31 Days Of CCS, #7: Ruby Arnone

What's most interesting about Ruby Arnone's Frankie & Jam is that, despite its origins as a formal cartooning exercise with some formal constraints, the actual comics are fluid and funny. It follows a trans woman anthropomorphic bunny named Frankie and a hoodie-wearing kid named Jam, with most of the strips featuring their observations, gags, and general quirkiness. One of the reasons why the comic is so enjoyable is that Arnone doesn't force things. Some of the strips aren't funny; they're just small but important moments in the lives of the characters. It reminds me a little of certain Peanuts strips that have small epiphanies, or like Pablo Holmberg's book Eden.

There are absurd and surreal strips as well, like the anthropomorphic college professor dog whose academic specialty is the habits of staplers, which he views as sentient entities. There's the imperious and threatening Lizard Queen, who is reduced to washing her clothes in a laundromat and eating at cheap restaurants after ruling a kingdom. Arnone's cartooning is sophisticated, but I also see a lot of experimentation here with grid vs no grid, multiple line weights, and silent strips that depend on flow vs gags that depend largely on the text. This is fertile ground for future ideas, as Arnone generated half a dozen characters and ideas that could be explored for a long time.