45 Days Of CCS, #39: What The Gnomes Know

What The Gnomes Know is an anthology centered around artists from CCS and the Columbus scene. There's a good mixture of both, and there are a number of artist-writer combos that are somewhat unusual for an alt-comics anthology, but it works to good effect here. What's interesting is that a couple of the collaborations are between partners. It was organized and selected by CCS grads Rainer Kannenstine and Ben Wright-Heuman, both of whom have a lot of different projects they've been involved in, both solo and in terms of collaborative efforts. It was edited and designed by Columbus mainstay Kelci Crawford. 

Writer Ian M. Klesch collaborated with Wright-Heuman on a post-apocalyptic story following an elder gnome navigating a ruined city, looking for parts. This is an elegantly-constructed story using a recording of the gnome's dead son to push the narrative, as we learn just what caused the apocalypse in the first place. Wright-Heuman's art is moody and stylish, but it pushes the frantic action of the second half of the story clearly. It's a great use of world-building to set up a character-driven narrative with a satisfying resolution that still leaves the reader wanting more. 

Catalina Rufin's "Gnome Pizza" was cleverly assigned right after that story, and it's the contrast that make both stories stand out. Using a delicate line and extensive use of watercolors, Rufin establishes an interesting narrative when a woman moves into an apartment that was originally gnome territory, and then turns the plot on its head by turning what could have been a conflict into an appeal for connection from a desperately lonely person. 

Writer C.M. Clemence and artist Kelly Swann offer up what seems to be a typical D&D-inspired quest by two gnomes seeking out their friend. They acquire allies along the way until the rescue, but the swerve at the end that reveals what's really happening is clever. Swann's art shot straight from her scratchy pencils is the highlight here. Eddie J. O'Neill and Kaz G.M. Lukacs collaborated on a story of a group of gnomes adopting a misfit kobold that's cute, but whose use of color feels garish throughout. Angela Boyle took a lot of risks with "Gnoir With A Silent G," a parody of detective tropes featuring a gnome. The big risk was making this illustrated text with a stylized font. There were just enough illustrations (and enough sequential art) to make this work, especially since the art belied the hard-boiled cliches of the lead character. Boyle's drawings are also lovely, with an effective combination of grit and delicate color. 

Alex Washburn's story about humans who can transform into gnomes was a mix of what felt like a personal story of frustration around identity and a ripping fantasy story involving the danger of possibly being turned into stone. Washburn's use of color was way over the top and would have looked better muted, but his expressive characters drawn in a thick line match up with their emotional natures. The collaboration between Erienne McCray and Kannenstine leans into the density of its colors in a deeply expressionistic manner, especially since so much of the story revolves around dark magic. However, it's still essentially a story about a mother and daughter's connection, and that's what ultimately gives the story its real impact in the end. 

The non-CCS stories included a clever entry from Jess Tweed about two friends dealing with dark magic in order to save someone else, and the clever way a seemingly iron-clad contract was dealt with. There's also a text piece written by Jack Wallace with moody illustrations by J.M. Hunter that's nearly unreadable because of its use of stylized text. The illustrations became almost incidental. Overall, it's a fairly strong anthology that could have toned down some of its use of color and has a wide variety of genre types despite revolving around a highly particular genre theme 

31 Days Of CCS, #32: Less Than Secret

I enjoy anthologies that are a true team effort. This is something that's one of the major first-year requirements at CCS, as students are split into teams to make an anthology in a particular style, like Golden Age adventure or romance comics or 90s style Shonen Jump manga work. Because most alternative cartoonists are solo acts, forcing this kind of collaboration can be useful and teach a lot of lessons. Less Than Secret is an anthology from several CCS grads and several other cartoonists. Beyond their contributions in terms of the stories they drew, many of the book's cartoonists had other duties related to publishing. 

CCS grads Rainer Kannenstine and Ben Wright-Heumann served as its publishers. They were there to make sure the book was on schedule, obtain funding and consider distribution. JD Laclede was the editor, working directly with talent and sequencing the stories. Erienne McCray did the design, while Kelci Crawford acted as the crowdfunding manager. Angela Boyle was an anthology consultant, which makes sense considering her years assembling the Awesome Possum anthology. That collective sense of responsibility on what was clearly a labor of love is present and strengthens the overall anthology. 

