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.

The Fellow Travelers of Hang Dai Studios

Studios have long been a tradition in the world of comics, from the early sweatshops to more recent space-sharing from mainstream artists. Only in the last decade or so have alt-cartoonists decided to rent work space together as a way of becoming more productive, of getting out of the house and of being with like-minded individuals. Brooklyn's Hang Dai Studios consists of alt-comics veterans like Dean Haspiel and Josh Neufeld as well as a host of newcomers.

Dean Haspiel's Psychotronic Comix. This is a great sampler of Haspiel's work. He's always been a comics "tweener" in that he's had one foot in the mainstream comics world and one foot firmly in the alt-comics world. That was the case even when mainstream comics wasn't all that interested in his work; he just has a sensibility that's greatly influenced by Jack Kirby as well his mentors, Walt Simonson and Howard Chaykin. The comic starts off with a tribute to his collaborator Harvey Pekar, who illustrated one of Pekar's few long-form works in The Quitter. Then there's a Gene Colan-style street level superhero comic featuring an origin story for The Red Hook (which is also a section of Brooklyn). It's stylish and features great character designs.

Then we get an emo-superhero tale in "Tommy Rocket", followed by some superhero silliness with his team A-OK Cool struggling with breakfast as well as fighting on other worlds. This sort of loosely-assembled and plotted work is Haspiel at his best, especially when he introduces color into the equation. It's not unlike the sort of thing that Jim Rugg likes to do, only Rugg is more of a style chameleon than Haspiel, whose trademark exaggerated facial expressions and thickly inked lines always put a stamp on his work.

Haspiel then shifts to autobio, with a strip about an old bar that would come to mean a lot to him, and eventually it was too much for him. Haspiel has a talent for spinning yarns about places that has great significance to him, and this story is told with great economy. There are funny stories about his misadventures with marijuana, a hellish experience with a neighbor who may have been a robot (shot straight from his pencils, giving it a nice sketchy effect) and a story about founding Hang Dai. The quick-hitters work best for Haspiel, especially given his tendency for noirish narrative captions and stylized dialogue. Giving the reader just a hint of where his mind is wandering and then moving on to something else made this a rich reading experience.

The Giant Effect, by C.Cassano. This little fable about a cruel sheep-devouring giant and his eventual downfall is viscerally told, with the giant-flesh-hungry expressions on the sheep being especially effective. The sepia wash and Cassano's thin line add to that mythological feel of the story, while the lettering varies according to the story's needs. This is a clever and effective comic.

The Vagabonds #3, by Josh Neufeld. It's an interesting transition of sorts for Neufeld, who started his career writing stories about his travels around the world and his observations. He's still travelling and observing, but he's doing so in the context of being a comics journalist now. His specialty is on-site interviews that obtain personal experiences from major events. For example, "Superstorm Stories: A Red Hook Family" is all about one family's experience in cleaning up from the storm, focusing on the loss of a lifetime's worth of reading materials. Neufeld uses single-tones for his panels and switches them up as a means of identify time in a story with a hopeful ending.

Neufeld isn't afraid of more nuanced and complicated stories, as "Bahrain: Lines In Ink, Lines In The Sand" indicates. This is one of his best-ever stories, as it details the stories of two friends he made while spending time in the Middle East country as a representative of the U.S. state department. Through their stories, Neufeld details an uprising in that country and how widely opinions varied on who was a terrorist, who was a traitor and who was an activist. There were no easy answers to be had and Neufeld doesn't pretend to have any, preferring to allow each story to make its own case. There are more lighthearted pieces as well, like a page about Turkish tea, another couple of pages detailing his involvement as a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan  (this had his most lively, colorful cartooning in the book), and reimagining public education. Neufeld's cartooning has always been more functional than exciting, which befits his tendency to view stories as problems to be solved in order to get across a particular experience. He doesn't have the chops of some other comics journalists, but he gets around that by using a number of different approaches. He might use color in a non-intuitive fashion, might use a minimalist line, might invoke parody or satire in his character designs or might play it totally straight and do naturalistic art and colors. Especially with regard to his journalistic comics, clarity is more important than any other quality, but Neufeld's instincts are always to push the reader just a little bit so as to get across information in a way that will make them remember it. It's good to see him back in comic book form once again, both as a home for a number of comics that originally appeared on the web as well as having an opportunity to do other kinds of short-form experiments.

Hang Dai Studios Comix. This is an anthology from some of the artists who share space in Hang Dai. As such, it's not especially cohesive, given the wide disparity of styles. It's more instructive to read it as a sampler rather than a cohesive statement or expression of an editor's vision, a sampler that reflects a certain point in time for these artists. Christa Cassano's smudgy line and sepia tones really seem to be her trademark at this point, and she's as at ease doing a story about an outcast in the city as she was in drawing a giant being devoured by sheep in her mini. Seth Kushner & Nick Bertozzi's "Schmuck: Raising The Bar" is one of Kushner's semi-autobio comics about meeting up with a past fantasy girl in a bar and the rather ridiculous circumstances that result. Bertozzi's figurework elevates the material, which was appropriately amusing but didn't quite go far enough in either the direction of raunch or laughs. Shiraj Ganguly's "Savior" is a nicely-drawn, silent story about the downside of being a super-champion.

The two real highlights of the comic were quite different. Jess Ruliffson's "Haditha/Katrina" is another one of her interview comics with veterans of recent conflicts. She has a tremendous knack at breathing life into transcripts by way of her sketchy and expressive line and a sense of how to visualize both big and small moments. Gregory Benton's "Teratoma" is a bizarre and colorful story about a creature willing itself into life and encountering a woman who turns its existence around. Kushner, best known as a talented photographer, then provides an account of the studio's evolution and the various artists who ply their trade there. It's a great snapshot of this current studio-related movement in indy comics.

Sequart Reprints: Peter Conrad, Superior Showcase

I happen to love comics anthologies, in all their beautiful sloppiness. I love panning for gold in them, hoping to get at least one great story even in an anthology that's otherwise a waste of time. I enjoy seeing authors stretched to put something together for a themed anthology, to be put out of their comfort zone either by the length of the story or its theme. In the history of comics, there have been so many significant talents that were discovered in anthologies, so much important history made. I especially enjoy reading minicomics anthologies, as so many artists get their first significant exposure (such as it is) in these venues.

One advantage of self-published, self-constructed minicomics is that the formal and design possibilities are almost limitless. They can become as much art object as a vehicle for delivering narratives. Peter Conrad has done a lot of exploring with both form and design for his comics. His best known was a comic he affixed to a Rubik's Cube, where every twist and turn created different stories. It wasn't just an ingenious idea, it actually made for some good comics, because he took the time to break down every panel and how it might connect to every other panel.

Along these lines, Conrad conceived of an anthology where every artist had to draw their story using their non-dominant hand. I was intrigued by such a severe formal constraint, and it was Conrad's aim to get each artist out of their comfort zone. What was interesting is that a number of similar themes popped up from story to story, including twins, mirrors, and other states of not quite being oneself. Conrad's formal constraint wound up producing a set of stories that fit well together, but was not burdened by the sort of repetitiveness that a thematic constraint often brings.

