I wasn’t always this pathetic.
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Nothing used to be better than going out to the clubs with my friends and seeing a show, or dancing until two in the morning. Then we would go to Denny’s or whatever place was open all night, stake out a table, smoke Camel Wides, nurse sodas, and talk shit until the sun came up.

We had a crazy, unfocused energy. We were kings (and queens) of the empty streets we walked or drove at three in the morning. Anything seemed possible in that time between days, when we weren’t fryer cooks or stockers at K-Mart. I could draw comics or go to Paris or hop the bus in my small town and be in a new place tomorrow. Possibility, breathless, unfolded.

These feelings came back to me when reading Jessica Abel’s Soundtrack, from Fantagraphics Books. I’d read Abel’s previous Artbabe collection, Mirror, Window and had liked it well enough. I had trouble relating to the characters, but had admired the complexity of the characterization and the nice art (note: Mirror, Window, though released first, is Abel’s later work from her Artbabe comic. Soundtrack is Abel’s earlier Artbabe comics and pre-Artbabe work. Confused? Abel has a website, www.artbabe.com. Stop wallowing in the sophistry of this column and check it out).

Soundtrack is more to my liking, shorter pieces with lots of emotion-or whimsy-behind them. The book represents a diverse sampling of Abel’s work from the late eighties to mid-nineties. There are some goofy cartoons, some illustrated journalism, some twentysomething-themed stories, and other offerings that aren’t as easily "categorized".

The quality is consistent. Abel sidesteps any heavy-handed pretense, letting the stories tell themselves. I suspect that’s her journalistic training. There’s a damn funny two-pager about a Godzilla convention. Godzilla fans will cringe with radioactive shame at her dead-on snippets from the convention floor (Hey, does anyone out there remember Spectreman on Superstation WTBS in the early and mid-eighties?).

There’s also a brilliant Camille Paglia piece. In only a page she conveys the buzz of an academic lecture at the University of Chicago. Paglia, ostensibly the subject, shares the story with her attendees and their reactions to her ideas. Anyone who has attended a big campus lecture will knowingly snicker.

Like Bendis, it appears Abel used models for her many of her characters. I like this technique. It adds facial and body nuances to characters, making them stand out. After finishing the book, I realized all of John Byrne’s women looked alike and not even Terry Austin could save him.

The highpoints of this book were twofold. One was the great story "Jack London" near the end. The spareness and subtlety employed in this story are breathtaking. Like many great stories, "Ethan Frome" coming immediately to mind, the reader is left to their own speculation as to what it all means.

Read "Jack London" on a snowy, dreary day and listen to Moby’s "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters".

The second high point for me was the last page of the collection, with a Hester Prynne/Artbabe holding a babe in a winter forest.

Nourish what’s weak and beautiful, it says to me. Nourish what’s weak and beautiful.

Or maybe I’m talking liberal arts slacker bullshit. Let’s go to Barnes and Chernobyl and steal cookies from the Mystery Readers Club. Fuck you, Hercule Poirot, A&E mother--

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Now, some of you yahoos have been bellyachin’ to the Top about the mission. Why are we fightin’ for this god-damned hill? When are the choppers comin’ with more men? And the big one, what makes this comic so ESSENTIAL that I need to buy it?

Well son, there ain’t no more men coming. We’ re it, and if we don’t fight on this hill it’s just gonna be another one.

I believe in this book. This book is ESSENTIAL because I feel owning it will enrich your life, even if you just look at the fucking pictures. Did you ever have a mixed tape you played and played because it sounded so sweet and it was sexy and dangerous and all about you? Try this Soundtrack.

I’ll put my money where my mouth is. After reading this column, click here to go out to the SAVANT Delphi forum. Post a story about how comics made you a better person. How comics boosted your reading scores and kept you out of the seventh grade-again. How Captain America helped you stand up to your alcoholic dad. No rules, just the Truth.

I’ll pick one story and send the author a copy of Soundtrack via Amazon. I’ll even gift-wrap it if you want.

We all have stories, and we’re all on this hill for a reason. But we’re not alone. And that’s what’s really ESSENTIAL.

Besides. I shoot deserters.

I wrote this review before reading the strip on the back, entitled "Via Lattea". Allow me to close with an excerpt:

Do you ever feel, in the summer, a night like a balm, like a kiss, like a soft velvet cape about your shoulders?
A night that feels like nothing can be bad?
A night that, despite its softness, feels like an adrenaline shot in your veins?
A night that feels like it belongs to and alternate-universe-you who lives a much happier life?
It’s some sort of alchemy of heat and dark and stagelights, of streetlights, or starlight, that turns the leaden night into gold,
…and makes your heart stand in your throat. You have to be in it, now, because you can’t save it.
It is fleeting.

Thank you, Jessica Abel.
I wasn’t always this pathetic.
Stop.
Rewind.
Stop.
Play.

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