The title to J.L. Roberson's benefit comics anthology, Working for the Man (Unbound, $9.95), recalls Roy Orbison's classic song of working class resentment & ambition, but its purposes are considerably more altruistic. Collected to raise funds for a comic book creator who has recently fallen on dire times, the anthology represents the efforts of 25-plus mainstream & alternative comics folks who've been influenced by William Messner-Loebs. Screwed out of his mortgage by the penurious efforts of local bankers, Loebs found both self & family homeless this summer. Members of the comics community, artists & fans alike, have endeavored to help this beloved writer/artist through charity on-line auctioning or donations (much of it advertised through The Comics Journal's message boards) and now this collection: a remarkable amount of positive activism in a relatively short time.
I first came into contact w./ Loeb's work during the 80's black-and-white comics boom via the frontier adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire, a taciturn grizzled backswoodsman who roamed the wilds of Canada & the northern Midwest in the early 1800's. Fluidly drawn and told, the MacAlistaire stories were witty, poetically rendered, occasionally convincingly brutal: an amalgam of Mark Twain & Will Eisner. I followed Journey through two publishing companies - but for some reason, not enough readers were willing to support a frontier-based comic, no matter how skillfully it was rendered. (No capes for the superhero fanboys; no autobiographical angst for the alternative comics crowd.) Loebs was forced to take his talents to the comics mainstream, working on such mainstay titles as DC's Flash & Wonder Woman.
Around the same time that Journey ceased publication, I suspended much of my comics reading, so I missed Loebs' transition into mainstream superhero scripter. He obviously developed a coterie of fans for this work: many of his comics from this period are still available as trade paperback reprints. Loebs eventually moved away from mainstream comics, for reasons that aren't known to me, but he wasn't forgotten. In testimony, here's this collection.
Working for the Man is an e-book anthology, the first such benefit to my knowledge: a collection of thirty pieces, most of 'em comics (though TCJ publisher Gary Groth contributes a nice laudatory intro, Chad Parenteau a poem and writer/artist Steven Bissette a short story that seems somewhat out of place). Some of the strips recall Loebs' past work or present situation (this is not the book for you if you're a thin-skinned financial type); others just content themselves w./ comics storytelling or art. Among the highlights:
- Donna Barr's "Loan Prairie," the most effective Journey pastiche (though Barr places more blacks in her loose-limbed inking style than Loebs), set in the frontier and featuring a curse that sends a trainload of bankers to their death;
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