Peep pg.38 (2024)

Peep (2024)
"I'm Dating Again"
Page 38
Edited by Sammy Harkham and Steven Weissman.
Published by Brain Dead Studios.

Pencil and ink on paper

Kevin Huizenga

Kevin Huizenga is a modern master of cartooning. Largely known for his “everyman” character “Glenn Ganges,” who if not the comics equivalent of DeNero to Huizenga's Scorsese, at least Glen is Chris Eigeman to Kevin's Whilt Stillman (IDK IDK still workshopping that one). I mention Glenn because the first thing that stood out to me when seeing the original art for this piece, is the bottom left showing "Glenn" as the name of the person who is featured in this one page story, made up of 12 panels that make up a mosaic, made to look like the protagonist's dating profile, instead of the published version's "Name." So leaves you to wonder why the name was changed in the final piece and what provoked Kevin to unassociate his main character with this particular story.

Brian Nicholson writes about this page well in his review for the Eisner nominated anthology Peep, which this page appears in, for The Comics Journal, "Ours is a changing world, and Kevin Huizenga provides a one-pager that demonstrates the way in which the conservative male mindset has changed since the Bush-era Christianity of his Kramers Ergot 5 story Jeepers Jacobs to the dick-pills new age of the neverending Trump campaign. Here he adapts a Craigslist personal ad into a cubist portrait of man and Oregon ablaze. As seen in last year’s Fielder 2, Huizenga’s thoughtful and observant approach is able to capture the increasing mania of the internet-abetted fracturing of shared reality. He is one of the best we’ve got, capturing the feeling of teetering over the edge of that which threatens to destroy our ability to capture and communicate any feeling at all. In retrospect, it is very funny that he spent the past decade-plus writing about trying to fall asleep."

Fun thing that can be seen on a piece of production comic art, such as this, are notes in the margins, in this case there is one in the upper left hand corner, which has Kramer’s 10 crossed out. So I'm going to assume this was submitted for Kramer’s but was held off until Harkham’s next anthology, co-edited with cartoonist Steve Weissman, Peep.

Thanks to Sean from Athenaeum Comic Art for helping acquire this page.

Personal note: I remember my wife showing me this Craigslist writeup in Harpers when it came out. https://harpers.org/archive/2017/11/total-eclipse-of-the-heart/