Minis: Mardou, Drew Lerman

Some Day My Witch Will Come, by Mardou. Sacha Mardou rarely does autobio comics, though it's obvious that her slice-of-life comics have always had an autobiographical bent to them, be it through adapting direct experience or adapting the experiences of others she knows. This comic is about Mardou turning forty years old two years ago, and in most respects, it was a great time. Her first book was published, she has a wonderful family, and stability. Despite all of this, she was feeling a nameless anxiety and was suffering from acne out of the blue. What followed was a journey that reminded me of a less severe version of John Porcellino's The Hospital Suite, as Mardou went from one homeopathic cure to another in order to fix her acne and eventually realized that she had hit upon a well of trauma that she had never dealt with.

Trauma is an odd thing. It can lie dormant for years as one can consciously push it down, but it will always emerge eventually and frequently has a somatic component as well as an emotional component. When she was getting acupuncture for her acne, she started bursting into huge, wracking sobs for no apparent reason; what was actually happening was Mardou allowing that trauma to start to escape, a little at a time. Or rather, that trauma forced itself to the surface and exploded, especially when she started to try meditation. Mardou zeroes in on facing the witch archetype and how she initially feared it (in part because of the trauma surrounding her religious background). Learning to accept that archetype as always being present in her life and to embrace it as a way of navigating that trauma was a fascinating tool that Mardou started to use, as well as being more aware of her dreams and what they were trying to tell her. She notes one dream where she's at a wedding where two young teens are getting hitched but the flower girl was throwing a fit. She reached out to comfort her and felt a sense of happiness. It wasn't until later that she understood the dream--her parents were teens when they were married and the little girl was her--and she was able to comfort herself.

That's a powerful image. In a therapeutic setting where a patient has a hard time forgiving themselves or loving themselves after going through extreme trauma at a young age, it's not unusual for a therapist to ask if the young version of them was worth saving. Coming to terms with that truth, where one is able to return love to oneself as a child unconditionally is an unbelievably powerful feeling akin to that of the feeling one has for their own children. In Mardou's case, communicating with her inner child meant wanting to play with her young daughter, and that she was able to play with her in the same way she would play as a child only added to that sense of healing and joy. Mardou's layout choices were interesting--open page layout with stacked horizontal panels, anywhere from two to four of them. The looseness of the format contrasts the tightness of her drawings. Certainly, Mardou always maintains a certain ratty looseness in her drawings as part of her style, but there was a boldness and confidence in her line here that made everything look crisper and more fully-realized. I wouldn't say that I'd equate this comic with therapy, but it is a vivid recreation of a therapeutic experience that packs a wallop.

Milk Debt & Boucher's House, by Drew Lerman. Lerman is a rarity: an alternative comics cartoonist from my hometown of Miami, which has never had a discernible scene. He's done Frank Santoro's correspondence course and his work has obviously been strongly both by the grid and the vivid use of color so many Rowhouse students like to employ. In Milk Debt, Lerman tells the story of some fourth graders who speak in a remarkably florid style, the most interesting of which is Hector, a psychopathic bully who has a demon living in his chest. At the same time, Lerman, creating a grotesque atmosphere both in terms of character design and his lurid use of color, skillfully depicts the notion of "fairness" that obsesses children of that age. Rules, deals, and promises have a powerful sense of meaning for them, and trying to retract same has horrible repercussions. That's true in this comic, as when one friend bets another $20 that he'll never French kiss a particular girl. His friend does kiss the girl, who immediately wants a gift (that later turns out not to exist). That sets off a chain of events that leads Hector to buy the debt and punish the kid who owed the $20, only to have his skin ripped open and the demon freed.

This comic works on a number of levels. There may be an eight-panel grid (constantly recentering the page), but it's an open-page format, so there's more of a sense of bleed between the panels and events. Lerman's use of children reminds me a bit of Steve Weissman's, where there's a sense of extreme exaggeration but also a great deal of accuracy with regard to the way children truly interact with each other. There's also the sense of how each child is very much not only in their own world, but actively narrating their stories until they get interrupted by someone else's narrative, often with disastrous consequences. The kids in this story don't so much interact as they do cross paths and engage in power struggles for the right to impose their version of reality on the world.

Boucher's House keeps the eight-panel grid but smashes the panels together to instantly create a sense of suffocation for the reader. The coloring, which was crisp and neat in Milk Debt, is splattered and expressionist, more along the lines of what Dash Shaw does. This comic is a satire of fragile masculinity, as an older man with a young wife is constantly jealous and paranoid that she's out to get him somehow. Whereas it's obvious that she's loving and patient with his frequently toxic but ultimately impotent gestures. I wish there had been a bit more to her character than the patient sex bomb, but I understood what Lerman was getting at in this satire, especially in the hilarious scene where the titular Boucher visits a friend to earn some sympathy and is dealt back the same kind of macho nonsense. Lerman's sense of humor is at once exaggerated and bone-dry, and his line matches those qualities.

