Thirty Days of CCS #9: Ford, Forsman, Coovert, Kim, Martin, Gaskin

Let's take a look at some short comics from the remarkable graduating class of 2008 from CCS, many of whom spent time editing the Sundays anthology.

Simple Routines #18, by J.P. Coovert. Coovert's been honing his craft as an autobio cartoonist for some time now, and his most recent results have been increasingly poignant and poetic. That includes his line, which he has simplified thanks to the choice of using a thin weight (exactly the same as the weight he uses for his lettering), which gives each panel a sense of compositional unity. Considering that he uses a narrative caption for most of his panels, this is the biggest key to their success. His figures are simple and iconic without sacrificing clarity or expressiveness, which is important because Coovert explores the emotions he feels for his wife, friends and parents in many of the anecdotes described here. The final story, where he remembers playing with a sick kid as a child as a formative moment for how he views life, is poignant without being maudlin or too self-important. Through sheer hard work and repetition, Coovert has made the daily diary strip more than just an artist's exercise.

Teen Creeps #1 and Working On The End Of The Fucking World, by Chuck Forsman. Forsman is one of the smartest and most thoughtful cartoonists working today, with an intellectual curiosity about process and themes that reflects his status as cartoonist, editor and publisher. That curiosity has led to Forsman publishing several interview zines through his Oily Comics concern, as well as the Working On... zine that's comprised of commentary, an interview, sketches and thumbnails from his most well-known comic that began as a series of eight-page minis. Forsman notes that it's mainly an excuse to "play with 2 color printing", and he sounds a bit anxious about being pretentious in the interview, but it's clear that this is something he takes seriously, and rightly so. Documenting that process in a manner that's visually interesting and challenging was obviously a puzzle of its own for him. Teen Creeps is his new series of short stories involving "loosely connected" characters over time. The first issue starts a story featuring Hilary and her bad-ass friend Dawn. Hilary is slut-shamed by a jock at a high school when she won't put out after he goes down on her. When Dawn catches wind of this, she kicks the kid spreading a rumor about Hilary in the groin, ignoring the inevitable lecture from school officials. Forsman's specialty is teenage characters, and this comic features him tackling the subject from a different perspective. It's not just that the lead characters are girls (a rarity for Forsman), it's that he's examining a different set of character dynamics than usual. This set of Teen Creeps story seems like it's going to focus in on the friendship between Dawn and Hilary, and the ways in which that friendship blurs and strains. As always, Forsman's character design is cartoony and grotesque in a manner that feels real, from Hilary's pointy nose and long, stringy hair to a kid's flat-top, spiky haircut.

Shadow Hills #1, by Sean Ford. It's a brand new series for Ford after working on Only Skin for several years. This time around, the focus seems to be on a couple of children: a mute boy who collapses near a small forest town, and a girl who fancies herself a would-be detective who discovers him. Told in retrospect by the girl, it hints at ominous, strange events that seem to indicate that the boy was far from ordinary. Ford seems to have varied his line weight a bit here, giving his line a more fragile, tremulous quality. Ford also sets up the stakes of this story more rapidly than in Only Skin, with its narrative structure immediately instilling a sense of menace and foreboding from the very beginning. It was a bit strange to see Ford work this small, after seeing the wide-open vistas of his last book, but he may be going for something more claustrophobic here.

Timber Run 1 and Dumpling King 1, 2 by Alex Kim. If you were to ask me about a particularly underrated cartoonist, Kim would be one of the first names I'd consider. His idiosyncratic and piercingly angular character design, his lush use of backgrounds, and his quirky sense of humor all punctuate his status as an outstanding writer of suspense and horror comics. Dumpling King, published by Oily Comics, promises to be a creepily-paced breakout work that brings him deserved attention. It's remarkable how quickly he's able to establish the premise and setting of this comic, as a prospective dumpling making decides to abandon his tutelage in favor of being the store's delivery man after the former holder of that spot kills himself. He wants to investigate for himself the mysterious Grace Chang and her sinister family despite the protestations of his mentor. Kim quickly sets up steam and fog as recurring visual motifs, painstakingly rendered in a stippled line that gives the vapor a density that looks dangerous. The changing covers are also carefully considered, as we switch from character to character in each issue and the moon slowly sets. This is beautiful and meticulous cartooning that's in total service to the demands of the immediately engrossing story. Kim draws the reader into his world with pointy noses and wrinkled faces. Timber Run is the first part of a horror comic that features one of Kim's favorite motifs: the cabin in the woods. The reader is slowly drawn into a family drama, an abandoned relative and his sister's family attempts to find him. If the horror here is perhaps more conventional, Kim plays around with expectations by putting the family's drama out front until the monster is revealed in gloriously over-the-top style. Kim leaves the reader on a nasty cliffhanger, making it clear that a happy ending is not guaranteed.

