Tits, Ass & Real Estate is a crudely
drawn black and white series of stories from the life of Eve Gilbert. Most of them involve her getting drunk,
high, screwed or screwed over by or with her friends and fellow workers. She works in bars, sex shops, and
occasionally steals, as well as doing her art.
It’s angry and bawdy, and occasionally gets surreal — objects talk,
people appear as clowns, and there are even some space aliens, all in grimy
dangerous cities. The writing is often
hard to read, and the pages are crammed with small details that you only notice
after reading them through a few times.
You get the impression that Gilbert is often pushed close to breakdown,
and her artwork is possibly a form of emotional release for her. Her life stories are not particularly
interesting in themselves, and she keeps getting into the same sorts of problems. If the book has appeal, it will be far more
in its artwork. Even though the
production values are pretty bad, there’s an energy and creativity there which
could appeal to committed comic fans, especially those who like stories about
the really gritty details of a young woman’s experience. Recommended if you like the work of Aline
Kominsky-Crumb, Julie
Doucet, Roberta
Gregory and the Twisted
Sisters collections of Bad Girl Art.

© 2003 Christian Perring. All
rights reserved.

Link: Publisher’s web page

Christian Perring, Ph.D., is Chair of the Philosophy
Department at Dowling College, Long Island, and editor of Metapsychology
Online Review.  His main research is on philosophical issues in
medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: ArtAndPhotography, Memoirs