Delving In: Eric Kostiuk Williams and Mardou

Hungry Bottom Comics: 2Fags 2Furious, by Eric Kostiuk Williams.  First of all, this is clearly the title of the year. Williams is a fantastic young talent whose debut mini was remarkable. There were a number of clever takes on autobio in that comic, which doubled as a soul-searching session. This issue tilts even more in that direction, as the Eric who floated through the gay hookup scene in Toronto found himself increasingly uncomfortable with what he was doing and his own identity. The issue starts with a hilarious take on Goldilocks and the Three Bears, with "bears" being used in its alternate meaning in a manner that was both funny and endearing. The problem with the story is that it was fictional in every sense; Williams doesn't have that kind of relationship right now, and in fact took a step back into celibacy.

That celibacy was less a deprivation than it was a kick-start to start exploring different aspects of himself and his community. In "Christeene", Williams discusses his first time doing full drag, with assistance from a close friend not yet comfortable with "dressing out". Williams' fractured panel placement, exquisite decorative touches and rock-solid rendering mesh perfectly on page after page, creating a tumultuous but exciting world of discovery. The account of the concert by trans performer Christeene is hilarious and outrageous: glam rock at its most transgressive. In each of the following chapters, Williams picks up a new persona, all armed with a long knot of hair: Goldilocks, her Britney-esque drag persona, her celibate nun persona, and a masked X-Man, defending him against a world that hates and fears him. That's the persona that responds to gay-bashing and homophobia he encountered on the streets of "tolerant" Toronto, thanks in part to the fluidity of his own gender identity. He points out that the oppressiveness of some aspects of gay culture made him almost as uncomfortable as the heteronormative culture he so dearly wanted to escape. In the end, he notes that there has to be something in-between celibacy and the hook-up culture, and it's obvious that he still has work to do on himself in order to be comfortable and confident with all of these identities while presenting them in public. I loved the way how Williams once again used comics to take a good long look at himself, merging his fantasies and his fears while articulating both in an entertaining, fluid and honest manner. There's no question that he's already become one of the most exciting autobio artists out there.

Sky In Stereo #2, by Mardou.Mardou's coming-of-age story is so true-to-life that it hurts. After a first issue tracking Iris, a young woman in college who works at a fast-food joint for extra money and has an unrequited crush, this issue follows her on an acid trip. I've read many a comic depicting the experience, but Mardou's take is impeccably accurate in so many ways. She captures that sense of being the only person in the world who's awake at 4am, the way that the rapidly approaching light of a sunrise can be a visually stunning experience,and most especially the way that a first acid trip can be a game-changer in terms of how one looks at the world. She also captures how the return to "consensus reality" can be rocky and unpleasant and how long it can take to truly adjust to the filters and guards we put up to defend ourselves from the world. Of course, the simple act of taking a drug doesn't really change anything but one's point of view, and the feeling of just how Important one's thoughts and feelings are on the experience are always exaggerated and often seem silly in the cold light of day.

The other aspect of the comic that was devastatingly effective was the reaction of Iris' mother when she failed to show up for work. The desperation and gratitude in her eyes when Iris told her the truth was heartbreaking, and Mardou captured it perfectly in the way she drew the mother's slightly bulging eyes. The thought that Iris had at that moment, that she wished her mother had covered herself up better, was hilariously and perfectly apt. Throwing her mom's obtuse and abusive boyfriend into the mix (who says charming things like "Right now, I don't care if you live or die") gets at the heart of Iris' central feelings of self-hatred and an overall lack of self-worth. Mardou's always had a knack for getting at real and unpleasant human interactions, but she's truly outdone herself in this series and this issue in particular. This issue was published by Rina Ayuyang's increasingly ambitious Yam Books, which has been releasing an interesting mix of full-length books and minicomics.

Sequart Reprints: Minis from Forsman, Ford, Glidden, Smith, Mardou, Overby, Latta

Time to check in on the world of mini-comics.

Snake Oil 1-2, by Chuck Forsman. This is a really excellent, unusual mini that combines slice-of-life slacker life with a truly demented fantasy narrative. It's told in a series of vignettes as a garbageman named Tim is kidnapped from a diner by several mysterious figures using some kind of magical powers. His best friend Bob and fellow garbageman tries to pursue them but is outfoxed. The lead sinister figure stops him by asking him his name, and then says, "Bob, quit doggin' me" and then laughs maniacally down an alley and disappears. Meanwhile, Bob's son Darryl is getting high with his friend Kim, who smokes what's in a mysterious pipe. She suddenly goes catatonic for no apparent reason. Tim finds himself in a mysterious land populated by nudists, while the bull-headed men who are driving him away in a van freak out on pills. In the back-up story, "Mickey The Man", a man goes from a state of being a human and then being an anthropomorphic duck and finds that his baby is stolen from him by unidentified, sinister forces.

It looks like Forsman is cycling through his influences in this mini, spinning them through his own unique point of view. I can sense early Chester Brown as an influence in the first story and his character design is very similar to Sammy Harkham's in the second. The way he mixes humor, fantasy elements, a gnawing sense of dread and everyday ennui as components in his story make it quite memorable. I like his character design and composition, though his line isn't quite assured enough to pull off every trick he attempts in this book. His ambition is impressive, as is his restraint in not overrendering his characters. Forsman is an student at the Center For Cartoon Studies, and it's obvious that he's developing rapidly as an artist. He's definitely one to watch.

