Minis: C.Browning, M.J. Alvarez, M.Pearson & M.Hawkins

Grey Fug, by Chris Browning. This is less a comic than it is a series of captioned illustrations, detailing Browning's struggle with depression. Each single-page illustration is crammed either with detail, spotted blacks or dense cross-hatching. The conceit of the comic is explaining his depression to his two beloved cats, and there's a sense in which each panel represents a different window, a different look into his mind. He even views each of his cats' personalities as analogous to his own, with an older one with a cynical kind of tough love and the other with constant, wide-eyed enthusiasm. Taking them on this tour also brought on echoes of Dante being led by Virgil through the circles of hell, as each layer of depression is more difficult than the next to process. Browning takes us through mental clutter, self-recrimination over unfinished projects, deep regrets, and self-loathing (especially with regard to body image and comfort eating).

Browning is mindful enough to recognize his positive aspects, but is also aware that things can go downhill with no warning, thanks to both anxiety and his Asperger's syndrome, which means that of his neurological wiring is off-kilter to begin with. Browning identifies a huge key in combating depression: understanding that both its biggest catalyst and fuel is not just isolation, but also the idea that there is no one out there to reach out to. The comic demonstrates just how he reaches out, and how that gives him hope each time he falls into that "grey fug". There's a powerful sense of reaching out on each of the pages as well; he's telling a secret on himself, which is often a key aspect of negotiating the isolation urge. The comic is a literal demonstration that he has nothing to hide while simultaneously providing a path for him to tread when he's looking for a way out.

Hypnospiral Comics #8, by M. Jacob Alvarez. This is a series of single-panel gag comics, with Alvarez using an extremely heavy line weight for all of his drawings. It's a little distracting at times, as his gags don't have a lot of room to breathe in some of his selections here. His three panel-strips are similarly cramped thanks to dense line weights, but there's no doubt that he has solid ideas and knows how to match his drawings with his concepts. That is, he doesn't "draw funny" so much as his gags land because he's skillfully able to nail his ideas on the page. For example, one of the best gags was that of two t-rexes. One was obviously old because of his dialogue, cane and checkered cap, and the other young because of his baseball cap. However, the real gag was that the older one was standing and the younger one was bent over, which is funny because that crouch is the newer, but more scientifically correct, understanding of how the T-Rex carried itself. There's another good gag about a hero-swap between Frodo Baggins and Conan the Barbarian, and just how badly that would have gone. Alvarez has solid comedic and cartooning chops. All he needs now is to give his drawings a little more room and perhaps cut back on his line weights just a tad.

Long Necked Bird 1, by Marc Pearson. Pearson and Michael Hawkins (below) make up Melbourne, Australia's Glom Press. They're a Risograph operation that makes lovely comics. Pearson's comic features the titular, silent bird who is an outcast with his own fellow birds but is friends with a frog. The frog comes up with a personal helicopter as an invention, so he can fly like his friend. Later, the bird sees a huge, bizarre creature that he later realizes could yield a reward. Pearson really goes to town with the Riso, using a different color on nearly every page to help express mood and time. The story itself is just the beginning of what is clearly a much longer saga, but there's an anxious sweetness to it that offers push and pull for the reader.

The Nap and Secret Song, by Michael Hawkins. Hawkins combines bigfoot cartooning with bizarre, highly sexualized shapes and psychedelia. The results look familiar but divorced from any one influence in particular, as Hawkins' voice is at once folksy and dreamy. Secret Song asks the question of what forces set us in motion? Are they chemical? Supernatural? Something else? The Nap similarly a mix of the sensuous and the existential, as a young woman coming home from work goes to sleep and ponders the implications of that state of unconsciousness, the way it makes her feel afterward ("like the debris from a glacier") and its ultimate connection to death. Hawkins sticks with a single color for this comic, but he's all over the place in Secret Song, with oranges, purples and golds that almost look embossed. He goes a bit over the top with color in that comic, to the point where it nearly obliterates his line in several places. It also distracts from the storytelling and nearly erases some of the lettering. Still, one can see the sheer enthusiasm at the possibilities that the Riso gives to tell a story, and it only makes sense to test those limits. It didn't work in this case, but there were still a number of interesting images and effects that I'd love to see repeated later.

