Julia Wertz

A massive collection of most of Julia Wertz's Fart Party material. I read the first two volumes a decade ago, but I thought it a good idea to revisit them in this handy chunk of book before diving into Wertz's new graphic memoir, Impossible People. Everything is still felt fresh and funny with the exception of some insensitive language which Wertz apologizes for up front. I appreciate that she didn't edit out the offensive stuff though, giving us a warts and all look at her early work.

I'm show more often put off by books that center around a person with a substance abuse problem, but somehow Wertz's cartoon avatar stays adorable despite her drinking. The bathroom humor and her introverted personality kept me hooked as she wandered around California and made her way to New York City. It's sort of fun to track her growing popularity as a creator as more and more indy cartoonists start making cameo appearances in her strips, hanging out and working with her.

It took me nearly a week to get through this brick, but it was time well spent.

FOR REFERENCE:

Table of Contents for Museum of Mistakes: The Fart Party Collection, 2014, 400 pages:
• 1 - The Fart Party Vol. 1: Drawn/happened in 2005/2006, published in 2007.
• 2 - The Fart Party Vol. 2: Drawn/happened in 2006/2007, published in 2009.
• 3 - What Would Have Been The Fart Party Vol. 3, Had I Made It Instead I made Drinking at the Movies. The random comics I made during 2008-2012 unpublished make up this section.
• 4 - Sugar Pill Comix - The earliest early work that was never shown or published anywhere, for obvious reasons.
• 5 - Behind the Scenes - Process pages and sketchbook illustrations.
• 6 - Zines n' Things - Scraps from early zines, fan (hate) mail, interviews, magazine articles, short stories, etc. . . .

Table of Contents for Museum of Mistakes: The Definitive Fart Party Collection, 2023, 528 pages:
• Introduction: An Illustrated Guide to The Museum of Mistakes
• The Fart Party Vol. 1: Published in 2006 by Atomic Books [with Foreword and contribution by Peter Bagge and contribution by Josh Wertz]
• The Fart Party Vol. 2: Published in 2009 by Atomic Books [with Foreword by Nicholas Gurewitch]
• (What Would Have Been) The Fart Party Vol. 3: If I had made it. Instead I made Drinking at the Movies, a graphic novel about moving to NYC that follows Vol. 2. This section is all the unpublished, random comics I made during that time that were not put into a book
• Sketches by Laura Park and Myself: Done in Chicago and NYC, 2006-2012
• Sketchbook: Random doodles, commissioned pieces, promo art, etc.
• Sugarpill Comix: The earliest comics I made that were never published anywhere, for reasons that will be obvious when you get to this section.
• The Legend of Rebob Mountain: A semi-fictionalized version of true events that happened during my childhood in the 1980's.
• Addendum: The Fart Party's Over: A "graphic essay" I did for Narrativly in 2014, explaining why I quit making comics for a while. show less

When I brought this book home from the library, I hadn't bothered to actually crack the cover. And when I did open it, I saw page after page of blocks of text with hardly a word balloon or dialogue exchange in sight and almost returned it unread. It takes a special creator to pull off a text heavy graphic novel - or "illustrated history," in this case - and I wasn't sure Julia Wertz was that special.

What a delight to find out that she is.

The passion she has for New York City's architecture show more and trivial bits of history bursts off the page. I have never been so happy looking at pictures of buildings - and such ordinary buildings at that. Wertz makes average city blocks fascinating by comparing the modern version to an incarnation from 50 or 100 years before. Two-page spreads sprinkled throughout the book become an engaging spot-the-differences puzzles. In between she tells of her own personal experiences in the city, and the experiences of criminals, inventors and regular schmoes in a relaxed, funny, and expletive-laced narrative.

What a wonderful book to read so soon after reading Roz Chast's [b:Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York|33911267|Going Into Town A Love Letter to New York|Roz Chast|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1490383272s/33911267.jpg|54876739]. I definitely recommend reading them together for a wonderful immersion in the horrible awesomeness which is New York City. show less

Summary: The Fart Party is the unfortunately named but frequently hilarious autobiographical comic of twenty-something smartass San Franciscan (now New Yorker) Julia Wertz. Volume 2 takes up the fall-out from the end of Wertz's relationship with her boyfriend Oliver, and her subsequent decision to move to New York City. It includes fewer one-off comics but a lot of travel sketches.

Review: There's a marked shift in tone between Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. It's partly because Vol. 2 features fewer show more "finished" comics, and more quickly-drawn "sketchy" comics, done in the moment, which are obviously less polished but do have an energy that would have been lost if they were finished up after the fact. But it seems to me that, on the whole, the comics are a bit more serious and a bit less wildly inappropriate - just a bit, though, there's still plenty of drinkin' and cussin' to go around. Good stuff. 4 out of 5 stars. show less

A listing of emotional portmanteaus that would be absolutely tedious were it not for the sporadic Julia Wertz cartoons.

Most of the book is junk like this floating in the middle of an otherwise blank page:

ILLOGICAL + EMOTE
ILLOGIMOTE
|i'läjimōt|
v. to feel in a way that contradicts or undermines one's intellectual understanding (of a situation)

This whole book strikes me as an attempt to use the shotgun method to make fetch happen. One of these fetches gotta hit, right?