Around New Year’s Eve 2020, my girlfriend and I left Chicago for a cabin out near Starved Rock State Park in North Central Illinois, a popular weekend destination for Chicagoland residents. It was going to be a relaxed New Year’s Eve with no internet, no cable and weak cell reception. Part of preparing for the trip involved downloading movies to my laptop, including Steve McQueen’s recently released series of films, Small Axe.

While all five of the films in the Small Axe anthology ended up being pretty good and worth watching, the second in the series, titled “Lover’s Rock”, really blew me away. The details about the characters and plot aren’t really the important part. It was more about what it was trying to portray and how it did. Taking place almost entirely during one night among Black British youth at a house party in 1981 West London, how it represented that night was treated with such respect, admiration and attention to details. I was left thinking that every generation, every subculture, deserves such a representation of just a regular part of their lives.

Boots-N-Booze is very much in a similar lane as “Lover’s Rock”. Originally an early US skinhead zine that ran from 1987 until the early 1990s, it was revived as a slick graphic novel in 2020. Like past issues, right about half of the stories are from the two editors, with the others coming from Mike Haber, Scotty Wheeler, Courtney Schamach, Misty Hecht, Matt Niswonger and Roy Sikes. The art has a similar split with the editors, and the rest is done by Danny Boy Smith, Scotty Wheeler, Courtney Schamach and Misty Hecht.

This issue has 11 stories or strips and like past issues, revolve around the tales of a crew of young skinheads in Santa Cruz, California during the late 1980s-early 1990s. For the most part, the stories are low-stakes and are probably not too different than the kind of humorous recollections you may exchange with your own friends from back in the day. But the construction and execution of the stories makes them interesting even though you yourself aren’t part of it. That’s not the easiest thing to do. Think about being the odd person out when you’re with a few people who’ve known each other since they were teenagers and are spending time telling ‘Remember when..?’ accounts. You probably quickly start tuning out.

Even the stories that do have higher stakes, such as confrontations with neo-Nazi boneheads or other youth subcultures, still end up concluding with a joke or something that really reflects the silliness of being young.

Although I am comparing this graphic novel to the second film in the Small Axe anthology, there is one important difference. Steve McQueen and Courttia Newland, the writers, were 12 and 8, when the events in “Lover’s Rock” are being portrayed. They weren’t creating something that represented their youth, but of those 5-10 years older them. Boots-N-Booze, however, is created by the people who did live these stories. They manage to do this without the kind of bitterness or ‘These kids nowadays’ saltiness that many can’t avoid when passing on their experiences. In my opinion, this may be even more difficult to do than to try and paint a picture of youth that came before you.

All of the artwork is great, but my favorites are from Loya, Reitano and Hecht. Reitano also does a series of comics called Nineteen Eighty Seven that is similar to his work in Boots-N-Booze. It’s hard for me to explain, but Loya’s drawings are some of the most satisfying to look at out of any comic strip type thing I’ve ever seen. Hecht’s stuff bothered me for days, as it reminded me of something that was just out of reach in my memory. It’s like watercolored Americanized manga influence? 1960s Archie filtered through the lens of 1980s minicomics? Not sure, but I like it.

In summary, another great creation from the Santa Cruz crew.

Boots-N-Booze: Volume 4, Edited by James Reitano & Joel Loya, Published by Pirates Press Records, $17.99 USD, https://shop.piratespressrecords.com/products/bobop363rd-lp, Comes with a 7″ of Swingin’ Utters covering two Cock Sparrer songs