Dirtbag #6
For whatever it’s worth, this review is being done on 1/9/10, far into the future from when the rest of these reviews were written. Why so late? I missed it the first time around, so why not? Reading this now, after Dave has done at least a few really polished books, it’s hard not to notice how raw this is. Oddly, I mean that in a good way, as there are tiny images of all sorts of things all over the place and panels are only occasionally used. The nuggets for his future books are here, as he opines about how he’s obsessed with girls, wishes to be taken on adventures, fears loneliness and wants to throw aside all his responsibilities to become a hobo. Those are the linear, easily understood moments, told in (more or less) a conventional way. The sampled page is a better illustration of what I’m talking about than anything I could say, but there’s something about the simplicity of drawing the random images in his head, putting dreams and bits of reality together and seeing what comes out of it that’s missing in his later work. Granted, his later work is probably “better”, if such a thing can be measured at all, but there’s some serious charm to be seen in his older stuff too. No idea if this is still available to buy, but if it is it’s $1.
