A review by bstratton
The Puma Blues: The Complete Saga in One Volume by Stephen Murphy, Michael Zulli
4.0
Growing up reading comics in the 80's, I was slightly too young to appreciate this at the time. I remember it as a book that was always mentioned in the same company as your Cerebuses and your Vs for Vendetta, the sort of book that The Comics Journal always had a raging hard-on for.
Revisiting it now (and reading it for the first time in 2021), I don't know if I'd mention it in that company. I can’t say that it’s aged particularly well, especially the writing. It’s kind of all over the place, prescient in the abstract but whiffing on the particulars.
But I LOVE what a big damn swing it is. It's the work of two passionate young creators who are doing a book exactly the way they want to do it, and no one else could do it except them. It was effectively self-published, so there was zero editorial interference, for better or for worse. It's very "indie 80's" — new-agey and artsy and very activist, in ways that some folks will find endearing and others kind of obnoxious. But it's an important book and deserves its spot in the canon — if for no other reason than Michael Zulli is one of the greatest comics artists to ever grace the page, and holy god is it amazing to watch Michael Zulli become MICHAEL ZULLI right before your eyes.
Steve Bissette's afterword tells the story behind the story of The Puma Blues, and it's at least as interesting as the work itself. And the creators made a very good decision to have the first thing in the book be an introduction written by Dave Sim, The Puma Blues first publisher, because nothing that follows is more batshit insane than that.
Revisiting it now (and reading it for the first time in 2021), I don't know if I'd mention it in that company. I can’t say that it’s aged particularly well, especially the writing. It’s kind of all over the place, prescient in the abstract but whiffing on the particulars.
But I LOVE what a big damn swing it is. It's the work of two passionate young creators who are doing a book exactly the way they want to do it, and no one else could do it except them. It was effectively self-published, so there was zero editorial interference, for better or for worse. It's very "indie 80's" — new-agey and artsy and very activist, in ways that some folks will find endearing and others kind of obnoxious. But it's an important book and deserves its spot in the canon — if for no other reason than Michael Zulli is one of the greatest comics artists to ever grace the page, and holy god is it amazing to watch Michael Zulli become MICHAEL ZULLI right before your eyes.
Steve Bissette's afterword tells the story behind the story of The Puma Blues, and it's at least as interesting as the work itself. And the creators made a very good decision to have the first thing in the book be an introduction written by Dave Sim, The Puma Blues first publisher, because nothing that follows is more batshit insane than that.