Thirty One Days Of CCS #23: Luke Howard and Penina Gal

Match, by Luke Howard. Every year, CCS sends out a comics pamphlet detailing the benefits of the school in a general way and specifically asking for donations. Howard, an administrator at the school and also a graduate, wrote this year's pamphlet for 2018. Unsurprisingly, it's funny and quirky, with its main concept being that giant hands from the sky often come to help us when needed. These "helping hands" later help cartoonists match up with "top-notch teachers" at CCS in addition to helping humanity at larger, spurring any number of theories as to what they actually are. Howard, never afraid to go meta, actually has a character posit the idea that the giant hands are a metaphor, which gets the character roundly ridiculed by his friends. At the very end, there's a pull-back that reveals that a grandpa was reading the story to his grandkids, who found it a "little...one-note". At the same time, Howard stays on mission as the kids ask "why didn't the cartoon school just come out and ask for donations directly?"--and then turn and look at the reader.

This is a bit of applied cartooning, to use the term championed by CCS founder James Sturm, but it's entirely in Howard's style. Howard is someone who can work in any style, but he's really come into his own over the last few years. He has his own take on the stripped-down figure style based on simple geometric shapes. His storytelling mixes utter sincerity with distancing irony at the same time, creating an absurd atmosphere that the reader must navigate on several levels. In this case, Howard directly addresses the reader in an attempt to ask for donations to the school, but the level of distancing in the comic also addresses the fact that doing so is humiliating. Throw in his usual, slightly pained sense of humor, and you have a pretty remarkable comic.

Drift, by Penina Gal. This continues Gal's more recent trend of doing more abstract, poetic comics. This one is built around swirls of color on the left side of the page and a four-panel grid on the right that's mostly just text. The overall effect is a rhythmic one, as patterns and colors rise and fall around the text. Gal writes about ADHD in this comic and makes the sage comic that the disorder is only pathological in a capitalistic society that demands focus on a particular task and actively discourages daydreaming. There's a sense of resentment that she has to take drugs and go to therapy for something that doesn't actively distress her; she's being forced to alter her brain in a way she doesn't want. It's also an example of a comic that I've seen a lot of lately, which is how to cope with living in Trump's America as part of a marginalized group, especially as a highly empathetic person The mix of anger and activism with calls for self-care is very much part of this, but (on brand) Gal drifts back to thinking about the hows and whys of her brain's function. In particular, she notes that her therapist posited the idea that her brain "processes tasks through emotion rather than deliberation." It's an interesting idea, focusing in on the executive functioning portion of the brain. Someone who processes information emotionally is susceptible to emotional burnout and overload, which is why the self-care aspects of the comic were so important. For a comic built on personal feelings and experiences, Gal outlines the mechanics of this empathy and its relationship with focus with a great deal of precision.

Thirty Days of CCS #4: Luke Howard, Steve Thueson, Dan Nott

After Luke Howard finished the emotionally devastating, formally challenging comic Our Mother, it made sense that for his next comic, he wanted to do something as a palate cleanser of sorts, something that wasn’t as draining. The comic turned out to be The Big Mystery Case (subtitled “A Crime Comedy”), which threw every trope and cliché’ imaginable from hard-boiled detective stories and creepy serial killer cases and reimagined them as a kind of easy-reader primer for kids. The result is hilarious, as Howard’s deliberately spare line leaves only basic storytelling scaffolding plus whatever visual jokes he wanted to throw in. There is inane repetition that starts at the beginning, as the detective gets a call that says “We need you for the big mystery case” and he says out loud, afterward, “They need me for the big mystery case”. After he finds a clue, he says to the cops, “Take this back to the lab and do lab things to it.” You get the idea. 

There are mentions of a dark past and a trail that leads to the awesome Bad Boy bar, where a guy with a Mohawk is wearing a skull-bedecked top that says “Crime Shirt”. At one point, the detective says “We can do this easy way or the hard way” and the bar dudes hilariously say “Oh, then I say we go with the easy way”, simultaneously calling out action clichés and subverting them. There’s a Mystery Cave, flashbacks, a memory of a memory of a partner eaten by a shark in the caves, a memory of another partner being killed in a unique manner by an eagle and the discovery of a second detective, with whom a reluctant partnership is formed.

The back half features an encounter with a jailed serial killer (ala Hannibal Lecter) for information and a final confrontation in a basement (“Our descent is a metaphor”) that leads to an anticlimax. Nothing else would have suited this narrative, really. Howard doesn’t draw distinct faces in this story and also uses deliberately awkward poses, with the main detective tending to hunch his shoulders forward. He’s identifiable mostly by his moustache, just as the other detective he meets is made distinct by her hair (and otherwise identical detective outfit). This comic is 132 pages of silly, complete with an inspirational, shoegazing ending with a surprise character. There’s even a fan letter written by the killer to his inspiration stuff in an “envelope” glued to the inside back cover. 

