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Justin Green




Title Creator Publisher Series Price
Someday Funnies Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, C.C. Beck, Wallace Wood and more ... Abrams ComicArts $45.00
($55.00 list)
Somedayfunnies
Read more and comment... 		edited by Michel Choquette  Well, here's something you don't see everyday:  a comics anthology that has been completed but unable to find a publisher for nearly forty years, finally being published!  As readers of The Comics Journal #299 – the cover feature of which was an in-depth article on the history of this volume – already know, this volume had reached a legendary/mythical status.  Robert Greenfield's introduction squarely situates the work contained in this volume as a document of "The Sixties," While comics critic/historian Jeet Heer's foreword provides ample context and background for the comics work the book contains as well as a chronology of its epic 40-year journey from inception to publication.  We've barely dipped out toes in this majorly oversize – 11" x 17" – 216 page, full color hardcover volume containing 120 comic strips by 169 creators, so we're not going to say much about the contents at this time, but we will provide you with some of the contributors, and let you do the math:  Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, C.C. Beck, Wallace Wood, Harvey Kurtzman, Arnold Roth, Don Martin, Gahan Wilson, Bobby London, Trina Robbins, Vaughn Bodé, Steve Englehart, Archie Goodwin, Denny O'Neil, Ralph Reese, Alan Weiss, Herb Trimpe, Frank Zappa, Harlan Ellison, William S. Burroughs, Roy Thomas, Barry Smith (before he added Windsor) Guido Crepax, Ralph Steadman, Leo & Diane Dillon, Walter & Louise Simonson, Justin Green, Bill Griffith, Red Grooms, Russ Heath, Jay Kinney, Denis Kitchen, (a very young) Art Spiegelman, (also very young) Stan Mack, Ever Meulen,  Joost Swarte, Tom Wolfe,  Federico Fellini, and many, many more!  Also included is a "92-drawing take on Choquette's travels by Michael Fog" that parallels and brackets the comics the volumes contains.  Surprisingly (at least to us), the intent to create an interweaving bracketing tale was a component of the original volume's conception, and blank spaces were deliberately left in many of the pages at Choquette's instruction. 
Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary Justin Green McSweeney's $26.00
($29.00 list)
Binkyb
Read more and comment... 		introduction by Art Spiegelman  <<•>>  We were a tad skeptical when we first got wind of this re-issue of one of the undisputed classics of the underground era of comics that it would justify its hefty price tag:  but all of our doubts vanished as soon as this splediferous volume emerged from the box it arrived in.  This is a fabulous, gilded and embossed hardcover edition that is a whopping 10" x 14" and reproduces the entire original classic comic book directly from the black & white, pen & ink original, using full color reproduction.  What this means is that you can really see the original art in all its imperfect glory:  white-out, blue pencil, inadvertent stains – all are clearly on display, rendering the creative process visible, and allowing the reader to really see the art that brought this major comics milestone into being.  As for describing the work itself, we'll hand that job off to these highly esteemed commentators:  "Justin Green – he's out of his mind.  I love every stroke of his nervous pen, every tortured scratch he ever scrawled.  He was among the top storytelling artists of the first wave of 'underground' comics, a darkly humorous social commentator, and the FIRST, absolutely the FIRST EVER cartoonist to draw highly personal autobiographical comics.  Binky Brown started many other cartoonists along the same path, myself included."  – R. Crumb  <•> "With Binky Brown, comics went  practically overnight from being an art form that saw from the outside in to one that sees from the inside out.  (Justin Green's) internal struggle can practically be felt in the drawings themselves, the style sometimes changing from panel to panel – sometimes even within the panels themselves – all in a effort to simply arrive at The Truth.  Comics wouldn't be what they are today without this book, and this new edition places it in its proper place in the comics literary canon.  Thank God for Binky Brown.  And thank God for Justin Green."  – Chris Ware  <•>  "I like it very much but I don't get the slang." – Federico Fellini  <•> Is there really anything more left to be said?  If those endorsements don't sell you, nothing will!