altar of consumerism, anti-egalitarianism, and perhaps most disturbingly resurgent militarism, it was a commercial failure that I’m reliably informed divides fans of the band to this day, but its message is crystal clear : we become the monsters we fight against. Even — maybe especially — when we win.

Precisely one year later, legendary comics artist Barry Windsor-Smith began his own magnum opus that grappled with remarkably similar themes, although he certainly may not have been consciously aware of its scope at the time — after all, what has finally emerged, 37 years later, as Monsters actually began life as a Hulk

You know the drill — the comics gods giveth, but they also taketh away. And so it is that the back half of the deluxe hardback Captain America By Ta-Nehisi Coates Vol. 1 — a six-part storyline titled “Captain Of Nothing” that ran in issues 7-12 of the still-current volume of the monthly Captain America series — offers some significant steps forward, but also some irritating steps back.

For one thing, Cap spends nearly the entirety of this “arc” in prison, awaiting trial for a murder he didn’t commit, but it is, as you’d likely expect, not just any prison — no, The Myrmidon (Coates’ love for mythological names really comes to the fore as this series goes on) is a “big house” for super-powered inmates run by one of Cap’s most notorious nemeses, Baron Von Strucker, who was “gifted” with the job of warden of his very own “superjail”…

What impresses most in the early going of Marvel’s deluxe hardback Captain America By Ta-Nehisi Coates Vol. 1 is that Coates seems to have a clear and distinct vision for what he wants to do with the character — and it’s clearly not to make him a mouthpiece for his own ideas and opinions, much to the probable consternation of those who assumed that was exactly what he had in mind.

On the contrary, when a battle-scarred and psychologically adrift Steve Rogers engages in combat with an army of cloned copies of his old villain Nuke (a fight which began in the pages of a Free Comic Book Day giveaway number that is presented as an introduction here and continues in earnest in the first issue proper), his one anchor is his resolute belief in his country not as it is — divided after Hydra occupation and ideologically, economically, and…

Patriotism, the old saying goes, is the last refuge of scoundrels, but I dunno — these days it just might be the first. From Donald Trump to Alex Jones to Larry Elder to Ben Shapiro to the rapidly-growing list of right-wing “shock jocks” dropping over from COVID at a steady clip (hey, who says all the news is bad?), the media landscape is utterly polluted by scurrilous grifters dry-humping Old Glory for a quick buck and tossing her aside until it’s time to milk their audience of lemmings for even more of their hard-earned (unless it was given to them by means of one of those dastardly “gub’mint handouts” they oppose for other people) cash. The ringleaders of this shell game writ large don’t care about America any more than they care about you, of course, but it seems there will always be a ready and willing audience for…

I dunno if I’ve got miles to go before I sleep (let’s fucking hope not), but I’ve got miles to go before I’m caught up, so let’s keep on keeping on with the single steps that make up the journey of a thousand — you know what? Enough with the cliches already.

Spiny Orb Weaver #2, Edited By Neil Brideau – Starting things off with a shameless plug for my Patreon, I’ve been talking a lot recently about the new trend in comics toward more locally-focused anthologies over on that site, and Brideau/Radiator are taking things a step further by funding this Miami-centric ‘zine with a South Florid arts grant. The format of each issue is tight and disciplined, to be sure, but there’s room within it to tell just about any story a person could want to : the lead feature is done by a South Florida-based artist, followed…

Continuing our frenzied and likely haphazard overview/brief analysis of stuff I read over the course of my break from posting here, we happen upon the following foursome of comics —

Cabin In The Woods, Part One By Tara Booth – Admittedly, the cover price on this 2019 comic from Berlin’s Colorama is steep at 18 Euros plus shipping, but there’s no denying that it’s absolutely gorgeous, as well — which comes as no surprise given that all of Booth’s gouache-painted comics are. The title’s a bit curious given that most of the “action” takes place in the city, but rest assured that by the end (for now) of the largely-wordless narrative our heroine/authorial stand-in makes it to the rural retreat in question. Prior to that, though, we are treated to an equal parts thoughtful and dizzying display of motion and its absence, communicated via the entirely relatable means of workaday…

And so we — or I guess that should be I — return after a few weeks’ absence, certainly none the worse for wear (in fact, dare I say feeling somewhat refreshed), but with plenty to catch you, dear reader, up on. To that end, the next batch of reviews are going to be whirlwind overviews of a number of comics I read over the course of my hopefully-well-earned (you can be the judge of that) break. And seeing as how I’ve wasted enough time recently as is, I think the best course of action is simply to jump right in —

God Bless The Machine By Connor McCann – Don’t look now, but the “Strangers Fanzine Presents” label is turning into the closest thing the comics world offers to a guaranteed mark of quality. Latest case in point : this artistic and conceptual thrill ride from Connor McCann…