Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email


2016 July 01 • Friday

It's been a while since I read an autobiographical comic. I brought Glenn Head's Chicago on a recent train trip and enjoyed it very much.


It starts out with teenage Glen [sic] in 1970s New Jersey, in between high school and art school. He's struggling to get a grip on where he is and where he wants to go. The one certain thing is his passion for underground comics.

But comfortable, middle-class suburbia has made him deeply skeptical of roads more traveled. Art school isn't a haven or an opportunity to grow as much as it's a windmill to tilt at and, eventually, run away from.


When a fellow student suggests, not seriously, that since he's too cool for school he should just go to Chicago and get a job drawing for Playboy, Glen does just that. He hitchchikes his way there and lands on the street with absolutely nothing. Nobody knows that he's left and nobody knows where he is. He's totally broke and already starting to freeze in the inadequate clothes he's wearing.

This is the meat of the book here, as Glen hustles to survive and confronts the reality of not playing it safe. He's extremely lucky to benefit from unexpected help and he even gets to meet his hero, Robert Crumb.


There's also a random encounter on the street with Muhammad Ali.


The story comes back to New Jersey and a surreal meditation on death. After that comes a coda that takes place in Brooklyn in 2010, where an adult Glen is a responsible father with one significant relationship from his youth to resolve...


If you're into this kind of book, you'll be into this one!