In a bit of publishing sleight of hand, “The Comics” is actually a combination of two books previously authored by Walker that chronicled the history of newspaper comics before and after 1945. Since childhood, Walker the Younger has been up to his elbows in pen and ink and is the author of the newly released, massive volume “The Comics: The Complete Collection” (Abrams, $40). That bit of gone and long ago would not be news to Brian Walker, son of Mort Walker, the cartoonist who created “Beetle Bailey” and “Hi and Lois.” What he doesn’t know about newspaper comics and their creators isn’t worth knowing. In the glory days of radio, who among us didn’t lie on the living-room rug, tune in and listen raptly as a disembodied voice read us the Sunday funnies? Movie Preview: Some titles just sell themselves, “Kids vs.Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu.Movie Review: How the Other Half Parties leads to “Pretty Problems”.Scott tangle over “Oklahoma Crude” (1973) Classic Film Review: Dunaway, Palance and George C.Next screening? “The Railway Children Return”.Whatever the universe was telling Kline, the message or warning got a little muddled in translation. And then he kind of lost the thread, if not his nerve. He’s found a fascinating subculture to take us into, settled on a hero to take on a quest through it. ![]() As an actor, he once worked with Noah Baumbach (“The Squid and the Whale”), and “Funny Pages” has a bit of Baumach’s funny-not-funny ear mixed in with Terry Zwigoff’s “Ghost World” “harmless” screwballs-who-might be dangerous vibe. Kline presents us with a coming-of-age story, or an artist finding his voice tale, and never quite delivers either. Wallace’s insecurities are many, his “triggers,” the things that set him off, many more. This “Wallace” fellow, a former artist who used to work in “color separating” in the inking of comic books, is eccentric beyond eccentric, bitter and wrapped too tight. Crumb variety, and Maher, a veteran supporting player often typecast in scary or instant-impression “fringe” character roles (“Gone Baby Gone,” “Wonder Wheel,” “Marriage Story”) is the source of most of those intensely discomfiting chuckles. Kline goes for cringe-worthy characters and cringy laughs of the R. Eventually he meets someone new to idolize, a former comic book industry insider ( Matthew Maher).Įighteen is not too young to learn the lesson, “Never meet your heroes.” Robert rudely dismisses the crude efforts of his fellow comic-obsessive and would-be artist pal Miles ( Miles Emmanuel) and starts selling off his comic collection to supplement his two part time jobs - at The Garage Comics store and as a transcriptionist for the lawyer ( Marcia DeBonis) who kept him out of jail.Īnd he shows off his work and the pornographic “Tijuana bibles” to the creepy confirmed bachelors ( Michael Townsend Wright, Cleveland Thomas) he rents a bed from, judging that this is exactly the sort of stuff they’d be into. Kline leans into the stereotypes and leads us into the darker recesses of lonerdom as Princeton-pampered Robert dismisses his parents ( Maria Dizzia and Josh Pais), drops out of high school and moves into a hellish dump of an apartment in Trenton. Almost everybody he meets encourages his “Michael Jordan/Kobe Bryant” level genius.īit player turned first time feature writer-director Owen Kline takes us into a “Ghost World” of the comic book store of pop culture lore, filled with oddballs, obsessives, the obese and the acned, the whitest white kids - and adults - you know. ![]() Wild hair, exaggerated noses or ears, pot bellies and bizarre personality quirks and perversions in real life are fodder for his art. He will live through his art, feeding on the the Fellini grotesques of his corner of New Jersey. “Funny Pages” follows Robert as he follows that “forget college” advice and his dream, gets in trouble with the law, finds work and gets a dose of supporting himself on a pittance. Maybe this adult world of adult cartoon humor, the people who create it and the people who consume it, isn’t the right path to go down. “College?” It could very well “ruin” him.īut as that session comes to an awkward close, Robert causes his mentor’s gruesome death. We meet the hero of our story at a mentoring session in which his cartoonist/cartoon historian high school teacher ( Stephen Adly Guirgis) has praised Robert to the high heavens and told him he’s “ already at a professional level” with his drafting, artwork and comic strip/comic book wit. Robert, played by Daniel Zolghadri, is a cocky, indulged high school cartoonist with dreams of Mad Magazine glory. It’s entirely possible that the universe was trying to tell Robert something, and he missed the traumatic and obvious sign it gave him in the opening of “Funny Pages.”
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