One Last Dose of Joe Matt’s Self-Deprecating Humor in Peepshow #15

Joe Matt is one of the patron saints of autobiographical comics.  Throughout the 1990s, Matt chronicled his life- the best parts of it and the worst parts of it.  In Peepshow #15 the last issue published posthumously after his passing in 2023, we see Matt just as he always showed us before— the humor, the self-deprecating honesty, the always-the-underdog mentality that defined his comics.  But there are differences in this final issue as well- Matt moved from Toronto back to Philadelphia and then to Los Angeles, he tried to put his obsessive porn video collection behind him, and he tried to get an HBO show made.  If not growth, there are at least signs of a different kind of momentum here than he has exhibited before.  Even just the fact that Matt had nearly an entire issue of Peepshow completed before his death (Chester Brown stepped in and completed inking a few pages of this issue to finish it) exhibits him moving beyond a creative block that existed for nearly 20 years.  Peepshow #15 is an autobio comic like all the ones from the 1990s sent forward to us in 2024.  It’s a relic of a past time but instead of feeling old or outdated or even just stale, it shows a cartoonist who is open and honest about his image of himself.  Maybe a bit too honest.  

Today so much of what we consume is considered “content.”  Even some of the better comics out there feel like they could have been produced off of some assembly line that used algorithms to give their audiences what they want.  There’s a sameness to comics, mainstream and indy, that makes it hard to find voices of the writers, artists, and cartoonists.  Even when comics today claim to be autobiographical, there’s often a construction or facade to them that feels like a barrier to protect either the creator or the audience.  You get access to only so much of the creator, no less and definitely no more.  It’s part of the world today where we’ve got more comics getting created than ever before— it’s great because we get all kinds of access to what these creators have to say but it kind of sucks because so many of them don’t have anything to say.  (And if by chance you’re a comic creator and wondering if I’m talking about you, I think that says more about you than it does me.)

Matt’s 6-panel or (mostly) 8-panel pages give him a solid framework to build on.  Reading these short stories, there’s very much a steady build-up, from the scene setting of the story to the punch line.  It could be a panel or a couple of panels But that setup leads to this practically cathartic burst of energy followed by a panel or two of being able to nod our heads at Matt’s conclusion or to think “Yup, that’s Joe Matt, alright.”  

One of the funnier pieces in this issue (among many funny pieces,) is Matt recounting cartoonist Seth’s 2003 farewell speech for Matt when he was preparing to move back to the States with his then-girlfriend.  It’s 4 pages of Seth waxing nostalgically over his, Chester Brown, and Matt’s friendship.  The speech itself practically feels like a Matt comic (apropos of Matt turning it into a comic) that describes their meeting, their friendship, and their butting heads.  “We became brothers,” Seth said.  “And that group of friendship has been one more of the most important things in my life.”  It’s sweet and touching and buried amongst jabs at Matt like “Chet and I often joked that we wished we could trade Joe in for someone more normal— like perhaps Joe Sacco.”  That kind of brotherly shot-taking where they could seem to be a big part of their friendship, particularly between Seth and Matt.  

It’s a great speech but this being a Joe Matt comic, it can’t just end on a nice beat, with Matt thanking Seth and asking for his notecards so he could make this comic.  Of course, there has to be one last jab hidden in those cards at Matt’s expense that he sees in the last couple of panels.  “This part is totally wrong” he fumes at Seth.  “I’m not like a grain of sand… YOU are!  You’re the grain of sand!  I’m the fuckin’ PEARL!”  It’s a great 4 page comic, really kind of touching, extolling what his friends saw in Matt but he has this great timing to undercut all of that at the end in a way that’s a perfect example of the friendship that Seth described.

Matt is making fun of himself in these comics. He knows who people think he is, mostly because that’s how he’s shown himself to be over the years.  Our image of him is based on his own image of himself.  In his comics, he both accepts and rejects that self-image, struggling against it even as he’s putting these confessions down on the page.  If there’s any ego in Matt’s comics, it’s an ego that drives him to be open, honest, and even kind of brutal with the audience and himself.  It gets to the point where we have to ask are we laughing with him at all of this or at him?  He’s the but of his own jokes, always setting himself up to be the one we all laugh at.  We don’t laugh at Seth or any of Matt’s girlfriends or any of his other friends.  Those last panels of these short stories deliver their comedic release at Matt’s expense. 

This is Joe Matt but it is also his perception of himself.  It’s a true-to-life caricature of the cartoonist that feels so real and so honest that we believe it’s the man himself on display here and not his memories filtered through both 20 years (most of the events of this comic take place around 2003) and his self-perception. And who among us is the best judge of themselves?  He gets to be the jokester and the butt of the jokes in his comic.  When he’s giving a rundown of all of his past girlfriends, the approach isn’t about how crazy his exes are but his own lack of growth and maturity, as so many of his comics are.  He recognizes in all of these relationships that he is the problem but lacks the wherewithal to change.

Peepshow #15 feels like the end of something but it’s more than the end of a body of work or the life of a cartoonist.  This may be his last testament but it’s unfinished.  Joe Matt’s life was a work in progress and this final issue demonstrates some kind of forward movement in his life, trying to put some things like porn and even Toronto behind him as he looked to the future.  And now, we won’t see what the last 20 years of Joe Matt’s life were like— how he may have changed and grown or how he may have stagnated and just fallen back on his old ways of being.  Honestly, having this book now feels optimistic; we can see him wanting to and trying to change.  He shows us these glimmers of hope for approaching something new in this issue.  It almost doesn’t matter whether or not any of this came to fruition.  For most of us, this last issue of Peepshow leaves us with both the comfort of Joe Matt (who probably is never going to change) and the promise of Joe Matt (who was trying to change.)