Last Gasp New Books Winter 2014

LAST GASP WINTER

2014

ESSAYS BY CHUCK PALAHNIUK MARGARET CHO MORGAN SPURLOCK

Y E AR O F T H E H O R S E WINTER 2014 CONTENTS STAFF FAVORITES PART 1....................................................................3 NEW & BESTSELLING LAST GASP BOOKS.......................................10 NEWLY REPRINTED BESTSELLERS....................................................13 CHUCK PALAHNIUK THE CACOPHONY SOCIETY.........................14 POP CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT...................................................18 EROTIC ART & PHOTOGRAPHY.........................................................20 TATTOO.................................................................................................21 MARGARET CHO SHAWN BARBER......................................................22 BESTSELLING ART BOOKS...................................................................28 ART BOOKS.............................................................................................29 MORGAN SPURLOCK ELIZABETH MCGRATH...................................32 GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS............................................................35 STAFF FAVORITES PART 2....................................................................39 Front Cover: Laurie Lipton, “Off”, 2008, charcoal & pencil, 49” x 37”.

This page: Elizabeth McGrath, “Boxer”, 2009, 61” x 72” x 24”, photo by Larry Underhill.

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staff favorites part 1

danny’s Picks Much Loved by Mark Nixon A touching memoir of a bunch of extremely loved stuffed animals, and ALSO the most terrifying, stringy, fur-less, nightmare toys I have ever seen.

The stories are incredibly sweet, the photography is beautiful and the concept is brilliant. Just try not to stare directly at the stuffies (or imagine them wielding knives outside your window to get even for years and years of love).

Fata Morgana by Jon Vermilyea A wordless color soaked adventure that follows a young child through what I can only imagine is an LSD dream, You really shouldn’t give hallucinogens to babies. Bright beautiful monsters all over the place, this is kind of what I feel like when I eat too much candy first thing in the morning.

Night Parade of Dead Souls The Masters of Ukiyo-E series brings us a bunch of really disturbing images of old-ass Japanese ghosts. They all have terrible posture and bad teeth and bugged out eyes which makes it even worse. The scariest of them all is the “Vagina-Face Ghost” which I can assure you, is even more terrifying than it sounds.

Pretty in Ink by Trina Robbins A comprehensive history of Northern American women cartoonists. When I think about all these babes being rad at art for over a century it makes me feel proud to be a woman. Then I get way too excited and my inner Spice Girl comes out and I want to don some platform shoes and and yell a lot about girl power in an English accent, but in relation to cartoons.

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janelle’s picks The Mad World of Virgil Partch

by Jonathan Barli I’ve been a casual Virgil Partch admirer for years, but I was unaware of the scope of his popularity, particularly by the ‘60s. I didn’t know a lot of things about him. For instance, did you know that Virgil Partch was a total babe?

Really, really, fine. Please refer to the photo of big-lipped young Virgil Partch lounging in a hammock with a fat cigar dangling out of his mouth or the one of Army Virgil opening up his military trench coat to flash his bare chest. Big lips and suggestive posing aside, the real reason I love VIP is because he offers up my favorite brand of cartooning: banana noses, smushed-together eyes, and cheap & funny gags. In his introduction, Peter Bagge hits the nail on the head when he describes VIP’s art as what “Picasso would have produced if he drew solely on restroom walls instead of on canvas.”

Best of Wonder Wart-Hog

by Gilbert Shelton Why can’t there be any contemporary comics like the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers? The closest thing is probably Bobby Madness, but not really. Gilbert Shelton is god. The cover of this one looks nearly identical to the Freak Brothers collection that Turnaround put out a few years back, but the quality of the reproductions is better this time around. jeri’s picks Ode to the Muse! Timeless real life tales behind the lives of some very reckless women and the famous men they inspired, loved, and ultimately lost...

Off the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac & Ginsberg

by Carolyn Cassady This is the memoir penned by Neal Cassady’s wife Carolyn. She was a very smart cookie,

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very well educated for her day, and obviously loved the wild stuff.

Imagine coming home to her dorm from a day of graduate school classes in the 1940s, mind you, to find Neal, her new paramour, in bed naked with some guy named Allen Ginsberg.

One and Only: The Untold Story of On The Road

by Gerald Nicosia & Anne Marie Santos Lu Anne Henderson was Neal Cassady’s wife before Carolyn. She is the real life character that traveled across the country with Kerouac and Cassady in the road trips of road trips which became the fodder for the Beat book of Beat books: On the Road. Lu Anne’s story, as Carolyn’s story, is full of bittersweet memories of a life that might look better on paper than in reality, as most legendary lives are.

Charles Bukowski’s Scarlet: A Memoir by Pamela “Cupcakes” Wood This memoir seems to validate that the great Buk didn’t have to stray too far from the truth when it comes to recalling alcohol consumption and tragicomical episodes with unpredictable, ill-tempered vixens. jon’s picks Tales From The Crypt Vol. 4: The EC Archives by Al Feldstein This is one of the best comics anthology series ever done. The early volumes of this came out a few years ago from another publisher who was brought to their knees by the recession.

Dark Horse has now picked up the torch and rebooted this amazing series.

The EC comics have come out in many formats over the years but this is by far the best. Beautiful digitally remastered coffee table hardcovers that feel great in your hands and properly display some of the best comics ever created.