Only Skin #3, by Sean Ford. This series reminds me a little of Gilbert Hernandez' work in some respects. The ensemble cast, the wide-open spaces, the eccentric character design, and the looming but enigmatic sense of menace that pervades the book are all reminiscent of a lot of Hernandez' recent work in particular. This issue starts to fill in some of the blanks regarding some of the key character's (Cassie) backstory, as we learn why she left the tiny, dusty town. She's confronted by a person who was the catalyst for her departure, who may play a significant role in the mysterious and brutal disappearances that are occuring in town. We also see more of my favorite character, the Pac-Man looking ghost that follows around Cassie's younger brother and nearly gets him killed. Some of the series' themes are also beginning to coalesce, especially mortality and the nature of human connection. I'm not sure how long this series is slated to run, but it quickly has become a favorite. Like Forsman, Ford has an excellent sense of composition and design but is still mastering the quality of his line. It's not always entirely assured, as though rendering certain scenes seemed to take an enormous amount of effort (especially character-to-character interactions). But also like Forsman, Ford avoids the pitfalls of overrendering.

How To Understand Israel In 60 Days Or Less, Chapters 1 & 2, by Sarah Glidden. Glidden is best known for her journal comics, and in these comics she takes her wry perspective to describe her journey to Israel on a "birthright tour". She took advantage of the Israeli government (combined with private donors) funding a program that brings young Jews to Israel from around the world. Glidden took the trip from a quite skeptical point of view, as a non-religious Jew whose feelings about Israel were ambivalent, to say the least. She was curious as to what kind of people she'd meet on the tour, if those running the tour would truly engage the tough questions regarding the Palestinian conflict, and how much of the trip would simply be an exercise in propaganda.

The best thing about these comics is Glidden's forceful and unapologetic presence as a biased narrator. She is not Joe Sacco in Palestine, submerging his own ego in order to get the stories of others. These comics are about Glidden's feelings and point of view about this experience. Despite her strong opinions going into it, one can sense that the mixed emotions she feels about being in Israel cause her to really think over everything she sees and hears. There's a liveliness in how she depicts characterization that allows the reader to fly through the story, and one can't help but wonder how Sarah will react to what she encounters next. Her position as someone who leans to the left who has enormous sympathy for the Palestinian cause can't help but be tempered by the complex realities of everyday life. Glidden also livens up the proceedings by depicting the wanderings of her imagination: as she confesses that she doesn't know how the Six Day War was fought, she starts to imagine soldiers mounted on dinosaurs attacking each other. Another sequence finds her experiences "on trial" in her mind, as the prosecution attacks what she sees as propaganda while the defense notes how open-minded the guides are, halting when the judge declares a recess for a bathroom break at the next gas station.

Glidden's line is on the primitive side, more concerned with capturing gesture and expression than a meticulously crafted stylization. For the purposes of a story that is entirely about the emotions and expressions of her characters, her art is more than up to this task. She sticks to a rigid 9-panel grid on every page, which serves to keep the story flowing but cramps things a bit. That mostly plays out in her lettering, which is a bit too small on the page and seems rushed at times. It's the only thing that interrupts the otherwise seamless flow of the comic; one rarely notices lettering unless it's a distraction. One could actually see the lettering becoming much clearer at the end of chapter 2, and her pages in general opened up a bit and started to breathe a bit more. I admire Glidden's ambition in tackling this project and think that her combination of wit, outrage and skepticism will make for a fascinating personal account of one of the world's most controversial areas. One can already see that the challenges inherent in telling this story are making her a better artist.

Small Bible,  by Shannon Smith. This is a clever mini that's about points of view and description. Taking key portions of the Old Testament, Smith quotes extensively from Stephen's Defense in the Book of Acts, then quotes the original scripture, then provides an illustration--all in just 9 pages. It's a clever comic that's both a straightforward depiction of an event, and a commentary as an interpretation of an interpretation of an event that may or may not have happened--but has enormous importance. Joann Sfar's Rabbi character in THE RABBI'S CAT described Judaism as different from Western (Hegelian) thought, which is thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The history of Jewish thought, he explained, is thesis, antithesis, antithesis, antithesis, and so on. This mini is another step in the argument, providing a visual interpretation of the events that is action-oriented on nearly every page. An angel dramatically swoops in to prevent Abraham from sacrificing Isaac; Moses gets a magic glowing staff from god that cures snake bites; various epic battles are fought. Smith gets across the quite visceral experience of reading the Old Testament, a tact that is quite different from the purposes of either Stephen or the original Torah. It's quite a clever little project.

Washing Machine, by Mardou. I really enjoyed this slice-of-life mini because it subverted expectations at every turn. A story about a 20-something woman who breaks off an affair she's having with an older married man, Mardou sets up a situation where her protagonist Rachel seems to be on the way to finding an exciting new boyfriend. Instead, Rachel's night ends in disaster as the wife of her ex-flame confronts her, her potential new boyfriend drives the hysterical woman home, and her dumpy roommate actually finds a potential love interest. Mardou's character design and dialogue are clever and serve well in drawing in the reader's interest. The ending of the story serves to offer up a bit of justice to a character that is actually a bit vain, shallow and conceited, and the way Mardou brings these threads together in one explosive ending was quite satisfying.