In the package for the comic, Howard threw in a second comic, The Little Mystery Case. It’s a send-up of his own send-up, as the detective finds a lost puppy, tries to squeeze out of his underground connections and accuses the Big Fat Boss of the crime. The end is inevitable and heartwarming, even if he did insult the Big Fat Boss (his name is Steve and he’s sensitive about his weight). Howard basically inserts a puppy into crime clichés and it slowly dawns on him that this doesn’t make much sense. Howard goes big on every page, as it’s a page per panel. He invites the reader to go as quickly as possible in reading the story, and the images don’t really encourage the eye to linger; Howard is careful to make his jokes quickly apparent. Howard is a funny cartoonist, and I’d welcome seeing variations on this formula in the future.

In Quest Mania, what Steve Thuesen does here can only be described as “crusty punk D&D adventures”. In the newest, full-color comic book (titled “The Swamp”), the unnamed adventuring duo have been hired to retrieve a crown from a tomb. They’re having all sorts of trouble: the male half of the duo’s ears are painfully ringing due to a show he saw a few days prior; the swamp isn’t even on their map, they are attacked by a monster, and they have their stuff stolen by a goblinoid creature. The guy is especially miffed when his mixtape he made for a girl gets stolen. When the creature leads them to the tomb, she speculates that he perhaps has a fetish, which sparks an argument. The genius of this comic is the way Thueson transfers the template of two crusty punks and the things they argue about and bond over to a magical fantasy-adventure world. Indeed, the transfer is surprisingly seamless. It helps that he’s equally adept at drawing monsters as he is punks; there’s no character or style clash on any of the pages. The pierced, schlubbily dressed punks just happen to be carrying huge swords and know how to use them.

In The Fastest Mile I Ever Ran, Thueson draws himself as a kind of punk duck in this story from high school. He establishes early on his generalized anger toward pretty much everyone around, but especially his homophobic and generally awful schoolmates. That rage wound up fueling him when it was time to run the mile in physical education, as he wound up doing a six minute mile--way ahead of his classmates. Of course, he also made the mistake of drinking an orange soda earlier in the day and nothing else, so his body--pushed to its limits-reacted accordingly by vomiting. The worst part of the story was him having to lay on the floor as other kids came in and then being forced by the janitor to clean it up. He's saved from the bell after working on this disgusting job for a while, but as the end of the story reveals, he learned nothing from it. Once again, Thueson's ability to draw disaffected punks in any setting, with attitude fully on display, is his greatest skill as a cartoonist.

Belling the Cat and Spy Blimp, by Dan Nott. Belling The Cat is a collection of three short stories, and it's a classic CCS move for a student to collect their student work in such a mini. Nott is graduating this year, and these comics show a cartoonist trying a number of different things. The first story, "9.11.01" uses the Ed Emberley simple-shape model (everything is either a circle, square, triangle, rectangle or oval) to relate his experience of 9/11 as a sixth grader. Using a 2 x 4 grid, it's odd now but made sense then that the teachers were trying to keep the event under wraps, but all it took was one student who had a doctor's appointment in the morning to rely this information. It's a comic that's interesting for its portrayal of cognitive dissonance on the part of the panicking adults, which bent the brains of the kids who were used to their authority figures being sure of everything that was going on. The Emberley style adds to that sense of a kid drawing the story and being unable to capture the complexity of an emotionally fraught situation.

The best story was Nott's adaptation of "Belling The Cat", based on an old folk tale. What I liked most about it was Nott's delicate, cartoony line in service of depicting a genteel mouse society menaced by the random violence of cats. It's a great story because it's about the way an idea can go a long way without anyone closely examining the viability of its premise. In other words: "Who bells the cat?" "Election Day" is about the 2016 election and suggests that there was a poor contingent of non-racist white people who voted for Trump because life was hard, his rhetoric had appeal, his racist friends liked him, and he didn't like being called a racist by someone outside a polling station. Nott tries to build up this character as reasonable and likable (with the light red wash being a subtle signal of what kind of voting area he was in). I'm not sure if Nott was setting this guy up as a good guy who got goaded by an asshole into voting for Trump, or simply a weak-willed person who got pushed into voting by Trump by the more passionate around him, despite his better judgment. Either way, considering the number of white people (and men in particular) who voted for Trump nationwide, I didn't find the strip's conclusions (such as they were) to be all that enlightening. The way Nott slipped between naturalistic drawing (the main character in particular) and the cartoonishness of the more extreme characters was clever.

Nott's work was much tighter overall on the whimsical, weird Spy Blimp. The first chapter is all about "Fat Albert", an aerostat (a stationary blimp) docked near Key West in Florida. Its purpose was unclear, although it was eventually revealed to be a spy blimp that also transmitted US TV to Cuba. It also had a tendency to have its anchor rope snap under high winds from time to time, and Nott depicts two fishermen tying it to their boat so as not to let it get away. Fat Albert had other ideas, taking the men and their boat into the sky. Incredibly, it was shot down by the Air Force, putting the poor fishermen into the ocean. It's a wonderfully absurd series of images in this nine-panel grid. The second story is an awesomely cynical one about a defense contractor trying to unload the JLENS (Fat Albert, essentially) as an anti-cruise missile deterrent. Its testing disastrous (causing power outages thanks to it getting away), the snake-oil salesman contractor pitched it to the senator for surveillance purposes.

