Published by New Reliable Press, You Ain’t No Dancer, Volume 1 is one of those rare finds where I pick a book off the shelf just to see what it’s about and discover that it’s packed full of high-quality work. At the time, I had recently allowed Scott Pilgrim into my life and was on something of a Byan Lee O’Malley kick, and was waiting for my delivery of his first full-length work, Lost at Sea, so I was ecstatic to discover this contained some of his work. However, even before that, I had read the two names that guaranteed my purchase of the book: Jeffrey Brown.
Despite one of the most wilfully grotesque covers I’ve seen in recent years, You Ain’t No Dancer is one of the highest quality indie anthologies I’ve read. Volume 1 contains more “big name” indie creators than you can shake a stick at, including some of my favourites: Jim Mahfood, Hope Larson, Dean Trippe – as well as a selection of artists with less exposure. Many of these creators would also show up in the ridiculously high-quality “Project” trilogy from Adhouse, including Brown himself (so I believe I’ll get to those on the blog eventually) and that alone should be an indication of how good it is. Anthologies such as these usually have a specific theme, but I can’t find one in these, so let’s assume for now that the theme is “excellent and original short comics” and I think we’ll all be happy with that.
Brown’s story, “William, I Need You” occupies the theological end of Brown’s spectrum, albeit comedically, which is one aspect of his work that unfortunately (for an elightened atheist like me) doesn’t show up very often. The piece itself is drawn in Brown’s more realistic style (ie, proper shading, varied line thickness, all those “real” artist’s tricks) and has 4 panels per (landscape) page (though the Man himself, God, does grab himself an entire page’s worth of splash panel). It’s not the heaviest piece of social commentary, nor the most original – general broad comedy around the idea that following God’s instructions instead of thinking for yourself will end up getting you killed – but it IS a timeless message, and I guarantee that there’s no other place you’ll get such amusement out of a man trying to decide how he can make fun of a pack of Lions.
I won’t go through all the others, because there are a huge amount, and I’m not going to single out the best, because they’re all of equally high quality, but I will tell you my two favourites and we can agree that no-one’s being snubbed.
Nicholas Gurewitch did one of my favorite strips, entitled “Giant Jim, your wife is cheating on you with the baker.” Which mixes fairy tale and infidelity into one bittersweet tale only 4 panels long and containing some brilliantly distilled storytelling. While researching this, I realised that he’s the same guy who does Perry Bible Fellowship, which is one of my favourite webcomics, and, even better, a version of this exact strip is available on that very site, so don’t say I never do anything for you.
Mahfood’s art style is always welcome, and his strip, “The Worst of Times” featuring his long-time anthology stalwart, One Page Filler Man, is as good as his work gets, with the frantic pace and humour one expects from anything he does. OPFM’s full-length OGN wasn’t the best work he’s done, but this short is top-quality.
Any more gushing would come across a bit TOO sycophantic (and after going out on Sunday this weekend, I’ve got limited time on Monday night to bash this entry out, so I could probably do to keep it succint now that Brown’s work is covered) but suffice to say, even without Brown’s inclusion I’d be giving this anthology the Crudely Drawn Naked People stamp of quality. I’m only now realising that Crudely Drawn Naked People actually applies to several of the shorts in this book, and the indie scene in general. Clearly I am a Genius.
Buy You Ain’t No Dancer from New Reliable (US & Int.)
You Ain’t No Dancer Preview Pages (including Jeff Brown artwork!)
