In the United States, every comic book is a superhero comic. That is, readers’ expectations are formed entirely by the dominant genre; cartoonists who want to tell other kinds of stories must cope with that set of ideas about what a comic is and what types of tales it should contain. The medium itself may encourage irreality, since anything at all can be shown in it, unlike film or television or theater. Why not, then, use it to display the least plausible actions and characters? Even the most intimate, autobiographical expressions — the work of Harvey Pekar, say, or Chester Brown — can seem comfortingly familiar. Aren’t they really versions of “secret identity” stories, narratives from the lives of nebbishy Clark Kents or Peter Parkers?

Other cartoonists employ different strategies in stretching the acceptable boundaries of the form. One useful technique for writers and artists hoping to portray human-scale dramas is to set their stories in melodramatic places and times. Maus, for instance, described recognizable interactions among ordinary humans, but the requisite melodrama arose from the historical circumstances in which it was set. Stuck Rubber Baby, the forthcoming graphic novel by Howard Cruse, takes a similar approach by mining the civil rights movement for material. And Holy Cross, Malachy Coney’s wonderful new comic, also relies on a lurid but realistic locale: occupied Belfast.

Every issue of Holy Cross — there have been three so far — focuses on a different series of events in the same impoverished Catholic neighborhood. Coney writes them; the comic has been drawn by a different artist in every issue, all of whom have provided clear, competent support for narratives centered far more in text than picture. (Parodoxically, Coney’s scripts rely as much on silence as on sound, with few captions and not a single unnecessary word of dialogue.) Each story is complete in itself, but then, at 48 pages these are fairly long comic books. The continuing presence of a pair of marginal characters, Jimmy and Davy, help link the episodes, papering over the gaps between artists and between stories. They are a sweet-natured pair of unemployed, middle-aged, philosophical drunks who may or may not be lovers. But the protagonists of Holy Cross are old women and (especially) young boys, the weakest members of the violent society Coney portrays.

Like Cruse and Spiegelman, Coney asks how ordinary people’s experiences and natures might be distorted by extraordinary times. He avoids explaining anything in the lives of his characters as the direct result of the British occupation. But violence — realistic and ugly, almost dull, nothing like the superhero version — haunts Holy Cross. Nowhere is safe: policemen and soldiers stand on every corner, bombs hide in drainpipes, rapists break into bedrooms, bingo games in church end with acrimonious bickering, and the neighborhood — infested with gangs of vigilantes — is lit by burning trash. Few human relationships go untouched by violence: Coney’s characters are bullied by their neighbors, lose their friends and relations to “the troubles,” suffer beating at the hands of their parents, and are injured by their teammates on the soccer field. Their schoolteachers give them bad dreams.

Even these characters’ imaginations seem infected by a sense of threat. Nightmares — realistic ones — plague some of them, while many indulge themselves with hopeless fantasies of power. Davy and Jimmy, who bedeck their living room with posters for Darkman and Zombie Fleshfest, watch The Evil Dead with their drinking buddies over and over again. The boys whose woes are at the heart of the third issue act out comic book scenes in the vacant lot which is their playground. They obsessively watch old thrillers on television although they understand that, as one of them says, “it’s a load of ole’ shite anyway. It’s the same every week.” To which his companion, a boy who suffers horribly from an abusive parent, can only reply weakly, “It takes my mind off things.” Their fantasies are no substitute for real autonomy and security, and are just a thin comfort in hard times.

Holy Cross suggests that such imagining may serve more than an ameliorative function. Fantasies of danger and power also inform the behavior of the more powerful characters in Coney’s district of Belfast. The police seem to borrow their dialogue from Hill Street Blues reruns (“terrorists, rapists, child pornographers… I don’t see any difference at all, we have to stop every one of them”) while the local vigilantes might be modeling themselves on a John Ford western. (“So we take it in shifts… no-one will get past. And we’ll catch this bastard before he gets anyone else.”)

An abusive father excuses his rage as the product of his son’s failure to live up to his Sports Illustrated ideals; as he reels back from the pub, he complains, “I’ve been listening to fathers talking about their sons, what football teams they played for, the trophies… they won… an’ what have I got for a son? A fuckin’ wee nancy boy.”

In one issue of Holy Cross, the imagination acts as more than a comfort to the downtrodden. The second issue tells the story of a young orphan who has caught his tears in a glass jug all his life. (Coney’s use of the “bottled-up” metaphor for sorrow is uncharacteristiclaly heavy-handed.) Just before he leaves with the priest to enter a seminary, he escapes from his aunt’s house with his tears tucked under his arm. After various mishaps, he arrives at a wharf, pursued by his aunt and the priest. Before they can reach him, he empties the bottle into the sea. Magical horses appear from the waves to carry him away; his fantasies rescue him from Belfast.

