Foxing Reprints #4: Olga Volozova

The Golem of Gabirol, by Olga Volozova. This comic was one of the first published by Sparkplug after the death of Dylan Williams, and the discovery of a talent like Olga Volozova's is a testament to Williams' eye for comics that are unusual, intensely personal and poetic. Her The Golem of Gabirol is based on "the legends around the name of the Hebrew poet, scholar, Kabbalist Solomon Ibn Gabirol, who lived in Moorish Spain in the 11th century C.E.". It's a powerful story about a young woman sent to stay with her uncle, and the unusual Reb Solomon that she meets. It's a story about the intersection between words and reality done in what I call the "immersive" style of comics, wherein text merges with image for both decorative and narrative purposes and there's almost no negative space on the page. In a story where Solomon creates a "golem" version of the protagonist, Zuleicha, that intersection becomes all the more powerful, because golems are created out of clay and brought to life thanks to words that are written on their foreheads. 

Volozova digs deep into folklore to tell a story about the love triangle between Zuleicha, the facially disfigured Reb Solomon, and Zuleicha's cousin Nusret, who falls in love with her and marries her. There's a magnificent page early in the book where a speech by Solomon that claims that "letters are the elements that God created the world with" makes up the tree that she and Solomon happen to be sitting under. It's a transformative moment for her, because it makes her lose her fear of death while simultaneously imparting her with a thirst to understand poetry as the building block of creation. Solomon creates the golem (with Zuleicha's features) when Zuleicha gets married, which leads to him fleeing for suspicion of using dark magic. From there, the book becomes a journey for Zuleicha, who can see the fabled "old kings" of the earth who preceded Adam. In Volozova's immersive style, the spirit world and its manifestations (including the old kings) appear where negative space might appear in another comic. Like Zuleicha, the reader is allowed to see what is unseen by others, a disorienting technique that takes some getting used to. Indeed, most immersive books fairly demand that the reader approach them on the book's own terms or not at all. 

Tragedy strikes in the end, as Zuleicha loses both Solomon and her jealous husband. She manages to go unscathed in a sense, even after she has obtained forbidden knowledge and awareness of history and how the world truly is. She is left with the question of why Solomon eventually chose to break his golem and wonders whom he loved more--her or the golem? As to the latter, she's asked a question in return: whom did Adam love more, Eve or Lilith (who was cast out of paradise)? As to the former, she understands that "why" is the wrong question to ask. She believes he would have said "We are all made of words and need to have our stories told"; in essence, every human being is their own sentient story. In the case of his golem, she was in danger of being possessed by the ruler of the city instead of having any kind of free will of her own, of having any ability to tell her own story. In a sense, she was a cautionary version of Zuleicha herself, who as a woman had little in the way of rights or freedoms. That she wound up relatively free was largely due to her own strong sense of her personal narrative while managing to evade being overly molded and shaped by external architects. For Volozova herself (who dedicated the book to her late husband, who was also a rabbi), The Golem of Gabirol represents her own attempt to create life using text., in order to honor an old legend, to establish a memorial for her husband and to construct a feminist narrative where she builds a creative space for herself and Zuleicha, word by word.

Foxing Reprints #3: Elijah Brubaker

Reich #11, by Elijah Brubaker.  Brubaker is nearing the end of his series about the controversial Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, whose theories about "orgone radiation" led him to make some radical claims. Brubaker's take on Reich is neither hagiography nor a sensationalist expose'. Indeed, Brubaker tries to be as matter-of-fact as possible regarding the increasingly eccentric nature of Reich's claims, including that aliens were infecting earth with negative orgone energy. The story is told through Reich's eyes and experiences, but this also includes his failings as a human. Brubaker hammers home Reich's hypocrisy regarding his jealousy toward a lover that he accused of cheating on him. His free love ideas didn't seem to apply to those whom he viewed possessively. His absolutist and almost cultish demand for belief from his colleagues led him to alienate many former friends and supporters.

