Zines, Comics, and other Hip Lit

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Current mood: creative

Rather than do the traditional Mother's Day Brunch, the family and I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago today for an event called Zines, Comics, and other Hip Lit, presented by the MCA and Quimby's Bookstore. (See more about Quimby's below.) Quimby's had a long table with a lot of their books, zines, and comics for sale, with some authors and zine writers there as well. I chatted briefly with a couple of the Quimby's folks about my being a librarian lucky enough to buy the graphic novels for my library's collection. (It's pretty amazing that I lucked into this, actually. When they hired me at my library I was told that I'd be buying books in the 700s and 800s, which means Art books—including architecture, crafts, photography, comics, etc. —and Literature. These were the perfect selection areas for me!)

So anyway, while at the Quimby's table, one of the zine creators there, Al Burian, gave me a copy of his book, "Things Are Meaning Less." It's a 100 page collection of comics he drew from 1997-1998. I read it while I waited for my son and husband to look around the museum, and I was awestruck.

The first story is a beautiful little piece, with musings about life, maturity, the nature of coincidence, and a power plant's flashing lights that may or may not have prescient meaning. Throughout the panels, our hero is making a sandwich. The last frame shows him with sandwich in hand and he's thinking: "Peanut butter and jelly sandwich. As usual, totally kick-ass." The beauty of the mundane--I loved this book. I'm definitely going to check out his zine Burn Collector, which is also available at Quimby's.

If you ever come to Chicago, you have to go to Quimby's (www.quimbys.com). It's a great comic book store, with books on every publishing subculture you can imagine, from "Erotica & Fetish" to "Mayhem" to "Lowbrow Art." Check out their blog, too. I was alerted that the new BUTT magazine had come in! Read the description of it here: http://quimbys.com/product_info.php/products_id/19203 But here's a teaser: one of the articles listed in the magazine is: "'Dirty Danny--Amsterdam Homo Hobo Hasn't Changed His Filthy Bed Sheets Since 1996,' by Lenert Engelberts." I don't know about you, but I'm intrigued....

Currently listening : Operators Manual By Buzzcocks Release date: By 12 November, 1991