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BEST OF THE NEW COMICS

"...the prejudice against comics is so widespread, and it seems impossible to change," says Gary Groth, editor of The Comics Journal (Seattle).
Most book stores won't stock comics for whatever reason.
Art colleges refuse to lower themselves and teach comics in drawing studies, while drawing lecturers remain ignorant of comics history.
Libraries don't have a comics section.
People think comics are for kids so when they go into a comics store and buy a comic with sex in it they call the Censorship board and have it removed from the shelves.
People still confuse the medium of comics with genre.
They think comics are all about superheros, cute animal characters, and bland newspaper families: cute, moralising, patronising, gutless, bland, and commercial.
Ok, most of it is.
Superhero publishers Marvel, D.C., and Image do get most readers, and if you walk into a comics store you'll see mostly Spiderman and co.
But a lot of mature work has been created, especially since the 1960s.
Many collected editions of artists' work are now available, along with other quality comics, if you're prepared to hunt for them.
Here are some of the better ones:
For starters you can't go past Robert Crumb, as seen in the documentary "Crumb" (1994).
In 1968, Crumb, convinced he'd never fit into the commercial comics business, published Zap comics in San Francisco.
Zap took on religion, sex and society in an unrestrained, LSD-influenced style.
Zap published Gilbert Shelton (The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers) and S. Clay Wilson (Crumb says his work was liberated by the sexual content of Wilson's The Checkered Demon).
Crumb is regarded as a prophet by comics artists and his influence is obvious in Peter Bagge (Hate), Daniel Clowes (Eightball), and the dark and hilarious work of Ivan Brunetti (Schizo).
Crumb's characters include himself at odds with U.S. society, Fritz the Cat, and Dale Steinberger the Jewish cowgirl.
Crumb debates with himself in stories: his pragmatic side Flakey Foont argues with the idealist Mr Natural.
It's all drawn in an old-fashioned, innocent style.
See Carload O'Comics, America, and R. Crumb Draws the Blues, featuring work from Weirdo, Hup, Zap, and Despair.
There are some excellent Japanese manga (comics) that have been translated for the American market.
In Japan people of all ages read manga.
They're printed on cheap paper in books about half the size of a Brisbane phone book, read on trains, then thrown away and recycled.
Manga cater for special interest groups, for example, there's one manga that has stories that all involve the popular game of Pachinko which is like a vertical version of pinball used for illicit gambling.
There are manga about majong, combat, business and sports.
Manga in Japan are divided into four or five categories: shonen (boys), shojo (girls), redisu (ladies), seijin (erotic manga for men), and seinen (young men).
The bi-monthly June is a magazine for female readers exclusively featuring stories of love between males.
Toshihiko Sagawa, who claims to have developed the magazine's concept, says that the characters have an appeal because they combine desired attributes of both sexes.
Comic Amour is an example of redikomi (Ladies' comics) which contains racy reading material for women, while other redikomi have stories on marriage, child-raising and mystery stories.
But Garo is probably the most respected magazine.
Garo isa manga that aims to encourage the development of effective drawing and story-telling styles.
Popular among intellectuals and radicalized students, Garo was created in 1964 as a forum for artist Sampei Shirato and others to experiment.
Comics Underground Japan (Blast Books), Kevin Quigley ed., is an excellent collection of these underground manga artists.
One of the stories by Suehiro Maruo(creator of the excellent Mr Arashi's Amazing Freak Show) features a story about the Japanese conquering America during World War Two, complete with the be-heading of General MacArthur. They let him keep his sunglasses on.
Sake Jock (Blast Books) is another title worth reading..
Many Japanese "graphic novels" have been translated for the American market.
Masumune Shirow is an artist worth checking out.
His series Ghost in the Shell, Dominion, and Orion have been collected into graphic novels.
Ghost in the Shell (published by Dark Horse) was popularised by the excellent animated movie, and would appeal to readers of cyber-punk novels.
