Wally Gropius

Superficially resembling 1960s teenage humor comics, Tim Hensley's graphic novel Wally Gropius is actually an acute satire of power, celebrityhood, and modern culture, and tells the story of the titular character, who bears a closer resemblance to a teenaged Richie Rich or a classmate of Archie Andrews at Riverdale High than he does to the famous Bauhaus architect whose name he shares. Wally Gropius is the human Dow Jones, the teen who put the dough in bread, the heir to a vast petrochemical conglomerate. When the elder Thaddeus Gropius confronts Wally with the boilerplate plot ultimatum that he must marry "the saddest girl in the world" or be disinherited, a yarn unravels that is part screwball comedy, part homage to the teen and personality comics of the 1960s, and part unhinged parable on the lucrativeness of changing your identity. Hensley's dialogue is witty, lyrical, sampled, dada, and elliptical, and all in the service of a very bizarre mystery. There's sex, violence, rock and roll, intrigue, betrayal -all brought home in Hensley's truly inimitable style. Created during an era when another well-off "W" was stuffing the coffers of the morbidly solvent, Wally Gropius transforms futile daydreams and nightmares into the absurdity of capital.