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Mary Tyler MooreHawk
Jonny Quest meets Infinite Jest ! This mind-bending book—half graphic novel, half postmodern mystery, and 25% footnotes—is a thrilling tribute to the ways we build meaning out of disposable pop culture.
WHO IS MARY TYLER MOOREHAWK? How did she save the world from a dimension-hopping megalomaniac? Why was her TV show canceled after only nine episodes? These are just a few of the questions that young journalist Dave Baker begins to ask himself as he unravels the many mysteries surrounding the obscure comic book Mary Tyler MooreHawk . However, his curiosity grows into an obsession when he discovers that the reclusive creator of his favorite globe-trotting girl detective…is also named Dave Baker.
WHAT IS MARY TYLER MOOREHAWK ? A compilation of long-lost gee-whiz adventure comics in which the world’s strangest family fights to avert Armageddon… and a bundle of magazine articles from a dystopian future where physical property is banned and entertainment is broadcast on dishwashers. It’s a document-based detective story that weaves back and forth between worlds, touching on everything from corporate personhood to mutant shark-men to the meaning of fandom and reality itself. It’s a show you don’t remember…and a book you won’t forget.
WAIT, IS THIS REAL? Good question.
WHO IS MARY TYLER MOOREHAWK? How did she save the world from a dimension-hopping megalomaniac? Why was her TV show canceled after only nine episodes? These are just a few of the questions that young journalist Dave Baker begins to ask himself as he unravels the many mysteries surrounding the obscure comic book Mary Tyler MooreHawk . However, his curiosity grows into an obsession when he discovers that the reclusive creator of his favorite globe-trotting girl detective…is also named Dave Baker.
WHAT IS MARY TYLER MOOREHAWK ? A compilation of long-lost gee-whiz adventure comics in which the world’s strangest family fights to avert Armageddon… and a bundle of magazine articles from a dystopian future where physical property is banned and entertainment is broadcast on dishwashers. It’s a document-based detective story that weaves back and forth between worlds, touching on everything from corporate personhood to mutant shark-men to the meaning of fandom and reality itself. It’s a show you don’t remember…and a book you won’t forget.
WAIT, IS THIS REAL? Good question.
276 pages, Hardcover
First published February 13, 2024
33 people are currently reading
275 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews
November 18, 2023
Review originally posted here: https://open.substack.com/pub/samsstu...
Dave Baker’s upcoming opus isn’t easily pigeonholed nor should it be. Although NetGalley categorizes it as a comic/graphic novel, it’s really an admixture of comics and magazine-styled prose that toys around with literary elements on a metatextual level. The comic portions of the book chronicle episodes of the titular fictitious short-lived TV program, an action-adventure space opera following “teen sleuth” Mary Tyler MooreHawk and the ragtag interplanetary crew that adopts her into their team as they embark on various quests and deal with the most eccentric, wildest of foes along the way. Having read Baker’s previous graphic novels, namely Fuck Off Squad and Everyone is Tulip, I can say his work does have robust concepts and this is no exception. Inspired influences from pulpy sci-fi serials to Johnny Quest are proudly on display. Conversely, Baker’s strong premises atrophy from sloppy execution which this comic definitely suffers from. These episodic installments throw you right in the thick of the action inundating the audience with a plethora of characters we never have time to know beyond a surface level. Yes, there are footnotes throughout and character descriptions in every story to contextualize the action and settings, but they should be supplementary and not necessary to understanding the plot, especially if you’re going to use them pervasively with the plodding explanations seen here. Eventually, I was glossing over these parts because of how tedious it was.
Art-wise, I found the pink-purplish color scheme and pulpy aesthetic visually appealing and thematically fitting, particularly the splash pages which are beautiful enough on their own to be curated in an art book.
Unfortunately, these masterful illustrative skills don’t translate as well during most of the action scenes where too many things happen at once in a slapdash fashion.
Where Dave Baker’s writing excels, however, is the prose sections which is when the book gets really meta. Set within a retro-futurist backdrop, we primarily see articles from issues of Physicalist Today, a periodical for (you’ve guessed it) Physicalists, a niche of hobbyists who are into and collect physical items, which have been mostly discarded or banned due to environmental concerns. These pieces dive into the behind-the-scenes of Mary Tyler MooreHawk which only ran for nine episodes before being prematurely canceled and remaining in obscurity outside of a small circle of avid fans, including the writer of these articles, who’s this book’s namesake, searching for the MTMH creator who’s also named Dave Baker. So you could say this is Dave Baker’s Dave Baker’s Dave Baker search (try saying that thrice as fast). As easy as it would be for me to make fun of how self-aggrandizing that sounds, the lost/obscure media fanatic in me dug the whole underground mystery element behind this fictitious production and the whereabouts of the people involved. Since this takes place in a future where television is slowly being revived (via dishwasher sets), the events here in many ways mirror the first Golden Age of Television and parts of the Silver Age during the 1950s and 1960s, so it feels like a love letter to that era and one I’m enthralled in at that
Amazingly, for a book more focused on literary experimentation with form, there is some good character development as well. Article writer Dave Baker goes through an enlightening arc by the end where he finally meets his idol the MTMH creator Dave Baker which results in one of the most beautiful open-ended conclusions I’ve read serving as a bittersweet reminder to cherish one’s creative self-worth.
Overall, Mary Tyler MooreHawk is the most unique book I’ve come across recently due to its homage and recontextualization of pop cultural ephemera that’ll appeal to any obscure media enthusiast and literary fiction reader. If the work’s comic aspect, which takes up a significant chunk of the pages, was actually engaging to read, I probably would have considered this the best upcoming 2024 book. I’d say Dave Baker should write more prose since that’s clearly where his strengths lie.
On that note, here’s a quote from page 246 I would like to end the review on:
“In many ways, writers are like drug addicts. We’re always looking for the next high. We’re always attempting to collect that final piece of the puzzle We’re always trying to connect desperate narrative elements into a cohesive whole.”
Thank you Netgalley and IDW/Top Shelf Productions for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Dave Baker’s upcoming opus isn’t easily pigeonholed nor should it be. Although NetGalley categorizes it as a comic/graphic novel, it’s really an admixture of comics and magazine-styled prose that toys around with literary elements on a metatextual level. The comic portions of the book chronicle episodes of the titular fictitious short-lived TV program, an action-adventure space opera following “teen sleuth” Mary Tyler MooreHawk and the ragtag interplanetary crew that adopts her into their team as they embark on various quests and deal with the most eccentric, wildest of foes along the way. Having read Baker’s previous graphic novels, namely Fuck Off Squad and Everyone is Tulip, I can say his work does have robust concepts and this is no exception. Inspired influences from pulpy sci-fi serials to Johnny Quest are proudly on display. Conversely, Baker’s strong premises atrophy from sloppy execution which this comic definitely suffers from. These episodic installments throw you right in the thick of the action inundating the audience with a plethora of characters we never have time to know beyond a surface level. Yes, there are footnotes throughout and character descriptions in every story to contextualize the action and settings, but they should be supplementary and not necessary to understanding the plot, especially if you’re going to use them pervasively with the plodding explanations seen here. Eventually, I was glossing over these parts because of how tedious it was.
Art-wise, I found the pink-purplish color scheme and pulpy aesthetic visually appealing and thematically fitting, particularly the splash pages which are beautiful enough on their own to be curated in an art book.
Unfortunately, these masterful illustrative skills don’t translate as well during most of the action scenes where too many things happen at once in a slapdash fashion.
Where Dave Baker’s writing excels, however, is the prose sections which is when the book gets really meta. Set within a retro-futurist backdrop, we primarily see articles from issues of Physicalist Today, a periodical for (you’ve guessed it) Physicalists, a niche of hobbyists who are into and collect physical items, which have been mostly discarded or banned due to environmental concerns. These pieces dive into the behind-the-scenes of Mary Tyler MooreHawk which only ran for nine episodes before being prematurely canceled and remaining in obscurity outside of a small circle of avid fans, including the writer of these articles, who’s this book’s namesake, searching for the MTMH creator who’s also named Dave Baker. So you could say this is Dave Baker’s Dave Baker’s Dave Baker search (try saying that thrice as fast). As easy as it would be for me to make fun of how self-aggrandizing that sounds, the lost/obscure media fanatic in me dug the whole underground mystery element behind this fictitious production and the whereabouts of the people involved. Since this takes place in a future where television is slowly being revived (via dishwasher sets), the events here in many ways mirror the first Golden Age of Television and parts of the Silver Age during the 1950s and 1960s, so it feels like a love letter to that era and one I’m enthralled in at that
Amazingly, for a book more focused on literary experimentation with form, there is some good character development as well. Article writer Dave Baker goes through an enlightening arc by the end where he finally meets his idol the MTMH creator Dave Baker which results in one of the most beautiful open-ended conclusions I’ve read serving as a bittersweet reminder to cherish one’s creative self-worth.