It deals with the theme of when the human soul ends and the cybernetic machinery begins.
Anti-terrorist agent Major Motoko Kusanagi and her public security offsiders battle a cybercriminal called The Puppeteer.
Rumiko Takahashi's short stories (in comics) about Japanese urban life have been collected in Rumic Theater (Viz) and Rumic World Trilogy eg. a family has to hide a penguin from the leader of the anti-pets faction in an apartment tenants' association.
Domu, a Child's Dream (Dark Horse) by Katsuhiro Otomo is a graphic novel about an evil old man in an apartment complex who uses psychicpowers to kill tenants, until confronted by a small girl with psychic abilities.
Then there's Sanctuary by Sho Fuminara with art work by Ryoichi Ikegami (who did the art for Crying Freeman about a Chinese assassin who cries after he kills people. Sensitive).
Sanctuary is an insightful look into theYakuza and power play in the Japanese Diet.
Turning back to the U.S., The Worst of Boiled Angel is a collection of work from Mike Diana's controversial zine.
In 1994, Boiled Angel earned Diana an obscenity conviction in Florida.
The first comics artist to receive a jail term for obscenity, Diana argued his work was religious critiqueand a commentary on social evils like sexual abuse.
Diana reserves a special hatred for the sexual abuses of Catholic priests and other people in loco parentis, and some stories feature priests raping children.
Of course, the misguided obscenity trial has inadvertently served Diana's cause by publicising his excellent work.
Meanwhile The Comic Book Legal Defence Fund and Diana are trying for one last win in the Florida courts before appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Hernandez Brothers, Gilbert and Jaime, from Oxnard, north of Los Angeles, have had their Love and Rockets series collected in such works as House of Raging Women, and Music For Mechanics (Fantagraphics).
Their artwork and stories often feature strong female characters.
Gilbert explores his Latin american roots in his Heartbreak Soup stories about a matriarchy in a fictional Central American town, Palomar.
Jaime explored the punk rock community with his humorous sci-fi series Mechanics, and its realistic spin-off Locas Tambien about a mechanicand her friend who plays in a punk rock band.
French-Canadian Julie Doucet has a unique graphic style and a humorous uninhibited take on such subject matter as menstruation, castration, and dreams.
Leve Ta Jambe, Mon Poisson est Mort! (Lift Your Leg My Fish is Dead) includes work from her comic Dirty Plotte, as well as Weirdo, Drawn and Quarterly, and Snake Eyes.
My Most Secret Desire collects her dream stories.
Ariel Bordeaux started self-publishing her comics by mail order and has a child-like style.
Her work is inspired by her relationships with friends and lovers.
Her "picture novella" No Love Lost (Drawn and Quarterly) is about a bored young couple, Emma and Jed, with Emma trying to communicate her needs and Jed looking for a good reason to break up.
Howard Cruse's Stuck Rubber Baby (D.C.) is a graphic novel on the U.S. civil rights movement and gay community in the early '60s.
He draws important issues in an almost cute way to make it more accessible.
Maus, a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman, raised the status of comics by winning a Pulitzer prize.
Maus tells Spiegelman's father's stories of his years in Auschwitz and draws the Nazis as cats and the Jews as mice.
For an example of comics journalism see Joe Sacco's Palestine, in the Gaza Strip (Fantagraphics).
Comics journalism is a medium pioneered by Crumb: see his scathing take on an Academy Awards ceremony in the America collection.
In December, 1991, Sacco commenced a two-month visit to Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.
This is his depiction of Palestinians under Israeli occupation.
An example of a comics textbook comes with Understanding Comics, the Invisible Art by Scott McCloud.
Like Will Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art, the text is an interesting dissection of the comics medium, only it is written and drawn in the comics medium.
Many of these works are expensive and hard to find as they have to be imported from the U.S.
Things will be better when the local comics scene develops, although steps have been taken in this direction with the self-publication of such magazines as Groovy Gravy and Platinum Grit, as well as ground-breaking newspapers like The Bug.