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Housebound With Rick Geary
A collection of cartoonist Rick Geary's early magazine strips and mini-comics.
95 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1985
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About the author
Rick Geary
194 books202 followersRICK GEARY was born in 1946 in Kansas City, Missouri and grew up in Wichita,
Kansas. He graduated from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, where his first cartoons were published in the University Daily Kansan. He worked as staff artist for two weekly papers in Wichita before moving to San Diego in 1975.
He began work in comics in 1977 and was for thirteen years a contributor to the Funny Pages of National Lampoon. His comic stories have also been published in Heavy Metal, Dark Horse Comics and the DC Comics/Paradox Press Big Books. His early comic work has been collected in Housebound with Rick Geary from Fantagraphics Books.
During a four-year stay in New York, his illustrations appeared regularly in The New York Times Book Review. His illustration work has also been seen in MAD, Spy, Rolling Stone, The Los Angeles Times, The Old Farmer’s Almanac, and American Libraries.
He has written and illustrated three children’s books based on The Mask for Dark Horse and two Spider-Man children's books for Marvel. His children’s comic “Society of Horrors” ran in Disney Adventures magazine. He was the artist for the new series of GUMBY Comics, written by Bob Burden, for which they received the 2007 Eisner Comic Industry Award for Best Publication for a Younger Audience.
His graphic novels include three adaptations for the Classics Illustrated, and the nine-volume series A Treasury of Victorian Murder for NBM Publishing. The new series A Treasury of 20th Century Murder began in 2008 with “The Lindbergh Child.” His other historically-based graphic novels include Cravan, written with Mike Richardson, and J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography.
Rick has received the Inkpot Award from the San Diego Comic Convention (1980) and the Book and Magazine Illustration Award from the National Cartoonists Society (1994).
He and his wife Deborah can be found every year at their table at San Diego’s Comic Con International. In 2007, they moved to the town of Carrizozo, New Mexico.
(from http://www.rickgeary.com/bio.html)
Kansas. He graduated from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, where his first cartoons were published in the University Daily Kansan. He worked as staff artist for two weekly papers in Wichita before moving to San Diego in 1975.
He began work in comics in 1977 and was for thirteen years a contributor to the Funny Pages of National Lampoon. His comic stories have also been published in Heavy Metal, Dark Horse Comics and the DC Comics/Paradox Press Big Books. His early comic work has been collected in Housebound with Rick Geary from Fantagraphics Books.
During a four-year stay in New York, his illustrations appeared regularly in The New York Times Book Review. His illustration work has also been seen in MAD, Spy, Rolling Stone, The Los Angeles Times, The Old Farmer’s Almanac, and American Libraries.
He has written and illustrated three children’s books based on The Mask for Dark Horse and two Spider-Man children's books for Marvel. His children’s comic “Society of Horrors” ran in Disney Adventures magazine. He was the artist for the new series of GUMBY Comics, written by Bob Burden, for which they received the 2007 Eisner Comic Industry Award for Best Publication for a Younger Audience.
His graphic novels include three adaptations for the Classics Illustrated, and the nine-volume series A Treasury of Victorian Murder for NBM Publishing. The new series A Treasury of 20th Century Murder began in 2008 with “The Lindbergh Child.” His other historically-based graphic novels include Cravan, written with Mike Richardson, and J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography.
Rick has received the Inkpot Award from the San Diego Comic Convention (1980) and the Book and Magazine Illustration Award from the National Cartoonists Society (1994).
He and his wife Deborah can be found every year at their table at San Diego’s Comic Con International. In 2007, they moved to the town of Carrizozo, New Mexico.
(from http://www.rickgeary.com/bio.html)
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 13, 2017
A collection of short stories by Rick Geary. He is an awesome cartoonist but the narratives are lacking, well, a narrative. Many of these stories consist of a catalog of items shown. Sort of a story like if I illustrated my shopping list (actually that may be in this book somewhere). The times that Geary does decide to write an actual story the book becomes intriguing(like the one story about how the family's workaholic father is slowly replaced by a cyborg version and then a fully mechanical-computer version of the father is quite interesting).
These stories may have worked better as units contained in various periodical anthologies. As a whole it gets a bit boring.
These stories may have worked better as units contained in various periodical anthologies. As a whole it gets a bit boring.
January 3, 2014
This is a collection of Geary's early work from 1977-1982 gathered from his contributions to the magazines "National Lampoon" and "Epic Illustrated". I've never heard of the second and I was never allowed to look at the first, though I did sneak peaks and saw cartoons of ladies with big bosoms. None of these comics are like that though. Some of these are just comic strips, though not humorous. Some are comedy, but many are little stories and a lot of them are not surprisingly about murders and murderers, though these are fictional stories not true-life like his work now. This does give a glimpse into where his origins began and how he was interested in crime, history and biography right from the beginning. There is an odd "house" theme running through the book; you'll have to read it yourself to see what I mean. Geary's artwork is distinctive and he was working in the style we've come to recognise right from these early days, not much has changed. This was a quick read for me and while I didn't find any gems in here but it's a book I wouldn't miss reading as a huge fan of Rick Geary who is working my way through his backlist. I'm almost finished now. I would recommend the read to other Geary fans, simply for a retrospective look at the artist's work.
