COMICS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS

PUBLISHER
PictureBox

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 6.5 x 9 in. / 232 pgs / 204 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2011 p. 48   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780984589272 TRADE
List Price: $32.95 CDN $43.95 GBP £28.99

AVAILABILITY
Out of stock

"Underground comics have grown from their sordid and combative camp-inspired origins into a respectable industry. They have shed many of their initial gay-inherited affectations such as outrageousness, vulgarity, and hatred for all mankind. Now they typically resemble something more akin to the gentle post-hippie craft-ism of the middle-class do-gooder. The paper is archival and the drawings tend toward Zen inksmanship. The stories are often about relationships. Form trumps content. The comic, instead of being a campy launch pad from which to lacerate humanity, is held in high regard as a sacred institution, with the forebears of comicdom being revered as heroic themselves (just look at Crumb and his Bible stories). But we know that burning within this serene, highly personal, self-referential, and contented exterior is the contemptuous, reactionary bitchiness of pop, the movement that—by rehabilitating American capitalism for the world via art—not only liberated us from straining our brains but also helped vanquish human movements for social justice forever. ZAP! BLAM! POW!"

Ian F. Svenonius, excerpted from the essay, "Notes on Camp, Part 2."

  

PICTUREBOX

Kramers Ergot 8

Published by PictureBox
Edited by Sammy Harkham.

Featured image, by Ben Jones, is reproduced from <a href="http://www.artbook.com/9780984589272.html">Kramers Ergot 8</a>.

"If there's a future for comics, Kramers Ergot seems to have bottled it. The first really new paradigm for an avant-garde comix anthology since RAW.” –Art Spiegelman

Kramers Ergot is the premier comics anthology of the twenty-first century. Since its inception in 2000, it has revolutionized the medium, introducing new talents, solidifying aesthetics and standing as a state-of-the-medium book. Kramers Ergot has always been a reflection of editor Sammy Harkham's current interests in comics past and future. So it is in this spirit, with this new volume, that he severs the anthology from many of the formal and stylistic elements with which it made its name. Whereas past issues were oversize, colorful and filled with a variety of artists all designed to overwhelm the reader with raw power, Kramers Ergot 8 is a complete shift both aesthetically and physically. The size of the book is smaller, to encourage a more intimate reading of the material, and the content reflects a focus on substantial works from a small group of no more than a dozen artists who, rather than being aesthetically disparate, reflect a more specific and unified aesthetic space of discipline, sophistication and quiet power. Among the contributors are Anya Davidson, Leon Sadler, Ben Jones, CF, Sammy Harkham, Tim Hensley, Kevin Huizenga, Takeshi Murata, Robert Beatty, Chris Cilla, Gabrielle Bell, Frank Santoro & Dash Shaw, Johnny Ryan and Gary Panter. It also includes a 40-page reprint of the 1970s comic strip "Wicked Wanda" by Frederic Mullally and Ron Embleton as well as an introductory essay by Ian Svenonius. Packaged in clothbound covers designed by artist Robert Beatty, this is the essential comics title of 2011.

Featured image, by Ben Jones, is reproduced from Kramers Ergot 8.

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

Robot 6

Sean T. Collins

Despite featuring a much smaller roster than previous volumes in the series, and despite a much less “noisy” visual aesthetic than that which has characterized the series since its phone book-sized fourth volume caused a sensation upon its release at the MoCCA Festival in 2003, Kramers Ergot 8 has an intensity that’s tough to shake.
A cheekily provocative introductory essay from musician Ian Svenonius and a massive selection of racy reprinted Oh, Wicked Wanda! comics from the pages of Penthouse prove perplexing – but it’s a good perplexing, because it forces the reader to consider just how fingernails-on-a-chalkboard effective the rest of the volume is at discomfiting them.

Publisher's Weekly

James Romberger

In a reduction in size from the massively oversized previous issue, which is comprised of mostly single "broadsheet" comics pages by over 50 artists, KE 8 takes the form of a compact hardcover that focuses on short but mostly multipage visual progressions and graphic stories by eighteen contributors. These display a widely divergent range of visual styles, which are unified in their narrative content by irony and ambiguity.

Flavorwire

Tucker Stone

Eight installments in (and now on its third publisher), Kramers Ergot is sometimes discussed as if it’s merely a report card on the state of alternative comics, as if the table of contents is all that requires our attention. Ergot 8 looks to shake that foundation a bit, opening as it does with the most bewilderingly aggressive tract Harkham’s discovered thus far. From there, the book does take on a bit of a laundry-list quality — there’s Johnny Ryan, there’s Ben Jones, there’s Frank Santoro, Gabrielle Bell, all of your big dogs, they’ve come for your bones — but don’t let the brevity trick you into thinking there’s not something of substance going on. There’s a method to the madness, and by the anthology’s weird, atonal closer, you’ll be laughing (or wryly grimacing, at the least) right along with it.

USA Today

Whitney Matheson

Every few years a comics compilation arrives for those of us who like our stories sans superheroes and a little cutting-edge.
I own three previous Kramers books, and all of them feature some of my favorite artists, along with several up-and-comers. This time around, editor Sammy Harkham chose creators that "reflect a more specific and unified aesthetic space of discipline, sophistication, and quiet power."

Paste Magazine

Hilllary Brown

The book is a beautiful object, a love note to good printing and care for materials, with soft cloth you want to rub against your cheek and a three-color foil stamp in black, neon orange, and gold. It’s the kind of book printers send out as a sample to show what they can do. Its contents, on the other hand, and I believe the contrast is intentional, seem designed to make you so uncomfortable that the resulting feeling is about half an inch away from nausea.
This book has plenty of good reads, but it will also make you very uncomfortable. That impact, however, is a rare one from any artform, and it feels like something new and important.

Kramers Ergot #8: The Trailer from Dan Nadel on Vimeo.

Kramers Ergot 8

STATUS: Out of stock

Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory.

OF RELATED INTEREST

Brian Chippendale: Maggots

BRIAN CHIPPENDALE: MAGGOTS

PictureBox

ISBN: 9780978972264
USD $21.95
| CAN $30.5 UK £ 18.99

Pub Date: 11/1/2007
Out of stock indefinitely | Not available


FROM THE BOOK
This eighth installment of Sammy Harkham's influential and critically acclaimed comics anthology—"the premier showcase for emerging/edgy talent," according to Time magazine—features work by Gary Panter, C.F., Kevin Huizenga, Ben Jones, Jason T. Miles, Leon Sadler, Johnny Ryan, Dash Shaw & Frank Santoro, and Ron Embleton & Frederic Mullally, among others.



Scroll down for the video trailer by PictureBox Publisher, Dan Nadel.
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