The theme here is cryptids, or animals that some people claim to exist but whose existence has never been proven. It's fitting that Steve Bissette, the master monster-maker, penned a funny intro explaining his interest in monsters from a young age. Crawford's "A Day In The Life Of Mothman" is played for laughs, as a woman is followed by the legendary creature, whose presence foretells potential disaster. However, she can sense him, and it allows her to prevent a guy from being killed by a car, avoiding a fight at a diner, and preventing her from eating a bad hot dog. Crawford's line is crisp and expressive, with a lot of grayscale shading to add weight to the page. 

McCray's comic about the "Fresno Nightcrawler" (essentially a big baseball with legs) is also played for laughs, as this cryptid is more ridiculous than scary. They added a nice touch having the Loch Ness Monsters as its roommate and Bigfoot taunt it. McCray's line is fluid and a nice match for the kind of dynamic silliness that this ridiculous creature (wearing a fedora, even!) demands. Wright-Heumann is a horror guy, and he did a sort of Western/fantasy fusion with a family of Elves fending off a group of chupacabra mysteriously attacking them. The ending is grimly clever. His scratchy line was appropriate for the subject matter, though the extensive use of grayscale was distracting at times. This was a story that cried out for color. 

I'm not crazy about comics that insert huge blocks of typewritten text, but Angela Boyle's cartooning is so sharp in her story of the odd little elwetritsch that it wasn't too distracting. Moreover, using that text as the main character's interior monologue actually made this a useful device, commenting on the comic set around it. Boyle manages to sneak an entire murder mystery into this little comic with an unassuming old woman and her strange "pet." Ian Klesch and Andrew Small's story about how a lycanthrope used a dating app to fool a woman into being his prey was funny and grisly. The figure drawing was crude at points in a way that was distracting, and some of that was due to over-drawing in an effort to bolster a shaky line. 

Rainer Kannenstine's piece about the Dover Demon went in yet another direction: how messing with weird cryptids is likely to bite you in the ass in horrible ways. It's the story of a bully who attacks the creature in the forest with a ball, then gets his head crushed in revenge. He used some digital effects in interesting ways, including a "syrup brush" for some of the background fills that added to the story's atmosphere. Jess Johnson had perhaps the silliest story in the book, as an emo kid is befriended by his sister's new boyfriend: "JD," or the infamous Jersey Devil. Johnson turned the creature into an actual hockey player and made this a romance/family story where everyone took JD's presence for granted. It's hard not to see Johnson's strong shojo manga influence, giving this a radically different look and feel from the other stories in the anthology. However, it's not a slavish adherence to the style; rather, it's a launching point into Johnson's own style. 

There's plenty of backmatter in the anthology, including full biographies and behind-the-scenes stuff that's somewhat interesting, but at 20 pages (compared to 90 pages for the rest of the book) it feels like a lot of padding. That said, the interviews asking each creator why they chose their cryptid, their creative methods, etc. was at least thoughtfully done. Overall, this is a breezy anthology that I wished had been a bit longer. 

31 Days Of CCS, #8: Angela Boyle

The third issue of writer Rachel Cholst and artist (and CCS alum) Angela Boyle's Artema series was the best so far. Titled Artema The Lover, it follows the progress of the warrior exiled from her own clan because of her violent tendencies. The series is technically told in flashback, as the first issue introduced the reader to Artema as an old woman, on the precipice of finishing a long-pursued quest. Each issue has advanced her personal mythology a bit more, and this issue revealed in detail how the gods of her people gave her special powers to protect them. The paradox was that she was forced to leave her people, throwing in with a band of brigands. 

