October 2007

Mome (Fantagraphics, 2005-). $14.95, quarterly.

by Jared Gardner

With the release this week of the ninth issue of Mome, Fantagraphics’ literary quarterly, it is time to stack the issues and see what we have. In truth, as I confessed to Eric Reynolds, who co-edits Mome with Gary Groth, I really hadn’t entirely brought their ambitious project into focus yet. I had picked up the first couple of issues and found myself somewhat baffled by the unevenness, trying to position it in relation to other graphic anthologies like Drawn and Quarterly Showcase and Fantagraphics’ own earlier (and quite special) Blood Orange. And I continued to pick up an issue here and there, but in counting out my dimes each month, I was just as often inclined to defer the latest issue of Mome for the something more predictable or (I blush to say it) buzz-worthy. Fortunately, Eric took pity on me and sent on a couple of the recent issues I had missed; chastened, I tracked down the other back issues to fill in my run. And after spending a solid week working through the nine issues as they were meant to be read—that is, as a serial, rather than as discrete volumes—I can say without hesitation that what Groth and Reynolds have produced here is something strange, twitchy, and very much alive.

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The inevitable comparisons to Drawn and Quarterly’s Showcase (some volumes of which feature some of the same younger talents we find in Mome) gets to the essence of what it is that makes Mome special. The D&Q Showcase is a place to show off some of the hot young things, many of whom are part of the D&Q roster and about to publish first or new collections of their own. The whole is closer to a group show by a gallery’s stable, with an eye toward grooming the individuals for the limelight. Mome shares some of the same conflicts of interest, of course. But I’ve never been one to worry about potential conflicts of interest in a field where profit margins are so razor thin that they’re largely theoretical—especially in a form where cross-pollinations are in fact so very foundational. And in truth, Mome seems relatively unconcerned with mining talents for graphic novel ore. For Groth and Reynolds, it seems clear, the journal is the thing itself.

Part of what makes Mome so hard to keep on focus is that it is a journal, a series—and serialization is vital to its mission. I suspect that part of what is at stake here is a desire to find mechanisms for preserving the serial pleasures of the comic book in this Age of the Graphic Novel, where smaller presses are finding it harder to keep the old fashioned comic book alive. Fantagraphics, of course, has been playing a major role in a similar experiment—the Ignatz series of European-style serialized albums. For all of the beauty of those volumes, one of the biggest frustrations has been the glacial pace of serialization: two issues of the enigmatic and breathtaking Baobab in two years, for example. The promise of Mome is that the serialized stories (which make up roughly half of each issue) will be continued quarterly, moving the stories along while maintaining the imaginative temporal gaps that allows serialized narrative to dilate and seep into the fabric of daily life.

Of course, such promises have been inevitably stalled along the way, as some of the serialized stories drop out for a quarter here and there. For instance, Sophie Crumb’s dazzling psychedelic adventure “Lucid Nightmare” has taken five quarters to arrive at its fourth (and final?) chapter in issue #9. The result is that, for the casual reader, picking up an issue of Mome is likely to be a disorienting and frustrating experience. And this is my big concern for (not complaint with) the journal, whose weave of serializations, sketchbooks, and short experimental pieces probably captures better than any venue out there the unique energy of alternative comics at this moment in time. I fear that with each issue, it will become harder and harder for readers to join the party. Joining in, for example, Paul Hornshenmeier’s “Life with Mr. Dangerous,” arguably (easily?) the best work of his career, would be mystifying and surely leave a new reader cold. That this is in fact Hornshemeier’s warmest, most honest writing only becomes clear after living with his central character—her fantasies and struggles—over the course of the nine long quarters.

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I am not suggesting here, as some critics have, that Mome should change its format, focusing each issue around longer narratives. Part of the brilliant effect of the journal in its current form is that it allows for the strange synergy of putting these pieces into different combinations, as new stories and creators rotate in and out of the roster, and unlikely and unimagined themes and connections emerge to bind the pieces together within the individual issues. The problem, however, is in finding a mechanism to bind the pieces together across the issues. And it is here, perhaps, that a web archive—particularly for the longer ongoing stories—might be especially valuable to bringing in new readers and keeping old ones. Mome is a commitment for creators and readers alike, and an archive (even a community) where those commitments can be tested and strengthened might serve to keep this important project viable for the coming decade.

And the benefits of the forum for the creators who have been sharing their work in these pages seems clear. Several of these individuals are doing some of the best work of their career, broadening their range and growing, literally before our eyes, issue by issue. In addition to Hornshenmeier and S. Crumb, Gabrielle Bell’s contributions to Mome are a perfect case in point. I had been less than moved by her earlier work (see in my review of Lucky), and so I was not terribly looking forward to her role as one of Mome’s chief contributors. But from the start, her work here has demonstrated all the qualities the earlier sketches did not—moving beyond the diaristic and quotidian details of the life of the American twenty-something, either in imaginative flights or more nuanced exploration of inner spaces. And her drawing has taken on new dimension in both texture and tone, allowing a much more vulnerable warmth and intelligence to come through even at the expense of the perky vivaciousness of her earlier work. I cannot help but feel that the forum Mome has provided her has been just what she needed to develop into the graphic storyteller she was meant to be. Similarly, Anders Nillsen is working through some of his best experimental dialogues, seems to also be spreading his wings again after a devastating experience in his personal life brought his life’s work to a necessary resting place.

And there are, as is appropriate in a journal devoted to highlighting new talent, discoveries that are really very exciting. I am so grateful to have discovered how brilliant is the work of Eleanor Davis, for example. And French creator Émile Bravo’s work in Mome has been like going back to school and having all the lightbulbs go off again: his story in issue #8, “Young Americans,” is perhaps one of the very best short stories Mome has published. And we are also provided with a more leisurely and much-needed vision into the world of European comics in the serial publication of Lewis Trondheim’s “At Loose Ends,” a meditation on creativity at the middle-age of a brilliant career.

There are weak notes, of course. Most of them are, fortunately, short lived, one-shots, and easily skipped over. The big exception to this, at least for this read, is Tim Hensley, whose has dominated far too much prime real estate within the journal for what is at best a weak-kneed Dan Clowes ripoff of a Harvey parody (and that is, in truth, the best I can say about it). The devotion of the editors to this work is baffling to me, and I cannot believe I am alone on this score. I can only hope now that the billionaire protagonists girlfriend has been unceremoniously raped by her father for daring to suggest that anything other than national anthems should ever be sung, well, is there really anything else that needs to be said? I can only hope the answer is no.

And I remain uncertain as to the inclusion in most issues of interviews with members of the Mome crew. Gary Groth is certainly the best comics interviewer around (indeed, all others are indebted to him for every question they ask). But given the fact that The Comics Journal already devotes considerable space to interviews with creators (far too much space in my opinion), there is a feeling of redundancy to offering still more interviews in what should be first and foremost a creative quarterly. I would rather see these interviews collected in the Journal, allowing more space for the stories to develop and letting the comics speak for themselves.

But these are relatively minor complaints, all of them. Because the truth of the matter is that I was going through one of my bi-annual crises of faith in the whole enterprise of graphic narrative arts, wondering why I have decided to devote so much of my waking life, professional reputation, and disposable income to its cause. Mome has single-handedly restored me for at least another couple of years, reminding me that the form continues to evolve, improve, and speak to our 21st-century existence as perhaps no other can. Restored, I now can only hope that Mome is still around in two years to bail me out of my next crisis.


 

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