Two From Kilgore: Unicorns Of Planet Earth, Kilgore Quarterly #7

Unicorns Of Planet Earth, by Lauren Barnett. Barnett doesn't do a lot of minis these days, but there's no question that she's become funnier and funnier over the years. Her latest comic is kind of a conceptual sequel to her excellent I'm A Horse, Bitch, except that it's from the point of view from Barnett as a "unicorn scientist" instead of from the animal's point of view, and it declares horses to be "snooze-fests". Barnett's comedy is mostly conceptual in nature, combining total absurdity with a deadpan quality that's razor-sharp. The crude drawings of unicorns (in full color, no less) are always funny in and of themselves, and made funnier by supporting text like "This unicorn is an alcoholic, though he would say he's just 'going through a rough patch.'" Even better is when she describes the fact that unicorns mate for life, she says, "I love knowing that true love is out there, even for unicorns! It doesn't make me want to stab myself in the face or anything like that. I'm just happy when others find happiness. Super happy."

The comic goes from there, absorbing aspects of the likes of Lisa Hanawalt and Lauren Weinstein and giving them Barnett's own sardonic spin. What makes the comic so successful is Barnett's comedic sense of rhythm and the way she plays it off the bright, colorful and silly imagery. The mini is the perfect delivery system for this kind of humor, as her design and sense of humor is all over it. Barnett is the master at taking a seemingly thin premise and absolutely wringing out every possible laugh.

Kilgore Quarterly #7, edited by Dan Stafford. This latest issue of the in-house anthology collects a number of "orphans"--short stories by various interesting cartoonists that are now hard to find. It opens with a superb Summer Pierre piece, "Dappled Light", that starts off exploring her current relationship with old TV sitcoms from the 1950s (including the humor-free Father Knows Best) and then slips into a reminiscence about how TV was an escape from what was hinted at as a rough and abusive childhood. Pierre's drawing of herself as a girl is perfect in this regard: dots for eyes, a simply-drawn face, long straight hair. In the scene where she imagines herself inhabiting the world of Leave It To Beaver, just for a little while, that simplified self-image perfectly encapsulates her fragile emotional state. To be drawn with any more naturalism would be unbearable.

Tim Lane's "Steve McQueen Has Vanished" is typical of his deeply noir-inflected stories, only with a twist. Drawn in Lane's typical naturalistic, shadowy style, the story sees a drifter approach a roadside motel in a beat-up pick-up truck. The twist is that the drifter might be the missing actor Steve McQueen, who disappeared for a time in the early 70s. Another interesting storytelling decision is Lane himself being the narrator of the story but having the dialogue play out in real time, as though the narrator has no control over it. It's a story about regrets, rivalries, identity and the sinking feeling that one has made the wrong decisions in life. Lane also uses a metanarrative of McQueen's disappearance being on the news program McQueen watches in his motel room, as well as one of his earliest appearances (in the monster movie classic The Blob) being on TV.

Joseph Remnant's "I Told You So" is a story about heartbreak, obsession, falling in love with someone through their work and jumping into a new relationship just to reduce the pain of an old one. He's also an artist who uses a naturalistic style, but unlike Lane, it's more in the R.Crumb tradition of lots of lines and lots of cross-hatching, giving it more of a nervous energy than Lane's cool comics. It's a story about doing everything the wrong way but things turning out for the best anyway, and it's got a mixture of brutally sarcastic supporting characters and impractically idealistic protagonists.

Also in the issue is a hilarious Sam Spina "autobiographical" comic about a fish named Sam Spina who's having trouble getting laid, seguing to the actual Spina who then gets beaten up for looking like a threatening homeless presence. It's wish-fulfillment and anti-wish-fulfillment, all in one story, and in Spina's typically frantic, scratchy style. Leslie Stein's "The Desk" was taken from an Oily Comic she did where she sets up a desk in front of her room as a child made of fake bricks. It's a story about playing being an adult (her mom leaves to go to a meeting) and working through crisis, in the most delightful of ways, as she uses her trademark stippled style. There are also a couple of interviews in the book that are handwritten, featuring the cartoonist Jason and singer Grace Slick (!). This is a nice, tight little anthology that is surprisingly cohesive, given the differing styles and subject matter.

