Abandoned Cars

by Tim Lane

America depicted as a subdued and haunted Coney Island, made up of lost characters―boozing, brawling, haplessly shooting themselves in the face, and hopping freight trains in search of Elvis. An impressive debut of a major new talent Graphic shorts in a Jim Thompson vein. Abandoned Cars is Tim Lane's first collection of graphic short stories, noir-ish narratives that are united by their exploration of the great American mythological drama by way of the desperate and haunted characters that populate its pages. Lane's characters exist on the margins of society--alienated, floating in the void between hope and despair, confused but introspective. Some of them are experiencing the aftermath of an existential car crash--those surreal moments after a car accident, when time slows down and you're trying to determine what just happened and how badly you're hurt. Others have gone off the deep end, or were never anywhere but the deep end. Some are ridiculous, others dignified in their efforts to struggle to make sense of, and cope with, the absurdities, outrages, ghosts, and poisons in their lives.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Short Stories, Comix, Noir, Fiction, Crime

168 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2008

About the author

Tim Lane is a licensed paraglider pilot and a registered nurse. He has a BS in biology and an associate’s degree in nursing.

Reviews

[Jan Philipzig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe I've Had It All Wrong...

The mythology of popular culture “exists omnipotently on the dimly lit backstreets of our collective imaginations,” Tim Lane writes. He may have a point: haven't we all been bombarded with popular culture from infancy on? And hasn't that influenced our norms, tastes, values, and goals? Let’s see, there’s the high-school sweetheart, the Cadillac, the family, work, democracy, upward mobility, success, independence, the bartender, the railway, freedom - concepts, in short, that popular culture has been romanticizing and idealizing long enough for them to adopt what Lane calls “a surreal, frosting-coated, fairy-tale grandeur.”

Unable to experience this fairy-tale grandeur in real life, the protagonists of Abandoned Cars are plagued by gnawing self-doubt: “Maybe things have never been what I thought they were, nothing at all. Maybe I’ve had it all wrong… the wrong idea about everything.” Maybe, it is implied, popular mythology has alienated us from what life is really all about, with fatal and irreversible consequences: “I felt the gust of something, something that reminded me of the joy of life, but it was like an amputee feeling the ghost of a lost limb.”

As you can tell, Abandoned Cars takes itself quite seriously - and rightly so, it deals with a serious topic. I generally admire the book's sincerity as well as its dark and merciless visual style influenced by the likes of Drew Friedman and Daniel Clowes, though I have to admit the stories can occasionally get a bit sophomoric and obvious: “I wondered if Marty ever even loved his wife, or if anybody ever loves anybody, really. Or do we just keep putting each other through hell over and over again until one night we finally fall asleep for good.” There is no question mark at the end – must be a rhetorical question. Ouch.

Still, this is an overall intriguing and promising first effort, and Tim Lane is certainly a cartoonist to be watched!

[Marissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to reading this due to the style of the art which reminds me a lot of other Fantagraphics favorites Charles Burns and Daniel Clowes and I was hoping the stories would have a similar noiry sensibility. In reality, I was a little disappointed. The background political philosophy of the book is sort of watered down Crimethinc with all the usual obnoxious hipster male influences thrown in (he literally name checks Hemingway, Kerouac, Miller, Wolfe, London when he goes through his pantheon of heroes). The art and the writing is fairly skilled I suppose, but there's nothing new here, nothing I haven't seen before, and it's particularly frustrating with such a cliched philosophical take underpinning it. I much prefer the writing of Adrian Tomine who establishes a similar mood in his work without giving us any easy answers. He leaves more space open for the reader's imaginings and leaves more room for the characters' humanity than Lane. I'll be interested to see what Lane does next, but I'm not really impressed with this effort.

[Derek Royal · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was good to return to this book, as I hadn't picked it up in awhile. This is a fascinating collection of stories, although to call each of the pieces in this collection a story is not entirely correct. The core of the book comprises the seventeen fictional stories -- there is an eighteen, the story of Stagger Lee, that is obviously historically based -- of varying lengths. Then interspersed among all of the stories are one of either two series: vignettes of a angst-ridden loner/rebel and various "American Standard Cut-Out Collectibles Series" pages. Both of these latter have everything to do with defining America, in one form or another, and they are like the tendons connection the seventeen stories, which Tim Lane calls expressions of "the Great American Mythological Drama." This book IS all about America and the myths that compose it, and reading this book is like experiencing the musical catalog of Bob Dylan. It's a mixture of myths, pop culture, locales, heroes, themes, and even stereotypes that together create a broad mosaic. Looking too closely at it won't give you much of a sense of what's going on, but if you pull back and take it in broadly, the picture begins to take clearer shape. Perhaps this is another example of a graphic cycle, a comics equivalent of the short-story cycle in fiction.