In this issue, the reader is introduced to the beginning of the end for Reich. The Food & Drug Administration was coming down hard on him, a process that would eventually see Reich sent to prison and reams of research destroyed. However, it's hard to have much sympathy for Reich at the beginning of the story, as he once again demands that his ex-lover admit to an affair, and she once again denies it before he hits her. For a man whose position with regard to so many issues was feminist in a manner that was way ahead of its time, Brubaker presents this act as the ultimate form of betrayal and hypocrisy. It's portrayed partly in silhouette, with Reich's arm stretched out almost casually. The brutishness of the act is contrasted with just how easy it was for Reich to descend to that level.

One by one, his friends, followers and family start to leave. There's yet another revealing scene where he meets by chance the widow of the man he thought was having an affair with his ex-lover. When she invites him over for a picnic, they each have different things on their mind. For Reich, he anticipates a sexual encounter. For the widow of modest means, it's a chance to ask Reich for money, which he flatly declines. It's yet another example of the almost casual cruelty of which he was capable. 

The issue ends with Reich in Washington, trying to attach himself romantically to a younger woman. The final scene is with his beloved son Peter in a hotel room, as Reich first engages in orgone-related jargon with his son and then confesses that he might have to take his own life if men come "to take me away in chains". For the first time, he completely breaks down as his son tries to comfort him. It's one of the rare scenes where Reich shows vulnerability as a human being rather than attempt to portray himself as being above others.

Brubaker's shadowy, sketchy and angular style is a deft match for the bizarre world of Reich. There's an almost haunting, static quality in each of the panels, even when there is movement involved. Brubaker wants the reader to focus in on each character's body language in each panel as a counter-point to the dialogue. The sketchiness of the line allows the reader to focus on the expressionistic qualities of the character design, and the extensive use of shadow effects contributes to the downbeat mood of the comic. There will likely be a couple of more issues before Brubaker wraps up the series and likely collects it. Reich is one of the more impressive feats of comics biography that I've read and certainly the most interesting since Chester Brown's Lous Riel, which was obviously a huge influence. 

Foxing Reprints #1: Daryl Seitchik

A couple of years back, I was reviewing minicomics for Foxing Quarterly's blog. Unfortunately, that site no longer contains my original content, so I've been rescuing it from old email queues and the internet wayback machine. Here's the results of my first dig:

Missy #1, by Daryl Seitchik (Oily Comics). The cheeky tagline for Seitchik on Oily's site is "Your new favorite cartoonist". Of course, it's 100% true. In a short period of time, Seitchik has made a huge leap in her autobio and semi-auto-bio/allegorical comics, with a simple but refined & expressive line that she's in total control of. Seitchik was Gabrielle Bell's intern, and some of those sensibilities can be seen in her work, especially the deadpan quality of her sense of humor. This issue is the diary written by eight-year-old Seitchik to herself ("Missy"), and the strips range from angst over the divorce of her parents, to anger toward her sister, to the politics of dating for the pre-tween set. Every one of these strips is brutal, with streaks of pitch-black humor. They're emotionally savage precisely because of Seitchik's restraint as an artist. The subtle placement of Missy's dot-pupils speaks volumes as to her emotional state, especially since Seitchik so frequently draws her as stone-faced. The intentional misspellings of certain words and the intensity of the emotions felt add a sense of verisimilitude to these comics, as though they were drawn at the time and not sixteen years later.

Missy #2, by Daryl Seitchik (Oily Comics). The second, expanded format issue of Missy takes the reader up through her nineteenth year. There are always visual and other callbacks in Seitchik's strips; they aren't so crucial that they demand the reader remember them, but they add an additional layer to the story when read all at once. Here, the diary entries pick up later, as Missy is now disgusted by writing about a boy she had a crush on. While Missy is the protagonist of her own story, she's far from heroic, as recounted in a strip about a boy declaring they were going out and how repulsed she was by this. Indeed, the casual cruelty of children is a running theme throughout these comics, and Missy isn't immune to doling out punishment. At the same time, she understands the hierarchical nature of relationships, and when a senior she has a crush on declares her "his favorite freshman", she imagines herself as a sort of pet dog, coming and going at his beck and call, waiting for a pat on the head.

