Three New Comics by Iris Yan

I usually do all of my Center for Cartoon Studies reviews all at once, but I'm making some exceptions with the recent batch I've received. It's always a pleasure to get new comics from Iris Yan, whose dry but blunt sense of humor always delivers. Yan is extremely prolific, for good and ill, but when she takes her time, her anthropomorphic figures add a lot to her storytelling.

She also frequently just has a great concept. In Taxi Driver: Wisdom On Wheels, for example, she takes what is low-hanging fruit (stories about cabbies) and focuses on details and her own withering observations to create variations on a set-up that still offers up funny surprises. What's also interesting about this comic is that Yan's whole project has been one long memoir mediated through various gimmicks and devices: her experience having cancer, dating, teaching English, and more. This mini explores Yan's career as a consultant, a lucrative but stressful profession that meant dealing with a lot of weird personalities. Yan wisely approaches this time of her life from different, bite-sized angles with their own narrative hook, like having to take taxis to work. Ultimately, Yan noted that she just wanted to get home safely, which meant humoring some weirdos. 

Yan goes much deeper in her two Studying Traditional Chinese Medicine diaries. Hilariously, she decided to take up TCM after some acupressure helped him with a medical issue, because it seemed like witchcraft and "I've always wanted to be a witch." She was living in Taiwan at the time, and the courses were in China, so off she went. Yan is really adept at breaking down the inherent social absurdities of hierarchical institutions of schools and businesses, bringing the eccentric personalities she encounters to the forefront. Whether it's rigid teachers, flighty students, and concepts in TCM that she can't quite absorb, Yan goes into a great deal of depth with regard to her experience living in a dorm as a woman over forty years old. It's also interesting to see Yan struggle to learn the nuances of the TCM organs, which, while having familiar names like "lung" and "kidney," don't quite match up with their Western equivalents. 

The second volume begins with Yan returning to Taiwan for spring break in 2020, which coincidentally marked the beginning of the global pandemic. Her program was completely unprepared for zoom-style instruction, and so what it took to pass courses became much easier, with lots of open-book exams. As a result, Yan felt she didn't retain much information, except those things that involved children's urine or squirrel feces as part of their makeup. In the end, Yan took a leave while dealing with colon cancer. Each diary issue is close to 100 pages, and the episodic quality of each vignette made this a more uneven reading experience. Yan tried to vary the lessons she learned with bits about her classmates and teachers, but the narrative structure felt a bit overstuffed, as diaries often do. Yan's art and lettering were also uneven, looking rushed at times. The line weight for figures and especially lettering noticeably varied, as it felt like Yan was trying to get this down as quickly as possible. Yan works in a deliberately simple, stripped-down style with anthropomorphic figures because it gives her a lot of freedom to depict sensitive topics. However, I've seen her do this in a much more polished way in earlier comics. Happily, Yan's wit and timing remain as sharp as ever, and that is the main calling card for these comics. 

45 Days Of CCS, #4: Iris Yan

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45 Days Of CCS, #25: Iris Yan and Mercedes Campos López

Iris Yan is one of the funniest of all the CCS grads. Though she works exclusively in memoir, she injects humor into most of her work, and it's both bone-dry and frequently dry. There's a total absence of sentimentality in her comics, which is what allows her to be so matter-of-fact regarding any number of upsetting things. In one mini, (originally published in the My Pace 02 anthology), she considers the death and then subsequent funeral service for her mother. While there are genuinely touching moments in the comic, Yan also spends time wondering if her mother was on a secret hockey team after receiving a wreath from "the team." Another short comic was Teaching English In Taiwan, which is exactly what it sounds like. Yan's tone is so funny because of the way it shifts; there are times when she's unbelievably (and hilariously) harsh in talking about her Taiwanese students, but she also tenderly discusses how much they look up to her and are grateful for the class. As always, Yan is intensely curious about local customs and culture, which is another key aspect of this mini. 