Jessica, by Jason Overby. This is an unusual mini printed with a thick cardstock cover and heavy paper. While this is essentially an anecdote about a missed connection with a woman, what makes it unusual is Overby's visual approach. He alternates between a Paper Rad-style primitivism, pure iconic abstraction, and Frank Stack-style scribbly expressionism. The story drifts in and out of the anecdote, as Overby sometimes digresses to past memories and experiences. This mini is stream-of-consciousness and attempts to get across the experience of one's own consciousness visually. I especially liked the iconic abstraction that represented himself; ironically, his most abstract representation is the most straightforward in relating the narrative. This was certainly an interesting amalgamation of ideas and techniques, presented without compromise to conventional narrative concerns, and it'll be interesting to see how Overby develops his talent.

Rashy Rabbit #4, by Josh Latta. This is an outsized slice-of-life comic told in classic funny animal fashion. Indeed, Latta's skill in rendering his characters in that classic style is so considerable that the first page of this comic, featuring a sex scene, caught me totally off guard. The title character is a familiar 20-something loser, constantly (but often unsuccessfully) on the make and getting high. That opening sequence, featuring a sex scene and a stunning death, was quite a darkly hilarious introduction to this issue. Rashy as a character is a sad sack, without much ambition of his own and is thus easily manipulated by others. While the dialogue has a sort of sleazy verisimilitude that's amusing (especially Rashy's dirtbag stoner cousin), Latta takes a risk in having a protagonist that's so passive in this issue. Not having read the first three issues of the series, I'd be interested in seeing how Rashy interacted with other characters, and how that influenced the narrative.

Sequart Reprints: Anthology Round-Up

I review a lot of anthologies, usually in great detail. There are a number of anthologies that I've read where I don't have quite as much to say about them, so I thought I'd compile some brief thoughts about each of them in this article.

Whores of Mensa #2. This anthology, named after a classic Woody Allen short story, is presented by Jeremy Dennis, Mardou and Ellen Lindner. The theme of this issue seems to be a sexual exploration of "east meets west", many of them period stories. Lindner is a long-time minicomics favorite of mine, and her wry sense of humor is on display with a send-up of Jane Eyre where Jane winds up marrying into a harem. Mardou has two stories, one an expose on the belly-dancing instruction racket and another sharply humorous variation on the anthology's title, as she is a "literary prostitute" who winds up dealing with a john who's obsessed with children's literature ("a paedo-reader"). Dennis contributes a story about a 19th century man who overcomes his melancholy by traveling to an Arabic country and later posing nude. These are smart, sharp stories, packaged with an attractive cover in an oversized format. Dennis has a scribbly style that nicely complements Lindner's bold, smooth blacks and Mardou's exaggerated naturalism. When reading an anthology, I often think about if I've read this kind of story a million times before, because such stories tend to fade from my memory moments after I've read them. With this comic, I'm happy to say that this isn't the case, and that it even rewards multiple readings.

You Ain't No Dancer, Volume 2.  This anthology, from New Reliable Press, has the theme of "youth". Most of the stories in this pleasant but largely forgettable collection focus on childhood reminiscences, frequently of the "I was such a loser" variety. As a result, there's a kind of numbing sameness from story to story, even though most of the entries are solidly crafted. The only really amateurish entry is a gross-out called "A Filth Hole Adventure" by Fred Grisold and Jamie Dee Gailey which, while crudely drawn and loaded with spelling errors, does at least have a perverse kind of energy. In an anthology filled with blandly sweet memories, cutesy fantasy characters or familiar self-flagellation, that story, while not especially good, at least broke up the monotony.

That said, there are some exceptions here. The ever-delightful Hope Larson contributes a two-page "Recipe For Youth", using that brief space to create some evocative images. Colleen MacIsaac's "Indian Princesses" is really well-drawn and has a funny punchline dealing with some ethnic misunderstandings over a Halloween costume. Grant Reynolds has a truly disturbing story in "Litter", using a lot of blacks to depict a litter of puppies and their very short life--and the contentment they feel both in the womb and in a sack going into a river. "Sharp Young Minds" from Phil McAndrew stands out because it's so well-drawn and has such a sharply-delivered punchline. The main problem with this anthology, as with many anthologies, is that some of the stories (especially by some of the bigger names like Jeffrey Brown and Liz Prince) are short to the point of being ephemeral, while many of the other stories tend to blend into each other thanks to the theme.

Pictozine II, edited by Dave Bradbury. In my review of the first volume of this all-New Zealand anthology, I noted that as a whole the project was a noble experiment that didn't quite work. Editor Dave Bradbury clearly stepped up his game in finding contributors for this second volume, because on the whole it's a much stronger collection. There are 36 stories by 37 contributors for a total of 151 pages. While there are once again varying levels of ability and professionalism, about 1/3 of the stories is solid, another 1/3 is excellent, and the last third were either too crude, dull or otherwise unremarkable.

