David Mazzucchelli Comics: Short Stories in Various Anthologies, 1991–2013

At the apex of his relatively brief career in superhero comics – he drew his first comic for Marvel, Master of Kung Fu #121, in 1983 and had all but left the genre by 1987 – David Mazzucchelli helped redefine and reshape superhero storytelling with two acknowledged classics, both in collaboration with Frank Miller: Daredevil: Born Again (originally serialized in 1986 in Daredevil #227–233) and Batman: Year One (originally serialized in 1987 in Batman #404–407). (I read both on original publication and still consider the latter in particular among the best comics I've ever read.) When Mazzucchelli spoke to The Comics Journal in 1997 he told interviewer Christopher Brayshaw that he left superhero comics for three reasons: that he was not a violent person, and so had no connection to the fisticuffs aspect of superhero comics (quite a big component of the genre); that the schedule of doing a monthly comic "was starting to drive me nuts"; and that the kind of work he liked in other media – film, literature, the performing arts – was very different to the kind of work he himself was doing, in terms of "Subject matter, approach, attitude, everything."

His final work for Marvel (officially; in 1992 he inked a single page of Evan Dorkin's Bill & Ted's Excellent Comic Book, uncredited) appeared in issue #40 of the anthology Marvel Fanfare (October 1988), a story written by Ann Nocenti titled "Chiaroscuro". In many ways it pointed the way forward for the cartoonist, displaying a looser, more expressionistic line and featuring almost no superheroics (there's a four-panel silhouetted fight sequence on the first page, and the X-Man Angel is the ostensible lead, but otherwise the story is grounded in a suburban milieu).

Mazzucchelli worked from a plot rather than a full script, but he wanted to go further – to write as well as draw his own stories. Set free from the confines of the superhero genre he embarked on a succession of formally challenging, exciting, intriguing, sometimes moving, sometimes perplexing art-comix projects. He's since understandably become best known for the more substantial of these – his three-issue anthology Rubber Blanket; his and Paul Karasik's 1994 graphic novel adaptation of Paul Auster's City of Glass; his 2009 masterwork Asterios Polyp. But in amongst those longer projects he contributed numerous shorter pieces to various anthologies. Characterized by a restless inventiveness, some of these stories are possessed of an extraordinary depth and sophistication; others are more fun and light-hearted; but all are considered, thoughtful, and well worth seeking out.

I already had in my comics collection a good number of the anthologies in which Mazzucchelli's work appears, and I recently got hold of a few more; and having just written a profile of Mazzucchelli for the Marvel Fact Files – concentrating naturally on his superhero work – I figured I might write a blog post on some of those smaller and in some cases lesser known works. This blog post, in fact.

One of Mazzucchelli's earliest post-superhero pieces can be found in the third issue of Nicholas Blechman's anthology Nozone, published in 1991 (the same year as the first issue of Rubber Blanket). The theme of the issue – Nozone has a different one each issue – is "Destruction", which in Mazzucchelli's hands becomes "Cold Truth", a wordless two-page story about the tension between the pleasures of making and, well, unmaking.

Mazzucchelli contributed to Nozone twice more, in issues #5 and 6. Copies of Nozone are quite hard to come by, especially in the UK, but as well as finding #3 on eBay I was fortunate enough to come across a copy of #6, the "Crime" issue (1995), in one of my local comic shops, Dave's Books in Brighton. There's no Mazzucchelli short story inside Nozone #6; instead the cartoonist contributes the terrific front and back covers, which tell their own fleeting tale of crime and punishment.

A little easier to get hold of than Nozone are the two issues of Drawn and Quarterly Mazzucchelli contributed to. In Vol. 1 #9 (July 1992) he drew two very short stories: a meditative one-pager on the inside front cover, "Hear the Atoms Splitting", and a jarringly sardonic, aptly angular two-pager, "A Brief History of Civilisation".

Two years later, he contributed the much longer, much-admired "Rates of Exchange" to Vol. 2 #2. Done after he finished City of Glass, Mazzucchelli said of the story (in the aforementioned Comics Journal interview), "I think it's one of my best stories. I think the writing in particular, and by writing I mean the narration and the dialogue and the structuring of it as a story visually is... it was definitely a step for me."