Minicomics Round-Up: Guerra/Diaz, Taylor, Sikoryak, Alvarez, Purins

Rotland Dreadfuls #10: Sadistic Comics, by R.Sikoryak. Sikoryak is the greatest of all style mimics, and his mash-ups of classic literature and comics never fail to amuse. This comic from Ryan Standfest's Rotland Press is a mash-up of The Marquis de Sade's Justine and William Moulton Marston/Harry Peter's Wonder Woman. Using the covers inspired by the 1940s comics, Sikoryak hilariously skims the plot of Justine, transplanting the many terrors she faced into the type of S&M follies that Wonder Woman fell into. Considering That Marston was fascinated by S&M and bondage in particular (hence Wonder Woman constantly getting tied up), this pairing was low-hanging fruit as far as Sikoryak's mash-ups go. That said, it was the details that made it so funny, down to the chicken on "Just Justine's" bodice (symbolic of France) rather than the American eagle, as well as fleur-de-lis instead of stars on her costume. It would have been nice to have seen this in glorious color, but Sikoryak nails so many other details (his ability to match lettering styles in particular has always astounded me) that it scarcely matters.

Berries, by Whit Taylor.This is a lovely and weird encounter between the legendary Jersey Devil and a ruined stockbroker out to lose himself out in the woods. While the usual caveats apply to Taylor's art (the backgrounds in particular are rough), this is still quite a moving comic because of her focus on facial expressions. Even though one of the faces is that of a monstrous, dragon-like creature, Taylor makes sure that to let the reader know that it's a sad, lonely creature who could express kindness and experience camaraderie if only given a chance--especially since it speaks perfect English. This story is really a mutual expression and expression of despair and how breaking out of isolation is one of the few ways to get through it. The genre trappings really only add to that sense of despair, as the ridiculousness of the Devil's story is given a counterbalance of poignancy by the end of the comic. This is a little gem of a comic.

Two Toms, by Pablo Guerra and Henry Diaz. This mini was the only English-language release at the Revista Larva table at SPX 2015. The Colombian cartoonists had a fascinating anthology, and this mini contained the first four chapters of an upcoming book by Guerra (the writer) and Diaz (the artist). Diaz' work reminds me a lot of Brandon Graham: lots of sumptuously curvy lines influenced by graffiti art and perhaps even some of Graham's primary influence, Vaughn Bode. This is a science-fiction story that banks heavily on the nature of gender and sexuality, as a female researcher mistakenly (at least at first) has sex with an alien who resembled a missing crew member, which leads to all sorts of complications with her higher-ups. It's an enormously appealing and intriguing story, with just a touch of a blue wash to give the comic a bit more flavor. I'll be curious to see the finished version.

The Co-Dependent Tree and Hypno-Spiral Comics #2, by M.Jacob Alvarez. Alvarez is a relentless gag writer whose punchlines often rely on genre conventions. He also picks his share of comedic low-hanging fruit, like the titular "Co-Dependent Tree" being a send-up of Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree. Alvarez's visuals are difficult to process thanks to the thick line and little variance in line weight that is present in nearly all of his work. A gag about comparing hipsters to bees is difficult to parse because it was impossible to figure out what was going on without the words, and even then that amount of labor killed the joke. Alvarez is at his best when he keeps things simple and direct, like the various "Tattoos I Don't Have The Balls To Get" and "You Got Your Shit Together Charlie Brown". When he returns to that thick and stiff line (to which he often inexplicably adds hatching, making it even harder to quickly process), there's an extra second that divides the gag's visuals and its text. That disconnect lasts just long enough to disrupt a number of genuinely funny lines. My favorite of his stories was the genuinely weird "Chambara Punk", about a samurai-movie loving punk who gets in a convenience-store fight with a lacrosse-playing, knuckle-dragging jock. Here, the thick line seems to make sense with regard to the exaggerated nature of the story's sheer loudness. Alvarez is a funny writer who's trying to find his way as an illustrator and isn't quite there yet.

Zombre #3, by Ansis Purins. This beautiful, oversized comic has all of the standard features of a Purins comic: visceral, disgusting horror; hilarious gags; bigfoot drawing; a highly skilled and controlled line in the service of pure silliness; and over-the-top satire. Visually, this is an exciting book to behold, as the color scheme changes from a blue wash to a green wash to full color and keeps changing from there. Purins makes extensive use of zip-a-tone, which both adds density to each page and gives them a more cartoony quality. That fusion of styles reminds me a bit of Chris Cilla or Mark Newgarden, where old-style and flat cartooning is juxtaposed against weird angles and weirder story ideas that are nonetheless treated with an entirely straight face. There's also a quite coherent storyline here as well, demented as it is. Purins starts all over the place: a lost dog, a benevolent zombie, a hippie park ranger who's terrified of losing his job but still is mostly shiftless, his hard ass boss who is some kind of mystic being, a giant spider and its attendants, and some redneck hunters all enter the same forest. As Purins starts to pull together the threads of his narrative, the story gets crazier and at times terrifying, before resolving into a happy ending. Purins is a longtime cartoonist and is doing his best work to date.