Overall, Mary Tyler MooreHawk is the most unique book I’ve come across recently due to its homage and recontextualization of pop cultural ephemera that’ll appeal to any obscure media enthusiast and literary fiction reader. If the work’s comic aspect, which takes up a significant chunk of the pages, was actually engaging to read, I probably would have considered this the best upcoming 2024 book. I’d say Dave Baker should write more prose since that’s clearly where his strengths lie.
On that note, here’s a quote from page 246 I would like to end the review on:
“In many ways, writers are like drug addicts. We’re always looking for the next high. We’re always attempting to collect that final piece of the puzzle We’re always trying to connect desperate narrative elements into a cohesive whole.”
Thank you Netgalley and IDW/Top Shelf Productions for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
September 8, 2024
Dave Baker is one of the more interesting writers working in the comics indie space, these days. This is the first work of his that I've read that he has also drawn, and apparently he's good at that too. It's actually kind of annoying.
Mary Tyler MooreHawk is a complicated meta-comic graphic novel.. thing. I can't say I completely understood what was/is happening, and the art is beautiful and eye-bleedingly busy.
This is one that has to be read, to be believed.
(Thanks to Top Shelf Productions for providing me with a review copy through Edelweiss)
Mary Tyler MooreHawk is a complicated meta-comic graphic novel.. thing. I can't say I completely understood what was/is happening, and the art is beautiful and eye-bleedingly busy.
This is one that has to be read, to be believed.
(Thanks to Top Shelf Productions for providing me with a review copy through Edelweiss)
January 21, 2025
To quote my own review of Everyone is Tulip: "I keep picking up Nicole Goux books because they look so good, but then they always have Dave Baker's words spattered all over them, and I have immediate regrets."
At least this time there is no Nicole Goux art to ruin as Baker spatters his word garbage over his own illustrations or next to some totally useless photographs of random crap and buildings taken by David Catalano.
So, I picked this up because it earned an honorable mention on a best graphic novels of 2024 list (see below), but it's maybe half a graphic novel at best. Half of the pages are typeset text articles from a fictional underground fanzine from a dystopian future wherein a journalist named Dave Baker -- not to be confused with the author of this book -- writes tediously detailed articles about his favorite old television show: Mary Tyler MooreHawk. Alternating with Baker's essays are four non-consecutive comic book issues (numbers 1, 3, 5, and 7) based on the characters from the show, all written and drawn by the show's original creator, yet another Dave Baker. The comics are the absurd and juvenile adventures of a family of scientists and adventurers who protect the world from science villains, à la the old Jonny Quest television show, but with a lead character who is usually morose, whiny, or bitter about her lot in life. To extend the suffering, the pages of the comics and the text articles are frequently cluttered with verbose and dull footnotes that are unnecessary attempts at even more world-building or necessary exposition to fill in all the plot holes from the missing gaps in the comic stories.
I had to spread reading this book out over six days because the text pages take four or five times longer to read than the comic pages and because after the first chapter I was simply hate-reading the words so I could write a entirely earned one-star review.
This book is very bad. Near as I can tell, it's either an ironic attempt to condemn fandom and nostalgia or a genuine celebration of the same. It goes so far down the rabbit hole of triviality that I could never quite figure it out before I completely stopped caring about anything any of the Bakers had to say.
This may be the worst book I have read in the last few years, and maybe even in the top twenty for my entire lifetime. And that's out of tens of thousands of books and comics.
No more Dave Baker for me ever again. Even if that means missing out on terrific Nicole Goux art in the future.
(Best of 2024 Project: I'm reading all the graphic novels that made it onto one or more of these lists:
• Washington Post 10 Best Graphic Novels of 2024
• Publishers Weekly 2024 Graphic Novel Critics Poll
• NPR's Books We Love 2024: Favorite Comics and Graphic Novels
This book made the PW list.)
FOR REFERENCE:
Contents:
Introduction: A Book Shaped Like a Pyramid
Chapter 1
• From the Secret Files of Mary Tyler MooreHawk, Chapter One: "'Find Jean-Gerard Jetcar,' Said the President"
Chapter 2
• Physicalist Today #92: Secret File 029
• Physicalist Today #93: Born a Traveler
Chapter 3
• From the Secret Files of Mary Tyler MooreHawk, Chapter Three: "Crystal Hell"
Chapter 4
• Physicalist Today #94: The Building of the Great Ship
• Physicalist Today #95: "And Now We Just Need Shows."
• Physicalist Today #96: Enter: Gloomy Gals
Chapter 5
• From the Secret Files of Mary Tyler MooreHawk, Chapter Five: "Crucible of the Damned"
Chapter 6
• Physicalist Today #97: Existence Is the Enemy
• Physicalist Today #97: Mary Tyler MooreHawk Episode Guide
Chapter 7
• From the Secret Files of Mary Tyler MooreHawk, Chapter Seven: "Is the Loneliness of Good Equivalent to the Loneliness of Evil, Mary Tyler MooreHawk?"
Chapter 8
• Physicalist Today #98: Sweet Oblivion, Take Me Away
• Physicalist Today #99: Skeleton Babies
Chapter 9
• [Untitled Final Essay]
At least this time there is no Nicole Goux art to ruin as Baker spatters his word garbage over his own illustrations or next to some totally useless photographs of random crap and buildings taken by David Catalano.
So, I picked this up because it earned an honorable mention on a best graphic novels of 2024 list (see below), but it's maybe half a graphic novel at best. Half of the pages are typeset text articles from a fictional underground fanzine from a dystopian future wherein a journalist named Dave Baker -- not to be confused with the author of this book -- writes tediously detailed articles about his favorite old television show: Mary Tyler MooreHawk. Alternating with Baker's essays are four non-consecutive comic book issues (numbers 1, 3, 5, and 7) based on the characters from the show, all written and drawn by the show's original creator, yet another Dave Baker. The comics are the absurd and juvenile adventures of a family of scientists and adventurers who protect the world from science villains, à la the old Jonny Quest television show, but with a lead character who is usually morose, whiny, or bitter about her lot in life. To extend the suffering, the pages of the comics and the text articles are frequently cluttered with verbose and dull footnotes that are unnecessary attempts at even more world-building or necessary exposition to fill in all the plot holes from the missing gaps in the comic stories.
I had to spread reading this book out over six days because the text pages take four or five times longer to read than the comic pages and because after the first chapter I was simply hate-reading the words so I could write a entirely earned one-star review.
This book is very bad. Near as I can tell, it's either an ironic attempt to condemn fandom and nostalgia or a genuine celebration of the same. It goes so far down the rabbit hole of triviality that I could never quite figure it out before I completely stopped caring about anything any of the Bakers had to say.
This may be the worst book I have read in the last few years, and maybe even in the top twenty for my entire lifetime. And that's out of tens of thousands of books and comics.
No more Dave Baker for me ever again. Even if that means missing out on terrific Nicole Goux art in the future.
(Best of 2024 Project: I'm reading all the graphic novels that made it onto one or more of these lists:
• Washington Post 10 Best Graphic Novels of 2024
• Publishers Weekly 2024 Graphic Novel Critics Poll
• NPR's Books We Love 2024: Favorite Comics and Graphic Novels
This book made the PW list.)
FOR REFERENCE:
Contents:
Introduction: A Book Shaped Like a Pyramid
Chapter 1
• From the Secret Files of Mary Tyler MooreHawk, Chapter One: "'Find Jean-Gerard Jetcar,' Said the President"
Chapter 2
• Physicalist Today #92: Secret File 029
• Physicalist Today #93: Born a Traveler
Chapter 3
• From the Secret Files of Mary Tyler MooreHawk, Chapter Three: "Crystal Hell"
Chapter 4
• Physicalist Today #94: The Building of the Great Ship
• Physicalist Today #95: "And Now We Just Need Shows."
