Minis: E.Davis, L.Nichols, K.Froh, A.Shrestha, S.Lautman

Libby's Dad, by Eleanor Davis. This Retrofit release is further proof of Davis' versatility. Her issue of Frontier ("BDSM") showed off her black & white chops, while this comic looks like it was done entirely in colored pencils. Davis' comics are usually pointed in terms of her themes and the emotions she wants to explore, but she deflects away from hammering that point home through a series of interesting strategies. This comic is about the complexities surrounding emotional spousal abuse and how its fallout affects children. Davis' strategy was to tell this story entirely through the daughter of that estranged couple (Libby) and her friends during the course of a sleepover. The essential conflict of the story is that one of the members of the group was forbidden to come over to over by her mother because Libby's father had threatened to shoot Libby's mom. The rest of the story (told from the perspective of Libby's friend Alex) is essentially a debate as to whether or not that could possibly be true.

The genius of the book is Davis' unfailingly accurate depiction of children and the way they interact, with all the innocence and casual cruelty that implies. Davis' character design and her use of colored pencil gives the book the feel of a children's book, with exaggerated facial expressions, cheery colors and uncannily precise body language that gets across the energy that kids generate when they're in this kind of environment--especially since Libby's dad bought a house with a swimming pool and bought them all lunch. A running theme in Davis' comics is the way that adults try to keep secrets from children and fail to trust their ability to understand difficult situations. What the adults fail to understand is that children hear and understand far more than they might realize, only without context that knowledge can be warped. That's certainly the case here, as Libby's friends debate whether or not Libby's dad was nice or a monster and whether Libby's mom was a potential victim or a liar (there was no middle ground). The comic comes to a head when night falls and the colors turn from friendly greens, yellows and light blues to dark and oppressive midnight blue. There's another color whose presence is a constant in the book: blood red. It becomes especially prominent in the slumber party scene, especially when a spilled bottle of nail polish splatters the carpet like blood. Suddenly, jokes about Libby's dad and his gun turn into pure fear, as the white image of a gun against the dark blue background is a clear indicator of their mutual panic.

An exasperated Libby, who has been mostly silent up until this point, gets up and tells her weeping friends to shut up, and declares that her dad's not scary. There's a chilling two-page spread where her friends are in the bottom left corner of one page and Libby goes out the foreboding door in the upper-right hand corner of the next page, indicating a gulf between them as well as a sense of things not ever being the same when she returns from her dangerous quest. Their fears peak as the next two pages are devoid of backgrounds as they imagine her dead shooting all of them, shrouded in shadows. Davis comes back from that image with Libby's dad cheerfully cleaning up the mess in a room with the light on, bathed in a comforting yellow. That act is "proof" to Alex that "Libby's mom is crazy and a liar", and the girls are now free to have a carefree good time. Of course, what Davis is getting at is how women are made to feel crazy for responding to abuse, for people assuming they are lying or exaggerating and in general doubting the stories of survivors. There's also a larger question of complexity: Libby's dad may treat her well, but that doesn't mean that he wasn't abusive toward his mom, even if that threat was an empty one. The way the girls react can be explained in part because they are just children, but Davis' larger point is that it wasn't just them who reacted that way, as the parents of the other children had no problem with them spending time at Libby's dad's house. This is a story about abuse and the ways in which so many people prefer to believe that it doesn't happen, and Davis' use of color masterfully takes us through every element of the narrative, modulating emotion along the way.

Senior Time, by Kelly Froh. If one of Davis' special skills as a cartoonists is portraying children, then one of Froh's is portraying the elderly. This mini is about failing upwards, beginning with Froh fervently hoping she was going to get laid off because her desk job was debilitating her, both mentally and physically. Coming to terms with the idea as someone over forty that they weren't ever going to make a lot of money is difficult in a society driven by financial success as a measure of overall success. Froh struggles with that idea but counters it by embracing her role in the arts as well as time spent helping the elderly and teaching comics. Each page features a single image, some typeset text and Froh's own cursive script. The latter was especially important in establishing an intimate line of communication with the reader, but it also represented the kinds of relationships she was having with her clients.

Froh balances the tremendous respect she has for her elderly clients with her cartoony and slightly grotesque character design, and the gentle humor she records in this comic is modulated by her thoughtful and gentle voice as a narrator. Above all else, she listens, and she responds with respect but also humor. The variety of mental and emotional states among those living in retirement homes dictates some of Froh's work here, as one woman who kept asking "Then what?" whenever Froh would tell her what came next led to Froh expounding on what was really her own life goal: a full life, meaningful relationships, love and happiness. When the reply to that was "Then what?", what else could Froh say but, "Then, you die". I'm not sure if that last conversation happened verbatim, but that's not really important; what was important was the way Froh was encouraging and optimistic but also realistic and accepting of our ultimate fate. This comic is about process, and for Froh, it's processing the richness she feels in her current role, even as she is just barely able to piece things together.