As always, Yan's line is consistently wobbly, but it never detracts from the expressiveness of her anthropomorphic figures. Yan depicts herself as a pig, and she draws herself as a pig on two feet rather than a pig with more human figures. This is true of all her figures, which is part of the humor of her comics. For example, in the unrelentingly hilarious Pigs In Heat, Yan tells four different stories about going to a "swing house" in her native Brazil. It's a house for swingers to have sex in, with an entry fee. Never have I read a more sex-soaked comic that was less erotic than this one, thanks to Yan's unshakeable character design. Birds fuck bears, monkeys fuck turtles, etc. It's a smart choice, because Yan also emphasizes the total absurdity of this situation; it's enough to make one question one's own desire. Yan is also interested in logistics while maintaining her trademark bluntness about everything. 

It's no surprise that My Brief Colon Cancer Story is one of the better cancer narratives I've ever read. As a former cancer professional, I despise narratives that valorize the treatment process in any way. That was never a concern with Yan, who opens the book detailing the cancer-related deaths of her own parents and her blunt unwillingness to engage with the obvious symptomatology she faced. Yan details, in chronological order, exactly what she experienced as she was tested for cancer, got surgery, and then later got chemotherapy. Details about the friends and family who came with her, the amenities of the hospital, the personalities of her caregivers, and her generally sharp tongue make this as funny as it is a highly informative work of graphic medicine. Yan's line may be shaky, but there's no doubt that she's an effective cartoonist whose art makes her stories even funnier.

Mercedes Campos López's background in biology is in full effect in her comic Virus. It is a highly effective primer on COVID, cleverly and thoroughly explaining what exactly a virus is, how they spread, how they mutate, and how this relates to the global pandemic. With clear, colorful cartooning and a firmly authoritative but welcoming voice, Campos López sticks to the facts and the science with regard to what is understood about how viruses work as well as how they were addressed during the pandemic. While acknowledging that conspiracy theories, politics, and cultural differences have a way of obstructing science, Campos López aims to educate, not engage in debate with bad faith points of view. While an intelligent child can follow along, the science explored in this comic is certainly at a high school/adult level, with visual breakdowns of fairly complex principles of organic chemistry and biology. The comic is designed to follow a series of bite-size question-and-answer sequences, starting with the big question regarding COVID, backing up to explain viruses in general terms, and then circling back around to the central idea. The one problem with this ambitious example of applied cartooning is that it badly needed line edits, as there are multiple typos and errors throughout. I imagine this will be corrected for future editions. 

45 Days Of CCS, #24: 666 Comics

Editor and publisher Ian Richardson loves horror and a good anthology, and he set up a very clever constraint for 666 Comics. There are 6 contributors, each offering up a 6 page story with 6 panels on every page. Ricardson has long been a horror cartoonist, so each of the artists worked in that genre, more or less. There's heavy CCS involvement here, with Richardson, Denis St. John (another CCS artist known for horror) and Iris Yan (an artist known for memoir). In addition, former CCS instructor and horror legend Steve Bissette (Swamp Thing, Taboo) provided striking front and back covers. Even now, after his retirement from CCS, Bissette continues to actively contribute and participate in the projects of his former students. 

St. John has usually walked the path between horror and comedy in his comics, and his "Satan's Log Flume" is no exception. Featuring his "Hellarella" character that's a tribute to schlocky horror-show hosts like Elvira, this story follow two unfortunate Catholic school girls aiming to steal communion wine and pin it on the brutal nuns. Hellarella, barely disguised as a nun, takes them on a theme park ride tour of hell with plenty of wisecracks and puns (the joke about a splash page being more effective on a water park ride but being unable to use it due to the anthology's constraints was especially funny). St. John works in color here, and there are some spectacular pages that lead the reader's eye across the page in gross, hilarious detail. 