• Physicalist Today #96: Enter: Gloomy Gals
Chapter 5
• From the Secret Files of Mary Tyler MooreHawk, Chapter Five: "Crucible of the Damned"
Chapter 6
• Physicalist Today #97: Existence Is the Enemy
• Physicalist Today #97: Mary Tyler MooreHawk Episode Guide
Chapter 7
• From the Secret Files of Mary Tyler MooreHawk, Chapter Seven: "Is the Loneliness of Good Equivalent to the Loneliness of Evil, Mary Tyler MooreHawk?"
Chapter 8
• Physicalist Today #98: Sweet Oblivion, Take Me Away
• Physicalist Today #99: Skeleton Babies
Chapter 9
• [Untitled Final Essay]
November 21, 2025
Self-referential, meta-fictional, non-linear, .... These things can work for me. But here, they, sadly, don't.
March 26, 2024
Listen. It's not often that I don't finish a book. Especially a graphic novel. But this one...
Let me start by saying I really like the concept. I enjoy what Dave did here from an artist/writing standpoint. It's unlike anything I've ever seen in a Graphic Novel or otherwise. Good on him for doing something original.
However, this book is EXTREMELY hard to follow. There are so many annotations that it actually takes me out of the story instead of enhancing it. After every chapter, there are "Articles" about what had just read and such. Where I like this idea, again it just took me out of the universe instead engaging me more into it.
I love the art style that Dave has used throughout the book. The original art is so stunning and busy (in a good way) but choosing a pink backdrop for all of this art just washed everything out and really book my focus away from the detailed line work (something I admired quite often). Because of how busy the art is (and ALL the annotations) it took me FOREVER to read the 100 pages I got through before having to put the book down because I wasn't having any fun with it.
All of this to say, I appreciate and applaud Dave for creating something unique and completely different. It just wasn't for me. :/
Let me start by saying I really like the concept. I enjoy what Dave did here from an artist/writing standpoint. It's unlike anything I've ever seen in a Graphic Novel or otherwise. Good on him for doing something original.
However, this book is EXTREMELY hard to follow. There are so many annotations that it actually takes me out of the story instead of enhancing it. After every chapter, there are "Articles" about what had just read and such. Where I like this idea, again it just took me out of the universe instead engaging me more into it.
I love the art style that Dave has used throughout the book. The original art is so stunning and busy (in a good way) but choosing a pink backdrop for all of this art just washed everything out and really book my focus away from the detailed line work (something I admired quite often). Because of how busy the art is (and ALL the annotations) it took me FOREVER to read the 100 pages I got through before having to put the book down because I wasn't having any fun with it.
All of this to say, I appreciate and applaud Dave for creating something unique and completely different. It just wasn't for me. :/
March 30, 2024
I have a 50-page rule, and dropped this on pg. 48. The confused cartoony section was overwhelming and jarringly pink. That led to the next section, an overwritten (deliberately) scholarly article about the TV show that was the cartoon, which was tedious to read. I'm out.
June 1, 2024
DNF
I like the art, but I found myself not enjoying the story, the footnotes always took me out of it and I found myself dreading the meta magazine portions.
I like the art, but I found myself not enjoying the story, the footnotes always took me out of it and I found myself dreading the meta magazine portions.
March 11, 2025
I’m normally a fan of surreal mockumentaries, but this was just too confusing. From characters being too similar drawn at times to this scrambled storyline in the comic section that just left out - even with almost inaccessible to read footnotes - too much of the backstory and just plain explanation of what is going on. I liked the idea of this mixed style very much, but this was just poorly executed. However, the style of the comic and design of the text passages are very well-made and kept me hooked, while not knowing what was happening half of the time, to the end.
November 16, 2025
Most unearned self-aggrandizing i have ever encountered in my life. You can't just insist your book is enjoyable and important and mindbending enough times. Jonny quest did NOT meet infinite jest. A genuinely uncomfortable and really depressing experience. Will feel terror every time i write for the rest of my life that ive accidentally done one of the many, many unforgivable things in this book. I think it will really make my life worse
May 19, 2025
I could not finish this book- the art is ok in a kawaii way, the magazine breaks creating this fictional universe about a beloved tv show read like pitchfork articles before they were owned by Condé Nast. Just really kind of saying a lot of nothing. Not for me.
September 5, 2024
After thinking about this book and talking about it with others in the graphic novel book club I read this for, I can confidently give this 2.5 stars. That is 0.5 stars more than what I originally wanted to give it. I appreciate the intention behind this beast of a book, the way the author intentionally (at least I think it was intentional..) made this book a tedious challenge to read and to enjoy. It was full of glimpses of good ideas, compelling concepts, and a dystopian world that really resonates with me. BUT I don't feel like this book is for 99% of people just based on how redundant and granular the writing is, with (what felt like) hundreds of footnotes that mostly add zero to the story (they're more so there to maybe make you chuckle or roll your eyes - or at the very most, to make you marvel at the creativity of the human mind to just churn out characters and plot points like a machine) and illustrations that are at times really difficult to discern. Somehow every person and every action and every movement is expressed with the same sharp squiggle shapes. The reader has to put in A LOT of effort to physically engage with this book - which is a genius idea since one thread to this narrative (if you can call it a narrative) is to lament the loss of physical media in a world that has been purged of all comics, books, tv shows, etc. But it is only worth the effort if the twists in the end actually feel like a meaningful reward, and to me, it just simply didn't feel worth it. I actually think, ironically or maybe not ironically, this book would have delivered better as film or a tv show (in the book, Mary Tyler Moorehawk is actually the name of a TV show, and the comics are a spin-off from the creator's spiraling mind). I feel like I couldn't confidently recommend this to someone without worrying I have led them towards a very frustrating experience. This book made me chuckle aloud sometimes but mostly it made me want to throw it at the wall if I see another footnote, I swear to god... but by all means, give it a shot if you want! There is a creative little twist at the end that I'm grateful for the book club for clarifying for me. And out of 9 of us in the book club, 1 person loved it, so I guess those aren't bad odds for something this ambitious?
January 20, 2024
thanks to netgalley for a free arc of this title in exchange for an honest review. i will say, i appreciate what this book was trying to do. metanarrative is such an important tool, but this just wasn’t executed in a way that made it easy to digest whatsoever. i love a good footnotes side story, and splicing the graphic novel elements with the fake magazine physicalist today was an interesting tactic for sure, but the sheer DENSITY, even in the graphic novel portion, made this a really unpleasant read for me. there was just so much to retain and the graphic novel section had so much text that i found myself wanting to skim the whole thing just to save brain power. this was so ambitious which i commend but definitely missed the mark.
September 11, 2025
Per Comic Book Herald questo è il fumetto del 2024 e mi ci sono avvicinato con molta curiosità, anche visto il fatto che da molti viene accostato a Infinite Jest e Casa di Foglie (che secondo me sono due cose molto diverse tra loro, condividono solo una forma non convenzionale).
Da dove viene questo accostamento lo si capisce subito dall’introduzione che ne svela la natura meta: l’autore, Dave Baker, dice che il fumetto che andrà a mostrare gli è stato fatto arrivare dal futuro e che la sua pubblicazione è di fondamentale importanza. Alternate alle pagine di questo fumetto c’è poi una parte mockumentary composta dagli estratti di una rivista di un non troppo lontano futuro distopico chiamata Physicalist Today in cui un giornalista, anch’esso chiamato Dave Baker, è alla ricerca dell’autore scomparso di una serie animata omonima della serie a fumetti a cui si alterna. E indovinate un po’? Si chiama Dave Baker anche lui.
Quello che ne esce è una riflessione un po’ pazza sul diritto d’autore, l’importanza dell’arte come mezzo di espressione, la libertà di parola e di stampa, gli effetti di consumismo e capitalismo sui prodotti culturali, il rapporto tra artista e il fandom… un po’ tutto quello che verte intorno al mondo dell’editoria e del fumetto in generale.
Purtroppo, però, questi nobili intenti, sia nel messaggio che nella struttura complessa, non sono accompagnati da una realizzazione sempre all’altezza, che è spesso immotivatamente verbosa e prolissa risultando pesante anche in quelli che dovrebbero essere i suoi momenti più leggeri e divertenti. Soprattutto il fumetto non è poi di straordinaria bellezza nè di piacevole intrattenimento; pur essendo stilisticamente figo (rosa come unico colore, disegni lo-fi, un design di personaggi e luoghi) e sprizzando creatività da tutti i pori, risulta ripetitivo e confusionario dopo poco.
