Minis: E.Davis, L.Nichols, K.Froh, A.Shrestha, S.Lautman

Libby's Dad, by Eleanor Davis. This Retrofit release is further proof of Davis' versatility. Her issue of Frontier ("BDSM") showed off her black & white chops, while this comic looks like it was done entirely in colored pencils. Davis' comics are usually pointed in terms of her themes and the emotions she wants to explore, but she deflects away from hammering that point home through a series of interesting strategies. This comic is about the complexities surrounding emotional spousal abuse and how its fallout affects children. Davis' strategy was to tell this story entirely through the daughter of that estranged couple (Libby) and her friends during the course of a sleepover. The essential conflict of the story is that one of the members of the group was forbidden to come over to over by her mother because Libby's father had threatened to shoot Libby's mom. The rest of the story (told from the perspective of Libby's friend Alex) is essentially a debate as to whether or not that could possibly be true.

The genius of the book is Davis' unfailingly accurate depiction of children and the way they interact, with all the innocence and casual cruelty that implies. Davis' character design and her use of colored pencil gives the book the feel of a children's book, with exaggerated facial expressions, cheery colors and uncannily precise body language that gets across the energy that kids generate when they're in this kind of environment--especially since Libby's dad bought a house with a swimming pool and bought them all lunch. A running theme in Davis' comics is the way that adults try to keep secrets from children and fail to trust their ability to understand difficult situations. What the adults fail to understand is that children hear and understand far more than they might realize, only without context that knowledge can be warped. That's certainly the case here, as Libby's friends debate whether or not Libby's dad was nice or a monster and whether Libby's mom was a potential victim or a liar (there was no middle ground). The comic comes to a head when night falls and the colors turn from friendly greens, yellows and light blues to dark and oppressive midnight blue. There's another color whose presence is a constant in the book: blood red. It becomes especially prominent in the slumber party scene, especially when a spilled bottle of nail polish splatters the carpet like blood. Suddenly, jokes about Libby's dad and his gun turn into pure fear, as the white image of a gun against the dark blue background is a clear indicator of their mutual panic.

An exasperated Libby, who has been mostly silent up until this point, gets up and tells her weeping friends to shut up, and declares that her dad's not scary. There's a chilling two-page spread where her friends are in the bottom left corner of one page and Libby goes out the foreboding door in the upper-right hand corner of the next page, indicating a gulf between them as well as a sense of things not ever being the same when she returns from her dangerous quest. Their fears peak as the next two pages are devoid of backgrounds as they imagine her dead shooting all of them, shrouded in shadows. Davis comes back from that image with Libby's dad cheerfully cleaning up the mess in a room with the light on, bathed in a comforting yellow. That act is "proof" to Alex that "Libby's mom is crazy and a liar", and the girls are now free to have a carefree good time. Of course, what Davis is getting at is how women are made to feel crazy for responding to abuse, for people assuming they are lying or exaggerating and in general doubting the stories of survivors. There's also a larger question of complexity: Libby's dad may treat her well, but that doesn't mean that he wasn't abusive toward his mom, even if that threat was an empty one. The way the girls react can be explained in part because they are just children, but Davis' larger point is that it wasn't just them who reacted that way, as the parents of the other children had no problem with them spending time at Libby's dad's house. This is a story about abuse and the ways in which so many people prefer to believe that it doesn't happen, and Davis' use of color masterfully takes us through every element of the narrative, modulating emotion along the way.

Senior Time, by Kelly Froh. If one of Davis' special skills as a cartoonists is portraying children, then one of Froh's is portraying the elderly. This mini is about failing upwards, beginning with Froh fervently hoping she was going to get laid off because her desk job was debilitating her, both mentally and physically. Coming to terms with the idea as someone over forty that they weren't ever going to make a lot of money is difficult in a society driven by financial success as a measure of overall success. Froh struggles with that idea but counters it by embracing her role in the arts as well as time spent helping the elderly and teaching comics. Each page features a single image, some typeset text and Froh's own cursive script. The latter was especially important in establishing an intimate line of communication with the reader, but it also represented the kinds of relationships she was having with her clients.

