A lot of Narrow Books action this week. For the Unique LA event, we’re adding more titles to the catalog of books we’re selling that we didn’t print. First off, two collections of Neil Swaab’s Mr. Wiggles strips.
Neil published the first collection of his comics strips himself and then the second collection was published by the very eclectic NBM. The Mr. Wiggles strip has been featured as an alt-weekly strip, and Neil’s work in that context has been compared a lot… to other artists… This of course is the insult we often deliver to a unique artist’s work, and I’m going to be no different (see my next paragraph). But yeah, his work on Mr. Wiggles has been compared to Johnny Ryan, Pete Bagge, Tony Millionaire, Bill Watterson, and that guy who does Dilbert (which is such a freakish assortment that it gives lie to the whole idea of comparisons). The strip’s a fun read and he’s not afraid of carrying story lines across multiple strips, which for me has always been a favorite when it comes to strips and of course is why I’m a bigger consumer of strips in book form than in the pages of papers.
"Shoot" by Neil Swaab
But the other thing that I’m really interested in about Neil is his work outside of the strip (see his personal site at www.neilswaab.com). First off, I’ll mention that he’s been part of the team on the cartoon Superjail, which Mark and I were just discussing last week, and which is an amazing freakshow of a cartoon that left us both surprised but very happy. For my part, I caught my first episode just last month, very late at night in a casino hotel room when I was trying to go to sleep… and I couldn’t turn the television off until it was over. Then there’s Neil’s illustration work, which for me (and here’s those damned comparisons) reminds me of Sala, Burns, and even a dash of Dave Cooper (minus the fat bottomed girls). (See above and below for examples.)
"Guideposts" by Neil Swaab
And then we’ve also gotten our hands on some of the work of John Pham, who’s this great artist and designer who’s also got a grasp of story, which of course is a perfect marriage—in fact I believe any artist who doesn’t have a respect for narrative is always going to be crippled… John’s never going to have that problem.
We’ll have John’s Sublife Vol. 1 (Fantagraphics), which is an amazing anthology of his comics… Rather than trying to describe it here, just follow the link above to the page at Fantagraphics that has a great slideshow of the book (just scroll down).
But, and! we’ll also have issue 3 of 1-Up megazine, the video game zine that John designs… As an example of how smart a designer he is, I urge you to investigate how rich he’s made the thing using only two ink colors. Of course it’s a great zine, with a lot of great content, but Heck! If you’re at all into printing and publishing, check out the magic trick he did there just from a design point of view.
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