Once again, top Kiwi legends Dylan Horrocks and Roger Langridge contribute strips, and once again they're some of the very best in the book. Langridge's "Shirley Temple Meets Frankenstein" is his philosophical absurdism at its best. His line is so crisp and his use of blacks so commanding that it almost hurts to look at his art. Horrocks' "Siso" is a staggering short story, with an iconic set of characters designed to resemble the sort of characters one would see in a children's book. He evokes war, peace and a sense of dread & calm all at once.

There's more to see here than just Horrocks and Langridge, however. Cover artist Mat Tait also contributed a silent story of birth and death for a Maori tribe. Brent Willis has a funny but disturbing story about growing up with communist parents in the late 1930's who felt they had to make nice with Nazis because of the Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact. Carlos Wedde did an angularly-designed take on Harvey Pekar-style anecdotes, talking about a haircut he got from a couple of guys who turned out to be racists. Robyn Kenealy has a cute one-pager about Roddy McDowall that is the model of what one should expect from a one-page strip. Tim Danko returns with another unusual strip about a ship tossed at sea (set to "Eye of the Tiger"!), with a post-modern commentary on the edges.

Other highlights include a creepy fine-line strip by Heather Buchanan about a sheep and a skeleton that acts as a mother figure; a funny, heavily stippled piece by Jess Johnson spoofing the art world; and a clever 1-page stirp by Sheehanbros that makes great use of negative space to tell a story about a family's sleeping habits. Perhaps my favorite story was by Samuel Killean-Chance. Titled "Cliff Trap", it's a Mat Brinkman-esque story of a couple of bulbous creatures. One is pursued by a sort of tentacled creature and falls off a cliff. The action is simple, but his composition, backgrounds, fluidity in depicting motion and character design draw the reader fully into the story. I love the story's ambiguity and Killean-Chance's willingness to leave the backstory unexplained. This is an artist I hope to see much more from in the future.

All told, this was an interesting, varied read with a number of different approaches. It was an especially impressive effort for what seemed to be an open-submissions anthology (albeit one open to New Zealanders or those associated with New Zealanders in some form). If Bradbury continues to publish these anthologies (and I hope that he does), at some point he's going to need to start to make some difficult choices as an editor and only publish the best stories. This would have been an excellent 100-page anthology; as it stands, it's a very good 150-pager. I'd also like to see longer contributions by some of the artists; some of the 1-pagers felt tossed-off at best. That said, there were some excellent 1-page strips in here. The upswing in quality from the first to second volumes of Pictozine was quite impressive, and I hope to see a similar arc for a potential third volume.


CANDY OR MEDICINE #2, edited by Josh Blair. This modest anthology informs the reader right from the start that it "always seeks contributors of all skill levels for future volumes". With such a focus, it's not surprising that so much of the work in here is so rough. The anthology does lure the reader in with some Matt Feazell (king of stick-figure mini-comics) sketches, and they are indeed nice. The vast majority of the work in here, while containing some enthusiasm and creative spark, is mostly unremarkable. There are some funny ideas that aren't executed well because the artists' ability to render isn't at a level that meets their needs. There are some nicely-drawn comics that are hard to follow--a victim of composition and panel flow. There are some cute one-off strips that were instantly forgettable.

There were exceptions, however. Richard Cabeza's apparent use of a computer to draw a couple of gag strips about snowmen and turtles elicited some chuckles. Writing gag strips that work is extremely difficult, and it's even harder to use visuals to support a joke. Cabeza is clearly pretty clever and is an example of someone who made the best possible use of visuals in support of his ideas. Blair's own "Lunarcy" strip has a small but amusing payoff, nicely using repetition to get his point across. However, the best strip in the book belonged to Liza Miller. Utilizing expressive stick figures, she created an amusing strip about a woman playing around with a scarf, laughing at her own silliness. What I liked about this strip was the strong handle Miller has on gesture, especially with such a stripped-down set of figures. The wobbly-constructed panels added to the sort of rubbery, exaggerated action depicted in each scene. Miller's ambitions may have been most in this strip, but it was the most fully-realized comic in the anthology. I hope that she continues making comics, and that the other artists in the book strive to find out exactly what it is that they want out of making comics and immerse themselves in that process.

Syncopated, Volume Three, edited by Brendan Burford. This is one of my favorite anthologies, due in large part to Burford's strong editorial hand. The general theme of the anthology is reportage and "first-person journalistic essays". As such, the stories here have a firm sense of time and place, yet cover a wide variety of styles. In this volume, some of the themes that appear in the stories include perilous travel, treasures hidden and unappreciated, places whose times have come and gone and in general the way time erodes everything. This is a stylish, well-designed comic that is pleasant to read and look at. Burford and his cartoony line have stories that bookend this volume. One's about the old Fulton Fish Market in New York that's been moved and converted into a mall, and Burford goes on to make points about homogenization. That's a theme that runs throughout the book--the stories celebrate people and places that defy such homogenizaton. The last story is about the origin of the nickname "Gotham"--a phrase that originally was thought to meant a city of fools, but upon further investigation revealed that it's a city of natives who fiercely protect what's theirs, using deception when necessary.