This volume contains legendary horror strips by the likes of Jack Davis, Al Feldstein, and “Ghastly” Graham Ingels. Each artist’s style and vision is dramatically different from each other yet all of them are amazing draftsmen with wonderful

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cinematic sense of perspective and design.

There’s a story in this book by Joe Orlando about some normal Joe who stops in a small town while traveling cross country. He dismisses the locals’ rumors of vampires as superstitious idiocy until he inadvertently strays into a restaurant that turns out to be a blood suckers’ culinary destination and finds himself strung up upside down with a beer tap stuck in his jugular vein and the customers lining up to fill their glasses saying things like, “Nothing like the real stuff.” It’s one of the most lurid, horrifying strips ever made.

I’ve experienced moments of book nirvana reading this. Some of the covers such as one Jack Davis did of an axe murderer are among the best pieces of pulp art I own. Ingels’ work is especially good. I find myself gazing at his drawings for long lengths of time thinking, ‘My god, what a beautiful drawing of a haunted house or rotting corpse or decrepit witch.’

The EC Archives have been front and center on my favorite bookshelf for years and this volume will fit right in with the rest.

The Adding Machine by William S. Burroughs This is one of my favorite Burroughs books.

It’s been out of print for a couple of years so it’s great to see Grove put out a new edition.

Burroughs is known for his crazed, almost incoherent cut-up work but this book is the exact opposite. This collection of essays is comprised of structured, coherent, narrative prose pieces. Burroughs fixes a variety of topics in his sights and then proceeds to mow them down with his impressive arsenal of horse sense, literary might and invention, and pure wisdom. It’s the perfect combination of prophecy and good advice. This is the Burroughs book you can give to that person who doesn’t want to “read any of that weird shit”.

Stealing Cherries by Marina Rubin These are really great short short stories. Each one is a page long or less. Marina has an electric sense of language so you can roar through them as they create a whole rich narrative filled with memorable images and characters all in a single page. Her writing has real power and reminds me of Bukowski or Burroughs, a kind of perfect prose/ poetry. Marina is a Russian immigrant and many of the stories touch on this experience. This is one of my favorite parts of her writing, this sense

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of being an “outsider” gives her writing a really edged out paranoid feel. Great stuff, and perfect for anyone on the go who doesn’t have a lot of time for reading.

The Great War by Joe Sacco Joe has really outdone himself this time. This book is a wordless 24-foot drawing that is a ridiculously hyper-detailed rendering of the Battle of the Somme from World War One. This battle killed one million soldiers, and Sacco’s book depicts all the carnage with an unblinking eye. It comes packaged as a 24 page accordion-style book in a hardcover, but you can easily extend it out to surround your living room with the “war to end all wars”. This was one of our best sellers at the Alternative Press Expo. All the cartoonists and art lovers who looked at it would start flipping through the pages and before they got to page six they’d buy the book. You should buy it too. kristine’s picks Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story

by Peter Bagge My great-grandmothers had 6-10 surviving children each. My beloved Grandma told me how she and her 7 sisters used coat hangers, bleach, and throwing themselves from horses (!) to attempt to control fertility. How did we escape the tyranny of biology? Woman Rebel shows one very human and humane nurse rising to the occasion. Plus: Emma Goldman!

Comstock! Early underground distribution! The Klan! Family conflicts! Free Love! This slim book has it all.

I am so grateful to Margaret Sanger for my life, and to Peter Bagge for making this history fun and funny.

Mushroom Botanical Art

by PIE Books Want to see creatures from another planet, but here on earth? Usually the ocean is your best bet (I love you, giant squid!), but the land has fungi friends, and they are amazing. This imported Japanese collection of historical

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mushroom illustrations is a great book to relax with, preferably over a nice bowl of ramen with shitakes.

Asterix by Rene Goscinny, Albert Uderzo Oh Asterix, you’re the best at teaching us funny stereotypes! I just read my kid Asterix in Britain and she loved the excessive drinking, soccer hooliganism, and tea jokes. Rome, Egypt, and Spain, you’re next! renessa’s picks Peanuts Every Sunday 1952-1955: Vol. 1 by Charles M. Schulz First, my love of Snoopy hearkens way back to the ‘70s when those Peanuts cartoons aired on prime time and rolled out only that one time of year. This books celebrates Snoopy, Charlie Brown and Co. during their first year of Sunday funnies in COLOR! The first in a series of 10, contains 3 years of Peanuts Sunday strips ‘re-mastered’ to match the original syndicate coloring. Can’t wait to unwrap this, snuggle up in a big comfy chair and sip hot cocoa for an afternoon, then I will wrap it back up and give it to my dad. He LOVES Snoopy too.

But the Joe Cool Snoopy. I’m not sure how he feels about the vintage Snoopy.

Ballad by Blexbolex Another GORGEOUS story from the artist BLEXBOLEX. This one is a great starter for young minds to devour. Collect his entire collection of beautifully printed and designed books. Inspiring enough to make you want to break out the colored pencils and design and make your own holiday cards.

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Bad Houses by Sara Ryan , Carla Speed McNeil Because I LOVE estate sales, flea markets and open houses. Because I know what it is like to go through a loved ones things after they’s departed and wondering what to keep and what to toss. Because it is not lost on me that I will someday inherit an old house full of stuff from another person raised in another century.

Because I liked the first three pages I read and want to read more but I am at work.