This awkward fairy tale is as close as Coney gets to conventional comic book narrative. But it’s not nearly as compelling as the other two issues of Holy Cross. Unlike them, it portrays fantasy as a harmless, perhaps benign escape from a terrible situation. Most of the time — and this, I think, is the point of Holy Cross — Coney knows better.

Hulk no more fight bad men like Leader and Pointy-head. Hulk smash AIDS. Hulk get soshal conshense. Hulk no like child abuse and hurt abortion clinic complainers. Hulk writer make Hulk sensytive, which Hulk no like ’cuz Hulk like to smash! Hulk like drawer-man tho’, becuz he give wife-Betty breasts as big as her head and make Hulk 12-feet tall with biceps as big as waist. Now when Hulk go outside he wear bandana over head because Hulk want to live normal life, so peepul confuse Hulk with other 8-foot green monsters. Hulk writer so dumb he get confused about Hulk so now when Hulk get angry he become puny Banner who wants to smash like Hulk. Everybody knows puny Banner no smasher like Hulk. Hulk wonder if wife-Betty like sex more with Hulk or puny Banner. Who stronger, Hulk or NARAL? Hulk wonder why if somebody want to read about abortion rights, they not read Our Bodies, Our Selves instead of Hulk. Hulk wonder why if somebody want to read about Hulk, they not read Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Hulk wonder how many peepul eat Big Macs while looking at Hulk and feel guilty but still laugh when Hulk make Star Trek pun. Hulk wonder how many excuses writer man can think up for working for bad men.

Last summer marked what should have been phase two of the “Get Sam Henderson’s stuff in one place where everyone can buy it” project, with the collection of the early “Monroe” strips in Wow Cool’s Oh That Monroe. This spring we get phase one: Colorado-based Dodecaphonic Books’ nicely-packaged 124-page compilation of Henderson’s recent strips from sources as varied and inaccessible as Cruel and Unusual Punishment, Snicker, Spec, The Stranger, and various self-produced mini-comics.

There are something like 50-60 strips here, with the longest being seven or eight pages. The brevity suits Henderson and his style of savage, biting, sarcastic humor. Henderson realizes the subject matter often doesn’t merit more than one brutal kick-in-the-ass punchline. Some of the best sections feature several one-panel comics on a single page or two-page spread. This isn’t moronic humor; Henderson knows what he’s doing and some of the more satisfying bits of this book are those strips where he pulls apart and analyzes the humor involved or simply acknowledges a strip’s abrupt vapidity.

Better critics than myself have been screaming about Henderson for years, including a number of recommendations right here. With this attractive, meaty tome, you no longer have an excuse to ignore them.

British Columbia’s ticket to world fame showed up in 1986 in the form of a B-class world exposition that attracted visitors from around the globe, and hordes of young Vancouverities who spent serious time trying to pick each other up, or slaving away at morally questionable service-industry jobs connected with the fair. Now, ten years later, someone has finally gotten around to immortalizing Expo’s seamier sides in print. The current issue of Ian Boothby’s I details the highs and lows of Ian’s summer of ’86, which range from an afternoon spent rebuilding Expo Ernie, the fair’s annoying, English-accented robot mascot, to coitus interruptus and a panicked flight under his girlfriend’s bed. Scattered in between are a talent audition from Hell, a visit to a Vancouver gay bar, and an apartment with defective fuses and an equally defective roommate.

I is one of the most enjoyable minis currently available. Ian can’t really draw, but that limitation never compromises the book’s manic pacing and all-around visual inventiveness. Ian has a quick sense of humor reminiscent of Evan Dorkin at his best, and the early Joe Sacco. Sometimes I strains credulity when it pushes parody too far, as in the case of #13’s James Bond-themed backup, or the recurring adventures of Hell Squirrel. But when Boothby concentrates on semiautobiographical material, as in the case of the Expo story, or the earlier, multi-part “Border,” I displays a wit and polish distingushing it from most other minis. Recommended in particular: #13, and the just-released Collected I, whose portrait-with-stuffed-dead-things- among-others on the front cover is worth the price of admission alone.

Eric Drooker burst into the consciousness of most alternative comics fans with the publication of 1994’s FLOOD!: A Novel in Pictures, which won wide critical praise and an American Book Award. Illuminated Poems, which for many will be a glossy-book collection of the Beat-era icon’s work, is such a broad and wide-ranging collection that it serves as Drooker’s major comics follow-up. As such, it doesn’t disappoint.

