The Ephemerist

Above are the representations of Seth & Chet (Brown) by Seth & Chet respectively (from Palooka-ville 5 and The Little Man). I’m a great fan of both of them, but I was wondering if part of their appeal stems from the fact that their comics somewhat interlock, since they (at least used to) constantly refer to one another.

Come to think of it, these again are Seth & Chet, this time by buddy Joe Matt (from Peep Show 13, in my opinion the best of the series). I think it’s quite quaint that you never see Matt in the other two’s comics. Or did I miss something ?

All artwork © the respective creators

Chester Brown drew this strip for the New York Times, which ran it in its magazine on July 8, 2004. The first half of the strip appeared on the cover, and the strip continued inside. Or rather, it didn’t, because Brown wanted to clarify that it seems to be impossible to seriously discuss comics without referring to Batman or Donald Duck or yelling “Sha-boom ! They’re not for kids anymore !”

After reading Charlie Gower’s post on tantramar about the cover Chris Ware did for Rousseau’s Candide, I checked out the Penguin Deluxe website for other covers by cartoonists. Most of them are fairly recognisable, such as covers by Art Spiegelman, Seth, Roz Chast and Anders Nilsen respectively :

Not only do these covers immediately jump out as different than all the other book covers you see on the shelves, the cartoonists never even tried to shy away from their trademark style (which is not to say that I don’t like them - I think this is a very interesting project, and the books are more beautiful than most).

What struck me, though, was that I’d not recognised two covers as being by cartoonists, namely those by Frank Miller (for Gravity’s Rainbow) and Tomer Hanuka (for the Marquis de Sade). They looked to me as covers made by bona fide book designers, not cartoonists trying something else for a change.

I’m not really sure what I prefer - the books that sport covers that have a high “comics ephemerist” value, or the other ones. I do know though that, if Frank Miller were to look for a different profession after comics and movies, book design would be a very valid alternative.

Fred Hembeck, of the “destroys [insert popular culture property]” fame, has been collecting the best columns in his his Dateline series on his website. I particularly like the one above, which makes fun of the Three Musketeers of alternative comics (Seth, Chester Brown and Joe Matt). I shudder to think what would happen if they followed his advice for spicing up their books…