Little Death

by Thomas Kriebaum One of those funny, little books that you pick up and put down and pick up and put down.

Hilarious but also poignant about the eternal question ‘What will I be doing when Death knocks at my door?” It’s a book not unlike Darth Vader & Son, 101 Ways to Kill a Zombie, and Penguins Hate Stuff. Die laughing.

Rage of Poseidon

by Anders Nilsen Classic stories told in single panel unconventional ways. From a person who knows how to tell a compelling story, illustrate that story with profound imagery, then bind it all in a imaginative and NEW way to tell stories. Joe Sacco and Anders Nilsen deserve kudos for books designed ‘outside the box’.

Much Loved by Mark Nixon I had one, he was purple with black felt ears.

He was won from an outdoor arcade well before I could see over the counters and railing and well before I was tall enough for the throw-up rides. It was given to me by someone very special. I cared for mine like a baby. I put a bandanna around his neck and diapers on his bare bear bottom. I was mercilessly teased and ridiculed by my older sister. Mine never had a name. I finally lost him in a move but I remember leaving that box behind, knowing it was full of old memories. That was almost 15 years ago that I left that box and I still miss that bear to this day.

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WHEN GIBLETS FILLED THE AIR

MY INTRODUCTION TO CACOPHONY CHUCK PALAHNIUK

MY FIRST TIME was at The Alibi, a Polynesian-themed bar in North Portland. A friend had found a flyer stapled to a telephone pole. “Free Voodoo Weddings,” it said. “Tiki-Con.” The flyer promoted a night of retro-jungle music, nothing racist-racist, just the brooding fantasy music you’d hear in the soundtrack of Tarzan movies from the 1940s. Luau music with chattering monkeys and screeching parrots mixed in the background. The Alibi seemed the perfect place for it, a bar built to cater to Greatest Generation service men returning from the Pacific Theater, all plaster-of-Paris volcanoes and papier-mâché hula dancers glowing, lurid, under black light. I kid you not, the salad bar is a repurposed wooden lifeboat. Picture Trader Vic’s but in the wrong neighborhood.

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Whatever this Tiki-Con was, it sounded like zany fun. People in Berlin have an old saying: “Berlin runs by many clocks,” meaning they have lots of nightlife options. Maybe in Manhattan you could dress as a slutty chicken and boogie, suspended inside a go-go cage at the Limelight, but you’d be surprised how few choices people in Portland, Oregon had on a Friday night in 1993.

So we went to The Alibi, and we went early and claimed a big booth in the middle of the action and ordered drinks that arrived in life-sized ceramic skulls. Drinks that smoked with dry-ice fog, like a mad scientist had mixed them. I wore a Hawaiian shirt. I wore a puka shell necklace that I’d bought before they were ironic, back when the best way to get laid was to look as much as possible like Christopher Atkins in “The Blue Lagoon,” back when white people still dreamed of going native.

The people who’d organized Tiki-Con: the Cacophony Society, they called themselves. They looked like they didn’t care how they looked. Like they never went to the gym or counted calories. When they tried to dance, it was even worse. They flailed, and not in an angry-mosh-pit-punk-rock way. They Cacophony Factoid art by Kevin Evans spun their record albums of weird Hollywood paradise music and hopped around flapping their arms or they puckered their lips and pretended to be tropical fish. They danced like Special Olympics. These Cacophony people, they were so un-cool they made even me look cool. Goodness, they were pitiful.

So my friends and I, we drank our Blue Hawaii’s, and for an hour we were the cool people at least in comparison to the people who were hosting the party. But then the actual cool people began to arrive – late, like they always do – and they wore miniskirts or Jordache jeans and sneered at everything, like they always do.

They took over the dance floor. They took over everything.

All through high school I only pretended to cheer at pep rallies and football games. While the crowds roared, I merely gaped my mouth open and shut, fake-cheering, like someone choking to death on a fish bone. If that makes me a misanthrope – not being thrilled to adore and applaud the people whom the culture already adores – so be it.

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So we were booth hogging at the Alibi, and the perfect people flooded in and turned a wacky Friday night into just-another-boring-beauty contest. They posed and preened. The Cacophony people got squeezed into a smaller and smaller corner, but they persevered. The jungle music kept playing, but you couldn’t really hear it. Not even the trumpeting elephants, not anymore. As advertised, someone began to officiate “voodoo weddings.” A voodoo witch doctor wearing a necklace of animal teeth stood above the crowd and chanted mumbo-jumbo. Men married women. Women married women. People married themselves.

Not that the milling hordes of beautiful people even noticed. No, they’d arrived and kept on arriving, turning Tiki-Con into just another banal mating ritual. Really, isn’t that what everything devolves to for those people? Just another showcase for hook-ups?

A hipster shop window for flaunting clear skin and thick, glossy hair. Biceps and boobs. Boobs and biceps. Pose, pose, posing.

That’s when the impossible happened. The room was packed beyond fire codes, every molecule of breathable air displaced by a fog of Giorgio and Polo, and not even the servers could squeeze through to replenish our Singapore slings and zombies. Just when it seemed as if we’d be hemmed in forever by these tedious breeding rites… the witch doctor stopped his gibberish sermonizing and threw a handful of something over the heads of the crowd.

This clump of something scattered into a cloud of wet mini-things that rained down on the perfect rockabilly haircuts. The witch doctor threw another handful, and more mysterious somethings splattered the scenester crowd. A profane anointing.

