The first two releases: The Push Man and Other Stories (1969) and Abandon the Old in Tokyo (1970)
Thank you, Drawn and Quarterly, for showing me exactly how I'll become bankrupt.
These comics are amazing, if depressing. (And mildly shocking: in the 1970 collection Abandon the Old in Tokyo, I wasn't really prepared for the man-on-dog action at all.) They're also ambiguous, open-ended, misanthropic, and surprisingly modern. A generic "everyman" highlights the often hidden side of the Japanese economic boom of the late 1960s - at times he is a sewerman, unclogging drains and avoiding eels and fetuses; other times, he endures in his marriage to a woman who alternately is having an affair or simply is a prostitute.
Remember, I said they were depressing.
Two in the collection have been released so far, with many others in the works. All I can say is that even at $20 each, they're worth it. The binding alone is worth it, really.
I'm trying to picture what the whole collecting would look like in my library, and finding myself turning into Homer Simpson: mmm...library.
No comments:
Post a Comment