BLAB! Vol. 11

Rating:
Summary: Let's start a new book category and call it BLAB!
Review: BLAB! sets a new standard in printed art media. One most often finds this beautifully crafted book displayed along with comic books and comics anthologies, graphic novels, etc,...when in fact, it's obviously none of the above. BLAB! exists in a realm beyond these other categories of which I am also an avid connoisseur. It's an amusement park ride that I'll savor to take upon my first glance at a new cover when it appears at a local bookstore! But what makes BLAB! truly special, aside from the highest degree of artist/writer talent, is it's remarkable eccentricity in design and conception. Blab! is the definitive wunderbook! Congratulations, Monte!

Rating:
Summary: Irony only gets you so far; this is retro-recycled ho-hum
Review: I often here comics critics give gooey praise to works like this, and usually somewhere nearby there's a label: "comics for grown-ups," or, "for those who still don't believe comics can be art."
I've been growing up with comics for a dozen or so years, never doubting once that comics weren't art (after all, haven't we won that battle guys?). And though Blab finds itself at the forefront of comics, one is forced to ask, why?
Watch out! Because:
A)Cynicism, irony, and kitsch so shamelessly pervade the selected works that nearly all of their creative spirit is suffocated.
B)While it is generally believed this brand of comics, (the one that pays homage to underground comics of the past), is where one finds daring formalism and unrelenting individuality, at least in this collection, one doesn't. With a possible exception or two, all of these works seem derivative of each other, or worse, of pillars of the unrelenting individuality school like the late Edward Gorey. Homage? Hmm.
C)I picked up Blab to find cool new formalism. Most of the works here seem anachronistic to me. Precious, even. I saw nothing new.

Rating:
Summary: Hardly revolutionary, but pretty.
Review: Just look at the lovely cover by Mark Ryden. It's practically impossible not to like his work even though the "ironic" juxtapositions of fluffy bunnies and raw meat, etc were NEVER really clever or thought-provoking and have since become mere conventions. So for most of the stuff in a typical issue of BLAB - a rather aptly named journal indeed. It's supposed to look as though it's being incendiary or at least cutting-edge, but it's really just so much hot air. Not that I'm not recommending it. It has always functioned as a showcase for my favorite commercial illustrators - Ryden, Christian Northeast, Gary Baseman, Camille Rose Garcia, Fred Stonehouse, blabblabblab - and thus there are always at least a couple pages of technically interesting artwork per issue. But I say "technically" because there is just not a whole lot going on conceptually with BLAB. It's just a bunch of pretty weirdness. It's the literary equivalent of "Liquid Television." But I don't know that anybody was expecting anything else out of it...nor should they, really. Fans of Ryden or Baseman know what to expect.

Rating:
Summary: Zany illustrations and art deco
Review: The black and white and color cartoons of the social commentary/cartoon book presentation Blab are presented in an oversized, eye-catching publication. Zany illustrations and art deco illustration make for a hard to describe yet appealing presentation.

Rating:
Summary: blabfest
Review: you can judge a book by its cover. i sat and stared and sat and stared at this amazing BLAB cover, before summoning up the aesthetic gumption to peek inside; i was not disappointed. this is MAD magazine for adults, designed wonderfully, chockful of comic and artistic surprises. i even went back and bought blab 10. yeah, i was regressing. hats off to monte. a graphic tour de force--and fills a void where RAW left off.