Life as a bunny began in Lake Geneva
By John Halverson/The Week
When he was growing up in Lake Geneva, Max Estes was titillated by what he found in his stepfather's bedroom.
There were old World War II books and girly magazines. But the most scurrilous, the most taboo, the one thing he knew he absolutely shouldn't look at were those underground comic books.
Back in the '60s, underground comics, like those of the subversive and sometimes creepy R. Crumb, were sold like contraband at head shops next to bongs and Rolling Stone magazine.
Now you can find their offspring, graphic novels and zines, on the shelves of Barnes and Noble. You may even find a Max Estes alongside an R. Crumb. That curious little Max, it turned out, has grown up to be a practitioner of the art he once found so enticing.
A tall, gangly stick figure of a man with a self-diagnosed case of attention deficit disorder, Max is a likeable man who seems as excited about his new bride from Norway as he is of his artistry.
His recent presentation kicked off the display, "Graphic Novels, Zines and Comix: from Hogarth to Robert Crumb," running through March 20 at UW-Whitewater's Crossman Gallery.
For a man who describes his work as therapy, it wasn't surprising that Max's presentation was impetuous, meandering, effervescent. A self-described ramble, it more resembled a hand-held camera than a speech.
The self-effacing Max traced his beginnings as a student at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design through his graphic novel beginnings, to today when he draws a daily visual "blog" called "My Life as a Bunny."
For a time after getting his undergrad degree, Max was an artist seeking an art form, an outlet for "the romantic within," as he termed it, as well as a means of paying off $70,000 in school loans.
His malleability, a willingness to be formed, opened him to the possibility of the graphic novel. Max loved its "texture," the idea of holding it in his hand. When Max discovered someone he actually knew had published a graphic novel, the form became his muse, his mentor, his means to an even loftier end - self-discovery cloaked in self-expression.
So Max went on to publish two graphic novels, "Hello, Again" and "Coffee and Donuts." But despite their success, Max still felt they hadn't said enough about him.
"I was fascinated by the medium but didn't know what I wanted to do with it," he said. "I wanted comics to be a larger part of my life."
So after five years of writing what he called "bad stories" Max drew a graphic novel called "Through the Night." The process, he said, was a lot like a line in his book, "draw yourself in underwear...don't look back...draw a thread and pull." Max calls it "very terrifying" because he didn't know where it was going. But listening to him, you also get the idea it was his most satisfying work.
It turned out to be a chronicle of Max's life as he was living it, which included the discovery, through his work, of the love of his life, a woman from Norway. One cartoon, which bedecks the publicity pamphlet for the Crossman exhibit has a caption, which discusses their e-mail exchange: "I responded with 4,000 messages."
As it turns out, he and the woman fell in love, and the last frame is a drawing of both he and his wife to be in their underwear--as close to an innocent naked truth as you're likely to get in a comic book.
Lately, he's been doing a daily blog called "My Life as a Bunny."
That "daily practice," as he calls it, can be found at www.mylifeasabunny.blogspot.com, and covers the mundane to, well, the more mundane.
It's a recording of his daily "routines, comforts" encounters and "everyday observations," he explains. But the mundane in Max's hands is something else all together. "A meditation on the present moment," he calls it, "a tactile record of the elusive.
"These records," Max says, "become the sheet on the ghost."
Now far from the surreptitious discoveries of World War II books and underground comics, "Life as a Bunny" is still asking: "What's the value of single day?
"These," he said, "are the questions that keep me going."
So what's in a name?
What, exactly, is a graphic novel?
Its definition is as evolving as the craft itself, but in its most simplistic form it's comic strips put into book form.
Most often they're longer, edgier and more complex stories than "Nancy" or "Superman" comics many of us recall from our youth. Despite the dissimilarities of the comics of the 50s and 60s and graphic novels, the "Classics Illustrated" series is seen as a legitimate precursor for what was to come, a story-based comic.