One of the soft fragments went splat on our table. And there it was: A wilted, blue bowel. A loopy length of wet intestine. Next to that landed a tiny lung. A gizzard splashed into a friend’s Rum Collins. A bloody heart plopped into a Long Island Iced Tea. Real blood in our fake skulls.

It was chicken guts. Giblets filled the air.

It was that movie, “Carrie,” only in reverse. Instead of the cool kids putting the spastic on stage and pelting her with gore, this was the social reject delivering the offal. The thatched-roof, South Sea ambience was filled with screams and slaughterhouse odors. Another detail you never get from movies and the Internet is how things in real life smell. It smelled awful.

It was a hipster stampede. The formerly chill’n play-ahs, they

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climbed and clawed over each other in their fight for the exit.

The outsider misfits had baited and successfully sprung their voodoo trap.

There was a lesson here: Homemade entertainment versus storebought. Actual cool versus the appearance of being cool.

Finally, the misanthropes had won. The football stars and cheerleaders were routed. It was Cacophony, and I was hooked.

Here was an escape from the treadmill of always looking good and always looking good and always looking... In the Cacophony Society you could embrace the terrible. Today, I see a little of this same genius in the zombie culture, where people lurch around with their insides on the outside, but in 1993 we didn’t have zombie walkathons and zombie conventions. In 1993 we had Tiki-Con. Here, you could propose an idea, any scary, ridiculous stunt – What if we dressed as Mad Hatter characters and played croquet with bowling balls and sledge hammers? What if we rode kayaks through the sewers? – and days later, people would create that scenario as a new, short-lived reality.

It was a laboratory for experimenting with the culture. And for experimenting with ourselves. In so many ways, it was my inspiration.

You don’t say anything because fight club exists only in the hours between when fight club starts and when fight club ends.

Still, as my mother used to warn me, “It’s always fun and games until someone loses an eye.”

The trouble was my friends didn’t laugh. They couldn’t see anything beyond their ruined drinks and the stains on their clothes.

They saw no benefit in having their innards on the outside, even if it was just for a couple hours.

The good news is that I made new friends.

Excerpted from Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society Edited by Evans, Galbraith & Law Hardcover, 320 pages, over 500 color and b&w images, 50 full-color illustrations 8 ½ x 11 978-0-86719-774-7 Pop Culture / History / Performance Art $39.95

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SHAWN BARBER FOREWORD TO ‘MEMOIR’ MARGARET CHO Shawn Barber photographed me for reference material for his magnificent portrait of me during a session at one of my favorite places in the world, Everlasting Tattoo – a beautiful tattoo parlor at 813 Divisadero Street in San Francisco.

I love Everlasting Tattoo. It’s one of the places that I want to have my ashes interred, after I have finally shaken off this mortal coil. Please leave my cremated remains at Everlasting Tattoo, my face in a jar by the door, like Eleanor Rigby. The place means that much to me. I’ve bled gallons there, my DNA infiltrating the walls from getting tattooed time and time again by the owner Mike Davis as I marveled at his supreme and surreal Bosch/Breughel inspired paintings there; I’ve hung out there, gossiped with the other artists and clients under the influence of the strange high that being tattooed gives you there – forcing you to reveal more than you might if you were stone cold sober, or at the very least on some other more predictable and traditional controlled substance. I’ve drunk the odd Tecate there (I’m not a beer drinker by nature, but the place calls for it somehow), played guitars with Mike there, eaten protein bars standing up like a horse there, laughed at Henry Lewis until I released small amounts of urine there, smoked cigarettes guiltily in the back of the shop there, shot music videos for Jill Sobule there, made commercials for my much loved yet ill-fated VH-1 reality project “The Cho Show” there, wished mightily that I had another pristine and untattooed body while staring at the impressive flash there and most importantly- forged a friendship there with one of the most talented, influential, inspiring, prolific, genius – and frankly-just-fucking-cool artists of our time, Shawn Barber.

Shawn stood on a ladder, photographing my session with Mike from above, as Mike tattooed a finely detailed and impressive pink peony on my chest. I was high on the tattoo, loving the de-

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Shawn Barber, Abstract Large Scale Tattooed Self Portrait Oil on canvas, 36” x 68”, 2011-2012

sign, the flower that signifies my Korean name which means ‘Peony,’ and my artist Mike – my skin being broken yet again, some spirit coming into me and taking me over, as it always happens when I am being tattooed.

My high was not only from being tattooed. It was helped along tremendously by a cannabis lollipop I had smuggled in from the ubiquitous drug dispensaries in Los Angeles. The big, bristly, vicious looking Malinois drug dog at the Oakland airport not even giving me a second look as I waltzed past his well trained snout with my bag full of drug infused candy. I’d given Shawn a lollipop, infused with the highest grade of medical marijuana, meant for cancer and Aids patients (but I felt qualified to partake with Shawn because let’s face it – we’re sick). He and I both sucked on the deadly (or life-saving) sweets with abandon, not realizing that the drugs would have a direct line into our circulatory systems – sublingual ingestion being much more potently unforgiving than plain old digestion or even smoking it.