Se è anche vero che il suo ruolo, poi, è quello di fungere semplicemente da opera nell’opera acquistando un altro valore in retrospettiva arrivati all’ultima pagina, è altrettanto vero che io me ne devo leggere quasi 150 pagine, quindi vorrei che fosse una cosa dignitosa e piacevole anche di per sé.
Di tutt’altra pasta la parte di mockumentary della rivista, molto più interessante e sempre sul pezzo.
Mary Tyler Moorehawk è comunque in generale un’opera più che sufficiente che ha dalla sua una struttura non convenzionale, una frizzantissima creatività di fondo, un’art direction pazzesca e un messaggio molto bello. Poteva essere realizzato meglio e alla lunga potrebbe annoiare, però merita sicuramente un tentivavo e sa almeno ricompensare sufficientemente chi decide di arrivare in fondo.
Da dove viene questo accostamento lo si capisce subito dall’introduzione che ne svela la natura meta: l’autore, Dave Baker, dice che il fumetto che andrà a mostrare gli è stato fatto arrivare dal futuro e che la sua pubblicazione è di fondamentale importanza. Alternate alle pagine di questo fumetto c’è poi una parte mockumentary composta dagli estratti di una rivista di un non troppo lontano futuro distopico chiamata Physicalist Today in cui un giornalista, anch’esso chiamato Dave Baker, è alla ricerca dell’autore scomparso di una serie animata omonima della serie a fumetti a cui si alterna. E indovinate un po’? Si chiama Dave Baker anche lui.
Quello che ne esce è una riflessione un po’ pazza sul diritto d’autore, l’importanza dell’arte come mezzo di espressione, la libertà di parola e di stampa, gli effetti di consumismo e capitalismo sui prodotti culturali, il rapporto tra artista e il fandom… un po’ tutto quello che verte intorno al mondo dell’editoria e del fumetto in generale.
Purtroppo, però, questi nobili intenti, sia nel messaggio che nella struttura complessa, non sono accompagnati da una realizzazione sempre all’altezza, che è spesso immotivatamente verbosa e prolissa risultando pesante anche in quelli che dovrebbero essere i suoi momenti più leggeri e divertenti. Soprattutto il fumetto non è poi di straordinaria bellezza nè di piacevole intrattenimento; pur essendo stilisticamente figo (rosa come unico colore, disegni lo-fi, un design di personaggi e luoghi) e sprizzando creatività da tutti i pori, risulta ripetitivo e confusionario dopo poco.
Se è anche vero che il suo ruolo, poi, è quello di fungere semplicemente da opera nell’opera acquistando un altro valore in retrospettiva arrivati all’ultima pagina, è altrettanto vero che io me ne devo leggere quasi 150 pagine, quindi vorrei che fosse una cosa dignitosa e piacevole anche di per sé.
Di tutt’altra pasta la parte di mockumentary della rivista, molto più interessante e sempre sul pezzo.
Mary Tyler Moorehawk è comunque in generale un’opera più che sufficiente che ha dalla sua una struttura non convenzionale, una frizzantissima creatività di fondo, un’art direction pazzesca e un messaggio molto bello. Poteva essere realizzato meglio e alla lunga potrebbe annoiare, però merita sicuramente un tentivavo e sa almeno ricompensare sufficientemente chi decide di arrivare in fondo.
March 20, 2025
I probably read 80% of this; I bailed out on the last sections of the fake magazine Physicalist Today, but I did read all the comic sections and the ending. I started with a library copy, thick, heavy and intimidating which I managed to get halfway through. I finished with a digital copy (also through my library via Hoopla). The length of time between starting and finishing and having done so in two different reading media may have contributed to my disjointed feelings about this book but the book did that to me as well.
It’s hard to describe this book and I don’t want to put too much effort into doing that. A chaotic mess? A monumental creative accomplishment? The self-indulgent scribbling of a madman down a rabbit hole he is digging himself? An artistic cry for attention to our culture’s lack of attention to itself? Metafiction being obnoxious? A fun tribute to Johnny Quest cartoons? Whatever. Some of this and all of this.
Many of the pink and purple tinged comic panels were overly blobby with oozing tentacles and explosions and difficult to discern action and characters. But the less frequent splash pages were stunningly effective and conveyed an eerie sense of place and movement. The main characters, especially MTM, do emerge as distinct personalities - whether you like them or not.
It is possible my self-imposed limits of how much time and effort I was willing to give this book has led me to summarize it as overdone and too busy. I won’t even get into the footnotes. But just look at any of the two page spreads introducing the usually more than twenty characters for each of the comics sections. Each character is numbered for further text explication on the following pages (along with their comical, extravagant, outlandish names) but each character is also drawn with creepy, flowing detail all blending into and overlapping each other. It’s an amazing mess. And most of these characters are unimportant, even unrecognizable in the story. So is author/artist/ conceptualizer Dave Baker’s making it obvious he is overdoing this by overdoing it? Whoa. Now that is playing his game, like a snake eating its tail.
It’s hard to describe this book and I don’t want to put too much effort into doing that. A chaotic mess? A monumental creative accomplishment? The self-indulgent scribbling of a madman down a rabbit hole he is digging himself? An artistic cry for attention to our culture’s lack of attention to itself? Metafiction being obnoxious? A fun tribute to Johnny Quest cartoons? Whatever. Some of this and all of this.
Many of the pink and purple tinged comic panels were overly blobby with oozing tentacles and explosions and difficult to discern action and characters. But the less frequent splash pages were stunningly effective and conveyed an eerie sense of place and movement. The main characters, especially MTM, do emerge as distinct personalities - whether you like them or not.
It is possible my self-imposed limits of how much time and effort I was willing to give this book has led me to summarize it as overdone and too busy. I won’t even get into the footnotes. But just look at any of the two page spreads introducing the usually more than twenty characters for each of the comics sections. Each character is numbered for further text explication on the following pages (along with their comical, extravagant, outlandish names) but each character is also drawn with creepy, flowing detail all blending into and overlapping each other. It’s an amazing mess. And most of these characters are unimportant, even unrecognizable in the story. So is author/artist/ conceptualizer Dave Baker’s making it obvious he is overdoing this by overdoing it? Whoa. Now that is playing his game, like a snake eating its tail.
September 19, 2025
Sehr überdrehtes wir-retten-die-Welt-Comic mit vielen schönen Ideen (vor allem bei den Charakterbeschreibungen - wovon die meisten dann gar nicht vorkommen) wird unterbrochen von fiktiver Reportage über die Fernsehserie, die das Prequel zu dem Comic gewesen sein wird (in einer alternativen Welt mit einigen Änderungen zu unserer) - leider klingt das jetzt deutlich besser als mir das Buch dann gefallen hat, die Reportage hat für mich überhaupt nicht zum Rest gepasst und ich hab sie eher überflogen. Nicht meins, leider.
December 13, 2025
MTMH is an ambitious feat even for someone as seasoned of a writer as Dave Baker is, but I digress.
This book was a lot of things…a lot of which I’m not entirely sold on. An archive of a fictional magazine set in the future, a collection of post-modern comics, and a puzzle-box with admittedly a satisfying end, but the journey leading up to it left me feeling prickled once my eyes laid upon its final two chapters.
Overall, this book is not for you if you find any kind of disdain in footnotes, an overabundance in lore that never leads anywhere, or envy the color pink (now I’d suggest you look inward on that last one as pink is phenomenal; no further notes).
This book was a lot of things…a lot of which I’m not entirely sold on. An archive of a fictional magazine set in the future, a collection of post-modern comics, and a puzzle-box with admittedly a satisfying end, but the journey leading up to it left me feeling prickled once my eyes laid upon its final two chapters.
Overall, this book is not for you if you find any kind of disdain in footnotes, an overabundance in lore that never leads anywhere, or envy the color pink (now I’d suggest you look inward on that last one as pink is phenomenal; no further notes).
