Anthologies: Little Heart

2D Cloud's Kickstarter-funded anthology Little Heart is uneven as far as the quality of its contributions goes, though in some respects that's beside the point. A portion of the book's proceeds went to [MN]Love, a nonprofit dedicated to marriage equality in Minnesota. As an adopted North Carolinian, enduring the results of Amendment One this past year was disgraceful, as it made so-called "marriage protections" part of the state constitution. Until the US Supreme Court rules otherwise, more states are in danger of having to deal with these barbaric and discriminatory practices. As such, one can forgive that some of the entries in this anthology either aren't comics or else display more enthusiasm than skill.

Let's take a closer look at the stories themselves. One thing that I liked about the anthology is that there was no specific requirement for the contributors to make their story about gay marriage. Indeed, a number of the stories are personal accounts from people who are single or have no desire to get married. I thought two of the better (if on-the-nose) stories came from Virginia Paine and Maurice Vellekoop, respectively. Paine talked about that even when she dated men, she never thought of marriage as an attractive option, but did say that having a choice like anyone else is important.Vellekoop, the great Canadian illustrator, interviews some friends after nearly a decade of equal access under the law in his country. It's a fascinating piece and a nice capstone to the book, as some of his friends discuss the pros and cons of marriage as well as their own mixed feelings about the institution. A couple of his friends felt it was too imitative of the straight world (a quite common claim), while others liked the idea of being part of an ancient institution and making it their own. It's a fascinating discussion of some finer points of the experience that many don't think about, drawn in Vellekoop's trademark angular, attractive style.

A couple of stories were personal accounts of deciding to get married, focusing in on specific aspects of the experience. For Emily Carroll and Kate Craig, their story focused on the simple engagement ring purchased online, which had an inscription from another couple. It's a simple sentiment, wondering about who these people were but focusing more on the present. Mari Naomi's account of proposing to her husband was more complicated, as she spoke to one queer friend whose less than enthusiastic "How nice for you, that you're able to do that" spoke to the divide between gay and bi individuals as well as the dilemma many hetero partners feel when they think about marrying. That said, the sheer enthusiasm and nervousness comes through on every page, and the splash page featuring the proposal was nicely understated, as Mari Naomi puts the image of her proposing in the bottom left hand corner, surrounded by tons of white space.

Some of the strips focus less on the idea of marriage than the experience of being queer and exploring that identity.Alex Fukui's "Footsie" for example, is a painful example of having desperate yearnings as a young person and wondering if someone you have a crush on is interested in as well, with the added layer of total fear about being a teen and being gay. Ed Choy and Sam Sharpe's "Roosterlegs" is by far the best-looking strip in the book thanks to the bold, confident lines, clever character design and interesting use of spot color. It's a strip about a young person trying to investigate the realities of what being queer means in nature and exploring the possibility of trans identity.

Other stories focus on being alone vs being with someone and the sacrifices one makes in either scenario. Christopher Adams' evocative silent story about a priest going about his day, hanging out with members of his congregation, speaks to the nature of the solitude of his position and the peace he has ultimately made with it. Hannah Blumenreich's story of a lovable pre-teen oddball who earnestly believes that she is psychic is endearing precisely because of her lack of self-awareness, even as she makes subtle shifts in attitude when reality dictates it. Joseph Remnant's excellent story about a guy crushing hard on a girl he sees at a bookstore and subsequently talks to at an art show is funny because of the quite deranged nature of obsessiveness overriding reason. The fact that this story gets a happy doesn't feel like a cheat so much as an indication that the leads occupied the same place in their circle of friends and really did find out by accident that they were perfect for each other. Noah Van Sciver's account of Richard & Mildred Loving's struggle to have their mixed-race marriage accepted in the south is especially poignant given that their union was opposed on many of the same supposed moral grounds as gay marriage is today. Jeremy Sorese's story about his divorced parents remarrying provides the structure for his own mixed feelings about marriage in an elegant and stylish series of highly stylized images. He gets at an interesting point: even if gay marriage is a big deal, why should a 23 year old be worrying about marriage anyway?

Most of the other stories are pleasant enough, if forgettable. I thought the inclusion of spot illustrations didn't do much to strengthen the anthology, especially since few of them were especially memorable. The handwritten coming-out story of Tammy Ray was impassioned but wasn't really comics, and Rachel Kowarski's poem did not fit at all. Editor Raighne Hogan likes to take risks in his anthologies and errs on the side of leaving in submissions that perhaps should have been cut. He leaves it up to the reader to decide their worth, which is admirable, but I'd love to see him exercise a firmer editorial hand. Of course, this anthology wasn't necessarily the place to do so, and erring on the side of enthusiasm in this case made sense. There's no question that it's a beautifully designed book, as all 2D Cloud projects tend to be, and I hope that it makes a difference.

