Super Visions: Ghift guide #1 addendumbration

Or: an imperfect interchangeable to cure some unwanted present

One book I intended to write about in my ghift guide a few weeks back arrived too late for inclusion there. Once I read Kill My Mother, I became even more eager to mention it here, even as I recognized the failings that made it not quite ideal. Its creator, Jules Feiffer, is a legendary cartoonist whose work I’ve long held more in awe than with outright admiration.

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  • Liveright



You might recognize his name thanks to his numerous contributions to the Village Voice or, if you’re lucky, through his wondrous children’s books. His line, loose but elegant, always evokes dance, even when his characters are “standing still.” I always associate him with the Voice for the recurring figure of a lithe, long-haired woman in a leotard who would self-consciously “dedicate” whatever series of panels she appeared in to spring or some other theme, then comment amid her own entrechats and so forth as the comic progressed. These pieces and ones like them always struck me as better ideas for comics than as fully realized comics, no matter how elegantly rendered they might be. I own several ancient compilations of Feiffer’s work for periodicals, but I seldom look at them.

Feiffer’s children’s books are another story altogether. Meanwhile ..., Bark, George, and I’m Not Bobby are particular favorites of mine. Feiffer strikes me, in these books, as that uncle who parents wish weren’t quite so forthcoming in the presence of young ears, and whose whimsies often contain a spoonful of danger.

Feiffer adds danger by the bucketload to Kill My Mother, which I’ve seen labeled as his first graphic novel for adults. Never mind the manifold imprecisions of the term graphic novel or the implied limitations of such a rubric for what grownups ought to be reading: the label is spot-on in making clear that this book is not for kids. The violence suggested by the title unfurls on the page throughout this demolition of noir/tough-guy detective tropes. Feiffer’s seemingly parallel assault on conventions of the family and how one gets made strikes me as slyly political in the best way. The relations among the numerous characters are complex and complicated, and making sense of them is part of the challenge (and the pleasure to be had) here. Slightly overlong and marred by a copy editing lapse (your for you’re) that left me in slack-jawed disbelief, Kill My Mother is nonetheless a superb choice for someone who understands that comics is not a genre, that crime stories rule, that even the toughest guys exist thanks to some woman, and that there’s always someone tougher (or quicker or larger ...) than you are.