Macrogroan #7, by Sara Lautman. Lautman has slightly refined her scratchy, sloppy scribbly line just enough to make her comics more easily intelligible but not so much as to lose their spontaneity and pure beauty. Simply as a personal aesthetic preference, I love artists who have mastered the ability to create characters using expressive scribbles because that spontaneity is key to making the characters come alive. They have a wobbly, vibratory quality to them that creates a sense of motion and energy on the page, even when the images themselves depict a silent character sitting on a stoop. Like Jules Feiffer, both Lautman's line and her handwritten lettering are beautifully sloppy in an inspiring way. It also helps that she has a sharp sense of humor, ranging from self-deprecation to crafting a shaggy dog story for the sake of a pun. The way she draws herself as frequently slumped over, with a pointy nose and messy hair, only adds to the sheer pleasure I get from looking at her drawings. When she uses grayscale, she often just uses her pencil to gray-out some backgrounds so as to give her drawings some more weight. There's also a great deal of charm in her strips, like one in which she enthuses about a "classic date spot" in New York (The Cloisters), which turns out to be from a banned lesbian young adult novel from the early 80s--which her friend calls her on. Lautman's autobio reminds me a bit of Sophie Yanow's, only less angular and less political. Lautman's comics explore comic and quotidian aspects of city life with occasional forays into surrealism. She's become a much better storyteller, especially in terms of panel-to-panel transitions. It's pretty clear that she could do something long form or collect strips thematically, much like Gabrielle Bell does. She's certainly hit on a winning formula.

Genus, by Anuj Shrestha. This batch of one to two page stories and illustrations is separate from the body horror/conspiracy series of the same name, but the aesthetic is very much the same. In this zine, that aesthetic of people slowly having their faces completely subsumed by a wriggling, plant-like growth is entirely ignored, especially in terms of the narratives that Shrestha spins. The first story is about a young girl's experiences in school as an avid participant--almost too avid. In this and other strips, the growths seem to be a visual metaphor for a kind of inner ugliness made external, except that everyone experienced it the same way. It's a stripping away of innocence and a reflection of the parasitic or codependent nature of our relationships. The more materially and financially accomplished a person became, as in the story "Company Dinner", the more disfigured and inhuman each person became, until their heads stopped being recognizable as human. The illustrations are all of fashionable, hip looking people whose faces have become entirely transformed into that mass of writhing tentacles/stalks. The final strip, "Genus Company Policy" reveals that the system is rigged from the start. Shrestha's line drawings are exquisite as always, as they add a level of chilly distance to the everyday activities they depict.

Flocks, Chapter Five, by L.Nichols. Nichols' incredibly empathetic and humane autobio series about the various groups that have had an impact on their life reaches an almost unbearable point of agony and then resolves in an unexpected but remarkably hopeful way. Growing up in rural Louisiana as a queer kid led to all sorts of feelings of self-hatred, even as the local church community often provided her tremendous support and encouragement. Nichols rejects all binary arguments and instead embraces the contradictions that surround us. It was possible for people in their church and their family to support them in some ways but make them inadvertently feel like a sinner in others. They were often a shield for them and encouraged their budding academic talents in the face of bullying from the other kids at school. Their parents were another set of contradictions, simultaneously encouraging Nichols and making them feel worthless. This volume follows up on hints laid down in earlier volumes, as Nichols' father asks for a divorce, leading Nichols' mom to leave the house with all the prescription drugs. Nichols details the ways in which their parents put them in the middle, each attacking the other.

Nichols depicts themself as a rag doll in their autobio comics buffeted by the inexorable forces of physics. This is an especially apt metaphor given the way Nichols felt pushed and pulled, reducing them to a pile of stuffing. Nichols details the ways in which their church helped them and their mother out, no questions asked: food, clothes, shelter, etc. Even with the weight of being queer bearing down on them as a young teen, Nichols' faith was still a comfort in the face of extreme anxiety. Nichols finally gets relief when they're accepted into the state Science, Math & The Arts high school. Here, Nichols meets a new flock. No longer an outsider due to their intellect and interests, Nichols finds unconditional support for the first time in their life. There's a remarkable scene when one of Nichols' friends basically tells them to come out, that everyone knew they were interested in girls--and it was OK. The pressure arrows bearing down on Nichols disappeared as the one thing they thought they'd never get and didn't deserve--true acceptance--was freely given. After extending empathy, compassion, understanding and the benefit of the doubt to everyone else, Nichols finally gave it to themself. The joy and radiance in Nichols' line at this point fairly bursts off the page as they were able to extend and receive the trust that had been broken with their parents.

