I KNOW, I know...a year behind. one does ones best to keep up, but...sigh.
As Ben Katchor's 2017 volume leaned a bit towards outsider art, Phoebe Gloeckner's leans towards the underground tradition of Zap! comics and its countless epigones. Casanova Frankenstein and Max Clotfelter in their abject confessional mode, Ted Stearns with his surreal take on old-school animal character comics, Chloë Perkis in sheer outrageousness, Gary Panter in his Gary-Panter-ness, all seem direct descendants of the Crumb-,led late sixties breakout.
Which makes perfect sense. The very first guest editor of this series, Harvey Pekar, came out of that scene, and Art Spiegelman, whose Maus was crucial to the achievement of the respectability signaled by the very existence of the series, was an old undergrounder.
The respectable end of comics gets a look-in in the volume as well--Julia Jacquette, Sarah Glidden, Joe Ollmann--and that's all well and good. But it's nice to see some of the old anarchic streak as well.
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