Froh balances the tremendous respect she has for her elderly clients with her cartoony and slightly grotesque character design, and the gentle humor she records in this comic is modulated by her thoughtful and gentle voice as a narrator. Above all else, she listens, and she responds with respect but also humor. The variety of mental and emotional states among those living in retirement homes dictates some of Froh's work here, as one woman who kept asking "Then what?" whenever Froh would tell her what came next led to Froh expounding on what was really her own life goal: a full life, meaningful relationships, love and happiness. When the reply to that was "Then what?", what else could Froh say but, "Then, you die". I'm not sure if that last conversation happened verbatim, but that's not really important; what was important was the way Froh was encouraging and optimistic but also realistic and accepting of our ultimate fate. This comic is about process, and for Froh, it's processing the richness she feels in her current role, even as she is just barely able to piece things together.

Macrogroan #7, by Sara Lautman. Lautman has slightly refined her scratchy, sloppy scribbly line just enough to make her comics more easily intelligible but not so much as to lose their spontaneity and pure beauty. Simply as a personal aesthetic preference, I love artists who have mastered the ability to create characters using expressive scribbles because that spontaneity is key to making the characters come alive. They have a wobbly, vibratory quality to them that creates a sense of motion and energy on the page, even when the images themselves depict a silent character sitting on a stoop. Like Jules Feiffer, both Lautman's line and her handwritten lettering are beautifully sloppy in an inspiring way. It also helps that she has a sharp sense of humor, ranging from self-deprecation to crafting a shaggy dog story for the sake of a pun. The way she draws herself as frequently slumped over, with a pointy nose and messy hair, only adds to the sheer pleasure I get from looking at her drawings. When she uses grayscale, she often just uses her pencil to gray-out some backgrounds so as to give her drawings some more weight. There's also a great deal of charm in her strips, like one in which she enthuses about a "classic date spot" in New York (The Cloisters), which turns out to be from a banned lesbian young adult novel from the early 80s--which her friend calls her on. Lautman's autobio reminds me a bit of Sophie Yanow's, only less angular and less political. Lautman's comics explore comic and quotidian aspects of city life with occasional forays into surrealism. She's become a much better storyteller, especially in terms of panel-to-panel transitions. It's pretty clear that she could do something long form or collect strips thematically, much like Gabrielle Bell does. She's certainly hit on a winning formula.

Genus, by Anuj Shrestha. This batch of one to two page stories and illustrations is separate from the body horror/conspiracy series of the same name, but the aesthetic is very much the same. In this zine, that aesthetic of people slowly having their faces completely subsumed by a wriggling, plant-like growth is entirely ignored, especially in terms of the narratives that Shrestha spins. The first story is about a young girl's experiences in school as an avid participant--almost too avid. In this and other strips, the growths seem to be a visual metaphor for a kind of inner ugliness made external, except that everyone experienced it the same way. It's a stripping away of innocence and a reflection of the parasitic or codependent nature of our relationships. The more materially and financially accomplished a person became, as in the story "Company Dinner", the more disfigured and inhuman each person became, until their heads stopped being recognizable as human. The illustrations are all of fashionable, hip looking people whose faces have become entirely transformed into that mass of writhing tentacles/stalks. The final strip, "Genus Company Policy" reveals that the system is rigged from the start. Shrestha's line drawings are exquisite as always, as they add a level of chilly distance to the everyday activities they depict.

Flocks, Chapter Five, by L.Nichols. Nichols' incredibly empathetic and humane autobio series about the various groups that have had an impact on their life reaches an almost unbearable point of agony and then resolves in an unexpected but remarkably hopeful way. Growing up in rural Louisiana as a queer kid led to all sorts of feelings of self-hatred, even as the local church community often provided her tremendous support and encouragement. Nichols rejects all binary arguments and instead embraces the contradictions that surround us. It was possible for people in their church and their family to support them in some ways but make them inadvertently feel like a sinner in others. They were often a shield for them and encouraged their budding academic talents in the face of bullying from the other kids at school. Their parents were another set of contradictions, simultaneously encouraging Nichols and making them feel worthless. This volume follows up on hints laid down in earlier volumes, as Nichols' father asks for a divorce, leading Nichols' mom to leave the house with all the prescription drugs. Nichols details the ways in which their parents put them in the middle, each attacking the other.

