Comics From Hazel Newlevant and Laura PallMall

Sugar Town, by Hazel Newlevant. This is a good old-fashioned, quasi-autobiographical romance comic by an artist who quite deservingly just won an Ignatz award for portraying relationships both healthy and toxic. The fact that it's a queer, poly romance comic simply means that there were more layers for Newlevant to explore in a manner where every character treated others with respect, empathy and compassion. This is not to say that the comic was devoid of tension, because people make mistakes even with the best of intentions, but that the openness displayed by all prevented cartoonish conflicts and deceptions.

The story finds Hazel home in Portland, away from her boyfriend. She meets a woman named Argent who tells her within seconds of meeting that she's also a dominatrix. Not to impress or intimidate her, but simply as a matter-of-fact expression of her sexuality. The cover of this comic is expertly constructed: Hazel moving from right to left across the page, stopped in her tracks by the gaze of the exceedingly confident Argent, as a disco globe above them framed the image. Newlevant explores desire, vulnerability, queer identities, poly identities and so much more in this comic. There's a scene where she's skyping in the bathtub with her boyfriend, as they both deal with feelings of jealousy that often appear no matter how hard one tries in this sort of relationship. There's the palpable new relationship energy on the page as she gets to know Argent, and when she accidentally annoys her when she talks about her dominatrix job in public, it's a moment that's respectfully acknowledged but forgiven.

I don't know how much of this was pulled from real life, but there are levels of detail on a date that I found remarkable: Argent coming home to bake Hazel a cake for her birthday, a flogging session derailed by a pulled muscle, and Vicodin-induced declarations of love. Hazel deciding to make a true mix tape (not CD or digital file) for the older Argent was especially cute and drove the narrative a bit further, as the story ended with Hazel heading back to New York but very much in love with two people. Newlevant's figure work grows ever more confident with each new project, but it's her coloring that's the real revelation of this comic. It's complementary to her line rather than overwhelming it, but her use of color particularly with regard to outfits was a key aspect of the story, as Argent's stylishness was an important part of her overall personality. It's a sweet story with levels of complexity that surprise the reader, with every aspect of its emotional narrative feeling entirely earned.

Sporgo 2, by Laura Pallmall. The artist has a way of digging deep into the lives of miserable or confused people and dumping the audience right into the middle of their problems. A young screenwriter in LA is struggling to find any traction, doing shit jobs and even getting arrested at a Wal-Mart for illegally filming a project. The mini follows him around, including a disturbing episode of sleep paralysis that takes on apocalyptic overtones. What's most interesting about this comic is the way Pallmall juxtaposes the most mundane and tedious difficulties that have more to do with ennui than anything else with their sudden transformation into potential doomsday scenarios. Such stories tend to sneak into the writer's scripts no matter what else he's doing, as well as his nightmares. Pallmall's figurework is greatly simplified from the first issue, which certainly helps with the story's overall flow. The way she captures a particular time and place gives the comic a lot of power, as the main character is faced with a common problem in Hollywood: maintain integrity or start to buy the hype and dressing regarding star power. The ending provides a beat where he realizes that he can't do both at once and isn't sure which way he's going to go. That ambiguity is another strength of Pallmall's work, as she prefers to provide only enough information for the reader to understand what's at stake but eschews doling out easy answers.

Minis: H.Newlevant, W.Taylor

Wallpaper, by Whit Taylor. Taylor's writing and conceptual design continue to grow sharper and more sophisticated. While the small size of this mini was a printer's mistake, it wound up being a fortuitous one. Told from a childhood point of view, the left side of each page is text and the right side is a beautiful, decorative and emotionally resonant wallpaper pattern or some other kind of visually significant pattern. The book's smaller size makes it feel more like a child's book. There are a series of events detailed by Taylor that slowly coalesce into a narrative about her grandmother's increasingly failing health. However, the story is really about the ways in which certain details are important to children on an emotional level that adults simply don't perceive. Indeed, the very title "Wallpaper" colloquially refers to the sort of bland, background decoration that's ignored on a day-to-day basis. Taylor highlights these decorations in a way that is both functional in their depiction and genuinely beautiful as they appear on the page. Her use of color is vibrant without being lurid, and it truly gets across why a child would notice certain colors and patterns. Not all of them are of wallpaper; there's a microscope slide, a piece of pizza and other things appreciated for their aesthetic, rather than their practical value. Even the boring patterns--like the beige the mother in the story ultimately picks out for the kitchen--have emotional resonance. The child was upset by that choice because it was boring, but what she was really upset up was the death of her grandmother, who had a bright color sense. Concealing an emotionally complex story in a simple package is what gives this mini its punch.

