Ray Pride

Forty-three-year-old comics artist Joe Matt, whose comics include "The Poor Bastard" and "Peepshow," is promoting his new hardcover collection, "Spent," at Quimby’s.

The cover image of his alter ego face down on a bed, surrounded by soiled tissues, is a striking sight on such a handsome edition. Displaying a desiccated facsimile of R. Crumb’s epic, lifelong moan, Matt takes pains in his pages to insist that the story of the chronic masturbator whose days are spent chiseling his friends—fellow cartoon artists Seth and Chester Brown—and editing VHS dubs of hardcore pornography for his persistent delectation, ended in Toronto many years ago. At the discussion, however, led by Ivan Brunetti, whose "Schizo" comics are among the finest contemporary artifacts of self-mortification, Matt seems compelled to confess in front of the small crowd, largely young, beaming women with fresh-scrubbed faces that soak in his dither, that the collection burgeons still and he may now be the stingiest man in Los Feliz.

"In the books I jerk off constantly. As far as addictions go, I feel like I chose the right one." He admits the collection ranges past 1,000 tapes now, "edited to my taste." Whenever Brunetti nudges the conversation to less obsessive ground, Matt spirals into confessional detail, then tires of his own story. "I wanted the focus to be about porn addiction. It’s hard to have a relationship and jerk off ten times a day. You can’t find that balance or anywhere near that balance." And he elaborates on the fondness for young skirt he shares with his character: "I’m too old now to be like chasing 20-year-olds." He’s not a prolific artist and brags on living cheaply. "I haven’t had a job in like—since I was 20."

Matt describes comics as one might a sticky tissue. "The single-issue comic books, y’know, are meaningless to me, the flimsiness, the impermanence." He says he runs away from the perfectionism he sees in Chris Ware’s work, but "My original art has so much white-out on it…My god, this is boring. Everything in ‘Spent’ is as perfect as I could get it." He looks out to the crowd, now down to his feet. "Is this boring? This is boring."

(2007-06-22)

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