Nichols depicts themself as a rag doll in their autobio comics buffeted by the inexorable forces of physics. This is an especially apt metaphor given the way Nichols felt pushed and pulled, reducing them to a pile of stuffing. Nichols details the ways in which their church helped them and their mother out, no questions asked: food, clothes, shelter, etc. Even with the weight of being queer bearing down on them as a young teen, Nichols' faith was still a comfort in the face of extreme anxiety. Nichols finally gets relief when they're accepted into the state Science, Math & The Arts high school. Here, Nichols meets a new flock. No longer an outsider due to their intellect and interests, Nichols finds unconditional support for the first time in their life. There's a remarkable scene when one of Nichols' friends basically tells them to come out, that everyone knew they were interested in girls--and it was OK. The pressure arrows bearing down on Nichols disappeared as the one thing they thought they'd never get and didn't deserve--true acceptance--was freely given. After extending empathy, compassion, understanding and the benefit of the doubt to everyone else, Nichols finally gave it to themself. The joy and radiance in Nichols' line at this point fairly bursts off the page as they were able to extend and receive the trust that had been broken with their parents.

Autobio: Jep, Hayden, Nichols, Bean/Viola

Jep Comix 4, by Jep. The cartoonist draws slice-of-life autobio vignettes featuring a stripped-down self-caricature and frequent anthropomorphic versions of friends. These are comics featuring small but pointed moments, like a memory from high school spent playing a video game, avoiding his father. Another interesting bit was one where the cartoonist has a number of awkward interactions with a man from across the street who weirdly hits on him after he tells him he's getting married. Even a talking head strip featuring him talking to his sister about flooding basements and Moses parting the Red Sea is interesting because of his thick, simple line that's not unlike a Sam Brown figure. These comics are modest, charming and utterly lacking in pretension.

Rushes, by Jennifer Hayden. This is a collection of good ol' four-panel diary comics. They remind me a bit of Jesse Reklaw's strips in that the reader is more or less dropped in media res into Hayden's life and expected to figure things out as she goes along and that it's a process strip. That is, it's Hayden recording her progress finishing a long book about her experience with breast cancer (The Story Of My Tits, out in September from IDW/Top Shelf), as well as a document of everyday family life. This particular volume is also an account of the preparations for as well as an actual trip to London and Paris, so that gives the reader a bit of value-added above simply watching Hayden draw comics or talk on the phone for several panels. Hayden's voice is distinct and powerful, and it's well-matched to her stripped-down but still dense style of cartooning. Her use of negative space in particular is impressive in depicting a busy, cluttered and full life with comics, her family, playing music and a clear identity as the family organizer. Allowing the reader to fill in some lines allows her comics some space to breathe, letting the eye pass quicker from panel to panel without getting bogged down in each panel's details. The personal details are mostly of a quotidian nature, with occasional reminders about her surviving cancer; in these strips, Hayden is more interested in getting down the basics than reflecting too long on what it all means. That immediacy is what makes the strip-to-strip flow so effective.

Heart Farts, by Cara Bean and Rebecca & Jason Viola. This is a two-woman anthology featuring Bean and R.Viola (comics drawn by her husband Jason). The strips are pleasant and lightweight, featuring topics like dreams about Tom Brady and the satisfaction received in creating bento boxes for others' lunches. One of the bigger treats here is a chance to see more of Bean's classroom comics and her bean-shaped self-caricature; one of the strips is about being a teacher and trying to get her students to love what she's teaching as much as she does, getting away from the feeling that she's torturing them. The Violas' bento box strip is about how having an opportunity to make something unique and nourishing for someone else is in itself a nourishing activity. Bean's classroom strip addressed the idea of "flow": how purposeful, creative activity creates positive energy not only for oneself, but for one's associates as well. While Viola's comic doesn't address this explicitly, there's no question that her comic is a demonstration of this idea in action. That synergy of ideas makes the mini greater than the sum of its parts, as it features slightly diverging points of view on the same set of ideas. The versatility of Jason Viola meant that Rebecca could write about anything and the result would inevitably look great.

Flocks 4, by L.Nichols.This is the most powerful chapter yet in Nichols' account of growing up queer and Christian. In this issue, Nichols lays out why simply excoriating her parents and others in their rural Louisiana community for condemning homosexuality isn't so simple. Their parents, teachers and people in their church, who made Nichols' life hellish in some respects, were the same people who encouraged them to excel in school. Being an intellectual of size in school made Nichols an easy target, and that support from adults turned out to be a crucial factor in becoming a success and realizing their dream of attending MIT. In one sense, Flocks is a document about pain: the pain of not fitting in, the pain of knowing that those people you love might not love you for what you truly are.

