Customer Reviews

It's a Good Life, if You Don't Weaken

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Seth, hater of modern life, and big cartoon fan, becomes obsessed with a cartoonist called Kalo, who had a single item of work in New Yorker magazine in the 50s. He sets about tracking down more Kalos, managing in the end to find just 11. At the same time he goes in search of the life story of the artist.

I was reminded a great deal of Robert Crumb in the character of Seth. Like Crumb here is an ubergeek, obsessed with old things and unable to form relationships in the present. Where Crumb covets old records, Seth is into cartoons (although there is a reference to his 78 collection too!)

This is a subtle and at times slow-moving piece. Seth will often set up a scene with a series of panels containing just images of buildings or landscapes. Quite a filmic approach. I liked it very much.

Overall, you get a picture of a sad and lonely individual, who throws his energy into pointless anorak behaviour, while retreating from a love affair with someone he admits is a "smart and pretty woman".

This then is a subtle portrait of that usually male individual - the eccentric, the geek, the nerd - whatever you want to call them. Who is intelligent but unhappy, and who searches in vain for a true meaning in life through something haphazzard and irrelevant, while avoiding the reality and opportunities around them. Quite moving I thought, and subtly done. Wonderful artwork too.

I enjoyed this book alot. I've tried not to include any spoilers in this, but I have gone into little bits of detail here and there and made some conclusions based on events in the book, so to be safe you might want to just read the last paragraph and return to this review once you've read the book for yourself..

I was prepared for self indulgence thanks to some of the reviews here on amazon and I do think it's wise to take heed on said warnings.

One of the reasons I still really enjoyed this (beside the awesome artwork, compositions and general pacing of the story telling) was that I have the sense that Seth (as an author) genuinely thinks he's an interesting guy. It's almost like he's oblivious to the fact that the rest of the world doesn't actually spend their entire existence talking about cartoon strips. I like avant-garde black metal but I'm fully aware most people would see me as a freak if I talked about it like it was an attribute to my personality. Because of this oblivious element, I sort of sympathise with him. However...

There's one section where seth is talking to his incredibly good freind 'Chet' ('Incredibly good' because we see 'Chet' constantly lending seth money and listening to his benile mysanthropic rants like he cares without interuption) Seth changes the topic from his love life, which he allows to be complex for the sake of his comic obsession, back to his hunt for 'Kalo' and in doing so claims (periphrased ~) 'enough of this boring unimportant stuff - check out my new kalo cartoon I found'.

Was seth aware of this when writing or not? Complacency towards what he deams unimportant, when in actual fact it is important (in some ways this is approached when the book resolves).

His search for Kalo is clearly about his relationship with change. He wants to idealise and preserve this man who's artwork really speaks to his inner child. The search for Kalo is really a search for an identity only the past will allow Seth to have for himself. It's like he wants to follow in Kalo's footsteps, even though Seth has become a far more acomplished artist anyway. So really it's a search for inner peace. Something Seth won't have because he treats people badly... his brother... chet... his girlfriends. To be honest, he's not the nicest guy and definately not a likeable protagonist.

This doesn't stop us from enjoying the resolution and the journey in general. For fans of independant comics, this won't disapoint (unless you're an over opinionated conisseur who doen't just allow yourself to be immersed in what is essentially, a really immersing tale). If you get the same satisfaction I get from graphic literature, this will only leave you hungry for more.

I enjoyed this a lot though maybe being a fan of The New Yorker helped. Seth brilliantly gets inside the mind of his self-absorbed and opinionated main character.But it is much more than a study of youthful angst. The search for the mysterious cartoonist Kilo broadens the focus considerably. Marvellous drawings of urban and rural scenes, together with pastiches of cartoons from earlier decades, make this a very good read.

I bought this because I'd heard lots of good things about it and the book itself is very attractive, printed on yellow/cream paper with black and blue ink. When I first started reading it, I found the amount of narration irritating, and often distracting from the artwork - there is, as the artist calls it, a lot of "navel gazing" and so many references to old gag-strip cartoonists that Seth included a glossary of them.

However, when you get into it, it's a very sweet and poignant story. It has a nostalgic atmosphere to it. It's a true story, I believe, and I really liked the fact that the author's 'quest' in the story to find the cartoonist, Kalo, is never really completed. There are so many authors, cartoonists and artists that are long forgotten, and it's lovely to see a tribute to one of them turned into a wonderful story, and a wonderful comic at that.