The first half of this issue beautifully illustrates her blossoming relationship with a member of that gang named Katre. The combination of both heat and affection is skillfully depicted by Boyle. I noted that in the second issue, the way she depicted characters interacting with each other in space was stiff, especially the battle scenes. Her work in this issue is so much more fluid, without sacrificing the loose expressiveness of her character designs. Everything in this comic feels dynamic, from the sex scene's unusual angles and panel design to the way Boyle put together the fight scenes. While the body language in those scenes felt natural and fluid, her ability to exaggerate Artema's facial expressions in particular made it easy to understand her challenge as someone commanding supernatural forces who felt out of place. The bonus story featuring another glimpse of Artema's future was a pleasant one that had a small call-back to the first story while dropping another tantalizing hint to her turbulent past. This third issue is the one where one can feel things cohere both in terms of narrative and art. 

31 Days Of CCS #16: Angela Boyle, Denis St. John, Cole Closser

Bearskin, by Cole Closser. This comic is from 2013, from Ryan Standfest's "Rotland Dreadfuls" minicomics series, but I've only seen it relatively recently. Closser adapts the Brothers Grimm to forceful effect, as the story of a soldier who makes a deal with the devil has multiple twists and turns. Closser, who usually adopts the veneer of classic cartoonists in his comics, here instead uses a more traditional illustration style, albeit one fitting for a fairy tale. In particular, he really nails the early part of the book before we are officially introduced to the titular character, as small creatures in what seems to be a forest taunt an unseen presence. It's Bearskin himself, as the bet he made was that he wouldn't cut his hair or nails for seven years, nor would he bathe. It turned him into a monstrous pariah but also gave him riches that he used to help out a sad, bereft old man. In return, one of his daughters volunteered to marry him. In the end, the devil may have missed out on getting Bearskin, but Bearskin's action inadvertently led to him getting two other souls. It's such a brutal story because there is no moral, only the inevitability of death. The timing and grittiness of Closser's art is a perfect fit for this kind of story.

Artema The Beast #2, by Rachel Cholst and Angela Boyle. The second issue of this series about an exile from a peaceful society is more ambitious than the first, but it does have certain structural problems. Artema joins a small party of thieves and killers and proves to be far more bloodthirsty and deadly then the rest of them combined. Cholst gets at Artema's inner struggle here, as she doesn't know if she likes what she's become. Artema's loyalty to her country supersedes everything, but she is also aware that she's being manipulated. Boyle's bigfoot cartooning is an interesting match for a gritty fantasy story, and that is part of what makes the story visually interesting. There's a lack of fluidity in some of the fight scenes and some general clunkiness when it comes to characters interacting in space, but Boyle usually finds a way to work around it. Indeed, the stiffness of character interaction is more pronounced in non-combat scenes. There are also some panels suffering from a paucity of background detail that further accentuates some of the character design issues. Boyle's art was more interesting in close-ups and with just two characters together. When the series is hopefully collected one day, I could see Boyle re-doing certain pages here and there.

Continuing the monster/fantasy theme, let's check in with Denis St. John. His Monster Club Comix is a collection of short Patreon comics originally created for subscribers. St. John's level of detail and expressive scribbliness are a highlight of his comics, along with a ghoulish sense of humor. In the first couple of strips, we meet a teen who encounters a horrifying yet intelligent slug-like creature on a bus. In a later strip, it suddenly grows after being on her body while she's taking a bath. It's a hilarious take-off on that particular trope and even gives it a romantic bent. There are also several monster vs monster one-offs, and these suffer in a comic the size of a minicomic. The level of detail in the drawings sometimes makes it hard to tell precisely what's happening on a panel-to-panel basis. Some of the best strips are stories like "Passage," about an alien coming to this dimension and struggling with every aspect of it and finding a way out through a human. It isn't a gruesome ending--it simply jumps into his shadow. It's an interesting point-of-view comic with a twist worthy of an EC horror comic, which is a clear influence for St. John.

The Kiss Of Death is an individual issue of Monster Club, done in the style of a Jack Chick tract. With the Vampirella-style hostess "Hella'Rella" narrating, St. John goes to his other main well as an artist: sex. Just as monsters in his comics almost always have a humorous edge, so too is sex a subject of humor. In this story, the classic trope of the monster seducing and destroying the innocent human woman is hilariously subverted as the monster disintegrates upon a kiss. Hella'Rella then warns all innocent monsters about the depraved humans. St. John plays it up for all its worth, and the formal qualities of the comic all help sell the joke.

