Editor: Gary Groth
Publisher: Fantagraphics
The Comics Journal turns into The Wire by covering a group of artists that rarely distribute their work outside of their own state, have only a handful of books in print but turn in excellent shorts for the better anthologies.
The Fort Thunder collective include Brian CLIMBING OUT Ralph, Mat TERATOID HEIGHTS Brinkman and Brian MAGGOTS Chippendale among their number. I have to admit that the last book is still unreleased so this makes them even more obscure to even the more clued up of readers. They're the spiritual heirs to Gary Panter's scratchy, frenetic pages and helped to make KRAMER'S ERGOT VOL 4 and NON #4 (well, we're back to mythic objects) such an absolute joy.
For a company like Fantagraphics (who were in financial trouble earlier in the year) it's such a defiant gesture to cover, over the space of sixty-eight pages, a group of artists that go largely unread. Tom Spurgeon provides the central article and manages to show the communal living space where they slept and worked as three-way marriage between Warhol's Factory, the ZAP team and Pee-Wee's Playhouse without any of the financial concerns.
It probably helps that I love what I have seen of their comics, love the sense of movement and the creation of personal mythology and symbols. Highwater Books seems to be doing its best at coaxing collections out of the teams and the ones who should have been in the gang but weren't (Ron Rege Jr, Marc Bell).
The best issue of the Journal since Devlin & Crane took over for a month.
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