Whereas St. John bent and stretched against the layout, Richardson adheres to a strict 6-panel grid. "The Devil's In The Details" is an atmospheric and moody invocation. Working in a black & white with a lot of grayscale shading and other gritty details, the text consists of the instructions for a ritual. The ritual, we eventually learn, involves the young woman we see working with precise determination in panel after panel performing a ritual to resurrect her dead lover. The instructions are from him. Because Richardson locks in text and image on every panel so faithfully, it's especially effective when the actions of the woman veer away sharply from these instructions in the end. Richardson has a clever mind for plot twists like this, making him ideal for the genre. 

Yan's deadpan and sharply-observed humor, along with her commitment to working in an anthropomorphic style, make her an interesting choice for this anthology. Working in color (a rarity), Yan details three, funny bizarre instances of possibly encountering the devil. The first came in a kids' bible class, when one devil-obsessed girl told everyone else that the devil inhabited the letter "S." The second came when a kid stabbed her at a birthday party and she was told that he had the devil in him. Most hilariously was a neighbor who insisted to Yan and her sister that if they took money they found in the street, it could be used as "bait for dark magic." He insisted they pee on their hands to cleanse themselves of it. Yan's sense of humor is precisely my thing, and the matter-of-factness of her figure drawing is part of the fun. 

In the rest of the anthology, Amanda Kahl contributes a Thomas Ott-style scratchboard horror story about a curse that leads to total destruction, ontological and otherwise. The cartoonist HER offers up a moody and psychedelic story about a monster. The highly entertaining Trevor Moorehouse contributes a hilarious, disturbing story about an artist who went to extreme measures in a failed attempt at fame, drawn in a cartoony style. The rhythms of the story perfectly encapsulate both horror and comedy in equal measure. 

Overall, Richardson put together a solid anthology that never wears out its welcome, incorporated its restriction/theme in an interesting way, and explores a wide variety of styles and approaches. 

31 Days Of CCS, #9: Iris Yan

Iris Yan is one of my favorite CCS grads. Her dry sense of humor, minimalist but highly expressive line, and use of anthropomorphic animals for her autobiographical stories have long been a source of continuous delight. There's a matter-of-factness to the blunt way she evaluates the world that renders her an outsider no matter where she goes--and she's just fine with that. She's of Chinese heritage, grew up in Brazil, went to school in Vermont, worked in Madagascar, and now lives in Taiwan. No matter where she lives, she has a keen sense of the absurd with regard to local culture. 

Yan asked me to review her story in the excellent s! anthology, #39. This Latvian anthology has consistently put out some of the best comics over the past decade, and they've always been committed to a strong international presence. Yan's story fit into the theme of the anthology, "The End," as the pieces were about disaster, death, and other endings. Her story was about the death of her father, but it mostly concerned the details regarding his funeral. This is where Yan's sardonic, questioning wit shined even in the face of tragedy. In particular, Yan's ability to navigate certain local customs regarding funerals, like handing out towels to guests and buying fruit as an offering from the dead, made it easier for her to take over the proceedings from her sister. 

Even in this moment of tragedy, Yan was happy that she'd be able to go without taking care of her hair for several days, and was hoping to carry this as an excuse not to deal with other people. While Yan might come off as callous and uncaring, that wasn't really the focus of the piece. Like her mother, her dad was now gone too, and there was nothing she could do about it other than go through the rituals of mourning. That's what this piece was really all about; respecting rituals and providing a proper send-off with dignity but not necessarily with a lot of sentiment. The dryness of her wit is well matched with the spareness of her line, adding tiny comic elements (like her sister's glasses) to serious proceedings. Yan deserves a major collection of her work. 

Thirty Days of CCS #9: Girl Talk & My Pace 2

My Pace Volume 2 is an anthology edited by Iona Fox and Anna McGlynn under their Rod & Cone aegis.

Girl Talk is a classic CCS anthology: hand-made and aggressively bold in terms of its theme and structure. This time around, an artist adapted part of another artist's diary, fictionalizing it to create a narrative. The hand-cut cover with various punched-out skeletons is beautiful and a nice touch. Anna McGlynn took an entry from Fox and turned it into a visceral slice-of-life story centered summer in the city. Our protagonist, Vivian, is sick of being in her cramped, hot apartment while getting calls from friends smoking weed and hooking up with random guys. McGlynn drew Vivian in such a way that she was irritated with anyone having a good time with a potential romantic partner, eventually drawing in x's for eyes. When a loser guy she has a crush on won't even hit on her because her breasts were "consumed with sadness", that's her breaking point, one that only snack cakes will alleviate. The rawness of McGlynn's storytelling is a nice fit for depicting the kind of daywhere people feel like they're melting.

