The Naked Artist...And Other Comic Book Legends [Paperback]

Comic convention afterparties are the stuff of legend: when comic creators get together at the bar, drink until the wee small hours and tell stories about some of the outrageous things they'd done at previous conventions where they got together and drank until the wee smalls. As good as those stories are, you had to be lucky enough to be there at the bar to hear them... until now.

Bryan Talbot, Eisner winner for graphic novels like The Adventures of Luthor Akwright and The Tale of One Bad Rat, turns his hand to prose writing for this entertaining volume collecting dozens of these funny, often outrageous stories. Now if you're expecting some sort of "tell-all" book, this isn't the place to go - Talbot isn't dishing on who slept with who or anything like that. These stories, while funny, are more benign - such as how Dave Gibbons had trouble when airport security found a model skeleton in his luggage or Neil Gaiman had to get past a surly shopkeeper to autograph copies of his own books. He also gives the most succinct explanation I've ever read of the supposed Jeff Smith/Dave Sim feud.

Although there aren't any trash-talking stories, there are a few revealing ones... tales that make the occasional writer or artist appear like less than a nice guy. Other stories, quite simply, show how completely outrageous some creators are willing to get, and a few will make you smile a bit at how sweet and genuinely human a comic celebrity can be. Talbot tells you straight up if the validity of a story is suspect, and in a few cases, tells you not only that a tale is an outright fabrication, but also gives alternate versions or hunts down the real incident from which the story may have sprung. It's like a book of folklore or urban legends - tales that have been told from mouth to mouth, and may have changed in the telling. For the most part, though, the stories are just for fun, just for laughs, and Talbot's easygoing, conversational style works perfectly for the book.

Hunt Emerson joins Talbot with periodic illustrations throughout the book. The cartoons are very funny, although some of them - like some of the stories - are sometimes rather blue or bawdy. This isn't a book for the kiddies - of course, younger readers probably won't be familiar enough with the comic creators as individuals to care to read about them anyway.

This is a fast read, but wonderfully written and well worth checking out for anyone who's curious about some of the behind-the-scenes dirt that our favorite comic creators sometimes get into.

› Go to Amazon.com to see the review  5.0 out of 5 stars