el jay has gone screwy

01. Something From The ACME Novelty Library
Started w/ Issue 1 and never stopped. A real problem for shelving, since a few of them appear to be half as tall as I am.

02. A Complete Run Of Arcade
Hah! I wish! If I were 10 years older I would probably have this.

03. Any Number Of Mini-Comics
My very first mini was David Lasky's brilliant 1991 adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses in 36 panels. Now I have mini-comix flowing out of every orifice.

04. At Least One Pogo Book From The 1950s
I should probably have my reader's license revoked: not only do I not have any Pogo book from th 1950s; I have no Pogo book @ all! Fantagraphics are trying to fix my problem, but until den mebbe ah should do some digging in used bookstores?

05. A Barnaby Collection
It looks like I "need" this, too.

06. Binky Brown and the Holy Virgin Mary
Fucking fuck yeah! Th final word on Catholic guilt, if you ask me--ah'm a expert.

07. As Many Issues of RAW as You Can Place Your Hands On
I have placed my hands on and read many of them, but never bought one--which is a shame now that they fetch hundreds of dollars on ebay or whatever.

08. A Little Stack of Archie Comics
You don't have to own these th same way you don't have to own Beatles albums.

09. A Suite of Modern Literary Graphic Novels
My short list: Gemma Bovery, Epileptic, City of Glass, and Th Rabbi's Cat.

10. Several Tintin Albums
My mum bought these for me when she went to England, I think?

11. A Smattering Of Treasury Editions Or Similarly Oversized Books
Frank Santoro's Storeyville is th greatest thing I read this year.

12. Several Significant Runs of Alternative Comic Book Series
He's talking about Eightball, Dirty Plotte, Jim Woodring's various titles--my soundtrack to 1994, basically.

13. A Few Early Comic Strip Collections To Your Taste
I like: Krazy Kat, Polly & Her Pals, Little Nemo, and Popeye; but we're living in a golden age of reprints, and there's a lot of stuff out there to get greedy about. Gasoline Alley's probably next on my list. Or that Noel Sickles book--sick!

14. Several "Indy Comics" From Their Heyday
Cerebus is th best example I can think of of a great work of art that might well be incomprehensible to somebody who didn't grow up loving comix. W/o Flaming Carrot, Th Tick would not exist. Is it too late for me to get into American Flagg? Probably.

15. At Least One Comic Book From When You First Started Reading Comic Books
Wolverine snikt snikt woo hoo !

16. At Least One Comic That Failed to Finish The Way It Planned To
R.I.P. Big Numbers and Underwater.

17. Some Osamu Tezuka
Thanks to y'all.

18. The Entire Run Of At Least One Manga Series
Workin' on it.

19. One Or Two 1970s Doonesbury Collections
I still remember when th one character died of AIDS and had "Wouldn't It Be Nice" playing in th background, but that happened in 1990.

20. At Least One Saul Steinberg Hardcover
No idea who he was until now.

21. One Run of A Comic Strip That You Yourself Have Clipped
I've clipped tons of Peanuts and Calvin & Hobbes over th years but dunno if ah ever got a significant uninterrupted run. That would be ...... nerdy!

22. A Selection of Comics That Interest You That You Can't Explain To Anyone Else
I think my continued interest in Ann Nocenti's Daredevil qualifies, although I tried to explain it.

23. At Least One Woodcut Novel
They do look pretty cool.

24. As Much Peanuts As You Can Stand
I've italicized this because as much Peanuts as I can stand would be a near-infinite amount of Peanuts. This includes his senile late period.

25. Maus
You always have @ least one thing that everybody else likes, that you don't. Spiegelman is mine.

26. A Significant Sample of R. Crumb's Sketchbooks
My attitude toward looking @ Crumb's drawings is identical to my attitude toward Peanuts.

27. The original edition of Sick, Sick, Sick
I've got and love other stuff by Feiffer but have never seen this one.

28. The Smithsonian Collection Of Newspaper Comics
I wonder if they would have this in one of th Smithsonian's gift shops? I could just drive there. Of course, right now on Amazon there is a copy available for $4.98, but that would require my overcoming my Amazonophobia.

29. Several copies of MAD
I used to buy MAD after it had gotten lame and was all parodies of Growing Pains or Silver Spoons or whatever, but th point of this is to have those great 1950s cartoons by Harvey Kurtzman, right? I have Th Jungle Book.