The collaboration between Drooker and fellow New York City Lower East Side resident Ginsberg seems to be one of editing and placement rather than design and creation: Drooker’s work is matched up with existing Ginsberg poetry, and more than a few Drooker pieces look familiar (New Yorker covers). But the art is well-chosen and appropriate, and the two creators’ similar sensibilities make for interesting pairings.

Even if you’re not a fan of Ginsberg — some of whose best work is represented here, including his signature mid-’50s epic “Howl” — Illuminated Poems is a solid book if you just wish to look at the comics, some of the best work of Drooker’s career: silent, vignette-style comics and several single illustrations; full-color, two-tone, and black and white. The reproductions are, to my untrained eye, quite nicely done; as a matter of fact, the whole book is attractively designed. If you’re a fan of Drooker’s, Illuminated Poems is worth its steep asking price.

The sad fact about comics-related web sites is that, as with comics, most of them suck. Scrolling through the listings of your favorite search engine reveals an unhealthy amount of Spider-Man and Lobo fan pages. Nevertheless, there are a few jewels in this virtual rough — the ISM Comics Web Site, for example.

Point your browser at this non-commercially driven Site — an increasing rarity on the Web these days — and thrill to one of the most comprehensive and interesting collections of independent, small press and mini-comics to be found anywhere on the Internet. Complete stories by Paul Pope, Matt Feazell, Jay Stephens, Carol Swain, Bryan Talbot, Rick Veitch and many less well-known talents can be found at ISM, as well as the entire fifth issue of Paul Grist’s Kane. Not only is this Site an easy and cheap (it’s free!) way to become acquainted with the work of previously unfamiliar creators, but it’s also well designed and easy to interact with, foregoing the usual flash and gimmickry for a solid organizational structure and a relatively simple scrolling technique. The latter, you’ll quickly realize, is the easiest and most effective way to view comics on the Web.

Unfortunately, the ISM Comics Site is located on a British-based server which delays access time during hours of traffic. To enjoy optimum interaction with the Site, and avoid those painfully long downloads, visit it late at night or in the wee hours of the morning.

Gilbert shows great graphic inventiveness given the restrictions of a weekly strip, and his drawings are always finely rendered, often in a chiaroscuro style that steeps his work in an aura of sadness and loneliness whose only respite is absurd humor and Art itself. If you have access to the Internet, you can now see Scott’s Apeshot Studios home page, which features recent strips, some strips not collected in the book, and previews of upcoming work. The URL is http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~gilbert.

Rigg does a great job of turning this seemingly mundane storyline into engaging human drama. The dialogue has a Look Back in Anger quality, with its finely-honed appreciation for the petty domestic squabbling of unhappy lower-middle-class Brits. He also keeps things moving at a nice pace. Rigg avoids overlong scenes and uses a delicate touch in handling tense situations.

The artwork is what makes this book special, however. Rigg sticks to what he does well: the facial expressions and body movements of angry, confused people. The cover, for example, features a close-up of Jenny’s face. It’s a complicated look — at once anxious, annoyed, mistrustful, and watchful. She looks like she’s on the verge of anger, but not quite there yet. The book features dozens of similarly complicated looks, some of them boiling up toward confrontation, others offering flashes of repressed emotion. The desperation on Lee’s face as he opens his wallet in the final scene, trying to buy off Jenny by giving her money for a new outfit, is priceless. She just looks at the money blankly. The final panel shows Lee after Jenny’s gone to sleep, miserable but defiant. The first print run of Jenny Butler was 200 copies. There hasn’t been a second print run yet. This is self-publishing at its best.

I’ve always had a problem with Gary Panter’s work. His ratty aesthetic of second-childhood-by-way-of-psychosis often seems to portend more than it actually delivers — the sly primitivism hints at profound complexity while refusing to say anything definite. As a result, I sometimes can’t tell when Panter is provoking the reader for a reason, or simply indulging himself at the audience’s expense. On the one hand, the Jimbo strips from Raw Vol. 1 #s 6 and 8 remain vivid proof of how fine art can enter comics in a radically different way. Throwing his infamous punk protagonist into a nuclear holocaust, Panter’s blend of painterly and cartooning effects border on the horrific and hallucinatory, a perfect complement to the pathos the star character experienced.

In contrast, much of Jimbo #1 — the first title from Bongo Comics’ “mature” Zongo imprint — is a sterile effort, void of substantial pleasure or provocation. And while it’s perhaps unfair to compare an artist’s early work to more recent ones, I still feel like a chance was somehow missed here… and worse, missed on purpose.