In 1993 Mazzucchelli contributed a story to the third issue of Fantagraphics anthology Snake Eyes (another recent eBay acquisition of mine; I believe he also contributed to the first issue, but I haven't got hold of a copy of that yet; perhaps if – when – I do I'll update this post). In some ways "Phobia" can be considered a precursor to City of Glass; Mazzucchelli told Christopher Brayshaw that he showed the story to Art Spiegelman at the same Angouleme convention where Spiegelman later asked if Mazzucchelli would like to be involved with the City of Glass project (of which Spiegelman was one of the instigators), and it has similar noir trappings, although in the case of "Phobia", these are put to the purpose of satirising the luridly violent stories Mazzucchelli was seeing at the time in mainstream comics. Handily, The whole of "Phobia" can be read on Brian Michael Bendis' tumblr.

Mazzucchelli contributed to another Fantagraphics anthology, Zero Zero, three times during its 27-issue run. The first time was in the second issue, dated May/June 1995, with "Stop the Hair Nude", an uncomfortable and clammy but stylistically virtuoso story about a Japanese censor's obsession with female pubic hair. (A year later he contributed another Japanese-themed story, "Midori", to the first issue of Kodansha anthology Manga Surprise!, but I haven't seen hide nor hair of that – so to speak.) His next contribution, "Stubs" in #11 (August 1996), is in a much lighter vein, although even here there is depth in Mazzucchelli's examination of the folly of youth personified in a pencil. But Mazzucchelli's best Zero Zero story is the final one he contributed, to the anthology's final issue (Summer 2000): the quiet, reflective, drifting, abstract "Still Life" (another Japan-influenced tale which I understand originally appeared in Manga Surprise! #2).

Speaking of Fantagraphics publications, there's a lovely two-page Mazzucchelli comic in The Comics Journal Special Edition Volume One (Winter 2002) – "The Boy Who Loved Comics". Making the most of the oversized 12" square format, with deft lifework and bold use of CMYK colour, stylistically it has a fair bit in common with the later Asterios Polyp, as this blog post by Chris McCarthy points out.

Mazzucchelli contributed to two fairy tale-themed anthologies published over a decade apart. In 2000 his bittersweet take on the Japanese legend "The Fisherman and the Sea Princess" appeared in Little Lit: Folklore & Fairy Tale Funnies (RAW Junior/HarperCollins), while in 2013 the more comedic "Give Me the Shudders", based on a Brothers Grimm story, appeared in Fairy Tale Comics (First Second). At ten pages, "Give Me the Shudders" is one of the longer Mazzucchelli anthology short stories I've come across (beaten only by "Rates of Exchange"), and is also, I believe, his most recent work.

A few other short Mazzucchelli pieces I have in my collection are, I think, worthy of note in this context. Negative Burn #17 (Vol. 1, 1994 – again another recent eBay acquisition) reproduces pages from Mazzucchelli's sketchbook – not a must-have, by any means, but still, I'd say, of interest to the Mazzucchelli enthusiast (speaking as one myself). His contribution to Evan Dorkin's Superman and Batman: World's Funnest (DC, 2000), on the other hand, is well worth a look – a four page homage to Jack Kirby's Fourth World which Mazzucchelli spent months perfecting. Lastly, the 2005 edition of Batman: Year One boasts not only copious extras – samples, roughs, marked-up script pages, even Mazzucchelli's first comic page, drawn at age six – but an afterword(s) taking the form of four one-page comics about the artist's personal history with, and feelings about, Batman and superheroes.

Paul Auster, David Mazzucchelli, The Music of Chance, City of Glass

I've been thinking about Paul Auster and David Mazzucchelli quite a bit lately. I bought this the other week in Lewes's Bow Windows Bookshop.

A 1991 Faber first edition of The Music of Chance, signed by Auster on the title page.

