Comics Fondle

I don’t get it.

I mean, I get it in concept. Lois is a bunch of autobiographical sketches. Except none of them are really narratives. They’re strangely perfect for the comic form. Uninteresting recollections (narrated by illustrated narrators) of interesting events.

There are some one page bits, then some longer ones. The longest of the stories–about buying a mattress–probably reads the fastest, with the shorter items seemingly endless.

The first is called “P.M.S.” and is about a wife acting OCD when she’s on her period. It isn’t insightful and it isn’t funny. The punch line is particularly desperate.

The second story–by special guest writer Harvey Pekar–is worse. Harvey narrates the story of how he first read one of Lois Gilbert’s comic books. The punch line in this one is worse than desperate, it’s indecipherable. Maybe it isn’t supposed to be funny.

The third story, about Gilbert’s time as an exotic dancer, is interesting from a sociological perspective, but certainly not as a narrative. There are some amusing details, but nothing more. It shows the big problem with Lois #1–these strips probably shouldn’t be collected in the same place… their monotony shines through.

The fourth story is a lengthy, moving to New York City and encounter cockroaches. It’s lame and unoriginal, even if it is autobiographical. Everyone born after 1941 could have had a sled called Rosebud and if he or she lost it and then told a story about it, it’d still be unoriginal. I’ve been reading or seeing New York stories like this one since Woody Allen first got to shoot there… in 1969, wasn’t it?

The fifth story is the Jewish mother story. If you’ve seen “Seinfeld,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” or countless other sitcoms… you’ve already got this story. Again, doesn’t matter if it’s true. I clipped my fingernails last night. Want to read a four page comic about it?

The sixth story is about Gilbert becoming a stand-up comic. Kind of fits with the stripper story… and is a whole lot better at two pages.

The seventh story is about Gilbert going to a comic show and losing her comic books. Two endless pages.

The eighth story–another two pager–is a sexual harassment thing. It’s painfully unfunny, like most sexist jokes. The only difference is… it’s a woman writing the story.

Then it’s the long bed story. Honestly, I saw a mattress shopping episode of “Ned and Stacey” and of “House” in the last four months. There’s nothing insightful or new here. Nothing about the human condition to make this a valuable read. Nothing amusing about the writing to even make it enjoyable. It’s a bad narrative and could have been done in a four panel comic strip.

The ninth story is about bras. It’s goofy and painfully unfunny.

The tenth and eleventh stories both take up a page. In the tenth, Gilbert reveals she has an absent Mormon son. The punch line fails. The eleventh has to do with creepy guys. It should be funny and isn’t.

The back cover has one last strip. Pekar appears in it, but doesn’t write it… it’s bad.

I had a boss who told a great story about getting stoned and watching a bird fly into the car he was in. Landed on the seat next to him, straight through the windshield. A good story–fiction or not–has to do with how one tells it. Lois makes no attempt at being narrative, which makes it peculiar and interesting and unique and bad.

And I hate to nitpick–I realized artist Gary Dumm was probably not working for a fortune here, but there’s very little continuity from panel-to-panel on how people look.

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