45 Days Of CCS, #15: Ana Two

Ana Two's Hyperfawnus got an Ignatz nomination, and it was well-earned despite it being so short (just twelve pages of story). There's a neat trick and swerve on the first two pages, where we see a deer and a girl, and we are led to believe that the girl is the narrator, as the narration says "Follow me, little fawn." Instead, it's the Old Man of the Forest who's narrating, which we learn when the girl accidentally shoots the deer with an arrow. The rest of the comic is devoted to the price she must eventually pay after she refuses to fulfill the price of a single drop of blood. It's clear by the way that Two uses color, as well as their themes, that E.M. Carroll is a big influence. However, Two uses Carroll as a launching point for their own themes, interests, stories, and visual expression, rather than directly imitate what Carroll does. This comic is a great example of a story where much is hinted at but little is revealed, other than what is directly needed to resolve the character narrative. Here, that narrative is simply a price that must be paid; all other motivations and world-building remain unspoken. Two's panel design frames the work with unusual shapes, and the concave construction of many of them leads to a feeling of things closing in on the protagonist. 

Their latest project is Darkroom, published by the Shortbox Comics Fair. (Full disclosure: there is a longer version in the works that Fieldmouse might become involved with.) The story follows a vampire named Seraphina, forever in a young body despite her many years. She's in love with a photographer named Lynn, who is obsessed with trying to capture her on film. The story flashes several decades to Seraphina and another lover named Esther who was also obsessed with trying to photograph her. The other member of the cast is a mousy detective named Ira who has found a trail of bodies following Seraphina, and they are closing in.

Ana Two's comics explore a lot of aspects of power relationships and exchange vis-a-vis kink. That's part of what's going on here, but the main thrust of the character narrative is objectification. Seraphina is clearly a monster, but she is capable of love. Feeding for her is like a shark eating its prey; it is an amoral act of survival. Two gives some hints about how Seraphina lives with herself; memory for her is not a linear process, but instead "swimming upstream a river." What she remembers is "blood, tastes, scents." This explains why she doesn't completely recall how the older photographer, Esther, used her in the same way Lynn did. All Seraphina wanted was a connection, no matter how fleeting they all tended to be, but what the photographers wanted was their own version of immortality, through their work, using Seraphina as the means to get there. Ana Two's use of color is brilliant: grayscale wash (with spot color) for modern-day scenes, sepia wash for the older scenes, and a dark red wash for the darkroom. Two's work is thoughtful, subtle, and forceful all at once.