Tender-Hearted, by Hazel Newlevant. This is a thoughtful collection of short stories about relationships and identity. "Finding Place" is the standout of a strong collection, as Newlevant uses a beautiful watercolor wash in a story that connects her sexual identity with her budding interest in comics. The crux of the story is experiencing the difference between a theoretical and even intellectual understanding of identity with the actual experience of that identity. It's about the missteps that can be involved with that exploration, like putting identity ahead of human empathy. However, it's also about the importance of visibility as a creator, passing on information to younger creators or fans desperate for material that speaks to them, embracing both the responsibility and opportunities such a position provides.

"Apt #105 381 Troutman Street" is about being in a relationship with a self-harming individual, juxtaposed against the simple recitation of the contents of the titular apartment. It's as though the events unfolding before the reader's (and the narrator's, presumably) eyes is simply too much to take in, so there's a default back to simple, context-free description. "Enough" is a story I've reviewed elsewhere, though it obviously fits in seamlessly here. It's about emotional manipulation in a relationship where she was a caretaker, creating dangerous power imbalances and overcorrections. After that black & white interlude, Newlevant returns to color (one of her strengths as a creator) in "Bi-Furious", a story about a conversation she had regarding bisexuality with her mother. It's all about the concept of bi-erasure, and wondering that if she had lived in an earlier era, would she have had the courage to act on that aspect of her sexuality? Newlevant brings up a variety of bi women from recent history as examples, which is all part of Newlevant's larger project of exploring women's sexual identity throughout history, particularly in the arts. What I liked best about this story is Newlevant's willingness to honestly engage with the issue despite its hurtful premise, resulting in a discussion that sheds light (not heat) on the subject. Newlevant's figure drawing is appealingly fuzzy here, though there were times when the way she and mother looked stiff and posed, especially with regard to each other in space. This was surprising, because Newlevant's other figure work looks much more natural and fluid. I'm not sure if this effect was intentional, but it did feel a bit jarring.

Hazel Newlevant: Chainmail Bikini

We unfortunately live in a world where Chainmail Bikini's theme as an anthology (women's gamers) is a political statement. Unfortunately, in the wake of unrelenting hostility, misogyny and out-and-out threats on women who happen to play and write about video games, a public admission of being a gamer is an act of bravery. Indeed, that was one of the primary statements of purpose during the book's Kickstarter campaign. The book is a way of saying that gaming isn't and shouldn't be something that's reserved only for men, that there are a number of women who enjoy it, and that gaming communities shouldn't be hostile environments for women. In that sense, the book's existence makes it an unqualified success.

At the same time, it's also that most unpredictable of comics phenomena: the open-call anthology. For an editor and a project like this, it's difficult to turn down earnest contributions. Unfortunately, the resulting 200 page anthology was far too long for such a specialized subject and a wide variety of skill levels on display. The resulting read can be a slog, because while everyone's story is slightly different, there are too many stories and approaches that overlap in terms of style and intent. For example, one often-used narrative trick in the anthology talks about how important video or role-playing games were or are to them, and then draws the characters from a campaign having an adventure. Katie Longua, Anna Anthropy/Jeremy Boydell, Anna Rose, MK Reed, Becca Hillburn, Diana Nock, Liane Pyper, Sarah Stern and Jade Lee all did this, to a certain extent. Reed's was the sharpest written of the bunch, since as the Dungeon Master she took an all-male group of players playing an all-female group of characters through an adventure that had hilariously menstrual overtones. Stern's story involved a new DM in an established group of guys who stood her ground with them while giving them the best adventure they'd ever been on. Hillburn's story was sharply-drawn, featuring the ridiculous character of "Pretty Paladin Critical Missy" hogging the spotlight, as the other players accused her of grandstanding. Starting the story with the fantasy narrative and only switching over to the players later on was an especially effective technique.