 The third story reveals the panopticon-like qualities of the aerostat. Even if its cameras were broken, it was enough to make the people think that they worked to change their behavior. Designed to sniff out potential bombers, it wasn't hard to make the leap to categorizing any kind of odd behavior as threatening and in need of immediate termination. The differences in perception based on the degree of surveillance, violence and colonialism they're subjected to are depicted as bleakly humorous, as the cheers from the Afghans when they shot down their aerostat compared with the quirkly South Floridian bohmemians was telling. This is a smart, well-paced comic that concentrates on visual payoffs but also provides some key decorative qualities as well for balance.

Thirty-One Days of CCS #25: Luke Howard

Luke Howard has always been a remarkably skilled cartoonist whose interest in formal experimentation has always made his comics quite interesting. His comics have always been more than just excuses for formal pyrotechnics, as he's often explored issues relating to identity and the ways in which social pressures and expectations affect its construction. Howard has really started to hit his stride and has moved beyond his influences in the last year or so, as his 2016 output featured two of the best comics of the year.

Talk Dirty To Me is the perfect confluence of artist and publisher. Published by design wiz Chris Pitzer of AdHouse Books, this is a collection of a serial originally published in the very good Maple Key Comics anthology. It's a comic about identity, shame, sexuality, agency and the essential question: what should I do with my life? The story follows Emma Barns, who has just moved to the big city (unnamed, but presumably New York) with her husband because he's just got a new job there. The simple plot summary for the book is that out of curiosity, she takes a job as a phone-sex line worker. That plot provides the structure for Howard's real goal: allowing Emma to explore her past with regard to her sexuality and then project what might happen as a result of taking this job. Howard flips back and forth in time and intentionally blurs the line between truth and wish-fulfillment in a very clever way, especially since he uses some misdirection early on to make the reader think the story was going to head in a particular direction. The design is incredibly clever, with the French flaps lifting up phone receivers to reveal sex talk underneath--with the inside front cover being the call center side with her dialogue and the inside back cover being the customer's side, with his dialogue.

Emma's crippling flaw is a lack of confidence in herself and a corresponding lack of self-esteem and shame. She's ashamed of her sex drive and also ashamed and conflicted with regard not only to her love of pornography, but the also the kind of porn she watches (sexual humiliation/BDSM). Though it's never stated, it's clear that she initially takes the phone sex job because it not only plays into her obsession with sex, it gives her a lane into finding out exactly what she's good at and passionate about. She realizes at the job interview when she takes control of a play-acted "call" and realizes that she shed her lack of confidence and jumped right into the fantasy role of a dominant sexual figure.

Fantasy is a key element of the book. There are all sorts of fantasy sequences, like Emma transforming into a nude, conventionally sexy woman as she's doing the interview and has the interviewer in the palm of her hand. Upon arriving in the city where she knows no one, there's a fantasy sequence where a man in the street grows to giant size to talk to her outside the window of her apartment, answering all her questions about the city and what she should do with herself. That latter segment leads her to perhaps the central conflict of the book: asking herself to list "things I'm good at". She can't come up with anything, so when the interviewer said "I didn't expect you to be good at this", it clicked for her. In her imagination, this was the key that would unlock everything else. It would give meaning to her personal narrative of shame, because she would be able to write about it and share it with others as she related her career as a phone sex worker. Many of the scenes don't have panels, which helps the free-form and fluid nature of much of the book, as events simply slip into each other without rigid time and space restrictions. The pink wash is subtly lurid without drawing too much attention to itself.

We see her in the future with a best-selling book about the experience and an assured voice talking about all of the conflicts she had had with regard to sex on NPR. As we keep flashing forward, the details start to get and more absurd, as she becomes a celebrity, a late night talk show guest, an adviser to Congress, a potential visitor to the International Space Station...and in the most crushing segment of all, her husband wants her as much as she wants him. The book then collapses to the key event: her first phone call. In her imagination, she's nervous but does a great job, and this moment of total control is liberating and powerful for her. In her mind, it's the first step to actualizing her dreams and starting her new life. The reality is that she does indeed do a great job...but her first customer is a recovering sex addict who is relapsing with her and starts sobbing on the phone. It's an especially crushing scene because she knows all too well what sexual shame feels like, and because she's a good person she'll have no part in perpetuating it. The last part of the book is an interchange between Emma getting a job at the local ice cream place and a memory of being slut-shamed by her so-called friends after essentially being goaded into giving a guy a blow-job. It's poignant for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which again is not wanting to be any part of making someone else feel sexual shame. It ends with her giving a big, awkward monologue in front her new boss about not being a risk-taker, about not being an empowered person. One gets the sense, however, that self-awareness is the first key to self-development, and while she didn't get the narrative she wanted with this opportunity, Emma is someone who will hopefully find a way to tell her story eventually.