In another sense, Flocks is about pressure and balance, cleverly represented through mathematical notations. It's about the pressures that all of the various groups of whom we are a member put on us, for good ("you can do it!") and ill ("nerd!", "queer!", etc) and how to balance the negative pressures with the positive support. Nichols describes how they "fit in enough not to be rejected" and "fit in enough to gain support when needed" in hopes that "everything would get better one day". However, this wasn't simply a matter of things getting better by means of escape. Rather, things got better in part because of Nichols' amazing ability to take what nourished them and discard the rest. Even now, the even-handedness regarding faith, family and Nichols' upbringing is remarkable, considering how easy it would to be bitter. As per usual, Nichols' self-caricature as a sort of rag doll remains one of my favorites in autobio comics; it's a figure that's both capable of absorbing a tremendous amount of abuse as well as a tremendous amount of love, often from the same person. Though each issue stood on its own well, the cumulative effect really pays off in this issue in particular, since Nichols so wisely lays out that relationships are far more complicated than they seem on the surface and that the same person can give out support in one way and unwittingly undermine you in another.

Minicomics: Nichols, Cantirino, Remnant, Gfrorer, Reklaw

Flocks, Chapters 2 and 3, by L.Nichols. These are the next two chapters in Nichols' meditation and exploration of faith and growing up as a queer born-again Christian. Each issue tends to cover similar ground, circling back to a variation on a theme. For example, the second issue, subtitled "body of conflict", gets at Nichols' body-image issues, knowing exactly what she wanted to look like as a kid but knowing it "wasn't OK". Using her distinctive rag doll self-caricature, Nichols depicts the forces and pressures she felt as a child and teen using the nomenclature of physics, though those arrows bearing down on her pierced and drew blood. The comic is heartbreaking in that she has a strong sense of identity but prays desperately to change, to conform, to not be a sinner. It never works, and at the end of the issue she goes back out into nature with the animals and woods that provide her so much comfort because they allow her to be herself as she is.

The third issue ("Nature vs Nurture") focuses less on body image and more on faith itself. A constant, running theme throughout this comic is Nichols refusing to demonize faith and religion, despite her experiences. She talks about the feeling of community she frequently felt, the power and mystical intensity of gospel services, and the comfort she felt in the idea that god was all around. At the beginning of this issue, she quotes a pastor quoting the Bible, referring to the "still, small voice of God". This concept made sense to her, that almost Buddhist idea that she was "part of something larger".Once again, that voice was best heard out in nature, where it was easier to see oneself as part of something larger instead of hearing the loud, angry voices decrying homosexuality and sinners. As Nichols notes, those were the voices of man, not God. While Nichols works through a lot of pain in these comics, it's not done in anger, but rather in appreciating beauty. Nichols' approach is to match the hate she felt for herself and the hate she felt from others with gentleness and care. Her use of full color to depict just how vibrant her environment was to her is a key to the success of these comics, because one can sense the joy radiating from those sequences. These comics are not a chance for revenge, but rather a plea for understanding. I hope she keeps going.

Turnpike Divides Part 2, by Sally Cantirino. The first issue sets up a story about a young man returning home to New Jersey to attend the funeral of his best friend, with the strong sense that said friend drove his car deliberately into a pole. This issue picks up on the ramifications of this event, as the man (Alec) tries to gain comfort from his ex-girlfriend (Lily). Cantirino nails the ways in which twenty-somethings relate to each other as they find themselves drifting through life, and this comic takes dead aim at narcissism and self-pity. Alec tries to find ways to blame himself for his friend's death and condemns those around him for not mourning him sufficiently, before Lily reveals a key fact about his death and generally puts him in his place. It's also about no longer being part of a place, about its relevance to one's life being entirely in the past. Cantirino's line is a little on the busy side, making the pages a bit denser to read than they need to be, but she does capture a sense of time and place. She notes that she used a lot of reference to real places for this story, and it's easy to see that; the spaces here look lived-in and well-trod. She also has a real knack for drawing night scenes and snow, which added a lot of atmosphere to the story. A student at the Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW), her ambition as a cartoonist is clear.