Gnomes, by Sam Gaskin. This is a bit of smudgy silliness from a cartoonist who has always used fantasy and pop-culture tropes and images to fuel his humor. The strips here range between quotidian activities to out-and-out gags, like a gnome tricking a troll into falling into a hole and then pissing on him. Many of them are more like "tickle fight", which involves two gnomes tickling each other with the tagline "everybody wins!" This is a deliberately lo-fi, bawdy version of the famous 1977 book of illustrations that set off the gnome craze, one where plot and character are less relevant than world-building. Of course, the world-building here mostly involves gnomes getting drunk on mead and eating pumpkin bread. It's an amusing concept that's as sloppily drawn as the original book was fastidious.

Gagger 1, by Dane Martin. Martin has long been a cartoonist who's mashed together influences from the golden age of cartooning like EZ Segar with more modern influences like Tony Millionaire and Mark Beyer. Martin's comics have a feverish, nightmarish quality, even as they follow the adventures of cartoon birds who happen to be artists, animators and gagsmiths. There's a mix between characters that have a deliberate, energetic crudeness in terms of their rendering and a carefully-crafted set of backgrounds that feature intricate patterns and furiously-dashed marks. The eye doesn't rest on a Dane Martin page; instead, it dashes anxiously from image to image, never being allowed to relax or find comfort in any of the drawings. It's an anxiousness that's not unlike what Michael DeForge does on his pages, only cranked up to a more uncomfortable level. The main character here is a gag writer for "Uncle Saul" who's out of inspiration and ideas who takes a walk, only to reveal how useless and impotent he is a sentient creature, one completely unable and unwilling to help others. Of course, the character is ridden by guilt, because all of his emotions must center around his own negative conception of self no matter what. It's a powerful, bracing little comic that promises some fascinating insights into human interaction.

Funny Aminals Volume 3: Hush

Of the few CCS-related anthologies that have published more than one volume, Jeff Lok and Bryan Stone's Funny Aminals has been the most uneven in terms of production values and content. The third volume, subtitled Hush, is easily the tightest and best-looking edition to date. In part, I think that's because the editors chose from a wider pool of CCS-related artists, including a number of current and recent students. It's a substantial book at 64 pages yet doesn't outstay its welcome, with only a few pieces that might have been omitted. There was a sense that the contributors for the most part tried to bring their "A" material to the table, rather than hurriedly submit something, which is not an unusual occurrence for unpaid, self-published anthologies.

The book takes as inspiration funny animal comic books, a source that gives the artists a lot of latitude as to what kind of stories they chose to tell. Some tell stories in the original spirit of the comics that were once as commonplace as super-hero comics are today, while others take their cue from the underground comics that subverted these tropes. A good example of the latter is Matt Aucoin, whose "Floplins and Fuzzwumps", while silly and scatological, is superbly drawn and paced. This is probably the single best piece I've ever seen from him in terms of both storytelling and draftsmanship. G.P. Bonesteel similarly ups his game with his one-page strip "Chalk", which brings a silly premise to life with lively figure drawing of two lizard creatures. The anthology wisely leads off with Denis St. John's "The Devil's Magic", a hilarious and elegant story about a sinister-seeming anthropomorphic goat magician whose actual magic may be mundane, but still enormously impressive to his audience. It's a great-looking story with a strong undercurrent of humor throughout.

Other strong pieces included Andy Burkholder's "ZZZZZZZZ", a surreal piece filled with sharp and angular imagery; the joyfully loose "Bedtime for Boozy" by Colleen Frakes; Stone's delightful forest farce "One Year"; Jeremiah Piersol's ant vs anteater battle "Ant defEaters" (featuring his thick line deployed in a cartoony manner); Lok's bulbous figures and absurd horror in "Sal's" (the image of a sentient, bouncing pig's head is a hard one to shake); Donna Almendrala's silly Eastwood-as-chimp story "The Good, The Bad and the Chimpanzee" and the inimitable Dane Martin with "The Wise Old Bird's Paranoid Ballet". In his ratty, frantic, claustrophobic style, Martin once again tells a story of someone yearning desperately with the prospect of something wonderful at the end of his journey, only to find a bullet for his troubles. I'm excited that he's doing a series with Chuck Forsman's Oily Comics, because this is an artist whose work needs to be more widely seen. His presence is precisely the sort of change of pace that makes for a good anthology, and while many of the comics in Hush can be described as lightweight, there's a strong level of craft and care at work here that makes it worth a look.