Like Mark Beyer and Matt Groening, there are frequent points of disturbing insight in Panter’s vision, treading the thin line between fantastical child-like imagination and neurotically creative morbidity. That comes through only occasionally in Jimbo #1. The narrative format doesn’t help: each page is a discrete comic strip with the names of that page’s characters as a “title,” and the “story” is really two separate plot lines and some single-strip randomness. Like others from the Raw school of comix creators, Panter shows a fondness for hollow delivery and unfunny punchlines; however, his use of these devices isn’t as effective as, say, the more antagonistic non-humor of Mark Newgarden, or the existential blankness Ben Katchor evokes. The majority of strips in #1 deal with Henry’s visit to his hillbilly cousins, Songy and Yoyo: when he first arrives, Henry finds the pair in the outhouse, “lookin’ at pictures of pretty girls in the catalogs.” I hoped it wouldn’t sink any lower, and there’s a flash of true — if overplayed — humor when the country cousins are dismayed about chicken-killing season on their farm, only to have Henry volunteer for the task. Songy and Yoyo freak at their cousin’s sudden bloodthirst, but the story takes a ludicrous turn with an unexpected amputation and an ensuing sub-sitcom frenzy.

Of course, the brightest spot in this issue is the title character: a true rebel without a clue stuck in an anywhere-is-better-than-here wasteland, Jimbo’s hulkish stance and dumb-jock visage has become an archetype for our grungy anomic age. Unfortunately, he appears in only a few pages, beginning with a trip to the sewers to photograph dinosaurs and leading to pursuit by a baby protoceratops and a human war orphan. In one panel, Jimbo is running away from the pair of “refugees” who seek his help, his blanked-out eyes and cries of “Guilt! Guilt. Guilt!” conveying unnamable frisson, a universal dread Panter captures effectively. This storyline quickly peters out, but Jimbo’s later run-in with “The Friend-Catcher” is another glimmer of Panter’s undeniable talent.

With the exception of a tightly-drawn, amusingly detailed cover, the art in this issue looks like Panter drew with a pen held in his teeth. There are times when the lettering borders on the illegible, and the most common remark I’ve heard about these pages — “my little brother can do that” — seems pretty much on the mark. But again, there’s a tease of what Panter is truly capable of, including the aforementioned Friend-Catcher sequence and single-strip sequences like “Garloo” and “Painting Class Middlebury Vt.” The use of a hand is at least clearly evident in these select pages, the panel composition and detail showing more intelligence than Panter allows himself for the majority of this comic.

In the end, I just don’t know what to make of Jimbo. It poses the most insipid of readerly dilemmas: Panter seems to have designed this book precisely to annoy and bewilder, and while the reader knows and may even respect this move… Well, that knowledge doesn’t make the book any less annoying or bewildering. The contemporary comix dollar doesn’t stretch far enough to permit such obviously frustrating tactics, and I’m not much of a fan of punk-styled antagonism such as this. I’ll page through future issues of Jimbo as they hit the racks, but won’t expect improvement. Depending on your own reactions, I guess you can file either the comic or myself under “Just Doesn’t Get It.”

“Zongo Comics are swell comics,” as the company line goes, and yes, there is truth in advertising. Jimbo #1 got an inordinate amount of hype for an alternative comic because of its publisher, and I suspect this may have been to the book’s detriment. For the collectible-types who bought Jimbo out of a desire to have all-things-Groening and were unfamiliar with Panter, the first issue must have been a confusing and frustrating read. With pages that look like they were drawn at a rate of four a day (many were) and all of the seemingly unrelated and loopy things going on, I’m sure more than a few Simpsons fans felt ripped off.

It’s their loss if they gave up that easily. With the recently released fourth issue, Panter brings everything together, and honestly, all four issues make sense. Jimbo is reunited with Bob War and the bus guys after his incarceration at the Time Motel (although it is still unrevealed as to why the pupface provoked the friendcatcher — an upcoming story arc?). Henry, Songy, & Yoyo escape the really big chicken and their connection to Fluke and Groty is revealed. Although one must assume the Soulpink girls will yet again meet up with Jimbo, and there’s still Henry’s secret plans for Songy & Yoyo to deal with, but I’m sure all of this will be revealed in later issues, and Panter does a remarkable job of pulling a cohesive and engaging narrative out of what originally seemed to be unrelated scrawlings. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Chester Brown’s “Ed the Happy Clown” stories in terms of story structure, and is just as rewarding once everything comes together.