Thirty One Days Of CCS #17: Jess Johnson, Angela Boyle

The Odds Are Good Vol. 1 and Ragna Rock, by Jess Johnson. Johnson has a fun, propulsive and high-energy style that moves her comics along at an agreeable clip, no matter what the genre. All of this is aided by a strong sense of comedic timing. The first issue of The Odds Are Good is a romance comic, or rather the beginning of a "very long story of a very strange date". The protagonist, Daisy, is asked out on a date by someone she considers to be a friend, not a potential sexual partner, and she "bluescreens" and says yes. When she learns that he's been into her for years, she's horrified. Johnson takes that awkwardness and runs with it, incorporating all sorts of pop culture references and a wide array of visual tricks that heighten and comment on the situation on hand. For example, she uses Pokemon captions to narrate Henry running across her in the kitchen, as "Wild HENRY appeared!" that eventually results in a brain meltdown where she starts babbling about a mutual show they liked--which she feels leads him on even further. Johnson's art is informed by a number of different influences, including manga and a variety of different webcomics series, but she's not defined by any of them in particular. Instead, what's clear is that she's a skilled storyteller who packs a lot of images into each page and panel without losing clarity.

Ragna Rock is a post-apocalyptic comic that offers little in the way of backstory and doesn't need it. Instead, the reader is slowly fed information about its four female protagonists and their mission--delivering a "package" to a certain location as they navigate alien invader-infested areas. This is a comic defined not just by character, but by relationships, as Johnson extensively flexes perhaps her best skill--creating witty dialogue in the form of banter. There are plenty of well-designed action set pieces that mix in well with said banter, which only enhances the action. The big reveal at the end of the story ("the package") was clever and fit in with the "never say die" ethos of the characters. Overall, there's a fluidity to Johnson's story telling that makes it a great fit for serialized and extended storylines.

Artema The Exile #1 by Rachel Cholst and Angela Boyle. Boyle was an interesting choice to illustrate a genre fantasy story, but it works because of her background in doing stories about nature. The comic starts at the end, where an elderly version of the titular character is standing before her (unstated) goal, then it flips back to her childhood. She's part of a people called the Komai'i, who live in a sustaining land  called Chema'i. The story begins when Artema receives her name from the land as a child, and continues through her training as a warrior. This is in contrast to her mother, who is a healer. There are two key moments in the story: first, when Artema falters in her first combat and gets injured; and second, when a humiliated Artema takes revenge and slaughters a tent full of her enemies unawares. The latter went against her people's beliefs, hence the "exile" part of the title.

This issue was mostly just premise-setting and world-building. However, Cholst and Boyle also do a lot of nice character work with Artema. She's an iconoclast who's quick to anger. She finds it hard to accept her people's law that they can never strike first or fight in anger. She beats up a guy who says women are inferior warriors. Boyle gives her great backgrounds to work against: craggy mountains, gloomy caves, and vast deserts. Her character work is a little stiff at times in terms of showing figures moving and interacting with others in space. However, she has a nice sense of the dramatic when it comes time to the battle scenes, with several striking poses that set the tone for what was at stake. I don't have a real sense of where the story's going yet, but I'm guessing Cholst will continue to test Artema's violent nature against the beliefs she was taught.

Thirty Days of CCS #31: Awesome Possum #3

Awesome Possum Volume 3 is the continuing, kickstarted brainchild of editor Angela Boyle. It’s a big (400+ pages), varied and loving tribute to the flora and fauna of the world. How one feels about it as a reading experience will depend greatly on one’s interest in the subject, especially since there are a number of stories that aren’t even really comics at all, but simply illustrated text. Several of the entries are simply rundowns on the varieties of particular kinds of species and attendant drawings of them. Considering that there’s a separate, sixty-page section at the end of the book that’s nothing but illustrations, there’s a lot that felt redundant in this anthology. Awesome Possum succeeded when its contributors made the extra leap to truly doing an actual narrative surrounding a plant or animal, and failed when it was simply science class supplementary material.

