1. Hectic Planet #5 and #6 by Evan Dorkin, Slave Labor Graphics 1992-1993
I included both issues as my top choice because they hold the two parts to the story "The Young and the Aimless." Halby Durzell is depressed, once again, because of his once-love Elsie LeGrande. He keeps going on and on about things in his life and how much he misses her and what could've been done to make their relationship work. Halby's best friend, Renensco P. Blue, is sick of hearing about it and the two of them decide to head out on the town.
These tales of despair, love, and hate take place in the year 2074. Once a "space opera" involving violence, aliens, and aimless missions, the comic Pirate Corp$ was renamed Hectic Planet to show the shift from all the science-fiction material to the more sympathetic turn the book took. It started to deal more with relationships, hanging out and going to shows as opposed to the old days of the book seeming more like a disjointed Star Wars. Ren and Halby run into friend Tigger Levy and the three wander around with little money and a whole day to waste. They steal some hot dogs and, later on, skinheads threaten to beat up Hal and Ren. Halby punches a cop after he harasses one of the female characters and ends up in jail with Ren. They're separated and issue #6 concentrates more on Renensco's thoughts and how angry he is with his best friend for getting him arrested. This book is also an excellent showcase of many of the characters that have appeared in the previous issues of the series.
There was a proposed seventh issue but that never happened. The closest thing was a collection of stories called The Bummer Trilogy that starred characters from Hectic Planet. Three trade paperbacks collecting everything under the Hectic Planet banner have been released through Slave Labor Graphics. "Your planet, my planet … 24 hours a day … it's always a hectic planet."
2. Schizo #1 by Ivan Brunetti, Fantagraphics Books October 1995
This is one of the funniest and most disturbing comics I've ever read. I ordered a reprint of this book from the comic shop I worked at in high school and fell in love with it immediately. My friends did, too, and I ended up ordering another 15 copies to give out to them.
Schizo focuses on Ivan's huge lack of self-esteem and he puts his thoughts down very clearly on paper by using his many different styles of art to help convey them. He talks about everything from his personal life to his views on the state of people, and continues on to discuss his hate for the world. Ivan has a section in the book entitled "1,784 Things That Make Me Vomit." He only writes about 50 because of "space considerations," he says.
There are some great four-panel comic strips that are made to look like those in the daily papers, but they are definitely not. The strips include titles such as "Drink My Piss, Motherfucker", "Please Hurt My Oversized Testicles" and "The Nun with Two Dicks." If you hate all the bland humor that is out there and the comic strips that are afraid to take risks, then this book is very much for you. An even more hard-hitting book of Ivan's work called HAW! was put out by Fantagraphics and it featured nothing but hilarious one-panel cartoons.
3. Acme Novelty Library #1 by Chris Ware, Fantagraphics Books Winter 1993
The whole Acme Novelty Library saga starts out with a one-page strip starring little Jimmy Corrigan, the smartest kid on Earth, getting sick of living on a farm and he throws a rock at a chicken's head. Then, there is a highly complicated, intricately drawn story spread out about Jimmy Corrigan switching back from his life when he was older and his adventures when he was a child. Some of the pages have tons of panels drawn on them and the detail is breathtaking. Most of this book is in color and it requires many re-readings to even begin to understand anything about it. Older Jimmy is alone and sad while his younger adventures presented him many ways to fill a day. The back cover features the pieces to build a cool little toy robot model out of paper. There's a single-page strip featuring "Big Tex" and the first of the many fake advertisements. This time you can buy a Telephone Pole:
"What a bargain. Bring one of these home and won't the neighbors talk. Tremendously heavy, nearly impossible to fit in the front door. Treated acidic wood, will corrode most any material, eats holes in hands, clothing. Some still have wires attached. Put in backyard to confuse the workmen, or to add a 'nostalgic' touch to the scenery." That's a small example of the sometimes-subtle humor you can expect to find in Acme Novelty Library. A collection of most of the Jimmy Corrigan strips was also released as Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth and can be found at nearly any bookstore. Ware has contributed to many publications including The New Yorker and Chicago Reader, and he recently did an animation sequence for the television version of This American Life.
