Checking In With John Porcellino

Let's take a look at some of John Porcellino's output from the last year. The long-time force between highly influential mini King-Cat Comics and Stories, Porcellino has been publishing it continuously since 1989, although a host of health problems and struggles have slowed his output. Indeed, he published 50 issues of the comic in just seven years and only thirty more in the past 24. However, Porcellino's mastery of his art makes each new issue an event. Along the way, Porcellino also completed several books apart from his minicomic, including his epic memoir The Hospital Suite. Readers of his work will know just how difficult it became for him to draw and how part of his journey as an artist has been finding his way through mental and physical illness.

Before I review the most recent King-Cat, let's celebrate the welcome news that his previous collections from Drawn & Quarterly are being reprinted in a slightly different size and format. The first volume has already been published: King-Cat Classix, covering King-Cat #1-50. The new version is in softcover (as opposed to the original's hardcover) and slightly smaller page size. Neither of these changes has much of an impact on the material; in fact, Porcellino's work feels more natural in a softcover collection. The actual comics see the author as a young man finding novel ways to express himself. Many of the strips were about his experience as a mosquito abatement technician, and they were also collected elsewhere. Some of the strips about high school were collected in Perfect Example, which is also getting reprinted by D&Q. 

From a craft perspective, it's fascinating to watch his line and style evolve with relentless drawing. Like many young cartoonists, he didn't have a real sense of what he was doing in his early years, and the result is a lot of wonky drawings that he attempted to support in his earliest years with some over-rendering and spotting blacks. Eventually, he abandoned that approach and simply let his drawings be as she slowly refined and simplified his line. By the end of the volume, Porcellino is close to his modern style, creating an almost serene line ideal for his more frequent zen and poetic strips. While his best work was certainly yet to come, the raw enthusiasm on the page is exciting to follow. Fans of the artist who haven't examined this work should certainly take a look, understanding that in the early 90s, these comics were a powerful influence on a network of like-minded young cartoonists.

It's fascinating to compare it to King-Cat #80, the most recent issue from November of 2020. Porcellino's absolute mastery over his line is evident on every page, even in an issue that has a relaxed pace. Porcellino has noted that each issue has its own character, understanding that some might not have as many emotionally powerful stories as his most memorable work. Those issues aren't filler so much as a way of documenting and respecting quieter times. 

That's especially true since Porcellino is in a pleasantly domestic and quiet period of his life. He notes in the beginning that he married Stephanie, his partner of nearly a decade. The ups and downs of his relationships have always been a part of his work, but Stephanie's presence has always been more subtle. Indeed, King-Cat now is much less about relationships than it is about what they share together on a daily basis, especially their many pets. Porcellino has always been interested in nature, but his reports on the flora and fauna of South Beloit now occupy a significant amount of his attention as an artist.

In this issue, for example, the opener concerns a beloved Porcellino staple; the changing of seasons. The dawn of spring, the jack-in-the-pulpits blooming are typical of the sort of thing Porcellino always appreciated, but there are extra little notes about appreciating the smell of the kitchen after Steph made coffee and taking his dog Iris outside to listen to the birds. There's a powerful sense of belonging and gratitude evident in this story, as he spends a few moments outside before starting his day. Listening is a key element in this issue; there are strips about listening to nature and trucks with the same ears, and another strip about hearing his cat purr on his chest while they listened to the mice scratching in the walls. His line is especially spare in that latter strip, yet it's still powerfully evocative--especially as part of the larger theme.

Porcellino's love of animals fills this issue up. There's a brief note about the death of he and Steph's dog Gibby--an event so painful that he wasn't ready to draw him again just yet. However, that segued into them getting a new rescue they named Arlo, who fit right into their menagerie of cats and dogs. There are the usual "nature notes" of animals he spots, specifics about their pets (like their beloved toys), a fascinating list of dreams, letters, and his usual Top 40 list. This is a long-held part of the rhythm of the typical issue of King-Cat, and the way he arranged so many features around the death of a pet and how he coped with it tell their own story in a tacit manner. It's a familiar Porcellino trope, but it's also clear how comforting embracing nature in its most sublime manner is healing for him.

There's a moment in a story about setting up bird and squirrel feeders in the yard where Porcellino stops and acknowledges, "During the quarantine I move even slower, pausing to breathe, to feel fresh air, to let the sunlight warm me." That's what this issue is all about, embracing and leaning into that slowness. That includes a very funny anecdote about warming his cold feet in bed with Steph; Porcellino rarely does gags but has always had a sly, observational sense of humor. That's preceded by an observation and memory of his sick mother, as well as a childhood memory of a neighbor who used to give them ice cream--a pleasantly visceral memory. Porcellino deliberately spends very little time on the past in this issue, but it's as though the warmth he built up prior to this gave him permission to do so. The issue ends in fall in a story that echoes the opener--smelling the seasons changing and spending time with his dog while doing so. The final image is of a one-page comic celebrating the plants on the hill being born, being greeted by the hill, and dying, mourned by the hill. It's a bittersweet grace note that acknowledges the inevitability and fleeting nature of beauty and mortality. 

Porcellino's other recent mini was Christmas Stories, from January 2020. This comic is exactly what it sounds like, with three short stories. "From A Buick '66" is about one of his oldest memories at Christmas time. There's an absolutely perfect panel depicting the wild child energy he felt of him with his mouth and eyes wide open, agog with anticipation. The actual memory--of seeing Santa pull up in a big car and go across the street--is funny and full of awe at the same time. "Mysterious Gift" is all about outsmarting yourself when you think you know what you're getting at Christmas, with a wonderful full-page punchline. The final piece, "Ho, Ho, "Ho" is a now somewhat infrequent memory of his college days when he was partying pretty hard. He had promised to play Santa for a bunch of kids on Christmas eve and promptly forgotten about it, but he showed up extremely hung-over and did the job. These wilder tales are as matter-of-fact as any kind of memory Porcellino writes about, but it was clear that the humor involved made it a pleasure. It also gave him another chance to do drawings of children unhinged by Christmas. It's a genuine pleasure to isolate specific Porcellino images on the page as well as see them in their larger context. That speaks to his understanding of a cartoonist on how the micro and macro moments interact with each other, and how even the smallest moments accrue into larger truths. 

Best Life: King-Cat #78

John Porcellino keeps rolling on with his King-Cat Comics and Stories, and this issue has a lightness to it that's in line with recent issues. The beautiful cover is Porcellino's take on the unknown artist of the Flammarion wood engraving, drawing with a level of detail unusual for this comic. It's a "cover version" that's pure joy, both in terms of the original depiction of the atmosphere as well as the joy of drawing that comes through in his version. That joy is evident throughout the issue, as Porcellino in this stage of his career is as much a naturalist as he is a cartoonist, a modern-day Henry David Thoreau in terms of nature's importance to him. It's not all meditation and poetic observations, though as Porcellino takes delight in writing about his pets and the general ridiculousness of the human body.

Indeed, being embodied and thoroughly embracing that reality seem directly related to Porcellino's study of Zen Buddhism. There's a brief poem that opens up the issue, and anyone who's ever heard Porcellino do a reading of his work can hear the slightly somber, wistful tone of his voice as the words appear on the page. Later on, he revealed the "The Making Of" that poem, wherein he was sitting on the toilet, thinking about an image from his past. Hilariously, he yelled out to his girlfriend that he had written a poem on the toilet, and she replied "Are you going to share it with the class?". His cat Big Boy was in there with him, and his blinking as he read it meant that he approved. There is a sense of connection in this otherwise amusing strip that's indicative of the issue's overall tone.

Porcellino is always sincere in his observations. It's just that sometimes he's sincerely silly, like when he dropped a bunch of corny jokes as part of his illustrated Nature Notes. There's another making of strip, this time of another cat, Michi. In the original strip, Porcellino says to her, "You look like a possum". The cat replies, "Good, because I want to look like a possum", which is a very Zen and cat-like thing to say. The making of strip reveals Porcellino's imagination as he saw her eat. There's alsoa a goofy drawing of him, half-asleep, talking to his dogs as he wake up to feed them.