Minis: Ansis Purins, Lukasz Kowalczuk, Anuj Shrestha, Sar Shahar, Jared Rosello

Vreckless Vrestlers #0, by Lukasz Kowalczuk. This is an odd little mini by Polish cartoonist Kowalczuk about a wrestling manager from the future who kidnaps warriors from across time and space to fight for a championship with the motto of "one rule - no rules". With a fat, cartoony line reminiscent of Johnny Ryan (Prison Pit would seem to be an influence here), Kowalczuk uses a wordless approach (save for brief narrative captions) in introducing the eight characters who will wind up fighting each other. From valkyries like Barbarica to creatures like Vegan Cat and Crimean Crab, every aspect of this comic is over the top and blatantly ridiculous. Unfortunately, there's not much here in this "#0" terms of actual carnage for the reader to enjoy, but it would seem that the eventual payoffs will be visceral, silly and imaginative.

Magic Forest #1, by Ansis Purins. This is a collection of bits and pieces from the upcoming and longer Zombre #3. The concept here is a magic forest where some of its denizens are in alliance with human forest rangers, resulting mostly in goofy and occasionally violent gags. Purins has solid comedic timing that particularly shines through in a strip about an elf desperately asking a ranger for aid against the Spider King and his army. The ranger, of course, had been contacted by another ranger about a spider infestation in a cabin, but Purins strings things along amusingly with the elf relaying an epic tale until the ranger reveals a secret weapon: a can of "Spider B Gone". In another strip, a ranger tries to get official information out of a mermaid who doesn't speak english, chastising her that nudity isn't allowed on the beach while desperately asking her to keep singing. What makes this comic interesting is the way that Purins balances bigfoot drawing, traditional fantasy character design and naturalistic drawing. The remarkable clarity of line allows Purins to juggle all three styles while still retaining a coherent overall visual approach. Part of the reason why Purins does this so well is the consistency in the way he depicts gesture and expression; even characters drawn in different styles tend to act and move in the same recognizable set of patterns, one that's heavy on body language to such an extent that a reader could ignore all dialogue and still understand the comic.

Genus 3, by Anuj Shrestha. The third issue of this crazy conspiracy/sci-fi/horror/mystery comic ramps up both the mystery and the craziness while still retaining its signature crisp, restrained style of art. The plot follows an office worker who first dreams that there are multitude of others whose heads have been replaced by vaguely obscene, bulbous plants. Then he realizes that he's become one of them and is guided, Matrix-style, by a phone caller who seems to be able to watch his every move. In this issue, he poses as a plant-executive, having gained control of the ability to transform, and is again guided to a building where his two subordinates are killed by his savior, another plant-headed man. Of course, things once again aren't exactly as they seem, as our protagonist winds up tied up and injected by his supposed savior while being given a speech about corruption and being expected to behave. Shrestha's line is incredibly thin and precise as the suits he draws are as crisp and clean as the plant heads he draws are bizarre and disturbing. It's difficult to review just a single issue of this series, as it's obvious that there's much more that's going to be revealed, but so far it's a fascinating critique of corporate culture and science told through sci-fi tropes, but designed to be as clean and antiseptic as possible in terms of its execution.

Sequential Vacation II, by Sar Shahar. Secret Acres picked up the follow-up to Shahar's excellent first issue in this "travel" series, one in which the vacation is more of an imaginative one, one that draws a person out of their daily life. That certainly holds true in this issue, "Beach Fantasy". Grids are a key element of Shahar's art, omnipresent in his character's lives even as they try to find ways to break free of their boxes. It's no accident that the more fantastical aspects of Shahar's stories often have splash pages as opposed to the rhythm of a four panel grid or two panels on top and one panel on the bottom. After the opening fantasy sequence, the reader is literally presented with a huge grid: a sheet of graph paper that essentially makes up an office building. When that building explodes (literally destroying the grid), we see that our protagonist is watching a 3D movie in a theater, the idea of destroying the grid firmly implanted in his imagination. The next image, that of a hand scanning a UPC symbol on a flowery shirt, is a clever one because it's once again a splash page. The shirt represents fantasy triumphing over the grid, a dream of something else. Of course, the reader is then reminded that the grid is everywhere: on the cashier's computer, on the tile at the ice cream stand the hero goes to next, on the buses and in the city of Los Angeles itself. Wearing that fantasy shirt, the reader can see that he has a dating profile up on his computer ("Who's up for drinks?) along with itunes blaring, suggesting a party. We see the image of two beers being clinked, only to discover that it's on TV and the man is drinking alone. The man watches the box (TV), clicking from channel to channel in a dispiriting series of panel-to-panel transitions, the evening ending with a bomb on a TV show laying waste to its environment--in much the same way the evening has been a devastating failure, with the spilled cheetos and box of bagel bits a depressing reminder of this "party". The sun turns into the moon, which regenerates the beach fantasy, with a mystery man reappearing on this fantasy beach and a squeeze on the knee while boating providing a moment of aching delight. Of course, the final two pages contain the odd image of what appears to be a factory on the shore, with twin smokestacks framing the final image. Shahar has an uncanny knack for portraying the desperation of loneliness in a clever and frequently funny manner, using familiar imagery in unusual ways. When he has enough stories to fill up a book, he'll gain a considerable amount of attention for his work.

