Last Wednesday, I paid three dollars to sit in on Ink, Sweat & Tears: A D.I.Y Cartoon Concert and Book Tour, featuring Eric Drooker, Keith Knight and Jon Longhi delivering 15-minute sets of spoken word accompanied by slides images of their work.
Drooker was the draw for me, no pun intended. A nationally known painter and graphic novelist, Dooker's work is among my favorite in the graphic novel realm. I first stumbled upon his stuff a couple years ago at an open house at AK Press, "a worker-run book publisher and distributor organized around anarchist principles."
Drooker has perfected the art of telling moving, spiritual stories solely through pictures. Flood!, winner of the American Book Award, has been described by Art Spiegelman (Maus I & II) as "a picture of a soulless civilization headed toward the apocalypse. The page acts as a curtain to be raised, each page offering up new visual surprises... Drooker has discovered the magic of pulling light and life out of an inky sea of darkness." Equally stunning, Blood Song follows the journey of a young woman who inadvertantly becomes the sole survior of a brutal military invasion in her once idyllic home. Deemed "more optimistic and accessible than Flood!, this volume celebrates the perseverance of the human spirit in the face of repression," according to a Library Journal review. Drooker has done numerous covers for New Yorker and collaborated with Allen Ginsberg to create Illustrated Poems, in which Ginsberg commented: "Drooker's old Poe vision of beauteous deathly reality transcend political hang-up and fix our present American Dreams."
In other words, Drooker is a bad ass in the classic New York style, and I was psyched to see him. While I wouldn't say he was a disappointment, I will say that he seemed very much in his own microcosm. His images included "excerpts" from the aforementioned books, some cover art and other drawings I'd never seen, and most interesting, photos from his recent trip to the Gaza Strip, which he recounted for CounterPunch. It is obvious that the trip to "Israel's Apartheid Wall," separating the Palestinean rif from Israeli raf, has left Drooker's mind an occupied territory not unlike the one he visited. He did a little rap in the dark for us at Artist's Television Access as his images flashed on screen, though I'm slightly ashamed to admit I can't remember what it was about. I think it was about "the Man." Ultimately everything is.
I was prepared to leave after Drooker's portion, but the rain kept me in my seat. Longhi was next. Billed as an "urban humorist" and the author of graphic books Flashbacks and Premonitions and Wake Up and Smell the Beer, his work didn't resonate with me at all. He read three short stories that made the rest of the small but appreciative audience cackle, but I felt like I was enduring his 15 minutes rather than enjoying it. He did tell one slightly amusing story. The narrator reminisced about a dry spell during which his best friend was the only person in Portland who had access to any weed. However, this meant that whenever they brought it out—say at a party—they'd instantly become surrounded by "high school jocks and rednecks." Somebody would bogart their joint, and they'd never see it again. The problem was solved when the best friend decided to make a bong out of a "lifelike" dildo. After that, they couldn't get anybody to toke with them, even when they tried to force it on people. Like I said, the story was slightly amusing.
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