Peep Inside

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.

A Bonus Moment of Comics

John Linton Roberson has been showing this page from Joe Matt's Peepshow strip collection from Kitchen Sink Press. It features him and Bernie Mireault as two young cartoonists scraping by. Even before Mireault's recent suicide and Matt's recent death after living a meager and miserly existence for the last several years (albeit willingly), John said it worked as a cautionary tale and urged him to not be broke and destitute in life. I have more thoughts about Joe's work in particular. Particularly the last work he ever did.

 

A Moment of Comics

Cartoonist Joe Matt passed away on Monday. In life, he represented both the best and worst tropes of autobiographical comics. Even when people in the nineties were labelling alternative cartoonists telling stories about their lives as naval gazing whiners obsessing over masturbation and other bodily functions, Joe Matt never changed his style. His angry self-pitying character in his Peep Show comic was laid out for the audience to wonder at, sometimes in disgust or with pity for him.  His final book, Spent, was too much for a lot of people. It could only be classified as either an act of bravery or obsession or both.

Joe Matt never wavered from who he was, even if he might have wanted to. As someone who also can't help being who they are, the life he depicted in his stories was equal parts cautionary and inspiring. I hope he is at peace now and that his body of work (including anything else he was working on) survives him.