Not every narrative was equally interesting or equally well-told. While William Scavone’s story about the Varroa mite killing off bees had a solid platform (a beekeeper and his daughter trying to detect mites), it turned out to be scaffolding for a lot of detailed jargon. Spratty’s strip about rattlesnakes was more visually interesting, in part because of the subject, but mostly because Spratty is a better storyteller who used panel-to-panel transitions to create genuine reader interest. Perhaps the best story in the whole book was Moss Bastille’s story about ergot and its long and colorful history. In a style mimicking stained-glass window effects, Bastille nonetheless went from strange folk story to hard science in the investigation of the poisonous fungus ergot. It caused death, strange behavior, hallucinations and was eventually used to derive LSD. Bastille kept the visuals simple and bold, using a lot of negative space to let information-packed pages breathe a little. This is a great example of telling a story without sparing detail, but not dumbing it down for a reader, either.

Some of the artists in the book explained the science as though it were for kids, and others for someone who was genuinely interested in the smallest details of various observations. Bastille was one of the few who found that sweet spot in-between. Megan Archer’s story about ants farming aphids was aimed at kids in terms of the flourishes an overall simplicity of the line, but it’s still detailed enough to be accurate. In a black & white book that demanded clarity, she was one of the ones who did it best, especially since there were so many stories using lettering that was too small or stylized or gray-scaling that was too muddy.

There was another consideration to think of: was their story interesting or boring, especially to a general reader and not someone who doesn’t already find nature’s tiniest aspects to be fascinating? Well, Ross Wood Studlar, who has been drawing nature for quite a long time, took no chances with his story. First, it was framed as a conversation between himself and a group of friends and relatives, which made it easy to feed the reader information naturally. Second, it seemed based on a true story, which made the mechanics of how to explain things even easier. Third, it was about how amphibians have the ability to return from the dead. That’s an eye-catcher that demanded an explanation, and Studlar then went over the science of how certain mosses and amphibians can be frozen solid for incredibly long periods of time and then revive themselves when the conditions are right again. That even includes the tiny tardigrades that live on moss—little creatures that can shut off their metabolic functions and survive virtually any conditions. Studlar has never been great at drawing people, but he can draw natural life like a champ and knows how to tell a story, even getting a laugh at the end.

Kevin Kite and Michelle McCauley did their own take on the Tardigrade, which has survived all five of earth’s great extinctions. The line was much simpler and cuter, but Boyle made a good call as an editor to follow up Studlar’s story with this one, because they are endlessly interesting. That story made use of a simple, thick line that was perfect for the story’s sense of humor. Tom O’Brien story about bats is interesting because he made the best use of the opposite: a fragile line and an extensive use of gray-scaling that nonetheless looked beautiful. That’s likely because he made sure the images stayed in constant movement while the accompanying text oozed along. Kelly Fernandez followed that up with a more cartoony pen-and-ink story that used gray-scaling to a lesser extent. Again, a smart palate cleansing choice by Boyle, especially since Fernandez’s actual subject (about the difference between crows and ravens) isn’t exactly gripping, which she makes up for by making it funny.

My antipathy toward chart and illustration heavy entries is clearly noted in this review. There were some exceptions, and Alyssa Lee Suzumura is one of them. The delicacy and precision of her line is so fine that I could look at it for hours. Her page formatting in this story about animals rafting as a way of making their way across the world was also clear and clever, with striking images telling the story in such a way that they didn’t depend on the text. There are also interjections of humor and absolutely stellar lettering. Patricia Maldonado’s take on cryptozoology is very text heavy and there’s little here that resembles comics, except that she chose an inherently interesting topic and her drawings are beautiful and clear.

