Like a Dog

by Zak Sally

Zak Sally is best known for his career as a musician in the band Low. He also is an acclaimed cartoonist. Like a Dog collects the very best of Sally's acclaimed short comics from the past 15 years for publications like Mome, Dirty Stories , The Recidivist and more. Stories like "Don't Move," "The War Back Home," "Two Idiot Brothers," and "Killing Screws" share little in common on the surface but are united by Sally's forbidding style. Nonfiction comics include "At the Scaffold," about the trial of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and "The Man Who Killed Wally Wood," a story about Sally's brush with a former publisher of the legendary comic artist (who, contrary to the title of this strip, took his own life). Like a Dog will also include extensive "liner notes" by the artist, previously unpublished material, and other surprises.

Genres: Comics, Short Stories, Graphic Novels, Comix

128 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶]

It's nearly impossible to assign a star rating to a collection of this nature. Zak Sally set out to chart his growth as a cartoonist by publishing a 12-year span of his work, some of which he is decidedly not at all enthusiastic about. I understand his motives (explained extensively in the back matter), and I respect him for following through on them. I also appreciate the frankness in his admission that his nonstop touring and recording with Low during this same period was not the main reason why he produced such a relatively small canon of work, although that would have been easy to believe. Instead he proffers a much more complex and personal explanation.

The particular stand-outs for me here were the long biographical story 'At the Scaffold' based on Dostoyevsky's letters to his brother while he was imprisoned; 'The Man Who Killed Wally Wood', which details Sally's interactions with a mysterious customer at the t-shirt printing shop where he worked; and 'Dread', one of Sally's collaborations with the writer Brian Evenson (Sally later illustrated Evenson's short fiction collection Fugue State). Much of the balance of the work is more personal in nature, and while I enjoyed certain of these comics (more so the artwork than the storylines), some of it veered too far into solipsism for me to fully enjoy. In Sally's notes, he freely acknowledges this characteristic of his older work, and in a collection such as this it's usually expected to find work that doesn't quite measure up to an artist's later work. So I don't see this as a strike against the collection as a whole.

Recommended for those who know and enjoy Sally's work, but perhaps not the best place to start if you're not already familiar with it.

[Wayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of uneven for me. Some stuff I liked, and others were just so- so for me. God, I sound like Randy Jackson on American Idol.Anyways, I liked 2 stories a lot- Room 21 and The Man Who killed Wally Wood,both had descent plots. Sally's art is interesting and he seems to be able to change his style up befitting the particular story.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

The included comics are all over the place both in terms of style and quality, but its imperfection ends up Being The Point in the author's afterword, which turns this (I should note: still on its own accord very enjoyable) collection into something absolutely transcendent. Zak Sally found the exact combination of words and thoughts I needed to see in the darkest point in my life, a time of uncertainty and hopelessness and volatility. It is ultimately a personal tale of depression and the anxiety and self-doubt that comes with doing anything that other people will see, and the way these feelings can force a person into a deeply bitter relationship with the things they love.

What was a spontaneous checkout from the library ("oh, the guy from Low makes comics?") turned out to be something profoundly moving. It is no exaggeration to say that I have been shaking for the last hour after closing the book. In this afterword, Sally questions whether art can change you, whether it truly can help you push through. I think it can. This has.

[Sawyer Minecraft · Rating 4 out of 5]

zak sally has a deeply unique creative voice with the kind of grit i value. my personal favourite strip of the lot is "the man who killed wally wood". theres a level of understanding for the strange pains of being a mediocre artist in here that i rarely feel from published work

[Maureen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is all over the place, which is refreshing if you happen to get tired of any particular narrative, but can also be frustrating because it lacks a concrete flow or narrative. Ultimately, this is a scrapbook of a comic collection. The strength of it is that the drawing is interesting, and many of the shorts are really very good, but the weakness is that the whole book just feels kind of like an act of desperation to catalog the work of the author- but for what purpose? It seems as though this book exists simply as a monument to an attempt at productivity- which could be cool, and it is in some ways, but could have definitely been done better.

[John Porcellino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of Sally's early comics. Worth it for the afterword alone, where he describes, with humor and humanity, the psychological struggle he endured to produce this work. Inspirational!

Those of you who enjoy this one should track down his self-published Recidivist #3, which contains his most compelling and mature work to date.

(Full disclosure: I wrote the introduction, and Sally is a friend, but that doesn't change how I feel about this book... it's a beautiful, well constructed overview, and it's fascinating to hear the honest description of his creative difficulties.)

[J.T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The afterword with notes on each comic are what pushed this to four stars for me. These comics are all over the place, some work better than others, some look better than others, but ultimately that's the intention of this compilation. To show an artist working things out, experimenting and growing.

It's funny that all those times I saw Low perform when I was younger I had no idea Zak was a cartoonist!

[Lindsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

The artwork is excellent. The writing is also great. I think that this is the graphic novel more for the artist than the reader, though anyone should be able to appreciate it's beauty. Certain pieces I enjoyed or connected with more than others, so my review beyond what I've already said would be biased.

[Derek Royal · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting collection of Zak Sally's early and sundry works. I can definitely say that the notes at the end of this book -- what Sally thinks might come across as self-indulgent to some readers -- actually makes the book even better. A good read, and intelligent!

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was fine, but I wasn't excited about it and it was getting to be overdue.