Minicomics Adaptations: Choy, Gamboa, Stripling

Three intriguing minis this time around, all of which use the language of comics to adapt works of literature.

The Book of Job #1, by Scott Stripling. The artist was new to me, and there's no contact information in the comic. From the way that the book's panels were hand-drawn and out of alignment to the sketchy nature of his line, this comic feels like a sketchbook job done by a beginner. Nonetheless, Stripling packs a lot of interesting detail into this slightly modernized retelling of the biblical story of a virtuous man named Job who is beset by all manner of woes by God as a test of faith, though God is egged on by the Devil. What's interesting about this version is that God appears to be more of a concerned bystander who reacts with alarm to Job's woes but is seemingly powerless to stop him from losing all he has or to prevent his wife from running off with the pool boy. Job dies and goes to hell, but then emerges to much worse: a real accounting of his sins. Stripling implies that the supernatural force judging him is his own consciousness, or perhaps a part of him related to a sort of superconsciousness. The end of this issue sees Job struggling to figure out what questions to ask, and the result is something closer to Zen Buddhism than traditional Western ideas, though mixed with a carnival barker's patter. This is an odd little comic that's a big jumbled and disorganized, as though the ideas and images came faster than the artist could record them, but I'd be curious to see more.

Ed Choy Draws James Joyce, by Ed Choy. Choy is one of my favorite young artists but still seems to be slowly experimenting in public as he refines his chops and his style. Choy obviously takes great delight in exploring just how vulgar and scatological the great Joyce was, as his stream-of-consciousness writing frequently zeroed in on sexual obsession. Here, Choy chooses to tackle a couple of Joyce's more conventional works ("Araby" from Dubliners, and an excerpt from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), while teasing out some anecdotes from Joyce's life on the cover.  I could have read an entire comic's worth of these hilarious three and four panel strips, as Choy really plugs them into the language of comics. In "7 Words", for example, when Joyce delivers the punchline that he doesn't know what order the seven words he wrote that day go in, the person he's talking to does an old-fashioned plop take. It's all fun and games, but Choy also gets at something here, even in the hilarious four-panel strip where Joyce writes a love letter and talks about how much he loves his girlfriend's farts. He gets at the total immediacy, that total indulgence in the id that Joyce represents and that is quite familiar to an alternative/underground cartoonist.

 

The short stories look beautiful (this was printed on a risograph and really make the dark blue and pink hues he selected pop on every page) and flatter Choy's line and figure drawing, which is becoming ever-more assured. "Araby" sees a young man with a crush on a woman come to terms with the unreality of his desires, and it's a rather conventional adaptation. His excerpt from Portrait is more interesting, using a fuzzy zip-a-tone effect to create a dreamy atmosphere that befits the story lingering on school days. All told, Choy continues to push himself formally and experiment in new and interesting ways as he explores culture and finds new ways to interpret it. I like how deliberately he's working through his ideas, though I'd love to see him become more prolific as he gets better in public.

Miss Lonelyhearts #1, by Gabrielle Gamboa. Gamboa is a familiar name to alt-comics fans from the 90s, and she's returned to doing comics after a nearly eight-year absence. This Kickstarter-funded comic is an adaptation of the Nathanael West novel from the 1930s, and Gamboa uses a number of interesting visual tricks to add a vein of pitch-black humor to the grim nature of this story. A young man is given the task of writing the "Miss Lonelyhearts" column for a newspaper in the 1930s. These sequences in the book are drawn in a grey-scaled, naturalistic manner, echoing the somber nature of the story. While trying to figure out which letters he should chose for response so as to beat a deadline, the young man reads three tales of woe, each more brutal than the next. The twist that Gamboa provides is illustrating each of the three letters in the style of a different comic strip artist. The sad story of a Catholic woman whose unfeeling husband keeps getting her pregnant despite a very serious health risk is drawn as Popeye and Olive Oyl. The letter from a teenaged girl pondering suicide because of her deformed nose is done in the style of Little Orphan Annie. Finally, the story of a teenaged boy worrying about his deaf-mute sister's well-being after she was raped while enduring an abusive mother is done as the duo were Nancy and Sluggo.

Gamboa is not a style mimic a la R.Sikoryak or Roger Langridge, but she gets her point across with these visual approximations. The fact that they aren't exact reproductions actually works in her favor, allowing her to go a little more grotesque, like an image of the "Popeye" character looming with a disgusting leer on his face as he has sex with "Olive". Another example is the touch of pathos she adds to "Nancy" and "Sluggo", making them feel more real than the impenetrable Ernie Bushmiller originals. It's a bit of a gimmick to be sure, but one that works within the context of the story as West's prose is truly bleak, as his protagonist faces the most desperate of pleas for help. The fact that the protagonist's boss comes along and dictates a heap of platitudes for him to expand upon makes his task all the more grim. I'll be curious to see where Gamboa takes this series visually as she continues to adapt the novel.