Years ago I saw (on the telly, and then again on a video I taped off the telly) and loved Philip Haas's 1993 film adaptation of the novel, starring Mandy Patinkin and James Spader, and with a new novel from Auster due in a matter of days (4321, a breeze block of a book which seemingly explores similar territory to Kate Atkinson's Life After Life), I figured now was as good a time as any to read the source text. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of what I loved about the film – its theme of fate versus free will, of how life can seem both dizzyingly random and crushingly predetermined – is present in the novel, although I don't recall there being much of Jim Nashe's aimless road trip in the film – where I think he picks up hitchhiking gambler Jack Pozzi pretty early on – whereas in the book the opening 20 pages are given over to Nashe's zigzag across America, a segment I found exhilarating in its freedom and irresponsibility, and even more so when weighed against the oppressive, increasingly nightmarish situation – building a pointless wall at the behest of a pair of vindictive, manipulative millionaires – Nashe and Pozzi wind up in.

Thinking about Auster got me thinking about David Mazzucchelli, and led me to suggest to the Marvel Fact Files (who I write a fair bit for) that I do a profile on the cartoonist. I've only read one other Paul Auster novel – 1992's Leviathan – but I have read Mazzucchelli and Paul Karasik's graphic novel adaptation of City of Glass, Auster's debut novel (under his own name; he published a crime novel, Squeeze Play, as Paul Benjamin in 1982).

I read it in 2004, when it was reissued by Picador, having been unable to lay my hands at the time on its 1994 Avon original edition – this being before the internet became a thing on which you could buy pretty much anything. Whereas nowadays a copy of that Avon edition, which was published as part of the Neon Lit: Noir Illustrated series spearheaded by the late Bob Callahan (who provides a thoughtful introduction to the Avon edition) and the not late Art Spiegelman (who provides an illuminating introduction to the Picador edition), can be had online for as little as a penny (plus postage).

The other day I reread City of Glass – in its Avon edition, which I bought online for as little as a penny (plus postage) – and it remains a remarkable, formally inventive piece of comics, part PI mystery, part rumination on chance and circumstance and destiny. Mazzucchelli described it (to Indy Magazine's Bill Kartalopoulos) as not so much an adaptation as a translation from one language to another, further noting in a Comics Journal interview that there was nothing visual about the original novel. As a result, in sections the naturalistic style Mazzucchelli adheres to for much of the narrative veers off into symbolism and iconography, notably during the sequences dealing with the character Peter Stillman's damaged mind.

For background to the Marvel Fact Files piece I dug out my collection of Mazzucchelli comics: Daredevil #226–233 (Mazzucchelli and Frank Miller's brilliant, revolutionary Born Again storyline); Batman #404–407 (the same pairing's even more brilliant, even more revolutionary Year One story); issues #1 and 3 of Mazzucchelli's Rubber Blanket anthology (I don't own the elusive #2, and nor do many other people); various issues of Drawn & Quarterly and Zero Zero containing Mazzucchelli strips; Superman and Batman: World's Funnest, which features a four-page sequence where Mazzucchelli channels Jack Kirby; Asterios Polyp, Mazzucchelli's 2009 graphic novel; even the second issue of Bill & Ted's Excellent Comic Book, one page of which was apparently inked, uncredited, by Mazzucchelli (although I've no idea which one). I think I have Marvel Fanfare #40 as well, which contains a Mazzucchelli-drawn story featuring the X-Men's Angel, but if I do have it it's somewhere in the loft in one of two dozen comic boxes. And there are other Mazzucchelli short stories in various anthologies that I don't own; perhaps if I get my hands on some of them, and track down that Marvel Fanfare, I'll do a post on Mazzucchelli's short stories.

Whut You Reading For?

Getting back into novels has been a revelatory experience. I'd clean forgotten how rich and deep novels are in comparison to comics. Sure, there are some comics that manage a similar depth – Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp being a recent example – but in general, comics, or at least American adventure comics, provide a much pulpier, shallower reading experience.

I'm continuing to work my way through Patricia Highsmith's backlist, and I've got a few more Kingsley Amises lined up. I'm also currently midway through my first Bond novel, From Russia, With Love, and it's terrific. Why haven't I read any Fleming before? (I think we know the answer to that one – too busy poring over daft comic books.) I also picked up a Pan paperback of a Gavin Lyall book, The Most Dangerous Game. Kinglsey Amis was apparently a fan of Lyall, a writer I'd never come across before, so I'll give it a go.

Now then.

Here's something that turned up at the comic shop this week which wasn't on my list:













I feel a lengthy Mazzucchelli post coming on...