Fuff 1-9

There’s a scene on the cover of Fuff 4 (from back in 2006) – Jeffrey Lewis, Fuff’s author, wanders into a comic shop after an absence of some time. Has there, he asks, perhaps been a new issue of Peepshow? “No,” comes the reply. “Berlin?” “No.” “Frank?” “No.” “Optic Nerve?” “No.” “Palookaville?” “No.” “Eightball?” “Ha!” The sequence ends with Jeffrey exiting and pondering, “I know comix are hard work, but these guys are comic artists! What do they do with their time?”

Which is a fair enough question because you get the feeling  that Jeffrey Lewis is pretty good at time management. In the time since the last new comic from Joe Matt appeared, as well as having recorded at least four albums and toured and played with everyone from Roky Erikson to The Cribs, Devendra Banhart to The Fall,  he’s managed to get nine comics out over the last nine years, drawn strips for The Guardian and The New York Times, and written a sonnet based on every song by Sonic Youth (the project is called Sonnet Youth, but we can forgive him that).

For those of you who haven’t come across Jeffrey Lewis before, he is, as Jarvis Cocker is often quoted as saying, “The best lyricist working in the US today”, and, as a shameless fan myself, I have to agree that it’s true – he has written some truly brilliant songs (try one here!) – and he’s not a bad cartoonist either.

Most of his work’s ended up in his self-published pamphlet comic Fuff, but he turns up in various compendiums such as Harvey Peckar and Ed Piskor’s Beats: A Graphic History, as well as Paul Bulhe’s Wobblies: A Graphic History of the IWW.

His background, as is hinted at in the titles of the anthologies just mentioned, is second generation New York beat/hippy, and some of Fuff’s best comics are Stories My Dad Tells (along with the occasional Stories My Mom Tells, which correct the odd Dad-told detail). Jeff’s Dad was/is a very romantic figure who seems to have hit the hippy trail, dropped out and draft dodged with best of them. This deeply bohemian background is exposed further in Fuff 1-6’s main feature, European Travels 1999, which chronicle Jeffery’s hitchhiking trip around the EU.

Stylewise, Jeff’s artwork is of the underground (though he’s lectured on Watchmen – and check out his Story of Alan Moore!) – it’s largely biographical (auto and otherwise)  with detailed brush work and tightly packed pages. He’s not a slick artist, but he has a nack with a likeness (his Jeffery character looks like him) and pays attention to backgrounds – his New York is palpable and does a good bit of wilderness as well. But polish is subsumed (quite rightly) by story-telling. There are some unsuccessful stories – when he moves into fiction, he’s less sure-footed (though the Superhero parody Metoritemite in #8 shows there’s some hope in this area).

Like Adrian Tomine, Jeffrey Lewis’ recent comics work reminds me how much I miss regularly produced (once a year will do!) indie/underground pamphlet comics.

He’s touring at the moment and you can get copies of Fuff from his merch store, or you can order them online from his Lightening Lewis dispatch wing.