Highlights from On The Other Hand include Josh Neufeld's "Josh And I", Diana Tamblyn's "Cat Scratch Fever", John Hankiewicz's "Left Side/Right Lung", K. Thor Jensen's "Business Plans", Luciano Cruzado's "Secrets" and most especially Renee French's "Tooth Fairy". Neufeld's story is told from the perspective of his mirror twin, wondering about the odd person he sees in the mirror every day. Using his other hand loosened up his normally fine line considerably, adding a nervous energy that seemed to suit the personality of his mirror self. Tamblyn wrote about a cat whose "bad" paw caused it to get into all sorts of mischief. It seemed a sly way of talking about how difficult it was to work with her "bad" hand. The subject matter of Hankiewicz's story fit right into the rest of his typically cryptic tales, but still meshed nicely with the overall theme. There's his typical sense of foreboding here, about a man who can't sleep on his left side without his right lung causing him agony. Hankiewicz is another artist who normally employs a tight and spare line, which belies the tension beneath. Here, the nervousness and claustrophobia is all on the surface with an almost rubbery quality.

Jensen's story is a bit of autobiography: an embarrassing, drunken night. It's funny and the crudeness of his drawing looks perfect in this context. Cruzado's entry is perhaps the most beautiful-looking piece, suggesting that he may be ambidextrous. Regardless, it's a creepy yet touching account of a young boy finding a roomful of secrets and dreams, where he learns the most important secret of his young life. Finally, there's the insanity that is Renee French. Blessed with some of the best chops in the business, her disturbing-yet-charming style remains intact with her off hand. The story tells us what the Tooth Fairy really looks like, and it's not pretty.

Many of On The Other Hand's stories stayed with me for awhile, which is unusual for an anthology. I think part of that was due to the strength of the writing. While most of the stories clearly showed how much the author struggled to even get them on the page, it was ultimately their themes and execution that made this a memorable experience.

Turning to a thematic constraint, Superior Showcase #1 ($3.95, AdHouse Books) spun out of Chris Pitzer's beautiful Project: Superior anthology. That one was pretty simple: artists told stories about superheroes they way they wanted to. Whether it was superheroes as romance, straight-ahead stories, slice-of-life or humor, the results were at worst amusing and at best quite charming. Showcase is a "regular" comic book that continues the theme, and the three artists featured turn in very different pieces. The ultra-versatile Nick Bertozzi gives us "Super-Mart". In TOP TEN, Alan Moore gave us a city where everyone has superpowers and wears a costume, so that those two things no longer serve to differentiate members of the populace. "Super-Mart" works on a similar level, only with the more mundane setting of a convenience store. Mike Dawson shows us the fate of "Ace-Face", a retired superhero turned college professor. When he decides to stop a brutal vigilante, the real world catches up to him. Finally, Dean Trippe (with John Campbell) brings us a tale of "Butterfly", the son of a Superman-like character. He meets up with a disaffected Robin-like sidekick named Birdie, and they encounter Hipster Ghosts on Halloween.

The stories vary in tone, with Dawson's becoming unexpectedly grim. Trippe's is sweet and frothy, while Bertozzi's is absurd with a healthy helping of smart-ass. The book is aided by a gorgeous Hope Larson cover and publisher Chris Pitzer's impeccable design sense. I like superheroes and enjoy seeing artists put them to uses beyond simple action. What I've enjoyed about Pitzer's vehicles is their sense of fun. Superhero comics are really not very good at dealing with "serious" subjects; the inherent ridiculousness of the genre tends to make attempts at seriousness collapse. This is not to say that one can't do character work in a superhero setting, just that the artist has to have a grasp on the absurdity of that sort of world.

Finally comes, a miniscomics version of Conrad's webstrip Paper Dummy, which Conrad describes as a cross between a blog and a comic strip. What this winds up meaning is that formally, every entry is a comic strip. It's just that Conrad doesn't feel constrained to stick to a particular genre. Some days, it's gags. Other days, it's slice-of-life stories. And on other days, it's just little observations: things he's noticed in nature, or odd things that he's heard. The punchline here is that I'm reviewing a minicomics version of an online comic strip, which of course provides certain constraints of its own: the size of the paper, the order in which I am to read the strips, etc. While there are some web cartoonists who are uninterested in being published in "real" books, there are plenty who happily view the web as a great place to get the kind of daily / weekly / monthly exposure they might get from more traditional (but hard to obtain) means of serialization. After reaching a certain critical mass, they can simply use a service like lulu.com to whip up print-on-demand collections. For artists with more clout, they can cut a deal with either an established comics publisher or even a "real" book publisher; there seem to be more and more of these kinds of deals every day.

Of course, that's a whole 'nother story. Conrad's own contribution has lots of great gags. I especially liked the story about his parents moving to California and him getting them a TiVo and subscription to Wired so as to fit in; staying awake on the road by watching movies in other cars; and a dog reading a book called "Where The Ball Went" in bed. My favorite gag was "That Tingle Means It's Working", depicting a man with his hair on fire. The strips definitely have that sketchbook feel, looking quickly drawn. That aids in their immediacy, but their visual component is not all that compelling. I like a loose style that contains a certain energy, but I also appreciate the craft that goes into honing a line to perfection. The beauty of the online sketchbook is that an artist can do both: draw something every day to keep their skills in practice and get the instant gratification of having the world as an audience; and working on that long-range, slow project that can take years to finish.

Sequart Reprints: Periodicals

In this column, I've mostly paid attention to the avalanche of quality graphic novels that have been released of late (I have a huge stack still demanding my attention) as well as the large variety of minicomics that grow ever more intricate. There's a big pile of the latter from SPX that will also get a full hearing soon. But what of that disappearing species, the serial alternative comic? Love and Rockets is still going strong of course, but let's take a look at recent issues of some other series, new and old.

DORK #11 (by Evan Dorkin, Slave Labor Graphics)

Evan Dorkin has always been an interesting touchstone creator of sorts for me. He's one of the rare artists who's liked by fans of even the most abstract alt-comics as well as mainstream fans. In fact, he's one of the most prominent "gateway" creators, someone whose work is accessible to mainstream fans but can lead them in other directions. His old Hectic Planet series may have begun as a sci-fi series, but it evolved into something quite different. It became a book about relationships with a sci-fi setting--both about friends and lovers. Certainly Love and Rockets had to have been a huge influence on him by that point, but it was all filtered through his own point of view. That point of view is one of someone who was raised on pop culture & comics, particularly Marvels. As far away from that sort of thing he is now in certain ways, he can't help but reference them in his humor.

That sense of humor is what makes Dorkin such a popular creator. No matter what he's writing or drawing, there's always a manic feel to every word, every panel. Early in his career, Dorkin compensated for his perceived lack of talent by overstuffing every panel full of Will Elder-esque "chicken fat". Now that he's a much more skilled draftsman, that mania remains, only it's on a well-designed page. Dorkin's relationship with pop culture is one of love-hate: his Eltingville Club stories, depicting the misadventures of four genre-loving nerds, is stinging in its depictions of the pathetic lives of these unpleasant individuals. Yet at the same time, there's an undercurrent of pity present as well--and even a certain degree of empathy. Above all else, Dorkin is concerned about his story, his characters and getting laughs--yet there's always a subtext of anger, frustration, depression and hatred towards the world but especially himself.

