edgeMedia

Mark Shainblum

Originally Published in Enrage magazine, 1994.

            The old rules are gone. The new rules aren't written.

            We're living in a time where we simultaneously reject and mythologize the past, where the old ways of doing things are breaking down before our eyes but the new ways haven't been invented yet.

            We're existing in the middle. After what has been. Before what will come.

            In short, we're living on the edge.

            This is a place where we explore our strange new/strange old world.

            Where what has gone before is remembered, but not revered.

            Where what will come is explored, but not predicted.

            This is a place where all media are equal. Where the exploration is what counts, not the getting there.

            This isn't your father's Oldsmobile.

            This isn't your father's world.

            This is edgeMedia.

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Joe Matt and the Art of Drawing Yourself

            "I got into comics mainly through a failed illustration career," explains alternative comics artist Joe Matt, creator of the cult hit series Peep Show. "I lack the personality to impress art directors." Resigned to a life of small jobs and low pay, he started drawing comics for his own amusement, without any conception of making it his calling.

            The catalyst was his discovery of the alternate comics scene and the work of underground creators like Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman and Harvey Pekar.

            "They just blew me away," he explains. "Crumb's visual style totally overwhelmed me. I never felt I could draw the superhero stuff I'd been reading through my teen years."

            And he never did. Despite side trips into the world of comic book colouring in collaboration with 80's comic superstar Matt Wagner (creator of such dark-tinged superheroes as Grendel and Mage), Joe Matt's personal work has remained just that. Relentlessly personal.

             Peep Show is about Joe Matt, in excruciating and voyeuristic detail. It's all there: Joe Matt and money (he's cheap). Joe Matt and his scabs (he eats them). Joe Matt and women (he's neurotic and obsessive). Joe Matt and his art (he's neurotic and obsessive). Joe Matt's favourite masturbation position (on his stomach).

            None of which really tells you much about the comic. Nominated for several industry awards, Peep Show is on the cutting edge of an autobiographical trend, leading a small press rebellion against the dominance of corporate, escapist superheroes.

            "Looking directly at your own life seems a natural starting point when you're trying to run away from the fantasy," says Matt, quoting Seth, a fellow comic book creator who often appears as a character in Matt's comic.

            "I had the same misconception as many others," Matt continues, "that somehow as cartooning progresses and gets more mature, the drawing style gets more realistic. I grew up reading Peanuts, and I just thought that a teenager doesn't keep reading Peanuts and Little Lulu and Donald Duck. You've got to graduate. You've got to 'progress' to X-Men."

            Joe Matt's Peep Show is currently published by Drawn & Quarterly Publications.

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