The Well-Dressed Bear (Will Never Be Found) Book One, by Jarod Rosello. Told in a narrative style not unlike Edward Gorey (and there's a touch of Gorey to be found in the page design and even some of its decorative qualities), it's about a bear who starts getting weird, unwelcome phone calls. The third chapter is when it starts to get cooking, when the Bear leaves his brownstone home to go about his business in the city. The city, however, is a bombed-out and decaying wreck, something not at all addressed in the narrative. There are almost hints of City of Glass to be found here, in that "it all started with a phone call" and that identity plays a key role in the story's proceedings. The narrative turns from simple description to balancing paranoia and even desperation. Rosello's crisp linework and rubbery, looping arms remind me a little of Megan Kelso's comics. I'd love to see this mini eventually reprinted at a larger size, as it would highlight the decorative quality of some of the pages more emphatically.

Comics-as-Poetry and Stylized Comics: Badman, Adams, Shrestha

MadInkBeard #1 & #2, by Derik Badman. Badman is an artist who specializes in repurposing previously existing text and images for poetic effect. This is his new (mostly) one-man anthology comic that's a catch-all for his shorter projects. The first issue uses text from Henry David Thoreau's Walden journals juxtaposed against Badman's recreations of comics by a variety of cartoonists, including Charles Schulz, Mike Sekowsky and a variety of other romance comics artists. He did this as part of the "30 Days of Comics" challenge that Allan Haverholm participated in (which I reviewed on 8/20/2012), and the results are understandably mixed given that restriction. His strip on 11/3/2011 was a great one, with the text reading "They will occur with/some essential difference/though at the risk/of endless iteration" and each of the four panels depicting the very outside edge of a house. The last two panels originally come from Schulz, and this is an example of one of Badman's comics working because of the way he was able to match text to image while creating a sort of poetic narrative with the actual images themselves. Things pick up again when he switches to using romance comics art that totally repurposes Thoreau's original text. Badman creates something lively and spirited with his use of spot color, adding hues in an almost abstract manner to create atmosphere and contrast. From there, he switches to near-abstract uses of color, grounded only by the text which suggests fires, breezes and at times extreme close-ups. Badman also includes a page each from Haverholm, Warren Craghead and Simon Moreton, all of whom did their own variations on the challenge. Craghead's drawings on leaves were fascinating, while Moreton's use of smudging and water effects reminded me of some older Craghead comics.

The second issue is all photocomics (what we tend to call "fumetti" in the US even though this term is not quite accurate), including a long essay on the history of the technique and its general lack of favor in the US. Badman tries a variety of approaches here: anchoring the photos with poetic text that tells a vague story, wordless pages that coalesce around types of images, and a visual photo narrative of sorts that dips into abstraction. Of the three approaches, I thought the first was the least interesting. There's a rigidity about the photographic image that for me resists poetic text; it's almost intrusive to see words with these images. I thought his attempts of the second sort were interesting, matching angles, shapes, colors and textures in each photo to form photo patterns. I thought the visual photo narrative was the most interesting, as the reader is led along a leafy path, up a set of stairs and into a dark forest. Here, the concrete and "real" qualities of the photos work in their favor, as the reader is led somewhere that seems to actually exist, until they are confronted with alternating images of pure light and darkness. I wouldn't mind seeing more experiments of this sort from Badman, who certainly opened my eyes to the possibilities of the photo comic, even if it seems clear that he's struggling to discover them himself. As always, Badman's comics fascinate and raise questions about the formal nature of the art.