The latest issue of Dork distills all of this down to its purest form: 24 pages of nothing but gags. Some of them are single-panel, others are seven 4-panel strips, and there are a few extended sequences thrown in there. The issue began as something that Dorkin thought would be easy, just a bunch of gags strung together. But putting together joke after joke and making each one funny was a monstrous task. Dorkin really let his id wander in a lot of them, as his jokes became more vicious and nastier than usual, almost at an early Ivan Brunetti-level. Whether or not an individual finds them funny will vary, of course, but I did want to speak to the way that Dorkin works.

Reading this issue makes me appreciate the sheer effort Dorkin put forth to sell each joke. Take a one-panel cartoon. We see a furball with a hat and glasses having doggie-style sex with a naked woman. The caption reads, "My favorite porn star was Vixxen St. Clair, whose specialty was taking itt up the ass". The drawing itself is sort of funny, the work behind the pop-culture pun (Cousin Itt from the Addams Family) was admirable, the little detail of coming up with a dead-on porn star name was nice, but what took the joke over the top was the word balloon from It: "BRRPIDIT-BIPIBITIBIF BDRRHRHR-HBDRGT!" Dorkin's ability to really sell a joke, to go the whatever extreme was necessary to make the initial idea funny, is on display throughout the issue.

There are times when Dorkin doesn't care if you don't get the reference, but takes the joke to its logical extreme anyway. "The Prisoner of Second Avenue", featuring #6 asking where he was, and a St Marks Place punker naturally saying "You're in the village". You have to be familiar with The Prisoner and New York to really get enjoy that joke, but that's a case of Dorkin aiming some of his humor at certain audiences and making other gags more universal. "David Byrne Gets Alzheimer's" has the singer of course waking up in bed, saying "This is not my beautiful house", etc.

The violent gags are among the funniest in the book; Dorkin really cuts to the bone on them when he combines a familiar reference with a violent end. For example, "Tintin In Cambodia" is a one-panel gag that sees Tintin and Snowy bound, with their throats slit. "Bad Dad" is a page about an awful, abusive father making demented wisecracks to his son as he does ever-more repulsive and over-the-top things. The latter strip speaks not only to the antipathy he feels toward his own father, but there's also an extra undercurrent of discomfort now that Dorkin himself is a father.

Finally, I also rather enjoy his cultural and comics commentary, like his strip entitled "If Other Media Were As Sad As Comic Books" featuring characters saying things like "Dude! I saw this movie last night and they showed a character in it reading a book!" "Oh, I am in ecstasy!" Then there's the "Save CBGB's" strip, where the characters "forgot what a complete shithole this shithole was!"

This just scratches the surface--there's page after page of jokes. Some work better than others, but that will certainly depend on the audience. Dorkin has always noted that his work is polarizing even with his own fans, with some preferring Eltingville to Milk and Cheese, Fun Strips to the Murder Family, etc. This labor of love, blood, sweat and clearly many tears may be the greatest value for your entertainment dollar you'll see all year.

American Splendor  #3 (Harvey Pekar & various, DC/Vertigo)

Harvey Pekar is a name familiar to virtually every comics fan these days, thanks to the success of the film adaptation of American Splendor. However, Harv had been chugging along for years, first self-publishing his comics and then having them released by Dark Horse. While we did see an issue a year from Dark Horse, they never really gave his work the promotion and attention it deserved. While other major publishers were busy reissuing collections of Harv's early work (which sold like gangbusters), Dark Horse sat on a decade's worth of his comics--many of which were excellent.

Happily, the success of the film and his reprints opened up all sorts of opportunities: three original graphic novels plus a new series from Vertigo. Vertigo is doing a much better job of not only promoting him but getting an interesting variety of artists to illustrate his stories. It's unfortunate that Pekar didn't get these kinds of resources until very late in his career. It's a bit like Gary Payton signing on with Miami late in his career in order to get that elusive first NBA title--he still had moments of brilliance, but he was no longer a trailblazing force.

That's OK, because even an issue of American Splendor that covers familiar ground is still a unique event in the world of comics. Pekar not only is amazingly skilled in his depiction of quotidian life that is paradoxically poetic in its plainness, his cultural-political tangents & digressions on his career are also fascinating to read. I find his short stories are more effective than most of his graphic novels to date, in part because there's not quite enough narrative in most of his stories to sustain a long-form work. I would guess that's why he chose to write about other people in his latest graphic novels, and took a long look at his childhood in The Quitter.

While all three are quite enjoyable in their own way, there's something about a short Pekar story that is immensely satisfying on its own. The way he changes narrative strategies depending on the kind of story he tells and the type of artist he chooses to illustrate that story have a profound effect on the way the reader experiences them. For example, take "The Battle of the Vacant Lot". It's a story about his childhood and a violent event that took place, so it only made sense for his The Quitter collaborator Dean Haspiel to illustrate it. Haspiel's art is dynamic and stark, with lots of bold blacks, dramatic close-ups and tense compositions. That choice perfectly played up the story of Harvey accidentally hurting a friend of his as a child but feeling a weird sense of power after he did it. As with most of his stories, there's no neat conclusion or wrap-up; Pekar deliberately leaves his anecdotes open-ended for further contemplation by the reader.

"Medicating In the A.M." uses unusually loose art from another frequent contributor, Josh Neufeld. The slightly fuzzy line Neufeld employed nicely reflects the way Pekar felt in the morning as he contemplated what medicines he needed to take to combat his physical and mental problems. After using narrative captions in that first story to gain a little distance, the reader has full access to his thoughts via word balloons.

"Regionalism" employs long-time Pekar workhorses Greg Budgett and Gary Dumm. They're pretty much the working definition of "solid but unspectacular", which is what this story about urban sprawl, increased segregation and ways to combat it via a localized governmental model that encourages cooperation rather than competing for resources. Harv softens the didactic and rhetorical aims of the story by making it a dialogue between himself and a friend, and the art switches between Harvey and the scenarios he describes. One of the most interesting aspects of Pekar (one glossed over in the movie) is his status as a working-class intellectual, a renaissance man with extensive interests in politics, history and literature.

My favorite story was the quintessential quotidian Pekar piece, "Morning Route". Illustrated by Ty Templeton (an inspired choice) and looking like it was shot almost directly from his pencils, he adds a certain warmth to the proceedings. The story simply follows Harv around as he gets medication, goes to the post office, researches a story and buys some cookies for his wife. The undertone, as there almost always is in his stories, is how one man struggles to make sense of his world and feel like he's productive. As one reads his stories over the years, one picks up the thread not of a temporal narrative of his life, but an emotional narrative. Even when there's nothing but despair around him, he still plods through his day. After retiring from his government job and beating cancer a second time, he had to fight to stave off tedium and feelings of uselessness. For Pekar, not having a purpose and an outlet for expression is the same thing as death.