There were several stories involving gender, identity and how gaming affected it. Anthropy's story touched on it, but the visuals for the story simply weren't up to portraying how magical the game she played was for her and the digital lettering was distracting. On the other hand, The K.A. Kelly-Colon/June Viganis collaboration about a teen boy realizing that the female monster character he played in a game felt more like the real version of them than their birth gender uses clever page design choices while getting across the message. Kori Michele's story is a rant against the way many handheld games demanded that you enter your gender before playing, especially as a person who was "deep into my gender confusion".

Some of the best stories addressed gaming and mental health. Jane Mai's "Ikachan" is remarkable in the way it incorporates the bizarre game Mola Mola's suicidal aspects and how she connected it to a memory of learning how to swim. The scrawled text and lush images are quite affecting. Elizabeth Simins' "Manic Pixel Dream Girl gaiden: guitar heroine" details the artist's experience with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and helped distract her from her increasingly paralyzing OCD events that often revolved around death. There's no happy ending here, just a depiction of the struggle. Caitlyn Rose Boyle's exquisitely-drawn "Connections" champions the idea of video games as a way of moving the mind away from depression, even if they are "sweet and silly things". Her linework and lettering are crystal-clear and confident, as she makes extensive use of negative space to highlight those figure drawings. Sera Stanton's strip is about how she thought healers were pointless video game characters but how she wished she could do it in real life; her pages suffered from clutter that made them difficult to read.

Several stories dealt with sexism and misogyny head-on. Maggie Siegel-Berele's story talks about the slow progress being made in reining in misogyny and creating safe spaces for women and LGBT folk in Live Action Role Playing (LARP) communities in a straightforward, somewhat didactic fashion. Laura Lannes' strip about the feminist implications of the game Portal is a master class in deconstructing the symbols of a piece of culture and revealing its meanings in addressing the concept of patriarchy, although I wish the visuals had been a bit less bland. Sarah Winifred Searle's story about misogyny in the play-by-post role-playing community is pointed in its use of real-life examples, smoothly-designed and honest about the positives and negatives to be found in her pursuit.

A number of stories were simply about how the artist felt alienated from others until they found gaming, and then they had the sense that they found their people. Molly Ostertag's LARPing story from her teen years puts a clever spin on it by making it a third-person narrative, retaining the lessons she learned and confidence she gained in her schooling and career. Rachel Ordway's story is about how making up a game with her brothers bonded them over a summer, while Natalie Dupile's is about how a LARP variant at a summer camp brought people together because it didn't take itself too seriously and allowed for a lot of free expression. Kate Craig's story is another one about LARPing that involves romance; it's rather straightforward but with expressive figurework that carries the thin plot. Yao Xiao and Kinoko Evans both did strips about growing up and turning to video games for support, confidence and even personal growth.

Yao's strip talks about having parents disapproving of gaming. Newlevant touches on that subject with a strip about playing a dumb hack-and-slash video game but loving it because it was a particular kind of bonding experience with friends. Amanda Scurti's strip about pretending to avoid doing violent things on video games with her mother was hilarious, especially as a moment of self-reflection about enjoying violence ended with her gleefully going along with her brother to look at a violent game. Sophie Yanow's story is less about gaming as identity and more about her group fluidly accepted gaming as just another thing they did. Newlevant's other strip pointed to the idea that she could do an entire book of stories like this on her own as an autobiographical device, because her other story was completely different. That involved playing Vampire: The Masquerade and having to play a seduction on a non-player character--which essentially meant role-playing a seduction with her GM. It's a funny story that has just a tinge of the interplay being for real. I wish more of the anthology's stories had taken their cue from Newlevant in not trying to be quite so literal or didactic about their involvement in gaming and focused a bit more on trying to create an interesting narrative. That said, I admire the anthology's undeniable sincerity, the variety of visual approaches, the general lack of slickness and/or overdrawing, and the way so many of the cartoonists were willing to share so much of themselves.