4. Milk & Cheese #5 by Evan Dorkin, Slave Labor Graphics April 1994
One's a cartoon of hate, and the other is a wedge of spite. They are Milk & Cheese, Dairy Products Gone Bad. The cover of this issue has the two wielding a bloody bat and a broken bottle remarking, "Welcome to our world …" This book is the whole reason I make stupid little comic adventures of my own. M&C were so inspiring to me to create absurd little one- to two-page misadventures for the masses.
These two little troublemakers are very smart. They hate a lot of things and they run around declaring it to the world. The pair spouts off crazy little-known facts and they drink an awful lot. In this particular issue, they ridicule and humiliate the French, set a guy's head on fire, throw their television set out the window when Full House is on, and that's only 3 percent of the excitement contained in this book.
Evan Dorkin spares no space for his excellent humor. Anywhere he can, he adds his own quips and gags for Milk & Cheese to abide by. Out of the seven issues of M&C, this one is the best looking and best written.
Evan had a cartoon one-shot on Cartoon Network entitled Welcome to Eltingville that was based on characters from his book Dork and featured music by The Aquabats. He and his wife were also frequent writers on the television show Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, and they continue to contribute material to Mad Magazine as well as the Nickelodeon show Yo Gabba Gabba!.
5. Acme Novelty Library #10 by Chris Ware, Fantagraphics Books spring 1998
All the issues of this book are astonishing, but another favorite of mine is #10. The actual comic is hidden in an intricate book of fake ads and messages. For example, you can purchase a "Genuine Smile," a "Genuine Roman Crucifix," or even "Increased Productivity." The main story of this issue continues with the Jimmy Corrigan storyline started back in issue #1. Jimmy gets stranded on a deserted island and resorts to talking to himself and making new friends out of a safety pin and a match. He ends up getting saved, where he returns home and it is depicted that his life there is as lonely as it was on the island.
The crazy ads for fake products are my favorite thing in the book. The words are very tiny and Ware packs so much material into describing each item for sale. It's very amazing that everything held within issues of Acme Novelty Library are all done by one person.
6. Johnny the Homicidal Maniac #5 by Jhonen Vasquez, Slave Labor Graphics August 1996
Fans of this book may be shocked that I picked this book out of all the others seeing as how Johnny isn't even really in it. You just see him a few times, all bloody and ready to die. I chose issue #5 because it was the first issue of JTHM that I ever read. I had seen a little bit about Johnny in some of the comic magazines, and one day my boss at the comic shop got some copies in for people who ordered them. And, amazingly enough, one of the copies wasn't picked up and I got my first taste of creator Jhonen Vasquez' mayhem.
A couple of Johnny's victims that he has kidnapped are still alive and trying to escape his maze of a house. A group of beings with tentacles are chasing them and attacking everything in their path. This is the strangest Johnny book because so much stuff is just thrown in to take up space. I love it, though, because it also introduced me to Happy Noodle Boy. HNB is the creation of the Johnny in the comics and it's totally insane. He is a stick person that constantly yells at people and says very strange things all the time.
You might know Jhonen a little more from his Nickelodeon cartoon, Invader Zim. It's the story about an alien who arrives on Earth in hopes of conquering it. Joined by his adorable robot, GIR, Zim keeps getting his plans foiled by an Earth kid named Dib.
7. Steven #1 (magazine-sized) by Doug Allen, Kitchen Sink Press 1989
This was the first collection of Steven strips, detailing the adventures of a 12-year-old drunk, oddly enough named Steven. They had appeared in some magazines and also ran in various alternative newspapers around the country. Steven always says "No" and uses catch phrases such as "Eat some paste!" There are characters with names such as Brock, Mr. Owl Ph.D and Fifi Doodle that have to endure many hardships, mainly the wrath of Steven. That is because Steven hates everything and everybody. He seems sad most of the time and acts out to hide it from the world. This could be why he drinks, too. Many times, the lad gets sick of his own comic and wants to leave. He complains constantly, making this enjoyable to many people who share in Steven's angst towards the world.