Copykat #1 (MK Reed & Laura Tallardy, Otazine)

Manga is very much outside of my sphere of interest, but I've always enjoyed MK Reed's portrayals of youth and relationships. Her ear for dialogue makes her stories pleasant page-turners. It was a bit odd to see her write for an artist other than herself, and it was even stranger to see the printing/paper quality looking so amateurish. The whole thing felt more like a minicomic than a more professionally produced magazine, although its very crudeness actually made it more enjoyable to look at. Most standard manga (yes, I know there are all sorts of exceptions) is so slick and stylized (especially American attempts at the style) that my eye slides off the page. Quite frequently, I can't hold on to what's on the page. The cruder art, combined with a naturalistically told tale, reduced this difficulty for me.

The story is amusing and given energy by Reed's vivid characterization. Every character is given some sort of depth and is neither entirely likeable nor despicable. The plot is rather familiar: a young woman with a bubbly personality but not much of a grip on practicalities comes to live with her sister in New York, waiting for that big break in the art world. Reality dictated that she had to go find a job, and so she stumbled onto one at the local copy shop. Kat, the title character, is the sort of naive but pushy young woman who is fun to read about in this sort of setting. The reader is drawn to her but also wants to see her take a few lumps in the process of figuring things out.

The one really jarring thing about the art was Tallardy interjecting photographic backgrounds at random throughout the story. I'm not sure if that was a stylistic choice or simply a way to avoid trying to tackle subjects she can't draw. Her art is actually fairly expressive, but it's obvious that she can't do everything she wants on a page yet and there's not much economy to her art. She would do well to perhaps use slightly thinner lines and clean things up a bit in general. I like the way she composes a page, but using thick blacks doesn't really compensate for crude draftsmanship.

Monster Parade #1 (Ben Catmull, Fantagraphics)

It's odd that perhaps the most "mainstream" of the comics I'm reviewing in this column in terms of its trappings is from Fantagraphics, the vanguard publisher of alternative comics. Monster Parade is the new series by former Xeric-grant winner Ben Catmull. His work features a certain ominousness in its atmosphere and setting, lightened by whimsical story elements and absurd situations.

There's a certain interconnectedness in the short stories here, but it's not explicit. Catmull's world is one where monsters are the norm but still inspire wonder. In "Winter Storm", a young boy watches a storm roll in, stoked by a gigantic 4-armed hillbilly who's throwing lightning bolts and stirring up a wind. A huge bird brings the rain, and then the boy comes face to face with a flying whale. As we cut to a train rolling by, the story switches from black and white to the next story's washed-out reds. In "Monster Express", we get a sharply timed comedy of discomfort combined with an off-panel rampaging monster on a train. The story is completely different from anything else in the issue. However, despite the escalating gags from page to page, it still manages to finish on an extremely creepy note.

From there, we segue into the local wildlife doing all sorts of odd things and come upon an image of a creature in a window in a town. The reader is immediately jolted into the next story, "Civilization Illustrated", a faux-academic study of a town surrounded by rivers. This was my favorite story in the book, as Catmull manages to combine comedy, weirdness, and creepiness in one package. There's almost a Lovecraftian feel to some of the images (like the creature in the "deep haunted cellars where no living person should tread"). Then there was the minimalistically depicted war between Louse Land and Mite Ville, two insect cities living underneath a dock. There's not really a narrative here, just a collection of dizzying images that make the reader want to know more about every tidbit offered.

Catmull has always been effective in creating mood, atmosphere and general discomfort for the reader. In the long period of time it took him to publish again, it's clear that he's added a lushness to his work that serves to soften its hard edges and induce a sort of nostalgia for events that never took place and locales that don't exist. That may be the most unsettling part of his art.

Apocalypse Nerd #4 (Peter Bagge, Dark Horse)

Peter Bagge is one of my all-time favorites, and I've enjoyed every series he's released since he ended regular publishing of his classic Hate a few years ago. There's a sense that while he's dabbled with children's comics for DC (Yeah!), a whacked-out Spider-Man story and a book about a comic strip artist & his staff (Sweatshop, also for DC) along with Hate annuals, he's yet to really get back in the groove that made him one of the most important and successful comics artists of the 90's.

Apocalypse Nerd, along with its backup feature Founding Fathers Funnies, is taking him a long way back to that status in my eyes. First of all, he's doing both writing and drawing again for this feature, which wasn't the case for his mainstream work. Second, this material is a return to the sort of freewheeling nihilism that made Hate such a landmark series. Third, the backup feature highlights what he's done best in the past few years: politically-oriented strips for places like Reason and Salon. Applying the cynical, smart-assed Bagge interpretation to sacred cows like the Founding Fathers of the US is instructive both as history and a lesson on how to think about politics today.

The title feature follows two friends in the Pacific Northwest after North Korea nuked Seattle and their wacky hijinx. This issue gives us a bit more information about what's happening in the world at large after civilization more-or-less ceased to function in the area. The protagonists stumbled upon a "nerd camp", as a bunch of academics set up a subsistence farm. That happened to be close to a compound filled with lesbian separatists. A raiding party of native Americans on horseback takes over the men's camp; and Perry, the less macho of our heroes, winds up begging to be taken in by the lesbian compound. They reluctantly allow it after he convinces one less threatening woman to injure him and play upon their sympathies. This sort of flies, as they turn him into a pet, even making him live in a doghouse! The story is typical Bagge over-the-top humor, beginning with a shocking premise and then taking it to its logical extreme. As always, his exaggerated, eyes-popped-out art perfectly matches the story. While his line is perhaps not as precisely rendered as it used to be in the Hate glory days, his unique stylization more than gets the job done.

The real main event of this issue was "Let's Fuck Shit Up!" starring the Beantown Boys--Sam Adams, John Adams, Paul Revere and James Otis. It's a hilarious look at the propaganda, chicanery and crudity of America's revolutionary forefathers. Flipping from year to year, Bagge comically explores attempts made at distorting the facts of the Boston Massacre, the political maneuvering surrounding the Boston Tea Party, Otis' demented public rants, and moneyman John Hancock & Sam Adams fleeing by gilded carriage when the battle of Lexington broke out. Bagge manages to accurately convey historical detail with modern dialogue, producing a highly insolent look at history. Considering the way that the Founding Fathers are mythologized in American school systems, getting a taste of the wackiness that truly surrounded the times is what makes his stories so effective. I can't get enough of these stories, and I love to see a book full of them.

The Vagabonds #2 (Josh Neufeld & Various, Alternative Comics)

I reviewed issue #1.5 of the Vagabonds back in 2005 for my MOCCA article, and much of that material is in the new issue. The "real" issue is even more attractive than the mini; Neufeld's design sense and aesthetics are subtle and refined. This comic is devoted entirely to Neufeld's collaborations and the nature of collaboration itself. Neufeld is so successful as an illustrator because he never fails to bring out the most in a script he's given but does it without overwhelming the text. This makes him an ideal choice for Harvey Pekar, for example, who usually favors simplicity and directness for his naturalistic storytelling choices.