Michael Flanagan, director of the Crossman, has used a broad bush in his definition calling the exhibit: "Graphic Novels, Zines and Comix: from Hogarth to Robert Crumb."
Upon visiting the Crossman, UW-W freshman Josh Figurski said it isn't what you expected to see when you went to an art exhibit.
Sophomore Kraig Przybylski, a fan of the form, was surprised that so many things seemed to fall under the graphic novel category.
When R. Crumb was asked to define the underground comic he may have gotten to the core of the matter saying, simply, that they were "absolute freedom" and then added, "We didn't have anyone standing over us."
Some cynics have objected to the title. "The term 'comic' does just as well for me," one said. "The problem is that 'graphic novel' just came to mean 'expensive comic book."
"It's the literary equivalent of calling a garbage man a 'sanitation engineer," said another. "A graphic novel is in fact the very thing it is ashamed to admit: a comic book..."
Whatever you call it, the Crossman exhibit covers the graphic novel waterfront cutting from woodcuts done in the 1700s and before to strips which barely have their ink dry. There is a parody of Beetle Bailey encountering Abu Ghraib, politics, sex, and even wallpaper.
The wallpaper may be an example of a cottage industry of the future.
Inspired by a breakup, a rich New Yorker started a business whereby an artist comes in and makes a graphic depiction of your life that you then put up around your house as wallpaper It's an example of "rich geek chic," the display says, and is marketed to "downtown types who don't take themselves too seriously."
So what's the next step?
Way back in 1969, author John Updike, who aspired to be a cartoonist as child, declared the death of the novel.
"I see no intrinsic reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise," he said "and create a comic strip novel masterpiece."
If you go:
What: Graphic Novels, Zines and Comix: from Hogarth to Robert Crumb.
When: Through March 20: Monday through Friday from 10 am - 5 pm, Monday through Thursday evening from 6 - 8 pm, Saturday from 1 - 4 pm
Info: 262.472.1207
ooo
When he was growing up in Lake Geneva, Max Estes was titillated by what he found in his stepfather's bedroom.
Crossman Gallery
Robert Crumb, best known for his work in the underground cartoon world of the 1960s and 70s, inspired a new generation of artists, such as Max Estes, who grew up in Lake Geneva. A exhibit at UW-Whitewater's Crossman Gallery explores the genre and its place in popular culture.
Back in the '60s, underground comics, like those of the subversive and sometimes creepy R. Crumb, were sold like contraband at head shops next to bongs and Rolling Stone magazine.
Now you can find their offspring, graphic novels and zines, on the shelves of Barnes and Noble. You may even find a Max Estes alongside an R. Crumb. That curious little Max, it turned out, has grown up to be a practitioner of the art he once found so enticing.
A tall, gangly stick figure of a man with a self-diagnosed case of attention deficit disorder, Max is a likeable man who seems as excited about his new bride from Norway as he is of his artistry.
His recent presentation kicked off the display, "Graphic Novels, Zines and Comix: from Hogarth to Robert Crumb," running through March 20 at UW-Whitewater's Crossman Gallery.
For a man who describes his work as therapy, it wasn't surprising that Max's presentation was impetuous, meandering, effervescent. A self-described ramble, it more resembled a hand-held camera than a speech.
The self-effacing Max traced his beginnings as a student at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design through his graphic novel beginnings, to today when he draws a daily visual "blog" called "My Life as a Bunny."
For a time after getting his undergrad degree, Max was an artist seeking an art form, an outlet for "the romantic within," as he termed it, as well as a means of paying off $70,000 in school loans.
His malleability, a willingness to be formed, opened him to the possibility of the graphic novel. Max loved its "texture," the idea of holding it in his hand. When Max discovered someone he actually knew had published a graphic novel, the form became his muse, his mentor, his means to an even loftier end - self-discovery cloaked in self-expression.
So Max went on to publish two graphic novels, "Hello, Again" and "Coffee and Donuts." But despite their success, Max still felt they hadn't said enough about him.