I bought It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken with high expectations. It comes with a good reputation, it has a wonderful title and Seth has some pedigree as a comic book writer and artist merely by the company he keeps. However, I don't recall being more let down by a serious comic since I became interested in them.

It's a Good Life... is unbelievably self-indulgent. Fans of comics will have encountered self-obsession before but Seth turns it up to a whole new level, the portrayal of himself as a deep thinking protagonist while all about him are painted as pathetic (his fat, unfunny brother being the most glaring example) just does not ring true. It's fun to see Joe Matt and Chester Brown pop up, but they are nothing more than sounding boards for Seth's protracted rants on modern times.

All this indulgence would be more forgiveable if it wasn't completely unoriginal as well. The portrait of comic book anti-hero as a sad loner, obsessed with the past and uncomfortable with the modern world is tawdry and tired and there are far better examples of this character to be found in Crumb's, Pekar's and Clowes' work. The only different Seth has with any of these authors characters is that he can get a girl just by looking at her.

The brief relationship featured in the book is perhaps the only interesting part of the story, however Seth, perhaps unable to dissect his true character flaws, explains away his part in it's demise with the, by now typical, "I'm just too sad, deep and unique." line.

Of course, I forgot to mention the plot, which fails to engage and the motive seems forced. As a meandering journey to nowhere it fails to pack any poignance due to the unbelievable nature of the journey. Seth blabbers on about Kalo ad nauseum but never gets any real passion for him across, this, coupled with the fact that the character is presented as a straight laced, sensible, melancholic type who seems incapable of spontanuity makes the whole premise unrealistic.

I have given this two stars because despite the dialogue and plot, the book is beautifully drawn, the paper is thick and an aged newspaper colour, there is no white in the book at all, it is all drawn in blues and pale yellows and oranges. The lines are clean and the backdrops have a lovely style. He perhaps lacks the nuance of clowes in hinting at emotions beneath the static faces of his charcters, another thing that makes it difficult to engage with them.

All in all, I wouldn't bother.

The story isn't very special, but the drawings are awe-inspiring, jaw droppingly magnificent.
Seth is truely one of the best cartoonists of this time. The whole book takes you back years ago into a cold, gloomy Canadian setting. The black, yellow & blue coloring is cleverly chosen. With the fall and winter on our doorsteps, this is a great book to read in our snugly warmed homes.

This is utterly gorgeous- both in terms of it's art work and it's content. The story of a man caught up in an almost source-less nostalgia is told subtly as Seth's writing passes in and out of dreamy contemplation upon the nature of the disconcerting sense of saddness and loss that afflict him, and a plot driving search for the comics of an almost traceless artist. The muted colours and almost softly spoken, lyrical dialogue work in perfect harmony together. It touches also on a deeper melancholy; the need to collect information and so explain a life as such. Well worth the price- one of the best graphic novels I have read.

I hadn't heard much of this book except the reviews by other amazon buyers, but was seduced by the clean graphic-design style and 'wavy' inking. Visually, this is an excelent purchase, with some fantastically simple and stylised panels (plus i'm a sucker for 'dead panels', where nothing much happens), story-wise, however, is a completely different kettle-of-fish.

first off, i found none of the characers interesting; seth is shown as pompus, opinionated, and self-righteous, not to mention worshipped by women-folk and his 'best friend' chet (who, by the way, doesn't seem to mind in the least only having one line of dialogue to every 20 of seth's in their one-sided introverted 'conversations'. I also had a real problem with the dialogue; although I thought the way seth spoke was 'in character', every single other person he meets has this curious stilted pseudo-intelectual way of speaking that just drove me up the wall.

Not even mentioning the directionless, heartless, down-right dull search for kalo (on several occasions seth borrows money, then he goes on these wild goosechases halfway across the country, staying in hotels? to name but one example of this story's lack of understanding of where itself stands).

Now, i probably would have only given it 1 star, but i think alot of the reason i didn't enjoy it was the character of seth, and other people may not find him as grating as i did, so it got a 2 because if really is worth looking at some of the art (preferably from a library as opposed to a purchase though).