The Bunch's Power Pak Comics #1, by Aline Kominsky-Crumb (1979).
Revelatory, ground-breaking autobiographical collection of comics stories. Aline Kominksy's confessional, scrawly cartooning is made up of a great variety of agonized linework, full of contrasting hatching and stippling give a sense of real texture to her drawings. All her figures are awkwardly posed, stuffed into ill-fitting clothing, with huge noses, blubbery lips. And what these figures do and say! Oh my! The stories here chronicle Aline's early life and upbringing and depict taboo subjects like her parents having sex, Aline sitting on the toilet, her love-hate relationship with her mother ("Blabette") and Aline confessing all her most non-flattering, innermost desires and vanities, all in abject, brain-searing detail that influenced a generation of comics makers.
The critics: "Aline depicts this all with a critical eye, sometimes commenting directly even when she doesn’t need to (e.g. , a panel showing the Bunch receiving money for her report card is accompanied by a narrative tag labeling the moment her “first training in capitalist greed and opportunism”) . The approach creates a tension between Kominsky’s need to grow out of those elements of her upbringing that are offensive to her and the self-obsession implicit in her continuing autobiographical drive."
--Bill Sherman, “Underground Comix: Memories and Studebakers” (The Comics Journal #55, 1980).
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