Our Mother, published by Retrofit,  is a much shorter comic, but it has about five times the formal innovation and complexity of Talk Dirty To Me. It's a brilliant comic that addresses an incredibly difficult subject through humor and extended visual metaphors that serve as their own perfect little narratives. Howard broke out every formal trick in his toolbox to tell an autobiographical story about what it was like to grow up with a mother who had severe depression and was subject to frequent panic attacks. The inside front cover is a 4x4 grid where every image is of a crudely-drawn toy car that Howard's mother made and it establishes what's at stake here. Howard then whips the reader through multiple narratives done in multiple styles, each based around a different metaphor for mental illness and/or living with a person with mental illness. It opens with his mother's parents meeting a shadowy noir figure in order to get her to give his mom a mental illness, because it's "a family thing". In the most off-the-cuff and banal way possible, they rattle off a list of horrific symptoms that she would experience for years. What makes the strip funny and heartbreaking is that obviously no parent would deliberately wish something like that on their child, yet genetics frequently leads to these cruel outcomes.

The next segment sees Howard's father leaving the family in a manner that's brutal and heartless toward both of them, yet Howard doesn't deny the truth of her total non-responsiveness. It's just become his problem now, only he's just a kid being put in a position of caretaker at far too young an age. The art changes in the next segment, which begins a fantasy quest as Howard's mother is now a young girl whom only he understands, rendered in something close to the Adventure Time-style of drawing: simple but stylized figures, lots of odd angles, big eyes, etc. This segment starts off with a little magical realism but soon goes whole-hog into fantasy. There is a circular quality to the narrative that implies that getting his mom "home" (i.e., healthy) will always be happening. The next segment takes place in the future, where humanity lives in giant robots called Mothers. Howard zeroes in on one Mother, where the pilot is desperately trying to fix the robot while being distracted by an annoying, useless guy named Kevin who won't shut up. This is at once the most hilarious and most visceral of Howard's metaphors, especially after the pilot keeps killing Kevin, but he just won't stay dead. Kevin keeps coming back to annoy, distract and otherwise keep the pilot from fixing the ship. If that voice (depression) would just shut up for a minute, the pilot could think and make Mother functional again. The humor of this metaphor is milked by spacing out the joke throughout the book, and returning to it each time is a fun reward for the reader instead of being repetitive.

The final narrative is truly the most heartbreaking, as a scientist is trying to perfect a new antidepressant using a gorilla as a test subject. We first see this from the point of view of the scientist, who is reluctant to use the gorilla as that test subject but has no other choice. Later, the story is told from the point of view of the gorilla, whose behavior and mood shift wildly depending on which version of the drug she receives. Howard completely nails the almost random nature of how different people respond to different drugs. It can take years to find the right combination, and then things can change and drugs can stop working. The fantasy story is the most light-hearted in the book, but it actually hews the closest to reality in a number of ways. When a child has to take care of their parent a lot of the time, it changes their relationship. That's reflected in the Howard stand-in going on an adventure with a younger version of his mother, as it's effectively two children being together. The quest to get this younger version home is whimsical, involving swords, riddles, monkeys, an evil overlord, disguises, etc. It's precisely the kind of thing a kid might make up for a quest, but it ends with them traveling back in time to his mom's house when she was a kid--she was finally home. That allowed for some real introspection, as Howard recalls the strange memories of trying to engage his mother, of her panic attacks that necessitated trips to the hospital in an ambulance.

Howard knew there was no conclusion to what was a series of metaphors, so he amusingly transcribed a conversation he had with his mom after he had finished most of the book. He used a series of family portraits in fumetti style to help fill in some gaps on how and when she eventually got better. That's when Howard drops the bomb that the same depression started for him at exactly the same age as everyone in his mother's family: 28. The cheerful innocence of the photos in contrast to the painful subject is really disconcerting, but it does make for a powerfully strong contrast to the rest of the book. In the course of the interview, when she asks him how he's going to end the story now that he has this information, he simply replies "with, like, a cartoon hot dog farting". And that's exactly what happens after an epilogue to the fantasy portion of the book, when Howard gets sent back to the future and his mother reconnects with her parents on Christmas day. Howard is all about deflection, so on the inside back cover, when he talks about the specifics of his depression, the only image we see for sixteen panels is that farting hot dog. While absurd, it gets across the point that life is absurd, random and unfair. There's something wrong in Howard's brain, just as there was in his mother's brain and grandmother's brain and grandfather's brain, and there was nothing he could do to stop it once his time came except finally learn to get help when it became obvious he needed it. While it may sound strange to say, this is at once both the most entertaining and most harrowing account of mental illness that I've read. I've rarely read a book whose formal pyrotechnics blended in so seamlessly with the themes of the story.