Picking up again on that theme of the joy of drawing, this issue is heavy with his nature illustrations. There's drawings of vegetation, birds and an elaborate series of drawings about the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly as part of a story he wrote about trying to breed them in his back yard. Porcellino, as always, embraces and loves the natural word but isn't separate from the concerns of the greater world, as in one strip about his dogs he pauses to pray for the salvation of the world. Furthering that idea of connection is his letters column, which was slightly dialed back in length but still furthered his idea of connecting with his readers and friends, and connecting them to each other on his letters page. There's a letter from Jeff Zenick, for example, and a long letter from raconteur Eduardo Bak Garcia, along with drawings from Jenny Zervakis and Megan Kelso.

The key story in this issue was its final one, "Lost And Found In The Woods". It's a classic Porcellino walking story, this time a slow hike in the woods where he comes across a random guy and birds, and reminisces about past times he had been through the same area. He writes poetic observations and above all else is present both in his observations and his memories. As a result, the reader is too. Indeed, while this is very a journal of his observations, this issue also feels like an open invitation to come and sit on the porch with him for a while and just listen to nature. Ending the issue with a single-page Zen master gag just recapitulates the experience of the issue itself: self-aware, funny and keenly observant.

Minis: M.Turbitt, J.Baylis, J.Porcellino

That blissful comics avalanche feel is upon me after SPX. All I can do is sift through and start reviewing.

How To Eat Chips, by Meghan Turbitt. Turbitt continues her hilarious, over-the-top social satire by way of exploring advertising and imagery surrounding food in this mini. From the cover that's a parody of the Utz brand of potato chips to the "nutritional facts" on the back that indicates that it provides 200% of daily laughs, 100% of advice and 50% each of fashion, fine art & literature, this mini even has a single-page inset "Guide To Eating Potato Chips". What makes this mini so successful is Turbitt's genuine enthusiasm for food and snack foods in particular. The manic energy that Turbitt provides for her drawings is inherently funny in drawings of potato chips and people eating them; the dissonance between what we expect in a work of advertising and promotion and what she does on the page is amusingly diverting. The further the mini goes on, the sillier it gets, like listing the "best songs to listen to while eating Rap Snacks", positing pretzels as the enemy of chips, creating a "chips dream team" and imagining future chip flavors like oyster, pho, and lobster roll. At the same time, while the mini becomes silly, it never becomes absurd, and stays in the gravity of its central premise: a guide to something that needs no guide at all.

So Buttons #8, by Jonathan Baylis, et al. Baylis continues to get better with every issue of his collaborative autobio comic. His writing is sharper, more concise, funnier and just has a greater overall crispness and purpose. In terms of style, he's never been lacking for ideas, and the cover for this issue was just killer: a parody of the cover of American Splendor #4, as drawn by Robert Crumb. This was the one where noted record fiends Harvey Pekar & Crumb were doing an aw-shucks trade on records they really wanted, each thinking they ripped the other off. This time around, it's a drawing of Baylis and cover artist Noah Van Sciver, doing the same thing with comics. It's hilariously on point and evocative of the original while very much being in Van Sciver's mature style.

Baylis has learned to find good matches for story subjects. "So...Porky" is about his rejection of his Jewish religious roots in terms of dogma around diet and how he embraced pork. This was a light-hearted story, so a cartoony and light line like Corrine Mucha's was a solid pairing. I especially enjoyed how he went into so much detail about something called a Shanghai soup dumpling, which amusingly has a set of rituals surrounding it that one might almost call religious. Rick Parker's versatility and ability to draw horror images made him the right partner for "So...Hallow", which is a history of his love of Halloween make-up. It includes an interlude by Van Sciver where extremely gory make-up one Halloween stopped an angry motorist he'd just gotten into a fender-bender with in his tracks. Baylis always has a way of bringing these anecdotes around to more significant events, and in this case it was his initial interest in doing movie effects make-up for a living that waned when he started doing it for others, along with a general disinterest in Halloween that started after 9/11. The happy ending is that he started finding ways to dress up his dog. "So...Bejeweled" (with one of the best artists with regard to drawing animals in Rachel Dukes) is about his first dog as an adult who died not long after they got her, while "So...Close" is an amusing short with long-time collaborator T.J. Kirsch wherein he tells his wife that the feels like their life is settling down for the better...only to run out of gas. This issue is a solid, satisfying piece of storytelling.

South Beloit Journal, by John Porcellino. This mini from Uncivilized Books has an interesting origin. After finishing drawing a book about suicide, he found himself with 91 2x6" scraps of Bristol board after he trimmed the pages to size. He was inspired to do a daily, three panel journal strip that was very different from the sort of thing he does in King-Cat Comics & Stories. There's a level of precision, even in a minimalist sense, in those comics. Those comics are poetic, and the anecdotes carefully chosen. With a daily strip, John P simply unloaded what was on his mind in the fastest, rawest manner possible. The fact that he was going through an especially low, lonely period of his life and that he did this anyway is just part and parcel of Porcellino and his approach to life. Even at his most depressed, he finds a way to keep going, keep working, keep drawing, keep connecting and keep trying. The bright moments in this comic come when he's connecting with someone else, or talking to cartoonist friends of his at shows, or getting up and drawing/working when he would rather sleep all day. He's a sort of living example of the positive effects of what is known in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) as "opposite action"--doing the opposite of what you want to do in a depressed state, in order to change mood. The journal is also proof that no matter how awful today is, tomorrow has a chance to be better. That's borne out in the back half of the journal, when he goes on an extended trip to Canada for various shows and readings, and also starts dating someone new. Porcellino is not one to overromanticize anything, so reading about him watching the hockey playoffs with his new girlfriend is a kind of shorthand for that sense of new romantic energy. Making those connections and soldiering on with his creative work doesn't make everything perfect, but in these raw, ragged and emotionally vulnerable strips, Porcellino shows that it can at least help.

Minis: J.Porcellino, H.Simple, J.Allen

King-Cat Comix #76, by John Porcellino. After the intense and incredibly touching Maisie Kukoc tribute in KC #75, this is a more low-key, odds-and-ends sort of issue. It's one of the rare issues where there's almost as much text (in the form of letters, an introductory essay, and the KC Top Forty) as there are comics. Most of the comics are short and frequently whimsical, like a drawing of radishes that includes different people's opinions about them. There's an aborted dream take of the city/country mouse story that involved some nice drawings of Chicago and the sort of visceral memory of weather that makes John P's comics so memorable. Along those lines, there was a memory of living in a cold apartment, frying up burgers, listening to sports radio and trying to draw with cheap gloves on. It's the kind of story where Porcellino documents the sheer misery of daily existence, the oppressive loneliness of his chosen life, and yet finds a way through. He works on his comic. He gets out of the house. He might be miserable but he doesn't stop trying. It's here where his eye for small details is so important, because it's in relating these details in terms of how they felt but in a mostly visual manner that gives his comics so much power.

That's why his comics are such an emotional gut punch. By paring away all but the most essential details, Porcellino is able to make feelings very clear in a way that a more naturalistic or text-heavy approach would not just render trite, the aesthetic that he's trying to explore simply wouldn't come across at all. When he does choose to use text as the primary vehicle of his poetic expression, the drawings become a little more supportive and utilitarian, like the "January Poem" about him running around his cold yard in his underwear to chase the cat. There are other brief observations, like hearing the sound of a cardinal while taking out the trash, that speak to the way that Porcellino looks at and thinks about the world, even as so much as life is a struggle. That he is able to render struggle and the smallest of joys about being alive with equal clarity speaks to his understanding of how all of these aspects of life form our aesthetic point of view.