[Andrew Horton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tim Lane's "Abandoned Cars" splits the difference between Charles Burns' stark, precise B&W and early Daniel Clowes (think Like a velvet glove cast in iron). The collection has a decidedly noir bent, but it's much more Jim Thompson than Raymond Chandler - it's sad, introspective situational noir. This pushes all of the right buttons for me, so I might be unfairly rating it five-star, but it's a great first effort and immediately makes me want more.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deeply haunting graphic novel with stories that left me with no real resolution, and though the illustrations are largely realistic, Lane is very crafty in the way he adds grotesque qualities to them.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

The art is better than the writing.

[Juan Fuentes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un Daniel Clowes con historias más realistas del lado oscuro del sueño americano.

[Raina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories in graphic format riffing on the amerikan dream (my spelling).

I admire this as a graphic novel. It's gorgeous to look at - I love Lane's art. And the stories are deep and make you think. I particularily liked the ruminations of the educated young man fulfilling his fantasies by grabbing an illegal ride on a train. Personally, when I was growing up, I often imagined having to live without a home. So as we sped along the freeway, I'd check out the underpasses and bushes, wondering if each location would be a good place that would give shelter from the elements. So I get the romantic ideal.

However, it's pretty much a downer (and yes, I feel incredibly shallow for saying it). I felt no hope, and each story killed the amerikan dream in a different (and yes, impressive) way. So it was difficult to read, and I didn't particularly enjoy it. But again, impressed.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd rate this somewhere between ok and I liked. While there were stories I really liked the others were just mundane and repetitive. Nothing against the author I'm definitely the target audience for said work. I can relate to each character almost eerily so.. maybe it's me I find mundane and repetitive anywho, just my thoughts out loud. Made me think of early Bukowski with Tom Waits as the back ground music.

[Vicente Ribes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genial novela gráfica que describe la otra cara del sueño americano. Perdedores enganchados a la bebida, asalta trenes viajando a lo largo del país sin un lugar donde quedarse, asesinatos por celos y la música de Elvis y Bob Seger acompañandonos a lo largo de este genial cómic.
Como si Jack kerouak y Raymond Carver se dieran la mano para dibujar y guionizar un cómic, Tim Lane es un nombre a tener en cuenta y que a partir de ahora voy a seguir.

[Ajj · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would give this four stars if it didn't feel quite so self-indulgent. The art is great, I love the "back cover" pages with the American Cut-out Collectibles and many of the stories are haunting in their way. There is an undercurrent of the author being sorry for himself that taints the majority of the content and always leaves a bit of a bad taste in your mouth.

[George Marshall · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK- nice art, but sometimes felt a bit sophomoric, and the story about his riding the railcars was painfully self indulgent. I'd say a really good first book and someone to watch for sure but he's got a way to go yet

[Idleprimate · Rating 3 out of 5]

In brief, The book is luscious in terms of Lane's rich chiaroscuro artwork, but the stories are thin and feel like juvenilia, i.e. adolescent angst trying to pass itself off as noirish stories. Frankly I was disappointed.

[Micah]

tremendously sad but beautiful. a journey across forgotten america.

[Bryce · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really thought I would like this book less than I did, given some of the other reviews here. I liked The Lonesome Go, but thought if he got any more autobiographical than I'd be too annoyed. Sure enough, it's the autobiographical stuff in this one that really turned me off. Ignore that and you have a great collection of imaginative and noir-ish stories that show a very fun obsession with 20th century Americana. Some are completely serious and even sappy, others are self-aware and humorous, others unabashedly surreal. All a good time, and if nothing else the wonderfully inky pen drawings will keep this on my shelf until somebody steals it.

[Printable Tire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely the product of a recently deceased era, despite the art precision Abandoned Cars is messy, cringey, embarrassingly earnest... maybe I wouldn't give five stars for all that, but I like the variety of exploration here (autobiographical comics, fiction/character pieces, paper dolls, picto stories, biographical stories, essays, etc) that really showed a comic artist giving us all he has in a vast sprawling oeuvre of his work, a la We All Die Alone.