Dave Kiersh has a story about hanging out with a friend of his grandmother's who turned out to be an avant-garde filmmaker in the 1950's. There's an earnest sweetness to this story as Kiersh enthuses over his relationship both with his grandmother and this artist, and while he's sad that both are gone he treasures their memory. Nick Bertozzi's rollicking, harrowing account of "The Voyage of the James Caird" shows that this anthology isn't all solemn meditation--this was a fascinating account of a risky rescue sea voyage. Meathaus collective artist Jim Campbell, along the same lines, contributes "T.R. And the Thieves", a hilarious account of pre-presidential Theodore Roosevelt tracking down some thieves during a harsh winter with his men. Campbell's rubbery style is a perfect fit for the larger-than-life TR. The intrigues as his crew tracks down thieves in the forest reminded me a bit of the gripping Blueberry stories of Charlier & Moebius, only with a slightly more farcical air.

Burford includes some contributions that have a particularly striking visual approach. Tom Devlin's doodles aren't any kind of narrative, but are particular in how they were created--in a coffee shop with other cartoonists. Seeing a man who mostly works as a designer these days unleash his creativity on a page makes me wish he cartooned more these days. Greg Cook contributes an account of his local neighbors who went off to Iraq. Cook reverses positive and negative space in his depiction of figures, so it appears we are only looking at shadows. Paul Hoppe has a series of sketches about gentrification in Brooklyn, while Burford has an essay about the tugboat graveyard in New York and Susie Cagle writes about the history of a particular decaying building in Brooklyn.

All told, the variety of storytelling approaches and cartoonists, the enthusiasm with which each creator tackles their subject, and the particular writers and artists who contributed to this anthology made it one of the best comics of 2007. Anyone interested in the life of cities, exciting accounts of historical voyages, and the possibility of finding hidden treasures on a day-to-day basis should seek this book out. This anthology doesn't seek to revolutionize comics as a form, but rather seeks to examine specific times and events with existing storytelling structures. I hope another volume will be released sooner rather than later, because Syncopated succeeded in its goals and has become an overlooked treasure in itself.

Potlatch Project 5, published by Steven Noppenberger. This anthology was created several years ago from a group of creators whose entries were rejected by the SPX anthology, so they decided to publish their stories and donate the profits to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. This is the fifth iteration of that project, now no longer being done for the CBLDF. It's a mixed bag of superhero, sci-fi, fantasy and slice-of-life comics. A couple of them seem to be excerpts from other series, or episodes from a series. Few of the stories made much of an impression. Even a funny artist like Stan Yan contributed what amounts to a throwaway gag story, while publisher "Noppie" had a nice-looking (with a really beautiful line) but somewhat incoherent episode of a larger fantasy story. The only segment that I really enjoyed was David Recine's "Murky Waters" a funny series of slice-of-life bits with surprising action elements and good punchlines. His line is a bit crude, but functional. One cannot fault the enthusiasm or intentions of the artists involved, but at this point this anthology series might be running out of steam.

Blurred Vision 3. This is an interesting assemblage of comics creators and fine artists working in the comics milieu. There are hyper-realists like Karl Stevens, Woojung Ahn and the enigmatic Toc Fetch. Stevens' "Love" presents frozen moments in time as a couple wordlessly relaxes on a couch as a man strokes her hair. We don't see the whole picture here--just bits and pieces of the woman's face, the man drinking water, and the TV shows they're watching. Ahn's "Adventures of the Right Hand" is a cute but creepy account of how an overworked right hand escapes, finds itself in the harshness of the big city, then gets sewn on to a new arm. Fetch's strips defy easy description. The hyper-realism of his images is contrasted with the weird mythology he alludes to in his text.

There are some familiar alt artists here like Ethan Persoff, Henriette Valium, Dash Shaw and Bishakh Som (from the old Hi-Horse anthology). Valium reworked an old Captain America story into "Captain Angry White", a typically outrageous and extreme entry from him. Persoff had an entry in an ongoing story called "The Dog and the Elephant", using his somewhat still, animation-influenced style to create tension in his stories. Som's "You Make Me Feel So Real" is a visceral story about a dancer who dips into her memories as she practices a rigorous piece. The way Som simultaneously visually depicts movement against that narrative of memory along with the beats of sound effects, culminating in the character recovering from an asthma attack, makes for a powerful reading experience.
Perhaps my three favorite pieces came from artists whose work I'm not familiar with. Henrik Rehr's "Apple" and "Bald Men" utilizes a fractured arrangement of text (almost like snapshots) illustrating a brief, poetic series of thoughts. Koren Shadmi's "Know Thy Self" is a hilarious, revolting story of a young woman who reaches through her navel to pull out various of her organs, anthropomorphized into singing, dancing, smiling creations...until her body collapses. Stem's "Shadowhouse" is a cleverly composed and designed story that makes great use of negative space, about a young child who discovers a parallel, house under his bed and travels there at night. It's both creepy and sweet in its own way. The eccentric choices in this anthology led to an interesting reading experience, where despite a lack of a theme, the different stories complement each other well.

