Gary Panter Books

Reviewed by Irene Watson for Reader Views (7/06)

"13 Books" is not a book to be read lightly, it is a book where Leonard Koren explains the process that took place when he created his 12 books and a magazine. Koren is not only an author but an architect and artist. Several of his creations are: WET: The magazine of Gourmet Bathing; Wabi-Sabi; New Fashion Japan; The Graphic Design Cookbook; and, How to Take a Japanese Bath. Anyone familiar with Koren's work would find this book very enlightening.

Koren's format of writing this book is very different from anything I've seen before. He splits his page horizontally. For example, when explaining the inspiration for "17 Beautiful Men Taking a Shower" Koren , on the top portion of the pages, explains the subject matter, his inspiration, organizing principle and greatest difficulty. On the bottom portion of the pages he explains terminology such as: seventeen, art galleries, bathing.
I must say, this is a very creative way of writing, however, why would anyone be surprised coming from an eclectic artist as Koren.

Looking for an eclectic, yet very informative, read? This is it. You will come out by the end of the book much wiser, as well as have many thoughts evoked of your own personal experiences.

An unusual look into the mind of a unique creator. Understated, humorous, and acutely observant advice for anyone making creative product. I will recommend it to all my graphic and industrial design students.

Forget vapid Celebrity Culture. Don't trust the path of commercialism. Popular culture is a graveyard. You think you owe respect to your elders with their dead ideas? You think culture shouldn't harsh your mellow steady flow? Oh, but wait! You're terrified of becoming lost, like the proverbial Black Sheep, aren't you? You really believe you're comfortable with the safe White Gangster Sheep. You're convinced there's a Black Abyss that will swallow you up if you venture out too far. Because the Black Sheep don't have safe friends. Who are the ugly minds that tell you these things? Why do you listen? Why do you keep surrounding yourself with piles of useless junk that represent the Ugly Spirit? Because you're ugly inside, but do you know why? Because the world is upside-down and your cultural compass is steering you wrong. You wish somebody would absorb the horror of pop culture for you and transform it into sublime images so you can enter a realm of Radiant Dark Light. If only you could do it, you would. You want to do it, you want to decipher this new path that is already decades old. Trust me when I assure you that your eyes are only half open. Because, there exists out there sheltered away from fame and glory a true visionary. A spark of creation that has single-handedly forged the templates for modern pop culture. You don't want to believe, you don't want to see. You think if you can copy late period Picasso or Matisse you're an artist who can get by without the decades of effort to learn how to reduce a form down to its essence. But there is no cheating, there is only hard work. Gary Panter has worked harder than you can even begin to contemplate and he's four decades ahead of you. Imagine keeping it together and staying fresh for 40 years. And now imagine a monolithic dedication to this impressive earth shattering force is here to set the record straight. Keep imagining that it's a steal for the price, because it is. And now imagine with all the money you're saving you'll also want to buy a handsome book pedestal too. So then you'll be able to keep a different page open to the room, so you can always have a little rotating Gary Panter gallery to look at. You can't escape from Gary Panter. The images are by Gary Panter. The future has been documented by Gary Panter. MindProbe. Occupant X. Dal Tokyo. Bob War. Rozz Tox.

Gary Panter is a Roman candle spitting out great bloody chunks of his id all over the page and creating clunky masterpieces without seemingly trying. Here, in "Invasion of the Elvis Zombies," he succeeds in recreating a cheesy Fifties horror film on the page, with the inimitable razor-sharp Panter style. This book, and the original "Jimbo" strips/book, represent Panter's best. Indispensible. Get it.

(Note: Also available in a Spanish edition which is just as god: "Invasion de los Elvis Zombies."

Panter's been around forever, but for my money, this represents his apex. Jimbo's existential journeys, involving lots of injuries and countless band-aids, represent the punk aesthetic of the late 70s as well as a subversion of that aesthetic. (Huh?? What does he MEAN??) Panter draws the way Brando acts or Ali boxes: as an instinctive expression that is untamed by too much thought. Here, in "Jimbo," he achieves perfection.

This book is well worth the price and the time it take to reach you home. It's just a lot of fun. Charles Burns is one of the greatest illustrators it shows that he is very careful with his pen strokes. Gary Panter on the other hand wasn't a real good match for Burns but he doesn't ruin the book. They both did a terrific job. The whole idea is terrific.

Remember those books you played with when you were a kid where on each page would be an ordinary drawing cut into three sections, but if you turned only one or two of those sections to a different page, you would create a new picture meshing together two or three different scenes? This is the same basic concept, but geared towards adults with the hearts of children (in their desk drawer).

