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Gregory #1
Gregory
120 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1989
32 people want to read
About the author
Marc Hempel
109 books10 followersLibrarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Marc Hempel is an American cartoonist/comics artist best known for his work on The Sandman with Neil Gaiman.
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Marc Hempel is an American cartoonist/comics artist best known for his work on The Sandman with Neil Gaiman.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 14, 2020
#ThrowbackThursday - Back in the '90s, I used to write comic book reviews for the website of a now-defunct comic book retailer called Rockem Sockem Comics. From the January 1997 edition with a theme of "Funny Comics":
GREGORY (DC Comics/Piranha Press)
Gregory is small. Which is good, because his cell is pretty small too. Gregory is the world's littlest inmate of an insane asylum. He's also one of the funniest.
The 4-Fisted Misadventures of Tug & Buster is a pretty good book, but Marc Hempel's masterpiece, GREGORY, was completed years before, back in 1989. Fortunately, for those who missed it then, DC Comics keeps it in print and available on their back list every month in PREVIEWS. You'll also find there three GREGORY sequels which are good, but just don't compare to the first for sheer originality and audacity.
While TUG & BUSTER is sick and dark, GREGORY is sick, dark, and bleak. But funny! Gregory spends most of the book in a straitjacket, and his vocabulary consists mainly of "I Gregory" and "Ub." (Doesn't this sound hilarious?) And his only friend is a rat named Herman Vermin, who is constantly being killed by the janitorial staff. But that's okay, 'cuz, fortuitously, Herman is always reincarnated as himself. (Don't hurt yourself by laughing too hard now!) Oh, and there's lots of ka-ka jokes and moldy cheese. (Attention, Jim Carrey fans!)
Really, it's funny. Mostly because, despite everything awful that surrounds him and happens to him, Gregory is one of the happiest people in the world. And his joy is infectious.
Grade: A
GREGORY (DC Comics/Piranha Press)
Gregory is small. Which is good, because his cell is pretty small too. Gregory is the world's littlest inmate of an insane asylum. He's also one of the funniest.
The 4-Fisted Misadventures of Tug & Buster is a pretty good book, but Marc Hempel's masterpiece, GREGORY, was completed years before, back in 1989. Fortunately, for those who missed it then, DC Comics keeps it in print and available on their back list every month in PREVIEWS. You'll also find there three GREGORY sequels which are good, but just don't compare to the first for sheer originality and audacity.
While TUG & BUSTER is sick and dark, GREGORY is sick, dark, and bleak. But funny! Gregory spends most of the book in a straitjacket, and his vocabulary consists mainly of "I Gregory" and "Ub." (Doesn't this sound hilarious?) And his only friend is a rat named Herman Vermin, who is constantly being killed by the janitorial staff. But that's okay, 'cuz, fortuitously, Herman is always reincarnated as himself. (Don't hurt yourself by laughing too hard now!) Oh, and there's lots of ka-ka jokes and moldy cheese. (Attention, Jim Carrey fans!)
Really, it's funny. Mostly because, despite everything awful that surrounds him and happens to him, Gregory is one of the happiest people in the world. And his joy is infectious.
Grade: A
February 22, 2017
Piranha Press was putting out some very unusual comic books during the 80s and 90s, and none of them was more unusual than Gregory. Minimalism at its finest, Gregory is about a little kid - with a big head - in a small padded cell. All we know is what Gregory knows, and that isn't much. Gregory isn't talkative, and seems blissfully unaware of... well, anything. Gregory's existence is a solitary one, with the exception of the occasional visit by orderlies, psychiatrists, or the talking rat named Herman Vermin. Gregory hovers in the bizarre boundaries between dark humor and existential quandary, and it manages to be funny, compelling, disturbing, sad, and just a little bit (okay, more than that) silly. You get the feeling while reading Gregory that writer/artist Marc Hempel just doodled the character on a cocktail napkin one night and thought to himself, "Hey, that's not bad." No, it definitely isn't. Just ask Gregory.
September 16, 2020
Second Printing (no ISBN on my copy)
Very fun!
I appreciate Piranha Press (DC) and Epic (marvel) because they represented the latent demand for adult "mature" storytelling finally realized by the juggernauts.
Epic was led by a sequential Hall of Famer -Archie Goodwin- who's editorial oversight produced and guided quality from known names and up-and-comers while Piranha was a motley crue of some sort. yet there's no Marvel attachment found while Piranha's copyright page evidences.
A toe-tag and police photo malangne of malcontents and seedy saboteurs they seemed to portray- with pride. I've liked the jib cutting of the whole swarthy lot so far. ...if I remember correctly that is!