Ohio Is For Sale #9, by Jon Allen. The latest issue of Allen's ongoing saga about a group of slackers takes place a few issues after the collection that I reviewed a few weeks back, but it wasn't hard to figure out what was going on. The issue features Julian, the scumbag boyfriend of Dana, and his attempts at actually trying not to be a leach. It also features series regular Patrick, the writer who constantly faces a blank sheet of paper on his typewriter. As always, Allen uses a simple foundation to build stories that have considerable visual and narrative complexity, as well as a healthy slice of perversity. Allen starts with a simple three or four panel grid per square page, reflecting each issue's origin as a webcomic. The panel borders are unusually thick for a comic, as he gives each panel a lot of weight but also mashes them together a bit to form a dark gestalt. He uses anthropomorphic animals as his characters, which allows him to go as simple or as over-the-top as he wants to be at any given time. It also allows him to use magical realism when that seems the thing to do or intense violence, like in this issue. Every character tends to get what they deserve in this comic. Julian sells his stuff to help make rent at a hilariously redneck pawnshop filled with meth-heads, calling Patrick to help him. Meanwhile, Dana essentially enables Julian throughout the rest of the comic, and then she has her bag stolen. For a comic that can seem so episodic at times, Allen is a surprisingly tight plotter, as the subplot with the stolen bag smashes into Julian taking the money from the pawn shop and wasting it on a night out at a bar, and then getting into a fight with two thugs when he sees his girlfriend's bag. It's yet another dark, funny ending reminiscent of a Peter Bagge comic for Allen.

Holly's Whore Haus #1, by Holly Simple. With art and subject matter very much in the vein of Meghan Turbitt, Simple's story of she and her "best friends" (the characters on her keychain) going up against her nemesis Killer Bae and her crew at the "Sexy Awards". The comic is in part an exploration and send-up of conventional beauty, style and personality as it flashes back to the ways in which the conventionally attractive KB was a constant thorn in her side, in part because of the ways she embodied the bland, conservative nature of conventional attractiveness (in both appearance and behavior) are determined by men. The segment of the comic where Holly is getting her crew ready to compete by getting their hair done, dressing more feminine, willingness to perform and above all else, to be slutty, is hilarious, because she's putting a troll doll, a unicorn and a regular doll into ridiculous and slutty outfits. Despite Holly's crew going all out, Killer Bae wins easily, because dudes are always going to choose women wanting this particular kind of attention that are conventionally attractive. There are actually a lot of complicated emotions in this comic. On one level, this is obviously a feminist statement and condemnation of the male gaze, only done in the most obscene,  hilarious and over-the-top manner possible. At the same time, there's also a longing to have been accepted for being unique and weird, to have received the same kind of approval as KB. And at a different level, there's a visceral sense of wanting to be like KB, of wishing to be that woman and girl who gets conventional approval, but also a sense of self-hatred for wanting nothing less than to be the avid subject of objectification. The comic is colorful, grotesque and warped in terms of its drawings while keeping the reader's eye on the subjects and the wacky stuff that they're involved with. It's also powerful and to the point. I'd love to see more comics from her.

Josh Neufeld & Sari Wilson's Flashed

One thing that a number of Xeric Generation cartoonists (those between about forty and fifty-five years old or so) have in common is an interest in comics formalism, often expressed through the OaBaPo method. This is a series of comics-drawing games that use certain constrictions, like drawing all characters in silhouette, or including the image in every third panel, etc. to challenge cartoonists to use creative solutions for these problems. In many respects, formalism simply implies an awareness of the actual form of comics and how it can be manipulated to produce certain kinds of effects. A lot of comics-as-poetry leans heavily on formalist techniques, for example. In the case of Josh Neufeld, he's done things like comics drawn with his non-dominant hand as well as travelogues told from the point of view of strangers he encountered. Working with his partner Sari Wilson, who is a writer, they put together a collection of "flash" fiction and comics called Flashed. One of the constraints here is a comics story of no more than four pages and a short story of no more than a thousand words. The biggest constraint, and what makes the collection interesting at times, is that three stories or comics would bundle together to form a sort of triplet with a common theme.

Neufeld & Wilson would choose a previously-published comic or short story as a seed. It would be handed over to the next cartoonist or writer (always at least one of each in each triplet), who would respond to the first piece in whatever way they saw fit. Then that second piece would be handed over to a third artist/writer, who would react only to the second piece; they were not allowed to see the first. There are fifteen such triplets in the book and thus forty-five artists, which had to have made for an intense amount of work for the editors, especially since they solicited and printed reactions from each artist about the process after every assignment in a triplet had been completed. That made the entire project unusually meta for an anthology, although I found the author responses to be some of the most interesting parts of the project. As I have written about nearly every anthology I've ever reviewed, this book was highly uneven. I probably would have cut it from fifteen triplets down to ten, because some of them were either difficult slogs to read (which is surprising for flash fiction), lacking substance or outright juvenile.

The "Cheating" triplet started off with some swaggeringly tedious Junot Diaz machismo in short story form, was followed by an absurd Nick Bertozzi strip about a guy who started to think that the tags on his girlfriend's underwear were sending a message, and then finished by Zoe Zolbrod's purple prose. It's one of the rare times I've felt angry after reading something due to the feeling of having my time wasted. Some of the other triplets, like "Shell Shocked" all took somewhat obvious approaches to their subjects; in this case, it was the subject of a soldier returning home to a lover. Some did little to add to a great seed, like in the "Frozen" section where a John Porcellino piece is rendered into something predictable and lacking the poetry of the original piece by Alan Gilbert. In "Venus & Mars", a sentimental piece about emotional pain by Dean Haspiel is turned into an S&M piece by Gina Frangelo and then a parody of S&M and academia by Jason Little. "Winter Walk" went into territory that was too esoteric and abstract at times and didn't hold together.

Sometimes, however, the combinations worked and some interesting connections were made. Kellie Wells drew straight from certain aspects of Lynda Barry's deeply, emotionally rich story "Lost Worlds", and Box Brown went into a completely different direction that nonetheless captured the quality of light that's difficult to quantify in its beauty. "Dystopias" showed that even when an author did not understand an element of the original story (like Anthony Tognazzini misunderstood Jessica Abel's original), they can turn it into something interesting. In this case, it took a story about a tragic highway accident into a bizarre conspiracy piece, and the cartoonist DW managed to double-down on this. A more direct example of teamwork was "Amerika", where Jen Camper started off with a goofy parody of a future fascist America (yikes!) that V.V. Ganeshananthan turned into a full-out dystopian tale with an open end that Tom Kaczynski picked up and completed in his trademark absurd but deadpan manner.

In other stories, the connections made just weren't that interesting or the deviation from original texts wasn't striking enough. That was true of triplets like "Awakenings", "Brothers", and "Leviathan". When the creators started with a weird or whimsical premise and were willing to keep it going, the stories were more interesting. "Bronte", for example, starts with stage directions for a scene about the death of Emily Bronte, continues with a comic by Ken Nash that transposes the setting to an office, and finishes with a story by Rob Walker that transposes it once again and shifts the point of view to a guy in a club. The through-line of barking dogs being transformed into a ringing phone and then finally the person making the call was especially clever, even if one is completely unaware of the history of the literary Bronte sisters. "Mutable Architecture" starts with a premise grounded in the mundane (living in a tiny city apartment) with the horrifying (a mysterious hole in the bathroom that takes on an increasingly disturbing quality) thanks to Gabrielle Bell. Jedidiah Berry's takes that premise and warps it in a positive way, as a landlady showing an apartment to a new tenant becomes younger and younger as the tenant finds more and more secret chambers. Carol Lay's scratchy and tenuous line flip the story around again, as the resident of a sinister house across the street from the apartment goes about his day. "Incommunicado" flips from a disaster-situation to a surreal party to an anatomy of a date and personal ad, with Michael Hinken's deranged final segment strongly capping off the weirdness. Finally, "Curses" finds Anna North and then Andrea Tsurumi doing different takes on disaster and superstition that are both emotionally resonant, and Ben Greeman finishes up with something far more frightening.

All told, this was an interesting experiment that was mostly worthwhile as a read, with a number of slow spots. One thing I noticed is the near-equal split in the number of male and female creators, which probably had something to do with the diversity in subject matter and storytelling styles. I'm not sure a second volume would make much sense, unless it was completely revamped with a new set of rules. Even more preferable would be a volume where every group had a completely different set of rules. The problem with these sorts of exercises is that they usually wind up being more interesting to those who participated in them as opposed to those who might want to read them, which is why a heavy editorial hand is so important. Still, I've never seen an anthology quite like this one, especially in the way it encouraged artists from two different disciplines to collaborate.

