Fair Weather

In 1987 Joe Matt began work on the autobiographical comic series Peepshow (later instalments of which are collected in The Poor Bastard ). Peepshow quickly became an underground hit for its painfully honest accounts of Matt's dysfunctional relationships and his obsession with pornography, but Matt challenged his audience by turning to his childhood years in the 1995-1997 "Fair Weather" storyline. Fair Weather takes place over a weekend in young Matt's life, but this return to the past is anything but nostalgic. He spends most of the weekend alienating friends and family and attempting to avoid being beaten up by an former pal. Matt is on the verge of adolescence in the comic, and his awkward--and sometimes cruel--encounters with girls foreshadow the problems in his adult relationships. The foundation of Matt's life as a comic artist is also laid here, as he spends the weekend trying to find a copy of Action Comics No. 1 and track down his comics collection, which his mother has hidden. Despite some fans' complaints about Fair Weather lacking Peepshow 's usual focus on sexual obsessions and the failures of love, it is in many ways Matt's most challenging work. It's a searingly honest self-portrait of the artist as a truly horrible self-centered, greedy, uncaring, unsure of himself, and simultaneously contemptuous and fearful of the world. As in the case of other Peepshow comics, readers may find Matt repugnant and unlikable, but at the same time they can't help but identify with him just a little. While Fair Weather reads well enough as a stand-alone account of childhood, its real strength lies in the way that it fleshes out the rest of Matt's life. If Peepshow is Joe Matt's autobiography, Fair Weather is his secret diary. --Peter Darbyshire