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April 23, 2020 03:30 pm GMT

Edward Gorey's new book reviewed by Mark Dery

"The Angel, The Automobilist, and Eighteen Others" is a new collection of early drawings by eccentric illustrator and storyteller Edward Gorey (1925-2000). Over at The Comics Journal, Mark Dery, author of the Gorey biography Born to Be Posthumous, reviews the slim new volume while considering where Gorey's odd oeuvre sits (or doesn't) in the comic book tradition. Dery writes:

[Gorey's] library, at the time of his death, included anthologies of Bill Wattersons Calvin and Hobbes, Gary Larsons Far Side, the droll caricatures of Ronald Searle, European comics like Astrix and Tintin (Herges ligne claire aesthetic surely chimed, in Goreys mind, with the crisp line of his own hand-drawn engravings), 12 volumes of Hyperions Library of Classic American Comic Strips, Winsor McCays Little Nemo, and Wilhelm Buschs classic Max and Moritz (1865), a black-comedy parody of moralizing childrens literature like Heinrich Hoffmanns macabre Struwwelpeter (1845). Predictably, his small but carefully curated (as were taught to say) collection of original art included cartoons by Glen Baxter and the loopy New Yorker stalwart George Booth. Less predictably, his bookshelves were stuffed, too, with collections of superhero comics, especially Marvel titles: Batman from the 30s to the 70s, Superman Battles the Mightiest Men in the Universe, Bring on the Bad Guys: Origins of Marvel Villains, Marvels Greatest Superhero Battles, The Silver Surfer, The Incredible Hulk, and on and on.

Goreys fondness for comics and cartoons isnt proof positive they influenced his work, but Steven Heller, a historian of design and illustration, has no doubt he has a foot in the comic-art tradition.

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Original Link: https://boingboing.net/2020/04/23/edward-goreys-new-book-revie.html

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