John Porcellino's Back Pages

Throughout the course of its 25-year existence, John Porcellino's King-Cat series has mostly been autobiographical in the sense that it captures thoughts, feelings, moods, anecdotes and observations from his daily life. It has rarely been a straightforward, diary-style narrative. There have been exceptions, like the stories that made up Diary Of A Mosquito Abatement Man and Perfect Example. For the most part, however, Porcellino's writing circumambulated a number of huge, life-altering events. Porcellino noted that there were certain stories and events that he'd get to eventually, and "eventually" finally happened in the form of The Hospital Suite (published by Drawn & Quarterly), a book with three overlapping sections detailing Porcellino's battle with a mysterious, life-threatening illness and later depression, anxiety and debilitating obsessive-compulsive disorder.

This book accounts for a lot of things that were implied or elided in King-Cat. The first section, "The Hospital Suite", sets up the rest of the book. As a straightforward narrative about an abdominal tumor that required surgery, Porcellino also tells a story about love, fear, faith and coming to terms with the possibility of his death. There is the terror of being sick and dealing with doctors who needed a number of attempts to find out exactly what was wrong with him, but there was also the palpable comfort he received from his then-wife Kera as well as from his Buddhist faith. There are moments of humor, like when Porcellino is pissed that Harvey Pekar had beaten him to the punch in depicting a scene where his wedding ring fell off his finger because he had become so skinny. At 113 pages, this could have been its own graphic novella, However, the story deepens and becomes more resonant when paired with the next two sections.

The second section, "1998", talks about his journey back to his hometown of Chicago with his wife and the ways in which his life started to break down. Plagued by allergies that even made him hypersensitive to the ink he used for his comics, Porcellino once again had to come to terms with the idea that he might have to accept that he would lose everything that was important to him. When a specialist was finally able to help him with his allergies, he faced a new challenge in his persistent, alienating OCD. It was enough to cause his wife to walk out on him in a truly devastating scene, one that was precipitated by the nagging sense that she was on the verge of leaving him for months on end. This section mostly acts as a link between the first section and the last, detailing the ways in which physical and mental woes can wear away at relationships.

The third section, "True Anxiety" is by far the most harrowing. It's about his life-long battle with anxiety, depression and OCD. "Battle" is an overused term with regard to illness, but in Porcellino's case it accurately describes his many attempts at treating it. Meditation, yoga, diet, supplements, aversion therapy and talk therapy all helped for a period of time, but a stressful life event would simply make it come back, stronger than ever. Porcellino does a remarkable job in relating how one of the worst things about OCD was a rational awareness that the things the disease demanded were absolutely crazy and even absurd. Because the disorder works on one's lizard-brain, fight-or-flight responses, no amount of rational thought can assuage it. Porcellino even laughs at the sheer ridiculousness of some of his OCD fears, like how renting a Godzilla movie might cause monsters to appear and attack his town. Eventually, he gives in to the idea of medication, and there's a remarkable panel where he realizes that it's actually starting to help. Porcellino's work has always been simultaneously powerful and understated, and the ending of this book is typical of that quality. In talking about how he still has issues that he's dealing with, he notes that his life is now so much better, and in the past panel says, "When we meet, let's shake hands." That's a powerful affirmation for someone who was so germ-phobic, as well as an expression of openness and wanting to live.

The Hospital Suite is direct and blunt in a way that most of his work simply isn't. It still bears his trademark spare and understated line, conveying a maximum of emotion and information with a minimum of fussiness. It is brutally honest without being whiny or self-serving; if anything, this book shows just how humbled Porcellino was by his life experiences. There's an underlying sense of gratitude in how he came out the other side. The plain, stark and straightforward nature of the narrative takes on a greater power when paired with the rest of his life's work; The book certainly works on its own (as does King-Cat), but read in conjunction (and especially if one is a long-time reader of Porcellino's comics), each work illuminates and informs the other in interesting ways. The Hospital Suite provides context and resonance for the King-Cat stories, while King-Cat is in many ways a shadow autobiography that has illustrated Porcellino's life in a poetic manner.

While there are some interesting appendices in the book, the true companion piece to The Hospital Suite is actually the recently published King-Cat #75, the 25th anniversary issue. This is the tribute to Porcellino's beloved and deceased cat, Maisie Kukoc. Like the first and third sections of The Hospital Suite, this issue rewinds back to the early 1990's and tells the story of his life and his struggles with illness through the eyes of his relationship with his cat. There's lots of details about how life with a cat is a weird experience, but Porcellino genuinely drew comfort from this constant companion during his lowest moments. This relationship essentially framed one overriding aspect of Porcellino's form of self-expression: that he was not afraid to love, to acknowledge and express his emotions and to display constant wonder and awe at the natural world. That's especially brought him in the final, wrenching sequence when Maisie is dying and he takes her outside, explaining to her how hard it is to let go but it has to be done. This two page spread is masterful, as Porcellino only actually uses images in a handful of the twelve panels; some panels have only text, same panels don't have any borders, and some panels have just a handful of lines. The final panel of the second page has a drawing of his house, breaking up this moment of emotional intimacy and returning them both to the material world. Porcellino cleanses the reader's palate after she dies with a few pages depicting her favorite games, in packed pages featuring playful and kinetic art. Porcellino has an uncanny ability to draw animals in such a way that provides a fully-developed sense of their personality with just a handful of lines.

Ultimately, both The Hospital Suite and King-Cat #75 are about accepting loss without numbing oneself to the emotional reality of the situation. It's about the process of grief, as Porcellino had to grieve the loss of his health, his wife, his pet and even his own sanity and still found a way to make it through to the other side. Accepting loss while never giving up on life, the capacity for love, the willingness to take emotional risks and the energy to create and express oneself are depicted by Porcellino as part of what makes us human. There's no escaping loss and tragedy, and Porcellino's study of Zen Buddhism helped him to accept that the only way out is through--or as he says in his many books, "Forge".

Some Thoughts On Root Hog Or Die

Dan Stafford's low-fi, slightly ramshackle documentary, Root Hog Or Die, is entirely fitting with regard to its subject minicomics/zine-making legend, John Porcellino. The film follows a roughly chronological look at his life and career as a musician and cartoonist with extensive interviews from a number of friends and peers from all walks of his life. The film's rough, DIY feel makes sense given Porcellino's background as a cartoonist who uses an exceedingly spare line to relate anecdotes and poetic observations about his life and environment. It was interesting to see various places around Illinois and Denver concretized on the screen, but it was more interesting to hear Porcellino's own feelings about each of these places. There are also a number of readings of his comics by a variety of people.

The film is neatly divided into title-card sections, from his early life to college years to his early years in bands. From there, Porcellino's descent into years of poor health are described in some detail, and his account of battling OCD and depression are particularly harrowing. What is delightful is seeing the frequently solitary Porcellino hanging out with various of his friends from over the year. He's not by nature a solitary person, but circumstances and mental illness often drove him into that direction. Seeing him just cut up with friends like Noah Van Sciver was one of the real joys of this DVD, especially in the extended deleted scenes section. In some ways, I enjoyed the deleted scenes as much or more as the film itself, because they were every bit as revealing as the film's narrative but were more relaxed and more fun. Watching them felt more like reading an issue of King-Cat than watching the straight narrative. The "Extra P" section, devoted to John P talking about the "filler" cartoons from King-Cat as well as talking about how they bombed at one presentation, was excellent for the same reason.

A couple of quotes stood out in the film as especially illustrative of why John P is so good at what he does. Long-time admirer Ivan Brunetti notes that the specific nature of Porcellino's observations about life actually give them a universal appeal. We may not share Porcellino's precise situation or even aesthetic understanding of the world, but his passion for understanding and his attempt to create meaning is easily understood. Porcellino's interest in Zen Buddhism became crystal clear when he referred to it as the "DIY religion", where it's all up to your own effort to make it work and no one else can make it work for you. How fitting is that thought, given his own relentless and independent work ethic over the years?

