31 Days Of CCS, #10: Ana Two

Full disclosure: Fieldmouse Press will be publishing Ana Two's horror comic Dark Room next year. A running joke I have with Ana is that, regardless of the subject of their comics, they are always inevitably about power exchange and power relationships in kink-oriented relationships. Even their delightfully deranged comic for Diskette Press, Girl Yaoi, starts with a ridiculous premise but then inevitably gets down to the same kind of exploration Ana Two has done in their other comics. This isn't a criticism but rather an amused observation; the artist just can't help themself!

Girl Yaoi is unhinged from the very first page, and while I am not the target audience for its subject (women who read boys love comics, aka fujoshi), Ana Two deftly and hilariously gives all the context for the story that a reader might need. Aster Zhou is a yaoi enthusiast with a magic ring that allows her to enter the stories she reads in her dreams and allows her to fuck to her heart's content. This is quickly complicated when her new next-door neighbor, Summer Li, gets ahold of Aster's favorite yaoi and magic ring. This leads to them fucking each other, in boy form, in a series of shared dreams. 

There's backstory that includes Aster's teenage crush on Summer and feeling betrayed when Summer read Aster's highly sexual journal. They become neighbors thanks to the whims of fate, but Aster doesn't reveal her true feelings because getting to experience a different yaoi every night is too much of a draw for her to turn down. This is the best part of the whole book--Ana Two's warped genius in crafting so many different yaoi stories is hilarious and yet completely true to the genre. There's a frantic quality to their storytelling, with big, thick, angular lines and crazy angles for the panels. Sometimes, this leads to confusion while reading, as the order of the panels is not always clearly laid out, and this is a distraction. For the most part, the context clues usually sort out such problems, and Ana Two's use of spot color (yellow for Aster, pink for Summer) cleverly allows the reader to quickly identify the identity of each woman in the many, many sex scenes in the book. 

That speaks to the excellent production values from the new stewards of Diskette Press, Dylan Box and Robin Rowe. Their offerings have uniformly been a huge step above the previous iteration of the press, and Girl Yaoi is one of their greatest triumphs in that regard. Ana Two's writing is so sharp, especially in the way the reader comes to be deeply sympathetic toward both characters, even as issues of desire, consent, betrayal, and kink all come to the fore. This isn't a story about kink or power exchange as much as it is two vulnerable, sensitive people who eventually find a way to let the other in. 

31 Days of CCS, #9: Iris Yan

Iris Yan, on occasion, will engage in a solid gimmick for her comics. In The Story Of Some Objects, the cover depicts photos of 11 seemingly random objects. However, Yan spins stories about how each of them came into her orbit, using her typical anthropomorphic animal style. The list included a ring adorned with Legos, an eraser that changes colors in the sun, an uncomfortable pair of panties she had bought to make herself feel inwardly sexier, an electric bug zapper, and a delicious bag of potato chips. 

The mundanity of these stories is the point, as they serve to illustrate the quirky aspects of her life and the lives of her friends and family. There is a matter-of-factness about every aspect of her life that makes her comics so funny; whether it's food or sex or work or the meaning of life, Yan approaches it without exaggeration or florid language. The art in this comic feels less rushed than some other recent efforts, especially with regard to lettering and line weight. It's a great introduction to her work overall, as she keeps things light and on theme. 

31 Days Of CCS, #8: Cuyler Keating

While Cuyler Keating's comics have fantasy elements, it would be more accurate to say that she's really a medievalist. What that translates out to is a great deal of misery, death, disease, and squalor. That's certainly the case in the first two issues of her series Oblivioun, but Keating takes that a step further. The setting is a world where the empire is in ruin, plagued by a disease that ultimately results in the afflicted losing their memories. This is worse than death for some--the utter obliteration of self and memory. 

Keating centers this around two scavengers: a one-armed former knight named Ollie and his young friend Remy. They pick over battles and gravesites in an effort to get enough metal and jewelry to get food and lodging. Their relationship is familial, with an easy sense of teasing between the two. The first issue sees them finding armor and weapons they can sell, but encounter an armored knight who begs them to tell him what his name is. The second issue finds them selling their scavenged loot, with Ollie attempting to woo the daughter of the smith. 

Keating's line is fluid, with a focus on sharply delineated character work. Ollie is drawing with a rakish grin but also an occasionally hollowed-out stare. Remy is still young and full of hope, but one gets the sense that Ollie sees no future. Indeed, the red-soaked flashbacks, full of violence and past battles, reflect that Ollie welcomes the idea. One gets the sense that Remy is the only thing keeping Ollie tethered to reality and day-to-day survival. It feels like there's a long way to go in this series, and things are only going to get worse. Keating has a strong sense of design on top of everything else, and the decorative aspects of the cover and inside covers adds to the overall aesthetic of the comic.