December 16, 2024
unlike anything I've ever read before tbh
June 3, 2025
close enough, welcome back house of leaves
Read
November 25, 2023The contents of a package left on the doorstep of cartoonist Dave Baker; articles by the journalist Dave Baker about the short-lived TV series Mary Tyler MooreHawk, plus comics set in its world, seemingly by the show's reclusive, wronged creator, who was called...yeah, you guessed it. For me, the comics were very much the weak link here. On the face of it, they could be wonderfully odd, something like Goldie Vance taking the lead in a Saturday morning cartoon of God Hates Astronauts, full of dialogue like "Hello, winged dog zombies. My name is Cutie Boy, world's nicest robot. I'll be killing you now. Have a nice day!", and a supporting cast including such memorable folk as Master Silverborn Murdershock: "Part ghost, part samurai, part dragon-person, today leads a martial arts dojo part-time and works as a mystical bounty-hunter the rest of the week." But it's hard to feel the strangeness of Murdershock, or Dreeb Lazenby (psychic head-handed bastard son of nobody's favourite Bond actor), when they've all been crammed into a nine-panel grid where nothing has room to get weird, and coloured only in pink, a choice which turns out to be far less readable than either monochrome or full colour. Yes, there turn out to be in-world reasons for both these problems, but they nevertheless make for a reading experience reminiscent of bubblegum - and I don't mean in the sense the word is normally used of art, I mean it literally looks like the unappetising pink stuff left over after someone has had a good old chew.
Now, you could assume that if the comic in a comic isn't much cop, then that would be a fatal flaw, and normally you'd be correct. But the further into this you go, the more of it is articles about Mary Tyler MooreHawk from Physicalist Today magazine, an illegal publication* from a surprisingly believable future where minimalism and capitalism deepened their accommodation, such that corporate personhood has now reached the point where companies can adopt children, and bankrupting one counts as murder - but at the same time most physical possessions have been banned. As such, television is watched communally, mainly operating at the level of inanity one would currently find on TikTok, only at least here they suffer for it - popular shows include Come Watch Me Stub My Toe!, But My Butt Is On Fire!, and Will I Die If I Jump Off This?. Within which environment, one maverick business finds a loophole, and aims to recreate TV drama, except broadcasting to dishwashers. At their best, these sections have a bleak absurdity suggesting dystopia as sillified by Steve Aylett, while also managing to find a new way to look at fandom, the way so many of the originators of the culture we loved ended up bitter and broke, and even the puzzling truth that we don't necessarily always like the things we love: my favourite bit of the whole thing was probably the consensus among MTMH fans that the show itself never quite lives up to the opening credits.
*Which, OK, has higher production values than I'd normally associate with samizdat, but then, if it is specifically for an audience who are into physical artefacts...
(Netgalley ARC)
Now, you could assume that if the comic in a comic isn't much cop, then that would be a fatal flaw, and normally you'd be correct. But the further into this you go, the more of it is articles about Mary Tyler MooreHawk from Physicalist Today magazine, an illegal publication* from a surprisingly believable future where minimalism and capitalism deepened their accommodation, such that corporate personhood has now reached the point where companies can adopt children, and bankrupting one counts as murder - but at the same time most physical possessions have been banned. As such, television is watched communally, mainly operating at the level of inanity one would currently find on TikTok, only at least here they suffer for it - popular shows include Come Watch Me Stub My Toe!, But My Butt Is On Fire!, and Will I Die If I Jump Off This?. Within which environment, one maverick business finds a loophole, and aims to recreate TV drama, except broadcasting to dishwashers. At their best, these sections have a bleak absurdity suggesting dystopia as sillified by Steve Aylett, while also managing to find a new way to look at fandom, the way so many of the originators of the culture we loved ended up bitter and broke, and even the puzzling truth that we don't necessarily always like the things we love: my favourite bit of the whole thing was probably the consensus among MTMH fans that the show itself never quite lives up to the opening credits.
*Which, OK, has higher production values than I'd normally associate with samizdat, but then, if it is specifically for an audience who are into physical artefacts...
(Netgalley ARC)
November 5, 2023
Thanks Netgalley and publisher for allowing me to read this graphic novel for free.
Unfortunately I couldn’t understand it because there was too much action going on without context. The text was hard to read like it made me feel I was trying my best not to throw up. It was like reading a merry go round of text. I’m so disappointed as I felt this novel would have potential!
Unfortunately I couldn’t understand it because there was too much action going on without context. The text was hard to read like it made me feel I was trying my best not to throw up. It was like reading a merry go round of text. I’m so disappointed as I felt this novel would have potential!
December 19, 2023
My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher IDW Publishing for gifting me at the holidays with an advanced copy of the most wondrous and mind-blowing graphic novel/prose/experimental prose, even possible future memoir things I have read in quite a long time.
I've been reading comics longer than I have been reading books. I was drawn to the old Sunday Cartoon Pages staring at the art and laughing at what I saw. My grandmother began buying me comics from the newsstand starting with Disney, and Sad Sack with big pictures, moving to superheroes. In my time I have seen comics change from something bought in small stores with many steps leading down, to comic book stores, chains and online. Dark Knights, Ninja Turtles, Radioactive Hamsters, dead heroes, heroes reborn, and dead again. Some of the ones considered classics I think are just ok, some forgotten I mourn like certain relatives. A few have left me with what the heck was that moments. Less have left me with a, I never thought I could read something like this, I am better for it. Mary Tyler Moorehawk is one of those stories. A book that left me going, everything seems so familiar, and yet I have never read a book like this. And I need more. Mary Tyler Moorehawk by writer, artist, designer Dave Baker, is an adventure story, a memoir, an entertainment profile, and futurist view of a world that is grey, where TV is dead, washing machine viewing is in, art is underground, the future is dark, and yet one young woman fights on.
Mary Tyler Moorehawk is a hero with a bodyguard, a cyborg half-brother, a step-mother who is a genius, a love for adventure, a long list of enemies, a wish to find a haunted house to explore, rather than the underground places she usually finds herself. Told in nine panels her adventures pit her against a foe returned from the grave, who died with Moorehawk's mother, with plans to destroy the world, and take Moorehawk has left away. Mary Tyler Moorehawk is also a cult television show, shown in a future that has recycled art, broadcast on the screen for washing machines, before stopping with a last episode unseen. Dave Baker is a young reporter who loved the show as a child, and is doing a profile on the show, hoping to learn more about the making of, the ideas behind, and about its enigmatic creator, also named Dave Baker. Journalist Dave Baker gives a history of a future that could be ours, as he explores a future America tracking clues, and hints and hopefully more about Dave Baker.
This book is basically Philip K. Dick writing a comic book, while writing another book at the same time, while going through both a divorce, his exegesis and his dealer going AWOL. What starts as a fun looking comic book, almost for kids, gos into a prose account about a very sad sounding future full of billionaire ice cream company innovators buying public access television to broadcast shows on washing machines after an entertainment purge. The main character is a writer writing about a show created by a man who has disappeared with the same name as Dave Baker, who also is creating this entire adventure. This could be some sort of Dick novel A Minority Report about Electronic Sheep Darkly. The comic is good, funny, with great characters, lots of names that all should have shows about them. The prose writing is riveting, a Steve Erickson meets Mark Leyner kind of style, about a dark future that rid itself of technology, not for the better but for the dull. Baker is a great stylist. The amount of work this must have taken to create, I can't imagine. The art is fun, middle school adventure book fun. The writing deep, introspective, sad, and yet really really smart. I can't say enough good things about it.
Recommended for all those who always want graphic novel storytelling to finally start striving for those heights that have been promised since the 80's. Oh this book will change things, oh this will change things. I'm still waiting, at least until now. Hopefully this will change some stuff. Fans of comics will like this, fans of Philip K Dick, Steve Erickson, Mark Leyner, Bunny Modern, experimental writing, will love this. Art designers will get a kick out of the photos. Role players will love the idea of the future. I can see this being a hard sell to people. And to read. It is so worth it. Dave Baker is really a talent. I can't wait to read more.
I've been reading comics longer than I have been reading books. I was drawn to the old Sunday Cartoon Pages staring at the art and laughing at what I saw. My grandmother began buying me comics from the newsstand starting with Disney, and Sad Sack with big pictures, moving to superheroes. In my time I have seen comics change from something bought in small stores with many steps leading down, to comic book stores, chains and online. Dark Knights, Ninja Turtles, Radioactive Hamsters, dead heroes, heroes reborn, and dead again. Some of the ones considered classics I think are just ok, some forgotten I mourn like certain relatives. A few have left me with what the heck was that moments. Less have left me with a, I never thought I could read something like this, I am better for it. Mary Tyler Moorehawk is one of those stories. A book that left me going, everything seems so familiar, and yet I have never read a book like this. And I need more. Mary Tyler Moorehawk by writer, artist, designer Dave Baker, is an adventure story, a memoir, an entertainment profile, and futurist view of a world that is grey, where TV is dead, washing machine viewing is in, art is underground, the future is dark, and yet one young woman fights on.