As I read the anthology, I couldn’t help thinking what I usually do when I read one: this would have been so much better if you cut out a third of it. That rule applied here, but it’s so long that there were still have been so many great stories in it that balanced its overall approach, like an autobio encounter with a mountain beaver by Natalie Dupille, a cute but accurate account of the alarming phenomenon of aphid birth from Caitlin Hofmeister & Lauren Norby, and a super-cute series of illustrations and pages with big text by Bridget Comeau. Boyle’s own story about the dodo and extinction perfectly balanced her interest in detail with solid panel-to-panel transitions and a star character that is truly fun to look at in the flightless dodo. When you ask someone to be in your anthology and they have a specialty, let them run with it. In the case of G.P. Bonesteel, he specializes in horror, so his story about the invasive plant species houndstongue and all the damage has precisely the right tone.

Sometimes, sheer storytelling and drawing skill turned something dull (cottonwood trees of Canada) into something fascinating, as in the case of Laura Marie Madden. In the case of Jerel Dye and the Grasshopper Mouse, the physical characteristics of the creature became a part of this life-and-death story’s plot as it fought a scorpion. Aurora Melchior and Iris Yan both do their own take on the occasionally alarming mating rituals and habits of various creatures, both with a comedic outcome. Finally, Kriota Willberg’s amusing and highly detailed drawings of the “denizens of Manhattan” is a great showcase for this anatomical artist.

There were times that I wished for a heavier editorial hand in how some of the information was arranged. As noted earlier, this was a result of too many inessential pieces being published, but what can you do when it’s a kickstarted effort? There’s no question that she upped her game greatly as an editor and artist with this edition, as her interstitial possum drawings were an additional form of palate cleanser for the reader of this often entertaining and occasionally exhausting book.

Review and Kickstarter for Awesome 'Possum

The editor of the Awesome 'Possum anthology, Angela Boyle, sent me a copy of the second volume to review in conjunction with the Kickstarter for the third volume. Here's a a link to that kickstarter, and I would consider making a donation if possible. The anthology's mission is to publish comics and illustration about the natural world, and to leave that mission as loosely defined as possible so as to give the artists some room to interpret it.

That variety of approaches is what makes this a surprisingly readable book, especially given that so few of the entries here resemble conventional narratives. The other thing that makes the book a pleasure to read is the wide variety of visual approaches that were used. It would have been easy to make it a densely-illustrated book with an entirely naturalistic approach, but that would also have been boring. Furthermore, that type of art is often difficult to match up with cartoon storytelling, panel-to-panel flow and general readability. Even artists with somewhat limited draftsmanship ability managed to fit in by limiting the complexity of what they chose to draw, synthesizing the information conveyed by text with spare imagery to create a fluid piece.

Boyle is all over the anthology and has some of its best pieces. including the opener about how Opossums are enormously helpful creatures, the psychology of dogs, and the structure of fungi. Perhaps the best piece in the book was by her mother, Anita K. Boyle: a fascinating and beautifully composed ode to the role of water lilies in their environment. Though an entirely scientific account regarding these plants, Boyle's use of decorative elements, humorous flourishes, clever page design where everything is elongated much the way the lilies are underwater and a clear line made this strip the model for the rest of the book: clear, clever, entertaining and informative. Another highlight was a strip written by Steve Bissette and drawn by his former student Ross Wood Studlar (whose focus as an artist has been on wildlife). It concerned his sighting a fisher cat (a variation on the weasel) in the forest, which is a rarity, and finding that the animal stared him right in the eye. The story balanced a description of this interesting animal and its habits and ended with Bissette expressing his respect for it. This was one of the few conventional narratives in the book, and it worked precisely because of Bissette's knowledge of and respect for the Vermont woods.

Other highlights include Stephanie Zuppo's story about the Thyacine, a species thought extinct that keeps getting sighted; Kelly Swann's "first person" story from the perspective of a Thorny Dragon, which is exquisitely rendered in addition to being amusing; and Reilly Hadden's wistful account of being around Common Loons. Some of the material might have been trimmed from the anthology, but there's nothing that brings the anthology screeching to a halt. Indeed, virtually every piece is at least interesting to read, and few of them wear out their welcome. The general restraint and succinctness of the artists in this anthology definitely work in its favor. The end section, featuring a number of illustrations, provides different renditions of previously-mentioned plants and animals, this time from a purely static standpoint. This section fit well and didn't feel like the anthology was simply being padded. I'll be curious to see if the balance that made this volume work well continues to hold in the third volume, which will be nearly twice as long.