Hazel Newlevant: If This Be Sin

Funded by a Prism Comics Queer Press Grant, If This Be Sin is Hazel Newlevant's first fully-fleshed out work. Each of the three stories in the collection connects queer identity with the arts, with the first two stories based on actual events and the latter containing similar emotional details. The book's formal qualities are interesting. Newlevant apparently uses a brush to draw her figures, giving them a denseness and solidity with a thick line that allows her to be relatively sparse when it comes to actual detail. Her use of watercolors runs with that initial density of line, as it allows her to pick and choose her color scheme to emphasize the book's emotional narrative as much as it does the chronological narrative. All of this is framed in a design that's unpredictable from page. Some pages have an open layout where one image bleeds into another to portray the passage of time (especially when music is being played), while others use a kind of floating grid where the gutters stretch and bend around panels. There are times when her figures are stiff and the body language isn't fluid, especially in how characters relate to each other in space. That hurts the emotional realism of the book at times, but Newlevant manages to get around that with many dramatically staged panels and a touch of magical realism that plays off of that stiffness. It greatly helps that Newlevant doesn't over-write here, adding redundant narration or overly expository dialog. She trusts the reader to figure things out on their own, especially as each story has painfully bittersweet qualities.

The eponymous story is about blues singer/pianist Gladys Bentley, a cross-dressing, African-American, openly lesbian performer who was popular in gay speakeasies during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Newlevant here sees her earn a spot at a nightclub, boldly assert herself sexually and in terms of her talent, and sneer at the women at the church who looked down on her and literally spat in her direction. Newlevant adds a bit of drama with a police raid on the club that Bentley escapes and then cuts to an article she wrote years later about how she was "treated" to achieve a "normal" existence. Newlevant cleverly drops this narration first into an image of a distraught Bentley staring at a mirror after the bust, then into a page that finds this narration published years later in a magazine, and then brings us to later when she appeared on Groucho Marx's "You Bet Your Life" show. Bentley was portrayed as every bit the firecracker she was earlier as she fired back improvised lines at the legendarily quick-witted Groucho, but the final panel is a wistful look back at a top hat she sees in her dressing room. The top hat was emblematic of her drag outfit, a daring topper to her allowing herself to express herself as she saw herself. No matter how "normal" she had become thanks to societal and political pressure, Newlevant hints that she paid an enormous price to do so.

The second story, "No it U Lover" is about Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin, former members of Prince's band The Revolution. This story got a bit of buzz after Prince's death, and it portrays him as a complicated, ambitious musician with a lot of contradictions. The story details how Wendy and Lisa became key components of Prince's sound and look. For all of Prince's outrageousness on stage, he was a meticulously demanding taskmaster off of it, much like James Brown. At the same time, he was forward-thinking and knew talent when he heard it, like when he heard Wendy playing guitar in her girlfriend Lisa's dressing room. There's a panel where Wendy shows off and starts playing his songs and Newlevant draws Prince with his eyes lighting up, and we knew it wouldn't be long before she was in the band. The sexually ambiguous Prince not only had no problem with Wendy and Lisa's relationship, he even played it up for events like creating a poster for Purple Rain, putting Lisa's arm around Wendy's waist. There's a bit of tension as they were trying to figure out just how public they should be, but in a beautiful two-page spread that's the emotional heart of the story, Wendy, Lisa and Prince become a sort of musical family, freely fusing their talents together.

This is where Newlevant is at her best in shaking off the clumsiness in how she depicted her characters interacting with each other, as she Prince in three different poses in one panel to depict the passage of time, and then the three of them enter a "Dream Factory" space where they are all equals. That wouldn't last long, as Prince would want to go in a different direction and after a confrontation with him, he made it clear that he viewed this as his band--and moreover, that he had created them. Once again, the ending is a wistful one: Wendy and Lisa stand their ground but wind up being tossed aside, especially as they feel like they were exploited in a number of ways. Naturally, Newlevant uses a lot of purple in this story (including depicting their confrontation with Prince taking place on a rainy day), just like she used a lot of dark blue for Bentley's story (about a blues singer).