Mary Tyler Moorehawk is a hero with a bodyguard, a cyborg half-brother, a step-mother who is a genius, a love for adventure, a long list of enemies, a wish to find a haunted house to explore, rather than the underground places she usually finds herself. Told in nine panels her adventures pit her against a foe returned from the grave, who died with Moorehawk's mother, with plans to destroy the world, and take Moorehawk has left away. Mary Tyler Moorehawk is also a cult television show, shown in a future that has recycled art, broadcast on the screen for washing machines, before stopping with a last episode unseen. Dave Baker is a young reporter who loved the show as a child, and is doing a profile on the show, hoping to learn more about the making of, the ideas behind, and about its enigmatic creator, also named Dave Baker. Journalist Dave Baker gives a history of a future that could be ours, as he explores a future America tracking clues, and hints and hopefully more about Dave Baker.
This book is basically Philip K. Dick writing a comic book, while writing another book at the same time, while going through both a divorce, his exegesis and his dealer going AWOL. What starts as a fun looking comic book, almost for kids, gos into a prose account about a very sad sounding future full of billionaire ice cream company innovators buying public access television to broadcast shows on washing machines after an entertainment purge. The main character is a writer writing about a show created by a man who has disappeared with the same name as Dave Baker, who also is creating this entire adventure. This could be some sort of Dick novel A Minority Report about Electronic Sheep Darkly. The comic is good, funny, with great characters, lots of names that all should have shows about them. The prose writing is riveting, a Steve Erickson meets Mark Leyner kind of style, about a dark future that rid itself of technology, not for the better but for the dull. Baker is a great stylist. The amount of work this must have taken to create, I can't imagine. The art is fun, middle school adventure book fun. The writing deep, introspective, sad, and yet really really smart. I can't say enough good things about it.
Recommended for all those who always want graphic novel storytelling to finally start striving for those heights that have been promised since the 80's. Oh this book will change things, oh this will change things. I'm still waiting, at least until now. Hopefully this will change some stuff. Fans of comics will like this, fans of Philip K Dick, Steve Erickson, Mark Leyner, Bunny Modern, experimental writing, will love this. Art designers will get a kick out of the photos. Role players will love the idea of the future. I can see this being a hard sell to people. And to read. It is so worth it. Dave Baker is really a talent. I can't wait to read more.
March 4, 2024
2/28/2024 A deeply worthwhile struggle to read on digital. That said, read the physical copy if at all possible! Full review tk at TheFrumiousConsortium.net. I'll even translate that letter at the end for you!
3/4/2024 OMG, that was so hard to read on digital, friends, get the physical copy! This was such a good book, but such a challenge for me to read on a screen when the text abruptly switched to white on a dark background, given my astigmatism. It was absolutely worthwhile tho!
Mary Tyler MooreHawk starts out as an all-ages futuristic sci-fi comic a la Jonny Quest, featuring the titular character as she and her family travel the universe, seeking to stop evildoers and their terrible plans for galactic dominion. Mary has a sentient robot brother named Cutie Boy, whom she loves even tho he can be annoying at times; a strained relationship with her stepmother Meredith Moorehawk-Cho, and a devoted bodyguard in the form of Roxanne "Roxy" Racer. As believers in super science, they're committed to building better tomorrows for all people. Along the way, they've picked up plenty of allies but also many deadly enemies, including Dr Zebra, the arch-nemesis of Mary's late mom, Roseanne MooreHawk. Drs MooreHawk and Zebra allegedly perished together while struggling over an Einstein-Rosen bridge... but what is death really in the face of super science?
Interspersed with these comics, featuring an exhausting number of supporting cast members and done mostly in black and pinks, are curious prose and photography chapters that purport to be articles from a magazine called The Physicalist. These articles gradually build a picture of a dystopian future where corporations were granted full rights as people and the subsequent atrocities, some worse than others, committed therefrom. The story of Mary Tyler MooreHawk was made into a live-action show broadcast on dishwashers, as few people had televisions after the purges that rid most people of physical belongings, books and comics included. The show enraptured many, including the members of the Physicalist movement, who care about physical objects as being more than purportedly useless vanity.
One such is reporter Dave Baker, a Physicalist who discovers that he has the same name as the person who created MTMH. He goes on an epic quest not only to cover every aspect of the creation and broadcast of the show, but also to find out whether the rumors are true: that the other Dave Baker might actually still be alive. These nested stories make for a mind-bender of a novel, as our reality's Dave Baker expertly shows how horseshoe theory is real, while also juxtaposing the kindness and naivete of Mary vs the more skeptical inhabitants of the "real" world in which her story is told. It is both A Lot and The Perfect Amount, and to say any more would be to give too much away.
I will, however, give away (behind spoiler tags, ofc! Because this is also huge spoilers for what happens) the uncorrected text of the ciphered letter included at the end of the book. If you have the bandwidth to decipher it yourself, please do, because ciphers are fun! That said, I would have been desperately grateful for this translation after staring blearily at my PC screen for hours, so here you go if you haven't the time and energy to do it yourself:
""
The white lettering on black backgrounds that plagued me aside, the colors and layouts were fabulous, tho some of the linework for MTMH's supporting cast does tend to get a little same-y -- unsurprising given the vast numbers of them! This is definitely a book for people who love inventive, perhaps even literary, definitely dystopian sci-fi.
Mary Tyler MooreHawk by Dave Baker was published February 13 2024 by Top Shelf Productions and is available from all good booksellers, including Bookshop!
3/4/2024 OMG, that was so hard to read on digital, friends, get the physical copy! This was such a good book, but such a challenge for me to read on a screen when the text abruptly switched to white on a dark background, given my astigmatism. It was absolutely worthwhile tho!
Mary Tyler MooreHawk starts out as an all-ages futuristic sci-fi comic a la Jonny Quest, featuring the titular character as she and her family travel the universe, seeking to stop evildoers and their terrible plans for galactic dominion. Mary has a sentient robot brother named Cutie Boy, whom she loves even tho he can be annoying at times; a strained relationship with her stepmother Meredith Moorehawk-Cho, and a devoted bodyguard in the form of Roxanne "Roxy" Racer. As believers in super science, they're committed to building better tomorrows for all people. Along the way, they've picked up plenty of allies but also many deadly enemies, including Dr Zebra, the arch-nemesis of Mary's late mom, Roseanne MooreHawk. Drs MooreHawk and Zebra allegedly perished together while struggling over an Einstein-Rosen bridge... but what is death really in the face of super science?
Interspersed with these comics, featuring an exhausting number of supporting cast members and done mostly in black and pinks, are curious prose and photography chapters that purport to be articles from a magazine called The Physicalist. These articles gradually build a picture of a dystopian future where corporations were granted full rights as people and the subsequent atrocities, some worse than others, committed therefrom. The story of Mary Tyler MooreHawk was made into a live-action show broadcast on dishwashers, as few people had televisions after the purges that rid most people of physical belongings, books and comics included. The show enraptured many, including the members of the Physicalist movement, who care about physical objects as being more than purportedly useless vanity.
One such is reporter Dave Baker, a Physicalist who discovers that he has the same name as the person who created MTMH. He goes on an epic quest not only to cover every aspect of the creation and broadcast of the show, but also to find out whether the rumors are true: that the other Dave Baker might actually still be alive. These nested stories make for a mind-bender of a novel, as our reality's Dave Baker expertly shows how horseshoe theory is real, while also juxtaposing the kindness and naivete of Mary vs the more skeptical inhabitants of the "real" world in which her story is told. It is both A Lot and The Perfect Amount, and to say any more would be to give too much away.
I will, however, give away (behind spoiler tags, ofc! Because this is also huge spoilers for what happens) the uncorrected text of the ciphered letter included at the end of the book. If you have the bandwidth to decipher it yourself, please do, because ciphers are fun! That said, I would have been desperately grateful for this translation after staring blearily at my PC screen for hours, so here you go if you haven't the time and energy to do it yourself:
""
The white lettering on black backgrounds that plagued me aside, the colors and layouts were fabulous, tho some of the linework for MTMH's supporting cast does tend to get a little same-y -- unsurprising given the vast numbers of them! This is definitely a book for people who love inventive, perhaps even literary, definitely dystopian sci-fi.
Mary Tyler MooreHawk by Dave Baker was published February 13 2024 by Top Shelf Productions and is available from all good booksellers, including Bookshop!