Four New CCS Anthologies

Anthologies have long been the lifeblood of the students and alumni of the Center for Cartoon Studies. Self-published anthologies are frequently the first place they publish, but many alumni continue to edit and publish them long after graduation. Let's take a look at four recent anthologies by alumni, students and faculty of CCS.

Too Far, edited by Joseph Lambert. This is a very strong anthology from One Percent Press, the minicomics and music collective that includes Lambert, JP Coovert and James Hindle. They've done a number of anthologies but this one shows both their growth as artists as well as their taste in picking new contributors. Of course, this is really Lambert's show in terms of editing and design, and one can clearly see him evolving in every aspect of comics. Hindle's piece, "Microscopic", combines the very specific pain of dealing with a one-way breakup with the sort of phenomenology of space as it applies to emotional states that Tom Kaczynski does so well. Alexis Frederick-Frost contributes a story done in his recent, more relaxed style that's not quite so heavy on the blacks. With that thinner line, he crams a ton of ornate but clear detail into a hilarious period piece about society functions and how women started wearing ever more ornate hats with live birds on them. This is a wonderfully witty story that fully exploits its premise and ends with a great punchline. Coovert's piece is one of his fantasy/autobio pieces involving an argument with his finger after he picked at it. This is a wisp of a story, but some of the cartooning involved is clever.


Jose-Luis Olivares offers a typically visually crazy story about Superman and Storm giving birth to a baby hurricane. His line is simple but dense, using thick, swirling strokes to create an atmosphere of chaos. At the same time, this story is whimsical yet strangely affecting emotionally. Even when Superman learns that Mickey Mouse is really the father (a move that scored Olivares a hat trick of copyright infringement), he embraces the baby as his own--even as it destroys the world. Lambert follows a story by one of the most original stylists from CCS with another, as we get a Dane Martin story involving his bizarre bird people. There's always an inchoate rage present in Martin's comics that matches the bleakness of his dotted backgrounds and the blank expressions on the faces of his characters.


Lambert's own story is his best-ever, perfectly encapsulating the theme of the anthology as expressed by its title. Lambert's stories tend to center around sibling rivalry and the viciousness it can entail, putting that conflict on a fantastic, over-the-top stage. This story sees a scared child literally eating his father and then the entire world (truly a "going too far" moment) and then following up on the ramifications of this action by exploring what happens to the world when it's eaten. Lambert always had flash and slickness in his line, but he's now branching out with experimental and even quirky solutions to visual problems. Finally, Alex Kim picks up on the eschatological themes present in this book with a story about a man at an Antarctic base being confronted by the end of the world in the person of a woman who shows up at his door to tell him the news. "Too far" in this instance is less about nuclear devastation than about an extra act of shocking cruelty, and the paranoia in the story is heightened by Kim's trademark wavy line. There's no question that Too Far is on my short list for best minicomic of the year.

Stranger Knights #2, edited by Bill Volk. Volk expanded this genre-based anthology from the first issue, and while there's some interesting and off-beat stories to be found, the anthology as a whole is sloppily assembled. The work of some of the contributors feels rushed and even dashed-off in some cases. It doesn't seem like any editing or proofreading was done on any of the submissions and the errors are glaring as a result. Mary Soper, for example, has a pleasant enough style, but it's hard to tell her characters apart. This comic looks like it was drawn on a computer, but in any event Soper's line lacks weight, depending way too much on gray-scaling to give its characters some presence on the page. Volk's own stories are typically eccentric, but I'm not crazy about his new style. It's cartoonier and more spare than his old style, adding some interestingly deformed character designs, but it still feels like Volk isn't quite comfortable with it yet. What is never in doubt is Volk's wit, as the story of a "future archeologist" interpreting 21st century culture entirely through tattoos was very amusing. The weakest story in the anthology was Shawn Atkins' "The Rise of Phoenix Nine": the narrative is one cliche' after another, it's rife with spelling errors (due, no doubt, in part to its computer font), and the occasionally lively facial expressions are marred by pedestrian layouts.

On the other hand, the offerings by Morgan Pielli and Casey Bohn were a cut above the rest of the entries in the book. Pielli's "A Forged Man" is visually stylish, playing on Frank Miller-style figures and use of blacks to tell a story of a hero trapped in an awful loop. Pielli is really starting to hit his stride of late. Bohn's lumpy style is reminiscent of Steve Ditko, down to the stark simplicity of his character design and clarity of action. There's something slightly crazy going on under the surface of his staid-looking comics, creating an interesting tension between form and content. Overall, I'd say Volk's desire to expand the anthology's contents got the best of either his editorial judgment or attention to detail with regard to the other submissions. The idea of an alt-genre anthology is a good one, but the overall level of craft and care is not yet up to the standards of other CCS anthologies.