Blab 17, edited by Monte Beauchamp. Blab is a long-running anthology that stepped in when Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly quit editing RAW. This issue features a couple of former RAW artists like Sue Coe and Drew Friedman and in general continues to use a number of items from the RAW playbook. For example, there's a wide diversity of styles and creators from other countries represented here. Under editor Beauchamp, Blab has occasionally veered a little too far away from narratives in favor of flashy imagery. That's mostly not the case here, other than a series of illustrations covering about a 12-page span. Blab is a sort of cousin to Kramer's Ergot, though perhaps not as aggressively experimental; and Hotwire, though not as inspired by underground comics tradition.

There's all sorts of storytelling traditions and genres represented. The silent "Membrane" by Paco Alcazar is a chilling, bizarre horror story. Peter Kuper's "Nine Lives" is an amusing autobiographical short, while Spain relates a story of his turn in factory life. There's absurdity like Mark Landman's "Fetal Sunday Funnies" (starring Fetal Elvis) and Matti Hagelberg's "Christmas In Shacktown" (featuring James Bond villain Blofeld aiding Hansel and Gretel). There's historical reportage like Geoffrey Grahn's "The Dutch Tulip", about the tulip speculation craze, odd archival material like vintage roller skate labels and a tribute to Bazooka Joe, and Playboy cartoon parodies. Esther Pearl Watson (a relative newcomer to comics) contributes a remarkable two-pager about a haunted funeral plot. The change in tone and style from story to story can be almost dizzying at times, but it all seems to fit into the anthology's overall aesthetic. Not everything in here is a hit for me (I thought the attempts at poetry were especially overwrought or grating), but it's all at least interesting to look at. The fact that Beauchamp has kept the anthology going for so long, with so many different talented artists, is a remarkable testament to his commitment to his artistic vision and willingness to continue to mine the worlds of comics and fine art for images that need a publishing home.

sequart #190: Mini Comics Round-Up: Neely, Ayuyang, Sayers, Mardou

Rob reviews a variety of intriguing minicomics. (These reviews originally appeared on sequart.com)



YOUR DISEASE SPREAD QUICK and BRILLIANTLY HAM-FISTED, by Tom Neely. Neely is the artist behind THE BLOT, one of the more astonishing recent major comics debuts. Neely's work falls squarely into what I call "comics-as-poetry". I've written about THE BLOT and this topic for another website (which has yet to debut), but briefly, comics-as-poetry is not the same thing as an illustrated poem. Rather, it's a comic that utilizes the same sort of strategy that poetry does in terms of beat, rhythm and abstraction. It eschews standard narrative and forces the reader to engage the work. Unlike most narratives, which have an immersive quality (carrying the reader smoothly through the story), comics-as-poetry is most frequently anti-immersive: the reader is aware of each word, each image, each panel. It's up to them to create connections between word and image.

Neely's artistic style makes for an interesting series of contrasts. He draws much of his inspiration from classic animation and comics from around the 1920s, and his comics have a rubbery, cartoony quality that draws the reader to its surface qualities. At the same time, he subverts reader expectations with images that are often gruesomely visceral. Another trope of his is his use of ink blots. These blots have multiple meanings, depending on the context, but generally represent both creation and destruction. Neely also has an extensive background in fine arts, and as a result his comics have a tension between the flow between panels & pages and the powerful single image.

That tension is highlighted in YOUR DISEASE SPREAD QUICK, a minicomic "inspired by the music of the Melvins". Neely draws from the lyrics and characters of the album "(A) Senile Animal" to create an apocalyptic narrative. Flipping between a horse-headed man crying doom to a spectral figure drawing ink from the horse to a heavily-bandaged multiple amputee inching along the ground, Neely spends the story introducing doomed protagonists who are victimized by schemers (exemplified by a two-page spread of some of history's nastiest monsters). The bandaged man winds up turning the tables after being sacrificed to a huge eagle, and the world winds up transforming into a mass of doom-saying horse-headed men. The last page, with one of them screaming "The world is full of evil!" as he's buffeted by thousands just like him, is a funny bit of irony. Having not heard the album for reference, this comic is still an eye-popping read because of the way Neely creates a flow of imagery. The back cover, featuring an obligatory Hostess Pies parody starring the Melvins, is a bit of wish-fulfillment with a slightly salacious ending.

BRILLIANTLY HAM-FISTED is a collection of "comic strip poems" originally published on Neely's website. Neely dips a bit into John Hankiewicz territory here in terms of the way he uses realistically depicted ordinary objects in his strips and gives them a different meaning by virtue of the way they're juxtaposed. The similarities end there, because Neely is still working in a classic comics tradition by using a four-panel grid for each strip. He also is more deliberate in the way he contrasts word and image--sometimes working in concert, sometimes at deliberate cross-purposes. "Sunday Afternoon" is a strip featuring a common Neely image: a crowd so tightly packed there's nowhere to breathe or move. Panel by panel, the phrase "Some people just can't appreciate the pathos of it all" is uttered by someone in the crowd--but we don't know who, because the figures are so tiny. Of course, the actual identity is unimportant, since all of the characters look exactly alike and are in precisely the same jam.

