terry laban

It's pleasant stoner comedy, nothing earthshaking. I was thinking yesterday that the strips with the thinly-disguised Henry Rollins are a cut above the rest.

His daily strip, "Edge City" is pretty decent.

I totally agree with Austin: "Edge City" is pretty good for what it is. I never would've thought that LaBan could adapt to that style.

I didn't really care for Cud, in any of its iterations. Peter Bagge was doing much better stuff in a similar vein with Hate -- at least until Hate went full-color (the exact jump-the-shark point could be debated). So that always overshadowed my enjoyment of the series. I would agree with Raeburn that LaBan was an important figure, at least in Chicago -- no one besides Jay Lynch was doing this kind of stuff when he came up and his style and work ethic were certainly influential to Daniel Clowes during his Lloyd Llewellyn period.

Hate stayed brilliant all the way to #30, read it again when the de-coloured book comes out! The first few Annual stories about Buddy & Lisa were k-lame though.

what LaBan stuff was influential on LLLL! style? wasn't he doing bigfootish serial narratives then?

Ng-Unit -- Dude! I heard of Cud from your Chicago Reader article!

"Style" is the wrong word, I guess. But work ethic, definitely, since LaBan and Clowes used to get together and draw in their own Vicious Circle -- they're both in "Chicago Comics" and worked on the original menu for Earwax Cafe together (with Ware!). Maybe style-wise, Mitch O'Connell was more influential on Clowes during that period.

xpost: Ken, I thought so! Raeburn also describes Scott Dikkers' (ex-Onion) University of Wisc-Madison strip "Jim's Journal" as the greatest thing since sliced bread.

laban is def. underrated, and i like the way that he mostly avoided the explicitly autbiographical in Cud etc. also a v. versatile artist, cld draw anything and make it part of his own 'universe'

he def. was working through a massive crumb fixation, tho

I'm so wrong (again) -- LaBan claims that Clowes' LL was the motivator for starting his "Unsupervised Existence" series.

Also, here's the line-up for the Earwax artist group: Terry LaBan, Gary Leib, Doug Allen, Archer Prewitt, Dan Clowes and Chris Ware. All that greatness at one table!

Has anyone read "The Unseen Hand" mini he wrote for Vertigo? Looks neat.

it is terrible.

Hahahaha. But what about "Muktuk Wolfsbreath: Hard-Boiled Shaman" aka "The idea that even Tim Truman wouldn't touch"?

Muktuk spun off out of Cud didn't it? I'd kinda given up on everything by him after The Unseen Hand* but I imagine that one might have been a lot better. I remember looking at the first issue and thinking the straight adventure comics art would squash the roffles though.

*NOT BY ILYA THOUGH COME BACK BRING COMICS

o its true. what else did ilya do kitten? deadenders?

No, Deadenders was Brubaker and Warren Pleece I think. Dunno if Ilya ever did another miniseries for Vertigo, I guess he was disillusioned by the Unseen Hand experience, but he did write a GREAT eight-pager in one of those four-issue theme anthologies, drawn by Frank Quitely, about a guy who couldn't stop engaging in frottage with pavements. Vertigo Romance or Strange Love or some such.

His top stuff is all the former-minicomic or former-Deadline stuff about Bic and his Lahndon yoof pals, The End Of The Century Club and so forth. Also good is art on a few Deadface/Bacchus books and a short story in the It's Dark In London anthology that teamed up Gaiman with Pleece and had a preview of the Iain Sinclair/Dave McKean novel. I think that was about a coroner bloke who fell in love with one of his corpses. HMMMMM.

why do i always get brubaker and laban confused?

You got Brubaker and Ilya confused here! Or maybe you got Ilya confused with Laban and then etc.

CORE ILYA: (now I'm home and can check the bookshelf)

Skidmarks: The Complete Bic Cycle (Active Images)
The End Of The Century Club: Countdown (Slab-O-Concrete, OOP)
(The End Of The Century Club:) Time Warp (Slab-O-Concrete, OOP)

The Skidmarks TPB also includes, as I was telling Gaz in a bookshop once, one of my VERY FAVOURITE COMICS SHORT STORIES EVAR reprinted from an issue of A1*, where Bic cops off in the coatroom at a party. Hillyer uses duotone board with his most ligne claire style and the results are gorgeous. Plus fantastic pacing, in-panel storytelling and enough puns for a Carter single (WHERE ARE YOU TOM?).


*by the way if anyone has #6 I totally need it!