Edited by Sammy Harkham
Published by Buenaventura Press
Kramer's Ergot is an anthology of comics, drawings, and cartoon art. Kramer's Ergot is referred to by various critics as "cutting-edge," and "avant-garde."
In other words, it's weird. Like all anthologies, judging something like it means judging a compilation of images and narrative that is widely divergent in style and quality. Anthologies are more indebted to the personal experience than other graphic novels--the pages that one flips rapidly through, the stories that are less involving than the rest, and, as is expected with any contemporary art, the art where one's response is less "how interesting" and more "what a piece of shit." Kramer's Ergot, by sheer force of volume, is an exciting and pretty fascinating book--but there are portions of Kramer's Ergot that are just uninteresting, portions of the book that bring about the classic criticism of avant-garde works: the moments when the audience realizes that they don't "get it." So either the lavishing praise of critics and artists that one admires is based on an intelligence or aesthetic that the individual doesn't (and will never) possess, or it's the sheer lack of explainability or reason that is giving the work acclaim.
That's a truncuated and ill-informed version of the debate, but it's all this writer is giving out now--the central point is this: is Kramer's Ergot 6 good? Because the thing here is, that question is enough to keep anybody who spends time with it up for awhile, as long as they have nowhere to be. Asking that question means having to answer the question of what you think "good" means--do you think a comic is something that can be art? If you do, than can an anthology be art, in the same way that a museum showcase of a style can--a show where you might ignore some of the Warhol's because you like the Pollacks, or skip both because you get off on Diebenkorn? Or do you prefer when it's just one artist filling a room, and it's set up chronologically? What about reading--does it need to make sense? Does it need to have a plot that moves, a resoultion, identifible characters? Do you care if the bad guy from the first Robocop movie shows up, or if somebody rips off lame Seinfeld jokes? What if it's nothing but pages of intricate drawings of cartoonish structures, with random chunks of text? How do you read this stuff, anyway? Are you supposed to spend fifteen minutes a page, even when you gathered that all that lady is doing is drinking a urine rainbow?
There's plenty of people, we're sure, out in the world that will be able to explain Kramer's Ergot 6--they'll come up with plenty of reasons and reviews that will make us feel dumb for not reading deeper, or being smarter. That's fine--because Kramer's Ergot doesn't feel like something that was written for the masochists who listen to SYR5, or watch Brakhage in silence. (I for one, need some music, even if it's just City of Syrup. Brakhage numbs me out.) It feels like something that was put together to remind people that the extreme forms of art don't have to stay locked up in museums, laughing at us for being too ashamed to openly admit that we don't give a shit about the Turner awards. Kramer's Ergot isn't for intellectual wiseasses. It's for people that are tired of reading autobiographical comics about loneliness and super-hero soap operas, and people who want to believe that there might be some more great comics out there that aren't written by people with names like Crumb, Ware, Campbell, Clowes--and it's for people who don't know any of those names.
In other words, it's for you, you fuckers. Get some Kramer's, and get grateful. This shit ain't gonna be out there forever.
-Tucker Stone, 2007, who's desperately trying to get back on schedule.
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