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Ullman, Robert – Signifying Nothing: The Collected From the Curve 1994-1998
Signifying Nothing: The Collected From the Curve 1994-1998
I’ve been hoping that Robert would put something like this out. As far as I know his earlier work is out of print, so it’s great to see the early work of someone who I think is going to be a major voice someday, and he’s already pretty damned good right now. He wears his influences on his sleeve in a lot of these strips (sometimes you see Adrian Tomine, sometimes Evan Dorkin, sometimes Dan Clowes, and his art has always reminded me of Jaime Hernandez), but you can see his own voice starting to come through. I sampled one of the more disturbing strips I’ve ever read from this book and I defy any heterosexual male to not feel like shit after reading it. It’s something that we can all relate to, and… well, just read it. The rest of the book is kind of mixed, some good and some bad. More bad than good, and with none of the strips being more than a few pages long, there’s not much time to hate anything anyway. There are only 500 copies of this floating around out there, so you’d better send him $5 soon (contact info above) to get your copy.
Ullman, Robert – From the Curve #7
From the Curve #7
You know, somebody told me years ago to put dates on these reviews and I never bothered, figuring it would be too much of a pain in the ass. 8 years later, I would like to just say on the record to everybody who recommended this: you were right. It would have made things a whole lot easier now, on 2/2/10 (better late than never, right?), to know exactly when these reviews were coming from. The last two issues of this series clearly came from 2001-2002, as that’s when I lived 2 and a half hours from Chicago. As for the rest of it, who knows? I could go back to each individual update page and check the new reviews for each date, but I got tired just typing that sentence. Doing that for every day over the last 8+ years… well, forget it. So how about this comic? Rob is actually represented pretty well on this page, as I got my first issues of his comic right around when I was putting this website together, but I did manage to miss this one. If I’m remembering this correctly (and I wouldn’t bet any money on it) this was the last issue of the regular series From The Curve, after which he did a number of assorted projects, and it still making comics today. This issue is mostly a collection of short pieces, including a tribute to Charles Schulz, p-mail, wasting his time at a big box computer store, waking up in the early morning and the genuine confusion associated with it, why we look at a kleenex after we blow our nose, going to a very tiny comic show, getting to a late movie when the driver doesn’t know what he’s doing, his failed attempt at a stream-of-consciousness mystery, a depressed dog, dreaming a better evening than what actually happened, and leaving Richmond. It’s a solid issue, and one more reason for me to lament the fact that so few mini comics from back in the day are still available in any format these days. Why, in my day… well, in my day these were pretty hard to come by too. OK, forget that part. You should check out his newer books though, and at least he had the decency to put out a collected edition of at least some of his comics. $2
Ullman, Robert – From the Curve #6
From the Curve #6
I’ll get to it in a minute, but I’ve sampled here what I think is what autobiographical comics are supposed to be. That’s saying a lot, sure, and I’m not saying that this is the single best page ever, just what other people writing about their lives should aspire to. Got it? This one has a hockey story, Robert getting stood up (sort of) at a bar, the Hulk watching football, and a frustrating situation at work. Predictably (for me), the longer stories worked better than the shorter ones. Not that there weren’t a couple of funny moments in the one pagers, but I would have rather seen him develop the “date” story more or just expand a few more stories in general. I can tell that this guy is going to do great things eventually, I’m just impatient waiting for him to get around to it. Put out more comics! By the way, #7 is out. I’m just bitching because #8 isn’t out yet… Contact info is all above here, $2 for this one.
Ullman, Robert – From the Curve #5
From the Curve #5
Mini comics by the numbers, and if you think I mean that in a bad way, you haven’t been reading many of my reviews. This was great. A story about meeting a girl dancing and having nothing to talk about, not being able to draw, open mike night at the cafe, being addicted to coffee… I love stuff like this. Lucky for me there are at least 7 issues out. Look, I rarely make it to Chicago Comics, what with living 2 and a half hours away and not having a car, so when I do go I’m usually kind of limited in what I get, purely due to finances. This is one of those that I wish I had just taken a chance and gotten every issue they had. I guess it’s not the most innovative thing in the world, and it probably won’t win a ton of awards any time soon, but it’s honest and obviously heart felt, and that’s plenty good enough for me. Send this guy some money, huh?
