Here’s the Amazon Description: “From one of the bright new faces in the indie comix scene comes a collection of vignettes and stories about a solitary albeit gregarious woodsman with a loose grasp on his own personal history and that of the outside world. He forms relationships with his inanimate surroundings and muses to a dead audience, specifically his bear rug Phillippe. His own tales eventually become entangled with that of the legendary Paul Bunyan, and the two become indirectly intertwined, illuminating the discrepancy between the character of the storyteller and the character within his stories. The lives of both Paul and Pete encounter such things as the questionable origin of an ocean and the desire for preservation of everything from a fallen bird to an overused expression that has strayed a stone’s throw from its original meaning.”
I will admit again up front that I don’t “get” this book. And that’s fine, maybe I am not supposed to. It’s like a collection of webcomics that started on number 50 and one of your friends is telling you have to check it out and they’re also watching you watch and you think you’re crazy because you don’t see what you are supposed to be seeing so you nod your head and you’re thinking, ok my friend is definitely crazy or fucking with me but how do I get out of this?
I liked the Lilli Carre pieces I saw in the 2008 Best American Comics collection. I also generally like comics (recent reviews aside) but this one was lost on me. It could be a cultural thing (we’re the same culture), but I didn’t see a lot of jokes or a story or what was meant to be funny in these strips. I thought the writing was pretty good, but not particularly deep.
Here’s what they look like in this collection:
And then sometimes they look like this:
I just don’t know.