Some Thoughts On Root Hog Or Die

Dan Stafford's low-fi, slightly ramshackle documentary, Root Hog Or Die, is entirely fitting with regard to its subject minicomics/zine-making legend, John Porcellino. The film follows a roughly chronological look at his life and career as a musician and cartoonist with extensive interviews from a number of friends and peers from all walks of his life. The film's rough, DIY feel makes sense given Porcellino's background as a cartoonist who uses an exceedingly spare line to relate anecdotes and poetic observations about his life and environment. It was interesting to see various places around Illinois and Denver concretized on the screen, but it was more interesting to hear Porcellino's own feelings about each of these places. There are also a number of readings of his comics by a variety of people.

The film is neatly divided into title-card sections, from his early life to college years to his early years in bands. From there, Porcellino's descent into years of poor health are described in some detail, and his account of battling OCD and depression are particularly harrowing. What is delightful is seeing the frequently solitary Porcellino hanging out with various of his friends from over the year. He's not by nature a solitary person, but circumstances and mental illness often drove him into that direction. Seeing him just cut up with friends like Noah Van Sciver was one of the real joys of this DVD, especially in the extended deleted scenes section. In some ways, I enjoyed the deleted scenes as much or more as the film itself, because they were every bit as revealing as the film's narrative but were more relaxed and more fun. Watching them felt more like reading an issue of King-Cat than watching the straight narrative. The "Extra P" section, devoted to John P talking about the "filler" cartoons from King-Cat as well as talking about how they bombed at one presentation, was excellent for the same reason.

A couple of quotes stood out in the film as especially illustrative of why John P is so good at what he does. Long-time admirer Ivan Brunetti notes that the specific nature of Porcellino's observations about life actually give them a universal appeal. We may not share Porcellino's precise situation or even aesthetic understanding of the world, but his passion for understanding and his attempt to create meaning is easily understood. Porcellino's interest in Zen Buddhism became crystal clear when he referred to it as the "DIY religion", where it's all up to your own effort to make it work and no one else can make it work for you. How fitting is that thought, given his own relentless and independent work ethic over the years?

Where the documentary is at its best is when it manages to capture the thoughtful, poetic and philosophical side of Porcellino alongside his more playful and silly side. Seeing live footage of various bands he was in was a great deal of fun, as well as hearing anecdotes about some of his wackier on-stage antics. Porcellino is a skilled raconteur, even if that's a skill that took him years to develop. He's someone who's now used to talking about his life as a narrative and parceling it out as a series of anecdotes. At the same time, the best John P comics are those that float apart from specific timelines, those that are about Porcellino as phenomenologist. He observes the world, apart from its utility and our everyday understanding of it, and deftly records his sense of awe. There is a famous Zen koan: "First there is a mountain/Then there is no mountain/Then there is." This is a way of describing the Zen approach to living in the material world. We acknowledge the world as it seems to everyone, as the manifestation of the evidence of our senses and all of the assumptions that flow out of that. Then we acknowledge the illusory nature of these constructions. Then we once again acknowledge the temporal and physical existence of the world once again and our role in it. Porcellino's exquisite awareness and willingness to feel his emotions as connected to time and place are the essence of what makes his poetic work so powerful. It is simple and direct, where small details matter most of all. The words are basic and unadorned, the images stripped down to their simplest configurations.

That's especially true with regard to his relationship with animals, and his beloved, deceased cat Maisie Kukoc most of all. There's one strip about traveling across the country on a move where he sits in the cab of a truck, eating with his cat. There's a sense of perfect contentment on both their parts, of total understanding and acceptance of each other.

The timing of this documentary was interesting, because it came at a time when Porcellino was just starting to heal from years of mental illness that wound up wrecking two marriages. Both of his ex-wives are in the film, and he and his first wife Kera actually share a great deal of time together on the screen. The obvious affection both women still feel for him is obvious, given their tones of voice, body language and the ways they exchange words together. There's a sense in which being mentally ill is an aberration of who we are, a warped mutation of our true selves. Porcellino's OCD was certainly in that category, made all the more painful because he could understand rationally that what he was doing and thinking was not credible but couldn't help feeling and thinking that way. When someone is depressed and isolated but is then able to make a reconnection with an old friend, that experience can be a powerful tonic. It's rebuilding synapses that had been long abandoned and creating a flow of creative energy that had been dammed away. Seeing this happen onscreen, even if it's not discussed as such, is quite interesting and even inspiring. The film can also be seen as a companion piece to Porcellino's new book The Hospital Suite, which goes into greater detail regarding a number of autobiographical details from the film. Viewers should be warned that the DIY nature of the film extends to things like frequently poor lighting, a shaky camera, weird angles, etc. None of that seems to matter much given the subject, as the film shares in and celebrates Porcellino's own rough edges.