Coin-Op 漫畫選集：1997-2017

我應該意識到他們是商業插畫家——他們的作品具有所有的特徵。漫畫面板的打磨、構造、架構。這一切都體現了對設計的深刻洞察，對設計的深切關注，對故事的精準犀利的敘述。

Coin-Op Comics Anthology: 1997-2017 collects the first twenty years of short comics work by siblings Maria Hoey and Peter Hoey. The siblings live on opposite ends of the American continent and work together, writing and drawing on the same digital pages somewhat simultaneously. Some pieces were co-written by Charles Paul Freund, and the song lyrics in particular seem to be mostly from Freund.

Coin-Op Comics Anthology: 1997-2017 收集了瑪麗亞·霍伊 (Maria Hoey) 和彼得·霍伊 (Peter Hoey) 姐弟前二十年的短篇漫畫作品。兄弟姐妹生活在美洲大陸的兩端，一起工作，在同一個數位頁面上同時書寫和繪畫。有些作品是由查爾斯·保羅·弗羅因德共同創作的，尤其是歌詞似乎大部分來自弗羅因德。

The book is structured in a reverse order, starting with issue five of Coin-Op, which the Hoeys self-publish. Before that are the earlier stories from Blab! The stories are presented in a quirky, non-chronological order for a particular reading experience.

這本書的結構是相反的，從霍伊夫婦自行出版的《Coin-Op》第五期開始。在此之前是 Blab 的早期故事！這些故事以一種奇特的、非時間順序的方式呈現，以提供特定的閱讀體驗。

The Hoeys are successful illustrators who also make comics. As Monte Beauchamp, who “discovered” the Hoeys for comics as editor of Blab! in the ’90s, points out in a text appreciation in the book, comics are vastly less remunerative than illustration. He does a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation of just how much money the Hoeys could have made with the same number of pictures for commercial clients.

霍伊夫婦是成功的插畫家，同時也製作漫畫。蒙特·波尚 (Monte Beauchamp) 是《Blab!》的編輯，「發現」了 Hoeys 漫畫。書中的文字賞析中指出，在90年代，漫畫的報酬遠低於插畫。他快速粗略地計算了一下霍伊夫婦為商業客戶拍攝相同數量的照片可以賺多少錢。

The work has all of the hallmarks of commercial illustration: the polish, the construction, the architecture of the comics panels. It all shows a deep insight into design and a deep concern for telling stories precisely and sharply.

作品具有商業插畫的所有特徵：潤飾、結構、漫畫面板的結構。這一切都展現了對設計的深刻洞察以及對準確而尖銳地講述故事的深切關注。

Some of the stories are straightforward narratives, but many are more dreamlike, or design-driven. There’s a series of illustrated “articles” about jazz musicians – all of them, I think, entirely fictional – and some pieces that seem to be mostly song lyrics (original, I think) turned into visual art. There’s another series about two sad-sack characters, anthropomorphic dogs or dog-headed men, named Saltz and Pepz who get into various scrapes during what seems to be the Great Depression. The Hoeys also have a few stories in a twelve-panel grid, showing the same wide scene each page, as big events crash or break across multiple panels and characters.

有些故事是直截了當的敘述，但許多故事更夢幻，或是設計驅動的。有一系列關於爵士音樂家的插圖「文章」——我認為所有這些文章完全是虛構的——還有一些似乎主要是歌詞（我認為是原創的）的作品變成了視覺藝術。還有另一個系列講述了兩個悲傷的人物，擬人化的狗或狗頭人，名叫薩爾茨和佩普茲，他們在似乎是大蕭條期間陷入了各種困境。霍伊夫婦還在十二個面板的網格中寫了一些故事，每頁都展示了相同的廣闊場景，因為重大事件在多個面板和角色之間發生衝突或中斷。

Many of the stories are set in the vague past, what I think of as the ’30s or the ’50s – not during The War, not during anything major or notable – with boxy cars and people in constructed suits and all the furniture of a world that’s familiar and stable and entirely gone.

許多故事都發生在模糊的過去，我認為是30 年代或50 年代——不是在戰爭期間，也不是在任何重大或值得注意的事情期間——有四四方方的汽車和穿著西裝的人們以及一個熟悉、穩定的世界已經完全消失了。

Even the pieces I call straightforward are very Hoey-esque: designed, often to the point of being schematic, telling stories as much in the ways the panels are laid out on the page as in the things that happen in those panels. None of it is obvious; none of their work is ever obvious, I’m coming to believe.

即使是我所說的直截了當的作品也非常霍伊式的：設計通常達到了示意性的程度，以面板在頁面上的佈局方式和這些面板中發生的事情一樣講述故事。這些都不是顯而易見的；我開始相信，他們的工作都不是顯而易見的。

There’s a lot of depth and interest in Coin-Op: a lot of time and thought went into every panel here. Even the wordless, imagistic stories – which, as a Word Person, I had to admit I didn’t really “get” – are full of wonders and surprises. The Hoeys are as interested in how they tell stories, how they present moments visually, how those visually feel, as they are in the story being told.

Coin-Op 有許多深度和興趣：這裡的每個小組都投入了大量的時間和想法。即使是無言的、意象性的故事——作為一個文字人，我不得不承認我並沒有真正「理解」——也充滿了奇蹟和驚喜。霍伊夫婦對他們如何講故事、如何以視覺方式呈現瞬間以及這些視覺感受如何感興趣，就像他們對所講述的故事一樣感興趣。

They’re illustrators. It’s what they do. And they do it really well.

他們是插畫家。這就是他們所做的。他們做得非常好。