Fox illustrating Cooper Whittlesey's psychedelic insights was a particular pleasure, as her quirky character design, decorative touch and oft-sketchy line were perfect for a comic about walking around and listening to music. Whittlesey and first-time cartoonist Alyse Burnside were inspired by McGlynn's diary, an office story about a young woman named Jane who is frequently sexually harassed and humiliated by her boss. It's revealed that she's the result of her father having sex with his mother, a fact she tries to work through with fantasy (both in real life and with porn). The battle between her trying to assert her worth as a human being that deserves love and the abuse she receives culminates in her taking a bus to the end of the line and meeting a naked woman next to a run-off pipe and perceiving her as someone connected to her. Nothing is explicitly revealed regarding this identity or even reality in this situation, and that ambiguity charges the strip even more. With 16 panels per page, Whittlesey & Burnside pummel the reader with tiny print, grotesque drawing and oblique angles, yet the horror and absurdity of it all is strangely hypnotic in its own way. Kaplan drew a convoluted account of a story from Fox, as it's about a day she was supposed to get a stitch out from someone who turned out to be an ex-girlfriend of an ex-boyfriend. There are amusing rabbit-hole details that emerge from the story, but this story was fairly lightweight compared to the others. That's not surprising since it's just four pages, as it served as a digestive more than as a crucial part of the anthology.

My Pace, an anthology about marching to one's own drummer, had a tight seven-person lineup. It's not as conceptually interesting as Girl Talk and is more uneven, as the editors went wide and took some risks with their contributors, not all of which paid off. Sam Szabo's silly ant piece feels like something out of a 1980s Steve Willis minicomic, but the way in which she sticks to the premise of the ant janitor and its mystic implications won me over by the end, although this slight story was way too long. Collage artist Sara Hebert contributed clip art with statements about her anger about not asking for anything regarding her needs when having sex. It's short, stark and bold, and quite a shift from the first story. Sean Knickerbocker's crisp line art was another nice change of pace, as he wrote a story about a guy going back to the desolate area in which he grew up. Knickerbocker takes a wrecking ball to ideas like nostalgia and closure, as coming back to his old house was walking through a minefield of triggers. The kicker is that the friend who came told him that this was, in fact what he wanted--to relive the trauma instead of learning how to move past it.

Iris Yan's anthropomorphic autobio is always dryly witty, and even this story about the death of her mother is no exception. When she gets a wreathe "from the team", she imagines her mother was on a secret soccer team. Having her librarian mother's ashes on a shelf so she could read whenever she wanted was a sweet touch. Mississippi's text lettering was distracting, especially for a comic that was so roughly drawn. There were points where this meditation on loneliness was rough in a way that was lovely and expressive, and other points where it let down the story's flow. The more abstract nature of Megan Snowe's comic made that text feel more suitable, since it was a comic about texting, the hand and arm broken down in such a way so as to render them into almost abstract shapes. Finally Summer Pierre's piece about how she came to comics is one I've read elsewhere, but it was a perfect choice for ending this particular volume. It's a sweet, funny story about Pierre meeting "comics' (an anthropomorphic character accounting for all of the art form), having flirtations with music, art and poetry, and then one night coming back to comics ("It's you! It's always been you!"). Her use of the grid highlights her whimsical self-caricature design by featuring it in every panel, almost invariably in a different pose and position each time. It's a subtle way of making the reader work a little in every panel and keep their eye fresh when they absorb new text.

