THIS magazine (Dec./Jan. 01 issue) ran brief passages from this article that originally appeared in The Silhouette, a campus newspaper at McMaster University in Hamiltion, Ontario. The Silhouette article ran in their Sept. 20 issue. - - - - - - - - - - - -   By Armen Svadjian Famed neurotic comic maven Joe Matt ('Peepshow': Drawn & Quarterly) is facing stiff competition in the suddenly burgeoning field of unabashed autobiographical etchings. Yes, Toronto confessional comic scribe Matt Blackett has been garnering much merited ink in CHART and Broken Pencil magazines for his up-and-coming comic/zine m@b, wherein even the most mundane tasks in the drone of daily life are injected with effortless joules of hilarity. In the tradition of the finest humor comics, the artwork is simple yet effective, the scenarios identifiable yet completely unpredictable, the punch lines delivered with precision timing. The twenty-something Blackett turned his efforts towards m@b after several unsatisfying stabs at political cartoons. After a warmly received inaugural issue in Christmas of '98, m@b has been snowballing with train-wreck abandon ever since, all the while amassing more and more readers, many of whom excitedly confess to having had "m@b moments" themselves. Like James Joyce in his Dubliners collection, Matt is an exponent of the secular revelation of epiphany, interrupting the story's balance with a last minute sucker-punch of an offbeat disclosure, made doubly impactful by the concerned alarm communicated by his slightly startled protagonist. Matt himself is the strip's Jerry Seinfeld, an unremarkable but necessary muted prop through which we feel ourselves to be the last semblance of sanity in a world of crazies. The comic's greatest strength lies in the modestly rendered faces, which function as virtual blank slates onto which we project ourselves. While a drawing showing another's face in photographic detail creates a sense of distance, offering, at very best, a voyeuristic, fly-on-the-wall insight to the story's ongoings, Matt's minimal, cartoony renderings are not unlike the sketchy awareness we constantly have of our own faces, which are little more than basic shapes and fragments of noses, eyes, ears, etc. Crop off the man's impressive sideburns and you instantly become an active m@b participant, feeling yourself lost in a supermarket of the irrevocably insane. Indeed, as bona fide comics genius Chris Ware posited in a recent interview: "There's a strange wall between the artist and the reader in comics, and I think that the less information you provide about a character's external appearance in a comic strip, the more apt a reader is to identify with that character." Not to overstate humble Matt's efforts, but who'd of thought such modest endeavors as comics could trigger new synaptic links in reader's minds? While it's fairly obvious that Matt's work lacks the overtly topical grandiose of an Art Spiegelman, the comic's necessary coat of humor conceals within its deceptively thin shell an almost incendiary agenda. From Calvin and Hobbes creator, Bill Watterson, Matt learned that "a comic can be political without having labels written all over it. I get to make fun of institutions, mores, and stereotypes, all behind the blank stare of my main character." All of which is precisely why his everyman style of draughtsmanship is absolutely crucial to m@b's subtly caustic genius. We place ourselves within his character's perplexed exterior and share not only in the awkward moments of the everyday, but also hurl our fists along in helpless, unrestrained disgust towards the powers that be, with faith invested in the old Charles Mingus adage, "Anger is an emotion that has some hope in it." The real-life Matthew Blackett bears only a passing resemblance to his decidedly introspective protagonist. While his sideburns transfer faithfully to comic format, Blackett is as alert and genial as they come, nothing at all akin to so many concupiscent comic dorks with all the social graces of a trailer-park toddler. The reason is simple: while the whole lineage of bespectacled, underground comic recluses- traceable to Robert Crumb- honed their respective crafts in both physical and emotional isolation from other breathing souls, unearthing vile scraps of their psyche the rest of us would sooner leave alone, Matt is from the stock who looks for inspiration from without. "I've been really hooked on the idea of community lately. I try to emphasize that I do a lot of things within my neighborhood: grocery shopping, walking, bumping into people, going to see bands, people watching." Thankfully, m@b is far more than a mere Edward Hopper-esque appreciation of the humdrum lie that is the (North) American Dream. In fact, Matt states emphatically: "God knows that my comic would not have gotten off the ground had I created it in the 'burbs. The inspiration simply wouldn't have been there, as North York and other satellite cities tend to lie to us, telling us a story of urban life that is only half true." And, while life in swinging downtown Toronto does at times seem full at the seams with the sorts of maladjusted transients who'd provide the perfect grist for Matt's mill, much of m@b is in fact about, well, nothing. "I guess what's happened over time is that I learned to appreciate those (mundane) moments, to see the small beauties in life. Some days, it can be too much, as I watch punks making themselves puke, a man in a pin-striped suit talk loudly of believing word-for-word in Nostradamus, or a woman looking very much like my mom beg me for change so she can eat. Sitting on a streetcar and having a butterfly land on my arm in the sweltering heat of a traffic-jam can take me away from the horrors that a city can produce." Aside from being a vehicle through which to celebrate the commonplace and assert his normalcy, Matt hopes to use what he calls his "greatest act of self-expression" as a means to further his worldliness. Already having used m@b as an excuse to escape his day-job as art director at The Hockey News while soaking in culture in such locales as Vancouver, New York, and San Francisco, the near-future promises further sojourns in Mexico and the Baja peninsula. Join the thousands of worldwide converts by checking out www.mattbcomic.com. - - - - - - - - - Armen Svadjian is the editor of Ache magazine, which, by the way, is one of the best reads in the underground press world. back to news :: home

© 2001 Matthew Blackett