Neufeld separated the issue into four categories: Confessions (biography), Health & Welfare (odd medical tales), Echoes (formal experiments) and Loss (literal and figurative). In the first section, Neufeld illustrates two stories about Donald Ross written by his son. The first sees his rise as a big-time CEO in New York; the second sees him in Barbados after having given up that life. Both stories involve him ambitiously trying to master his environment, only to find that he was in over his head. Neufeld uses a pleasantly cartoony technique for these stories, verging on bigfoot-style comics.

A highlight of the Health section was a strip that Neufeld wrote about breaking his finger and how alienated from it he became. In a tongue-in-cheek turn, he blames the finger for ruining his career and marriage and ends the story holding a cleaver vowing that "there isn't room enough on this hand for the both of us". The most interesting example from Echoes was Neufeld completely redrawing a page of dialogue from an issue of Superman. Neufeld rethinks a scene featuring Superman returning to the Fortress of Solitude into a scene where a man comes home to his apartment in the midst of winter.

My favorite bit from Loss was "Father McKenzie's Sermon", inspired by the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby". Of course, in the song, Father McKenzie writes the words of a sermon that no one will hear; Neufeld interprets this as a sermon for Rigby's funeral. Neufeld's design on the page was quite clever. We see a shot of his feet, then his gesticulating hands and a bible, then a cross around his neck, then the cross on the coffin. We pan back to see a church and its cemetery, and finally her grave. This strip, and the comics he drew that adapated poetry, show Neufeld's great facility with adapting nearly anything into the language of comics.

Though the issue is interesting in its multiple approaches, experiments and types of story, the best Neufeld stories are those written by Neufeld. His travel stories are reminiscient of Pekar's work in that they look at small moments but significant in unfamiliar places and situations. In this issue, Neufeld stretches the bounds of the unfamiliar as an artist and collaborator, and the reader is treated to a one-man anthology more diverse than many multi-creator anthologies.

Sequart Reprints: 10 Great Minis From MoCCA 2005

This article was originally published in 2005 at sequart.com. It was my first-ever column on minicomics.
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Readers only vaguely familiar with the concept of mini-comics will be relieved to know that it's nearly impossible to pin down what is and isn't a mini-comic. Generally, they are small (but not always), usually relatively brief (anywhere between 8 and 80 pages), hand-made, frequently self-published, and often with personal touches like silk-screened covers, hand-stitched bindings, etc. Often, they serve as a sort of proving ground for young and/or inexperienced artists, though there are several accomplished artists who publish nothing but minicomics. The line between minicomics and zines is often blurred, but they often share similar content, a similar aesthetic, and the same sort of autobiographical self-expression.

The ten mini-comics I picked for this list were chosen based on how substantial they were (I skipped over some worthy 8-12 page minis simply because there wasn't enough "there" there), notable aesthetic or narrative qualities (preferably both), and formal elements unique to the world of minicomics. The artists range from absolute newcomers to those who have books from major publishers.

1. VAGABONDS #1.5: OF TWO MINDS, by Josh Neufeld (http://www.JoshComix.com). $2, 16 pages. Neufeld recently won a Xeric grant for A FEW PERFECT HOURS, distributed by Alternative. It's a collection of travel comics he had done over the years in his two-man anthology, KEYHOLE, and various other places. But Neufeld is also well known for doing a number of collaborative works (AMERICAN SPLENDOR the highest profile), and this mini is an exceptional collection of such stories. Neufeld adapts the poetry of several authors to comics, the most notable being "Time of Arrival". This is a single page with a 4x6 panel grid arrangement. The entire grid taken as a whole is an airplane, and Neufeld chops up the words of the poem into individual panels that comprise the plane. It's a clever formal trick and an effective means of getting across the poem's intent. Neufeld also did a story drawn with his non-dominant hand, imagining that such a person existed in his mirror and setting the story from the point of view of that character, and also draws a page using dialogue from an issue of Superman and completely recontextualizes its meaning with his new art. The mini is attractively packaged and extensively notated.

2. SATISFACTORY COMICS #6, by Isaac Cates & Mike Wenthe (isaac.cates@aya.yale.edu). $3, 28 pages plus extras. Full disclosure: Mike Wenthe is a long-time friend of mine. However, the work that he and his partner have produced speaks for itself. The duo has long thrived on experimentation with the form for their attractive minis, with other participants drawing panels for inclusion, providing built-in story constraints or throwing in random elements for the Cates-Wenthe team to work into their stories. As one might expect, jam comics are frequently better in theory than in practice, and some of their stories suffer from a lack of narrative cohesion. However, their output in the last year or so has shown considerable and sustained growth. Their latest effort is so jam-packed with different kinds of stories, ideas and clever geegaws that the result is a sort of miniature version of the comics issue of McSweeney's that Chris Ware edited. This issue features two comics based on a map created by a group of creators; an autobiographical story about online game addiction; a detective story wherein each page must mirror the form of a stanza of a sestina; an adaptation of Job 41, and a minicomic tucked into the front cover and a random shuffle comic paperclipped into the back.

3. NO PUNCHBACKS, by Kelly Denato & Christine Nimocks (http://www.nopunchbacks.com). $5, 28 pages. Amazingly, this is the debut comic for this duo, although initially No Punchbacks Press contained more contributors. Denato is an animator by trade, and it shows in her story, "Nanni-Nanni Boo-Boo". It's a wordless tale about a man who buys a bird and a fish from a pet shop whom are already friends, and how the fish is taken away. Her style resembles CHUNKY RICE-era Craig Thompson and Sara Varon, with a clean, assured line creating a cartoony world. Nimocks is a fine artist whose style and content is radically different than Denato's. She employs a scribbly line and deals with more autobiographical subjects, including internet dating. This is a remarkably accomplished first comic, with attractive packaging and smart storytelling. Interestingly, the duo was inspired by past visits to MoCCA to create their own comic.

4. SEE SAW, by Sara Edward-Corbett (http://www.greenfog.com, http://www.partykausa.com). $8, 35 pages plus extras. The artist is the most impressive member of the Partyka collective, and her strips here are reprinted from the New York Press. She uses a thin, precise line but balances this with heavy blacks and cross-hatching, giving these tales of schoolchildren an extra weight. The strips are about brother & sister Georgie & Olga, psychopathic Chucky and lovesick Meals. Georgie is an ultra-intelligent little nebbish, while his sister is constantly paranoid. Her dreams of being killed by a gangster octopus (complete with mask) are vivid, and while we feel her fear, the whole set-up is still hilarious. The comic is hand-stitched, with a "cootie-catcher" enclosed in the back.

5. APOLLO ASTRO #9: JOURNEY OF GEORGE, by Jack Turnbull. (http://www.jackturnbull.com). $5, 30 pages. Turnbull abandons his anthology-style for his mini and devotes an issue to his Walking George Potato character. The simplicity of the George and Veggie characters are balanced by Turnbull's lavish backgrounds and the Dreaded Bellpepper Storm Toucan, not to mention a gorgeous silkscreened cover It's a simple story, well-told, that owes as much to Dr Seuss as it does to Chris Ware. Turnbull's biggest strength is his ability to draw out every ounce of expression from his characters using just a few lines. He took a chance using characters that had mostly inhabited one-off strips and plugged them into a larger narrative, and it worked well. This issue is part one of a larger story.