The mini goes into detail about the uncomfortable nature of sex ed in school, the ways in which she felt nothing kissing a particular boy, and an epic section about James McMurphy, her first serious relationship. The first two pages where he's introduced are entirely silent, except that every third panel his name is simply spelled out. It's a brilliant bit of storytelling that tells the reader everything they need to know: this was an important person in Daryl's life, he cut a striking figure, was a bit of a nerd, etc. Things go downhill after a while, when his academics cut her out of his life, and then she dumps him unceremoniously, with a laugh that's betrayed by the look of sheer fear in her eyes. it's a raw and ugly scene, one that deliberately leaves out a lot of details to get to the emotional climax. The last few strips are about a living situation where Missy is in love with her apartment-mate, whose girlfriend also lives with them. The weirdness of Missy having seen him as a nude model prior to becoming friends with him is lingered on as a tantalizing bit of forbidden fruit, one that leaves her stuck writing and writing "until my hands fall off". She eventually takes the last page of her journal, rips it out, and turns it into a paper airplane--something that's mimicked in the actual comic by having its last page torn out by hand. It's a message to no one in particular, reflecting on the impotence of simply writing in a journal instead of doing something about her feelings.​

Middle School Missy, by Daryl Seitchik. This comic of Seitchik's retraces its steps back to age thirteen, which is generally one of the toughest transition years for any teen. She was no exception. The slightly tremulous girl of the first issue of Missy is replaced by an angry young girl who lashes out because she got braces (whose existence inhibits her ability to make out), boredom, and dealing with boys in animation class (ameliorated by being with one of her best friends and spinning chairs). There's a hilarious strip about her "studying" for a Spanish test, as she goofs off in various ways while talking about them in Spanish, until her mom comes in and spoils the fun. There's a hilarious strip about getting her period that's highlighted by her use of orange to depict her having to wear a pad that feels like a diaper and an overall descent into hell. Another strip interpolates the film Titanic with drifting away from her friends (though not her stuffed animal. These strips are a little wilder than the material in her Oily comics and much less restrained; at times, it's like a different person is writing them, even as Missy's dead-eye stare, modulated only by those dot-pupil eyes that say so much with so little. Even when things get crazy on the page, as Seitchik draws Missy wearing a diaper like an infant (complete with pacifier) and wandering through lava, that gaze never alters.

477 Bright Circle, by Daryl Seitchik. This comic is more in the vein of Seitchik's breakthrough comic, Sub. It's surreal autobio, as an adult Seitchik bikes by a store called Now that is seemingly never open. When she rides by and its "closed" sign has finally changed, she finds herself transforming into a little girl and waking up in a field of what at first appears to be grass. (This is neatly foreshadowed by the choppy way Seitchik drew grass earlier in the story.) Of course, it's not grass, and when she picks a "blade", she is transported to the house she grew up in and a particular set of childhood memories. From there, it's an elegant, wordless series of transformations using the simplest of lines to create environments, not unlike Crockett Johnson's Harold and the Purple Crayon. The final panels reveal that this adventure into the past ultimately yielded nothing, that this store purporting to sell the experience of "now" can only sell the past as a consumer article. Seitchik only drops clues as to what's happening, using her usual storytelling restraint to leave it up to the reader as to what she gains from the experience, if anything. She says at the end "I got nothing", but does she mean she purchased nothing, received nothing, got nothing out of the experience of reliving an important moment from her past, or simply has nothing to say about it? For an artist whose MO is slightly detached, spare drawing, there are any number of visceral, heart-stopping moments in this comic, like when the reader takes her view as she's running and panting toward the door of her old house. Drawing slightly bigger than usual, her eye-dots are even more powerful, especially the look of utter shock when she looks up to see her old house. This is a deep, rich comic that's indicative of Seitchik's status as a rising star.​