Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man
Porcellino's graphic novel about his last year in high school,Perfect Example(1999), will be reissued in style this fall by high-toned graphic-novel publisher Drawn & Quarterly. Expect much the same for this micropress effort about some of Porcellino's subsequent life. But don't wait. Porcellino's autobiographical comics rank with the best because of their unpretentiousness and candor. In a prose introduction, Porcellino says that he and his childhood pals thought the "mosquito men" they saw in suburban Illinois "got paid to do what we did for fun." At 20, he became one and for several years in Illinois and then Colorado hunted larvae, sprayed insecticide, and eventually changed his mind about the job. The 1- to 20-page pieces inDiaryrange formally from a list of "Inhuman Bastards of the Deep" (microfauna in a drop of water) to an essay on a typical workday ("Mountain Song") to conventional narratives. Porcellino's usual Matt Groening-simple drawing style becomes denser according to affect as much as subject (see the piece on spraying at night); it's always perfectly pitched.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved