Chicago by Glenn Head

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS

“Glenn: do more auto-bio stuff!” — R. Crumb, 1994 “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.” — George Orwell, 1944

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS INC. 7563 Lake City Way NE Seattle, Washington, 98115 Editor and associate publisher: Eric Reynolds Book Design: Glenn Head and Keeli McCarthy Production: Paul Baresh • Publisher: Gary Groth Chicago is copyright © 2015 Glenn Head.

This edition is copyright © 2015 Fantagraphics Books Inc. Permission to reproduce content must be obtained from the author or publisher.

ISBN 978-1-60699-812-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015939568 First printing: September 2015. Printed in Singapore.

Chicago is a coming-of-age story by Glenn Head, a luminary in the age of post-underground comics. His fluid, highly detailed drawings illustrate the remembered and the wildly imaginary populations and events of a psyche that seems to know no calm. One senses the influence of artists who preceded him (the Fleischer Brothers, Kim Deitch, S. Clay Wilson, and Rory Hayes, to name a few), but his style is truly sui generis. His stories are rich with seemingly contradictory elements; for example, for every act of violence, there is an opposing act (or state) of innocence or love. His work can be read again and again, and understood slightly differently as one absorbs the nuances of image and story.

There have been hints of “autobiography” in Head’s previous work, such as Avenue D (1988). But that work, and others (Guttersnipe 1 & 2, 1993–1996), mostly comprise stories which seem yanked from the purgatory of imagination. In these books, the forces of Life and Death, Right and Wrong, are obsessively tackled in the guise of uprooted talking flowers, anthropomorphic serpents, and profligate snowmen and snow-women.

Chicago has stronger ties to the “real” world than Head’s other books. In it, we meet “Glen” at age 19. We can assume that Glen the character represents Glenn the author (off by just one letter). As a young man, Glen is a budding artist enamored by underground comics—Robert Crumb is his hero. Sequestered in his bedroom, the walls plastered with psychedelic posters, Glen smokes cigarettes and fantasizes about the countercultural world he longs to be a part of. However, on the other side of his bedroom door looms the culturally barren, suburban environment of Madison, New Jersey.

What follows is Glen’s harrowing journey toward self-discovery as the boy struggles to become a man. Glen stumbles in and out of art school, then disappears for months, living on the seediest streets of Chicago with barely enough to eat, drawn to a life that offers

challenges and dangers unknown to him. Later, we are propelled years ahead, meeting Glen again as he grapples with adulthood.

Chicago begins and ends in a graveyard. Death and the places it frequents seem to be everpresent tropes in Mr. Head’s work, instilling fear, calm, or inspiration according to circumstance. Death’s presence is nearly always counterbalanced by an equally strong expression of Life. In one scene, while his family is off vacationing in their Winnebago, Glen wanders naked through the house, despairing at his isolation even as he is liberated by his family’s absence. A gun is found and a round of Russian roulette is played. After winning (or losing, as you see it) the game, he wearily puts the gun back to sleep in its hatbox and returns to his bedroom. He lights a cigarette and collapses on his bed, musing, “I wonder what it’s like to get laid?”

There are fascinating characters throughout the book. Sarah, the profligate daughter of Holocaust survivors, is an object of love, fear, and desire for Glen. Driven to self-inflict pain equal to that suffered by her parents in the camps, she is the external manifestation of the torment and confusion Glen internalizes. In Chicago, there is Aaron, a well-dressed black man living in a squalid rooming house, who extends unexpected kindness to Glen with no expectation of favors in return. Most complex is Glen’s father, a successful businessman who seems, at first, to represent all that his son reviles. Seeing his son’s struggles, he shares his observations and offers criticism. But he is no punishing God. Concerned, but never indulgent or rejecting, he is, in the end, something of a savior.

I’ll stop here for fear of divulging too much of the story. I’d like to heartily recommend Chicago. Glenn Head is a comics author/artist who has been working for several decades but is just now approaching his prime. I look forward to many more books in the decades to come.

“And spring left me with an idiot’s unbearable laughter.”

— Arthur Rimbaud, 1873

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17