Blabber Blabber Blabber: Volume 1 of Everything Hardcover – October 31, 2011

I'll start off by admitting that I am a huge Lynda fan, and have been collecting everything of hers I could get my hands on since the mid-80s. Of course I had to get this book. but I wondered how much new stuff would be in here, since I've got everything of hers going back more than 25 years. The answer is: There is LOTS of stuff here I'd never seen, including the "Two Sisters" strips that appear to have been the beginnings of her fascination with sisters and crass mothers, later developed further in the Marlys and Maybonne stories. We even meet the elusive "Ernie Pook" who gave his name to "Ernie Pook's Comeek"! There's just so much great stuff in this book that, even though I read it all in one night, I have a feeling I'll be rereading it again and again and finding more in it each time. It's just so dense with inspiration.Blabber Blabber Blabber reveals how Lynda's style evolved through the years. Her early drawings have a sort of spastic, urgent fury -- you can almost see the pen slashing through the paper. The backgrounds are vibrating with spiky new-wave patterns, and objects change with each panel, perhaps inspired by Will Elder's early Mad work. What's fascinating is that these energetic early works are bookended and interspersed with new autobiographical material and scraps of grade-school drawings, giving the book a feel a bit like her recent quasi-autobiographical  What It Is . The embryonic blurtings of the late 70s are put into context with the much more controlled and measured works of the mature Lynda, giving us an amazing and emotionally naked look into the mind of an artist who I think is one of the best, and most disquietingly honest, cartoonists since R. Crumb.If you've ever wondered where Lynda got her unique style and sensibility, check this book out. She tells about her childhood troubles and inspiration and reveals her early influences, both personal and artistic. She talks us through her childhood copyings of Dr. Seuss, Ed Roth, and Robert Crumb. Her comments on the epiphany she experienced when she saw the first issue of Crumb's "Zap! Comix" are quite revealing: "Everything that was going on around me seemed to be in that comic. It both scared me and made me brave. It made me realize you could draw *anything* in a comic strip, even very messed up things...."I can't wait for Volume 2. Rock on, Lynda, Funk Queen of the Galaxy!**According to Matt Groening. Which reminds me, Groening completists will enjoy this book too, as it contains some early correspondence from him to Lynda.

Lynda Barry had a troubled youth: her parents divorced when she was twelve; she did drugs, found herself at loose ends. Then at sixteen, she got her act together. The intervening hard knocks inform her work and provide perspective and bite. One can imagine her as a seventeen year-old in a Trailways Bus Depot sizing up the other passengers and nailing them with her acerbic drawings. She hits dead center nearly every time. Following her auspicious start on her college newspaper, Barry became one of the leading comic strip artists in what we have come to call the alternative comics scene.The term is established, but it is not a good fit for her work. The term comes from the fact that her strips were published in the newsweeklies that sprung up around the country as alternatives to the mainline consumer newspapers, the papers that carried Donald Duck, Dick Tracey and Little Orphan Annie. In truth, those comic strips, which are all highly fanciful in their way, portrayed worlds that were far less real than the one Lynda Barry conjured up week after week.She dealt with life as it unfolds for those for whom life makes no sense, often from the view point of young girls as she did in her "Two Sisters" strip which is included in this volume. These are characters who would change place with Annie in a Seattle second.Lynda Barry stepped away from drawing her comic strips in 2008 as the alternative newsweekly market shrank to the vanishing point. Now she spends a good deal of her time teaching others how to do what she did, how to write, to draw, to tell their stories. She is very good at it. Her workshops are filled with men and women, old and young and in between, who swear by her. "Blabber" is the cornerstone of a publishing venture which will, when it is finished nine volumes from now, provide a comprehensive retrospective of Barry's work. What a gift. Future historians who attempt to write a social history of the U.S. in the late 20th, and early 21st Centuries without consulting this archive will do so at their peril. For a complete description of the contents of Volume 1, read the first two five star reviews of the book, those by "rudkr" and Jeddy 3. They are both knowledgeable about her her early comics. End note. Lynda Barry made a fan of me when I came across a copy of her 1994 coloring book, "Naked Ladies Naked Ladies Naked Ladies Naked Ladies." It contains 56 unique images which, together, comprise a deck of cards with four jokers. It convinced me that Barry intended to show her readers what it's really like out there. For more details check out the title on Amazon. There are still a couple of used copies for sale.

"Blabber Blabber Blabber Blabber: Volume One of Everything" is a simply stunning book from one of America's most brilliantly unique and visually distinctive alternative comic artists. This book chronicles Barry's difficult and transformative early years struggling with problems at home and finding a release in comics. Long before Marlys, there were "Two Sisters," "Girls and Boys," and "Ernie Pook's Comeek" plus much, much more.I reveled in Lynda's early work, and found her one-off comics to be among my favorites. I was particularly entertained by the skewering of the then-popular "you might be an artist" advertisements on p. 14 ("You may have hidden artistic talent!") and especially the humor test I chose for my title (P. 15.) Lynda's peculiar style, her constantly changing use of fonts and spellings, and dabbling with surrealism (see especially the dueling cacti on p. 17) make for a great read. I've always thought of Lynda as a kindred spirit, and anyone from any age can find something to delight in here.This book really takes me back in time, and I couldn't have enjoyed it more. Lynda, sincere thanks to you! Now can you get the next collection out please? I can't wait!

This could be my favourite Lynda Barry book of all - the beginning is good but half way through the book changes to her older work titled 'girls and boys' and its incredible - the stories are like flashbacks from your own past and what i really like is that whole stories take up 1 or 2 pages so you can pick the book up and put it down and never feel like you've forgotten the plot or story because the comics are so short and snappy - they are seriously good bitter sweet comics. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in auto-biographical comics/art/womens art. You might also want to check out 100 demons if you're into that sort of thing.

great books as always from this author