(McSweeney’s) Guest Review by Robert Dayton
Not only is this the Daddy of the autobiographical comic book, it is also the greatest and most unique (still after forty years). This comic book is a personal confession of Catholic sexual repression that blends reality with symbiology in ways that had never before been expressed, dark and deep yuks of substance in the funny book form. The reproductions of this particular edition take pains to show every single cut-and-paste and streak of white-out. It’s like we are literally reading the paste-up copy before it goes to print. I’ve never seen anyone do this before and I’m not entirely sure of their reasoning. Perhaps this was done to take it away from the world of art reproduction, to make it feel closer to the real thing, yet I found looking at all the blue pencil marks and covered-up glitches to be distracting and distancing when I was reading it for enjoyment. This version seems aimed at people more interested in the working methods. Included is a lengthy and insightful essay by Justin Green himself of how Binky Brown Meets The Virgin Mary came to be in terms of his own personal and psychological history, style development, and the slow growth of its’ eventual influence.
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