The themes running through these strips include suffocation, failure, anxiety, and the desperate attempt to connect--both on an emotional level and as an artist. "Art" features the artist taking off his glove and cutting off his hand, even though he knows we "would prefer cheap decorations". Some of the strips are more engaging than others; some make a quickly-absorbed point while others require multiple readings. It's fascinating to see Neely continue to mix old cartooning traditions with formal experimentation. The contrasts and contradictions inherent in his style and methods are what make him an artist to watch.

Rina Ayuyang's recent string of sketchbook/diary minicomics has been quite engaging. The best quality of her recent OVERWHELMING WOT-NOT, for example, is the spontaneity and liveliness of her approach. She manages to sprinkle quotidian observations, joys and frustrations into narratives that are surprisingly coherent given her loose approach. Her self-characterization in her comics is as someone who's constantly frazzled, harried and short of inspiration, yet the comics themselves have a clever exuberance. In "Fire!!", Ayuyang manages to relate an amusing workplace anecdote, throwing in a couple of gags related to an annoying co-worker and then shifting seamlessly to a related event at home. It has a light, breezy tone that simultaneously feels like a funny memory recorded for posterity in a journal and a polished narrative.

"Sushi Times" is a rougher, sketchier story that's as much about Ayuyang's often misplaced sense of empathy as it is about a particular lunchtime incident. "Happiness" and "A Dream of Sandra Bernhard" are slightly melancholy ruminations disguised as rambling anecdotes. The best story in this mini is "This Is The Day", a story that's both about writer's block and a way of fighting her way out of it. Faced with a blank sheet of paper and nothing to say, Ayuyang at first retreats into time-wasting activities, but soon tries to find ways to inspire herself. She draws support and wisdom from her friends, gets told to practice what she preaches after telling a friend to value her work, gets a hilarious "pep talk" from her father and vows to get back to her Big Story after a brush with mortality. What I admire most about this mini-comic is that it works as a form of art therapy. Instead of staring blankly at a sheet of paper because she can't work on her "real" project, Ayuyang engages in a form of highly polished doodling. In her recent work, she's become much more relaxed and comfortable with her storytelling, which has translated to a real sense of playfulness on the page. While I'm eager to see her eventual long-form project, I hope she continues to give us these pleasurable little side projects.

One of the specialties of the cartoonist Mardou seems to be examining friendships both deep and casual, especially among women. In MANHOLE#3, her character Bea takes us through a first-person account of the history of her friendship with Carrie. Both rock scenesters, Mardou tells a story of a friendship that was really a platonic love affair. Her use of detail and ability to evoke emotion through vivid anecdotes really gets across the depth and importance of this friendship, at least through Bea's eyes. The story does meander a bit and coalesces a bit more after a second reading, especially after one reads the ending. Indeed, as Bea is about to become the mother of a girl, her experiences with Carrie became all the more important in her memory, as a sort of continuum of feminine connection.

Mardou's line is sketchy and loose but highly expressive. Her character design is varied and effective, with her eyes in particular carrying a lot of the narrative's load. In the story, Mardou had a way of the story's leads creating meaningful eye contact with each other that frequently reduced the men they were with to mere props. In retrospect, Bea could see the end of their friendship coming, but there was nothing that really could be done about it. Sometimes, some friendships have a limited time span, no matter how intense they may be in the moment. This story is about a series of moments that had a life-changing quality to them; Bea knows that they're gone forever, never to be reclaimed, but the memories will always linger and influence her the rest of her life.

I WISH YOU WERE DEAD: THINGPART COLLECTION #6, by Joey Sayers. This is a drop-dead hilarious collection of 4-panel gag strips from Sayers' THINGPART website. Sayers specializes in classic "turn the idea on its head" humor, presenting a premise that the reader expects to go in one direction and then subverting it by the third panel before ending with the punchline. To this end, she employs a cartooning style that is simultaneously minimalist and grotesque. The design of her characters' bodies and backgrounds is bland and is just there to provide points of information and reference. The faces and heads are another matter.

Sayers draws round, stick-figure style heads with crudely-rendered faces: dots for eyes and simple mouths. Those mouths are often filled with just 2 or three teeth that almost resemble fangs. Like Matt Feazell, the master of stick-figure comics, Sayers' characters are still enormously expressive, with Sayers' refined understanding of gesture and body language shining through the simplicity of her line and aiding the punchline. Sayers is a flat-out great gagsmith, either taking an absurd idea to its logical end (like an employer praising what are suggested to be a commercial artists' samples but look like blank squares to the reader--until we see that the artist is applying for a job at "White Cardboard Squares, Inc.") or subverting a familiar scene (like a teenager asked to say grace who instead insults Jesus' tastes in food, is praised by his parents in doing so, and leads Jesus to buy the junky "Sugar Bomb" cereal the kid wanted instead). Sayers' work is also in the Michael Kupperman/Martha Keavney area of absurdist humor, but her goals and methodology are different. Fans of those humorists should certainly check out her website, especially since Sayers has such a high hit/miss ratio.