30. A stack of Jack Kirby 1970s Comic Books
I'm counting reprints.

31. More than a few Stan Lee/Jack Kirby 1960s Marvel Comic Books
A friend recently made th argument to me that Jack Kirby's pre-Stan Lee comix were not that great. It occurred to me then that I've never read Kirby's pre-Lee comix.

32. A You're-Too-High-To-Tell Amount of Underground Comix
I've got several issues of Zap (favourites: Robert Williams, Crumb, Rick Griffin) and not enough mushrooms.

33. Some Calvin and Hobbes
Yes, but I do not have Th Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, which contains Watterson's essay on comics, and now I want it.

34. Some Love and Rockets
Th only thing missing from my collection is Luba's Comics and Stories #8, which looks like this:


--so if you see a copy lying around somewhere, grab it for me, willya? Ah'll buy you a hamburger.

35. The Marvel Benefit Issue Of Coober Skeber
An anthology Highwater Books put out in 1997 that contains Marvel Comics characters as interpreted by primitivist cartoonists Ron Regé, Brian Ralph, Mat Brinkman, and Brian Chippendale. Who knew it would become legendary? (I reckon that's how legendariness works: stealthily.)

36. A Few Comics Not In Your Native Tongue
My favourite is Eiland, a Dutch comix that is mostly wordless. I also have a copy of Dark Knight in Dutch that I picked up in Amsterdam's airport and a bunch of untranslated manga my old BFF Roger got for me in Japan when he was trying to become a monk.

37. A Nice Stack of Jack Chick Comics
Shit! I don't have any! Did you know they've been translated into over 100 languages? I'm not sure if Chick himself draws them anymore, but his company is still putting out new ones. Here's their latest, a timely bit of anti-Halloween propaganda.

38. A Stack of Comics You Can Hand To Anybody's Kid
I used to buy Bone and Cartoon Network comix for my ex-gf's son, but he's 15 now and his interest in comix was bulldozed by video games and girls. We are Facebook friends, which is about as strange as you might guess.

39. At Least A Few Alan Moore Comics
I have pretty much everything except for stuff that looks like it was drawn by Rob Liefeld, who hurts my eyes.

40. A Comic You Made Yourself
It is v. crappy, but I am v. proud of it. More important: it was hella fun to make, and I remember w/ great fondness that night of th 24-Hour Comix People all piled into my living room all night drawing like crazy, w/ a little help from Mr Adderall.

41. A Few Comics About Comics
Hurrah for Hicksville ! Still my favourite fictional town.

42. A Run Of Yummy Fur
This series was bent.

43. Some Frank Miller Comics
Elektra: Assassin is best. Second-best is Year One. Third-best is Ronin, which was th last time I wholeheartedly enjoyed his art.

44. Several Lee/Ditko/Romita Amazing Spider-Man Comic Books
I have a hard time reading most Stan Lee comix, but you can't fuck w/ th art.

45. A Few Great Comics Short Stories
Th short stories in David Mazzuchelli's Rubber Blanket are probably my favourite short comix stories ever done by somebody not named Hernandez. It's th only comic book I ever wrote a letter to.

46. A Tijuana Bible
No, but I've got comix filth that would make th Tijuana Bibles blush.

47. Some Weirdo
Like Raw, I used to pick these up and read them in th store, but I couldn't let it eat into my Sandman budget. Too bad.

48. An Array Of Comics In Various Non-Superhero Genres
I've got way too much Sandman and not enough good crime or romance comix.

49. An Editorial Cartoonist's Collection or Two
Tim Kreider is a lot of fun, if by fun you mean totally miserable and probably an alcoholic!

50. A Few Collections From New Yorker Cartoonists
Fuck th New Yorker, that shit never made me laugh once.

51. English Translations of Comix That Contain Drawings of Buildings by François Schuiten
Moebius would work in this category, too.

52. Actually Moebius Deserves His Own Category
I regret not buying ALL those Epic translations when they were easily available.

53. At Least a Few African-American Science Fiction Comix
What is it about these blacks and their science fiction that fills me w/ equal parts utter joy and utter disorientation? Sun Ra, Funkadelic, Ultramagnetic MCs ... Walker of th Universe ...!

54. Asian Comix That Aren't Japanese
I regret to report that I have no Filipino comix.

55. Speaking of Filipinos How About Some Lynda Barry Collections, Am I Right??
But I would remove all th strips emcee'd by a poodle and focus on th family stuff.