Peepshow (1992)

Joe Matt's first and so far still best foray into comic book autobiography (his self-declared career, even raison d'etre, from approximately the age of 24), this collection of a few years' worth of the mundane adventures of his daily life in the late '80s and early '90s opens an intriguing window into his development as an artist. That's not the only window it opens, of course—it's notorious for the ludicrous and occasionally grotesque candor of its revelations, which include shrieking fights with his girlfriend, repulsive habits of thrift and laziness, and, yes, it's all true, the inside view of a porn habit with a few particulars regarding fetish. It is indeed a consummate portrait of ongoing selfish narcissism. He gets away with it (as much as he does) by dint of the comic book art, which is perfectly charming, by the fact that he tends to take ownership of his warts with aplomb and even relish rather than getting defensive or blaming anyone else for them, and because he's just plain likeable. In controlled doses. At a distance. And via the mediation of the printed comic book page. (Everyone who knows him reports that he's exactly as he describes himself, perhaps more so, and it's not like he doesn't catch on—he's often able to convey how others struggle to cope with him.) In the end he's not so different from you or me, just more willing to talk about his stuff and put it out there. What makes this worth visiting and revisiting is the chance to trace the self-discovery as it happens. In the earliest pages you can see him feeling his way toward what he's doing. R. Crumb, Harvey Pekar, and many others by now have made careers of comic book autobiography, but no one does it like Joe Matt, who soon enough flails his way to a discipline he mostly manages to stay within: the single-page/tiny-panel installments he is able to deliver on about a monthly schedule. He explores variations along the way, but never drifts far from what he can do with a single page, a minimum of cross-hatching (it's nearly all line work), and plenty of black ink. And he not only discloses the various personal details of his life and volatile relationship, for which he's famous, but also explores a good many other angles of his life along the way: the philosophy and practicalities of living cheap (some good tips!), his infatuations with showering and collecting and walking, the strange cats with whom he has lived, and all kinds of aspects of his art, including comical abstract exercises. If I didn't know better I'd be tempted to compare him to Montaigne.

In case it's not at the library.