The Alcoholic
I finally got around to reading The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames last night. What a fantastic pseudo-biographical telling of one man’s life with being himself and the insanity that follows the first drink. Between his story and artist, Dean Haspiel’s black and white sketches I found myself staying up way too late the first night I got the book just to get to the end. And that end, tinged with the doubt and the waning will of Jonathan A. left in a particular state of limbo, on the brink of either recovery or further collapse was ingenious.
Jonathan A.’s story was sparse, simple, and expressive as he wrestled his own demons. There was an element, or two, that made the character’s life strikingly unique compared to the life of others. If you’ve read the book then you know what I mean. The loss in Jonathan A.’s life is incredible in its sorrow, along with the odd assortment of attachments he develops. His drinking stories, though sometimes frightening and odd, were not necessarily monumentally tragic in the sense they were for Nicolas Cage’s character in Leaving Los Vegas. No, Jonathan A. appears to be a garden variety drunk well on his way to an even more pathetic existence without the stripper girlfriend or the tragic-romantic sheen of willfully drinking oneself to death.
Over-all this book lived up to its promise of being honest and a compelling read that showed some of what comics can be and how they have grown up in such lines as Vertigo. It is especially nice to see a slice of life title in the line that does not involve either fantasy or some sort of fantasy-crime genre. Jonathan story is a simple reflection the real world, with all of its real problems: just simple straight up human f–cked-uppedness is nice to see from a mainstream line of comics.
