DivaLea: "Bee" Buzz or, Jason Little, Marry Me!

You'd be surprised at what two motivated couples can do with one crap camera. You'd be amused at how lousy famous people are at taking snapshots. I know, because I've seen the proof in double fistfuls of purloined moments on standard-sized glossy paper. I had a friend who worked in a one-hour photo and he and his boss would make extra sets of prints from rolls of girlfriends, foursomes, men who'd misunderstood where the camera added ten pounds, and snapshots taken by minor movie stars shooting on location for cable movie channels.

Jason Little's "Bee: Shutterbug Follies", was a webcomic I followed online for several years. What sold me, right off the bat, was that the title character, a photographer who worked in a one-hour photo, would make her own copies of the weirder (and skankier) off the rolls that came through the minilab. It gave me a knowing laugh. Even if you've never turned in a roll of amateur porn, you were always sure those lab people made themselves sets, weren't you?

After a long wait, Little's back to Bee with a new adventure, "Motel Art Improvment Service", with updates on Sundays. (Thanks to Scott McCloud and his impossibly on-the-ball blog for this news.)

Bee's a good girl, likeable, smart, caring, and tenacious when it comes to the welfare of people in need. Her fatal flaw and her gift is voyeurism: it makes her a wry and observant photographer, and also able to rationalize victimless swiping of people's private business that passes through her hands.

Bee works up a heavy karmic load swiping copies of threesomes, though: when she makes her own set of a gruesome roll showing an emblamer's reconstruction of a woman squashed, rotten.com-style, under the wheels of a horse cab, she finds herself caught up in a Rear Window humdinger with a Russian artist who does Korperwelten/Body Worlds-like "art", with photographs. Like Gunther von Hagens' corpses, the Russian's photographs of mayhem bring up uncomfortable feelings and dark thoughts. No one accuses murder, and yet there's plenty of brazenly-presented art that looks like the work of a serial killer. This is where Bee finds herself: who's going to believe there's a crime, when the evidence is so bald-faced? Is anyone that damn nutty?

I followed Bee rabidly for its run, anxious for every page Little produced, and sorry to see it end. Bee is no longer available in its entirety online, but the collected Bee, published by Doubleday's graphic novel line, can be found at Amazon.com for as little as 99 cents. (Whoever that seller is, they're a fool who should not be allowed keep their treasure!) You can also order "Shutterbug Follies" new from Little's favorite store, Mars Import.

Little does provide a 12-page appetizer of the flourescing goodness that is Bee:Shutterbug Follies for anyone who can't decide if a few bucks at Amazon is too much for Little's "bubblegum noir." (Two warning: you'll need a browser from this millenium: Beekeeper Amusements is frame-based, and Bee is not neccessarily work-safe. )