The final story, "Dance The Blues" is a fictional one that takes place in modern times. It's about a blues dance competition where the main character, Carita, is nervous about how she'll do considering that it's her first time attempting this. She's wary of dancing with a preening egotist, and sure enough, when they are matched up, he tries to upstage her. When paired up with a beautiful woman named Alex, she's very much attracted to her in an unspoken way. When Carita asks her to hang out afterward, Alex reveals she's going home with Todd. The story doesn't have the emotional heft of the other two; it's simply a reminder of the ways in which gender, sexuality and identity are in a pressure cooker dominated by a culture that's defined as heteronormative and patriarchal. None of that is explicitly stated in this sweet, sad story, but it's the subtext of the entire book. Once again, her willingness to show restraint in expressing something she's clearly passionate about was remarkable, as Newlevant let the images and the colors tell the story.

Hazel Newlevant: No Ivy League #1 and Mariposa

Hazel Newlevant is an interesting young cartoonist whose aesthetic eschews the vast majority of prevailing trends. Whereas many cartoonists tend to use a clear line for "cute" character design, drawn on a computer, Newlevant's comics look hand drawn and painted, with a naturalistic bent. There's a certain sense of passion and unrest bubbling under the restraint many of her characters evince. I'll be reviewing her work over the next three days.

The first issue of her series No Ivy League is an autobio strip featuring teenage Newlevant working her first summer job pulling ivy at local parks. While it's autobio, Newlevant is careful to establish themes and smooth out the narrative in such a way to make it clear for the reader. For example, the first page establishes her making out with her boyfriend and being interrupted by his mother, setting up a tension between Hazel and his mom. The second page sees Hazel painting while we meet her parents, who are clearly supportive. Then we quickly learn that she was homeschooled and felt nervous about fitting in with more mainstream high school kids, who are pointedly a highly diverse mix of races, ethnicities and economic backgrounds. The rest of the issue is Hazel at her first day of work, interacting with different kids with different results. She bonds with a girl with gauges in her ears but fails to bond with an African-American guy who derides her for trying to look "down" when she asks him about his favorite rappers. While the issue is mostly set-up and background, Newlevant still manages to create emotional stakes right from the start without showing her hand too much. Her character design is pleasingly spare, as it combines a mostly naturalistic approach with faces that are particularly expressive. I'll be curious to see where the series goes from here.

Mariposa is a mini that she did with Jesse Reklaw, during a period where they were regular collaborators. I honestly can't quite tell who did what in this comic, which is a fascinating mash-up of polysexual expression and scientific exploration. Somewhere in Latin America, a lepidopterist is searching for a rare breed of butterfly. Meanwhile, a neighbor from across the hall is having all sorts of sexual adventures with men and women alike. She even flirts with the scientist, who has a one-track mind about what he's doing (as does she!). However, a bit of local intelligence that she provides for him leads to astonishing discoveries about the butterfly's gender and sexual identity, until seeing her with two sexual partners of different genders leads him to a remarkable discovery. This is a smart comic that doesn't view any of its characters as being more worthwhile than any others, even as it gently mocks myopic behavior. The thick lines give the comic a feeling of a weight that's almost comforting, like a blanket. The pages, when opened up, are shaped like a butterfly, which provides some opportunities for some interesting formal tricks, but are almost beside the point with the characters, drawing and the story itself being so compelling on their own.

Journeys and Tranformations: Ullman, Dabaie, Newlevant

Diamonds Are A Girl's Worst Enemy, by Rob Ullman. Rob Ullman pays most of his bills through his illustration work these days,which is too bad because his clean and appealing style make him an ideal choice for so many other kinds of comics. His comics about hockey, for example, are impeccably researched, funny, fast-moving and a pleasure to simply look at. Of course, Ullman has the distinction of being skilled at a certain kind of cheesecake art, one that seems more honest and refreshing in the way he renders women than the more "realistic" good-girl artists or what passes for rendering women for most mainstream superhero comics. Indeed, this story is about a superhero named "Double Diamond" who's got all the male superheroes going ga-ga over her because of her skimpy outfit and flirtatious attitude. This infuriates the other women on the team, one of whom has a modest figure and the other who doesn't dressing in a revealing fashion despite having the figure for it. Ullman slyly comments on objectification and celebrity culture when the secret identity of a powerful jewel thief is revealed, critiquing both sexist behavior in men and the ways in which women internalize being objectified and use it as a weapon against other women. There is certainly a level at which Ullman is having his cake in presenting these critiques and eating it too in terms of drawing sexy women, but he doesn't go into the realm of bad taste or titillation in this comic. Indeed, take away the content related to sex in this comic and it's easy to see Ullman drawing a successful all-ages superhero or genre comic, given his understanding of body language and chops.

