Everything, Vol. 1: Collected and Uncollected Comics from Around 1978-1982

Everything #1

by Lynda Barry

From her first comics published in the Evergeen State College school paper to her influential weekly comic strip, Ernie Pook's Comeek ; from her bestselling creative how-to memoir comic books, What It Is and Picture This , to her novels, graphic memoirs, plays, and awards in between, Lynda Barry has been part of the North American alternative comics scene for thirty years.

Fans around the world rejoiced at D+Q's announcement of Blabber Blabber Volume 1 of Everything , which collects all of the seminal Ernie Pook's Comeek , some of which has been out of print for decades, and includes her earliest books, such as Girls and Boys and Big Ideas , and features an introduction penned by Barry, complete with photographs.

Reflective of the early 1980s before the appearance of Barry's well-known characters Marlys and Arna, the comics in Blabber Blabber Blabber cover the more adult subjects of bad love, bad perms, being single, Prince, and miserable break-ups―resulting in one of the most oft-quoted Barry "Love is an exploding cigar which we all willingly smoke."

Though Barry's early drawing style is most often described as "scratchy," her affinity for large swaths of text and narration; her fondness for exclamation marks, angular shapes, and cursive penmanship; and her uncanny ability to zero in on the very essence of life all within a few panels is as present as ever in this collection.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Humor, Art, Feminism

176 pages, Hardcover

First published October 25, 2011

About the author

Lynda Barry is an American cartoonist and author, perhaps best known for her weekly comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek.

Reviews

[Emilia P · Rating 5 out of 5]

Woop.
There's a comic in here I want to share with you that reads thusly:

**
Test your Self Respect

A. I'm so awful
B. I'm so awful
C. I'm so (AWUL crossed out) awful

Why? (In your own words)
**

So beautiful, I photocopied it. This book collects early Ernie Pook Comeeks, Two Sisters (totally eerie..like..it's super simple but it gets under your skin in an upsetting and lingering and sweet way), and Boys and Girls. I devoured it. It's darker -- a teensy bit more towards the Crummy (that's a book) side of Barry's work, but as I say that, I know that it's all dark.

What I learned from this book: Lynda Barry is so strange and so shaky and so brave to speak about everything and nothing and the abyss between fun, lighthearted, round-edged comics and bitter scratchy comics (a woman after my heart who loves the raunchy underground comix of the 70s and the Family Circus with equal fervor). That abyss, where comics touch us. Dude. Dude.

Also -- the older I get the more intensely and sadly I see the autobiography in her work. How simple and profound just, like, wanting a dog is. How hard it is to know who you are, and how to be that in the world, when you're ten and when you're 21 and when you're 50-something. I find myself saying please please just write it out without drawings and all the embellishment but then again, I know that I'm missing the point. Do your thang, my hero. I love you so.

[J.T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

It feels strange to give any Lynda Barry book less than five stars. I'm fascinated by the early work of artists I admire, so I was excited for this collection. I think I have just about every Barry publication from Girls and Boys on, so it was wonderful to read the work before that.

The best part of the collection, for me, was Barry's introduction. Chock full of handwritten explanation of where her head was at while making this material made beautiful with lots of decoupaged drawings, letters, wallpaper samples, etc. I found myself sometimes struggling to maintain interest in the very early work (and struggling to read it - her handwriting has improved greatly over the years!), but again I'm glad this collection exists for historical purposes.

Apparently Barry was unhappy with the format of this book, so I think going forward her old books will just be reprinted (hopefully with better quality binding glue). I do pray that including introductions becomes a tradition, though.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first in a series of way-highly anticipated volumes that will collect Lynda Barry's entire comics oeuvre, Everything Vol. 1 starts at the very beginning (well, Duh), with Barry's unique, sometimes eccentric, often enthralling use of language already in evidence. Her funkily expressionistic, often raw drawings display a seemingly tossed-off skill and employ far more formalistic techniques and experiments than I'd remembered from back in the mid-80's when I used to read and reread her first book, Girls and Boys (collected here in its entirety) over and over again. Very cool also to have a look at the full-year run of her never-collected-before comic strip "Two Sisters" from an early 80's paper in Seattle - it's really interesting work, often quite funny, with a wonderfully surreal bent. Barry's introduction and notes throughout tie these, her earliest comics, in with the work she is doing today, not only placing it all in context but demonstrating the trajectory of an artist's career, that in the end it is all of a piece. D&Q did a wonderful job producing this handsome keepsake volume. I eagerly await the next couple in the series, as my copies of her great 2nd and 3rd collections, Big Ideas & Everything in the World, are falling apart.