Thirty Days of CCS #29: Irene 3

Irene is currently the best of all the CCS-related anthologies. The editorial crew of Andy Warner, DW and Dakota McFadzean is not only a talented group in their own right as artists, they also seem to have a great sense of how to bring each of their aesthetic approaches to bear in the anthology in a manner that produces a cohesive final product instead of a bunch of stories that clash. For example, DW's scribble aesthetic and repurposing of text for decorative reasons is in line with the old Fort Thunder group, so it only makes sense that Leif Goldberg should contribute a story here. In "Newton's Mist", we see a figure battling against the forces of physics in a magical forest; though just two pages, the images are primitive and powerful. DW himself takes on what I like to call the Mat Brinkman spot in the anthology: creating a series of related interstitial images. In this case, it's scrawled, funny images of a band called "Veronica and the Good Guys". Some of the drawings are tiny and fine, while others are blown way up in order to give the reader a sense of the thickness of the line. Indeed, the essence of DW's drawings is to constantly remind readers that they are drawings, that they're made out of ink.

Andy Warner's influence can be felt with the presence of Barack Rima, a Libyan cartoonist and filmmaker whose dream comic "Nap Before Noon" is a fascinating trip not only through his own subconscious, but through the cultural and political landscape of Libya. The shadowy, hand-constructed look of each page certainly bears the mark of his cinematic influence, yet he's interested in the single, striking image above all else on page after page. This story held down the middle portion of the book, and it served as a fascinating change of pace, resembling nothing else in the book. Warner's "Boatlife", by contrast, is a slice-of-life story told in his typical naturalistic style. Relating two teenage girls hanging out in a cemetery, it's the sort of "nothing happens" story that's nonetheless full of crucial emotional beats and events that create lasting memories.

McFadzean's closest aesthetic compatriot in this comic is Sophie Goldstein, whose "Edna II" I reviewed here. Like McFadzean, Goldstein's storytelling is crisp, clean and assured, which allows her to go off on flights of fancy or use cartoony figures in a story that is otherwise naturalistically told. McFadzean drew DW's story "Ten Minutes' Break", a fascinating and funny workplace strip about three creatures essentially dealing with creation myths and alien civilizations. However, it's entirely from the point of view of working stiffs taking a break from their otherwise endless labors. McFadzean's every bit as good drawing fantastic characters and weird scenery as he is drawing average people and the plains of Saskatchewan.

Certainly, there are creators present here who cross lines. Alabaster's "Gin" combines the fanciful, beautiful and cartoony art with a story that's emotionally painful and raw, all wrapped in a quirky, decoratively interesting package. Jess Worby's "The Sasquatch In Brooklyn" has a heavily-shaded, ramshackle aesthetic that fits right in with DW, but it's easy to see how its humor and characterizations fit in with the other editors. The same is true for Mark Connery's "Whots It Mean", bringing more of that ragged art that brings a bawdy sense of humor to the proceedings. I would guess that the origin of this fused editorial aesthetic is that the CCS experience is one that encourages artists to understand and appreciate the work of artists whose approaches are radically different from their own. I would also guess that the editors deliberately sought out work that combined different aspects of their own aesthetic interests.

The stories by Luke Howard and Ben Horak are other good examples of this. Howard's "Dance Yourself To Death" is perhaps his most original, best-realized story to date. Using a slightly flat line and character design style, this story of the dark ways in which artists gain inspiration has a powerful payoff at the story's climax and then another shock in its denouement. In an anthology filled with downbeat and often disturbing stories, it was the perfect capper for the book. Horak's "What're Fiends For?" is a more broadly comic story, but no less dark than Howard's work. It's the ultimate example of a well-meaning but utterly destructive friend. Horak impressively manages to up the ante of menace in a rhythm not unlike that of a Looney Tunes cartoon, only with a viscerally disturbing ending.

It's likely that Kramer's Ergot and perhaps Non are significant influences on Irene. Both of those anthologies were fueled in part by Fort Thunder's influence and contributors; Goldberg himself is a KE alumnus, of course. It's certainly not a straight copy, but rather an influence in the sense that the editors wanted certain kinds of aesthetic approaches to comics to be present in the anthology, and once selected, they wanted those artists to have total freedom. For example, Dan Rinylo's "Find 'Sleepy'" is less a story than a reader activity, as they must find the one "sleepy" ghost on page after page of other ghosts. Cleverly, the pages are designed to make the reader's eye explore a space in much the same way a Brian Ralph or Brian Chippendale story might, only it could easily appear in Highlights or the old Nickelodeon magazines as well. Irene continues to be an anthology that's greater than the sum of its parts, a statement that's all the more impressive when one considers how individually excellent many of the stories are.

Thirty Days of CCS #27: Luke Howard

Luke Howard is an artist with a considerable amount of talent who is rapidly cycling through an array of influences that reflect his rendering skill and sharp sense of design. To be sure, Chris Ware's combination of precision and emotional vulnerability can be found on these pages. Gabby Schulz's witheringly cynical point of view and grotesque character design may be seen on others. The single biggest influence seems to be that of the angular and colorful design qualities of Lilli Carre, an influence that's even clear with the level of ambiguity Howard seems to enjoy inserting into his narratives.

