I Like Comics

The LITTLE LIT series aims to bring together comics artists and illustrators, and try to bring more kids to comic books. A noble cause, with mixed results. Some of the stories are great, and some fall flat. I feel like there’s a certain stiffness to the proceedings, reminiscent of Art Spiegelman’s atrocious children’s book from several years ago. However, the individual artists are often able to create breathtaking works that take full advantage of the phenomenal quality of the paper and printing. It’s surprising to realize that these books are in fact only 64 pages long, since the entertainment value seems to outstrip the page count.
Ng Suat Tong wrote a review of Little Lit 2 for TCJ.com that sums up most of the negative points. These books are fun to read, but they’re by no means essential.

Little Lit: Folklore and Fairy Tale Funnies

Edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly. Designed by Chip Kidd and Art Spiegelman. RAW Junior / Joanna Cotler Books / HarperCollins, 2000. 13 1/4″ x 9.5″ boards. Oversize!

The first volume is probably the best of the series, with the best cover, endpapers and design, and the greatest coherence between the individual contributions.

Art Spiegelman / (Cover and back cover)
Art Spiegelman / Prince Rooster Cute.
William Joyce / Humpty Trouble A silly pun-filled version, with gorgeous huge panels.
Ever Meulen / A Knight to Remember (1 page) A memory game.
Daniel Clowes / The Sleeping Beauty The strip is just beautiful… too bad the story is kind of pointless/disturbing.
Joost Swarte / The Leafless Tree More money doesn’t necessarily bring satisfaction.
Bruce McCall / What’s Wrong With This Picture? (1 page) Rapunzel theme.
David Mazzuchelli / The Fisherman and the Sea Princess Kudos to Spiegelman for coaxing some new work out of Mazzuchelli! And what work it is. Astonishingly beautiful Japanese-rendered art tells a fascinating (and disturbing) folk tale.
Lorenzo Mattotti / The Two Hunchbacks Kind of dumb…
Walt Kelly / The Gingerbread Man Classic Walt Kelly! Not too sophisticated, but fun!
Harry Bliss / The Baker’s Daughter Be generous, or you might be turned into an owl.
J. Otto Seibold / Can You Find the Twins? (1 page) Game.
David Macaulay / Jack And The Beanstalk It’s the The Way Things Work guy! A funny retelling of the familiar tale, with some great panel devices; the beanstalk extends across panels to play with how we read the strip.
Charles Burns / Spookyland (2 page) Burns at the top of his game. A seriously disturbing, highly detailed landscape across a two-page spread. “Find all the snakes & eggs in this picture!” Indeed.
Claude Ponti / The Enchanted Pumpkin (1 page) A funny wordless strip.
Kaz / The Hungry Horse Kaz is my hero.
Barbara McClintock / The Princess and the Pea A straightforward animal version. Beautifully illustrated.
Endpapers: Chris Ware / “Fairy Tale Road Rage” and “Once Upon A Time” For the first time, Chris Ware’s paper toys are actually easy to assemble and use. “Fairy Tale Road Rage” is a highly amusing game in which you move around the game board (front endpapers) using game pieces assembled from tear-out insertions in the front and back. You can play it! Plus, the back page, tells four stories with a princess, a wolf, a frog, and a banjo. (None of them end well.) [Ware’s original submission for this anthology is printed in McSweeney’s issue 6, which also contains a brief song on the theme by They Might Be Giants.]

Little Lit [2]: Strange Stories For Strange Kids

Edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly. Designed by Chip Kidd and Art Spiegelman. RAW Junior / Joanna Cotler Books / HarperCollins, 2001. 13 1/4″ x 9.5″. Oversize!

The later books in the series, I think, tend more towards kids than grown-up comics nerds. Even so, there’s still material that appeals to us, including what Spiegelman told me was Kim Deitch’s “best work of his career.”

Charles Burns / Cover
Art Spiegelman / The Several Selves of Selby Sheldrake
Martin Handford / Roody Hooster From the Where’s Waldo guy.
Maurice Sendak / Cereal Baby Keller Sendak evokes the classic era of comic strips. Beautiful!
Richard McGuire / Can You Find…? (1 page) Look for the “Igloo with a Shoe,” “Big Idea Stuck in a Tree,” and “Cloud with a Beard.” Waldo is not “here.”
Barbara McClintock / Runaway Shadow A whimsical story.
David Sedaris & Ian Falconer / Pretty Ugly A story of inner beauty — or ugliness.
Claude Ponti / The Little House That Ran Away From Home He collects sound effects, she collects smoke-plumes-that-rise-in-the-distance. It was meant to be! (But ten points off for using Comics Sans MS for lettering.)
Jules Feiffer / Trapped in a Comic Book Feiffer rants against comic books; or, in his words, “evil, stupid, boring puke!” He seems to mostly be talking about early 90’s Image Comics product. Good call, Feiff’ — hatin’ on comic books in a comic book meant for children!
Posy Simmonds / Mr. Frost Gorgeous art, delicate storytelling. This strip is much more attractive than her graphic novel.
Kim Deitch / These Cats Today! Here it is! A visual feast! Six pages of Deitchian visual bliss! My scans cannot do it justice!
Crockett Johnson / Barnaby A comic-book version edited together from various storylines in the early Barnaby strips.
Lewis Trondheim / A-maze-ing Adventure This is a trip! A choose-your-own adventure comic with over 200 panels and five endings.
Marc Rosenthal / Joke Page (1 page)
Paul Auster & Jacques de Loustal / The Day I Disappeared Paul Auster!
Francois Roca / Strange Picture (1 page)
Endpapers: Kaz w. Matt Campbell (colorist) / Strange Cartoon Lessons These are laugh-out-loud hilarious. “How to draw old bald guys: (1) First draw a hairy guy. (2) Erase the hair.”

Little Lit [3]: It Was a Dark and Silly Night