"And So It Goes" - Linda Ellerbee

One of my earliest experiences with being duly

impressed by anyone in the media, let alone to the

point of considering them a role model, had to have been

Linda Ellerbee.

The stoic, even-paced, high-minded anchorwoman--

who had been the antithesis of glitzy and vapid fake

news that had already started filling the air waves in the 1980s--

was a stellar figure to me, and made a great impression.

Reading her autobiography in my teens was an equally

meaningful affair.

With evocative, deliberate, engaging words which

create a picture and tell a personal tale, Ellerbee's

written word is as formidable and hypnotic as her

speaking voice. Casual strength. Reserved potency.

Her riveting--and quite revealing--look of the behind the scenes

television market over a lengthy career made for some

shocking insights. Remarkably, Ellerbee stimulates you with

the personal nature of her victories, her tragedies, and her

attacks without becoming a victim or a martyr. It's all

just as matter-of-fact as the protagonist's signature

tagline;

"And so it goes."

Even now, a few decades later, there is much that can be learned from

the pragmatism and style of this gracious humorist and observer!

"Comfort and Joy" by Jim Grimsley

"Comfort & Joy" is a novel that continues the story of

Dan Crell--(from Grimsley's "Winter Birds")--

a southerner with a hard past who's known poverty

and all that is linked to such an origin. The holiday setting is

prominent as, in both flashbacks and the present, Dan and his

upper crust partner, Ford, are dealing with the demands

of a relationship in conjunction with career, family obligations,

and awkward uncertainty about pursuing intimacy.

Packed with nuance and character, "Comfort & Joy" is

not--contrary to the title, in the best of contradictory manners--

a happy feel-good piece. It's unpredictable, human, complicated,

and real. Things don't go smoothly, people don't act as we would like,

and not all the answers come rushing in at appropriate times.

Thank goodness.

The conflicts arise from a variety of sources, including

a class divide in the two men and varying degrees of

contentment with their own sexuality. Throw into the mix

the normal difficulties of two men being in love (aptly

outlined here in both inner monologues and fight

sequences,) as well as an HIV diagnosis, and there

is a plenitude of engaging material.

To read a free section preview

or to order a copy, go to

http://www.amazon.com/Comfort-Joy-Jim-Grimsley/dp/156512250X

***

"The Good Neighbor" by Jay Quinn

"The Good Neighbor" is, as one might suspect,

not a title given to complete accuracy.

There may be a touch of facetiousness involved!

Eternal southerner Jay Quinn dishes up a

lively and intriguing story of an established gay

male couple living well in an indistinguishable

home in an upscale Orlando community.

Barely averting midlife crises themselves,

how will they respond when their new

neighbors--a married straight couple with

children--become wrapped up in their vortex?

I loved that this story effortlessly weaves all aspects together;

two very different relationships that nonetheless

have parallels, a back story that is indulged in

stops and starts, sexual tension that is splitting

open everyone involved, and a pot-burner

style that leaves you unsure what dastardly

or unseemly thing may happen next.

The story didn't go where I expected it to,

but the ending was nonetheless satisfying

and rewarding. Jay Quinn scores again, with

another great work that reads like something

I would have written to satisfy myself!

Another aspect of Jay's writing I love is that

characters are murky and imperfect and don't

fit into neat little boxes, and their motives

remain difficult to understand, if not unclear.

They're real.

Sexy, lurid, dangerous, and filled with realistic

everyday bits that people in and out of relationships

will identify with. If you love waiting to see 'what

might happen next,' "The Good Neighbor" is for you.

Interview with Jay Quinn re: "The Beloved Son"

***

Best American Comics 2009 (edited by Charles Burns)

"The Best American Comics" series has been producing annual
volumes since 2006 for the "Best of" in the comics field for each
year. It's an excellent series that highlights predominantly Indy
and alternative/small press comics, as selected by the rotating
editor and series editors Jessica Abel and Matt Madden, and gives
readers the opportunity to sample a wide array of lesser-known
(or less-widely-distributed) talents.

Included in this stellar volume are hundreds of pages of various
styles, insights, and viewpoints, including;

*Tim Hensley's oddly disjointed cross-generational Sixties-send ups,
(featuring 'Gropius',) placing sharply-colored cartoonish Archies/Bingo/
Scooter style kids comics with politically incorrect/incoherent asides.

*Daniel Clowes brilliant as always with a scathing review of a
fictional film critic (Justin M. Damiano.)

*A riveting tale of tape dispensers by R. Crumb and Aline Kominsky-
Crumb. (below)

*Michael Kupperman contributes a hilarious and retro copper buddy
story with beautifully muted colors and crazy 'ads' running alongside the
feature, Twain and Einstein!

*Dan Zettwoch gives flashbacks to some intricate and bizarre old
church bulletins he drew!

*Matt Broersma's "The Company" is a mysterious tale with a noir
quality and a great eye for simplified layouts (think Rizzo from "100
Bullets" or Sale.)

*Adrian Tomine provides one of my favorite (and linear) lengthy
stories about obsession, real life, friends, and reminiscence. (below)

*Mimi Pond details an artist's search for a place to draw from in
 'Over Easy.' (below)

*Art Spiegelman does a brilliant job showcasing the abilities of the
comic as a morphing, living creation, in short order.

