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JACK SURVIVES, AND WE DO TOO

In unknown pockets of America, a tiny segment of the alternacomix-loving population are drooling. This is especially true if they've yet gotten their hands on "The Complete Jack Survives", a relatively new compendium of Jerry Moriarty's cult comic series based loosely on his father, the eponymous Jack. The work—much of which originally appeared in RAW, a seminal art-comics magazine edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly—has been lovingly reprinted by Buenaventura Press in a table-sized book, along with reflections and photographs of young Jerry with his father.

As expected, the book comes wreathed in words of praise. In his introduction, Chris Ware named it the most important volume of comic art reprints ever to appear, and called Moriarty one of the "great geniuses of the comic strip" in an interview for the Believer. In the book's preface, Richard McGuire writes that Moriarty's drawings are "as sturdy and dependable as a two-by-four, a vintage car, or a durable appliance," while his words "hang heavy in the air and have the same kind of weight as the drawings."

But Moriarty's work isn't leaden, even if it doesn't quite enchant on first glance. The drawings look uncertain, putty-like instead of crisp, and veer towards messiness. It takes a minute to tease the expressiveness out of the smudges, but make no mistake—it's there. Every smudge has its purpose, whether to imply a hesitation of movement or a change in mood.

You could call Moriarty the Raymond Carver of comics if you wanted to hint at his solemnity and economy, but it's difficult to draw comparisons between fiction and narrative image-making. The strips are often no more than four or six panels long, each covering a single episode in the life of Jack. What Jack survives in panel after panel, it turns out, is what anyone survives: in one scene he fails to get clear reception on a television; in another he cleans up the yard. The title of the series may be ironic or meaningfully sad. It works either way.

"The Complete Jack Survives" (Buenaventura Press), by Jerry Moriarty, out now

~ MOLLY YOUNG