The Wild, Wild Women

So I'm sitting in my downstairs neighbor's apartment last night, watching the Yankees Phillies game three. In the fourth inning, A-Rod hits a strange home run off the outfield camera which requires some instant replay review, so I take the delay as an opportunity to glance over at my friend's bookshelves.

Now, this friend of mine is exactly the kind of guy we reviewers who've been around for a while have been preaching to, the open-minded intellectual with a voracious appetite for popular culture. He's the kind of guy willing to read comics in graphic novel form as long as they have some literary merit and intellectual content. He's not the kind of guy who would appreciate Mazzucchelli's Angel story in Marvel Fanfare, nor Ditko's mystical work on Doctor Strange. Rather, on his shelves, neatly grouped together, are maybe two dozen hardcover graphic novels, an impressive selection of Phoebe Gloeckner, Los Bros Hernandez, Will Eisner and David B. All four of Marjane Satrapi's books are there, as is Joe Sacco's entire catalog. He's also the kind of guy who's never been into a comic book store - he gets everything from bookstores - and laughs at me when I mention I've been reading old EC comics, saying "I'm not a geek, man."

But then I notice something odd.

Nestled in between volumes I and II of Spiegelman's Maus is a tiny little hardcover book with what looks like electrical tape running down the edge. There's no discernible title on the spine and the book's banged-up quality stands out like a sore thumb among the high-end gloss and sheen of the other volumes. Naturally, I pull it off the shelf:

Now, I'm a pretty well-read geek as far as it goes, but I've never heard of Virgil Franklin Partch, who goes by the moniker, "Vip." Still, I instantly love what I see. The dancing women with the sharpened noses, cackling smirks, amorphous, flowing hair and childlike hands and feet are immediately charming, and there's something about the hand-sketched quality of the logo that reminds me of a mini-comic. Right away I feel that old familiar surge in the pit of my stomach, the same feeling I experienced when I found a copy of the Incredible Hulk #181 in a box of old comics I bought at a garage sale when I was twelve.

Then I crack the cover.

The title page has me completely hooked. I love the woman in the upper left, the way Vip's pen line encircles her like some ethereal dress, leaving trace images in her dancing wake. It's immediately clear that Vips' a master at comedic exaggeration but what gets me is the way his characters MOVE. The woman in the lower right is similarly lovely, with tiny feet and ankles offsetting thunderous, Crumb-like thighs. Her frantic scribbles of hair, flung wildly atop an oddly misshapen head, call to mind Al Hirschfeld, Saul Steinberg and even Don Martin.

I quickly glance up at the TV. The game's still delayed while the umpires huddle trying to decide whether to blow yet another call in this post-season or actually get one right for a change, so I decide to delve deeper into this little gem.

My friend tells me he knows very little about the book and got it for a quarter at a thrift shop because he liked the cover. I tell him that seems like a bargain, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's worth a fair bit more. The publisher's info page reveals that Vip has at least two other books of cartoons, one titled "Bottle Fatigue" and the other, "Here We Go Again." The book I hold in my hands was published in 1951.

The rest of the 60 page book is comprised of black and white gag strips, not unlike those found in the New Yorker from the same era. The theme of the book is true to the title itself, as most of the cartoons focus on mischievous women playing jokes or mocking their befuddled partners. Vip's gags are universal enough that, on several occasions, I laughed out loud at the absurd situations and obnoxious behavior of these devious femmes.

For example:

Throughout the book, Vip's looping linework is utterly charming and playful. The art is loose and freehand, practically devoid of sharp angles and rulered lines. His characters are sarcastic and sex-crazed, although in a refreshingly innocent manner, and the book feels like an early sign of the women's liberation movement that was afoot during the decade.

There are also a few notable examples of formalist experimentation.

For example, this cartoon makes comedic use of the reflective nature of water, and it takes a few seconds for the gag - the oddly grotesque yet undeniably funny double-legged sunbather - to sink in.

Here, Vip uses an incomplete drawing as the underlying gag.

By the time the umpires return to declare A-Rod's hit a home run, prompting some high fives and clinking of beer bottles, I'm utterly entranced, barely able to concentrate on the game. Between each inning, I eagerly flip through the pages over and over, letting Vip's dry, sardonic wit wash over me, losing myself in his lovely flowing lines.

The Yankees go on to win, as you know, and I rush upstairs, jump onto Google, and devour what little information I can find about this book.

According to Wikipedia, Vip is not exactly the obscure discovery I had thought. In fact, he's a fairly well-known and widely published cartoonist from the 50s and 60s. In addition to several other similar cartoon collections, which the site claimed "reveal him to be a dipsomaniac obsessed with sex, power, prestige and money," Vip also created two syndicated comic strips, Big George and "the lesser-known but somewhat edgier strip titled The Captain's Gig." He also illustrated several children's books. Sadly, Vip died tragically in a car crash in 1984.

Still, for me, the night was a revelation, an unexpected discovery of an artist worthy of much more recognition than he gets. I finally drag myself into bed around 2:00 am, grateful for the extra hour of sleep thanks to daylight savings and already wearily composing this post in my mind.