November 16, 2024
Off the cuff thoughts: This book is fun and really worth time spent. Reviews of the book that I have read reference Infinite Jest and House of Leaves as two stylistic influences on the book. I feel like that’s a bit misleading, as it suggested a certain incel-esque vibe that Mary Tyler MooreHawk doesn’t have. A book I was surprised was not referenced more was Alan Moore’s Watchmen, where the device of alternating comics and prose was pioneered, at least to my knowledge. Anyway, I enjoyed this book and the big swings it takes, from the stylization and the content of the art, the sort of 90’s emo cover art indebted photography layouts, the wild profusion of characters, and the setting that evokes both future dystopia and pre-internet culture stagnation. It’s got a big story and a lot of ideas stuffed together, and also trusts the reader to make connections that are suggested rather than stated outright.
It occurs to me that MTMH is also pitched to a certain type of reader who enjoys clue-hunting, who is willing to scan through every last footnote to connect plot points, and who gets an aesthetic pleasure from putting puzzle pieces together. I’m one of those readers, although I definitely get an empty feeling when I read books that are so focused on intellectual game playing to the exclusion of emotional connection. That’s probably why I didn’t get very far in House of Leaves, which is a rarity for me- I almost always gut it out on a book instead of not finishing. MTMH seems to be written with the intent of balancing the head games of sorting out the plot with some emotional underpinning that kept me invested. Are there fully realized emotional relationships between characters in the book? Not really. But there was enough to encourage me to keep going to attempt to put the pieces together in my head without feeling like I was being led through a series of soulless series of episodes and action with no closure to be had.
That might be the ultimate charm of MTMH. Just enough of a variety of disparate elements to allow them to hang together, and extend the world building of the story outside the format of individualized episodes. This looks like an attempt to both honor and transcend the storytelling limitations of comics, both their centering of action over introspection and their tradition of serialized, rather than sustained plotting. So yeah, there’s a lot of meta here and it’s rewarding as a reader to see the author including considerations of the form into the construction of the narrative. It’s maybe another way of expanding the world of the book past the limitations of serialized comics without entirely abandoning the strengths of the form entirely. The book is ultimately a blending of ways of storytelling, some the story itself, others meditations on the creative process, others still about how those stories get brought to the public.
It occurs to me that MTMH is also pitched to a certain type of reader who enjoys clue-hunting, who is willing to scan through every last footnote to connect plot points, and who gets an aesthetic pleasure from putting puzzle pieces together. I’m one of those readers, although I definitely get an empty feeling when I read books that are so focused on intellectual game playing to the exclusion of emotional connection. That’s probably why I didn’t get very far in House of Leaves, which is a rarity for me- I almost always gut it out on a book instead of not finishing. MTMH seems to be written with the intent of balancing the head games of sorting out the plot with some emotional underpinning that kept me invested. Are there fully realized emotional relationships between characters in the book? Not really. But there was enough to encourage me to keep going to attempt to put the pieces together in my head without feeling like I was being led through a series of soulless series of episodes and action with no closure to be had.
That might be the ultimate charm of MTMH. Just enough of a variety of disparate elements to allow them to hang together, and extend the world building of the story outside the format of individualized episodes. This looks like an attempt to both honor and transcend the storytelling limitations of comics, both their centering of action over introspection and their tradition of serialized, rather than sustained plotting. So yeah, there’s a lot of meta here and it’s rewarding as a reader to see the author including considerations of the form into the construction of the narrative. It’s maybe another way of expanding the world of the book past the limitations of serialized comics without entirely abandoning the strengths of the form entirely. The book is ultimately a blending of ways of storytelling, some the story itself, others meditations on the creative process, others still about how those stories get brought to the public.
January 19, 2024
Like so many of my favorite books, Mary Tyler MooreHawk is near-impossible to categorize. Part dystopian literary fiction, part biographical magazine, and part nine-panel comic, Mary Tyler MooreHawk refuses to settle for just one genre. Dave Baker has succeeded in creating a multimedia masterpiece that has a lot to say about art, the pursuit of creativity, and the cult of personalities. Come for the bubblegum pink sci-fi adventure; stay for the avant-garde art and discussions on the ownership of ideas.
There are two Dave Bakers in Mary Tyler MooreHawk - Dave Baker, the journalist, and Dave Baker, the artist. Mary Tyler Moorehawk is a story of these two Dave Bakers and their connection to the titular cult-classic television show. Chapters of the Mary Tyler Moorehawk comic come between articles from a mysterious magazine called "Physicalist Today." These alternating sections combine to create a dystopian world with two Dave Bakers (probably) and one fictional teenage superhero.
The comic portion of Mary Tyler MooreHawk is a phantasmagoria of bubblegum pink, and I mean that in the best way possible. The comics are shades of pink and white - completely pink and white. Imagine black and white newspaper cartoons, but make them pink and white. Should this work? It does when it comes from Dave Baker. Mary Tyler MooreHawk is a teenage superhero, super-sleuth, and all-around incredible character. Landing somewhere between Indiana Jones and the Justice League, these comic chapters were delightfully fun and incredibly heartfelt.
The Physicalist Today magazine sections were my favorite part of the novel. I loved the photos and felt drawn to the world they depicted. The juxtaposition of the corporatized world against its surrealist subculture is striking. The magazine sections have underlying themes of both commercialism and corporatism, which I found particularly poignant. Details of the near-future world are drip-fed throughout the novel, leading to satisfying reveals of what physicalist means, who the audience of Physicalist Today is, and what Dave Baker's world looks like.
Final Thoughts:
Mary Tyler Moorehawk is everything I never knew I needed in a graphic novel. It’s a philosophical, speculative triumph.
Rating: A huge 5/5 Stars.
Thanks to Top Shelf for providing me with an advanced review copy.
There are two Dave Bakers in Mary Tyler MooreHawk - Dave Baker, the journalist, and Dave Baker, the artist. Mary Tyler Moorehawk is a story of these two Dave Bakers and their connection to the titular cult-classic television show. Chapters of the Mary Tyler Moorehawk comic come between articles from a mysterious magazine called "Physicalist Today." These alternating sections combine to create a dystopian world with two Dave Bakers (probably) and one fictional teenage superhero.
The comic portion of Mary Tyler MooreHawk is a phantasmagoria of bubblegum pink, and I mean that in the best way possible. The comics are shades of pink and white - completely pink and white. Imagine black and white newspaper cartoons, but make them pink and white. Should this work? It does when it comes from Dave Baker. Mary Tyler MooreHawk is a teenage superhero, super-sleuth, and all-around incredible character. Landing somewhere between Indiana Jones and the Justice League, these comic chapters were delightfully fun and incredibly heartfelt.
The Physicalist Today magazine sections were my favorite part of the novel. I loved the photos and felt drawn to the world they depicted. The juxtaposition of the corporatized world against its surrealist subculture is striking. The magazine sections have underlying themes of both commercialism and corporatism, which I found particularly poignant. Details of the near-future world are drip-fed throughout the novel, leading to satisfying reveals of what physicalist means, who the audience of Physicalist Today is, and what Dave Baker's world looks like.
Final Thoughts:
Mary Tyler Moorehawk is everything I never knew I needed in a graphic novel. It’s a philosophical, speculative triumph.
Rating: A huge 5/5 Stars.
Thanks to Top Shelf for providing me with an advanced review copy.
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June 2, 2025I'm mixed on Mary Tyler Moorehawk, despite a lot of positives. Dave Baker is an incredible cartoonist and the actual comic pages in this collection sing. While Baker takes a maximalist approach to details, he knows when to tone down the insanity and focus on characters' emotional arcs. He also puts the nine-panel grid to good use, a format that few modern artists can handle effectively. I always appreciate pages packed with smaller panels.
Baker exhibits a mastery of genre conventions, especially in action/adventure. His character designs and humorous twists on familiar tropes kept me engaged. Cutie Boy, Mary Tyler Moorehawk's brother, is the breakout star in this story. I would read a whole series about Cutie Boy.
My issues with this semi-graphic novel are mostly reserved for its non-comics half. Baker intersperses excerpts of prose that acts as "underground journalism" from the future. This prose fixates on a mysterious, short-lived TV show based on the comic characters in MTMH. Baker clearly takes inspiration from Danielewski's House of Leaves with this gimmick, including copious footnotes and indulgent tangents. While I see the potential of this format, I feel like the execution - both in House of Leaves and MTMH - lacks the attention to detail that could reward readers for careful reading. The prose in MTMH feels like a first draft with a distinct need for better editing. The future of banned physical media is interesting but needs more cohesion to feel immersive. Beyond frequent typos and grammar mistakes, Baker frequently contradicts himself - and not always in a compelling, "unreliable narrator" sort of way.
