Ben Katchor is endlessly wonderful. The Coeval Coffee Shop! Dry Cleaning communities! Undertaking as a spectator sport!

Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: The Beauty Supply District by Ben Katchor (2000)

Katchor is one of the most original comic artists ever, both in his scripts and his illustrations. He creates a bizarre yet recognizable parallel New York which is a bit more 40s than the 40s ever were, a bit more Jewish than even Brooklyn, and a bit more New York than the city itself. Somewhat surreal and wryly humerous, I have reread this many times.

A high-brow weekly comic strip takes the mundane aspects of city living and cranks it up to a near surreal level. For example, one of the better strips is about a store front that has been vacant for a long time. It's a common site in every city, but here it's been so long they do tours of the site!

Another strip has a family living in a high-rise but they always drop food and stuff off the balcony by accident. Our character gets fallen ice-cream on his jacket, but the family pays for his dry-cleaning and invites him up for dinner.

Many of the strips went over my head. I just didn't really understand the point at times.

The extension fallacy is when an arguer takes a statement and exaggerates the parameters so much that it becomes completely ridiculous idea. This perfectly defines the humor in The Beauty Supply District. The strips revolve around the nuances of city life. Much of them are concerned the variances of architecture in a New York City-esque environment. The constant raising and destruction of buildings, as depicted in this book, paints a picture of a city landscape that drifts back and forth like an ocean current, where the occupants try to find stability and meaning in a chaotic ever shifting concrete jungle.

The stories take mundane aspects and illuminate them to ridiculous heights. From tours of a shop that had been vacant since 1964. To a group of men at an office obsessed with their fire extinguisher. To a rich man who owns a private vintage bus and, for kicks, drives along an actual route picking people up. To the longer story of The Beauty Supply District, where many obsessions collide in a bizarre manner.

Love Katchor's management of scale/scope in these - the way the focus shifts from panel to panel can be truly remarkable, especially in the longer-form stories.

.??? 2000s: my sense of humour. deadpan images

False

A series of one-page vignettes, some starring Julius Knipl, that take place in a city kind of like NYC, but more surreal. They're apparently set in the modern day, but everyone has a sort of 1950s look to them; the men tend to wear suits and hats, the women all wear dresses and heels. People buy perfume that smells like mundane things. They make maps of mud puddles. They go to bizarre concerts where music is made by a fake tongue lapping at cream. The stories are odd, whimsical, sometimes funny and sometimes oddly touching. Sometimes I found the briefness of each vignette to be a little taxing; I wanted to find out more, I wanted it to expand into a story, but most of them are sort of one-shot deals. The section titled "The Beauty Supply District" tells a story, but it's an odd one, with a lot of intertwined elements. This is a very strange comic collection, and I'm glad I read it, but I need to mull it over more, I think.

As usual, this is a wonderfully entertaining, whimsical graphic novel -- or, rather, a collection of vignettes/strips that first appeared in newspapers. Katchor seems to have a boundless imagination which is used to obliquely comment on social foibles and ills. This book is a joy to read - the final portion is a more or less stand-alone very funny narrative, all of which represents a wry commentary on an ultra rarefied, aesthetically elite crowd at a concert featuring a unique musical instrument, which must be read to be believed. I've been a Katchor fan for many years - long before I joined GR - and found this volume of his work amusing, insightful, truly a panacea for these dispiriting times. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to laugh, get a break from the seemingly unremittingly grim news of today.

Ben Katchor has been added to my list of heros. This book is wonderfully absurd and literate, poking around the lesser-explored corners of our unintentionally ridiculous consumer culture. This is the logical conclusion to the modern world of yesteryear. Details otherwise unnoticed get exaggerated to comic proportions. Katchor playfully combines and invents words with impressive ease. Yes, I really, really loved this and yes, am sad that I don't know anyone else who might enjoy it half as much as I did.

For me, this collection is not quite as strong as Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer -- but still quite good. I love the immersion and depth of these short stories (most are single-pagers, with a few 2- or 3-page ones and one longer one at the end, the titular "The Beauty Supply District"). Those who love big-city urban life as it used to be before gentrification will appreciate a lot of these, and especially the detail embedded in them.