Sammy Harkham

Pathetic and shitty people live out their pathetic and shitty lives working for a B movie studio in the 1970s making a slapdash horror film. The most pathetic is a film editor named Seymour who has aspirations of writing and directing his own film but will compromise to get ahead at almost every opportunity. Mostly though, he's doing the midlife crisis thing, getting drunk and high, butting heads with his wife and sleeping around on her.

The book has a couple of big digressions, first to the 1910s with some early filmmakers who play no role in the rest of the story and then to the 1940s to give a Holocaust backstory to a secondary character who also has minimal impact in the main tale. They're not bad stories on their own, but just feel like filler here, dragging out this already overlong and tedious graphic novel.

I had passed up on reading this book previously but gave it a go because it made Publisher Weekly's list of best graphic novels of 2023. I should have stuck with my gut reaction.… (mer)

This was an almost automatic DNF. I did read the description telling me it was about a man writing about his life trying to become a film Director. The illustrations have a 70s feel to them which is when I believe this takes place, but right off the bat in the margins of the page you have porn illustrations. Then you have the characters in the bathroom having this conversation and just it was an immediate turn off for me. I have no desire to turn any more pages to read anything more of this book than the first page. Somebody will like it, just not me.… (mer)