Subterranean #3, edited by Sean Knickerbocker, Alex Bullett, and Andrew Greenstone. All three of these artists were new to me, but this mini was surprisingly tight and impressive. Each brings a different set of visual and narrative approaches to the table. Knickerbocker is a student at CCS, and he draws his inspiration from underground comics and contemporary cartoonists who take their cues from classic comics, like Sammy Harkham. His story "Hunters and Gatherers" is a grim take on two hunters exploring an environment, with the tragic outcome for one being mourned but briefly by the other. "Pekar" is a meditation on the great writer, done in the style of a Pekar/Crumb collaboration. His true gem is "My First Panic Attack", a (presumably) autobiographical story about a young man who experiences a panic attack when confronted with the age difference between him and his girlfriend. The attack manifests as he and his girlfriend transform into Floyd Gottfredsen-style, vaguely anthropomorphic characters and are menaced by a spider/cop. Knickerbocker clearly has a bright future, especially when he's fully processed his influences.


Bullett's story about two bumbling aliens sent on a mission to assassinate a political leader feels like a Heavy Metal pastiche/parody, and as such it's got a wicked wit. From the (subdued) spectacle of the villain wearing only a mesh tank top and sunglasses (a funny comment on the way women are dressed in such stories) to the distorted and grotesque figures, Bullett's chops are just good enough to tell the story the way it needed to be told without unnecessary clutter. Certain panels could have used backgrounds and more decorative detail to fully bring this world to life, but he certainly gets the point across. Greenstone's thick lines and clutter make his story about a vampire wage slave looking for love and inspiration at a hipster party spring to life. His cartoony style gives every drawing a springy energy, one that's contained by the generous helping of zip-a-tone effects he adds to nearly every panel. About the only problem I had with this story is that his lettering is just a bit too big and intrusive; the lettering itself is fine, but I would have preferred a little more visual impact in each panel and a bit less word balloon. All told, this was an impressive showcase for all three of these young artists, each of which has talent and potential.



This Isn't Working: Comics About Ex-Boyfriends, edited by Robyn Chapman. Chapman was never actually a student at CCS (she went to the Savannah College of Art & Design), but she's been an active part of the school in various capacities since virtually its inception. After years of editing and self-publishing her own comics as well as anthologies like True Porn and zines such as Hey, Four Eyes!, Chapman has officially launched her own minicomics publishing concern: Paper Rocket. She'll be reprinting classic minicomics series as minicomics (an ingenious idea) as well as doing new comics and anthologies. This Isn't Working is an anthology that includes several CCS folks in the mix, and it's exactly what the title suggests: autobio comics about relationships that didn't work out for one reason or another. The range of cartooning styles as well as experiences helps create a variety of stories. There are tales of woe, angry anecdotes and funny stories about crazy relationships. It's a short, tightly-edited anthology that doesn't overstay its welcome.

Cara Bean's pleasingly ornate tale of a rocky relationship she had with a man who was as miserable as she was ends with a tragic but not surprising result. Her self-caricature as a sort of walking potato was simultaneously endearing and self-deprecating. I've always admired Caitlin Plovnick's ability to use her limited skills as a draftsman to nonetheless create clear, simple and direct narratives. This story of a hideous recurring dream that turns from warm to horrible when an ex-boyfriend pops up is especially effective as she cleverly renders herself losing all definition after she wakes up from the dream. Chapman's spare and cartoony style has always grabbed my attention through the use of a thick, economical line surrounding key aspects of people and objects. Her story concerns her slight obsession with a long-ago boyfriend, wondering if he thinks of her the way she sometimes thinks of him.

Liz Prince's story of the hurt that remains long after the breakup with her boyfriend was surprisingly powerful. I thought her depiction of that relationship in Will You Still Love Me If I Wet The Bed? was lightweight and twee, but there's a level of thematic complexity at work in this story that goes beyond the simple drama of a break-up as she ties music into the narrative in an interesting way. Jen Vaughn's "Let's Go Out" is hilarious, depicting why cunnilingus after eating hot sauce is always a bad idea. As always, Vaughn is better at depicting clever visual solutions to compositional problems than in rendering actual figures, a factor that detracts a little from the story's punchline. Finally, Mari Naomi contributes another of her "Kiss and Tell" stories of people she's dated; this time, it was a rebound relationship after she broke up with her fiance'. The stark simplicity of her line, the frankness of her confessional story and sheer storytelling momentum she manages to conjure up out of minutia make this a strong closing act for an anthology that will hopefully have future volumes. Chapman clearly knows what she's doing as an editor and publisher.