Blindspot #3, by Joseph Remnant. The latest issue of the talented Remnant's one-man anthology focuses on autobio stories this time around, but each of the four has a very specific tone and purpose. At the same time, each of them fervently questions both himself and the cultural values surrounding him. In "L.A. Coffee Shop", Remnant takes aim at all of the "creative types" who fulfill every LA stereotype one can imagine, both in terms of the way they dress and the things they say. Of course, Remnant takes a step back and aims those barbs for himself as well, letting the other artist he saw in the cafe draw a picture of Remnant looking like an idiot. "Pappy Ron's Pizza" takes dead square aim at the controversy over Papa John's Pizza refusing to comply with the Affordable Healthcare Act because it would eat into their profits and "force" a small increase of the price of pizza. Here, Remnant watches a "news" report from a right-wing TV network that fully supports "Pappy Ron". From there, driving to various locations during con season leads him to choosing that pizza joint...but he just can't quite go through with it. It's a strip where Remnant is literally nauseated by the patter the Pappy Ron employee is forced to spew out, but it's also a story where Remnant follows through on his principles.

"Elevator" finds Remnant confronting his past in the face of an old friend and an odd interaction with him, as well as going back to his old school. This unsettling story then quickly resolves in a way that makes sense, and the jarring ending doesn't feel like a cop-out because of the warning Remnant receives during the course of the narrative.  The story that sort of recapitulates all the others is "You Are Here", which is about depression and how Remnant used meditative hiking up a hill as a form of therapy. Walks have a way of first stirring up bad thoughts and then dissolving them through sheer physical exertion, and Remnant works through his miasma and depression by forcing himself through. It's a story that touches on John Porcellino and his zen comics poetry, using many silent panels to create a rhythm that Remnant feels while walking. The slow, steady progression from panel to panel is modulated by the density of Remnant's cross-hatching, especially when Remnant walks slowly through shadowy parts of a forest. It's interesting to contrast the relative calm and quiet of that darkness to the darkness Remnant wakes up to in "Elevator". As always, Remnant's skill as a cartoonist is superb, with complete control over his line and his page. Like many artists inspired by underground cartoonists, Remnant's layouts are relatively straightforward, though he does something unusual on many pages with a 3-2-3 grid. The reader tends to go to the center of the page in grid set-ups, but Remnant deflects the reader's eye with two central panels in the middle of the page, forcing them to take in both of the central panels as a single image and then the rest of the page. Remnant wants the reader to look at every panel and follow its rhythm to the next, even when there are silent beats and delays. The way he formats the page makes the reader do this if they want to follow the story, and he faithfully puts a lot of clear but detailed information in every panel. Location, mood and body language are all keys in Remnant's comics and it's obvious that he wants the reader to closely follow all three. Even though this issue is autobiographical, Remnant is less interested in being confessional than sharing relatable stories.

Black Light, by Julia Gfrorer. Ever since publishing her first book with Sparkplug, Gfrorer has been creating one astounding, unsettling and frequently erotic story after another. This mini collects four short stories from a variety of sources, and what's remarkable about it is the way she takes tired fantasy and horror tropes (a vampire, Death, a deadly water nymph, and a magical bear) and transforms them into something that's actually frightening and real. That's because while the genre trope is often part of the story's big reveal, it's never the most frightening thing about the story. For example, "River of Tears" starts with the sort of party scene that Gfrorer excels at depicting, but soon segues into a series of texts from a suicidal junkie girlfriend. The horror here is not the Grim Reaper coming to take her away, but rather the mind-rending horror of dealing with that kind of emotional manipulation. "Phosphorus" is horrifying not because there's a monster in a pond, but rather because it's about sexual violence and humiliation."All Is Lost" is a downbeat story because it flips around the expectation of a monster menacing a child and suggests that it's the mother who is really the monster. Finally, "Unclean" and its ultimate monstrous revelation only works because of the way Gfrorer sets up and details the woman's betrayal. Indeed, she even suggests that the vampire is less of a predator than the woman's cheating ex-boyfriend. Her line is scratchy, harsh and dense, all befitting the kinds of stories she tells. Gfrorer is a smart storyteller above all else; one can sense just how much thought goes into each story and how certain elements, once revealed, will resonate for the reader. Her work rewards multiple readings because of its thoughtfulness and attention to detail, as well as her deep understanding of interpersonal dynamics and how they become dysfunctional.