My main issue with the prose mostly comes down to personal preference - I'm fatigued by metatext and "stories about stories." At a certain point, it feels like a snake eating its own tail, and MTMH doesn't add anything to the conversation that I haven't read before. I'd much rather see Baker's genre influences manifest in his cartooning than read his written descriptions of media and art.
If I ever reread this book, I'll probably just focus on the comics and skip the prose.
Baker exhibits a mastery of genre conventions, especially in action/adventure. His character designs and humorous twists on familiar tropes kept me engaged. Cutie Boy, Mary Tyler Moorehawk's brother, is the breakout star in this story. I would read a whole series about Cutie Boy.
My issues with this semi-graphic novel are mostly reserved for its non-comics half. Baker intersperses excerpts of prose that acts as "underground journalism" from the future. This prose fixates on a mysterious, short-lived TV show based on the comic characters in MTMH. Baker clearly takes inspiration from Danielewski's House of Leaves with this gimmick, including copious footnotes and indulgent tangents. While I see the potential of this format, I feel like the execution - both in House of Leaves and MTMH - lacks the attention to detail that could reward readers for careful reading. The prose in MTMH feels like a first draft with a distinct need for better editing. The future of banned physical media is interesting but needs more cohesion to feel immersive. Beyond frequent typos and grammar mistakes, Baker frequently contradicts himself - and not always in a compelling, "unreliable narrator" sort of way.
My main issue with the prose mostly comes down to personal preference - I'm fatigued by metatext and "stories about stories." At a certain point, it feels like a snake eating its own tail, and MTMH doesn't add anything to the conversation that I haven't read before. I'd much rather see Baker's genre influences manifest in his cartooning than read his written descriptions of media and art.
If I ever reread this book, I'll probably just focus on the comics and skip the prose.
June 14, 2024
DNF.
This seems ambitious and passionately made, and maybe there’s something worthwhile here and maybe if I give it another try in the future I can find that version of it. For now, though, this hyperverbal postmodern prose-comics mashup feels too middling and self-congratulatory to warrant the patience and effort it demands.
It’s presented as a combo of old Johnny Quest style adventure comics interspersed with longform magazine pieces (from a dystopian future) that are mostly investigating the creators of the comics, but neither half grabbed me in their respective torrent of words. There’s also some later stuff saying the expected things about how the comics industry tends to cannibalize the creators within it, which I agree with, but doesn’t seem to be saying anything interesting or new. The comic portion is drawn in a neat cartoony style, but the line work is so busy and combined with the monochromatic pink and white coloring it’s another layer of difficulty to read for, again, core substance that just doesn’t seem that special or worth all the effort. As much as I’ve enjoyed postmodern stuff like DFW, there’s a very high degree of difficulty in doing it well, and missing the mark like this seems to just tempts out words like pretentious, overindulgent, half as clever as it thinks it is, etc.
This seems ambitious and passionately made, and maybe there’s something worthwhile here and maybe if I give it another try in the future I can find that version of it. For now, though, this hyperverbal postmodern prose-comics mashup feels too middling and self-congratulatory to warrant the patience and effort it demands.
It’s presented as a combo of old Johnny Quest style adventure comics interspersed with longform magazine pieces (from a dystopian future) that are mostly investigating the creators of the comics, but neither half grabbed me in their respective torrent of words. There’s also some later stuff saying the expected things about how the comics industry tends to cannibalize the creators within it, which I agree with, but doesn’t seem to be saying anything interesting or new. The comic portion is drawn in a neat cartoony style, but the line work is so busy and combined with the monochromatic pink and white coloring it’s another layer of difficulty to read for, again, core substance that just doesn’t seem that special or worth all the effort. As much as I’ve enjoyed postmodern stuff like DFW, there’s a very high degree of difficulty in doing it well, and missing the mark like this seems to just tempts out words like pretentious, overindulgent, half as clever as it thinks it is, etc.
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September 12, 2024Finally finished this after a few months sitting halfway through it! At once really thoughtfully crafted but also maybe too invested in itself, even when it’s critiquing that single-minded commitment. If it’s any compliment, I surprisingly found myself really engrossed in the narrative MTMH segments—even if the story often seems intentionally antagonistic to my ability to follow the plot. The prose “real life” sections were always interesting, though I often find they trample right over the line of didactically telling me things about the comic book industry that I already know. Maybe that won’t be the case for many readers, but I struggle with the idea that those readers would care if they don’t already care about the precarious state of the comics industry. Baker’s cartooning is involving, though sometimes (again, probably intentionally?) it’s hard to distinguish because of its density. It’s a book that always feels honest—though maybe one note?—and I laughed frequently at Baker’s penchant for ludicrously in-depth backstories of ridiculously-named cult TV characters. I think this book probably accomplishes everything it sets out to do. I just wish it did a little more?
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November 11, 2025Graphic novel group book: November 2025.
Footnotes. Meta plots. Multimedia collage. Fake magazine articles. And a really pleasing hardcover.
MTMH is a TV show, is a comic, it's this comic and it's also a comic and a TV show in the future, but also maybe the past. Dave Baker is the creator of this comic but also the creator of the TV show but also a journalist. For some reason one-time James Bond actor George Lazenby had a canonically half-alien baby in this universe. Also corporations can adopt people and Mary Tyler MooreHawk is trying to save the universe.
This is a meta-comic. Half of our graphic novel book group didn't like it and found that it failed to carry interest or carry through its premise. Half thought it was an intriguing subversive take on authorship, what a graphic novel is, and the value of physical media. I really liked the art and, despite initial concerns, enjoyed the story despite it threatening at times to drown the reader in references to a world we don't live in. Yet. Yet?
Footnotes. Meta plots. Multimedia collage. Fake magazine articles. And a really pleasing hardcover.
MTMH is a TV show, is a comic, it's this comic and it's also a comic and a TV show in the future, but also maybe the past. Dave Baker is the creator of this comic but also the creator of the TV show but also a journalist. For some reason one-time James Bond actor George Lazenby had a canonically half-alien baby in this universe. Also corporations can adopt people and Mary Tyler MooreHawk is trying to save the universe.
This is a meta-comic. Half of our graphic novel book group didn't like it and found that it failed to carry interest or carry through its premise. Half thought it was an intriguing subversive take on authorship, what a graphic novel is, and the value of physical media. I really liked the art and, despite initial concerns, enjoyed the story despite it threatening at times to drown the reader in references to a world we don't live in. Yet. Yet?
December 19, 2023
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this advanced copy of the graphic novel in exchange for my honest opinion. I LOVED the weird, crazy, AMAZING concept of this book. It made me immediately think of "House of Leaves", which is one of the most daring novels I've ever read. The mostly pink art style immediately drew me in, I'm a huge fan of the way this novel was illustrated. It's so fun while still showing some of the most horrific and heartbreaking material. I think the author interweaving the comic and excerpts from "his life" was masterfully done and so, so interesting. Everything about "Mary Tyler MooreHawk" drew me in and kept me interested, I honestly cannot wait to buy a physical copy of this for myself. I hope to see much more from this author illustrator in the future!
September 26, 2025
This is probably the first time that I have given up and not finished a graphic novel. I am a sucker for experimental comics but this is unreadable.
Dave Baker has tried to infuse this with as much meta and world building as he possibly can, to the point that it seems like there is no plot. The amount of foot notes is ridiculous ( half of the 2 page introduction is foot notes) and they completely took me away from the story for no benefit whatsoever, I didn't care about any of the information that was being conveyed.
The "articles" in between the comics are unenjoyable and badly written as well.
Graphically, the pink colouring is a terrible choice, I could hardly make out what was happening.
It feels like Dave Baker read a Dog Man comic and thought he could come up with an adult, "clever", version of it and completely missed the mark.
Dave Baker has tried to infuse this with as much meta and world building as he possibly can, to the point that it seems like there is no plot. The amount of foot notes is ridiculous ( half of the 2 page introduction is foot notes) and they completely took me away from the story for no benefit whatsoever, I didn't care about any of the information that was being conveyed.
The "articles" in between the comics are unenjoyable and badly written as well.
Graphically, the pink colouring is a terrible choice, I could hardly make out what was happening.
It feels like Dave Baker read a Dog Man comic and thought he could come up with an adult, "clever", version of it and completely missed the mark.
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