[Jay Dougherty · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author really needs to decide if they want to write fiction or draw comics. It's vastly overwritten to the point of parody. The art is good and matches the mood of the stories but the amount of text is overbearing in the panels. Honestly, this would have worked better as a series of short stories rather than a graphic novel.

[Tyler Armendariz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was fun :) I don’t remember it super well, but there are three main stories told in, uh, I guess episodic format? It keeps going back and forth, but there are one-offs interspersed throughout. This one didn’t hit super hard, but I think I’d like to give him another shot.

[Regan Sharp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic stark black and white art in the vein of Charles Burns. Good collection of gritty quasi-philosophical "On the Road" type stories.

[Charlie Easterson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unappealing and needlessly self impressed. Couldn't finish it. It's the sort of comic a nihilist art student who models himself on Holden Caulfield might enjoy.

[Comics Alternative · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://comicsalternative.com/comics-a...

[Tanvir Muntasim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heavily inspired by the writers of the 'Beat' generation, this is a thought provoking, even if at times depressing, read.

[John Molina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps let me read it once more? xoxo--Jonny

[Tom Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the artwork. It's very much my kind of comic style. Wasn't as drawn in by many of the actual plots of the stories.

[Zack! Empire · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a few times reading through this book to really get into it. It might have something to do with the fact that I’ve been reading a lot of superhero books lately, so I just wasn’t ready for the narrative language of an indie book. It might also have had to do with the way Tim Lane tells the story as well. There is just something slightly other worldly about his use of language. He has a fascination with American culture. Not the popular culture of today, but the culture of America’s forgotten back roads. It is the culture of crazy old men sitting in the same bar every night, of a car long abandoned by the side of a road. This has informed the work, and shaped him as an artist.
Tim has one of the most amazing styles I’ve seen in a while. I kept finding myself sucked into the pages, pouring over the details and getting lost in them. When people have a highly realistic style they tend to overwork the figures and the backgrounds, making the pages look busy. Tim doesn’t do that in his work. He seems to have found the right balance between black and crosshatching. There was one three panel sequence that I found quite amazing. The main character, the artist himself, is sitting on train riding through the night. The first panel is all black white, the second a mixture of black and crosshatching, and the final one almost a simple line drawing. It’s a very well done sequence showing the rising of the sun, while Tim sleeps through the night into the morning.
My two problems with this book were that I just found some of the stories two short, and other stories felt empty. I read through them without a sense of completion. A comic doesn’t have to be long. In fact it can be one panel. However if that one panel does not present an idea, then resolve that idea within the space of the single panel it doesn’t work as a story. That is the most important thing to remember about comics: they are stories, not just notions or ideas. There is a two page story dealing with a man after his wife has dead. I thought that story was very good. We can tell that the man and woman were married for a long time. We can see that the man now feels lost after the loss of his partner, as many married people often do. That is an example of Tim telling a complete story in a short space. Some of the other stories, like the first story Outing, didn’t have that same feeling of being finished.
Overall this was a good read. I will be seeking out future work by this author, though I must admit it will mostly be for the beauty of his drawing style.

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Finally getting back to this book, read a few months ago. I recently leafed through it again, at the local public library.)

John Lennon once opined that Elvis Presley’s personal undoing stemmed from the fact that, by mid-career, he’d come to believe his own myth. Lennon’s inference was that when Elvis’s life-road & sense of self-worth couldn’t match that myth, he became desolate.

Lane is a brilliant cartoonist, story teller, and illustrator, and doesn’t suffer from a celebrity’s personal myth. The American galaxy he portrays includes not only hawkers, side-show gypsies, and tin-horn gamblers but also “name people” like Louis Prima, Miles Davis, Elvis, Kerouac, Brando, and Dylan, not to mention things like Harley hogs, “Detroit-iron” muscle cars, neighborhood bars & cafés, doo-wop & “heartland-rock” music. And not to forget cozy, cheerful families — for the golden guise of the myth implies that an American can dream and make his or her dream come true.

This book is a fiction medley, but the prime narrative is an autobiographical tale in recurring segments. Emulating Woody Guthrie, Kerouac & Dylan, Lane (in younger years) sets out to hop freights and travel through the unknown. Though not an extensive journey, his Minnesota to North Dakota roundtrip is, by turns, a thrilling challenge and a lonely, frightening sortie. For introspective Tim, the escapade is a conscious dive into the river of the enticing American myth — smitten with the nostalgia of it & appraising the reality… then facing up to a stark predicament inherent in the experience.