[Ginny Nemchick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lynda Barry is a grade-a genius and weirdo inspiration and I’ll probably give every book I read of hers 4 or 5 stars

[ComicNerdSam · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s rough and angry and weird and fantastic. Very great to see the roots of one of my favorite comic artists, it was a blast.

[jules · Rating 4 out of 5]

funny! really cool to learn about Lynda’s artistic process through her words and comics. love the cactus energy

[Gene Kannenberg Jr · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't be objective about Lynda Barry - I just think she is one of the very finest cartoonists ever. Reading BLABBER BLABBER BLABBER was a joyful experience. And it was quite interesting, after reading her two previous "how to be creative" books, to see how evident her thematic preoccupations have been from the earliest days of her career. She mines her early and inner lives not for autobiography, but for *verisimilitude* - her work feels solid, feels "real," in ways that are poetic and crystalline. Cannot recommend her work highly enough!

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like the secret origin tale of your favorite comic book hero, "Everything" reveals the bubbling vat of radioactive spiderstuff that mutated into the work of one of our finest writer/artists. I heart Lynda Barry.

[Madison · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Two Sisters are the best.

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first encountered Lynda Barry's work in the early 1980s, in Now magazine in Toronto. Initially, I found her work off-putting; the art was, to me, aggressively ugly and crudely-rendered, and the strips often seemed way too wordy to me. Nevertheless, I read them regularly and recognized their quality as unsentimental (and occasionally unsympathetic) depictions of the challenges faced by young girls. I am delighted to se this collection of Barry's earliest work (all of it, up to 1982 or so, if the cover is to be believed), as it allows me to see her evolution. I was especially happy to discover that the to me bafflingly-named Ernie Pook's Comeek had actually had an Ernie Pook in it originally. Observing Barry developing her style (through several iterations early on) and build on her influences is revelatory. Though even by the end of the book she hasn't fully realized her style (there are still odd tics, such as how she draws mouths), she is well on her way. Moreover, these strips are often funny, insightful, caustic, whimsical, pointed, and any number of other adjectives. I often laughed at an incongruity, or an image, or a situation, though not all the strips really seem to be intended to be funny, so much as satire or social observation. I really hope the promise of Vol. 1 is true, and there is more to come (I do see a listing for a volume 2 various places, but with no release date, and this one came out over a decade ago, so I am hopeful but resigned. Anyway, anyone interested in alternative weekly strips, and/or female cartoonists, really needs this book.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

The accept-no-substitutes Lynda Barry chronicles her evolution from earliest drawings (not many of which survived) to her copyings of established artists’ characters to her hilarious visual games to the beginnings of her own “Comeeks” strips — Ernie Pook, Two Sisters — to her glory days of alt-paper True Comeeks and Girls + Boys. The linework goes from ultra-fine to coarse and patterns splatter across walls, furniture, clothing, and place settings. Dialogue peppers the panels, some of it touching but some so surreal and goofy you will laugh out loud.

I revisited my wanna-be punk youth with this book, which covers 1978-1981, a vibrant era of goofball experimentation with style and substance(s)!

A funhouse trip for anyone who remembers those times or wishes they’d had a chance to be in the thick of it. The saga continues in subsequent collections, but this is a great start for Lynda Barry fans.

[Chelsea Martinez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Compilation of earliest Lynda Barry comics, starting from her childhood influences (I do now want to try to draw Rat Fink and capture his feeling). Includes pages with a current-day visual narrative, and selected comics she drew and published in her 20s. There's an amazing turn to, as she duly notes, bitterness, when she starts primarily drawing adults rather than kids in 1980-1981, which is especially interesting to me as a person who mostly knows her through Marlys. Also cool to see correspondence comics from Matt Groening and Gary Panter and to think of comics in the mail as a way (talented) people used to (still do?) amuse their friends.