Of note: there is a second book, published earlier called "At Home with Rick Geary". Both books share 78 pages; the remainder of the 95 pages in Housebound and 102 pages in At Home are different. Because of this I'm not going to bother reading the almost identical book.
Of note: there is a second book, published earlier called "At Home with Rick Geary". Both books share 78 pages; the remainder of the 95 pages in Housebound and 102 pages in At Home are different. Because of this I'm not going to bother reading the almost identical book.
January 18, 2021
Surreal vignettes featuring beautifully rendered art. One of the comix world's greats. Rick Geary should be a house-hold name. A lot of the stories are featured in another Fantagraphics volume of Geary's art, Housebound With Rick Geary, but it was still a gas re-reading them again. I'm a huge Rick Geary fan and am trying to collect as much of his books as possible. Hopefully some day there are some collected editions of his miscellaneous stories and art work published. Until that day I'll just have to keep collecting all his published work as I can track down.
July 21, 2016
Loved it. Wish I still owned it.
September 22, 2021
Rick Geary's early work in comics is a delight, and Fantagraphics Books deserves credit for tracking down and publishing each of these individual pieces, which originally appeared across a number of different magazine titles.
Although Geary's highly individualistic pen work is the main attraction, he also has a finally attuned sense of the American character, and his subtler works (such as "Waitress School" and "The Age of Condos") manage to evoke something about our nation that would be difficult to express only in words. "Communal Life" is probably the standout work in this vein, as it documents the decline of a great optimism into a reckoning with the world as it really is.
Few authors are able to really dig beneath the surface of the brash American character and reveal the mundane reality on which it is so often built, and Geary manages to do this with a sense of love and wonder that finds the glorious adventure in life's daily absurdities.
Although Geary's highly individualistic pen work is the main attraction, he also has a finally attuned sense of the American character, and his subtler works (such as "Waitress School" and "The Age of Condos") manage to evoke something about our nation that would be difficult to express only in words. "Communal Life" is probably the standout work in this vein, as it documents the decline of a great optimism into a reckoning with the world as it really is.
Few authors are able to really dig beneath the surface of the brash American character and reveal the mundane reality on which it is so often built, and Geary manages to do this with a sense of love and wonder that finds the glorious adventure in life's daily absurdities.
February 23, 2020
A collection of brief selections of Rick Geary's work from 1977-1985, gathered from magazines. Most of them are one to two page snippets of random weirdness with which Geary was originally known for. A fun little collection, none of it is especially groundbreaking, but if you can get it for a reasonable price, I would recommend it.
October 6, 2023
4.5 stars. Solid compilation of many, many shorts (many 1 page), many funny, some poignant, a few deeply surreal, and some scattered exquistely executed formal exercises (that I have absolutely no interest in, hence the rating).
June 20, 2019
*This ISBN is "AT HOME WITH RICK GEARY"
Which has NEARLY identical content according to GCDb- it seems that "Housebound" is the updated version.
Which has NEARLY identical content according to GCDb- it seems that "Housebound" is the updated version.
November 24, 2022
Geary rules. This ranges from some simpler observations to tales of grisly murder. Geary's style is so bleak that it makes ridiculous things feel honest. Great shit.
Read
January 22, 2008so i'm still looking at this book, there is fun intrigue here for me. the art is distinct and easy to read. mostly there are pictures with captions. that is to say, there isn't word balloons.
this is a collection of works spanning late 70' to early 80's and i find it interesting in the way of being a slice of social commentary. for instance, i began to wonder when folks started using bank cards as one piece from 79 entitled at the shopping mall and it just has scenes pictured with captions with one of them being Branch Bank and showed what looked like an atm kiosk.
most of what i've looked at has some cleverness about it and well, it is just fun to look at
ironically i picked this book up in burlington and in the evening when i returned to hicksville my buddy cat was sharing some old original pages sent from rick geary that he's gonna reprint in an upcoming comics anthology i believe.
this is a collection of works spanning late 70' to early 80's and i find it interesting in the way of being a slice of social commentary. for instance, i began to wonder when folks started using bank cards as one piece from 79 entitled at the shopping mall and it just has scenes pictured with captions with one of them being Branch Bank and showed what looked like an atm kiosk.
most of what i've looked at has some cleverness about it and well, it is just fun to look at
ironically i picked this book up in burlington and in the evening when i returned to hicksville my buddy cat was sharing some old original pages sent from rick geary that he's gonna reprint in an upcoming comics anthology i believe.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews