31 Days Of CCS, #3: Ana Two, Iris Gudeon

Ana Two is one of the most exciting artists to emerge from CCS this decade (and I believe this so fervently, that we will be publishing book by them soon). This little mini, Storm Drain, came from this year's Riff Raff anthology, which in turn is edited by CCS alum King Ray. This is only a 4-page, but so many of Two's interesting storytelling elements are at work here. This is a two-track narrative, with the first arc being about a nameless narrator leaving behind a journal on a napkin that yearned to be drained, washed away, and become a new person. This accompanies the distorted, psychedelic imagery of a body wasting away, becoming skeletal, and finally being reformed. The bottom third of each page is taken up by big text, acting as a sort of call-and-response with the rest of the narrative. Every gesture and statement Two makes in their comics is big. The emotions are over-the-top, bursting out--uncontainable. The desire to live, to die, to control, to be controlled, supercedes everything else, and the exaggerated art reflects. 

I find Iris Gudeon's strange little comics to be utterly baffling in a way I enjoy. The figures (usually animals) are simple and cute, the humor is often corny in a deliberately labored way, and it all amounts to what you see is what you get. There's no larger message, no intricate character work, no intense drawings. It is purely strange and cute gag work, but less in terms of having punchlines and more in terms of one artist's fancy flowing smoothly and freely on the page. All of this is true about Standing Cats, whose sensibilities are somewhere between Dr. Seuss and B.Kliban. Drawn in what looks like colored pencils, there's a vibrancy to these yellow cats going about various activities, including building chairs (with or without a sense of obligation), doing taxes, and staring at the sun. It's just a bit of nonsense, but I always look forward to this kind of nonsense from Gudeon. One thing I did notice is that their line is much more confident here than it was in their earlier minis. 

31 Days Of CCS, #2: Daryl Seitchik & Ellie Liota

Daryl Seitchik has built up an impressive body of work since their first minis over a dozen years ago, and I was especially excited to see another "Missy" comic. These comics are adapted from her childhood diaries, and Seitchik seamlessly works that material into a visual presentation that offers up ironic, funny, cruel, and deeply sad juxtapositions against the original text. As the title suggests, the new Missy 9/11 is Seitchik's impressions of the 9/11 terrorist attack as an 11-year-old in middle school. An entry a few days before the event finds her lamenting her body image and slow going through puberty. The next entry is two days after 9/11, and she's already moved on. The rest of the comic is structured as a news report, starring Daryl as a newscaster clad in a red jacket, first commenting on the school cafeteria's food and then moving on to 9/11 itself. A later story where that particular date had its own family meaning is a fascinating anecdote, and young Seitchik's attempts at creating a sense of gravity with her text are painfully earnest. Seitchik's cartooning, as always, is fluid and assured, and the red, white & blue color palette adds an additional satirical touch. 

Ellie Liota's Foreward is an older comic, done as part of the Ed Emberley assignment at CCS. This assignment calls for students to draw a comic in the style of Emberley: built on circles, squares, and triangles. It's a reduction of line to its basics that asks a cartoonist to focus instead on the cartooning that can be created through this simplicity of form. Liota further constrains things by rendering everything within a six-panel grid. She deliberately plays around with negative space by not introducing any kind of backgrounds--the reader is asked to focus on a tiny figure and what they have to say. Liota essentially turns this into a meta exploration of Emberley's technique, focusing on formal elements as the character brings forth various colorful objects. Later, it becomes meditative, as the figure asks the reader a number of questions. It's playful all the way through, and that sense of play through the motion on the page is the essence of Emberley's work. 

31 Days Of CCS, #1: Colleen Frakes

Kicking off another year of reviews of alumni and students of the Center for Cartoon Studies, it's fitting that I should start with Colleen Frakes. This is the 20th anniversary of the school, which is frankly astonishing. It points to the need for and viability of a focused curriculum for comics, as comics have become a more pervasive medium in the past twenty years. Frakes was one of the first graduates of CCS, and she's maintained a steady practice even as she's had to go through a few odysseys in order to get published. I've always enjoyed her take on fairy tales and myths, as well as her autobiographical material, and she produced quite a bit in the past year. 

After a delay to finish her graphic novel Knots, Frakes finished another long-running project, Iron Scars. That was originally released as a series of short minicomics, but she finished the back half in a nearly 200-page collection. A lot of Frakes' work is informed by her unusual childhood growing up on a prison island off the coast of the state of Washington. Iron Scars reimagines that island as originally having been claimed by faeries until humans stumbled upon it and settled it without permission. In the first book, it's established that faeries were not only stealing human children and turning them into changelings, they were also making their parents forget that they even had children. Opposing them were the witches of the island, including the bizarre, doddering Sea Witch. She was one of many fun character designs, as she was essentially a humanoid pile of seaweed and fish. 

The action of this book starts with some kids who managed to open a portal to the Faerie realm in order to rescue their missing siblings. The more interesting part of the story is the multi-generational conflict among the witches, especially as it's revealed that a war between Faerie and the witches traumatized the family and led to a couple of deaths. Frakes did some very clever world-building in setting up how each witch was different: a sky witch and a wood witch, but also a book witch and a math witch. Frakes never skimps on putting her characters in danger and creates some stakes that have teeth, and the action sequences in Faerie are harrowing and unpredictable. The changelings really play to Frakes' strengths as an artist, as their simplicity is amplified by essentially being little piles of black ink. 

Possibly due to the delay in finishing the book, Frakes' style noticeably changes about halfway through, as she refines her normally chunky line weight into something thinner. The lettering also changes from all caps to mixed-case, and it's also thinner and clearer. The change is a little jarring, and I don't think it was an improvement. Indeed, that chunky line was one of the things I liked best about her art. Iron Scars has a lot of characters, and they're sometimes hard to keep track of, but Frakes keeps the narrative pretty steady even with such a large cast. I'm glad she finished it, especially as it touched on a lot of images from her old Tragic Relief minicomics series. 

Frakes' new series is called Cursed, appearing on her Patreon. You can see her new style in its full form here, no doubt influenced by making Knots. This is in full color, and that thinner line makes a lot more sense with color. The first chapter finds Baba Yaga (a recurring character in Frakes' comics) turning a village girl into a horse after she revealed the girls went to the nearby city to have children.  The second finds a witch rejecting a local woman for fear of what a romance between them might bring, as well as various talking animals and some odd quests. This one's just getting warmed up, but I really like Frakes' use of decorative touches and her use of color. Cursed also feels a little lighter and more whimsical than many of her fantasy stories. 

How Are You Doing? is Frakes' latest catch-up memoir. I've said it before, and it's still true--Frakes' self-caricature is one of my favorites in all of comics. There's a slightly rubbery quality to the way she draws limbs that's perfectly cartoony and fits snugly with her mix of sincerity and cynicism. There's also a sense of how profoundly upsetting and awful the world has become--how does one react? Make comics, raise your kid, try to teach others. There's also a bit of family drama in there, which is rare since Frakes rarely writes about her family in the present tense. As always, I prefer her heavier line weights, and there's plenty of these comics in there. 

Finally, there's Hourly Comics: 2020-2025. I find such comics gimmicks often have limited long-term appeal, but the aforementioned virtues of Frakes' line paired with year-to-year changes and similarities make for a surprisingly cohesive package. For example, one highlight each year was going on a walk with a friend and her dog with a gloriously lustrous coat. We also get to see Frakes & family deal with COVID and watch her daughter jump from being a newborn to a toddler. Frakes has worked on her line, her cartooning, and her storytelling relentlessly for well over 20 years now, and her commitment to her craft and joy in her storytelling are apparent on every page. 

Suzan Colon's Wrasslin' Centaurs

Suzan Colón was a student of mine at SAW (Sequential Artists Workshop) last year, and she hit on an ingenious concept that she's working to bring to a longer form in her series Wrasslin' Centaurs. (Full disclosure, she listed me as an editor of this comic.) The concept is, on the surface, a silly one: a world where mythological creatures like centaurs and cyclopes are real and living in the modern day. This is a possible setting for a high-fantasy narrative; instead, the titular centaurs are struggling pro wrestlers in an independent league. The in-ring narrative does provide a lot of action, but this comic is really a romance narrative above all else. Colón has a strong ear for dialogue, but it's her visual eye for detail that makes this a fun comic. 

Her figures are cartoony and appealing, drawing from a Dan DeCarlo Archie tradition. However, Colón is something of a maximalist, often layering lots of extra gags and details beneath the clear action of the character narrative. That extends to the details on the cover, easter eggs about the extended world they live in, and decorative/humorous details on the inside and back covers. What's most important is that Colón  quickly establishes the set-up and the character motivations, though one of the three centaurs is not named until the very last page. Various romantic configurations are also established, and they are all filtered through a fantastical lens (they are creatures) in a manner that reflects everyday concerns (concern over dating a centaur because he doesn't have a stable job). Within that fantastical lens, Colón draws in a mostly naturalistic style, leaning into exaggeration to enhance humor or action. Upon reading this short comic, one immediately wants to know more about the characters. 

Tanya Dorph-Mankey's Count The Lights #2

The second chapter of Tanya Dorph-Mankey's queer wrestling epic, Count The Lights, ratchets up the tension between the intense heel wrestler Alan Jacobs and his infuriatingly casual rival Ryan Roberts. The story is told from a kayfabe perspective; that is, that the matches and stories behind them are real. Dorph-Mankey works big: big pages, big panels, big fights, big emotions. Wrestling here serves a function not unlike the songs in a musical: when the emotion of a situation is so overwhelming that mere speech no longer suffices to express it. As such, the actual wrestling moves all feel authentically drawn, and Dorph-Mankey is careful to pay a lot of attention to detail in how the men move in the ring. Jacobs is ambitious and clearly has a lot to prove in returning to the East Coast, and he can't stand how Roberts treats things like he's indulging in a punchline only he understands. 

The attraction that one would normally be subsumed in this kind of narrative is made plain and then demystified by the other members of his wrestling faction. The ridiculously bearded brothers Max & Jeremy are simultaneously his friends, his supporters, and also his enablers. The cruel leader of the faction, Caelum, tells Alan to fuck Roberts and get it over with. Roberts starts getting in his head and in his dreams. In one sequence, it's difficult to tell what's an actual match and what is the dream that he wakes up from. It's obvious that the lack of clarity is part of the point, but it felt a bit like cheating to advance their flirtation that far with so little warning, only to negate it. That thread is picked up again more effectively later, even as Jacobs continues to deny not just attraction, but his deeper feelings for Roberts as well. There are also signs of jealousy, as the easy friendship of Roberts' faction is very different than the survival-of-the-fittest quality he has with Caelum. The chapter ends with Jacobs once again trying to sublimate these feelings in the ring and challenge the champion, the mysterious masked wrestler Orion. There's a classic wrestling face-off, as Dorph-Mankey blends wrestling conventions with comics storytelling conventions in a way that feels both bombastic and organic. 

Comics from SAW Week: Meg Lentz

Meg Lentz is a SAW graduate whose work focuses on queerness, mental health, and social justice. Working through their alter ego, Lenny Ditz, Lentz's comics are usually very funny. Working through their assignments in SAW's year-long program, Lentz stretched into poetic comics as well. The second issue of their Lenny Ditz comic continues on the memoir track, with Lenny graduating from comics and getting a retail job at a certain popular grocery store chain here nicknamed as "Raider Rob's." 

What they thought would be a fun and queer-friendly experience turned out to be a nightmare as they endured typical corporate bullshit, mandatory "fun" like synchronized dance routines for customers, and a concussion when some stock fell on their head. Lentz exaggerates this in a pirate motif, as each employee gets a parrot and a "box-cutlass" and their boss talks like a pirate. Lentz makes a lot of clever & funny cartooning decisions, with a potentially tricky open-page layout paying off as it allowed them to pack a lot of gags and information on each page. The final gag, where a "flash jig" results in Lenny getting hit in the head with a plank and being trod on by their co-workers, works well because it pushes the concept to its limit. 

Lenny Ditz #3: Lenny Ditz Meets Sappho is even funnier, as it tells a tale of high-school Lenny, who had yet to come out but considered themselves to be a "good ally." Tongue is firmly in cheek here as young Lenny struggled to write a research paper about the famous poet whose work is mostly fragmentary. Falling asleep in front of an altar to Sappho, Lenny "gay magically" appears in ancient Greece and happens upon Sappho and her admirers. The genius of this comic is that because so little of Sappho's work has been translated, nearly every bit of dialogue in this part of the comic consists of lyrics from Abba. (Mamma Mia, indeed!) Lentz has a knack for wringing out every bit of humor from the premise of "Oh, I'm not gay, I'm just an ally" and pairing it with the absurdity of the Abba references. The front and back covers feature familiar uses of the famous vases that had images of Sappho--a clever decorative feature. Lentz's cartooning is just plain solid throughout, especially the way they depict bodies interacting in space using an open page layout. Lentz's figure drawing is a bit on the plain side, though the humor in their pieces comes from their concepts and storytelling, and less from the drawings themselves. 

A Girl Without Skin is a total departure as a two-track narrative showing a worm but featuring narration by a girl born without skin who is tortured by her constant pain and inability to feel the touch of another. The visual track looks like it was done as a print, with stark black & white illustrating a worm being picked up, crushed, and flicked away. It's a double-barrelled misery explosion presented in a concentrated and beautiful format. It's entirely hand made, with the lettering being taped on. The darkness inherent in Lentz's more humorous work is on full display here. 

Finally, there's I Like To Draw...With My Eyes Shut!, a fun like sketch zine that's exactly what it sounds like. It's a great exercise, because it forces the artist to trust their hand instead of their eyes. Unsurprisingly, when Lentz was drawing action sequences (like figure skaters), the shapes were fluid, dynamic, and immediately recognizable. Their self-portraits, on the other hand, were far less coherent and recognizable. I'd recommend this to any cartoonist who wants to draw more expressively. 

Trondheim & Sfar's Dungeon: The Early Years

Lewis Trondheim & Joann Sfar's Dungeon (or Donjon, in the original French) is my favorite comics series of all time. It's a giant, sprawling epic that's both a love letter to and a send-up of fantasy spectacles. It spoofs overly convoluted world-building and plots while establishing its own deep lore. The essence of the story is this: there is a dungeon, run by its Keeper, that actively encourages adventurers to attempt to take its treasures. Of course, it's full of horrible monsters and traps designed to murder any party, which means the keeper takes all of their treasure as well. All of its characters are anthropomorphic animals, which makes sense since Trondheim drew most of the early series, and that is his style. 

The main title, nicknamed "Zenith," shows the dungeon at its height and introduces an idiot duck named Herbert trying to get a job in the dungeon. He befriends the Keeper's top man, a dragon named Marvin, and accidentally acquires a sword that demands he go on a quest. It's funny but also satisfying as a solid piece of genre fiction. The conceit is that Dungeon would run for a hundred volumes, but Zenith only had 10 volumes.

Trondheim & Sfar didn't want to do a conventional narrative. They wanted to play with the story in fun ways, asking the question, "Hey, how does it all wind up?" So they zoomed ahead to volume 101, starting a series of stories called "Twilight." Years later, we see what became of Herbert, Marvin, and many others, and it's a surprisingly grim story, still leavened by lots of slapstick. If that wasn't enough, they zoomed back in time to volume -99, called "The Early Years," which introduces us to the keeper in his youth. (There are also Antipodes + and -, which go way further into the future and past, but those haven't been translated into English yet.) 

NBM had originally published these in small digest format, which hurt the reproduction of the art, which was originally published in France in the oversized album format. NBM finally reprinted them again at the right size and published all of the Early Years stories. The six original French albums have been published in two editions: The Early Years Vol 1-2: The Night Shirt, and The Early Years Vol 3: Without A Sound. Overall, these volumes are a great improvement over the previous editions. There are still some quirks; there are lettering errors in the translation, for example. It's still exciting to see so many volumes of Dungeon translated into English, though NBM's recent shift to mostly doing biographies would seem to indicate there won't be any more forthcoming. 

There is a consistent character arc in the series that is reflected by the protagonist of each of the main series. The hero initially is highly naive and idealistic, but they are eventually worn down by their experiences and become corrupted and cynical. This happens to the Keeper, aka Hyacinth de Cavallere, and it happens to Herbert (and it's shocking when it does). Marvin the Red, the hero of "Twilight," is certainly naive at the beginning, but as the world literally falls apart, his narrative goes in the opposite direction: from a wannabe hard-boiled killer to a family man. 

"The Early Years" focuses on Hyacinth's journey from pampered son of a warlord to cold-blooded assassin. Both Early Years and Twilight depict an old order crumbling before the eyes of the protagonists, and the stories are that of adaptation and finding a new steady-state. In "The Early Years," the old world of knights, warlords, and chivalry came to an end, symbolized by the fall of the capital city Antipolis. It's the seat of all knowledge and law, but it's being undone by its own corruption, greed, and squalor. The first three volumes (-99, -98, and -97) detail Hyacinth becoming a sort of bumbling vigilante named "The Night Shirt," who fights for justice in the corrupt city. His undoing is falling in love with a snake-woman assassin named Alexandra. 

The narrative then jumps ahead to volumes -84, -83, and -82. Hyacinth is rich and powerful, and secretly the head of the assassin's guild, but he is in mourning because his lover Alexandra has murdered his sweet wife. His own greed helps settle the city's destruction, and he's forced to flee to his family castle. By the end of the last volume, he's assembled the crew that would make up the foundation of his dungeon, including a five-year-old Marvin the Dragon. Christophe Blain drew the first four volumes, and he was an outstanding choice as someone who has done so many action epics. Working within the Dungeon style, Christophe Gaultier brings a darker, grittier quality to the story than the others, but it's fitting for how nasty his chapter was. Stephane Oiry's chapter is brighter and clearer, which was also befitting a more optimistic story. Selecting the right artists for the job showed that Trondheim & Sfar were smart editors in addition to being great artists. "The Early Years" might be my favorite entries in the whole Dungeon saga, as they are satisfying in how they create the character narrative as well as having tons of fun lore-related easter eggs for fans of the rest of the series.