A Child's Life and Other Stories / Edition 2

by Phoebe Gloeckner, Robert Crumb

Overview

Phoebe Gloeckner's first book collects her highly praised autobiographical accounts of a teenage girl's loss of innocence through sex, drugs, rape, and AIDS. This edition includes eight pages of new material.

Long respected as one of the finest and most original of today's underground comics artists, Gloeckner shows both technical artistry and tremendous range—from her sly, lurid, and brilliantly colored posters for rock groups to her textbook-quality medical illustrations; from her sharp naturalistic juxtapositions for The Atrocity Exhibition (J.G. Ballard) to the signature comics for which she is best known.

Pages include both black and white and color comics, some that were published before in obscure comic books, and some of her classics in addition to new stories. In detailed, nuanced panels, these strips depict the isolation, horror, and disappointment—but also the revolutionary, transformative power—of young women trapped in circumstances ringed with drugs and sexual abuse. Gloeckner continues as a major literary and visual artist.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781583940280
Publisher:	North Atlantic Books
Publication date:	07/25/2000
Edition description:	REVISED
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	8.51(w) x 10.97(h) x 0.36(d)

About the Author

Phoebe Gloeckner was born in Philadelphia and raised in San Francisco. Her comics first appeared in underground publications when she was in her teens. Gloeckner is also author/illustrator of the critically acclaimed Diary of a Teenage Girl, published by North Atlantic Books in 2003. In addition to paintings and comics, she has made award-winning short films.

Editorial Reviews

"I thought that Phoebe Gloeckner's story, 'Minnie's Third Love,' was one of the best comic stories I ever read in my life ... a masterpiece. She is one of the best, which is interesting, seeing as: A.) She's a cute girl, B.) She's not a very prolific artist ... two factors which, one would assume, would be a hindrance to great art. But it's always a mystery, what makes great art ... there, I said it ... she's a great artist."
—R. Crumb, cartoonist

"Phoebe Gloeckner's illustrations for The Atrocity Exhibition were superb—wonderful line and shading of which Durer would have approved—several were absolute tours de force."
—J.G. Ballard, author of Crash and The Atrocity Exhibition

"Many cartoonists today mine their personal lives for subject matter. Phoebe Gloeckner achieves what few of them can; she makes the autobiographical universal. Her finely crafted drawings and emotionally powerful story-telling ability combine in this terrific collection to tell us painful, sympathetic, and hilariously human truths. Read this book. Find out why comics are art."
—Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead

From the Publisher

Gloeckner is a legendary figure in underground comics. Her short, powerfully candid and visually explicit autobiographical graphic narratives vividly re-create the sexual victimization of her childhood and adolescence. Her first full-length book combines new work in color and in black-and-white, including the title story, along with older, shorter narrative comics dating back to 1976. (An appendix reprints her disturbing medical illustrations for J.G. Ballard's avant-SF classic The Atrocity Exhibition.) Abandoned by her father and sexually victimized by her alcoholic mother's lovers, the teenage heroine of "Minnie's 3rd Love" endures a "week-long nightmare of sex and drug-taking" among the hustlers and addicts of 1974 San Francisco. In the ruefully humorous "Quaker School Q-Ties," girls team up to embarrass, and disgust, boys in their grade school. Gloeckner's drawings combine a labored precision with a wild, often satirical expressiveness; her protagonists can resemble sad, angry toy dolls. Undergound comics master R. Crumb's introduction combines glowing praise and a typically embarrassing confession: "I, too, lusted after the young, budding artist-cartoonist." (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Sponsored by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, this text describes narratively and through b&w illustrations why, where, and how to utilize advanced strain and counterstrain technique, developed recently by Dr. Lawrence Jones (D.O.), for treatment of tissues and structures innervated by the autonomic nervous system. The physical therapist authors present some 100 techniques (some of which they developed) for health care providers treating cases of muscle spasm, tender points, and other disorders. While a M.D. extols the therapy in the foreword, references would have helped establish empirical credibility or at least a theoretical basis. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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