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Shawn Barber, Portrait of the artist Margaret Cho (Mike Davis at Work) Oil on canvas, 24” x 36”, 2009

I was so high I don’t remember much about that evening, except that Shawn was a little too high, and then, suddenly – way too high. Shawn put his camera down and sat on a metal folding chair, a fearful look in his crystal blue eyes. I mentioned something about the sinister sand people – the predatory mummy-like villainous creatures who terrorized the dusty planet Tattooine (appropriately named in this situation) in the first installment of Star Wars – and Shawn whispered softly, “That’s freaking me out...” I saw the druggy paranoia in his face – that fear that comes from being in a place where you haven’t been before. Higher than you meant to go. Far from the home of your head and unsure you would be able to find your way back.

I felt bad that I had dosed one of the most important artists of this century. I worried. Would Shawn Barber come back from this trip into the outer limits intact? Would he be forever impaired? Did I just dim one of the modern art world’s brightest lights? Fuck! Fuck! FUCK! But I was high too. And the rest of that night is just a blank. Although I vaguely recall Mike and I ordering buffalo wings from room service at my hotel and eating them like a wild animal, covering my new tattoo with blue cheese dressing while I worried about Shawn. I heard from Mike that Shawn remained high for nearly three days after and he vowed never to do anything like that again. I felt bad, guilty, disgusted with myself for endangering a talent so prodigious and I felt akin

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to the woman who given that last speedball to John Belushi and made a vow that when I am close to greatness, I will not give them drugs. Never again.

Shawn is greatness. His portrait of me from that fateful night hangs in the entryway of my home. It’s the first thing you see – it’s a watchful sentry – the sign by my door that says who I am and what I am here for. It says, “I live here. That’s right. I FUCKING LIVE HERE. This is me. This is my life. Welcome friend.”

The painting is the first thing you see when you come to me and the last thing you see when you leave, and I am so proud that it is a Shawn Barber. I love the painting so much it became the cover of my album “Chodependent” and I believe that the strength of the image was what garnered that record a Grammy nomination.

Yep, it’s that good. It’s a fucking incredible painting – as Shawn captured an incredible moment, a most powerful scene – and one of my best days on earth – me at Everlasting Tattoo – being tattooed by Mike, surrounded by art and the people I love, getting high, being photographed, painted and recorded for posterity. Me in the prime of my life, doing something I love more than almost anything else – getting tattooed. Me and my tattoos – work that is in itself a microcosm of the history of tattooing in America – Don Ed Hardy, Mike Davis, Andrew Moore, Nathan Kostechko, Kat Von D – and that’s just above the waist.

I am a heavily tattooed human being, and so I am a perfect subject for Shawn’s incendiary and important work. I am of his tribe, the one that he is a part of and documenting for us. There is a direct line between the daguerreotypes from the turn of the century and Shawn’s painting. It’s about the discovery of being seen.

People took to the new invention of photography and realized that their lives mattered, and that they could record their existence with images that could be passed down for generations. It made them feel real. It made them feel important. It made them feel like they existed. It made them feel like they were immortal and eternal.

This is exactly what Shawn is doing for not only the tattoo community, but for the world. He is showing us, the heavily tattooed, for who we are – in a glorious light. We exist. We matter. We are real. We are important. We are immortal and eternal. He captures our bodies and in turn our tattoos, our beautiful Japanese hand poked Yakuza/samurai bodysuits and our realistic portraits and our black and grey and our single needle and our flash and our biomechanical and our blackwork and our new skool and our

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graffiti and our doodles done when it’s slow around the shop and our tributes to those who have passed on and our misspelled kanji and our tribal and our inked jokes and our fuck ups and our bad decisions and our allegiances to our respective crews and our lover’s names and our mother’s names and our shit that we have gotten done at conventions when the sound of the tattoo guns drown out all and our everythings that have been emblazoned on our skin, which is the record of our lives – the art that we have chosen for ourselves, that we have loved and maybe hated or felt indifferent towards, our bodies of work that have become so much a part of our skin that we barely see them anymore yet somehow define us.

Shawn’s work is to me both very realistic, somewhat objective, a pure and unembellished – almost photographic portrayal of who we are at that moment – but also infused with the reality that he is also an incredibly gifted tattoo artist (I can attest – I am the proud bearer of a Shawn Barber tattoo done at his awesome studio Memoir Tattoo that he co-owns with the legendary Kim Saigh). So He is one who is inside, one who is part of the tribe, a beloved and treasured and trusted member and essentially family.

To me, all of Shawn’s painting reflects the family we, the heavily tattooed people of the world – are. There is a warmth in the eyes of his subjects, an affection that is genuine and uncomplicated.

Shawn’s painting us, and we know him well. He’s our friend, he’s our brother. He’s one of us. When he captures us in our glory, we are unguarded, we are safe – because we are with our own.

This collection of paintings is really like a family tree, a glimpse of who we are, who we have become, where we have been and where we are going. Shawn Barber is a national and international treasure to all of those who have lived and died under the tattoo gun. And to think, I got him utterly wasted. Shame on me.

Thanks Shawn. Thanks for everything.

– Margaret Cho Excerpted from Memoir: The Tattooed Portraits Series

by Shawn Barber

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Hardcover, 256 pages, 110 full color paintings, 30 color photos 10 x 12 978-086719-775-4 $39.95

Shawn Barber, Portrait of the artist Kim Saigh Head study 1, Oil on canvas, 24” x 18”, 2007

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ELIZABETH MCGRATH MORGAN SPURLOCK I LOVE LIZ MCGRATH’S WORK. I love the oddness. I love the weirdness. I am so attracted and drawn to it, and not just because I’m also odd and weird. For me, my passion for her work is rooted in one specific moment in my life that changed the way I would look at and appreciate what she does on a much deeper and personal level.