Period, by Christopher Adams.  Adams is an up-and-comer whose first book is about to debut at SPX, published by the folks over at 2D Cloud. His work is all about stillness, quiet, and everyday experience as a kind of marvel. This comic follows a family as they go about their day, pelting the reader initially with a 4 x 8 panel grid that emphasizes the ways in which our morning routines blend into each other. Adams jumps back and forth in time as memories take over the narrative for extended periods of time and fantasies (like flying on a hammerhead shark) intrude on work rituals. Adams explores the family unit as one that is stultifying in its boredom because of the repetitive nature of its interactions but at the same valuable for that very reason. There's an extended sequence where a father players his young daughter in Wii tennis while her mother looks on that's remarkably true to life in how toddlers interact with their parents. From there, we see vacations, garbage day and other either memorable moments or quotidian rituals burned into memory, before consciousness recedes and we see mountains, just as the comic opened with a seahorse floating around and smoking a cigarette. This comic works because of Adams' chunky line and attention to detail; the reader is drawn to every panel as an event worth watching, even as Adams draws the reader's eye across the page quickly. Adams' work looks even better in color, and I'm hoping that his new book will fall into that category.

Genus #1 & #2, by Anuj Shrestha. This mini reminds me a lot of Adrian Tomine's work, if Tomine wrote conspiracy/mystery/sci-fi stories wherein a significant number of people had had their heads replaced by grotesque, bulbous plant-like organisms. Shrestha's line weight, character design and overall restraint as a storyteller all seem to be in Tomine's balpark, but the Lovecraftian body horror that runs throughout the series is heightened precisely because of that distance and restraint. The first issue is entirely silent, as a man wakes up from a nightmare where a spore organism is vomited out of his mouth to go to a job interview. From there, he begins to notice that a number of people have had their heads replaced, only to be confronted with the dead corpse of a "plant man", as he's discovered with the body a la an Alfred Hitchcock scene out of North By Northwest. At the end of the first issue, he discovers that his nightmare is coming true, as he feels protuberances on the back of his neck. The second issue is driven by narrative captions and a chase scene that feels a bit like The Matrix, as the hero is guided by a mysterious caller on his cell phone on how to escape his pursuers, down to drinking special hot sauce that cures him of the condition, or rather, allows him to control his transformation. I love the way that Shrestha plays around with familiar genre tropes while not alighting upon a particular genre; instead, he keeps the reader as off-balance and bewildered as the protagonist, who must wonder not only what he's up against, but who's helping him and why. This is a wonderfully clever and smartly designed comic that looks like it's headed in some interesting directions.

Coin-Op #4, by Peter & Maria Hoey.The brother and sister combo return with another comic's worth of the surreal and the mundane with a crisp, beautiful line and rich sense of color. It's no surprise that one of their strips was printed in an issue of Blab!, given that that publication is well-known as the intersection between the art world and the comics world. Once again, the stories are a mix of modern and postmodern, with an art deco feel representing the former and a fractured storytelling sensibility representing the latter. The highlights of this issue include "An Occurrence at Pont Neuf Bridge", a story that playfully riffs on the Hoey's own cinematic tendencies by providing three layers of storytelling. First, there's the wide-angle shot of a director screaming at a runaway actor to get back. Second is the highly cinematic series of small panels in the middle of the page which emphasize both motion and the actor's own dreamy, dazed narration. Finally, there's a series of single-page panels emphasizing particular story elements from classic films, abstracting a motion picture down to a few static elements. It's a funny story both about the obsessiveness of directors and the feeling of detachment the actor feels from reality--fueled in part by being in a movie.

Going back to the art deco/Max Fleischer feel are "Valse Mecanique" and the latest installment from "Saltz and Pepz". The former reminds me a bit of Metropolis, given the robot society and how it works within an oppressive government, although this strip is more about creativity in such environs. The latter story's anthropomorphic dogs once again get in trouble with the law, this time over a Thelonius Monk record. Naturally, this leads them to travel back in time to meet Monk himself and steal a wallet from an associate of the jazz musician's. It also wouldn't be an issue of Coin-Op if there wasn't at least one story with fractured storytelling,as "The Slippery Lobster" sees the Hoey's use a 4 x 3 panel grid both as a single image and as a series of panels telling a propulsive story. This story is about motion coming in a number of different directions: left to right, right to left, upper left to lower right, upper right to lower left. That motion is given real stakes when boats threaten to run into each other and a lobster fisherman eventually loses his catch. It's a tremendously clever, witty comic that uses formal innovations to tell a very simple story, incorporating both movement and simultaneity into a page that makes it static and dynamic at the same time, depending on how the reader approaches it. This is a fine showcase for two illustrators who are also top-notch cartoonists.