Birdseye Bristoe
Dan ZettwochA pair of teens arrives to spend the summer with their granduncle Birdseye just as the town has embarked on an ambitious but controversial project to erect a massive cell phone tower. As the summer unfolds, we learn about the town’s handful of business establishments (a bait shop, an adult superstore), its landmarks (the water tower, the Great Fallen Sign), and its eccentric residents, foremost among them the crusty Uncle Birdseye, a WWII vet who owns most of the town’s land. The ambling narrative is interspersed with Zettwoch’s signature mock-informative, Popular Mechanics–derived diagrams that reveal how to make a Red Cow milkshake or how to harvest nightcrawlers. Zettwoch’s low-tech graphic approach, utilizing ballpoint, colored pencils, and whiteout, is an ideal match for this fetchingly ramshackle slice of bygone Americana.
| status | Copy #1 (5002): in |
|---|---|
| genre | Humor and Satire » General Humor |
| publisher | Drawn & Quarterly |
| publish date | June 19, 2012 |
| popularity | checked out 7 time(s) |
I’ve been wanting to read a full length Dan Zettwoch story since I first discovered his work (Kramers Ergot, I think?). Birdseye satisfied that itch perfectly. There’s everything I love from Zettwoch in here: cutaways and other informative/humorous comic diagrams, great small-town kinds of characters, beautifully designed pages.
The story too has a really unique social perspective. This story takes place in the early 90’s when cellphones were just beginning to become of mainstream use. We mainly follow the story of Uncle Birdseye with his niece and nephew. We see this world through a very narrow lense and don’t ever even come to know the real name of the central character. We understand through bits and pieces of overheard conversations that on the periphery of the town, there are a few big money businessmen who are making a lot of changes which are changing much of our daily lives.
It doesn’t seem like a very deep story at first, but in retrospect, there were a lot of things being said through this book. Good job Dan Z!