When I was growing up in West Virginia, hunting was a big part of my family’s and my community’s life. Most of my relatives hunted, and most of my classmates. Hunting season was such a big deal in my state that I even remember them changing the dates for Thanksgiving vacation at my school just so it would better coincide with deer season. It was most likely this influence that caused me to have a fascination of and desire to own a collection of mounted animals.

In my childhood mind, these were the equivalent of pure grown up manhood. They lined the walls of my cousin’s living room, staring down at me with those forlorn eyes. There were quail and bucks and geese and ducks. In my mind, these were the symbols of not only someone who had seen the world, but someone who had conquered it! These were the trophies of men who had been stronger and faster than the wild animal kingdom, and they brought home their spoils from the hunt to show their tribe how powerful they were.

I dreamed of going on safaris. Of tracking my own wild animals that would one day grace the walls of my own lodge-like abode.

And I think that was what was running through my head when, on my 12th birthday, my grandfather gave me my first rifle. It was a .22 with a shoulder stock that he had hand crafted and sanded and stained into the smooth beautiful yellow pine rifle that I now held in my hands. I was overjoyed. It was the greatest gift I’d ever gotten. It

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crushed the bike I got for Christmas the year before and was leagues beyond my Atari 2600.

“You want to shoot it?” he asked, and we raced out the back door, him as excited as I was. My father used to work for the phone company, so we had a couple of those giant wooden spools that cables would come on in our back yard. We set an empty plastic milk jug in front of one of the spools and I fired my first shot. It was exhilarating. We backed up a little further, and we walked he talked about where we would be able to hunt up at their country house. I reloaded, took a deep breath, aimed, and fired. As soon as the shot rang out, there was the yelp of my dog as she went running across the back of our yard.

After my first shot, she apparently hid behind the target for safety, and my grandfather and I never saw her. We chased her into the woods where she collapsed into the leaves at the base of a tree. I was speechless as I stood there watching her die. Watching her pant, whine and cry. Tears streamed down my face as I watched her take her last breaths, and then my grandfather buried her in the woods.

You can’t help but be affected by something like this. After that day, I only went hunting a few times into my teens and I pretty much never wanted an animal’s head anywhere near my house. And I think that’s what attracted me most to the beautiful horrors that are the work of the amazing Liz McGrath.

They are the carnival and the spectacle, the hunter and the hunted, the loss and the prize. Each piece of brilliance makes us look at what we fear and what we consider to be beautiful.

They hold a mirror up to our own scruples and force us to rationalize or justify our own choices and inadequacies.

They bring into question any sense of superiority and make you realize that you yourself could soon be the tattooed andmounted trophy of another mighty hunter.

Opposite Page: Deer House, 2007, 37" x 20" x 12", photo by Larry Underhill.

This Page: The Tattooed Pig-Man of Bora Bora, 2006, 22” x 13” x 5”, photo by Morgan Slade.

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Elizabeth McGrath, The Folly of St. Hubertus, 2010, 23” x 15” x 24”, photo by Larry Underhill, assisted by Miles Gavin.

In this world, we are all game. And while we have yet to become the dissected subjects of another’s collection, Ms. McGrath’s art shows us that it’s only a matter of time. Her creatures and characters take on all our traits and personalities, our good and bad, and she’s put them all on the wall for the world to see. Sinners and saints are both welcome here, and its our faults and foibles that then become the showpieces.

I have witnessed her work make people visibly uncomfortable. I have seen people close their eyes and walk away from her sculptures. And I have seen others stare in awe, speechless at what they are consuming. It’s both heart attack & resuscitation. For me, it’s a celebration. It’s an acceptance of the miracle that is both life and death. In all of her work, I find the laughter and joy that make life worth living as well as the irony that in the end we may just end up being stuffed and stuck on the wall for someone else’s enjoyment.

Are we art or artist? Victor or prize? Only time will tell.

Excerpted from Incurable Disorder The Art of Elizabeth McGrath Hardcover, 176 pages, 200 full-color images 9¼ x 12 ¼ 978-0-86719-776-1 $39.95

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staff favorites part 2

Kristine Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh OK, the publisher blurb that we copied says “beautifully illustrated,” which this is NOT. Brosh’s art is terrible, but somehow it works. The stories are so funny and painful and true that you forgive the art in seconds and you can’t stop reading for hours. “Dear 4-year-old Self: Paste will never be frosting, no matter how many times you try eating it. NEVER.” Kid Mafia by the brilliant Michael DeForge Lovely comics, finally collected!

Henry & Glenn Forever & Ever #4 edited by Tom Neely I haven’t read this yet, but the cover parody is so perfect that I look at it on every 10 minute break & crack up.

Queen of the Underworld by Sophie Lyon A nice companion to Jack Black’s You Can’t Win. I like my criminal scumbags old and literary.