Junior is his longest work in this set of comics I received, and it's like a weird Ware/Schulz matchup. It concerns the titular character on a trip to visit an aunt he never knew he had (he was adopted by a lesbian couple) to sign over the estate of the father he never knew. The issues of having a missing father and the painful attempts to make any kind of connection with a relative obviously suggest Ware, but the hilariously awkward but strangely self-aware and lovable nature of Junior suggest Schulz or even Peter Bagge. Junior, with a wispy blonde mustache and the sort of ballcap and shorts that a ten year old might wear instead of a grown man, is the sort of character incapable of not saying every single thing on his mind. Ranging from asking another man to hold his hand during a plane take-off because he was scared to vocalizing the real tension between himself and his aunt, things get delightfully weird when he starts a dialogue with a cardboard box. That bit of magical realism is never explained, yet it made total sense in the context of the story. Junior a sad, funny comic that punctures its pathos with weirdness and tinges its humor with longing and despair, and this dynamic plays out both in terms of the story and the illustrations.

Howard's also published a trio of flip-comics, containing two stories apiece. She Me You/Goldfish Day is a good illustration of the different sort of styles Howard works in. "She Me You" is a heavily Carre'-influence story about a man who confesses his attraction to another woman to his wife, which causes her to move to the ceiling, away from his life and other people entirely. With characters that possess sharp, angular features and a blue wash as part of another magical realist setting, one can sense Carre's similar preference for stories about alienation. The main difference is that Howard's approach is slightly warmer and more direct. "Goldfish Day" features a more tremulous line and character design that's closer to Joseph Lambert. Indeed, it's about young girls experiencing the joys of goldfish ownership (and camaraderie in general), until one girl's goldfish simply doesn't die like the others do. That sense of survivor's guilt and rejection by her friends as a result is presented as a traumatic event, yet one that the reader can't help laugh out loud at.

Forms/Copy shows off two more sides of Howard. "Copy" is about two small magical beings, one constantly yapping and complaining about the other's general perfectness. As they walk through a forest that's at once gritty-looking and clearly shaded with computer effects, Howard keeps ramping up the annoying qualities of the one character, until he's given a surreal comeuppance that wouldn't seem out of place in a comic by Brian Chippendale. "Forms" returns to the more angular side of Howard, coupled with that slightly cartoony character design, as it tells the tale of two men, ignorance, fear and the cyclical destruction of beauty as a result. Howard frequently writes about characters who put themselves into difficulties because they are unwilling or unable to perceive their own mistakes and tendencies; he punishes them because they punish themselves.

Finally, How To Be Shapes/Best Seller is Howard's most design-heavy comic in terms of how the design affects the narrative. "How To Be Shapes" involves a curious toddler who wonders about what happens to the blocks he pushes into a cube toy once they enter, and so magically squeezes himself inside. However crossing over changes him into a spectral creature that slips in and out of people--eating their food, seeing what they see, etc until they die of starvation. Howard's use of color is crucial in telling this story, especially in terms of the transition from child to creature. "Best Seller" is a love story between two books at a store, one a work of historical fiction and the other a sci-fi novel. It has a funny, strange ending that makes sense in context with the rest of the story. Both stories, which rely so much on color, have sort of a NoBrow aesthetic to them, as though they were first cousins to Jon McNaught or Luke Pearson. Howard's understanding of how to use color as a form of narrative is every bit as sophisticated as theirs. These comics are funny, clever and technically accomplished, but I still get the sense that Howard is rooting around and dabbling in a variety of styles as he endeavors to find his own voice. It's clear that that voice will have a degree of sweetness to it but an even larger hunk of cruelty, cynicism and grotesqueness to it. It may also be the case that he never settles on a particular visual style, instead preferring to match his art to his subject matter. In either case, his work ethic and chops both indicate that he's a cartoonist well worth watching.

New Faces From CCS: Leake, Malig, Onorato, Steinberg, Dukes, Howard, Almendrala

This column gives me the pleasure of examining work by students from the Center for Cartoon Studies from the classes of 2012 and 2013, artists whose work is (mostly) entirely new to me.

All Rumors Are True, by Laurel Lynn Leake.Of all the comics mentioned here, Leake's features my favorite cover. The sneering, lipsticked figure whose hair obscures her eyes issues forth pink, pixelated pronouncements while the title looks like it was drawn in red lipstick.This comic follows Scratch, a "tiny little legend in the local drag scene" who is cast by a "metareligious hallucinogenic radical queerotica" video company Pansexual Pantheon. In a truly inspired idea, Leake posits this outfit as one that casts actors as gods and figures from a variety of religious pantheons from across history and has them fuck each other, all told through the details and history of those belief systems. Scratch is cast as the Shinto goddess Amaterasu and Leake tells the story of her experience through a series of behind-the-scenes clips, internet commentary interspersed as actual narrative, and bits and pieces of the film itself. She jams every panel with cartoony character interaction (her drawings of the zaftig actress who plays the goddess Uzume are especially eye-catching), whirling decorative flourishes, eye-grabbing text that has an almost visceral impact, or some combination thereof. This comic is successful because it's so highly stylized, a pure distillation of glamor, excess and sheer presence.