A Voyage To Panjikant, by Marguerite Dabaie. This is the first dozen or so pages of what will be a longer work for Dabaie. It follows a 7th century merchant family from Sogdiana, a country that's now roughly where Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are today. It's a comic that plays to Dabaie's strengths as a storyteller: an attention to detail, especially in terms of fashion; a vibrant but never garish understanding of how to use color; and a level of research that brings a little-known (to most English-speakers, at least) culture to life without bogging it down in mere detail. She's able to do this because she has a knack for creating a vivid family portrait in just a few storytelling strokes. There's the merchant father, patient but nonetheless frustrated by his goofball son. That son, despite his best efforts, can't help but screw up an important sales trip. There's the clearly intelligent daughter who shares her father's sense of frustration but isn't quite in a position to act on it yet. Dabaie offers hints of life in Sogdiana and how merchants have to have a clear understanding of any number of religions and cultures in order to interact with and build good will with them. I'm hoping that the final product will be bigger, in order to show off the intricate nature of her drawings (especially the designs on clothing, which are remarkable) and the impact of her use of color.

Curio #2, Mariposa and If This Be Sin, by Hazel Newlevant. Newlevant's comics are frequently about gender fluidity in a variety of forms. If This Be Sin, for example, is about the blues singer and pianist Gladys Bentley, who openly performed in male drag and wrote songs about blurring genders and her attraction to women in the 1930s. Newlevant's character design and page composition are both highly effective here, giving the page a certain fuzzy softness, evoking both buried memories and a time that in some ways was hard to believe was real. Though Bentley later reportedly "cured" herself by taking hormones to "become a woman again", Newlevant hints at a lingering sadness in her story, suggesting that the change was a desperate attempt to fit in and avoid persecution. Mariposa, done in conjunction with Jesse Reklaw, is about the parallel narratives of a scientist discovering a new genus of butterfly with ambiguous genitalia and the polymorphously perverse young woman who lives in his apartment building. The mini evokes both Reklaw and Newlevant's love of clever formal packaging, given its butterfly shape and the way the reader must unfold it to create the full effect. The ambiguous ending implies that the scientist himself goes through a process of frequently uncomfortable metamorphosis in order to become something much more beautiful; it can be taken as a moment of magical realism or a metaphorical transformation that sees the scientist understanding that how she lives her life is not so much random or self-indulgent as it is totally embracing a certain kind of freedom of and from identity.

Curio #2 is a collection of one-page strips, sketchbook drawings and other experiments, many of them done in collaboration with others. Newlevant experiments with going small, going big, using a sketchy & loose style, and using a more naturalistic line. Some of the strips are gags and goofs, while others zero in on personal and autobiographical details, like "3 Years of Open Relationships". The latter is a brutally honest self-appraisal of polyamory and the ways in which it can be an emotional rollercoaster. The page design is clever, with some panels turning out to be thought-balloon flashbacks and others acting as mirrors or callbacks to earlier parts of the emotional narrative. "Maidenhood" is a hilarious, weird story that is similarly clever to look at; it has the qualities of a dream comic and an extended period of time thinking about vaginal skin and the mechanics and implications of the decision to have sex or not have sex. Other strips feel more disposable, like "The Royal Matchmaker", which has the cute idea of matching up an alien with someone on earth in what turns out to be a pet relationship; there's a lot of effort to get to a mildly amusing punchline. What's obvious is that Newlevant is very much feeling her way around comics, trying on different styles and working relationships as she attempts to figure out what kind of artist she wants to be. There's a certain restless adventurousness at work in her comics, and it will be interesting to see how she harnesses that ambition.