6. COUCH TAG #2, by Jesse Reklaw. (http://www.hobocomics.com). $2, 20 pages. Reklaw is the artist of the syndicated dream strip, SLOW WAVE. This mini has a simple premise: it's about the thirteen different cats Reklaw had during his childhood. What makes this such a great read is that this is really an autobiographical account of his family, but telling it through the device of when certain pets were around and making that the focus of the narrative makes the side details all the more intriguing. Little touches like designing different logos for each cat's introduction and skipping long periods of time between pets make this a great read.

7. THESE THINGS THESE THINGS, by Jeffrey Brown. (http://www.theholyconsumption.com). $4, 36 pages. Brown's scratchy art style and his focus on his love life in his major works for Top Shelf have made him a love him or leave him sort of artist. Personally, I can't get enough of his comics and their lack of adornment when dealing with major drama. Beyond his graphic novels, his minis are often just as compelling for very different reasons. Brown lets his sense of humor show more in his minis, and tells different kinds of stories. This mini deals with some of the events in ANY EASY INTIMACY, providing a sort of closure as Brown deals with yet another broken relationship, the quest to find the artist who performed a particular song, and a book tour with some fellow artists.

8. SUMMA CUM LAUDE, by Eve Englezos & Josh Moutray. (http://www.icecreamlandia.com). 10 pages. The comics that this duo creates are unlike anything else out there today. This latest work, a little bridge between issues of the sublimely strange Icecreamlandia, is designed to look like a minature diploma case. As you open it up, the pages fold out accordian-style, revealing a bizarre science fair. For some reason, the adults are all in 18th century aristocratic dress (complete with powdered wigs and corsets). The dialogue follows from this absurd set-up ("Why, yes, it seems pretty obvious to me now that the dinosaurs were in 3-D.") As always, the realistic, clear-line art belies the insanity of the set-up.

9. A CASE IN TOKYO, by Damien Jay. $10, 22 pages. This comic wins the "most beautiful mini" award, hands-down. Printed on a heavy cardstock and hand-assembled, the coloring process used to illustrate this creepy little story makes the whole thing feel like a children's book gone horribly wrong. The story describes a mental patient who in fact may be possessed, and the momentary clarity she displayed in this state. Her clarity was so incisive that everyone couldn't stand to be around her, until the spell faded and "she became a stupid person once again." While a very quick read, the visuals alone make this a worthwhile purchase. Jay gets the most out of the minicomic format, using every hand-crafted trick in the book.

10. ISOLATION CHAMBER #2, by Ed Piskor (wimpyrutherford@hotmail.com). $1.50, 16 pages. Of the comics on this list, this is the only diary strip. Diary strips (much like personal zines or blogs) can get boring quickly if the author simply devotes it to standard quotidian concerns. It's important to establish some sort of angle early on to differentiate it from other kinds of autobiography. Piskor does this through establishing his voice loud and clear in the early going: he's a curmudgeon who knows a lot of strange people, and isn't afraid to dish. He manages to inject sincerity into his description of his relationship with his baby sister without seeming overly sentimental. He struggles with what to put in his journal and what to censor, some interesting interactions with his parents, and a local group of comics creators. There are weird stories about his interactions with junkies, talks with Harvey Pekar and his feelings about becoming semi-famous. At the end, Piskor announces that the cartoon journal took up all of his time and discontinued it--an interesting statement in itself. Piskor is a real talent and has an interesting voice; it'll be interesting to see what he does after he finishes up his work with Harvey Pekar.

Sequart Reprints: Activate

In the mid-90's, when I started to fully engage the world of alt-comics, some of the first artists I encountered were the KEYHOLE duo of Dean Haspiel & Josh Neufeld. Shortly thereafter, I discovered the comics of Nick Bertozzi, whose development as an artist was rapid and remarkable in how quickly he matured from work to work. In the mid-90's, Haspiel created a livejournal group called ACT-I-VATE, designed to bring together a group of artists serializing their comics on the web. There are now 28 different series on the site in various stages of completion. Some have seen publication in print, and others will even likely get published by a major house. They are certainly an interesting alternative to the sort of thing I'm used to on the web: variations on comics about video games, role-playing games, derivative sci-fi, manga rip-offs, etc. I realize that there are obviously plenty of intelligent strips online, but on first perusal it's like walking into a comics store that is almost entirely mainstream-oriented. I am not interested in reading strips like PvP or Penny Arcade, and I am especially not interested in reading knock-offs of those strips. Having an alternative like ACT-I-VATE (and sites like serializer.net) has been important for both fans of alt-comics and webcomics readers alike.

After a couple of successful years as a livejournal presence, the group now has its own dedicated website. Since the site has expanded so much, with a roster of 24 artists, I'll be taking a periodic look at the site, exploring the work of three artists at a time. I'll start with comics by Haspiel, Neufeld and Bertozzi, those three artists whose work I've been following for a decade.


Let's start with Josh Neufeld's THE VAGABONDS. Using the same title as his occasional series from Alternative Comics, Neufeld spins the same sort of stories we're used to from him: travelogues, meditations on war, disaster and art, and a touch of the absurd. The advantage of seeing his work online is that he gets to use color. Like most of his work, his use of color is subtle--the use of blue & orange for his funny riff on steroids & baseball (imagining the Mets' mascot as a rage-fueled abuser), washed-out greens for a story about Neufeld reacting to seeing a film about Viet Nam, a light & friendly green for a little "travel tips" bit. My favorite of his strips here is "Post-Traumatic Skyscraper Anxiety", a triumph of design and tension. Embodying many New Yorkers' fear of buildings coming down post-9/11, Neufeld cleverly creates a linear narrative with his captions and contrasts that with panel design that is at once meant to be read as a gestalt and as individual panels. It's not a profound or revolutionary observation, but it's heartfelt and well-crafted. Neufeld is mostly working on his A.D.: AFTER THE DELUGE strip at the moment (to be reviewed in a later column), but his contributions here made a great place to start.


Dean Haspiel is serializing a couple of Billy Dogma stories here. IMMORTAL is finished, while FEAR, MY DEAR is still in progress. IMMORTAL is probably the strongest work overall I've seen from him in his long career. Billy is "the last romantic anti-hero" and these comics have always been a blend of superheroics, romance and Haspiel's own eccentricities and beliefs. Billy is Dean's own stand-in, and so these stories have elements of autobiography to them, at least on an emotional & philosophical level. Everything about his work, from dialogue to art, is about as stylized as one can get. The one problem I've always had with his art is that he makes it too slick, too much like a typical mainstream superhero comic. That's especially evident when one compares his rough pencils to final product--it's obvious that the energy and power of those initial sketches doesn't always translate into a final product, robbing it of the visceral quality that is so clearly his aim.

With IMMORTAL, Haspiel let go of that need to over-render and provides a story that still has all of the warmth and oddball humor of a typical Billy Dogma tale but that also packs a punch and a crunch to the reader. The platform for reading it works quite well, providing a single panel at a time but allowing the reader to quickly page through. Haspiel immediately sets the tone with a stark red-and-black palette, extensive use of shadow and silhouette, and a grittiness reminiscent of Will Eisner or Frank Miller (only with much different goals). The story concerns the tumultuous love affair between Billy and his girl Jane Legit and how it awakens an immortal god from outer space. One can see all of Haspiel's many influences at work here (Kirby, Chaykin, Simonson), synthesized to provide an experience that has echoes of each of them yet is straight out of Haspiel's id.


