AMERICAN ELF
by James Kochalka
with an Introduction by Moby

Awwwwww...

July 22, 2004
I picked up James Kochalka's Sketchbook Diary collection today.
It has an introduction by Moby.
Moby! Argghhh!
But the drawings seem cute.

July 23, 2004
I've started reading the diary strips, but it seems to be taking a while for them to pick up steam.
I've also started Craig Thompson's Carnet de Voyage that I bought the same day.
They're both diaries.
Thompson and Kochalka also put out a dialog comic where they discuss the nature of art, but it sucked.

July 24, 2004
I first heard of James Kochalka when I started getting into the Comics Journal again.
It was just after he had started a letter-page debate with his statement, "Craft is the enemy."
I missed the begining, but the argument seemed ridiculous at first.
But as time wore on, I realized that there was some value in what he was saying.

July 25, 2003
I'm starting to think this diary-as-review idea is a terrible one.
I'm so drunk that I can barely write.
slurplepopalottzzzzxxxxxx
Crap.

July 26, 2004
While craft is not the enemy, "polish" should not be the ultimate end goal of a comics artist nor should a lack of it be a detriment to anyone who wishes to make comics.
I think this is what Kochalka was trying to say then.
I think I can agree with that.
I just think it's funny that I used the word 'nor'.

July 27, 2004
I later downloaded (remember Napster?) the songs Monkey vs. Robot and Beer Dog.
I have played these songs at every party I've thrown since.
Then King Leisure picked up the Monkey vs. Robot book at St. Mark's Comics for my birthday.
I enjoy Kochalka's work, but American Elf is the first thing of his I've paid money for (that and the dialog thing).

July 28, 2004
Kockalka sure gets sick a lot in the first half of the book.
And he plays video games a lot.
And he's amused by a lot by the things he and his wife say.
And for no reason, his white cat Spandy now has stripes (maybe it more acurately depicts the cat).

July 29, 2004
Every couple of weeks, Kochalka gets very sick.
Maybe he includes these aspects because being sick has such a profound effect on a person's life.
Or maybe it's to illustrate the fact that alternative cartoonists can't afford healthcare.
Maybe the sick strips only stand out because I've got this terrible flu right now.

July 30, 2004
Kochalka has stated that he was trying to reach some greater understanding of life by focussing on the mundane aspects of his.
But all too often, his strips focus on the fact that it's the end of the day and he hasn't drawn his strip yet.
There are moments when this is handled well, but mostly you just wish he'd freakin' suck it up.
Certainly these days can't be less eventful than the days represented by other strips.

July 31, 2004
The strips in this book demonstrate what I think might be the crux of Kochalka's anti-craft philosophy.
The more refined (classical?) drawing approach of Jim Woodring (whose work, I believe, triggered the debate) is completely absent from Kochalka's work.
He uses a quicker, almost spontaneous line with loose (sometimes cramped) compositions, little attention to modelling and a minimalist approach to detail.
However, most of the strips are tightly written, well-paced and provide as much visual information as is neccessary to follow along.

August 1, 2004
King Leisure picked up the first vollume of the Complete Peanuts.
Growing up in the eighties, it was difficult to appreciate this seemingly repetetive, minimalist, simple-minded excersise in humorlessness.
Reading these early strips, I'm amazed at just how good Shulz was, and just how ignorant I was of what he was doing.
Kochalka's daily diary has been compared favorably to Peanuts, but it shouldn't be.*
*Come on! He seems like a great guy, and the strips are fun, but comparing him with a master can only make him look bad.

August 2, 2004
The drawings are cute, and much like Peanuts, the strips are at their strongest when the characters are cruel or spitefull with one another.
But the cuteness gives their actions a forgivable, almost playful characteristic.
Unfortunately, the later strips devolve from being documents of fights and arguments to documents of apologies for fights we never witness (sometimes the strips seem like they might have been written as part of a deal for reconciliation).
Kockalka's friend Jason (represented, resentfully, as a dog) often shows up to caustically bring the strip back on course.

