Thirty One Days Of CCS #26: Brainworm 1-2

Anthologies have always been the lifeblood of CCS. In addition to work that's assigned to the students, there have often been cartoonists who have chosen to put together work with fellow students and alums. How the work is put together is often up to whichever cartoonist takes it upon themselves to edit the anthology, and in the case of the two recent volumes of Brainworm, that person is Kat Ghastly. She billed this anthology as "a catalog of obsessions for the obsessed" and themed both issues, giving them a nice sense of loose coherence. The table of contents in the first issue contains a sign-up sheet where most artists who said yes agreed at the expense of sleep or possibly quality, which speaks to the work ethic of the average CCS cartoonist.

The theme of the first issue is Endings. Tim Patton's stylish strip is about a couple of friends who visit an out-of-the-way coffee shop on its last day, and it's all about that sense of wistfulness that one feels in moments like that. The use of steam lines speaks to the ephemeral nature of the moment and then the memory. Hachem Reslan's silent strip is clever; it starts from heavily rendered as we see two hands: one holding a knife and other other an orange. As there is a surprise thing that is cut, the rendering and lighting gets lighter and less distinct, as though the cut hand is the one that's drawing the strip. Kristen Shull's cartoonish line is a delight in her story about songs that she can't get out of her head; it's a bit of fun that she braces with the final observation that banishing lingering thoughts is much more difficult. Sage Persing makes use of the dark in talking about their childhood OCD thoughts. Leise Hook's obsession with knowing how stories end was also cleverly drawn, with literalizations of the metaphors she was using. Bailey Johnson's drawing of a camera they took apart spoke to the way that working with its parts was soothing.

Unsurprisingly, CCS fellow Keren Katz's contribution was hilarious, odd and unsettling. It mixes drawings and photos (with a curly mustache drawn on Katz's face!) as the story follows a curator trying to figure out how to display the new heads. Each image is very typical of Katz, in that she's interested in exploring the way images in motion flatten themselves vs the ways in which still images can be arranged so as to create a strange synthesis. Ghastly's own strip is an amusingly cathartic story where she imagines people she hates falling into an open sewer grate, and then she thinks about what that fate may be. Her use of blobby figures reminiscent of Keith Haring drawings gives her story a strong visual charge.

The second issue isn't quite as interesting, in part because the topic ("The Undead") is a bit played out, and thus there was less variety on display. Katz once again takes an eccentric approach to an idea by taking three different documents (instructions for taking care of a cat, an origami instruction book and a book on making bubbles) and challenges people to come up with the first sentence of each book. It's all for reviving a monster. Katz is a walking idea machine, her brain and/or her body in constant motion as part of her relentless project to brighten the world with whimsical, bizarre and thought-provoking art.

There are some nice illustrations provided throughout by CCS instructor and horror master Steve Bissette, but they clashed with the generally lighthearted fare in the rest of the anthology. For example, Kurt Shaffert's "Bioethics and Zombie-care" is a funny take on how the rules of research (autonomy, beneficence, etc) would apply to dealing with zombies. Ghastly's own strip is about her own actual fear of zombies, or rather, that someone she loved would try to destroy her unexpectedly. Reslan and Persing's collaboration follows a sort of mannered, doomed romance, only one half of the couple is a zombie. Andres Catter's zombie gag is a funny one, using an image per page for maximum impact. Leise Hook's comic about a plant she revived and then might have killed again is a clever take on the theme, and its understated visual approach blends nicely with the text.

Thirty One Days Of CCS #24: A Whole Lifetime Of Firsts

A Whole Lifetime Of Firsts. This is the second collaboration between CCS cartoonists and the White River Junction VA, featuring veteran's stories focusing in on women. The first CCS/VA collaboration was good, but this one is excellent. There's a level of depth and execution in transcribing the stories of women in the military in a variety of ways that's striking. On top of that, telling stories that haven't necessarily been part of the public discourse up til recently is also something that adds to their impact.

"Mitzi's Story" is written by co-editor J.D. Lunt (CCS president James Sturm is the other editor). She is a former NCO who wound up in places like Kosovo and Iraq. For her, even though she's a closeted lesbian, military service was her life. That was also despite a sexual assault and soldiers of lower rank frequently ignoring her orders. When she was honorably discharged because of an injury, she was ill-equipped to face civilian life despite being married. She got hooked on drugs, arrested and tried to kill herself before really deciding to embrace rehab. After a lifetime of being told she wasn't good or smart enough and enduring enough PTSD for a dozen people, her ability to endure and thrive is simply remarkable. Garcia uses a standard nine-panel grid with a visual approach that's a little ragged, yet appropriate for the subject.

"I Got Your Six" is from Daryl Seitchik & Dan Nott, and it's about an Army nurse who was in Viet Nam. There's a lot of story to tell here, and Seitchik & Nott use a twelve-panel grid to pack it all in. Despite that, they tell the story with a great deal of clarity, making frequent use of switching black & white negative space. Every panel is well-balanced in this regard, making the linework easy to grasp and contextualize. This story focuses more on her experiences in the war as a nurse and less on what happened afterwards, though she does note how much hostility she faced as a veteran of Viet Nam when she returned. What I found most fascinating is her intuitive understanding of how important psychological care was for soldiers in addressing PTSD at a time when it was not understood or used.

"Isolated Duty" is a story with the opposite scenario: a woman in the Navy in the 70s got injured and met the love of her life who was also a woman in the military. Drawn by Rachel Ford and written by Sarah Yahm and Kurt Shaffert, this is a nicely-constructed comic that at times is perhaps a bit too spare with regard to facial expressions. The theme of being taken care of and now taking care of her partner resonates, especially with the way they keep their romance alive despite her partner's increasingly diminished mental capacity. Finally, "Kathi: A Life Well Traveled" is about an Air Force nurse who was in Europe and later Viet Nam, and it's by Catherine Garbarino and Kelly L. Swann. The artists make extensive use of grayscale shading to add to the sense of this being akin to an old book of photos, filled with memories. Kathi is a relentlessly upbeat presence and was regarded as such in Viet Nam, even earning a Bronze Star for the way she enhanced morale. This is not to say that there weren't painful moments, like a truck accident that she still couldn't discuss, and a young boy in a leper colony that she wanted to adopt but couldn't, but she still mostly stayed positive. All of this was told from her perspective of being treated for cancer at eighty years old, staying positive to the end. The way each story had a different focus and featured several different armed services spoke to the variety of experiences, as well as the need for each of these women to tell their story. These are stories that needed to be told, and the artists found different ways to get there.