*Gabrielle Bell gives a fantastic autobiographical aside with a nice piece
called "When I was Eleven" (Think 'Alison Bechdel.')

*Gary Panter's "Daltokyo" gave my mind a workout!

*Jerry Moriarty's grotesques laid over 1950s imagery (no words) were
extremely powerful and evocative

*Dash Shaw's "The Galactic Funnels" tells a weird story of Dan Dak and
Stan Smart with romance, competition, intellectual property theft,
and science fiction as a few of the cool themes employed.

*Jason Lutes' Berlin is excerpted with its devastatingly realistic slice
of domestic violence in the midst of war-torn Germany. Survival isn't pretty.

*Tony Millionare's quirky monkeys and birds never fail to satisfy.

*Chapter Two of Sammy Harkham's "Black Death" is a two-tone treat
of whimsical art that belies a darker story nature. Some gorgeous work
(think Herve', Peyo, and other masters.)

*Chris Ware's "Jordan W. Lint" is a massive (seemingly) autobio-
graphical journey through some key points of the man's life, with
extraordinary layouts and structure as we have come to expect from Ware.

*A warm and nicely developed story of some latchkey kids, "Freaks" by
Laura Park is a great piece. (below)

*An excerpt from the awesome graphic novel "Skim" (previewed by me
here:"Skim" ) by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki is also included.

*Appropriately titled (har har!) 'Antoinette' by Koren Shadmi is a hoot.

*Al Columbia gives a shocking and subtle insight into a dark side of the
American dream, with a scant few panels and no words, merely intricate,
spookily-detailed art that paints a picture that draws you in.

*A disturbing journey from Gilbert Hernandez called 'Papa' details a
man's difficult trip filled with hardships and maladies surreal and scary.

*Anders Nilsen does a beautiful job of creating a macabre and mysterious
scene with a style reminiscent of Moebius.

*"Glenn Ganges in 'Pulverize'" by Kevin Huizenga is a wonderful tale of
the appeal of video games to grown men, a sliver of the dot com bubble's
impact, an indictment of bosses who want to be your friends, and other
joys of auto-biographical comics. (below)

Best to read one at a time, so the taste savors. Reading through causes the
bleed and every tale has such a distinctly different feel it's not as satisfying.

I do love crazy and discombobulated flotsam and jetsam, and art for
art's sake, but I'm still predominantly a fan of actual stories, points of
views, tales. This has plenty...but it also has anthropomorphic hi jinks
and acid-tripping wing nuts depicting chaos-filled minds, too!

A splendid collection showcasing the diversity of sequential art story-tellers
and a great introduction for someone who still doesn't realize the depth that
'mere comics' can have.

Order "Best American Comics 2009" online

**********************************************************

Veteran's Day for All

How We Won

Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military

Ask and Tell

Secret Service: Untold Stories of Lesbians in the Military

Unfriendly Fire

Our Time

***

Books About Mittens

Two Books Reveal Romney's Truth

***

"Mississippi Mud: Southern Justice and the Dixie Mafia" by Edward Humes

Mississippi Mud is a true story revolving around the mysterious murders
of two  prominent Biloxi, Mississippi residents in the late 1980s. The book
painstakingly and dramatically reenacts the goings on in the underbelly
of this Southern Strip of corruption and crime (run by the 'Dixie Mafia')
and the murky interactions of a handful of southern undesirables that led
up to the deaths of husband and wife, Vincent and Margaret Sherry.

Through the eyes of police detectives, con artists, lifers, hired killers, and, most poignantly--the tireless avenger of the Sherrys, their eldest
daughter, Lynne--a storyline is set up that will keep readers rapt. (At
one point, the information presented seemed to indicate rather an
extensive selection of potential suspects.)

Humes beautifully orchestrates the manipulation of timeline and massive
amounts of information. Taken from interviews, transcripts, testimony,
public records, newspaper articles, police reports, news reports, and a good
bit of detective work, the voluminous information is presented in a pot-boiler
manner so that you are unable to predict what will happen next.

And yet there is a comprehensible, easily-absorbed sense as he makes
the torrent of information seem effortless. There is such a rich, vast story
here, painting the humanity of the Sherrys and connecting the readers to
them as if they were our own family...as though we are the ones gnawing
and climbing the walls over the frustrating lack of justice and the far reaches
of the city's corruption.

This is the exhaustive study of how two lives of essentially regular
people can become trivialized by a system filled with corruption,
incompetence, and intimidation. The Southern mafia, perhaps seemingly
a joke at first, becomes a very real and frightening wall of power that,
as anyone who has lived in the south for five minutes can attest, is a
very real and frightening thing.

Kirksey Nix with all his swagger and charm and homilies and smarts
doesn't have anything on Stalin or Mussolini in the sociopath depart-
ment, and he's an all-too common face of the new criminal. The 
devastation of all the harm done by his schemes--from the comfort
of a prison cell--is staggering.

The heroine of the book, Lynne Sposito (daughter of the murder victims) pushes on well past the point most would have dissolved into
tears or fallen to pieces; facing death threats, the concerns for family
safety, stress and grief, and a burden that seemed as though it might
never end...her parents possibly never receiving closure on their lives.

(Note of warning: DON'T look at the photos included in the book
until you've read it! Even though placed in the middle, the captions
accompanying the photos for the central characters gave away
results not found until the end of the book, destroying much of
the suspense!)