When autobiographical cartoonist Joe Matt passed away of a heart attack last fall at the age of 60, he was found at his drawing desk. One might assume that he was a prolific cartoonist whose incessant work ethic caused his demise.
In fact, he was an agonizingly slow cartoonist, whose life's work, the comic book series Peepshow, only made it to 14 thin issues in his lifetime. His last issue had been released 17 years prior to his death.
But his friends discovered that his next issue, #15, was complete except for four uninked pages. His friend cartoonist Chester Brown inked those pages, and the issue is to be released by Fantagraphics on July 17.
The comic is, quite simply, extremely Joe Matt. The shockingly confessional narratives, the funny self-deprecation, the obsessive detailing of his self-destructive obsessions — they're all here.
But I've got to warn readers: Certain of his obsessions have not "aged well" in the 17 years this comic book was in the making, and it's somewhat disturbing. In fact, maybe the reason they weren't published wasn't laziness or procrastination, but his perception that the culture had moved sharply against the stories he was telling and the confessions he was making.
He tells stories of using his relative fame in the comic book world to attract inappropriately young women (but not literally illegal) into romantic relationships. Matt's self-proclaimed (over and over) obsession with women of Asian descent is also problematic. If there's anything that makes any of this less repellent, and it might not, it's his own confessed (over and over) self-knowledge and shame over his behavior. I wonder if the women depicted have seen these comics, and how they'll feel and react to their publication.
Yet, as one might expect for an artist with 17-year gaps in work, Joe Matt was a throwback. His comics have always invited, almost demanded, that you find him repulsive. At times, the cute style of humor worked in direct juxtaposition to the nasty subject matter of his life.
It's fascinating to see the '00s work of an artist so clearly influenced by the unflinchingly confessional underground comics of the '60s and '70s, newly published in 2024.
But it might make you flinch.
Previously:
• Interview: Joshua Mills on his upcoming Fantagraphics book about the late comedian Ernie Kovacs
• When he died, his family discovered 50 years of cartooning output: the secret comics of Frank Johnson are published
• My Favorite Thing is Monsters: a haunting diary of a young girl as a dazzling graphic novel
All images posted with permission of Fantagraphics.