Thirty Days of CCS, Day 30: Iris Yan

Iris Yan is a CCS grad who specializes in autobiographical comics, but they always have a peculiar angle. For example, Capulanas And Sweets is about her time spent on the tiny island of Mozambique. Friends is about a variety of friends she lost touch with. Hotline is about her time spent in graduate school as a "liner" for the school's crisis hotline center. Each project sees her use a different visual approach. When the focus is on the personal and a degree of anonymity is important, she draws all of her characters as anthropomorphic animals (her own "totem animal") is a pig. In Capulanas and Sweets, it was important to get across a great deal of detail about her location, so she used a more naturalistic style.

Let's start with that comic first. Capulanas And Sweets is about Yan's time as a volunteer in Mozambique; her job was identifying potential tourist locations for the future community foundation. That's a fancy way of saying that she got to be a tourist who was exploring the local culture and had the ear of what turned out to be a prominent community leader. The comic is divided into small vignettes, as Yan (who is Brazilian with Chinese parents) negotiated a culture where she was very clearly an outsider. Part of that negotiation was learning that hygiene was an issue on the island, from people defecating on the beach because of a lack of toilets to sand appearing in food because it wasn't washed properly. Dealing with politics and political parties was a regular part of life, especially on the many national holidays the island held. While trying to be a creative problem-solver, Yan never held herself apart from the island's population, and was thrilled when prices started to mysteriously drop for her at the marketplace--especially for her beloved capulanas--bright pieces of colorful cloth that could serve as wraps, blankets or be made into virtually anything. Yan has a self-deprecating and disarming way of describing other cultures that serves her well, because unlike the comics of a Guy Delisle, she never comes off as a smug Westerner. Her lifetime of being an "other" both made her accustomed to the treatment she received but also far more respectful of the locals, their customs and traditions. While not a great naturalistic artst, her simple drawings here got the job done in an expressive and stripped-down manner.

Friends was prompted when Yan looked through her phonebook and wondered about the many people she was no longer in touch with, and decided to tell the stories of her friendships with them. It's a fascinating cross-section that cuts across youth to graduate school to the present. The cuteness of her animal figures belies the frequently serious and disturbing breakdowns in relationships, like one friend exhibiting signs of schizophrenia, prompting Yan to put her on a plane to her parents' place. Others include a guy whose breaking up with his girlfriend and leaving town was a happy occasion because Yan was pals with his girlfriend, a boyfriend who prompted her to become a vegetarian, and a friend with few social boundaries who tested her ability to deal with people in general. Throughout the book, Yan keenly examines her own behaviors and role in friendships and love relationships going sour, like unconsciously trying to make one boyfriend look bad in front of her parents and friends. Hints of Yan's spiritual and ethical decision-making are present as well, like being a kid and having a friend who was a Jehovah's Witness try to convert her with Bible stories, or being an adult and learning how to read auras as she alienated a hardcore atheist friend of hers. Yan's matter-of-fact about these conflicts, in part because of the way she draws herself as fairly unflappable. This is not to say that she's emotionless, just that her first instinct is to stay calm in these stories.

Hotline is my favorite of the three comics here. Originally serialized in Maple Key Comics, there's a more assured sense of flow in this comic than in her other work, which tends to meander at times. This comic about joining a finely-honed group of "liners" in helping callers help themselves through a series of mirroring and parroting techniques is fascinating, mostly because the liners themselves have so many psychological problems. (Yan is referred to as "generally fucked up".) Nailing the quotidian details of how training worked, how an average night worked, and how it all ended along with the specifics of how the friendships created with her fellow liners gave more direct insight into Yan's personality and experienced than the two other autobio comics referenced in this article. Part of that is that this comic isn't explicitly about her, but rather an experience she shared. That gave her room to insert her point of view strongly as a way of becoming an entry point for readers. The other reason, I believe, is that this was simply a much more personal comic that deal with sensitive and personal issues. Certain issues that were dodged in the other two comics were an important part of Hotline. Once again, Yan's balance of the absurd and the near-tragic while keeping a deadpan affect throughout is the key to her appeal, with her placid animals characters the perfect mirrors for this approach.