Combining their skills are two of the greatest renderers of the strange and grotesque, Charles Burns and Gary Panter. My one complaint, however, is that what really made this type of book great as a kid was that you could take the ordinary and make it extraordinary and bizarre, however with Facetasm, each original picture is already bizarre as is. This takes away from the fun of such subversive acts as, e.g., combining a picture of a macho testosterone filled body builder with those of a dainty ballerina and a withered old man. Here, the artists themselves have already committed the acts of subversion with each original drawing. But it is still fun to play around with and it contains great artwork by both contributors.

I spotted a box of three tapes (that is why I bought the ceedee of the Big Bang later) full of percussion, in the Netherlands (Europe). After hearing the tapes in my car, they have stayed in the car. And each time that I drive, nothing can come between me and this beautiful collection of world rythm ! This box is fantastic !! It makes me dream of traveling to far distances, into unknown places where tribes drum on about anything that they can get their hands on and I dream then that I can take part in this tribe, in which they learn me how to use unknown forces to drum my heart out. And then suddenly I realize again that I am stuck in a traffic jam ! This ceedee is almost perfect. It would have been perfect if there had been no European or American percussionists in it ! Anyone who feels like I do can mail me for a chat about "drums in nature".

The Djembé-darbouka guy !

This is a classic Jimbo and long out-of-print. If you haven't read this character before, try some of the cheaper comics first...but if you already know and like him, don't hesitate to pick this up if you can find it!

I was sorely disappointed in this book. After I read the introduction, in which Panter describes what the book is about, I almost threw it across the room.

Jimbo takes the place of Dante, author of The Divine Comedy, the robot Valise takes the place of Virgil, and all the other characters represent/symbolize characters out of The Divine Comedy. They are all traversing Mount Purgatory, which is a "...vast infotainment testing center...and all the participants strive for University degrees in literature. Each must respond with a literary fragment, a quotation, that demonstrates a knowledge of the passage and an ability to quote other works alluding to the theme of that location in the poem, and in addition, to designate, by that utterance, the story of Boccaccio's Decameron that is allied to Dante's canto and to allude to the metaphorical sum and difference of the pairing of that allusion."

If this raises you're blood pressure, you might enjoy this book. Personally, I find it pretentious. But I persevered and began reading it. Here's a sample quote from Valise, representative of all of the characters, "I have shown him guilty gloom-rockers of focky bocky enhumed in wrath and havoc." I admit, I'm taking the quote out of all context, but after four pages of this kind of dialogue, I couldn't continue. The artwork and layout of the panels is detailed and striking, perfectly produced for this over-sized book, yet the awkwardness and disproportion of the characters is jarring. And everything you can think of is referenced, from the Bible and Chaucer to Kato, Elvis, and Boy George, all acknowledged below the panels.

But what turned me off the most is the lack of feeling. This is purely an intellectual exercise. If you like that kind of thing, this might be the Holy Grail, but if you're looking to get emotionally involved in a story with realistic characters, look elsewhere.

Weeewh! I'll not use too many words to say that this book is simply amazing... so clever, so rich, so well-done, so brainy, so quirky... and full of many literary and pop references (from Milton to Tiny Tim, from Godzilla to Chaucer, from "Westworld" to Frank Zappa... and much much more). Also Beautiful packaged and with a classy gilded cover! Great work Mr. Panter, you're always one of the coolest guys around... great work man!
Buy it or die (and eventually go to the real Purgatory)!!!

She found lots of perfect $100k homes -- too bad they weren't perfect for her!

I enjoyed this book immensely -- read it in two days.

With a warm and friendly writing style, Ms. Jacobs (former editor at Dwell magazine) introduces us to host of talented architects, each with their own take on the $100,000 home, based on local needs, economics & politics and aesthetics. Some are mid-century moderns, some are updated classics, and others defy classification. All are interesting!

Along the way she gives us some insight into what's going on across the spectrum in the world of architecture, from the huge corporate builders to the "one-off" customs.

As others have noted, there aren't enough pictures (just one black & white drawing for each chapter), but the two page index of the architects' Web site URLs make up for that in spades. I spent two hours surfing them and had a ball!

Finally, I'm glad it was her doing the extended road trip and not me -- I surely would not have lasted as long as she did!

I suppose I was expecting a journey along the lines of Tracey Kidder's House, something personal and organic.