Socialist and Labor Songs by Elizabeth Morgan I wish Occupy had come up with some decent goddamn songs. Hell, I wish for ANY songs that many/most people can sing as a group. (Have you tried Christmas caroling lately? Kids know the first verse of Jingle Bells and that’s it. Bleah.) While I have my old codger hat on, I recommend this book of socialist and labor songs. No, nobody (certainly not the union workers I know) will be familiar with them, much less able to carry the tune, but it’s fascinating reading. I like the old stand-bys, but it’s the weird ones (Casey Jones as a scab?) and the outright “I hate work” ones that really

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grab me. “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum”?!? I would love to sing that around a campfire!

Renessa Queen of the Underworld by Sophie Lyon Pocket-sized with chapter headings like: “How I Escaped from Sing Sing”, “Women Criminals with Extraordinary Ability...with Whom I Partnered”, “Startling Surprises that Confront Criminals”, “Behind the Scenes at the 3,000,000.00 Robbery of the Manhattan Bank of New York”...and more!

Cuff’d Bottle Opener by Gama-Go I ride a bicycle, I always need a bottle opener on the road- or my ‘friends’ always need a bottle opener on the road.

The Best of McSweeney’s edited by Dave Eggers Sometimes you need some thing better than good, you need the BEST! Coloring Book Project 2 edited by Brett Herman, Spencer Caligiuri, and Mike DeVries Another great coloring book.

Really nice paper.

Professor Astro Cat’s Frontiers of Space

by Dr. Dominic Walliman & Ben Newman Excellent book with fascinating information. Easy for adults to understand, intelligent enough for kids.

Jon The Creepy and Eerie Archives Series This deluxe hardcover archive series has grown to be one of my favorite reissue lines. Each edition is a lushly produced oversize hardcover which reprints 5 issues of the classic Warren horror

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comic magazines. These originally came out in the late sixties and early seventies and were written and drawn by a who’s who of talented cartoonists. Veterans like Steve Ditko and Wally Wood contributed stories that were printed alongside work by underground newcomers like Richard Corben and Bernie Wrightson. Warren suffered a lot of financial ups and downs so the quality of the work in these volumes fluctuates wildly but there are certain time periods and issues where they really get it right. The covers by Frazetta are masterpieces as well as Richard Corben’s color strips. The Bernie Wrightson strips are arguably some of the best horror comics ever produced. His adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat” is one of the best pieces of comic art ever produced. Between the two series there are now over thirty volumes in print and there’s pretty great stuff in every one of them.

My Prison Walls: The G. G. Allin Prison Diaries I’m not really a big G. G. Allin fan but I’m glad this book exists. Back in the eighties and nineties G. G. Allin had a reputation as “the filthiest man alive” and made his living playing punk rock shows naked and rolling around in a combination of broken glass and his own shit. Back then you could get a special edition of one of his singles that had a little baggie stapled to the front that he had jerked off into. Yes, you could get G. G.’s dried DNA for less than ten bucks. He used to throw his turds at the audience so it there was a real sense of danger in going to his shows. It was all very literary and highbrow. So to see him have his own numbered collector’s edition of his writings is kind of amazing. This deluxe 209-page hardcover publishes Allin’s prison memoirs twenty years after his death. It’s a beautiful archival edition with all the pretty bells and whistles one would expect from such a volume. I wonder if G. G.’s rolling in his grave?

I love selling this to places like Amoeba Music because I just know it’s the fulfillment of some aging punk rocker’s scummiest wet dreams.

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Fran byJim Woodring I think I reviewed this last month even though I hadn’t read it yet. I actually went to shelve my copy to save for a rainy day when I casually opened it and started to read the first page...

The next thing I knew it was almost an hour later and I was still standing there motionless having read half the book. So I just sat down and read the rest of it.

It was a perfect comic experience. The narrative and the drawings just pick you up and carry you away. It all makes perfect sense until you actually think about what happens in the story and then you realize it is completely surreal and almost nonsensical but it displays that perfect logic that dreams have. There are sections of this book where comics becomes a pure form of kinetic expression. Woodring’s drawing style has become supple and loose yet still wonderfully detailed - perfect for the stories he’s telling. Kind of a masterpiece, and one of the best new graphic novels I’ve read this year.

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh We got this book in and it sold out immediately.

It came and went so fast that I had no idea what it was. So I asked my co-worker and comic book expert Kristine Anstine, “Hey Kristine, what is Hyperbole And A Half and why does everyone like it so much?” She emailed me links to a couple of strips on the cartoonist’s website that were arguably works of genius. Whether she is describing a childhood memory or her struggles with mental illness, cartoonist Allie Brosh hits the nail on the head. Her artwork is very primitive, but it is functional and works well with the narratives. But her writing -wow. Her words are so elegant and perfect they make up for all the flaws in her drawing. She brings you right into the experience and makes it real for you. Her strip on mental illness expanded my concept of what mental illness is and how it affects people, it actually changed my world view, and that’s what great art should do.

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Conqueror Worm by Richard Corben I’ve loved Corben’s work since I first saw it in

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the early seventies. He’s still active and has been doing some fun adaptations of classic stories by Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft in the past few years. This is a new one that Dark Horse put out. It’s just a staple bound comic but it has some great line work and displays Corben’s wonderful use of color. It’s a very liberal take on the story but lots of fun. Check it out.

Danny Adventure Time Encyclopedia by Martin Olson A detailed book on everything Ooo! Written by Marceline’s Dad, with fun edits by Jake the Dog and Finn the Human!