I’m Canadian, but here we’re familiar with the myth; for at least a century it has seeped to us through magazines, novels, music, movies, and TV. When I was young I wanted to check out unknown activities, places & types of people — not spurred by any myth, but for the simple reason that most young people feel like doing something along that line. (Case in point, when I was 28 I got acquainted with a 20-year-old girl who’d travelled a mite by hopping freight cars.)

In the assorted stories, most of Lane’s protagonists have wound up feeling numbed or deeply disappointed, brooding in hopelessness. Yet toward the end of his journey, train-rider Tim stops chasing a chimera and has an occasion of insight, seemingly an intuition that transcendence is possible.

And so for me, as someone who applies wisdom from third-force psychology and the perennial philosophy, the trajectory of Lane’s graphic novel was not only engaging but meaningful.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lane has drawn & written quite an impressive book of inter-related cartoon stories, mostly ironic, cynical, bitter, but with the occasional redeeming ending. I loved the cut-out figure drawings - everything in Lane's world is related to the raw underside of American life, the people that are mostly mocked or avoided, or seem to be "unpleasant" cliches. There are characters that are trapped in their mundane existence, and a recurring character who wanders an unnamed city, smoking and deep in thought, an ongoing philosophical meditation. An exciting story about a young man who tries to emulate the excitement of the Beats, by hopping a freight train in the Midwest, the adventures he encounters in his journey. The drawings of towns, trains, and freight train cars, are detailed and interesting. A story of a man in Cleveland who is trying to get over a break-up, but finally after a long train of thought about his ex, concludes that heaven is where-ever she and him are together. There's a story about a girl who manages to get rid of an overbearing guy trying to pick her up in a bar and an extremely funny story about an old drunk in a bar who is convinced he has to find a treasure buried under a cow with a horn on its snout, and the adventures that befall him in trying to find the cow. The book has stories that pick up and continue several stories later, so the reader can follow the adventures of characters as they develop, such as the adventures of the guy who hopped the freight train. A leitmotiv seems to be senseless breakups and the pain of remembering a lost relationship. The final section tells the story of Stack Lee - who became legendary for shooting a man in a bar who refused to return his hat to him. The book ends with a truly humorous lawn ornaments page.. after the usually grim, "slice-of-life" stories, this was a great way to wrap up the book, on a fun note.

[Randy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really nice collection of offbeat black and white stories by an American cartoonist. These things emotionally resonate in a personal way as he makes references left and right to Americana of many sorts. Jack Kerouac, Bob Dylan, Elvis, Stack-O-Lee all make appearances in this really nicely printed edition. I gave it four stars because while I admire the craft and nuances of the art, the overall theme was a bit of a stretch to include under one cover. The effect was a little disjointed, albeit pleasant. I felt that Tim Lane felt compelled to do this because of something his academic background trained him to do and not really for any intentional artistic reason. But I enjoyed it immensely and would definitely reccomend it. The cutout characters section was always disturbing fun, from That Crazy Guy to Beatle Bob. "Inexplicably Famous!" I think the tagline read.

Good stuff to brag about being clued into.

[Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Astonishingly well written book, even if it tends to the melodramatic in some stories. This is pure Americana, or what Tim Lane calls the "Great American Mythological Drama": there's even "King of the Road" floating about on the radio in one of the panels. Which means there is a lot of self-indulgent reflection on American white male anxiety, especially lower class anxiety, along with a heavy dose of Kerouac, with nods to Hemingway, Miller and all the rest who are lined up by the author as influences on page 48. That doesn't mean the stories are bad, although I guess it could be criticized on those grounds. There is hope and grief in almost equal measure, even though there is very little happiness. But it's been a while since I've come across a library book I wanted to add to my collection. I will re-read this.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author calls this the "Great American Mythological Drama". It's a nice name for what is basically nostalgia, specifically for early and mid 20th century culture. R. Crumb put this nicely, he says that he grew up wanting to live life in an earlier time. Not his exact words, but that's the general idea. Does Tim Lane capture this? I think so. Some of the stories make no real sense as a narrative. Instead, their goal is to capture a tone; and they do that well. If I had any complaint about this collection, it would be that I didn't much care for the one-page sequences between stories. They look like they are reprinted from newspaper strips and all but the last few don't quite fit the tone (or format) of the rest of the book. This is really just my opinion, though. Anyone who likes classic alternative comics will love this.