Blabber Blabber Blabber: Volume 1 of Everything

Over the course of three-plus decades, Wisconsin native Lynda Barry has achieved widespread critical acclaim for her unique style of cartooning. Her latest book, Blabber Blabber Blabber: Volume 1 of Everything, traces her artistic development beginning with her early days. The collection includes three strips published between 1978 and 1981, sketches that pay tribute to her influences (such as Dr. Seuss and R. Crumb), and author notes that delve into why her art changed drastically from relatively clean and simple to the "scratchiness" she's now known for. Ernie Pook's Comeek, which was published by fellow student Matt Groening in the campus newspaper at The Evergreen State College while Barry was a student there, is full of surreal gags, yet drawn with a neat hand. By contrast, her third strip, Girls and Boys, is heavily abstracted and downright ugly to look at, with the comics themselves built around dialogue that is often dripping with angst. Barry's attempts to explain why she went from "sweet" to "bitter" are elusive (for example, she mentions "that feeling of the line being alive again"), but it's her comics that show the actual progression happening in stages. Blabber Blabber Blabber ends before Barry's art swings back in a lighter direction but it makes following her development intriguing and rewarding.