Where the documentary is at its best is when it manages to capture the thoughtful, poetic and philosophical side of Porcellino alongside his more playful and silly side. Seeing live footage of various bands he was in was a great deal of fun, as well as hearing anecdotes about some of his wackier on-stage antics. Porcellino is a skilled raconteur, even if that's a skill that took him years to develop. He's someone who's now used to talking about his life as a narrative and parceling it out as a series of anecdotes. At the same time, the best John P comics are those that float apart from specific timelines, those that are about Porcellino as phenomenologist. He observes the world, apart from its utility and our everyday understanding of it, and deftly records his sense of awe. There is a famous Zen koan: "First there is a mountain/Then there is no mountain/Then there is." This is a way of describing the Zen approach to living in the material world. We acknowledge the world as it seems to everyone, as the manifestation of the evidence of our senses and all of the assumptions that flow out of that. Then we acknowledge the illusory nature of these constructions. Then we once again acknowledge the temporal and physical existence of the world once again and our role in it. Porcellino's exquisite awareness and willingness to feel his emotions as connected to time and place are the essence of what makes his poetic work so powerful. It is simple and direct, where small details matter most of all. The words are basic and unadorned, the images stripped down to their simplest configurations.

That's especially true with regard to his relationship with animals, and his beloved, deceased cat Maisie Kukoc most of all. There's one strip about traveling across the country on a move where he sits in the cab of a truck, eating with his cat. There's a sense of perfect contentment on both their parts, of total understanding and acceptance of each other.

The timing of this documentary was interesting, because it came at a time when Porcellino was just starting to heal from years of mental illness that wound up wrecking two marriages. Both of his ex-wives are in the film, and he and his first wife Kera actually share a great deal of time together on the screen. The obvious affection both women still feel for him is obvious, given their tones of voice, body language and the ways they exchange words together. There's a sense in which being mentally ill is an aberration of who we are, a warped mutation of our true selves. Porcellino's OCD was certainly in that category, made all the more painful because he could understand rationally that what he was doing and thinking was not credible but couldn't help feeling and thinking that way. When someone is depressed and isolated but is then able to make a reconnection with an old friend, that experience can be a powerful tonic. It's rebuilding synapses that had been long abandoned and creating a flow of creative energy that had been dammed away. Seeing this happen onscreen, even if it's not discussed as such, is quite interesting and even inspiring. The film can also be seen as a companion piece to Porcellino's new book The Hospital Suite, which goes into greater detail regarding a number of autobiographical details from the film. Viewers should be warned that the DIY nature of the film extends to things like frequently poor lighting, a shaky camera, weird angles, etc. None of that seems to matter much given the subject, as the film shares in and celebrates Porcellino's own rough edges.

Chicago Week: King-Cat #74

John Porcellino's long-running and influential minicomics series King Cat hit its 25th year of publication in 2014, and the upcoming KC #75's release should come at around the same time his all-new book, The Hospital Suite, is due to debut in the fall. Porcellino will go on tour with those books as well as Root Hog Or Die, the documentary that Dan Stafford made about him. I did want to discuss King Cat #74 before all of this hoopla kicks off, in part because there's a gentle, more centered and even playful quality to this issue that's been absent in some of the heavier issues that dealt more directly with depression, illness and turmoil in his life. I chose this comic to kick off a week's worth of Chicago-related comics; even if he's not technically living within city limits, I regard his work as having that distinct Midwestern feel.

"B.O." is a good example of this. It relates an anecdote regarding his giving up deodorants as a young adult because of the aluminum in them. This is a hilarious story about his later sweaty humiliation at a high school where he gave a lecture about cartooning, made funnier by his trademark minimalist style. When John writes gags in his comics, it's not unlike a more serious Matt Feazell in terms of the way he still manages to incorporate body language as part of his cartooning. The promise at the end of the story after he bought some organic deodorant ("So now if you meet me, I'll smell like springtime and roses!") just added to the squirm quality of the situation.

"Batty Batty Batty" is a life update comic, talking about moving into his girlfriend's apartment after his small place started to flood but miraculously spared all of his comics stock. When a bat is encountered, it spawns a complicated chain of events that involves them driving out to a couple that essentially fosters bats. It's the kind of weird John P. meeting that he seeks out, in part because of his enormous empathy for animals and indeed all living things.

"F For Fear", "Insomnia" and "Tennessee" are more along the lines of his comics-as-poetry that has been an important part of his work for some time. Porcellino makes the first two strips especially unsettling in the way they express his anxieties while trying to sleep. On the other hand, "Bridges of South Beloit" displays Porcellino's natural curiosity about his surroundings and how deep he's willing to go with regard to finding out as much as possible about a particular subject. With regard to that story, he's fascinated by the workmanship, utility and aesthetics of the various bridges. He wonders about and researches why some bridges fall out of use and why others get refurbished. More than anything, John Porcellino looks, really looks, at his environment. His ability and willingness to truly observe and distill the essence of his environment is what makes Porcellino such a fine cartoonist.

Sequart Reprints: Yet More MoCCA minis

This article was originally published at sequart.com in 2007.
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There's always been a strong relationship between minicomics culture and zine culture. Indeed, one could make the argument that minicomics are one of the most vibrant subtypes of zines these days. Beyond the fact that they're relatively cheap and easy to make, minis also allow cartoonists to turn comics into art objects if they so desire. Another connection is that many personal zines tend to be autobiographical musings of the author, and that tradition is certainly prevalent in the minicomics scene. This article will examine a number of minis that are either autobiographical or deal with slice-of-life narratives. I'm going to try to resist giving detailed plot descriptions and instead focus on character and characterization, along with the specific look of the comic and what kind of impact it makes on characterization.

CROSS-COUNTRY, by MK Reed. MK Reed's newest feels like a screenplay, but she puts in enough comics-only flourishes to give the comic weight and substance. This one's about a cross-country road trip with a young guy who's part of a family of Wal-Mart-like stores, and an employee. Greg, the boss, is a boorish frat boy type whom Ben, the employee, despises. Greg is a vacant sleazeball and Ben is conflicted about being there--it's a summer job and he needs the money. Greg loves to sleep with young girls, and this first issue ends with Ben being forced to drive home a waitress that Greg slept with--to school, because she's only 15 years old.

Greg is actually the more interesting of the two lead characters, because he's so unrepentently awful and banal. Ben clearly hates himself in more ways than one, and is stewing over an old girlfriend. He obviously thinks he's morally superior to Greg, but the fact that he's enabling his boss' bad behavior makes him worse in some ways. I like this ambiguity in Reed's characters here, as well as the unusual page and panel composition she uses. That includes panels at odd angles like diagonals, eschewing a grid on certain pages, using diary-style narration in print outside the panels, and going to unusual close-ups. Reed's figure-work is crude but she continues to play to her strengths, focusing on gesture, body language and facial expressions. Reed's definitely one of my favorite mini-comics artists who specializes in the lives of young people; I'm glad that she's moved on to a slightly older age demographic after mostly writing about teenagers.

MATCHING JACKETS and SOURPUSS 1 by Robyn Chapman. Chapman is a graduate of the Savannah College of Art & Design whose work I've been following for many years. She's one of the co-editors of the fascinating TRUE PORN anthologies as well as the driving force behind the enormously entertaining HEY, FOUR-EYES! zine. This pair of minis are obviously very personal and intimate; one is explicitly autobiographical and the other inspired by autobiographical events.

MATCHING JACKETS is a compilation of stories about old boyfriends. "Something's Wrong" is from TRUE PORN, and is a devastatingly personal account of her problems with sex with one particular boyfriend, and how this turned into an irreparable barrier. What I liked most about this story was the disconnect between "Robyn's" emotions and her physical reactions as a sexual being. When she reveals that it may be related to her evolving sexuality (being attracted to women), it's a painful moment, one where all further communication is impossible. A cheerier story is "Comfortable", a John Porcellino-style story where Chapman merges text and image in a free-flowing manner, abandoning panel gridlines altogether. This one retells a clearly-doomed but still-pleasant relationship from college, and is told in Chapman's sparer, cleaner line from her recent works. The nature of the narrative will feel familiar to anyone who recalls their first love from college, but it's her compositon that makes this the best story in the book. There's one page where she describes the first time she and her boyfriend told each other that they loved each other. The way she makes the eye follow her boyfriend laying in the grass, to the narrative, to an overhead view of a park, to Chapman in the bottom right hand corner, is a perfect example of assured and creative storytelling, neatly solving several visual problems.

SOURPUSS is the first chapter of a high school story, and it takes place in Chapman's native rural Alaska. There's a Chapman stand-in in Doris, an artist who hangs around with some nerd friends and can't relate to anyone else around in her redneck town. This comic is a well done but quite familiar account of teen alienation. In the first chapter, the dynamic between Doris and her friends is fairly predictable, down to her jealousy over one of them getting a girlfriend. Chapman's character design is the main attraction of this mini, along with her understanding of expression. I'll be curious to see where the story winds up going.

JAM IN THE BAND and PARTY @ HORROR BEACH, by Robin Enrico. Enrico's specialty is conjuring up atmospheres of particular youth scenes, and he creates that verisimilitude thanks to witty dialogue. JAM IN THE BAND is a short preview of a much longer work, and it had echoes of Brian Lee O'Malley's SCOTT PILGRIM and Jaime Hernandez' LOVE AND ROCKETS. It's about a music writer in New York who's about to see a well-known, all-female indy rock band--one that he knew quite well in the small college town they came out of. It's got that same indy rock vibe as SCOTT PILGRIM but uses the time-jumping techniques in those Locas stories. Despite those influences, Enrico has his own voice. His cartooning is simple, iconic and stylized, with a number of decorative flourishes. He's careful to keep his panels uncluttered, even when he's trying to get across a lot of information through visual cues. The small taste we get of the characters in this issue wasn't quite enough to get lost in their stories quite yet, but it does lay out the tensions nicely. I look forward to the larger work that's yet to come.

PARTY @ HORROR BEACH has several semi-auto-bio stories, some of which read like inside jokes. "Trapped In The Closet", however, put together a string of ridiculous situations and sustained them nicely as one coherent, funny narrative. It's about a Halloween party that Enrico's stand-in character attends, where he comes as a "Big Stupid Box" on a dare. There's a funny aside where two women note that since it's Halloween, they're required to dress in something Sexy--so one chooses to be Sexy Abe Lincoln and the other comes as Sexy John Wilkes Booth. He winds up fooling around with a woman (with a boyfriend) whom he had slept with before (at a drunken party) in a closet. When he's told that the woman is now engaged, and that her fiance was at this very party, he finds himself stuck in a closet for the night, hiding out. Enrico manages to play a sordid encounter for laughs, mostly at his own expense. What I like about this is the extreme short-sightedness of every character; the woman he sleeps with has no problem cheating on her fiance, until he gets wise and takes away their engagement ring, while Robin knows it isn't a good idea but does it anyway. Enrico's skill at humor is what distinguishes this autobio mini from others of its kind, along with that amusingly cartoony art (which greatly aides in evoking laughs).

DISCO MAXX by Katie Skelly  This brief mini has a mylar cover with a different design on every copy. While this is an autobiographical story, it's not really a narrative or even an anecodote, really. Instead, it's a series of memories as images, flowing together on a night when Skelly and a friend DJ'd a party at Syracuse. Skelly's style is spare and simplistic, emphasizing expression over form. It's a sweet, unambiguous account of a night where everything went magically right. It was the sort of night where one could sense great things happening as they unfolded, and the result is a series of memories that burned themselves into one's mind's eye quite vividly. Skelly's panel composition can be slightly cluttered; if anything, I'd like to see her simplify things even further. Still, I enjoy the way she presents memories and encounters on a page, especially how she constructs dialogue. Though this story was very sweet, she actually has a tart and witty voice, and I'd like to continue to see that fleshed out in longer narratives.

MY BRAIN HURTS #6, by Liz Baillie  Enrico and Skelly distance the reader from the emotional content of the material, either through humor (Enrico), narrative ambiguity (Skelly) or a cartoony drawing style. Liz Baillie, whose work I've reviewed here previously, goes in a different direction. She plunges us head-first into her characters' tumultuous emotional lives, and does so with dense, detail-packed panels. Her actual line is fairly thin, which lessens the punch of each particular panel (different from Robyn Chapman, who uses fairly thick blacks for her lines), but she adds mood to her panels with the heavy use of shadow, cross-hatching, blacks in a panel, etc.

All of this is in service to her story, and this particular issue deals with some unusual difficulties regarding young love for a teenaged lesbian. Baillie perfectly captures the awkwardness of an attempted sexual encounter, especially when her girlfriend paradoxically clings to her Catholic upbringing. Baillie gets this across in a page where the panels sit at odd angles to each other, overlapping and zooming in and out of intimate close-ups. It's a great page, one of several in the book where the page design has a direct influence on the book's emotional content. By the end of the issue, we have a real sense of the main character feeling as though she's hit rock bottom, with nowhere to belong. Baillie's become more adventurous as an artist as the series has proceeded, and the interesting choices she's made have deepened the book's emotional impact.

NO IN-BETWEEN #1-6, by Marion Vitus  I remember buying the first issue of this series at SPX several years ago, and was struck at how ambitious it seemed for a young artist to undertake a sprawling travelogue as their first work. It's obvious that this story, described as "fiction with autobiographical inspiration" (what Dean Haspiel calls "semi-auto-bio"), was a life-changing and enormously meaningful event for Vitus. The plot can be described simply: an aspiring artist is stuck in a dead-end job, awaiting a backpacking trip to Europe with her long-distance boyfriend as the catalyst needed to get her out of a rut. When he unexpectedly dumps her, she decides to go anyway--by herself. I like that Vitus took a sharp turn away from standard 20-something romance drama and went in a very different direction. It's clear that this isn't just a series of observations on travel, but rather an attempt at using travel as a means of finding out what she really wants in life, and how to get it.

The fact that it took Vitus nearly four years to produce six 8-page minis just points to how much of a struggle it can be for a working artist to find the time to concentrate on their personal projects. Among other things, this mini is obviously Vitus' laboratory in attempting to grow as an artist. She changed her rendering style twice before settling on a look that seems to be a good fit. The first issue was a pretty clear-line affair; there weren't many blacks used, and she kept her figures fairly simple. I also noticed that Vitus loves to play with gesture, posture and expression as emotional cues; there's a squirminess to her stand-in character that reflects her own discomfort with the world, and at times, herself.

The second issue, which takes place in Italy, was much more heavily rendered than the first. At times, it was over-rendered. That killed a lot of the spontaneity on the page and made her figures look stiff. By the end of the third issue, she loosened up a bit, especially on a page where she gets goosed on a subway. In the sixth issue, Vitus does a nice job of keeping that spontaneity going while still getting across the beauty of the surrounding countryside. It's fitting that in a story about transformation, growth and becoming comfortable with oneself, Vitus the artist continues to grow and struggle with the lessons she learned as Vitus the character. The difference is that the story crystalized that moment into a series of epiphanies. The struggle to hold onto those feelings of self-discovery and relay it on paper continues to inform the way Vitus is slowly unfolding the story.

THE ROSIE STORIES, by Diana Tamblyn  As a storyteller, Tamblyn is clear, restrained, matter-of-fact and has an assured, bold line. After reading a number of stories involving teens or young adults, it was an interesting change of pace to read stories about becoming a mother. Tamblyn's tone is gushingly emotional and joyful; there's no attempt or thought of an attempt to put any distance between her plain feelings and the reader. She ameliorates that bluntness by using a couple of different techniques in these stories about her daughter. Tamblyn either tenderly narrates her stories in a realistic style, or else simplifies her line for stories told from her daughter's point of view. It's a more cartoony, John Stanley-esque style that's very appealing. Throughout the comic, there's a genuine warmth that comes across on each page. At times, it's a bit overwhelming for a reader.

While I can certainly appreciate how much a new mother loves her child, there's not much going on in the first story other than an expression of that love, along with trying to capture perfect moments. It felt more like something you'd send out to your relatives than work for the general public. The Rosie-as-narrator stories work a bit better, especially when Tamblyn introduces some light elements of conflict. The last story, where Tamblyn relates her paranoia regarding her child's safety and her own desire to become a better person, is the most interesting by far. There's a lot of skill and sincerity in this comic, but one senses that Tamblyn isn't sufficiently distanced from the initial event to write a compelling narrative about her experiences. I'd like to see her take cues from the last story in the mini and add a bit of perspective to what is obviously an amazing, life-changing odyssey.

DUMB JERSEY WHITE BOY #3, by Mark McMurray McMurray is a very strong storyteller, using a variety of approaches to give a powerful sense of time and place. His stories usually mix comic and horrific real-life events, and this issue is no exception. It's a collection of short stories about his father from various points in his life. The most accomplished is a short story he submitted to the SPX anthology some years back, and it's a beautifully-illustrated memory of his childhood. Young Mark is obsessed with the new Fantastic Four cartoon, which his father interrupts by talking about his failing marriage. While he weeps and holds his son, young Mark can only think that Jack Kirby was definitely involved in the cartoon! The stage is set for the other stories in the book, where McMurray displays a combination of ambivalence and bemused affection for his father. The latter stories were originally done as correspondence, and have the vibrancy that a quick sketchbook drawing possesses. McMurray has a very assured line and an excellent eye, and augments these skills with a keen sense of when to exaggerate and when to reel things in. As a writer, McMurray keeps a layer of humorous distance up when discussing his father--he talks about what his father has done or said, but never spells out his own feelings. He prefers to let the anecdotes speak for themselves, a tactic that works to his advantage.

PHASE 7 #11, by Alec Longstreth. This is a follow-up to PHASE 7 #10, wherein Longstreth starts to lay out his entire history of comics involvement. This issue picks up with Longstreth deciding to make creating comic books his life. The last issue was all about how he became immersed in comics and came to start drawing them, but this one focuses on how he developed his working method, the ways in which he started interacting (and drawing strength from) fellow cartoonists, and how he came to terms with his own publishing schedule. Longstreth uses a cute framing device to explain why he published issues out of order, giving a long and very specific autobiographical story some structure. What I find interesting about Longstreth is that while he acknowledges the huge debt he owes to those cartoonists who inspired him over the years, he doesn't seem to be quite aware yet of his own role in inspiring his peers. Simply put, it's rare to see an artist this completely devoted to his art, who thinks about it in terms of the years that are ahead of him, and who provides such a steadfast example of hard work being its own reward. The fact that he has such an enormous appetite for different kinds of storytelling and doesn't seem to favor one over another is also interesting; he's very much an "in-between" sort of artist. He lists BONE as his favorite comic ever, but is also a big fan of Chris Ware and Adrian Tomine. Likewise, his comics go from gags to autobio to adventure, and his art ranges from stick-figure (inspired by Matt Feazell) to intensely cross-hatched and detailed; he refuses to impose limits on what he can do.

Even though he's already published quite a few comics, I get the sense that he's still working through his influences. As solid a craftsman and storyteller as he is, Longstreth is not yet an innovator or visionary as an artist. He's an artist that I think will plow through a series of "steady-states", wherein he will master a storytelling or artistic technique, and then face either a new problem to solve or influence to absorb and then adapt that into his routine. Eventually, these years of internalizing these adaptations through sheer hard work will coalesce into something we've never seen before. Until that time, his audience will have a great many unusual, enjoyable comics to read.

ANTELOPE EATER, by Juliacks. This is an intensely stylized, painful story of a young boy struggling with his mother's illness and her resentment towards him. What's most striking about this is the sophistication of the page design, coupled with raw, primitive art. The way Juliacks combines text and image on a page, such that the text should be seen both as part of the image and as a separate message, makes for an intimate, almost suffocating experience as a reader. The images are not pleasant, because the experience of watching one's mother die as she wishes you had never been born is certainly not pleasant. The boy retreats into fantasy, becoming a superhero who can save her. The images switch from purely grotesque to fanciful, though the tiny text reminds us of the painfulness of the experience. The last page, with a number of small panels that intersperse her vitals with images of a heart (acting as both literal and metaphorical agent), is shattering--especially, once again, with the way she integrates text into the image. Juliacks has a powerful voice, and the multitude of influences on her art (see her website) point to someone who can do some very interesting things in the world of comics.

THE OTHERS, by Matt Madden. Madden is well-known for his formalist experiments, devising whole stories around clever storytelling constructions. He seems endlessly interested in taking the basic format of comics--panel, page, images, letters, panel-to-panel transitions, point of view--and scrambling them so as to force the audience to see what's happening "backstage", so to speak. At the same time, he's able to imbue this interest with enough humanity to make these more than mere technical exercises. THE OTHERS is a brief, circular exercise in switching points-of-view. It reminds me a bit of the Richard Linklater film SLACKER in that we are privy to a character's narrative for a few moments, and then we sail off into another character's narrative when their paths cross. The difference is that as a comics audience, Madden gives us access to their interior, running monologue. Each character happens to be studying the next character, wondering about their histories and motivations. Starting with one young man in a cafe, we zip from character to character until we arrive back at the original character--and an attempt to make contact. "Other" here refers to our essential isolation as human beings, and how difficult (and often startling) it can be to try to genuinely break through that layer of alienation. Madden's line is as loose and sketchy as ever; I sense that he prefers that his work should look a bit fuzzy so as to provide less of a shock to the reader when he starts shuffling his formalist deck. Madden really found his voice doing these sorts of comics, and they're always satisfying to read--though they'll never have the emotional impact of more personal work.

THE OTHER SIDE and DOUBLE-YELLOW LINES, by JP Coovert and Hope Larson. These comics have modest ambitions, but the ambiguity in both made them linger a bit. THE OTHER SIDE is a seemingly simple look at a sleepover with two boys who are best friends. They scamper around their neighborhood at night in a carefree manner, peeking into the windows of various people. Until one of them spies a couple having sex--one of the boys is fixated, and the other gets nervous and wants to leave. This leads to an argument, accusations of being gay, and then an attempt to pretend the whole thing didn't happen. While never apologizing, I liked the way Coovert found ways for the characters to nonetheless reconnect without language--especially through the use of physical contact.

DOUBLE-YELLOW LINES is a beautifully-designed mini (black cover, black-embossed lettering, and 2 yellow lines to represent the highway) where Coovert and Hope Larson collaborated. Both stories reflect on each other, as they're both about the briefness of life and the painful awareness that it can be taken away at any time. Larson's story has her coming upon a rabbit that had been struck by a car . As she tried to comfort it, she noticed that the rabbit's mate saw them near the edge of the highway. The rabbit she held died, but the other was shooed away to safety, despite the obvious urge to search for his mate. Not for long, however--the rabbit returned, only to meet his own death on the highway, joining his mate. "Driving In The Rain" is about Coovert wondering where his better half is and getting a phone call from her that she'd been in a wreck. He raced to get her, worst-case scenarios burning through his thoughts, until he found her OK--and presented him with a touching romantic gesture. The sentiment of the story is a nice balance to the downbeat ending of Larson's half of the mini. It's the nature of mortality, that we're all essentially living on borrowed time, and this mini eloquently gets at that truth in just ten pages. Visually, Larson punctuates her bold black line with all sorts of decorative touches that act as narrative clues, while Coovert keeps things clear and simple. His art is all about economy of line and advancing the emotional narrative of his story with a minimum of fuss.

NEW CONSTRUCTION #1, by Kevin Huizenga Huizenga is a fast-rising star in the world of comics, with an Ignatz book (GANGES) from Fantagraphics and his own series (OR ELSE) and a collection (CURSES) from Drawn & Quarterly. However, he got his start with his minicomics series SUPERMONSTER, and he continues to make minis to work out ideas, provide anecdotes, and show off some interesting work from his sketchbook. There's a sense that this is autobiographical, because it's displaying ephemera and sketches straight from the cartoonists' pen, and a number of the pages are about his working methods.

A number of the strips here were "deleted scenes" from GANGES #1. I have no idea if he actually meant to include these scenes but didn't have room, drew them but decided they didn't fit, or did them after the fact as a lark, but they're all a hoot. That issue depicts the life of a couple at home, focusing on minutiae and moment-to-moment beats & rhythms. Both of the scenes depicted here were a lot more light-hearted than what we saw in the actual comic, and I can see why they weren't included. Still, it was fun to see Wendy Ganges tell Glenn to stop thinking sexualized thoughts about her, or see her fall on the floor laughing because of a trick Glenn was pulling with snacks. I also rather enjoyed the very odd "The Hundred Most People In America", a riff on celebrity and other such lists featuring a number of oddball characters and descriptions. Any fan of Huizenga should track down a copy.

ECLIPSE and THE ANATOMY OF US, by Karla Krupala. Krupala has serious chops as an artist. ANATOMY OF US is less a story than a self-described "work in progress", where she "sketched various relationships in states of disorder". The results are very interesting in this mini, but they've obviously not resulted in a coherent whole as of yet. Krupala likes static images and using them in unexpected ways. On one page, we see the back of a skeleton as a means of conveying a conveying a dialogue, doubling as an anatomical chart. On another page, we see a woman's legs, and her shadow is formed out of the word "take" repeated multiple times. Krupala seems to be emphasizing our essential aloneness and the near-impossibility of communication. In particular, words not only fail in trying to connect people together, they inevitably serve as weapons. ECLIPSE is a story set in outer space, but the themes are similar: loneliness, the possibility of connection, and the nature of that connection. I felt tantalized by these two minis, wanting to see more by the artist. I especially wanted to see her themes fleshed out a bit more in longer stories. Her development as an artist over the span of a year was remarkable, especially in terms of her figures. They became more assured and bolder in ANATOMY, though her composition in both comics was striking.

ALICE IN NEW YORK #4, by Henry Chamberlain. I reviewed the first two issues of this series in entry #10 of this column, and was happy to see this issue pop up in my mailbox. I missed #3, but it was easy to catch up with what happened. This is the conclusion of Chamberlain's love letter to New York and Lewis Carroll, and it's interesting to see how his art has matured. He uses a thick line but is nice and loose with his figures. There's a pleasing, sketchy quality to them that meshes well for the slightly dreamy quality he embues in his story. The theme of the story is allowing oneself to become open to an awakening of imagination and the possibilities therein. The Henry character is guarded and uncertain, but clearly wants to find ways to break out. This issue is essentially one long battle of wits with the object of his affection, a woman who challenges him to break free of his self-imposed, over-intellectualized restraints and assumptions. This issue is very talk-heavy, but Chamberlain counters that with big panels that are well-composed. The central conceit of the series, that characters from ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND are secretly aiding Henry in opening himself up to a new world, is kept mostly to the edges of the story, allowing the issue's central dialogue to take precedence. It's a smart decision, because there was definitely a danger in those fantasy elements overwhelming the emotional thrust of the story. Instead, Chamberlain was able to present the story of a character who overthinks things a little too much, who was able to find a way to lose himself to the immediacy of experience.

THE HOOKAH GIRL VOLUME 1, by Marguerite Dabaie. The subtitle of this comic is "Growing Up Christian Palestinian In America", and Dabaie wastes little time in addressing some very sticky points about this subject. She cleverly begins this collection of brief stories and anecdotes with "Should/Am", which is a series of paper-doll cutouts. Dabaie goes from stereotype to stereotype, boldly drawing humor out of a cut-out of "Martyr" ("NOT in Israel To Sight-See!"), alongside "Muslim", "Seductress" (a harem girl costume), "Revolutionary" and finally "Hungry Artist". It's a direct shot across the bow to start a collection, and Dabaie makes her bluntness work by using dark humor and the convention of a child's activity.

The rest of the stories in the book range from light-hearted memories as a child to pointed observations on today's political climate. A story about her family stealing grape leaves from wine orchards (prefaced by the technique on how to roll a grape-leaf) was funny, as was a story about the ways in which Palestinian-Americans go to extremes in connecting with their culture. It's clear that Dabaie is conflicted on a number of matters relating to the Palestinian cause. In a story about hijacker Leila Khaled, it's obvious that Dabaie is drawn to her because she was a woman who acted boldly in the Arab world, and not just because she drew media attention to the Palestinian cause. There's another story called "The BestEST Joke" where someone tells her a Palestinian joke (not knowing that she was half-Palestinian), and she doesn't know how to react.
My favorite story in the collection was "NOW", an acidic critique of Americans using the kaffiyeh, a traditional piece of cloth, as a fashion statement. ("Go against 'the man' Now. In style!") I think Dabaie is currently most skilled as a satirist; she has an elegant thin-line in those drawings that really brings out the cutting humor in her concepts. I also admire her simplified, stripped-down style that she used in "The BestEST Joke" and the grape leaf story. The stories using thicker blacks are somewhat less successful visually, feeling slightly over-rendered and drawn with a less confident hand. Still, Dabaie was bold in trying so many different styles for her first collection of work, and she has a strong storytelling voice. Her point of view and experiences are also obviously unusual in the world of comics, but it's not just that point of view that makes her distinctive as an artist. Her brains, sense of humor, and graphic design sense are the engine that manages to link her memories and opinions in such a bold presentation. I'm eager to see how she grows as an artist.

STABBED! and BERNIE, by Cheryl Gladstone. These autobiographical comics score major points for being really funny. Gladstone uses her background to generate laughs out of family drama, thanks mostly to the outsized personality that is her mom, Bernie. She's a "Jewlipino", a rare person who is both Jewish and Filipino. In BERNIE, Gladstone does a series of one-page gag strips with Bernie's point of view on all sorts of things. My favorite is Bernie telling young Cheryl that she was adopted, even though she wasn't. Another strip, "Motherly Advice" has Bernie offering dating advice to Cheryl's sister: "No blowjobs!" STABBED! relates another crazy anecodte: Cheryl's brother and mother both threaten to kill themselves as a means of trying to one-up each other. Her brother finally tops her by impulsively stabbing himself in the leg, which is a cold dose of reality for everyone. That bit of insanity leads everyone to cope the best they can: Bernie starts organizing her shoe closet, Cheryl starts writing in her livejournal, and her sister goes shopping. BERNIE is the later mini, and it shows. Gladstone's line is both bolder and simpler. It's much more assured, with better panel composition. STABBED! loses some of its comedic impact simply because the figures are shakier, and Gladstone tries to compensate by overrendering the backgrounds. BERNIE is more successful on a visual level simply because Gladstone makes sure to emphasize her characters above all else. She has a strong comedic voice and manages to evoke humor from a situation without relying on distancing herself from the reader. Reading these two comics made me want to see more from her.

KING-CAT #66, by John Porcellino. To say that John Porcellino is a revered figure in minicomics circles is an understatement. He long ago mastered an economy of line that strips away everything but what is essential, especially in terms of emotional content. His stories range from standard narratives to wisps of memory to story poems, all grasping at getting across the sublime on paper. "Football Weather" is a lighthearted story about playing football with the neighborhood kids, with more funny moments than the usual Porcellino story. I especially liked the revulsion he felt at the possibility of having to play on a team called "The Packers", given his status as a life-long Bears fan. I love the way this story looks--the stripped-down lines still depicting action and motion so well, various emotions shown with just a line or squiggle, and the way he creates a rainy fall atmosphere. It's beautiful and evocative. This issue is like a Porcellino primer, because he goes from a straight-ahead story like "Football Weather" to an illustrated poem in "Blue Light" to an almost wordless meditation on scenery in "Freeman Kame". Porcellino writes many of his stories on a small scale--a memory here, an anecdote or observation there. It's that very scale that creates an intimacy and warmth for a reader, that slowly lets us understand Porcellino's point of view instead of him jamming it into our faces. The urge to create autobiographical work is often a narcissistic one, wherein the creator is the most important "character" in their story. Porcellino manages to side-step that tendency by neither overselling nor underselling himself, but rather by revealing himself to be a small but not insignificant part of the world--just like everyone and everything else.