August 3, 2004
A weakness that many of the strips have in common with the dreaded eighties Peanuts strips is an over-reliance on cuteness for cuteness sake.
Admittedly, I shouldn't have expected anything else from the author of "The Cute Manifesto."
Again, some of these strips are wonderful and they're even occaisionally funny, but the sheer number of these strips weighs like a 7-ton barrel of syrup on the book's back
(I don't know about you, but too much syrup makes me sick (and back syrup is the worst).

August 4, 2004
What was I thinking?!?!?!
This is a horrible way to write a review.
Here's the word pencil: pencil.

August 5, 2004
Your cat is not precious!
Ugh. What IS it about people with cats.
Nothing makes it more special than anyone else's mangy animal, and nothing justifies focussing so many strips on it.
It doesn't do anything that every other cat in the world doesn't do (okay, okay, maybe that's the point).

August 6, 2004
Don't comic books smell great?

August 7, 2004
I'm too tired to work on this review.

August 8, 2004
After taking a shower, I walked in on my girlfriend flipping through American Elf.
At first she thought it was strange that someone would write a fake diary for a fictional character.
Strange but cool (in a nuerotic way).
She had trouble understanding that it was a real diary written by a guy that just draws himself as an elf for no good reason.

August 9, 2004
There are a lot of questions that need to be asked about this project.
Why an elf?
Why only four panels (or less) a day?
Why is Kochalka always yelling at his wife?

August 10, 2004
Why an elf?
While there is a literary tradition of masking autobiography as fiction through the "changing of names to protect the innocent" clause, there is no attempt in these strips to hide anyone's identity except by picturing them as assorted animals and bizzare creatures.
The practice of using animal representations for real people is probably best demonstrated in Art Speigleman's Maus, where a character's ethnicity/nationality is satirically rendered through iconic symbolism (Jews are mice hunted by Nazi Cats, etc.).
Kochalka's motive seems to be less satirical and more an attemt by the author to capture his characters' personalities through symbolism (he sees himself as a whimsical elf, his best friend is a caustic dog, his neighbor, New Guy is some kind of blockhead or asshead).

August 11, 2004
Of all the character designs, Alan, who appears in the last chapter of the book, gives Kochalka the most difficulty.
Scenes where he appears often show him off-panel or mostly obscured (usually with a note explaining Kochalka's reticience to commit to an iconic representation).
Finally, he is revealed as a rather magnificent black lion, easily the best character design in the whole book).
Unfortunately, his appearances are brief and he inexplicitly turns white in his last (one has to wonder if Alan's race caused Kochalka his consternation, but we're given no indication whether he is black or if that was even an issue).

August 12, 2004
Why four panels?
While the four-panel template is one common in daily strips and affords the author time to work on other projects, the limitations become obvious fairly early in the book.
There are times when Kochalka is able to tell a complete anecdote with setup, punchline and/or profound statement and there are times when he is able to show multiple glances of different times/situations from throughout the day that paint a picture through their juxtaposition, but too often, the four panels drive home the idea that it is very difficult to say anything really meaningful in so small a space.*
Kochalka even seems to give up at times, choosing to focus a day's strip on conversations that I'll begrudgingly refer to as wordplay.
*Writing this review with four or fewer sentences per entry has been a true test of both my patience and my ability to defy grammatical politeness.

August 13, 2004
Lest this review seem too negative, I just want to say that I enjoyed American Elf, both as an excersise and as art.
Some of the strips are magnificent and James and his wife are generally a joy to sit down with as I peer into their lives through this book.
But there are problems.
Problems that could have been rectified through heavy editing, like in some sort of "Best of American Elf."

August 14, 2004
Like a favorite sitcom, American Elf irreversibly "jumps the shark" (I appologize for using that loathesome term) around the time that Kochalka's wife gets pregnant and the baby comes along.
Even Jason, James Mason and Tom Devlin reappear to let Kochalka know that the strips are going downhill (there's a brief highlight when the Superstar's band plays for a crowd of highschool girls).
Unfortunately, the drunken, goofy, angry Kolchalka seems to vanish and is replaced by a nuerotic new father who apologizes constantly.
When doing a diary, there's nothing wrong with focussing on the major events of your life (and I imagine having a baby is about as major as it gets), but babies are like cats, everybody loves theirs and the only other people who care are the type of people no one else can stand.

—Justin J. Fox