Thirty Days of CCS #12: Angela Boyle, Melissa Mendes, Kane Lynch, J.D. Lunt

A big thanks to Craig Fischer in lending me the following minis for review, from his excellent show At The Junction Of Words And Pictures: The Tenth Anniversary of the Center for Cartoon Studies at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. Craig was kind enough to invite me to do a talk with grads Beth Hetland and Rio Aubrey Taylor, and I had a great time. Thanks to Craig, I was able to flesh out my CCS feature this year, because missing SPX meant missing a number of potential contributions.

Final Frontiers, by Kane Lynch. This is comics reportage about highly dedicated Star Trek fans who have built their own sets and have continued the original series from where it left off. Lynch uses a multicolor approach free of black ink lines that mimics the absurdly bright color patterns of the original show. Lynch gets at the sense of creativity and passion of the fans who want to break out of simple cultural consumption and want to be part of something collaborative. He also dutifully reports on how different fans have different aesthetic interests in the show, and how that's led to a number of rifts.

Coping Mechanisms, by J.D. Lunt. This is an excellent if rough comic about mental illness, both with regard to the artist and those he served. It kicks off with his job as a person who takes shift with people who are on suicide watch. He meets one woman named Nicole who was given a guitar, and he saw that being able to play and sing about her life (as well as silly things) has a tremendously therapeutic effect. A strip about dealing with his PTSD is fascinating, as Lunt discusses the mechanics of how making abstract art proved to be a soothing activity for him, partly through the influence of Lynda Barry's writing about how putting pen to paper can be therapeutic, even if it's just doodles and spirals. The same was true for him owning a dog, taking care of it, going out in public with it and forming a bond with it. The heart of the matter that he got at was that despite his own fears induced by PTSD, he could be brave for his dog when the dog was afraid of so many things in the world. Lunt gets at the idea that nurturing a pet that has come to trust and love you unconditionally is enormously therapeutic, because it gets you out of the headspace of trauma and into something active and positive. Lunt's draftsmanship is still functional at best and he suffers from over-drawing and over-inking at various points, but it's clear that he's learned how to tell a story and has a lot to say.

More Than You Wanted To Know About Horseshoe Crabs, by Angela Boyle. This is a light-hearted but informative comic about the titular arachnids, which combines her interest in sequential storytelling with scientific illustration. Indeed, while there are plenty of cute panels where the crabs engage in silly activities, Boyle places a premium on anatomical accuracy throughout the comic. It's a comic that's maybe a shade too technical for a young reader to enjoy due to the nature of some of the terminology, but certainly would be great for middle schoolers and above to enjoy. I think the comic's greatest virtue is that while Boyle is interested in accuracy, each of the drawings is cartooned and has a life of its own, rather than the more static nature of a more detailed illustration. The story was the thing here, even if that story was simply the horseshoe crab talking about itself, and that's why the comic works.

The Weight #3, by Melissa Mendes. Mendes has distinguished herself as one of my favorite storytellers from CCS, especially with regard to the real empathy with which she treats her characters. There is a tremendous amount of affection demonstrated on the page for them, which makes it all the more emotionally powerful now that she's stretching out more and more with what's happening with her characters. This issue follows a girl growing up in an abusive family on a military base and her relationship with her best friend. We see the girl and her mother go over to a friend's house after an especially vicious incident and the delightfully quotidian rituals the girl and her friend engage in the next day. That leads to an encounter with friends that looks like it might lead to tragedy, but it only serves to stir up rage in the girl when it proves to be a trick. That brush with death portends a real tragedy at the end, serving up a powerful emotional shock that works so well because of the way that Mendes established the comic's relationships. Mendes' powerfully expressive style has become more confident and richer as she's expanded her storytelling range, but its overall spareness emphasizes the emotions of her characters above all else. This will make a powerful impact as a book when it's collected.