I found this book frustrating for two basic reasons:

1. The lack of photographs, especially of the specific houses discussed was frustrating. Akin to discussing the merits of a painting, without a picture of it! I don't know if this oversight was the fault of a cheap publisher's budget, or the author's choice, but the book suffers as a result.

2. The author's voice: seemed bitter or jaded or tired of her journey about two-third's before the road trip was done. Needless to say, it seems that she never found a house that she could actually commit to.

As a result of the above, the reader leaves the book neither caring about the author's quest or any closer to discovering where to find the perfect $100,000 house.

Perhaps the only thing I got from this book was a fleeting desire to subscribe to Dwell magazine.

I wavered as to how many stars to give this book. I enjoyed the story of the author's attempt to find or create her dream home. But I think many people are going to buy this book in the hopes finding practical advice for their own search and in that respect it falls down.
I wanted to know more about the homes themselves and as good a job as the author does describing them, I wanted pictures and, even more for a book so much about architecture, plans and elevations.
I wonder whether the $100K price tag has become too low a target 3 years later. Perhaps the most telling thing is that by the end of the book the author has not found a house that works for her.
An answer for that perhaps would have been instead to focus more on the story of the homeowners who lived in the homes she passed on and why those homes were the perfect ones for them.

The book is rather like a long magazine article. You get the idea and the attitude early on, and nothing changes. She's pithy and terse but the situations become redundant, even for a design nut like myself. I didn't miss photographs, allowing Gary Panter's breezy illustrations to stoke my imagination.

Reading the jacket tells you where she lives now, so the ending is no surprise. But it probably wouldn't have been anyway. I have the strong suspicion Ms. Jacobs is really looking for the right woman to settle down with.

For a more involving and satisfying tale, try Kate Whouley's "Cottage for Sale, Must be Moved." I'd call it a minor modern classic.

It sounds like a great concept: An architecture writer with $100,000 in the house sets out to see what she can buy for that money somewhere in America. And the first chapter, where she goes to "architecture camp" in Vermont sets us up for something promising.

But the promise isn't fulfilled because for a book like this which is as much travelogue as reporting requires that we have a guide that we enjoy spending the trip with, and Jacobs is that most obnoxious sort of New Yorker: No place is good enough because it just isn't New York. The other cities in America, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, are just places to get through on the way to another rural area which will be dismissed because it's just some remote area where there aren't enough hip people (or too many hip people) for it to be comfortably similar to living in Manhattan.

Worse still, in a book about architecture, there is one essential ingredient which is painfully absent. PICTURES. I'm sorry Ms Jacobs, but your prose is not sufficient to convey the feel of the homes you describe without abundant illustration to accompany them. Instead we're treated to one(!) illustration per chapter, which often isn't even the most interesting-sounding building from the chapter.

Many comic artists have taken to publishing their sketchbooks and the results are usually quite interesting. Crumb and Ware come to mind. In both of those instances, the notebooks are full of distinctive artwork and they shed light on the artists working methods (In the case of Ware, his sketchbooks are very noticeably different than his finished comics)

I did not find this to be the case with Panters "Satiro-Plastic", which I did not buy from Amazon. I paid full retail price for a shrink-wrapped book solely on the basis of my belief in Panter's vision. Had I the opportunity to look inside first, I would not have purchased it.

First, I love Panters finished books. I treasure both of the Raw one-shots he did and the character "Jimbo" is always entertaining, but this sketchbook should have remained unpublished as it has nothing really new or interesting to offer.

Panter's raw, sketchy style which serves him well in his comics becomes somewhat tedious and crude in the sketchbook. This is a small size book and the drawings look to be done actual size, so the fat-line, marker-like quality of the sketches does not help.

Very few of the drawings are of characters or situations familiar to Panter fans. Many are still life's or landscapes, done in a VERY shaky - sketchy - small scale. The majority look as if they were dashed off in a manner of a few minutes. Whereas a Crumb or a Ware sketchbook might have numerous drawing on a single page, each page in this book is a one-shot, which means not only are the drawings small and crude, but there are not even that many of them!

Somebody like Jules Feiffer (a master of the shaky-line style) could have pulled this off but unfortunately Panter's art minus his edgy narrative & storytelling abilities doesn't really hold your interest. It didn't hold mine at least.

As a sketchbook Panter carried around with him to capture ideas I'm sure this served his purpose well, but I think he was ill advised to consider that this rose to the level of a publishable work.

If you're a HUGE fan of Gary Panter and have to have everything, then buy this, otherwise, I recommend skipping it and going for one of his highly entertaining "Jimbo" books.