The follow-up series, FEAR, MY DEAR, is just about a third of the way through, so one can't offer a full judgment of it. The story concerns Billy learning that the eighth deadly sin is love and confronting his own past, in what can be called a slam-bang allegory. It lacks the same kind of punch as IMMORTAL and is a bit murkier and talkier. As a reader, I can say that IMMORTAL had me frantically clicking ahead to the next frame but FEAR, MY DEAR feels like a bit more of a slog. There are still plenty of striking visuals and there's still that rawness to his art that was so appealing in IMMORTAL. We'll see how this one develops.


Nick Bertozzi offers up three features, each of which is completely unlike the other. EARNEST SHACKLETON, a story about Antarctic explorers trying to survive a desperate sea voyage, was later printed in the third volume of the anthology SYNCOPATED. This is a fairly naturalistic story that has a certain breathless quality, as Bertozzi adapts a real-life event into comics form.


From a naturalistic style and thrilling adventure, Bertozzi switches over to a highly-mannered, warped tale about anthropomorphic sweets called PECAN SHANDY. The title character is a dreadful, self-centered fop whose font is an affected cursive script. He winds up in a series of misadventures that are mostly caused by his own selfishness, and while he winds up paying a heavy price, he enacts a humorous form of revenge in the end. I don't associate Bertozzi with straight-out humor, but this was a very funny strip, mostly because of his extreme stylization in his art and his use of fairy tale-style pastels.


The most ambitious of Bertozzi's three strips is PERSIMMON CUP, a sci-fi/fantasy/world-building exercise that follows the quest of a creature named Garo and the female creature he loves, named Persimmon. It's a twisted world of pirates who live in rivers, stone monoliths that offer wisdom, traveling inside of other creatures and other assorted oddness. I'm not sure that the web is the best place for this strip, I think that it will flow a bit better on the printed page. I do like Bertozzi's total commitment to his world in his strip, leaving out or muddying exposition and forcing the reader to figure out what's going on. Bertozzi's use of color here is a key element to his story, something that's been true of his work since he had the opportunity to start using color. In my next look at ACT-I-VATE, I'll take a different path and examine the work of three cartoonists I've never read before.

High-Low At SPX and 12 Artists To Seek Out

I will be at SPX, perhaps the premier alt-comics event, this Saturday, September 26th in Bethesda, MD. I'll be part of the Critics' Roundtable at 3:30pm in the Brookside Conference Room, along with Gary Groth, Douglas Wolk, Sean T. Collins, Chris Mautner, Tucker Stone and Joe "Jog" McCulloch and moderator Bill Kartalopolous. I really enjoyed last year's panel and I'm looking forward to having a discussion with so many esteemed critics. I'll also be hosting a Debut Cartoonists panel, spotlighting new work by Hans Rickheit (THE SQUIRREL MACHINE), Eleanor Davis (THE SECRET SCIENCE ALLIANCE), Ken Dahl (MONSTERS), and the great Zak Sally (LIKE A DOG).

Here's my annual list of artists to seek out at the con. This is obviously not any sort of exhaustive list of artists that I like or will seek out on my own. Consider it a survey of new artists, significant artists making their first appearance at SPX, artists with interesting new releases, artists deserving greater exposure and folks whose work I simply admire.

1. John Porcellino. One of the greatest exemplars of minicomics as a viable format of their own, separate from potential collections. He'll have not just a collection of KING-CAT out from Drawn & Quarterly called MAP OF MY HEART, he'll also have a brand-new issue of the series. SPX is one of the first stops on his extensive book tour of the country celebrating his 20th anniversary of his career. His extremely spare line is a testament to how one can be devastatingly expressive using a minimalist style. Porcellino will also have original art for sale. This is his first appearance at the con since 1997, and a generation of cartoonists has been strongly influenced by his approach. He will have a 2pm spotlight on Saturday in the White Flint Amphitheater and will be signing at the D&Q table on Saturday from 11:30-1pm and Sunday from 1-3pm. Sally will moderate the spotlight session, and I should note that he's most certainly another artist to seek out.

2. Colleen Frakes. One of my favorite graduates from the Center For Cartoon Studies (along with Chuck Forsman, Sean Ford and the rest of the Sundays gang), Frakes' recent WOMAN KING was simultaneously lovely and disturbing. I'd also seek out her older TRAGIC RELIEF minicomics.

3. Carol Tyler. One of the greatest working cartoonists makes her SPX debut. Her YOU'LL NEVER KNOW is my top comic of the year. She'll be signing at the Fantagraphics booth on Saturday from 12-2pm and Sunday from 2-4pm. Tyler is also a delightful storyteller, so be sure to check out her spotlight on Sunday at 1pm in the White Flint Amphitheater.

4. Josh Neufeld. This long-time SPX attendee is basking in the glow of the well-earned acclaim that his AD: NEW ORLEANS AFTER THE DELUGE has received. One of the best books of the year, Neufeld will have his own spotlight panel on Sunday at 2pm. Neufeld is a perfect example of a generation of cartoonists whose career dovetailed with SPX, going from self-published minis to illustrating Harvey Pekar to his own series with small publishers to a book deal with Pantheon.

5. Ken Dahl. Also known as Gabby Schulz, Ken Dahl has an acidic sense of humor and stunning chops. He will be debuting MONSTERS, a collection of stories about herpes, at the show, and will be on the panel I mentioned above. Simply put, Dahl is one of the best cartoonists to emerge from this decade.

6 Dina Kelberman. IMPORTANT COMICS was one of the weirder and more compelling minis I read this year. Her comics have a sort of absurdist quality that I admire, and the way she uses unusual page & panel compositions with a minimalist line is unusual. She'll be part of the Aesthetics of Mini-Comics panel on Sunday at 4:30pm.

7. Ed Piskor. Piskor is unusual in that he's a young artist heavily influenced by the underground generation (as opposed to the alt-cartoonists of the 80s and 90s). He's also had an opportunity to work with legends like Jay Lynch and Harvey Pekar, but his own voice is unique. He's taken his underground sensibilities to write about another underground culture: hackers. Seek out the first two volumes of his WIZZYWIG and watch him on his Source-Based Comics panel at 1:30pm on Saturday.

8. Eleanor Davis. Davis is another artist on my short list of "best emerging talents of the decade" thanks to her compelling minicomics and short stories in MOME. Her Toon Books entry, STINKY, was one of the best comics of last year. Her new book, THE SECRET SCIENCE ALLIANCE, is aimed at older kids, which makes sense given her style of art.

9. Jon Vermilyea. Eric Reynolds discovered his minicomics at San Diego a few years ago, and his subsequent comics for MOME have been simultaneously hilarious and disturbing. Like Dahl, Vermilyea has incredible chops and a flair for the grotesque.

10. Jeff Zwirek. His BURNING BUILDING COMIX, an Ivan Brunetti-inspired work, was one of the more clever comics I read last year. I'd recommend getting every issue to fully appreciate the level of detail he puts into his gag work.

