Just Read: Amy + Jordan by Mark Beyer

If I'm not depressed enough to appreciate these comics this summer, they'll never work for me.

This book collects what I think are all of the "Amy + Jordan" cartoons by Mark Beyer, which originally appeared in The New York Press from 1989 to 1996. Now, I read the Press for a big chunk of those years, and I remember this strip...but, still, none of them were familiar.

Beyer has a deliberately crude style. (At least, I think it's on purpose, and not just because he's really bad at drawing.) It's not inappropriate for the content: odd, aggressively "underground" (or "downtown" or something else that means ugly and unpopular) strips about a couple who live in a city (presumably New York) and to whom bad things always happen.

Amy + Jordan was never actually funny, and it's not really poignant, either, since the nasty things that happen to the characters are usually surreal and weird. Really, what this strip was is the serious, hipster version of Mr. Bill.

As a side note, I realized while reading this through that Amy and Jordan are supposed to be a heterosexual couple, and that I'd had no idea what their relationship was when I used to read this strip in the Press -- I guess I vaguely thought they were sisters. That tells you something about the characterization and depth of relationships here.

Oh, another note: the strips in this book are clearly not in order -- it starts in 1989, but goes back to 1989 at least twice -- and it doesn't matter. Each strip is completely independent, and none of them lead to any of the others. That's potentially a good thing, but I don't think it actually is in this case.

This book is only for those who both miss the wildest extremes of the undergrounds and still smoke above eye level. I grabbed it as a bound galley at work in 2004, and it wasn't even worth taking up space in my house for three years.