This one is ace. Scrumptual consumption.
Very fun!
I appreciate Piranha Press (DC) and Epic (marvel) because they represented the latent demand for adult "mature" storytelling finally realized by the juggernauts.
Epic was led by a sequential Hall of Famer -Archie Goodwin- who's editorial oversight produced and guided quality from known names and up-and-comers while Piranha was a motley crue of some sort. yet there's no Marvel attachment found while Piranha's copyright page evidences.
A toe-tag and police photo malangne of malcontents and seedy saboteurs they seemed to portray- with pride. I've liked the jib cutting of the whole swarthy lot so far. ...if I remember correctly that is!
This one is ace. Scrumptual consumption.
February 28, 2025
Devilishly funny with a side of simplicity. Definitely for adults.
February 7, 2013
This was a lot funnier when I was younger and everything was funnier. Now, it scarcely raises a smile, but I still enjoy it. Hempel's high-comic style is perfect for the subject matter, which otherwise could get downright grim...or just be stupid. He manages to hit a nice balance, and lifts the characters out of our real world into another where a child in a dank asylum cell isn't something depressing. Hempel doesn't set out to make any grand statements here, though he does make some smaller ones about the nature of freedom and happiness, but rather to have fun with the strange situation he's concocted. He does that well.
August 9, 2010
i hope somebody reads these books that i'm posting about.
November 2, 2021
This is one of those books either I lost it, or I sold it (or I gave it away), either way, I will probably never see another copy again, which is a damn shame, because it was an utterly unique comic book, published just when comic books were starting to get treated seriously as art (it was published over 30 years ago, and has probably been out of print for at least twenty years -- I wonder how it would be looked at today, if it had been published in 2019, rather than 1989?)
I recently stumbled across a reference to this book (just as I stumbled across a reference to the OTHER book I am giving a five-star rating to today -- the now-obscure, long-forgotten "Rumours of a Hurricane" by Tim Lott) and was surprised I hadn't already rated/reviewed "Gregory" on Goodreads (in fact, very few people on Goodreads HAVE rated and/or reviewed the novel...so I feel an obligation to throw my 2-cents worth in) and was immediately overcome with nostalgia. Yeah, it's a comic book about a non-verbal kid with a big noggin, who lives in a "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"-type asylum with his only friend being a rat named Hermin the Vermin, but Marc Hempel packed more humour, pathos, and general humanity into this slim volume than most authors work up for a 500-page "literary" novel. "Gregory" made me laugh, made me sad, left me feeling uneasy...but mostly, made a lifelong impression, because it touched my heart. (Seriously.)
("Rumours of a Hurricane" was pretty good too, because, like very few books I had read before, and very few books I have read since, it presented a family (British; 1980s) that I came to care about as if they were real people going through a huge societal change, rather than just stock characters in a "big" novel -- the type of "big" novel American post-modern literature has been attempting to deliver for the last thirty years, but generally failing at -- leave it to a Brit (and not even Martin Amis!) to write what I personally consider to be one of the key novels of the 1980s!)
I recently stumbled across a reference to this book (just as I stumbled across a reference to the OTHER book I am giving a five-star rating to today -- the now-obscure, long-forgotten "Rumours of a Hurricane" by Tim Lott) and was surprised I hadn't already rated/reviewed "Gregory" on Goodreads (in fact, very few people on Goodreads HAVE rated and/or reviewed the novel...so I feel an obligation to throw my 2-cents worth in) and was immediately overcome with nostalgia. Yeah, it's a comic book about a non-verbal kid with a big noggin, who lives in a "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"-type asylum with his only friend being a rat named Hermin the Vermin, but Marc Hempel packed more humour, pathos, and general humanity into this slim volume than most authors work up for a 500-page "literary" novel. "Gregory" made me laugh, made me sad, left me feeling uneasy...but mostly, made a lifelong impression, because it touched my heart. (Seriously.)
("Rumours of a Hurricane" was pretty good too, because, like very few books I had read before, and very few books I have read since, it presented a family (British; 1980s) that I came to care about as if they were real people going through a huge societal change, rather than just stock characters in a "big" novel -- the type of "big" novel American post-modern literature has been attempting to deliver for the last thirty years, but generally failing at -- leave it to a Brit (and not even Martin Amis!) to write what I personally consider to be one of the key novels of the 1980s!)
January 2, 2009
Another I've had for a long time, and a lot of fun. Gregory is a little baby/kid locked in a cell in an insane asylum, who can't speak and is subjected to a barrage of characters, from snot-noses outside his window to nerve-wracked therapists to a lovable, eloquent rat named Herman.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews