Sequart Reprints: Anthology Round-Up

I review a lot of anthologies, usually in great detail. There are a number of anthologies that I've read where I don't have quite as much to say about them, so I thought I'd compile some brief thoughts about each of them in this article.

Whores of Mensa #2. This anthology, named after a classic Woody Allen short story, is presented by Jeremy Dennis, Mardou and Ellen Lindner. The theme of this issue seems to be a sexual exploration of "east meets west", many of them period stories. Lindner is a long-time minicomics favorite of mine, and her wry sense of humor is on display with a send-up of Jane Eyre where Jane winds up marrying into a harem. Mardou has two stories, one an expose on the belly-dancing instruction racket and another sharply humorous variation on the anthology's title, as she is a "literary prostitute" who winds up dealing with a john who's obsessed with children's literature ("a paedo-reader"). Dennis contributes a story about a 19th century man who overcomes his melancholy by traveling to an Arabic country and later posing nude. These are smart, sharp stories, packaged with an attractive cover in an oversized format. Dennis has a scribbly style that nicely complements Lindner's bold, smooth blacks and Mardou's exaggerated naturalism. When reading an anthology, I often think about if I've read this kind of story a million times before, because such stories tend to fade from my memory moments after I've read them. With this comic, I'm happy to say that this isn't the case, and that it even rewards multiple readings.

You Ain't No Dancer, Volume 2.  This anthology, from New Reliable Press, has the theme of "youth". Most of the stories in this pleasant but largely forgettable collection focus on childhood reminiscences, frequently of the "I was such a loser" variety. As a result, there's a kind of numbing sameness from story to story, even though most of the entries are solidly crafted. The only really amateurish entry is a gross-out called "A Filth Hole Adventure" by Fred Grisold and Jamie Dee Gailey which, while crudely drawn and loaded with spelling errors, does at least have a perverse kind of energy. In an anthology filled with blandly sweet memories, cutesy fantasy characters or familiar self-flagellation, that story, while not especially good, at least broke up the monotony.

That said, there are some exceptions here. The ever-delightful Hope Larson contributes a two-page "Recipe For Youth", using that brief space to create some evocative images. Colleen MacIsaac's "Indian Princesses" is really well-drawn and has a funny punchline dealing with some ethnic misunderstandings over a Halloween costume. Grant Reynolds has a truly disturbing story in "Litter", using a lot of blacks to depict a litter of puppies and their very short life--and the contentment they feel both in the womb and in a sack going into a river. "Sharp Young Minds" from Phil McAndrew stands out because it's so well-drawn and has such a sharply-delivered punchline. The main problem with this anthology, as with many anthologies, is that some of the stories (especially by some of the bigger names like Jeffrey Brown and Liz Prince) are short to the point of being ephemeral, while many of the other stories tend to blend into each other thanks to the theme.

Pictozine II, edited by Dave Bradbury. In my review of the first volume of this all-New Zealand anthology, I noted that as a whole the project was a noble experiment that didn't quite work. Editor Dave Bradbury clearly stepped up his game in finding contributors for this second volume, because on the whole it's a much stronger collection. There are 36 stories by 37 contributors for a total of 151 pages. While there are once again varying levels of ability and professionalism, about 1/3 of the stories is solid, another 1/3 is excellent, and the last third were either too crude, dull or otherwise unremarkable.

Once again, top Kiwi legends Dylan Horrocks and Roger Langridge contribute strips, and once again they're some of the very best in the book. Langridge's "Shirley Temple Meets Frankenstein" is his philosophical absurdism at its best. His line is so crisp and his use of blacks so commanding that it almost hurts to look at his art. Horrocks' "Siso" is a staggering short story, with an iconic set of characters designed to resemble the sort of characters one would see in a children's book. He evokes war, peace and a sense of dread & calm all at once.

There's more to see here than just Horrocks and Langridge, however. Cover artist Mat Tait also contributed a silent story of birth and death for a Maori tribe. Brent Willis has a funny but disturbing story about growing up with communist parents in the late 1930's who felt they had to make nice with Nazis because of the Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact. Carlos Wedde did an angularly-designed take on Harvey Pekar-style anecdotes, talking about a haircut he got from a couple of guys who turned out to be racists. Robyn Kenealy has a cute one-pager about Roddy McDowall that is the model of what one should expect from a one-page strip. Tim Danko returns with another unusual strip about a ship tossed at sea (set to "Eye of the Tiger"!), with a post-modern commentary on the edges.

Other highlights include a creepy fine-line strip by Heather Buchanan about a sheep and a skeleton that acts as a mother figure; a funny, heavily stippled piece by Jess Johnson spoofing the art world; and a clever 1-page stirp by Sheehanbros that makes great use of negative space to tell a story about a family's sleeping habits. Perhaps my favorite story was by Samuel Killean-Chance. Titled "Cliff Trap", it's a Mat Brinkman-esque story of a couple of bulbous creatures. One is pursued by a sort of tentacled creature and falls off a cliff. The action is simple, but his composition, backgrounds, fluidity in depicting motion and character design draw the reader fully into the story. I love the story's ambiguity and Killean-Chance's willingness to leave the backstory unexplained. This is an artist I hope to see much more from in the future.

All told, this was an interesting, varied read with a number of different approaches. It was an especially impressive effort for what seemed to be an open-submissions anthology (albeit one open to New Zealanders or those associated with New Zealanders in some form). If Bradbury continues to publish these anthologies (and I hope that he does), at some point he's going to need to start to make some difficult choices as an editor and only publish the best stories. This would have been an excellent 100-page anthology; as it stands, it's a very good 150-pager. I'd also like to see longer contributions by some of the artists; some of the 1-pagers felt tossed-off at best. That said, there were some excellent 1-page strips in here. The upswing in quality from the first to second volumes of Pictozine was quite impressive, and I hope to see a similar arc for a potential third volume.


CANDY OR MEDICINE #2, edited by Josh Blair. This modest anthology informs the reader right from the start that it "always seeks contributors of all skill levels for future volumes". With such a focus, it's not surprising that so much of the work in here is so rough. The anthology does lure the reader in with some Matt Feazell (king of stick-figure mini-comics) sketches, and they are indeed nice. The vast majority of the work in here, while containing some enthusiasm and creative spark, is mostly unremarkable. There are some funny ideas that aren't executed well because the artists' ability to render isn't at a level that meets their needs. There are some nicely-drawn comics that are hard to follow--a victim of composition and panel flow. There are some cute one-off strips that were instantly forgettable.

There were exceptions, however. Richard Cabeza's apparent use of a computer to draw a couple of gag strips about snowmen and turtles elicited some chuckles. Writing gag strips that work is extremely difficult, and it's even harder to use visuals to support a joke. Cabeza is clearly pretty clever and is an example of someone who made the best possible use of visuals in support of his ideas. Blair's own "Lunarcy" strip has a small but amusing payoff, nicely using repetition to get his point across. However, the best strip in the book belonged to Liza Miller. Utilizing expressive stick figures, she created an amusing strip about a woman playing around with a scarf, laughing at her own silliness. What I liked about this strip was the strong handle Miller has on gesture, especially with such a stripped-down set of figures. The wobbly-constructed panels added to the sort of rubbery, exaggerated action depicted in each scene. Miller's ambitions may have been most in this strip, but it was the most fully-realized comic in the anthology. I hope that she continues making comics, and that the other artists in the book strive to find out exactly what it is that they want out of making comics and immerse themselves in that process.

Syncopated, Volume Three, edited by Brendan Burford. This is one of my favorite anthologies, due in large part to Burford's strong editorial hand. The general theme of the anthology is reportage and "first-person journalistic essays". As such, the stories here have a firm sense of time and place, yet cover a wide variety of styles. In this volume, some of the themes that appear in the stories include perilous travel, treasures hidden and unappreciated, places whose times have come and gone and in general the way time erodes everything. This is a stylish, well-designed comic that is pleasant to read and look at. Burford and his cartoony line have stories that bookend this volume. One's about the old Fulton Fish Market in New York that's been moved and converted into a mall, and Burford goes on to make points about homogenization. That's a theme that runs throughout the book--the stories celebrate people and places that defy such homogenizaton. The last story is about the origin of the nickname "Gotham"--a phrase that originally was thought to meant a city of fools, but upon further investigation revealed that it's a city of natives who fiercely protect what's theirs, using deception when necessary.

Dave Kiersh has a story about hanging out with a friend of his grandmother's who turned out to be an avant-garde filmmaker in the 1950's. There's an earnest sweetness to this story as Kiersh enthuses over his relationship both with his grandmother and this artist, and while he's sad that both are gone he treasures their memory. Nick Bertozzi's rollicking, harrowing account of "The Voyage of the James Caird" shows that this anthology isn't all solemn meditation--this was a fascinating account of a risky rescue sea voyage. Meathaus collective artist Jim Campbell, along the same lines, contributes "T.R. And the Thieves", a hilarious account of pre-presidential Theodore Roosevelt tracking down some thieves during a harsh winter with his men. Campbell's rubbery style is a perfect fit for the larger-than-life TR. The intrigues as his crew tracks down thieves in the forest reminded me a bit of the gripping Blueberry stories of Charlier & Moebius, only with a slightly more farcical air.

Burford includes some contributions that have a particularly striking visual approach. Tom Devlin's doodles aren't any kind of narrative, but are particular in how they were created--in a coffee shop with other cartoonists. Seeing a man who mostly works as a designer these days unleash his creativity on a page makes me wish he cartooned more these days. Greg Cook contributes an account of his local neighbors who went off to Iraq. Cook reverses positive and negative space in his depiction of figures, so it appears we are only looking at shadows. Paul Hoppe has a series of sketches about gentrification in Brooklyn, while Burford has an essay about the tugboat graveyard in New York and Susie Cagle writes about the history of a particular decaying building in Brooklyn.

All told, the variety of storytelling approaches and cartoonists, the enthusiasm with which each creator tackles their subject, and the particular writers and artists who contributed to this anthology made it one of the best comics of 2007. Anyone interested in the life of cities, exciting accounts of historical voyages, and the possibility of finding hidden treasures on a day-to-day basis should seek this book out. This anthology doesn't seek to revolutionize comics as a form, but rather seeks to examine specific times and events with existing storytelling structures. I hope another volume will be released sooner rather than later, because Syncopated succeeded in its goals and has become an overlooked treasure in itself.

Potlatch Project 5, published by Steven Noppenberger. This anthology was created several years ago from a group of creators whose entries were rejected by the SPX anthology, so they decided to publish their stories and donate the profits to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. This is the fifth iteration of that project, now no longer being done for the CBLDF. It's a mixed bag of superhero, sci-fi, fantasy and slice-of-life comics. A couple of them seem to be excerpts from other series, or episodes from a series. Few of the stories made much of an impression. Even a funny artist like Stan Yan contributed what amounts to a throwaway gag story, while publisher "Noppie" had a nice-looking (with a really beautiful line) but somewhat incoherent episode of a larger fantasy story. The only segment that I really enjoyed was David Recine's "Murky Waters" a funny series of slice-of-life bits with surprising action elements and good punchlines. His line is a bit crude, but functional. One cannot fault the enthusiasm or intentions of the artists involved, but at this point this anthology series might be running out of steam.

Blurred Vision 3. This is an interesting assemblage of comics creators and fine artists working in the comics milieu. There are hyper-realists like Karl Stevens, Woojung Ahn and the enigmatic Toc Fetch. Stevens' "Love" presents frozen moments in time as a couple wordlessly relaxes on a couch as a man strokes her hair. We don't see the whole picture here--just bits and pieces of the woman's face, the man drinking water, and the TV shows they're watching. Ahn's "Adventures of the Right Hand" is a cute but creepy account of how an overworked right hand escapes, finds itself in the harshness of the big city, then gets sewn on to a new arm. Fetch's strips defy easy description. The hyper-realism of his images is contrasted with the weird mythology he alludes to in his text.

There are some familiar alt artists here like Ethan Persoff, Henriette Valium, Dash Shaw and Bishakh Som (from the old Hi-Horse anthology). Valium reworked an old Captain America story into "Captain Angry White", a typically outrageous and extreme entry from him. Persoff had an entry in an ongoing story called "The Dog and the Elephant", using his somewhat still, animation-influenced style to create tension in his stories. Som's "You Make Me Feel So Real" is a visceral story about a dancer who dips into her memories as she practices a rigorous piece. The way Som simultaneously visually depicts movement against that narrative of memory along with the beats of sound effects, culminating in the character recovering from an asthma attack, makes for a powerful reading experience.
Perhaps my three favorite pieces came from artists whose work I'm not familiar with. Henrik Rehr's "Apple" and "Bald Men" utilizes a fractured arrangement of text (almost like snapshots) illustrating a brief, poetic series of thoughts. Koren Shadmi's "Know Thy Self" is a hilarious, revolting story of a young woman who reaches through her navel to pull out various of her organs, anthropomorphized into singing, dancing, smiling creations...until her body collapses. Stem's "Shadowhouse" is a cleverly composed and designed story that makes great use of negative space, about a young child who discovers a parallel, house under his bed and travels there at night. It's both creepy and sweet in its own way. The eccentric choices in this anthology led to an interesting reading experience, where despite a lack of a theme, the different stories complement each other well.

Blab 17, edited by Monte Beauchamp. Blab is a long-running anthology that stepped in when Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly quit editing RAW. This issue features a couple of former RAW artists like Sue Coe and Drew Friedman and in general continues to use a number of items from the RAW playbook. For example, there's a wide diversity of styles and creators from other countries represented here. Under editor Beauchamp, Blab has occasionally veered a little too far away from narratives in favor of flashy imagery. That's mostly not the case here, other than a series of illustrations covering about a 12-page span. Blab is a sort of cousin to Kramer's Ergot, though perhaps not as aggressively experimental; and Hotwire, though not as inspired by underground comics tradition.

There's all sorts of storytelling traditions and genres represented. The silent "Membrane" by Paco Alcazar is a chilling, bizarre horror story. Peter Kuper's "Nine Lives" is an amusing autobiographical short, while Spain relates a story of his turn in factory life. There's absurdity like Mark Landman's "Fetal Sunday Funnies" (starring Fetal Elvis) and Matti Hagelberg's "Christmas In Shacktown" (featuring James Bond villain Blofeld aiding Hansel and Gretel). There's historical reportage like Geoffrey Grahn's "The Dutch Tulip", about the tulip speculation craze, odd archival material like vintage roller skate labels and a tribute to Bazooka Joe, and Playboy cartoon parodies. Esther Pearl Watson (a relative newcomer to comics) contributes a remarkable two-pager about a haunted funeral plot. The change in tone and style from story to story can be almost dizzying at times, but it all seems to fit into the anthology's overall aesthetic. Not everything in here is a hit for me (I thought the attempts at poetry were especially overwrought or grating), but it's all at least interesting to look at. The fact that Beauchamp has kept the anthology going for so long, with so many different talented artists, is a remarkable testament to his commitment to his artistic vision and willingness to continue to mine the worlds of comics and fine art for images that need a publishing home.

Anthologies: Candy or Medicine and Brad Trip

I'll be reviewing a wildly diverse batch of indy anthologies this week. Let's start at the most DIY end of things, with Josh Blair's entry-level anthology Candy or Medicine and the Portland publishers team-up for Free Comic Book Day, Brad Trip.

Candy or Medicine #17. The previous issue was the best of the entire series, which is geared toward new creators looking for a publishing outlet and is printed in classic 5.5 x 4.5 minicomics format. This issue is more typically uneven, with a lot of lightweight, crudely drawn stories. I did enjoy the drawing in Jon Light's "Pizza Bill" strip about an anthropomorphic pizza that winds up splattered against a wall, though it does remind me a bit of the sort of thing that Jon Vermilyea does. Harry Nordlinger's strip about a man demanding to see a woman who had just been buried, only to be directed to a tower, an interminable wait and a potential reunion with her that is highly unpleasant, has a grim but amusing quality. I also liked the frantically scrawled and slightly grotesque covers by Willard Herman, thanks to their slightly awkward charm. The rest of the entries felt slight, especially the two pages that seemed to be little more than an advertisement for a webcomic.  We'll see what sort of comics Blair unearths for his next volume.

Brad Trip. This is the latest of the oddly-titled anthologies co-published by a number of west coast micropublishers.  This year, it's Sparkplug, Revival House, Teenage Dinosaur and the retailer Floating World. Printed on fairly cheap newsprint, the format favors the unusual and striking nature of the artists featured. Aidan Koch opens up with one of her smudgy, oddly paced and formatted pencil-heavy comics. The strip features extreme close-ups between two men meeting on a beach, with extended pans over to a horse frolicking in the surf. Like many of her comics, it's both impenetrable and completely straightforward. Annie Murphy contributes a charmingly creepy story about a young woman traveling to what seems to be Baba Yaga's hut to receive a gift.  The gift is distilled to a flame, which she's ordered to swallow, providing a source of illumination. Once again, this story is entirely straightforward, but the story's symbols are mysterious. This is a search for knowledge, even as it's revealed that the young woman is half-human, half beast.

Constance Hockaday and artist Maria Sputnik go in a different direction, with Sputnik's charmingly ramshackle style being used to illustrate a section of a story about a family that escapes authority by living on a raft made of garbage. Sputnik's design is interesting, as some of the panels are made to look as though they were torn directly out of a sketchbook, with part of one page flipping upside-down. Kinoko Evans' story about two sphinxes eating a stereotypical hipster is cute but lightweight and disposable. Virginia Paine's story about a girl waiting on another girl indifferent to her affections is one of her best to date. She captures the quiet passion of the girl pursuing someone she clearly has deep feelings for; even as she's rejected, she expresses no emotion, with Paine letting the Childish Gambino song speak for her. It's a well-designed, emotionally ambiguous story that has a strong sense of place and character. Dunja Jankovic closes out the issue with one of her increasingly abstract and psychedelic comics that coalesces into a coherent form only at the end. The way she plays with shapes and patterns suggests a journey looking inward or an extreme close-up that is by nature highly distorted.  All told, this is a visually striking anthology that moves from strength to strength and style to style with its stable of young artists.

Mini Anthologies: Candy or Medicine, Fuzy, Holy Shit

Candy or Medicine #16, edited by Josh Blair. Blair has been putting together this entry-level anthology that takes all comers for several years now, and the results have always been decidedly (and understandably) mixed. From beginning to end, #16 is the best issue of the anthology, with every entry worthy of attention. From the clever cover by Emi Gennis to single-page drawings by Andy Nukes and Robert Dayton, Blair manages to put together a wide variety of styles and storytelling approaches. Jim Gullet's story about a bounty hunter going after a lizard man has deliberate echoes of Gary Panter, and it's told with a touch of wit to go along with its grim reality. Nate McDonough's excellent, strange character designs add a lot of energy to his story of the ways in which a very tall man and very short man conflict on the street. Finally, Harry Nordlinger's story about a kid going into a forest filled with monsters has a certain Edward Gorey quality to it in the way he lists the various sorts of monsters that he might encounter. Like the other work in this comic, that strip has a lot of energy, even if the line is a bit thinner than some of the other strips.

Holy Shit, edited by Sean Knickerbocker, Katie Moody, Dakota McFadzean, and Amelia Onorato. There have been a number of attractive anthologies from the Center for Cartoon Studies over the years, but this is one of the best. From small details like the biblical appearance of the book with Gothic lettering, gold-leaf tipped pages and a ribbon bookmark to the stories themselves, this is an anthology that holds together at every conceptual level. As one might expect, the anthology centers around religion, with four different takes on belief. McFadzean's strip is a sort of shaggy-dog story about a schlubby older guy who goes through his morning routine, down to popping a zit and beating off in the shower. The final reveal as to his true significance was funny, even if the joke felt a little easy. His attention to detail was crucial for making the strip work. Knickerbocker relates an anecdote from his childhood where he was trying to fit in with a church youth group because he was so lonely and desperately wanted friends. The sinking feeling he experienced when he realized he was around crazy people shattered any number of belief systems, especially social ones.

The best story in the collection is Katie Moody's long explication of growing up Catholic and how she decided to reject her faith. Focusing on a childhood incident that festered until it became a source of constant guilt and anxiety, she overcompensated by trying to be perfect in order to combat that guilt. When she realized that she and the church no longer shared the same values, she left...but it wasn't easy. Her cartooning is extremely sharp and innovative here, with a lot of decorative lettering and unusual visual cues. Onorato's exploration of how religions evolve out of each other (framed as a discussion between her and a "cute" Jehovah's Witness), her take on the tragedy of the Children's Crusade and the wonder felt by the Western discoverers of Easter Island reveal an artist whose work isn't as personal as Moody's or Knickerbocker's, but do reveal a sharper satirical point of view than the other artists in this book. The fact that there isn't a unified approach or point of view regarding faith (other than deep suspicion) makes this a stronger anthology.

Fuzy, edited by Mark Thisse. This is a beard-related anthology consisting of stories contributed by members of the classes of 2007 and 2008 at CCS. Despite having such a silly premise, there's a surprisingly strong range of stories to be found here. Steve Seck's excellent sense of comic timing is on full display in "The Beard's Beard's Beard", an absurd story about a famous set of Hollywood facial hair who disguises his homosexuality by being married to a female beard, only to find out that his wife is having an affair with his boyfriend, who is in fact a female beard in disguise. This is every bit as silly as it sounds, but Seck manages to imbue his story with just enough pathos to give it some narrative weight. Baldemar Byars' "My Whiskery History, 1966-1967" is an account of the artist running headlong into facial hair and cultural expectations. This very funny set of anecdotes finds the artist called a Marxist by his family in Texas, but it's also assumed that he's ready to join up with bomb-throwing protest organization SDS. His drawing is a little on the cartoony side, and it's functional without standing out in any particular way.

Sango Imai-Hall contributes something rare for the average CCS graduate: a straight-ahead, sword-and-sorcery story, albeit one whose main character is a young woman with a red beard. Aaron Cockle adds his own version of a genre story, in which an imprisoned, broccoli-bearded man is visited by a man with a beard of bees. As with most Cockle stories, he alludes to events and scenarios that remain hidden, adding a level of intrigue to a story that has an unexpected punchline. Jeff Mumm's guinea pig comics are exquisitely drawn and jammed with sight gags, while Mark Thisse's comic about a magician who disappears his own beard, only to recover it when he least expects it. It's not an especially eye-catching story, both in terms of the drawings and the story. Still, there are a lot of gems from some artists whose work I've never seen before.

Small Press Anthologies: Three #2, Candy Or Medicine, The Sorry Entertainer

Let's take a look at three anthologies of various shapes and sizes:

Three #2, edited by Rob Kirby. Nothing in this issue of the queer-themed anthology of Three matches Eric Orner's story from the first issue, which earned an Ignatz nomination. That said, there's a certain sweetness and vulnerability to be found in each of the three stories in this issue. "Dragon", written by Sina Evil and drawn by Jon Macy, is the least compelling of the three. It's about a young man who meets a cartoonist he admires and feels close to on the basis of his familiarity with his material. They have a romantic encounter during which the young man is coerced into doing things that made him somewhat uncomfortable, yet are rationalized away because of the connection he imagines between them. The "dragon" metaphor (and insertion into the story), however, is a painfully obvious metaphor, especially when something dramatic happens. It's annoyingly "cinematic", adding little to a story that's already a bit bland to look at.

Things pick up with "Help Wanted", a jam between Jennifer Camper and Michael Fahy. This is a delightful little comedy of misunderstandings with a distinct romance comic flair. What's surprising is that even though Fahy and Camper alternate panel tiers, there's a remarkable sense of continuity in terms of both story and art between the two. This is quite unusual for a jam comic, which usually tend to be huge messes. I don't know if the two improvised from tier to tier or if they wrote it beforehand, but the smooth result speaks for itself. I like the way that Camper and Fahy play up the romance comic tropes, down to lines like "Happy, darling?" being followed by "Oh yes! A thousand times yes!" coming after a man's FTM transexual boyfriend reveals that he's pregnant and once had a fling with his sister.
The best of the three stories is "Nothin' But Trouble", a collaboration between Craig Bostick & David Kelly. It's a story of a closeted country-western singer who picks up a prostitute after a gig but falls in love with him. There's a clever narrative trick where the story is told first by the singer (Jimmy, drawn by Bostick) and the prostitute (Butch, drawn by Kelly), alternating every couple of pages. The trick comes in terms of coloring: the red-toned pages belong to Jimmy and the green-toned pages belong to Butch, allowing the cartoonists to make whip-crack transitions with a minimum of narrative disruption. Bostick has always had an appealingly clear line, and the cartoony quality of his line is a nice counterpoint to the low-key melodrama of this story. There's no easy happy ending to be found to this story, yet both characters wind up having a surprising and positive effect on the other. It's a pitch-perfect slice of life story, with the two artists meshing remarkably well despite portraying two different but complementary narratives.


Candy Or Medicine: The Compleat First Year, and Candy Or Medicine #14 & #15, edited by Josh Blair. Blair decided to reprint the first four issues of his all-comers minicomics anthology which has a lower hit-to-miss ratio than virtually any other anthology, yet always yields some gems. As Blair notes in his introduction, this is a deliberate strategy. He's less an editor than an "OE", to use APAzine parlance. That is, he serves to collected and publish material sent to him, with the money he earns from sales (at just a dollar an issue, it can't be much) to support collating and copying each issue. His hope is that every story will appeal to at least some readers, even if they aren't necessarily the stories that he likes most. From the very beginning, Candy or Medicine attracted people who could barely draw or conceive of a coherent narrative as well as great cartoonists with no other print outlets. Brad W Foster (a Newave era stalwart) and Matt Feazell (the DaVinci of stick-figure minicomics) make early appearances with drawings instead of comics. The strip has also drawn an unusual number of international cartoonists eager for any kind of exposure to American artists, like Greek artist Kostis Tzortzakasis and Briton Kel Winser.

The most recent volumes (#14 and #15, sold as a two-pack for two dollars) show that the anthology is both much the same but has also started to attract a better quality of cartoonist. #14 is a particularly strong issue, with a strange and beautifully drawn story about how the mold in a kitchen spawned a new ecosystem and saved a marriage as its centerpiece. Emi Gennis contributed one of her "Wikipedia List of Unusual Deaths" comics, this time about an old man who was exercised to death by his wife, who happened to be a MTF transsexual and who also happened to be the child of old family friends thirty years his junior. Gennis' line just gets sharper and sharper, matching her wit as well. Lauren Barnett's absurd scribble is typically funny, especially in the way it makes fun of her own limited draftsmanship. Issue #15 doesn't feature any stand-out strips but is still interesting for publishing short comics from Lithuania and Guatemala. I love that Blair is so committed to this anthology, giving cartoonists the opportunity to get better in public.


The Sorry Entertainer, edited by Simon Moreton & Nick Soucek. This is a cheap newsprint anthology from the UK that includes contributors from Ireland, the US and Argentina, based around the theme of performing and performers. The results are a mixed bag, as some of the artists don't really rise to the occasion of using the space in an interesting manner. On the other hand, there's plenty to like here from a number of artists who have been making some noise in the UK and US scenes the past couple of years. Moreton's own strip follows a schoolboy persecuted by his peers who slips into fantastic reveries, acting as a sort of prologue for the kinds of stories that follow.

The tone of the anthology slips from light-hearted to the contemplative. Paddy Lynch, for example, submits a wispily-drawn story about a man going to a park musing about how difficult it is us for to live in and enjoy small moments while listening to a guitar player, only to have a policeman come by and shoo the guitarist away. Jason Martin's adaptation of Mike Watt's tour diary is hilarious, with his rough style a perfect match for Watt's whole demeanor. Another example of that swing is David Z. Greene's full-page wrestling strip that winds up with a silly (if bloody) punchline. Greene's one of the few artists in the whole broadsheet who really makes use of the space, filling up the page with big images that go a long way in selling his gag. Rol Hirst and Andrew Cheverton's "Face For Radio", on the other hand features an ex-DJ with a new gig: introducing records at a retirement home.

The ubiquitous Noah Van Sciver contributes a story about a four-eyed man shunned by society who joins a traveling freak show, grows embittered and kills his audience and the circus. Van Sciver crams the story into fifteen panels, yet nothing feels cramped and his drawings carry the story. The bitterness of performing is ground that's covered by Richard Worth & Jordan Collver as well as Chris Fairless. The former story is a detailed character portrait about a magician who first waxes nostalgic about his career, and then when the page is flipped, complains bitterly about it. Its outer border is that of a playing card, and his story is supported by a lightly penciled series of figures in the background. It's a clever bit of cartooning. Fairless' story is about a young immigrant who performs in a park by speaking truth to power until he gets busted, and then simply performs as a statue. Fairless uses shadow and light contrasts to tell his story, and the modulation of these tones is what gives the story its emotional power.

Other highlights include a typically goofy strip by Lauren Barnett about a sad clown who performs for Jesus, a funny strip about a comedian with a particularly lowest common denominator for a gimmick by Sam Spina, Peter Batchelor's story about a psychic with a horrible secret, Soucek's account of a story about a rock band who got the greatest gig of their lives under dubious circumstances, and of course an epic bit of full-page lunacy from the inimitable Rob Jackson. His account of an entertainer who recalls his life's story is full of hilarious non sequiturs, with his typically rough style somehow accentuating the effect of his silliness. While there were no true duds in the anthology, none of the rest really registered after an initial reading. That said, this broadsheet was an interesting alternative to the typical minicomics anthology, allowing artists the opportunity to go big with a theme vague enough to allow them to tell the sort of story they wanted.

Whores of Mensa #5, Candy or Medicine 13

Time to look at a couple of minicomics from near and far.

Candy or Medicine #13, edited by Josh Blair. The latest in this all-comers minicomics series is the usual mixed bag of visual & narrative approaches. William Cardini's story, as always, was welcome to see, as he unleashed his usual Mat Brinkman-style exploration of environment with monsters and robots. It's a nice mix visually between heavy use of black in negative space with wavy lines filling up entire panels. There's also a slice-of-life gag from Katie Omberg that was fairly routine up until the punchline, which actually landed with some force. Brad W. Foster shows once again that he's a fine artist, even if his gag was less-than-inspired. As an editor, Blair has shown a tendency to try to print some genre-oriented stories, like this issue's "The Cloud Catcher" by Christopher Tupa. It's a mildly amusing fantasy story that lacks visual appeal thanks to its use of grays; it probably looks more interesting in color. Blair's commitment to a variety of material as well as experience & even talent levels has always been impressive, and some interesting names have floated through this anthology as a result.

Whores of Mensa #5, edited by Ellen Lindner & Jeremy Day. Kickstarter strikes yet again to produce another attractive, lengthy comics anthology. In the past, the Whores of Mensa anthology printed no more than three or four cartoonists. This UK-centered anthology has also traditionally published the work of women, a tradition that continued in this issue with one exception. Each issue has also revolved around a loose theme; this issue's central idea is "parties". This approach spawned a surprising number of variations on the experience of a party. Patrice Aggs, for example, set her comic in a hair salon where everyone there talks about potentially attending a party at a club later that night. Aggs skillfully depicts the inanity of workplace chatter with great affection. Perhaps too much affection, as the comic slightly outstays its welcome at seven pages.

Sarah McIntyre's two-pager about being forced to fold paper napkins for her mother's parties, on the other hand, benefited from its brevity, as it possessed a clever punchline. Co-editrix Jeremy Day's nine-panel comic "Larderella" is typically cheeky, turning the Cinderella story on its head with the prince being interested in the heroine's shoes for a quite unexpected reason. Cloidhna Lyons' story features lovely art with bold black lines, but it was more than a bit predictable and ultimately forgettable as a result. Francesca Cassavetti's childhood anecdote is typical of her in that she goes from the general (attending all sorts of parties) to the specific (a party that her secret crush Serge was supposed to attend) with great fluidity, easing the reader to her eventual punchline. Her scribbly art is a perfect match for the kinds of stories she tells.

Co-editrix Ellen Lindner, long a favorite of mine in the minicomics world, shows off a remarkable amount of polish in her story of a young woman bouncing from London to New York with great misgivings. Her precise misgivings go unrevealed, but her tendency to bounce from affair to affair may well have something to do with it. There's a stark precision to Lindner's line combined with a certain stiffness of figure that almost reminds me of Steve Ditko. It's stagy, an aesthetic that fits due in part to its nature as a period piece. Howard John Arey (formerly of the High-Horse collective) contributes a two-pager about the sort of person who isn't invited to a party, but desperately longs to be. It's a clever story with an agreeably sloppy line. Emily Ryan Lerner's story about two friends negotiating a New Year's Eve party at an unfamiliar apartment has the sort of specific detail that this sort of slice-of-life story demands. The simple line allows the reader to fly across the page.

My favorite story was that of Maartje Schalkx's, a cleverly-designed map comic that follows her progress walking up a street (shown as walking "up" a landscaped page) with a lost little boy. There's a remarkable spareness of line and image in this comic, as she has the street map take up most of each page. Finally, Tanya Meditzky's comic features small drawings and tiny print, which was certainly distracting as a reader. The simplicity of her line allows her to lead the reader across and around the page with surprising fluidity, much like the conga line she depicts. Whores of Mensa #5 is somewhat uneven but overall still a coherent and joyful shout of a comic. It's another example of the way the British comic scene is growing and the variety of approaches that are springing up.

TCJ Post #27: Candy Or Medicine #8, Lauren Barnett minis

Rob reviews the latest issue of the Josh Blair-edited CANDY OR MEDICINE #8 as well as a couple of minicomics by Lauren Barnett over at http://www.tcj.com/minicomics/minis-lauren-barnett.

Minicomics Round-Up: Smith, Cagle, Mitchell, Stafford, Pasty Anthology, Volk, Candy Or Medicine, McAndrew

Time to take a look at the latest batch of minicomics that have come to my attention. Included are minis by Bill Volk, Phil McAndrew, Susie Cagle, Brian John Mitchell, Ryan Cecil Smith and Tyler Stafford, as well as anthologies Candy or Medicine and the Pasty Anthology.

TWO EYES OF THE BEAUTIFUL and UN PETIT CARNET DE VOYAGE II, by Ryan Cecil Smith. Smith is the first of the Closed Caption Comics group that I've had a chance to read, and I was impressed by both of these minis. TWO EYES OF THE BEAUTIFUL is an adaptation of Umezuo Kazuo's "Blood Baptism", billed as "a grotesque horror manga". It's an over-the-top, jam-packed story about an actress with a disfiguring facial disease and a mysterious doctor who compels her to do all sorts of horrible things for a potential cure. Smith throws the kitchen sink at the reader visually, with zip-a-tone, photorealist panels, and heavily rounded Tezuka-like figures. The highlight for me was a witty four-page sequence where the actress is trying to tie up an innocent girl for hideous purposes--with nothing but zip-a-tone and sound effects representing the dark room. Smith cleverly captures the crazed nature of J-horror, mixing warped humor and genuinely disturbing images.

UN PETIT CARNET DE VOYAGE is a travelogue in the tradition of French comics, showing off Smith's lush brushwork. He is currently teaching english in Japan, and so made the trip from Osaka to Hiroshima, ostensibly for a sake festival. He notes with some delight that he feels like he's learning to draw trees, and they are indeed some of the most striking images in this minicomic. It's interesting seeing him mix Japanese imagery (especially with regards to trees and buildings) with a more French style of line with regard to his figures. This is one of the most beautiful minicomic sketchbooks I've ever seen, and I only wish it was printed bigger. It's obvious that Smith has tremendous tools as an artist, and I'll be eager to see how his time in Japan continues to influence his work.



THIS AND THAT #3, ARE YOU MAN ENOUGH?, THE SECRET THOUGHTS OF HAROLD LAWRENCE WINDCRAMPE, and PEARLY WHITES, by Phil McAndrew. McAndrew is all about character and caricature in these comics. SECRET THOUGHTS... is a Jules Feifferesque mini about an ineffectual guy who whines about not having a girlfriend and then spies a perfect candidate...only to lose her to an alpha male. It's nicely drawn but with a predictable ending, though he did get off a great joke in the middle ("Lola is too picky" after rattling off a capricious list of reasons why all the girls he knew weren't good enough for him). THIS AND THAT sees the artist collecting a variety of sketches, gags, and short stories in a variety of styles. He seems most comfortable drawing slightly grotesque caricatures with lots of angles, bushy eyebrows, stubbly facial hair and bulbous noses.

Speaking of facial hair, ARE YOU MAN ENOUGH? was the funniest of these entries. He combined his scratchy line, pointy noses and exaggerated character design with an excellent gag: a wimpy suitor impressing his girl's hyper-masculine father with an "awesome drum solo" so powerful that the father's moustache flies off of his lip and on to the suitor. He rides away with his lover with a motorcycle summoned by his moustache. PEARLY WHITES features another grotesque, scribbly, hyperemotional figure who regrets a lost love. McAndrew backs up a good final gag involving a creature sending him back in time in exchange for his teeth with a series of funny drawings. McAndrew is leaning heavily on his chops at the moment and still seems to be finding his way with regard to story structure. Of course, his control over his line is pretty remarkable at this stage. With his skills, it's likely that he will improve from story to story, as he continues to develop and refine his style and story interests.



O WOE! and DOMESDAY by Bill Volk. The first effort I read from this Center for Cartoon Studies student was a 24-hour comic (THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM IS DECADENT AND DEPRAVED). While that mini was rough in presentation, one could see a witty voice emerging. O WOE! is an account of the creation myth and apocalypse of a civilization that rose out of the remains of a giant space sperm. It's a clever idea with some funny and even disturbing bits (like a society that fell because of "doubling", wherein the rich made duplicates of all their possessions, up to and including cities--only to leave them unused), but Volk's chops weren't quite up to making their society as vivid as it needed to be. I'd love to see Volk redraw this comic at some point.

On the other hand, DOMESDAY is a comic that plays to Volk's strengths as an artist: character design, gesture and exaggeration. The story's about William the Conqueror's rule over England, and follows a young man following the king's decree of counting the possessions of every man in the country. The young man, of Norman descent, is terrified of the savage English, and Volk gets a lot of mileage out of the young man fearing for his life and begging god for mercy. The superdeformed looking character design is clever, giving this historical account a certain playfulness. Historical fiction, especially of an obscure nature, may well be Volk's forte, and I'll be interested in seeing how he continues to develop.



FOLK #3 by Tyler Stafford. This is a 24-hour comic by this intriguing cartoonist who works in the Brian Ralph/Mat Brinkman tradition. The best thing about the comic, other than a surprisingly well-defined plot, is the delightfully loony character design. The story follows an escaped prisoner on an alien world who is captured after breaking out and returned to his cell. Stafford then takes the story in a weird direction, as the jewel on the alien's head pops out and it magically rescues them all...with some unforseen complications at the very end. The way Stafford manipulates the shapes of his characters is what appeals to me the most: the oval-headed heroes, villains with bullet heads and creatures with heads that look like light switches, the weird Vaughn Bode-like helmet of the female leader and the toy-like proportions of the spaceship. This is a goof of a comic that does what Stafford does best: put funny-looking characters in motion.



NINE GALLONS by Susie Cagle. Cagle cleverly mixes the personal, the political and a keen eye for caricature in this account of her time with Food Not Bombs. This mini was the first part of a longer work related to this subject, and is unusual for a story with a strong political point of view in that it's not a polemic. Instead, it's a warts 'n all love letter to the various people she met when she was helping feed the homeless of San Francisco. Cagle takes aim at herself as much as anyone as she encounters, depicting herself as hemming and hawing and having trouble asserting herself. The story she relates is equal parts ambivalence and affection, given the friable and flaky people she encountered in the organization, like the group leader who always passes on cooking duties and urges her to go faster when she's chopping potatoes. Her most affectionate portraits are reserved for the people she helped feed--even the ones who screamed at her. There's a freshness to Cagle's point of view and a lot of verve to her line, making her an artist to seek out for those interested in political cartooning and comics journalism.



JUST A MAN, WORMS #4, XO #5 and LOST KISSES #9 & #10, by Brian John Mitchell, et al. These are tiny micro-mini comics, measuring about 2x2", and range from 16-40 pages each. Mitchell is the writer for all of them and is also the (stick-figure) artist of LOST KISSES. Most of these are parts of a series, all of which are easy to pick up on as Mitchell hops from genre to genre. JUST A MAN, drawn by Andrew White, is a sort of hard-bitten western, stripped of glory. A farmer sees his house burned down, his infant son killed and his wife disappear. He's pretty sure he knows who did it, and hunts them down, one by one. I liked the voice Mitchell used for the character, but he overwrote this story. That's not unusual for a writer collaborating with an artist, but the story would have had a bit more power if the first-person narrative had been sparer and he let the visuals carry the story.

WORMS and XO fall into the realms of sci-fi/horror and crime noir, respectively. WORMS had a zippy pace to it and appealingly minimalist art by Kimberlee Traub that fit the story nicely, one that featured a young woman who witnessed the death of her father and was the subject of an experiment in a lab. This issue found her gaining power through some strange worms, subduing her tormentor, and escaping. The single panel per page format fit with Traub's striking and hallucinatory imagery. XO had a similarly snappy pace to it but was let down by Melissa Spence Gardners art. It was competent, but it didn't fit the story's mood or add anything to Mitchell's narrative, which needed a moodier style.

The stand-outs in this set were Mitchell's issues of LOST KISSES. These stick-figure comics were first-person, meandering observations about human behavior and the narrator's own misanthropy. What's clever about these strips is precisely the same thing that hamstrung JUST A MAN: there's a narrative caption working against the image and dialogue on each page (it's a panel per page for all of these comics). However, in this comic, there's a comedic tension that arises as a result of that juxtaposition. Issue #10 was especially amusing, as it was a takedown of the concept of love and those who insist on expressing it, with the author worrying about falling for that fallacy himself. I love how unassuming and direct these comics are; there are no frills or pretensions here--just a writer and artists who are experimenting with a variety of means of expression.

CANDY OR MEDICINE 4-7 and LUNARCY, edited by Josh Blair. Blair's modest little anthology continues to roll on. Each issue is 16 pages long (including covers) and is just a dollar. The focus is on up-and-coming creators, though virtually issue has work by at least one reasonably well-published cartoonist. The highlights of #4 are a great gag strip by Blair and Ray N (punning on "Love Is Blind" in clever fashion) and Kevin Richardson's strip about a loveline DJ who gets his heart broken in a bar. His character design and use of gesture carry the strip.

Issue five has a couple of Shannon Smith strips later reprinted in his own minis, a "missed connections" strip by Ed Moorman that had a certain sweet wistfulness to it, and a cleverly-designed strip about a sleepwalker meeting a series of horrible fates. The sixth issue's highlights center around gags, featuring up-and-coming cartoonist Lydia Conklin with a couple of surprisingly silly punchlines, Jason Viola contributing a typically cartoony strip about a playground lawyer, and Patrick Morgan selling a character named Blobby for all that he's worth ("Do you dance?" "I shimmy..."). The latest issue's best story was from Tyler Stafford, who contributed a typically quirky tale of a tiny space creature that winds up popping a hole in a giant space whale.

LUNARCY is a comic filled with silent-beat gags involving the moon hanging in the sky, eventually making absurd or witty declarations. Blair is a crude draftsman but I admire the level of devotion he has to his gags as well as his sense of timing. In general, CANDY OR MEDICINE is an interesting if uneven sampler of new voices in comics from across the world, from an editor who is clearly devoted to creating a showcase for these voices. Many of the comics in this anthology aren't very polished, but I admire the diversity of styles and aesthetic choices featured here.


THE PASTY ANTHOLOGY, edited by Rob Jackson. This is anthology devoted to the glories of the British baked goods known as pasties, a quirky and geographically specific theme that was somehow delightfully conveyed. The stories range from Steve Butler's cautionary tale of why being a health nut (and denying oneself a tasty pasty) can be hazardous to one's health to Dave Hughes' pasty-obsessed character studies to Jackson's absurd history of the importance of pasties throughout history.

What I found surprising about this anthology was how much witty cartooning there was to be found. Jim Medway's calendar comic featuring anthropomorphic animals buying food at a pastry shop was a clever talking head strip with surprisingly expressive characters. Francesa Cassavetti's account of being scared as a girl because she swallowed chewing gum (leading to her ignoring pain that would turn out to be an appendectomy) was my favorite strip in the book, thanks to her loose character design and appealingly sketchy line. Even the text pieces in the book fit into the uncompromisingly provincial nature of the anthology. Jackson's hand as an editor is quite evident here, given each artist's total commitment to absurd ideas and seeing them through as seriously as possible.