My heart goes out to Roberta Gregory, whose latest collection has been delayed due to an Iranian missile hitting a ship that was carrying her book's entire print run off the Strait of Hormuz. Enjoy a page of Gregory's creation, Midge McCracken, being her best self from Naughty Bits #8.
Something pleasantly different for National Poetry Month. Charles Bukowski dipped his toes in comics. Pat Moriarity drew several stories Bukowski wrote. This page is the concluding page of "They Rolled The Whole Bed Out Of Here," with words by Bukowski and artwork by Pat Moriarity in Zero Zero #1. Always remembered the silent panel on this page. Wonder if that was an innovation of the artist or paced by the writer.
This half page (taken from an article in The Comics Journal) is the only image I could find from Unsupervised Existence, written and drawn by Terry LaBan. It was once considered one of the best comics of the nineties. I remembered this scene of the cab drivers' writing workshop and wanted to include it for National Poetry Month. It was a tougher undertaking than I thought it would be.
My then girlfriend, Lynne Sticklor, had one of the collections from that series. Love's Not a Three Dollar Fare. I had the other one, International Bob. I loved LaBan's depiction of city life and its inhabitants struggling to both exist and matter. The strips in Love's Not a Three Dollar Fare seemed like some kind of commentary on our relationship. If not for the sex scenes (again, it was the nineties), this book could have been required reading in schools. Hopefully, someone can collect the entire series before it's completely forgotten.
I took time out of worrying about our nation in crisis to talk about the late Joe Matt, his body of work, and the posthumous issue of his comic Peepshow. Read it now over at The Ugly Monster.
For no particular reason, here's a scene of Buddy Bradley visiting his Trump supporting mom from Hate Revisited #3 by Peter Bagge.