11. Will Dinski. Dinski gets my vote for best currently self-published artist. His new comic, COVERED IN CONFUSION, is typical of his recent remarkable hot streak: funny, dark, tragic and uniquely formatted. Someone needs to give him a book deal.

12. Matthew Thurber. Thurber's 1-800-MICE is one of the best comics of the decade. That about sums it up. It's an exemplar of comics that have a lot of genre elements, humor, deeper themes, dense plots, absurdist elements and unforgettable characters. Seek him out at the Picturebox booth.

Survival & Alienation: A.D.: New Orleans After The Deluge

Rob reviews the updated and revised edition of Josh Neufeld's first-person accounts of Hurricane Katrina: A.D.: NEW ORLEANS AFTER THE DELUGE (Pantheon).

I reviewed the work to-date of Josh Neufeld's A.D. back at sequart.com about a year ago; alas, the links to that site still aren't operable. I noted at the time that this could be Neufeld's masterwork, and after seeing the finished product published by Pantheon, I think this is definitely the case. The attention he's receiving for this project has made him something of a 20-year overnight success, a fact that has made a number of his long-time fans (of which I am one) especially delighted. Neufeld put all of the skills he developed as a storyteller to excellent use in A.D., especially in how he is able to tell someone else's first-person story. Years of being one of Harvey Pekar's go-to illustrators combined with his own instincts as observer and reporter in his own autobiographical stories was a perfect training ground for an enormously complex and ambitious narrative.

Being a freelance illustrator meant that Neufeld could take time to volunteer for the Red Cross in Biloxi after Katrina hit in 2005. He blogged about the experience, drawing comments from locals and others who appreciated hearing his perspective and getting a chance to share theirs. Those blog entries turned into a zine (not a comic), and that zine drew the attention of smithmag.net. Publisher Larry Smith knew that he had found an artist who could help tell the stories of survivors of the storm, and Neufeld diligently went about finding people who wanted to share their experiences.

The best thing about this comic is that Neufeld errs on the side of restraint at all times. His work has always had a certain quietude to it, and that stillness turned out to be a perfect match in depicting a raging storm and the hellish conditions that followed it. He rarely played up horrific images for shock effect, instead forcing the reader to understand that the suffering felt by his subjects was constant and unrelenting--even as they found a way to struggle through it. Neufeld also clearly labored to stay true to the tenor of each person's own narrative. Each person had greatly different experiences and their emotional response in recalling the tragedy also varied as a result.

Neufeld noted that he made sure to select as wide a cross-section of experiences as was possible. There was Kwame, the African-American teenager who evacuated the town and was forced to view its destruction and reconstruction from afar. There was The Doctor, a wealthy white denizen of the French Quarter--an area of the city that was mostly untouched by both the storm and the ensuing flood, but who was a big part of its recovery. There were Abbas and Darnell--a shopowner and his friend, both determined to ride out the storm, who faced the most hellish of life and death experiences. There were Leo and his girlfriend Michelle, two more residents who left the city and who had to cope with the treasured memorabilia of a lifetime destroyed. Finally, there was the book's emotional core: Denise, who felt the sting of abandonment by her government the most acutely when she was stranded at a convention center. The seven people who wanted to tell their stories were a cross-section of race, gender and class, but all of them loved their city.

While some of the narratives are more compelling than others, Neufeld wove them in and around each other so as to provide relief for the heavier stories and context for the lighter ones. For example, the Doctor had been through any number of storms, so he calmly hosted a hurricane party and cleared out storm drains when the eye of the storm passed over. After the storm ended, he went from building to building looking after potential patients and set up an "impromptu clinic" to provide care to all in his neighborhood. A fixture in a town where time usually stands still, his biggest woe was that the shrimp at Galatoire's weren't as good as they used to be. It's obvious that Neufeld was deliberately juxtaposing the experiences of the Doctor against those that suffered life and death consequences, but he carefully restrained himself from making any judgments of his own.

That said, the Doctor received far fewer pages than either Denise or Abbas & Darnell. For the former, she experienced nearly getting killed in her own apartment by the storm and then waiting as buses that were supposed to carry everyone to safety never showed. Thousands of survivors outside the convention center and Superdome were left in unsanitary, harrowing situations as they had to deal with a government that was both corrupt and incompetent. She and her family only managed to escape through luck, but Denise took it upon herself to note that the reports of roving gang violence were not only not true, but that many gang members took it upon themselves to give food, water & medicine to those who needed it the most. Abbas & Darnell had to contend with a flood of noxious waters, mosquitoes, rats in nearby trees swimming after them, and the brutal August sun in their bid to ride out the ordeal and protect Abbas' store. Here, Neufeld used his most dramatic imagery: dark floodwaters pooling ominously, the specter of disease embodied by mosquitoes and rats, and the oppressiveness of the heat & humidity.

Leo & Michelle and Kwame all left the city, leaving behind all they had. These stories are also comparatively minor beats, with Leo (an avid comic book collector) coming to grips that everything he had was destroyed. Kwame grew accustomed to being away from home as he finished high school in Berkeley, college in Ohio and then spent a semester in London. For both, an eventual return home was essential. Denise embodied the idea that part of the spirit of the city died in the experience as so many were left without lives or homes. She eventually went back despite that despair, but noted that "we're not all home yet" and was in no mood to party in a city known for its laissez-faire attitudes.

In terms of the visuals, Neufeld used a single-tone color field for most of the different sections. This helped highlight different parts of the narrative, but also added a subtle hint of emotion. Most of the colors in the early part of the book are somewhat cheery: sea foam-green, a bright yellow, a light lavender, etc. As the story proceeds, the colors become darker and more sickly, culminating in bruise-purple and jaundice-yellow for the scenes depicting disease and mayhem. In the scenes after the storm, the spotlighted characters are all a different color from everything else in the panel--a notation that they have been marked by this experience and that they are no longer quite as home amidst their surroundings. Neufeld's line is supple--just realistic enough to depict these events, but rubbery enough to make the pages breathe a bit. He takes advantage of the book format with several dramatic two page spreads, the most dramatic of which was the "they brought us here to die" crowd shot.

This book isn't about innovation, but rather the urgent need for people to tell their stories in as direct and open a manner as possible. While Neufeld does weave stories in and out effortlessly so as to move the reader's eyes from page to page easily, there's very little artifice to be found in A.D. Neufeld has always had a way of asking complicated questions in a straightforward manner, and this book is his most ambitious display of his natural curiosity and empathy. It's a story that needs retelling, especially given that we're four years out from the storm and the city is still struggling, especially its poor. The real tragedy of Katrina is not the storm, nor the flood, but the alienation felt by its citizens in the wake of the event. For a city that is a national treasure and one of America's few truly unique cultural outposts, there was frequently a startling lack of empathy for the dispossessed. This was a moment of national shame, a time when everyone knew that the government at all levels failed its people, and Neufeld simply gave a voice and a face to those affected by the experience in a way that anyone could understand. A.D. is really the best kind of political work: one where the author can make a point without bludgeoning the reader and let the reader decide what's right and wrong.