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MY UNCLE JEFF
(
Alternative Comics,
Damon Hurd)
Review by Mike Hunter
Despite the lip service paid to "family values" in our culture, that venerable institution gets scant coverage in the comics medium. Oddly, even autobiographical comics rarely touch upon family dynamics, or creators may, at best, devote a short story to their parents' dysfunctional marriage. Which makes the Eisner-award nominated
My Uncle Jeff, a work intended as Damon Hurd's paean to his father's younger brother, particularly unusual and daring.
The slouching, walrus-mustached, gap-toothed, tattooed Uncle Jeff – an amiable, salt-of-the-earth type – is introduced as a study in contrasts from Hurd's ramrod-straight, conservatively groomed and dressed father. "They are the paradox that makes genetics interesting," Hurd notes, "...people that deep down share some intrinsic characteristics and values, but their lives have gone in two completely different directions..."
A family reunion at the home of Hurd's elderly grandfather forms the framework of the book. Pedro Camello's strong artwork, with clear layouts and deft use of shadow, adds vitality and drama to scenes that would have been visually dull in less gifted hands. Relatives do "catching up," and a brief bio of "My Uncle Jeff" plays across several pages: from mischievous youth, to a tour in Vietnam ("dishonorably discharged"), marriage ("When are you going to grow up?" the Missus says) and divorce. But several panels show Jeff, indeed a big kid at heart, romping through the years with young Damon, and we understand why Hurd concludes the page by saying, "He was a great uncle."
For me the highlight of the book is a two-page spread, "My Family Tree," covering the mother's side of Hurd's family, from which he is now cut off ("...When the chips came down they shunned me. They betrayed me. They abandoned me..."), and haunted by, because of the fact that he still loves them. The portraits there spotlight Pedro Camello's exceptional gift for vivid characterization (he received no reference photos of the persons involved for the book, and created all from his imagination), the faces not quite full-blown caricature but with its touch of exaggeration well employed. And the descriptions of each person there encapsulate one of the most striking features of Hurd's writing. He'll mention "My step-grandfather Burt...I've always felt that pedophile sounded too stately...He's the reason my sister is afraid of her own shadow..." Then, when we're ready to consign Burt to cartoon-villain Hell, Hurd will add, "He loved jazz. He loved me. He was the only grandfather I ever knew."
It's a technique deployed to powerful effect throughout the "Family Tree," and elsewhere in
My Uncle Jeff Hurd likewise lets us mentally pigeonhole his uncle Steve, who "talks of killing various animals...with his car...and then eating them." We label him a redneck lout, but then Hurd continues, "He raised my cousin Chrissy, a victim of...cerebral palsy until she died...at the age of 18...No one loved her more than him...no one." In a culture and its media where we're accustomed to cardboard heroes and villains, it's a bracing shock to be reminded what a mixture of contradictory qualities people in real life can be. And it's why voices such as Damon Hurd's, willing to think outside the "good guys" and "bad guys" boxes, are so valuable for the continuing literary growth and health of the medium.
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