"I was fascinated by the medium but didn't know what I wanted to do with it," he said. "I wanted comics to be a larger part of my life."
So after five years of writing what he called "bad stories" Max drew a graphic novel called "Through the Night." The process, he said, was a lot like a line in his book, "draw yourself in underwear...don't look back...draw a thread and pull." Max calls it "very terrifying" because he didn't know where it was going. But listening to him, you also get the idea it was his most satisfying work.
It turned out to be a chronicle of Max's life as he was living it, which included the discovery, through his work, of the love of his life, a woman from Norway. One cartoon, which bedecks the publicity pamphlet for the Crossman exhibit has a caption, which discusses their e-mail exchange: "I responded with 4,000 messages."
As it turns out, he and the woman fell in love, and the last frame is a drawing of both he and his wife to be in their underwear--as close to an innocent naked truth as you're likely to get in a comic book.
Lately, he's been doing a daily blog called "My Life as a Bunny."
That "daily practice," as he calls it, can be found at www.mylifeasabunny.blogspot.com, and covers the mundane to, well, the more mundane.
It's a recording of his daily "routines, comforts" encounters and "everyday observations," he explains. But the mundane in Max's hands is something else all together. "A meditation on the present moment," he calls it, "a tactile record of the elusive.
"These records," Max says, "become the sheet on the ghost."
Now far from the surreptitious discoveries of World War II books and underground comics, "Life as a Bunny" is still asking: "What's the value of single day?
"These," he said, "are the questions that keep me going."
So what's in a name?
What, exactly, is a graphic novel?
Its definition is as evolving as the craft itself, but in its most simplistic form it's comic strips put into book form.
Most often they're longer, edgier and more complex stories than "Nancy" or "Superman" comics many of us recall from our youth. Despite the dissimilarities of the comics of the 50s and 60s and graphic novels, the "Classics Illustrated" series is seen as a legitimate precursor for what was to come, a story-based comic.
Michael Flanagan, director of the Crossman, has used a broad bush in his definition calling the exhibit: "Graphic Novels, Zines and Comix: from Hogarth to Robert Crumb."
Upon visiting the Crossman, UW-W freshman Josh Figurski said it isn't what you expected to see when you went to an art exhibit.
Sophomore Kraig Przybylski, a fan of the form, was surprised that so many things seemed to fall under the graphic novel category.
When R. Crumb was asked to define the underground comic he may have gotten to the core of the matter saying, simply, that they were "absolute freedom" and then added, "We didn't have anyone standing over us."
Some cynics have objected to the title. "The term 'comic' does just as well for me," one said. "The problem is that 'graphic novel' just came to mean 'expensive comic book."
"It's the literary equivalent of calling a garbage man a 'sanitation engineer," said another. "A graphic novel is in fact the very thing it is ashamed to admit: a comic book..."
Whatever you call it, the Crossman exhibit covers the graphic novel waterfront cutting from woodcuts done in the 1700s and before to strips which barely have their ink dry. There is a parody of Beetle Bailey encountering Abu Ghraib, politics, sex, and even wallpaper.
The wallpaper may be an example of a cottage industry of the future.
Inspired by a breakup, a rich New Yorker started a business whereby an artist comes in and makes a graphic depiction of your life that you then put up around your house as wallpaper It's an example of "rich geek chic," the display says, and is marketed to "downtown types who don't take themselves too seriously."
So what's the next step?
Way back in 1969, author John Updike, who aspired to be a cartoonist as child, declared the death of the novel.
"I see no intrinsic reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise," he said "and create a comic strip novel masterpiece."
If you go:
What: Graphic Novels, Zines and Comix: from Hogarth to Robert Crumb.
When: Through March 20: Monday through Friday from 10 am - 5 pm, Monday through Thursday evening from 6 - 8 pm, Saturday from 1 - 4 pm
Info: 262.472.1207
ooo
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