LOVF New York: Destination Crisis., by Jesse Reklaw. This is a harrowing, intense account of Reklaw journeying to New York City and inadvertently going off his meds and becoming homeless for a period of time. Published by Robyn Chapman's Paper Rocket Minicomics, it's a beautiful, full-color minicomic that contains comics, sketches, collaborations with others and tenuous threads of narrative. It's a comic that's as much about the process of making a comic as it is the material itself, because the original pages got rained on at one point and the colors bled into each other. It's a collaboration with the elements as well as other artists, and a document of Reklaw going through a manic phase when he was off his meds. The line between typical member of society and being homeless is shown to be remarkably thin, especially when someone is dealing with mental illness. This comic rewards multiple readings simply because each page is so dense and filled with detail, scrawled jokes, background gags and references to New York. The city plays a huge role, given how unforgiving it is to the poor, but also because Reklaw went to the city to try and do business, even going to the weekly open tryout at The New Yorker. This comic represents a side of Reklaw I've never seen before. He's an artist whose comics are generally neat and ordered, hewing to strict grids and other formal constraints. Here, he's all over the place in spectacular fashion.

Systems In Flux: Comics from L.Nichols

Let's take a look at a big batch of minicomics from the talented L.Nichols.

Flocks (Chapter One) was published through Box Brown's Retrofit Comics, and as such, it's the most straightforward of these comics.  Flocks was done in Nichols' most naturalistic style, with the exception of how she portrays herself. As always, she is a rag doll with x-button eyes. This is a heartbreaking account of Nichols' upbringing in the South as a devout Christian who knew from a very young age that she was a lesbian. What's remarkable about this story is not that Nichols felt like a freak and an outcast, but that she doubled and later tripled down on being more devout in an effort to receive a miracle: to not be gay anymore. She goes through full immersion baptism, more church services, more bible study, etc but still feels the full weight of being queer. This is depicted with arrows, much like a physics problem (Nichols has a degree from MIT and frequently depicts human relationships in terms of physics equations). Of course, when she more or less has an innocent first kiss with another girl (in a playacting scenario), she is both thrilled and terrified, as the arrows pierce her ragdoll body. This isn't a screed against Christianity; indeed, Nichols notes that her faith carried her through the conflict in her own family and offered her some comfort against her feelings of alienation. Rather, this is a personal story that takes aim at a cultural breakdown that crushes the faithful much more than the faithful. It's told in a restrained, almost poetic manner.

Unsurprisingly, much of Nichols' work focuses on transformation, identity and changes in systems. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, she reminds us in one of her comics; it can only be transformed. Her adaptation of Tejal Rao's "The Shucker's Tale in her catch-all anthology Jumbly Junkery #11 is a good example of this, as it's a whimsical tale of a shucker who's an oyster whisperer of sorts, encouraging whole choruses of oyster singing despite his father's objections. Nichols turns to mythology as well in this issue, with tales of Penelope and Prometheus that get at their hidden perspectives: Penelope's pain and Prometheus' matter-of-factness through doubt. In the other stories, conflicts and relationships intertwine as Nichols' line is quite different, as she makes her characters marionettes with realistic heads but painted-on cheeks. She also has time to do a silly "Outlaw Dog" strip, which is pure, visceral fun as a post-apocalyptic, motorcycle riding anthropomorphic dog gets in a race and then blows shit up.

Input/Output and Free People get at the struggles and pressures of life and expectations. Her storytelling is far more elliptical here, as the former comic uses color to heighten the sort of conflicts we saw in Jumbly Junkery. Input/output refers to eating/excretion, but it also refers to the infusion of the soul and taking life, as well as the ways in which we all ultimately "become part of a larger system". The comic hints at our choices as humans in how we channel the energy we receive as part of a greater system, and how truly understanding our eventual fate might also transform our choices. This was Nichols' most beautiful, effective attempt at comics-as-poetry, heightened by her figure drawing, use of color and mix of realism and the grotesquely cartoony. Free People is a juxtaposition of The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini and images from the Free People store catalog. Nichols bends both of these sources to her general themes: pressure to conform, seeking freedom (often through radical means like escape), transformation. She turns the fashion model photographs into her cubism-inspired jigsaws (once again with painted-on cheeks that suggest both life and external manipulation). It's an interesting appropriation of other media for an artist who's produced some interesting results dabbling in comics-as-poetry. Nichols just started her own micropublishing concern, which is fitting considering how hard-working she is as an artist and how she's developed so quickly.