Stonewall #1, by Sasha Steinberg. This is a work of historical fiction about the famous Stonewall riots that sparked the LGBT movement in the US. Steinberg reminds us that at the start of the movement in particular, there was a strong emphasis on the "T" (trans) portion of the movement that got lost for a long time and has only within the last five to ten years become an accepted part of the overall rights movement (after considerable struggle). Steinberg draws this full-color comic in the style of golden age cartoonist Tarpe Mills, whose Miss Fury strip was very much a mix of drag disguise (for fighting crime) and fashion. It's a genius move to depict trans folk in that glamorous style, and I especially liked Steinberg's notion to create a fictional character (a 14-year-old trans person who called herself Miss Venus--especially clever given her resemblance to the golden age Bill Everett character called Venus) to go along with real figures like Sylvia Rivera. Venus is the sort of innocent new to a scene that allows veterans to play off of, a catalyst that causes the other characters to have something to react to. Steinberg skillfully creates an enormous amount of tension and drama considering that all of the action in this issue takes place in a cramped hotel room. The people in the room, he's careful to depict, were not saints or heroes. There were conflicts, jealousies and a frequent sense that many of them only associated with each other because they were all in the same boat.

The Stonewall riots were born out of frustration above all else, and Steinberg amps up that level of frustration and weariness in the form of people like Rivera, Ivan Valentin and Tammy Novak. Years of random and indiscriminate police raids and persecution made living and expressing themselves acts of boldness, even if being bold was less on their agenda than simply being. Venus represents the power of youth and hope that fuels every movement, the younger generation that has yet to be jaded and demands more. She's the focus of this first issue and so the figures here are representative of how Venus sees the world and the scene: glamorous, tinged with a hint of danger and excitement. Steinberg has really done his research here and transformed facts into a living, breathing story in a clever and innovative manner. Given that this is part one of ten, I'm eager to see how the series proceeds and what other visual representations he chooses to use.

Anything Is Anything, by April Malig. This is a bit of comics-as-poetry that takes the reader through Malig's sensation of falling as she tries to go to sleep and extends that metaphor through a number of experiences in her life, especially those that involve relationships. Malig has a strong sense of composition and design and works hard to make each page a poetic construct of is own and does a nice job of using blacks to create a dizzying sort of dream world. Her figurework is a bit stiff, which renders some of the key scenes lacking the kind of emotional power that I believe Malig intends. In particular, her use of gesture and the way her figures interact is stilted in a way that draws unwelcome attention from the reader's eye. I think this is simply a matter of experience, and that her figures will fit better with the rest of her graphics as she continues to draw, because otherwise it's obvious that she displays a great deal of nuance and emotional sensitivity as a creator. I especially liked her lines about communication, like "Words don't always hold, if they are even caught at all. It's hard not to feel like we're all just thumping glass upon glass". The image here are two people in bubble space helmets, frowning as they try to communicate. If anything, I'd like to see Malig go a bit more abstract on the page, breaking down figures more as shapes and seeing how that works with her strong decorative and design sense.

Chimps In Space #1-3, by Donna Almendrala. These three comics are Almendrala's way of exploring genre stories using the titular chimp characters, mixing extreme silliness with a genuine affection for each genre. The first issue is an outer space story where we eventually learn that the captain of the ship (who is narrating the story) is a complete idiot. It actually is less of a space adventure than a locked-door murder mystery whose resolution is also quite silly, especially when the captain tries to tack on a Star Trek-style moralistic message at the end. The second issue follows two of the crewmembers on a planet where they engage in Western-style hijinx; the beginning of the story is taken from an anthology story Almendrala did a while back. This issue was the most forgettable of the three, as it was really all over the place narratively and in terms of tone. I liked the third issue best, which featured the adventures of a dead crewman in the afterlife who is recruited to join Hermes, Ulysses, Hercules and Achilles to go on an adventure. He is reluctant to join this motley crew, which is why generates both narrative friction and humor. Almendrala really seems in her comfort zone with this comic, easily navigating fine details regarding mythology while reworking them for comedic purposes. There's an easily-detected Ernie Bushmiller influence in her figure drawing and use of spotting blacks, making each page a pleasure to read and giving each image a certain comedic charge. Even before she sets up a single gag, I found myself being amused by the figures themselves. I'd love to see her take on more mythological stories in a comedic tone because of the fluidity of that third issue.

Rockall #1, by Amelia Onorato. This is the first issue of what is shaping up to be a fantasy/romance story set in an island off of Ireland. We meet Tommy Kagan, a young man who has purchased property on the island is rowed out there at the beginning of the story. He quickly discovers two things: like all small communities, the island is a place where your business is everyone's business; and there are two inhabitants in the house he has bought. One is a woman accused of being a "selkie", a seal who takes human form who can be captured by a human who happens to see her dance. She can only be freed if she finds her skin after her human master has stolen it. Onorato wisely plays coy as to whether the woman is actually a selkie, though she is indeed searching for something and is trapped on the island after her husband mysteriously died in a fishing accident. That's an event the islanders blamed on her ("calling up the sea"), sparking mutual distrust and loathing. This is obviously a groundwork-laying issue, but it's one that's well-structured and built in part on a patois that is at once distinctive but not confusing. One gets a real sense of time and place very quickly in this comic. Onorato's line is simple, cartoony and expressive. The comic did cry out for color, however; a light green wash or even some kind of blue-green duotone would have looked much better than the grey wash used on a number of pages. I'm quite curious to see how the story proceeds.