These hilarious strips were a great precursor to many other indie comics to follow in the '90s. Doug Allen also contributed art to the film American Splendor, which told the story of Harvey Pekar's autobiographical comic book of the same name.
8. Optic Nerve #3 by Adrian Tomine, Drawn & Quarterly Publications August 1996
The first Optic Nerve issue I ever read, this series evolved from the mini-comics of a very young Adrian Tomine. This book is drawn more realistically than the others that make this list and the characters show more emotion and make their thoughts more aware to the reader. There are four stories that make up this book. The most notable one is the first, "Dylan & Donovan." D & D are twin teenage girls that have grown apart from each other and society. Donovan (Donna, for short) is going through serious teenage angst. Their dad wants to bond with them after having just gotten a divorce from his fourth wife. He tells them that he is taking them to a comic convention, because he is trying very hard to relate to his daughters (Donna digs comics, Dylan thinks they're "OK"). He tries even harder with Donovan, though, because she is so despondent. They go to the comic convention and split up to buy comics and other pop culture junk. Later that night, Dylan gets a hold of Donna's diary to try to figure out what's up with her. She reads some stuff she'd rather not know about, she closes it and goes to bed. There's another day of the convention and the three, once again, go their separate ways. The story keeps going to Dylan, who can't seem to figure out why she is so worried about her sister. She decides it's a waste of time to think about it. The day after that, they go home and no one talks as their dad keeps driving down the road.
This book taught me that comics are a great tool to make you reflect on your own life. Adrian was born in 1974 and only a teenager when he was first praised and recognized in the world of comics. All of the issues of Optic Nerve have been collected in several volumes.
9. Reid Fleming, World's Toughest Milkman #1 by David Boswell, Eclipse Comics October 1986
Reid Fleming is, in fact, the world's toughest milkman, and he will make it a point that you know that. Reid lives in a world where it is still customary to receive milk door-to-door. He constantly wrecks his delivery trucks. He yells at his superiors and basically does what he wants. He's a balding man, but always remarks that he cuts his hair that way. His favorite show is The Horrors of Ivan, which is about a skeleton of a man who wanders around. Reid is a winner with the ladies and loves causing trouble wherever he goes. Issue one of the Eclipse series took over from Boswell's earlier self-published Reid Fleming tales with the first part of the story "Rogue to Riches." The art is very attractive as Boswell spends a lot of time on detail to the characters and backgrounds by using hatching and cross-hatching techniques that adds more complex layers to the story.
10. Sin Comics #1 by Jay Stephens, Black Eye Productions Winter 1993
Sin is a great showcase of all the things that were to come from Jay Stephens. It uses a comic-within-a-comic style at some points of the book, and even once uses a cartoon-within-a-comic approach to display some more fun. The stories in here feature characters from Stephens' later series' The Land of Nod and Atomic City Tales. Issue #1 goes from totally insane to very humorous, to superhero serious and back through all of them again. It doesn't disappoint you no matter what kind of comic style you like because Stephens caters to all of your needs. The back of the book is a great end to the whole adventure where it holds a Captain Rightful comic. C.R. is a super-powered flying thing that always comes to the rescue of those in need a little too late. This one is about a guy who's riding a motorcycle when he hits an animal, flies off his bike and smacks himself into a tree. As he screams for help, he falls back off the tree limb he flew into and lands in a river. As he goes over a waterfall, the whiny little brat screams for help one more time. He ends up dying on some rocks just as Captain Rightful arrives declaring, "Here I come."
Stephens also had a few cartoon shorts on Nickelodeon's Kablam! that featured his superhero character JetCat; he created the show Tutenstein for Discovery Kids, and he has an upcoming show on Cartoon Network called The Secret Saturdays.
Read an interview with Josh Sullivan here.
This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2008.