Beg the Question

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This volume collects stories from Fingerman's earlier Minimum Wage series, with new material added and revisions made to the original work.From Publishers WeeklyIn this revision an d expansion of Fingerman's acclaimed Minimum Wage series, the artist offers 40 pages of retouched and redrawn panels, enhanced by gray tones that add a rich tone and spatial volume to each drawing. Fingerman chronicles the daily lives of young lovers Rob Hoffman and Sylvia Fannucci and their motley crew of friends in 1990s Gotham. It's at once a veiled biography and convincing fiction. Rob makes his living drawing pornographic cartoons for an obese editor at Pork magazine, amusingly reminiscent of Screw magazine. Sylvia, a hairdresser, also writes, plays guitar and paints. Their friends are hipsters drawn from New York's dives and dead-end jobs, annoying yet comical. Rob and Sylvia are well developed characters, likeable despite plenty of obnoxious personal flaws. Wildly oversexed, the two can't keep their hands off each other. But when an unexpected pregnancy confronts them, readers learn of Rob's secret, violent psychological aversion to having children. Rob also struggles to jump-start his comics career, enduring humiliating interviews with art directors, and attends a comics convention complete with the requisite Star Trek nerds and Goth girls in spandex bikinis. Ridiculous subplots abound, from the jealous boyfriend of a topless dancer to the Martin Amis fan so obsessed with getting dozens of Amis autographs he becomes a borderline stalker. This is not a plot-driven book, but a daily chronicle of scuffling, artsy New Yorkers. They go to Coney Island on a blistering summer day, down burgers at White Castle, attend obligatory family gatherings and have sex, letting readers tag along. Fingerman's dialogue is biting and realistic, and his drawing is exceptional.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.From BooklistFingerman chronicled the young and underemployed in New York City in his mid-'90s alternative-comics series Minimum Wage. He has reworked those stories and added 40 pages of new material for this book. Although he employs a large and diverse cast, the focus is on caustic Rob Hoffman, a struggling artist who makes ends meet by drawing cartoons for a porno mag, and his high-strung girlfriend, Sylvia Fanucci. The strips follow the couple as they search for an affordable apartment, confront an unplanned pregnancy, and slowly creep up on the prospect of matrimony--and be advised, they have explicitly rendered sex frequently along the way. Distractions they enjoy include the performance-art scene, experimental filmmaking, and weekend escapes to Sag Harbor. Fingerman depicts their eventful if directionless lives with humor and empathy, and his cartoonish yet detailed drawing style, with its cramped and cluttered panels, effectively conveys the discomfort of urban life. Anyone who has lived or envied la vie boheme should relate to this dead-on evocation of a contemporary version of it.-- Gordon Flagg Show more