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh Allie Brosh’s comics speak to my soul. They make me laugh really hard and they also make me feel things, similar to having gas but totally different. Intelligent, crudely drawn, and very clever comics that are as important as they are ridiculous.

The Fifth Beatle by Vivak J. Tiwary This is the true graphic novel telling of the driving force behind one of the greatest rock bands who ever lived. Brian Epstein was with the Beatles from the beginning, and this is the beautiful and poignant tale about his struggles with loneliness and just being himself in an uncompromising world.

Dream Animals by Emily Winfield Martin This captivating and beautiful children’s book will put wild fantasies in little heads about finding their dream animals while they sleep. I tried to find my dream animal after I read this but I just kept dreaming about pizza. Maybe my dream animal has been put out to pasture.

The Lengths by Howard Hardiman Finally the book we have all been waiting for!

The story of a homosexual dog prostitute who’s looking for his true love, with sexy results! Oh, and the dogs all have human bodies, even sexier! Get the hose!

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Janelle Real Good Stuff #1 & #2 Dennis Eichhorn Good ol’ Good Stuff. The comic formerly known as Real Stuff. Dennis Eichhorn’s autobiographical stories differentiated themselves from other comics of the autobiography-drenched ‘90s because there was action.

Shit actually happened. No neurotic inner monologue or crybaby break-ups, Eichhorn’s comics are full of sex, drugs, adventure, and wacked-out characters. This new edition brings us more of the same. Art by Mary Fleener, Aaron Lange, Noah Van Schiver, Pat Moriarity, and more.

Police Log Comics #2 by Owen Cook Read all about the weirdness of small town crime as seen through the Carmel, CA police blotter.

Kid Mafia by Michael DeForge Michael DeForge is everyone’s favorite cartoonist right now and it’s easy to see why.

Weirdly-proportioned bodies and slightly surreal story line make everything feel out of whack, but still somehow rings true.

Deep In The Woods

by Noah Van Schiver & Nic Breutzman A double feature of mythical tales about a floating cow’s head and a crackwitch. The newsprint is kind-of a bummer, but the art is top-notch so suck it up and get your fingers dirty.

Read more staff picks on our blog! www.lastgasp.com

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The Timid Cabbage by Charles Krafft, illustrated by Femke Hiemstra A hardcover book featuring original drawings by artist Femke Hiemstra and written by Charles Krafft.

“It began with a poem written by and sent to Femke by artist, Charles Krafft. Femke was quite taken with the endearing charm of the poem and proceeded to illustrate it. Those drawings became a sold-out show at the Roq La Rue gallery in Seattle in November 2011. If you have a young child The Timid Cabbage is a beautiful keepsake gift that they will forever treasure, if you have an older child they just might embrace the heartfelt moral of the story about the importance of being an individual. If you are a young adult, middle-aged pseudo hipster or even a decrepit bed-ridden invalid you will want it to revisit the magic of being young-minded and susceptible to enchantment. You’ll want to have The Timid Cabbage prominently displayed on your bookshelf to impress all your cheesy friends.” This hardcover, foil stamped book is from an edition of only 1,000!

Hardcover, Black & White, 24 pages, 10 x 11.25 ISBN-13: 978-0-57812457-5 $34.99

WHOLESALE TERMS & CONDITIONS It’s easy to open a wholesale account with Last Gasp and receive a 40% discount on your purchases.

MINIMUMS Your first order should be at least $200 net (after discount) and at least 10 items.

HOW TO ORDER The easiest way to order is to fill your shopping cart online and click the “wholesale checkout button.”

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HOW TO ORDER Individuals Please order online at lastgasp.com or call (800) 848-4277 or visit your local bookstore Wholesale Customers Order online and click “WHOLESALE CHECKOUT” or call (800) 366-5121 or email wholesale@lastgasp.com Questions? See our F.A.Q. at lastgasp.com CONTACT INFORMATION phone (415) 824-6636 fax (415) 824-1836 facebook.com/lastgasp twitter.com/lastgaspbooks instagram: lastgasp Mailing address: Last Gasp 777 Florida Street San Francisco, CA, 94110 Prices and availability subject to change. Contents of this catalog are copyright © 2014 Last Gasp and/or the individual artists, authors, and publishers. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

The Weirdo Years 1981-’93

by Robert Crumb All of Robert Crumb’s art and comics from the influential Weirdo magazine, widely considered his best work ever.

Weirdo was a magazine-sized comics anthology created by Robert Crumb in 1981, which ran for 28 issues.

It served as a “low art” counterpoint to its contemporary highbrow “Raw.” Early issues of Weirdo reflect Crumb’s interests at the time: outsider art, fumetti, Church of the SubGenius-type antipropaganda and assorted “weirdness.”

The incredibly varied stories include TV Blues, Life of Boswell, People Make me Nervous, The Old Songs are the Best Songs,Uncle Bob’s Mid-Life Crisis, Kraft Ebbing’s’ Psycopathia Sexualis, Goldilocks, The Life of Philip K Dick, and many more.

Also within are several “photo novellas” featuring Crumb himself and various of his trademark well-built women, including his wife, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, in tales such as Get in Shape and Unfaithful Husband.

INCLUDES CRUMB’S STUNNING AND VARIED COVERS FROM ALL 28 ISSUES OF WEIRDO

Hardcover, 256 pages, Color and B&W, 8.5 x 11 ISBN 978-0-86719-790-7 $29.95

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