Jayson: Best of the 90s
In the first Jayson collection reviewed here previously), Jeff Krell chronicled the development of his comic through the 1980s, from early one-pagers to the six-page stories that defined the early part of the series. In this second collection, Krell shows even more experimentation, trying out different forms and genres, but always grounding it in the same now-well-established cast of lovable characters. The title character and his best friend Arena remain at the heart of the story, while characters such as their neighbor Robyn Ricketts and Jayson’s mother Bertha Callowhill, take on larger supporting roles.
In the 1990s stories collected here, Krell spends less time dealing with the darker issues of gay life that appeared in the first volume, instead taking the characters on ever-wilder romps. With this freedom, Krell is able to produce stories that seem even more parallel to the “Archie Comics” world than his work from the 1980s.
Most notable are Krell’s two ventures into science fiction (a genre that he notes he was pretty much dragged into by “Meatmen” editor Winston Leyland). The first (though it appears last in this collection), “Jayson Visits Planet 69”, is an intergalactic anti-love story of epically cynical proportions. It’s also hysterical. The second, a three-part epic entitled “Jayson Becomes a Man”, offers biting commentary on gender roles while still maintaining the light touch of an “Archie Comics” lark.
While Krell doesn’t have any horribly “downer” stories in this collection, that doesn’t stop him from making good points along the way. Even the more overtly political stories, such as “Jayson’s in the Family Way” and “The Trouble With Men” still manage to not take themselves too seriously while depicting genuine issues of gender oppression and conflict along the way.
Also included in this collection are a series of stories from the period in which “Jayson” was syndicated as a four-panel comic strip. This required a major rethinking of Krell’s successful six-page format, in which he could tell an entire story in thirty or so panels. He ended up dividing narrative arcs into four-panel chunks that set up each new micro-episode from the previous punchline,
To Krell’s credit, little is lost in the translation. Sure, these stories seem a bit more gag-driven than his other outings, but Krell’s always been good with the gags. They’re part of the classic comics to which he pays homage in his work. One of the political stories, “Jayson’s in the Family Way” is told in this four-panel-at-a-time format, and it works beautifully, the gags timed perfectly to break up what could otherwise be the ugly scene of Jayson and Arena confronting family bigots. Of the whole collection, this is the one story in which there’s a joke that may cross the line of political correctness for some folks. Then again, “Jayson”, while almost always politically astute, has never been the most politically correct comic (and I consider that a positive attribute).
The only thing that would improve this collection would be more of the same. At 96 pages, it feels a bit short to cover a decade’s worth of work. Perhaps Jeff Krell is simply quite modest in what he considers the “best” of his work. Krell’s one-page introductions to both of these collections set the tone quite nicely, but more information about his creation process might be interesting. Again, though, the book is well worth the near 10 cents a page at which it currently weighs in.
Fortunately, it sounds like we won’t have to wait until 2010 to get the “best of the ‘00s” collection. Jeff Krell is now running his own publishing operation, Ignite! Entertainment, who publish these two “Jayson” collections, along with Krell’s translation of the wildly successful German comic “Maybe… Maybe Not” (which inspired the German movie of the same name) and other works by Ralf König. He has announced that he will be returning to drawing “Jayson” comics and publishing them in a quarterly format starting in 2006.
Ignite! isn’t merely vanity press, however. In addition to publishing works created or translated by Jeff Krell, they have also mounted stage productions, including a musical based on “Jayson” in collaboration with gay singer/songwriter duo Romanovsky and Phillips. The “Jayson” musical ran off-Broadway for 10 weeks in 1998. According to the company web site, “Other producing credits include the world premiere of Desi Moreno-Penson’s “A Divine Brew” at the Blue Heron Arts Center in 2000.”
Also from the Ignite! site: “Ignite! Entertainment promotes alternative voices that have the potential to cross over to a mainstream audience. To achieve this goal, our genre of choice is comic books, although we’ll go wherever the muse takes us.” We can only hope that the muse continues to lead Jeff Krell to new and exciting places in his work.
$9.95 paperback, Ignite! Press