Read Jimbo 1-4 all at once. It’s fun. It’s punk. It’s hillbilly existentialism. What more could you ask for? There’s even an anagram for you gaming fans on the front cover of #3, which as far as could tell reads, “Gary Panter and NPR berate traps,” although persistent readers may extrapolate further enlightenment from the jarbled letters.

Between Jimbo and Fleener, Zongo is a welcome addition to the world of alternative comics — let the fanboys be damned. If superheroes are indeed on the outs, then new heroes will have to rise in there place, and Jimbo seems as good a place as any to start.

Under economic and social pressure, the irrepressible spirit of underground comics has pulled another revolutionary end-around and festered in one of the last places I’d have looked for it: the mainstream. Issue #4 of Vertigo’s Jonah Hex: Riders of the Worm and Such is the funkiest, most grotesque, and blackest comedy I’ve read this year, a wicked distillation of rowdy irreverence from a possé of pros hellbent to demonstrate their sharp-stick savoir-faire on a commercial property.

Writer Joe Lansdale and penciller Tim Truman have worked together on two series prior, but this is the one in which they hit a pitch only attuned ears can appreciate. Lansdale’s script is twisted, preposterous, pleasantly meandering and insidiously involving. This issue’s rudely risible dialogue is particularly relentless. Truman’s art champions cowboy grittiness to the point where we feel befouled by reading. Inker Sam Glanzman seconds the grime, overlaying Truman’s sometimes static art with an encrusting patina. The colors of Sam Parsons reach an ennobling crescendo during an evening of amour and peeping tomfoolery: the glories of nighttime on the open plains frame an extended dialogue on cowboy procreation, pig-poking bestiality, and incestuous affection that is touching even as it makes the flesh creep. There’s death on the chamber pot, brains eaten from the skull, one galvanizing, heroic moment as the protagonist exits the conjugal bed, and a lusty howdy-doo from the singing buckaroos of the Wilde West Ranch, that besieged Music and Cultural Emporium founded on the aesthetic philosophy of Oscar.

This issue’s unique je ne sais quack blend of horror, high spirits, and low, low comedy provides some authentic mean-spirited fun. Depending upon sensibilities, this notice should be taken as either an alert or a recommendation.

When I first happened upon Ben Katchor’s work a few years ago in a weekly paper, my reaction was one of complete indifference. Now that I’m completely converted, I feel obliged to enthusiastically recommend Katchor’s second collection of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer strips — partially out of embarrassment for not having appreciated the strip’s brilliance sooner, but also because reading such a concentrated dose of Katchor might instantaneously do the trick for someone else.

If you’re not familiar with Julius Knipl, the strip is focused not so much on the main character’s personality as the objects and bits of the past he encounters during his sojourns through the city. Fragments from discarded tabloids, a crumpled soda straw, a hopelessly outdated exercycle — Katchor uses all of these to evoke a sense of nostalgia without ever coming off as sentimental. But the atmosphere of loss and decay that permeates the strip can never truly disturb the reader; it’s balanced out by Katchor’s wonderfully odd sense of humor. For example, one strip depicts a group of men who compete with each other in collecting (and identifying the various varieties of) lipstick-stained cigarette butts. Their obsession leads some of them to make arrangements with the smoker “to have the butt set aside for them when the cigarette’s finished.”

As for Katchor’s art, there’s something seamless about the way it blends in with the content of the strip. The weary, tilted lettering and washed-out greys both serve to reinforce the melancholy that envelops Julius Knipl. Still, it’s hard to identify or adequately describe what makes this latest book — which, by the way, contains a 17-page story unlike anything I’ve seen before from Katchor — so powerful for me. Do yourself a favor and buy it.

Collecting the first four issue’s of his self-published series, Kane, Paul Grist’s Greetings from New Eden is a breath of fresh air in a field overflowing with cynicism, anxiety and despair.

Greetings is fast, furious fun that pays homage to Raymond Chandler novels and Dirty Harry movies even as it neatly satirizes the conventions of both. Grist’s sense of timing is impeccable, and he accomplishes a great deal simply through page design and panel layouts. The structure of his stories is also top-notch, as when he deftly moves forward and backward in time to superimpose the past and present conditions of his characters.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Grist’s book, though, is the art. He is one the few artists who makes the stark black and white style work effectively, neatly sidestepping the usual temptations of the b & w stylists (Frank Miller rip-offs, an overemphasis on the black).

That Grist is planning to continue this series for a long time, and release it in a timely fashion, is good news indeed. Finally, there is a self-published comic that people can buy for pure enjoyment rather than out of some displaced notion of loyalty to the cause.