Minis: Daniel Spottswood

Daniel Spottswood usually does amusing and fictional slice-of-life comics, but in Son of Nix! and April 2018, he focuses on life with his wife and toddler son. The latter comic is printed on light cardboard stock and folds out like a calendar, with each day's slot containing either a four-panel strip or a single image. Spottswood's cute style is juxtaposed against his frustrations with his job and the difficulties of raising an active toddler. Some days are cute, like when his son gave him a good-night kiss but not for his mom. Some days are filled with emotion, like when he unloads on his wife for being so messy and then is immediately filled with shame. Some days are filled with having to bend to the iron will of a toddler who demands a certain kind of play. Spottswood also manages to read eight books in the month in addition to drawing this strip, finding the energy despite having a job that clearly enervates him. Working as a store dealing with shelving and organizing products is actually made worse by working for a friend as a manager, who is wishy-washy in terms of leadership. Despite all of the frustrations, one can sense a great deal of joy in this work, especially when he sees his son delight in something. The cute, spare line Spottswood uses is ideal for this kind of work when a lot of art is crammed into a small space, though some of the lettering is hard to read.

Son Of Nix! focuses in on Spottswood's son, Philip, in a standard minicomic format. There's a variety of work to be found: naturalistic drawings of his son, four-panel strips (in a size that lets them breathe), single-page gags and expressions of frustration, and more. Some strips are written taking Philip's point of view in mind, like how upsetting it is for your first birthday, surrounded by strangers and your food on fire. There are gags about play telephones that are very funny because Spottswood knows how to sell them both to the reader and his son. There's a lovely silent strip where he comforts Philip when he has a fever, falling asleep with him in his bed. There are more funny expressions of frustration, like when Philip knocks over his coffee in order to play with his cup or when Philip bashes him to wake him up before the sun rises. What I like most about these strips is their sense of being in the moment. There's a presentness in Spottswood's approach, especially in this mini, that focuses on the moment-to-moment life of being a parent. That gives them an almost visceral impact, both in terms of their humor but also their anger and frustration.

Minis From Daniel Spottswood

Daniel Spottswood uses a Raymond Carver-style overlapping series of individual narratives that meet at certain key points in his minicomics. There's a mix of slow-burn narrative but also a certain repetitive series of gags surrounding his characters, as the reader always expects certain things when a particular character is spotlighted. Visually, Spottswood uses a cute, simple style that emphasizes one or two features for each of his characters. He also puts in sly references to Marvel comics and other pop culture, like the cover of Disquietville Showcase #1 being a reference to an old series of Marvel covers during one month. Mostly, Spottswood gives the reader a set of slice-of-life narratives that start to become familiar and welcome fairly quickly. His ability to get to the essence of a character allows the reader to understand them thoroughly and look forward to what they might say or do next, especially as they interact with other characters.

For example, in Disquietville Tales #1, we're introduced to Owen and Patrick, a father-son duo who each act problematically in their own way, yet show each other unconditional love. There's Patrick, the artist, who is followed around by the silent ghost of his ex-girlfriend, presented on the page as just a series of dashes. Glen's a nerd who prizes getting a rare toy instead of the winter coat he badly needs. In the middle of the comic, it folds out for a tale of gathering spot "Pablo's Diner", where a number of these narratives intersect or give the reader a taste of what's to come later. It's intricate and overwhelming, but Spottswood is careful to bring the reader along gradually in and out of these narratives.

My favorite character in the book is Margie, the anxious and put-upon waitress who's always showing up late, fibbing to her boyfriend as a result of her forgetfulness and constantly anxious about her inability to focus on what she really wants to do in life. She's the embodiment of ambition undercut by anxiety-driven procrastination. Her design, with hairbows and short pig-tails, really fits her cute exterior that belies that mixture of worry and hedonism.

Disquietville Showcase Featuring Doug #1 is all about a particular misanthrope who works in the convenience store and is friends with Glen. Some people are born misanthropes, but in the case of the permanently unshaven Doug, his hatred of the world was created by lazy co-workers who took advantage of his good nature and team spirit. It didn't take long for him to take his revenge on them through never leaving the job and making them miserable. There's a centerfold feature about that history and his horrible coworkers, one of whom calls him a "faggot". There's a surprising sense of ease with which Spottswood uses homophobic language, but it's always either said by an obviously awful person or else it's actually corrected by another character.

Unstuck is a series of presumably autobiographical, single-page images that are memories (like Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five) that are "unstuck" from time. From being introduced to his baby brother to remembering an especially amazing Christmas gift to losing his job to a particular sexual encounter to meeting a future girlfriend for the first time, each image is powerful on its own. Spottswood's gift here is conveying a great deal of information in a single panel with a minimum of dialogue. The reader knows that they're jumping back and forth in time, and we see the same images of important people at different times. Spottswood's understanding of the complexity of emotion and memory, especially with regard to family, is hard to explain and understand, as an image of his father hitting him and a later image of him praying that his father doesn't die illustrates. The use of blue wash adds just enough of a touch to illustrate how the images are linked together, giving a sense of being slightly faded and flickering, like an old TV set. Spottswood's comics take advantage of his invitingly cute character design and allow him to inject a number of adult themes without ever losing track of their appealing, welcoming quality.