[spoon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The beginning was good, the middle was AMAZING, the end was... well. The end was a series of strips called "girls and boys" which was just straight stuff and not super resonate to me. Barry writing about childhood esp through the perceptive of high school girls I think is so groundbreaking and so ahead of everything going on today. The commentary on heteronormativity and male/female relationship dynamics.... idk like sure.

The middle was amazing tho. Like If I reread I would reread everything but the last series of "girls and boys" strips and would be v happy about it.

[Mateen Mahboubi · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of older material, some independently released some unreleased before. Some of it was okay, others I couldn't really get into. Despite being a big fan of Barry, I think that my expectations were somewhat tempered by the nature of the collection and it was pretty much what I expected. Good for the completionists or those who have read everything else but not where I would suggest someone who wants into Barry to start.

[River · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely loved this one!!! Some of them didn’t super resonate with me but some of the comics were sooooooooo good!!! I loved the ones with the sisters so much they were some of my favourite comics I’ve ever read. After reading this and One! Hundred! Demons, I absolutely love Lynda Barry. I also follow her on Instagram and it feels like we’re friends at this point hahah! Just awesome totally recommend this one!!!!

[Jenshaines · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great retrospective and peek into the journey that Barry took in her early cartooning years and when she produced Ernie Pook's Comeek (and beyond). I was a little less taken with this than many of the other books I've been exploring by her because there's less of the whimsy and creative process comments.

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wild collection of Lynda Barry’s very early work. Cool to see many themes that have stayed the whole way through and her early drawing style. Lots of darkness and truth.

You can see what was so special about her right from the start.

[min · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I read Lynda Barry, I want to make copious notes to help me remember all of what I feel and think as I read her drawings and read her words. My brain goes zing*zing*zing*zing as different memories of my own, insights, and chuckles, mixed with deeper thoughts come into my mind.

[Bayneeta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early stuff. Mostly didn't grab me, and I thought I'd go blind reading some of the very small print.

[Cathryn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really didn't care for (or "get," I guess...) pretty much all of the comics in this early collection. Was expecting something more like Marlys but these characters are darker, and just creepy-weird.

[Lynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a fun book with inspiring quotes and drawings!!

[Josie Deryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inspiring as always though not as colorful as What It Is.

[Julie Grace Immink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like passing notes in middle school

[Terrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always enjoyed Lynda Barry's work and found this collection of her early comics very entertaining.

[Jesús · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of early strips by the legendary Lynda Barry.

[Jennifer Whiteford · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Lynda Barry. LOVE HER! And I have loved her since I discovered Ernie Pook's Comeek in Now Weekly when I was fifteen years old. That said, this collection, which features her earliest comics, wasn't my favourite. I already own Girls and Boys, the book that makes up the second half of the collection, so that was nothing new to me, and the earlier comics were kind of all over the place, which is to be expected when looking at someone's earliest work. I really enjoyed Barry's explanations about each section of work, but I would have liked it if they were even longer and more evocative of the time when the comics were drawn. (See Pagan Kennedy's book "Zine" for a great example of how that can be done.) Mostly I'm looking forward to the next volume of this Barry collection. I got this first one from the library, but realistically I'll probably want the whole collection on my shelves at home eventually.

[C.E. G · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't give Lynda Barry anything less than five stars.
This is the first volume of her collected work, covering the years 1978-1981. Includes some of her early Ernie Pook comics, the Two Sisters strip, and the book Girls and Boys.
Ernie Pook and Two Sisters were hilarious and sweet, and Girls and Boys reminded me of a less violent, straight woman's version of Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This anthology republishes Barry's earliest works, including the odd "Ernie Pook" daily and the even weirder "Two Sisters" strip, up through her first collection, Boys and Girls. I think I would call her early style slipstream. It is totally out there and yet kind of nips at your soft spots, leaving you with an odd, deja vu feeling. Creative genius!

[P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lynda Barry! She writes funnier multiple-choice comics than Roz Chast. I probably shouldn't've read this all at once, but I had nothing else to do and some time to kill. So I read it all at once. It made me wish I'd been older in the 80s, and I was charmed to see Canadian hot dogs make an appearance--just like in Marc Bell's comics! Now I know that the use of the Canadian jumbo as a character/symbol in comics is a sign of a Good Thing.