"All Coons Look Alike To Me": The Life of Ernest Hogan, Father of Ragtime, by Luke Howard. In dealing with racism and the realpolitik of exploiting one's race for profit at a price, Howard manages to use a lot of highly emotionally charged images with a thorough degree of sensitivity and context in telling the story of musician Ernest Hogan. This book is told in black and red (two colors that wind up having considerable significance in the story) with single-page panels meant to emulate silent movies, complete with full pages devoted to dialogue or narration. Howard depicts Hogan's tale as one of a devil's bargain in an era where choices were few. There's a sense of joy and triumph early in the story as Hogan first hears and then later develops the musical form that would come to be known as Ragtime: melodic, upbeat, exciting music dependent upon the piano as its driving force. When he finds he can't sell his music to anyone (and white people in particular, because they're the ones with the money), he happens upon a minstrel show and decides to combine ragtime with minstrel show imagery, all in an effort to amuse white audiences.

He writes the title song, which is an immediate smash hit that trades in on white stereotypes about African-Americans, and immediately becomes rich and famous. Of course, this doesn't earn him actual respect from caucasians, who take it upon themselves to repeat and laugh at the racist imagery he celebrates while they're hanging out with him. More to the point, when fellow black folk stare at him with a mixture of disdain and deep disappointment, it causes him to create something more uplifting, "something the next generation can look up to". But it's too late, as he's locked into being a minstrel show man for life. There's a powerful scene where Hogan has trouble getting off the blackface and red lip makeup he uses for shows and has a nightmare that white men wearing minstrel masks chop off his own face and replace it permanently with a grinning mask. The last chapter shows him dying of tuberculosis (the red blood on the white handkerchief showing it all), finding a black man playing piano in a bar and being invited to play with him. Howard sides with Hogan in this question: if someone makes a devil's bargain, do you blame the person for being naive or the devil for being evil? In this case, Hogan got what he wanted--fame, success, money and simply a chance to play a new kind of music. The price he paid was severe, but he could never go back after establishing himself, even though he desperately wanted to. The stereotyped, grinning black imagery that Howard employs here is even more powerful than the hateful words--and Howard doesn't hold back from depicting it exactly as it was, from showing just how white folks saw black folks. It reminds me a of a quote from Kyle Baker's Why I Hate Saturn: "Black music is in, black culture is in, but black people will never be in." It's a phenomenon that while not as nakedly racist as it was in Hogan's day, continues to persist in the overall culture (cf Robert Townsend's film Hollywood Shuffle). Howard is successful in evoking the aesthetics of the day without for a moment indulging in nostalgia in a book that is provocative, intelligent and striking to look at..

Comics Cardigan, by Rachel Dukes. Dukes is no newcomer to comics, after having edited and published a few music-related anthologies (Side A and Side B) as well as operating a small-scale comics distro. Going to CCS, I'm guessing, is a way to settle down and work on her own chops. Her Comics Cardigan package certainly displays her skill as an editor and publisher in terms of packaging and all-around attractiveness as an art object. A cardboard sweater snugly holds all sorts of little treasures. Let's unpack them one by one:

* "Hello Sweetie", a promotional notebook for her new mixtapecomics.com website. There's an attractive, single-tone screenprinted cover.

* A priority mail sticker-stamp with the Mixtape Comics symbol screenprinted on it, with the motto "No worries. just keep drawing."

* An 8 page mini called Adventure Story. Done in the style of Ed Emberley (he of the simple, geometric how-to-draw books), this is a cute story about a cat that goes overseas to try to rescue its beloved teapot, only to find a surprise.

* Frankie's Busy Day, a 32 page full-color mini aimed at kids, about a confused cat unsure of why all her toys were being taken away by her people, until she is taken to a new apartment. The very simple line (drawn on a computer, perhaps?) is nonetheless expressive, and the use of color makes the characters pop off the page.

* A 20-page mini consisting of one-page autobio strips, process pages, and an excerpt from a longer ongoing series that seems to be an intense family/high school drama.

It's easy to tell that Dukes has a strong work ethic and is constantly compelled to not only create nice-looking comics and zines, but to get them out to the public. What is not clear to me is what sort of cartoonist she is at this point. None of this is related to her first-year thesis project, for example, and I get the sense that her "real" work tends to be in the naturalistic style she displays in "Primary", her ongoing series.Reading the Comics Cardigan package certainly made me want to find out more about her cartooning, but I only wish there was something here that I could have really sank my teeth into. That aside, her children's book was really well-done and contained a number of moments of sly humor.