Top Shelf: Penny Nichols

Slice-of-life fiction is something I see a lot less of in comics these days, especially compared to its heyday in the 90s. A lot of it was perhaps thinly-veiled autobiography, only with a stronger narrative structure and/or more defined character arcs. Most fictional comics these days tend to be genre-inflected, even if the genre elements are in the background and the stories are heavily-character oriented. Tillie Walden and Rosemary Valero-O'Connell are good examples of doing that at a high level. On the other hand, while MK Reed has done her share of genre work, she started her career working on slice-of-life books, and her big breakthrough was her love letter to libraries, Americus.

Her latest book, Penny Nichols, was written with frequent writing partner Greg "Clutch McBastard" Means and drawn by long-time minicomics stalwart Matt Wiegle. It's about a smart but aimless 26-year-old woman (the titular Penny Nichols) who is working a series of pointless temp jobs and going on the occasional horrible date. In reading it, this book is truly aimed at that mid-20s person who hasn't found their purpose in life. They don't have the ambition, ability, or interest to hook into the business world, but they've also faced a lifetime of discouragement in trying to do anything else. Their liberal arts degree seems pointless. They don't just want to hop on the marriage train and start having kids, but they don't know what they want.

In the case of Penny, she gets mixed up with a troupe of horror movie filmmakers who have plenty of vision and creativity, but they are missing the essential element of a single organizational brain. Reed and Means create a vibrant cast of horror geeks, over-acting theater guys, and dreamers who want a taste of something beyond their service or office jobs. Penny soon learns that much of the group, especially the two guys running Satan's Fingers Productions (or is it Killshot Films?) are long on ideas and short on actual follow-through. The spine of the narrative is built around making a horror film in time for a big indy horror-film event called Splatterfest.

Along the way, Reed & Means keep the focus on Penny and her life. That includes her adversarial relationship with her roommate, her dysfunctional relationship with her prim sister, and her own self-esteem as a person. The cover of the book is a neat summary of the narrative: Penny is there making directorial notes, adding make-up touches, holding a boom mic, assisting with blood for special effects, and then mopping up the whole thing. She's in blue while everything else is in yellow, a nice trick that focuses the reader's eye and makes them understand that the same person is in all of these roles. Penny helps write the script and do the storyboards, goes out and looks for costumes, scouts locations, and reads up on how to make a film. More to the point: she was encouraged to do this, and encouragement was all that she ever wanted and needed. She wanted to be part of something creative and to find a community that valued her for her creative instincts. Moreover, Penny Nichols hammers home one specific point: nothing you ever do will ever live up to your own ideal of what you wanted, so the most important thing to do is finish it.

Indeed, the final day of filming is one where Penny has to take over the most significant role: directing itself. The flaky director, whose anxiety always rose directly the closer he got to actually completing any project, didn't show up. Instead, Penny takes the reins and not only gets through it, she even manages to come to an understanding of sorts with her sister. Reed and Means keep the characterizations relatively simple but still allow each character to feel satisfied with themselves for their own contributions to the film. From the young special effects guy to the actress hungry for real structure, the crew manages to find workarounds for everything, both in terms of props, location, and even the story itself.

If all of this sounds like a metaphor for the comics community, that's because it is. Splatterfest itself is a love letter to events like SPX. Indeed, there's a time gap between the last day of filming and the convention, which opens with a young woman flagging down Penny and lavishing praise on the film. We learn that they didn't win the competition, but they did get a lot of attention and interest. Every artist and writer knows that feeling of someone coming up to you and telling them how important their work is to them. It's a sense of validation and belonging that was heretofore missing in the lives of so many. While that validation and camaraderie feels good and can be sustaining, Penny Nichols is firm in asserting the idea that it's the work itself that's most important.

Speaking of collaborations, Wiegle's cartoony, exaggerated style is ideal for a comic about making a horror movie. While a lot of his comics have dealt with fantasy or genre concepts, Wiegle at heart is a gag man. This is a book that has a lot of funny character moments, and Wiegle delivers a host of quirky, bizarre, and amusing character designs. Penny herself is gloriously frumpy, with hair piled on top of her head in somewhat haphazard fashion. Wiegle's varied line weights allow for a lot of precision character details as well as denser, more expressive lines when they film a bunch of the blood-splattering scenes. There is a sense of joy at the heart of this book, as the collaboration of the artist and writers reflects the enthusiasm of the cast of characters. Penny Nichols is about the joy of creation from concept to problem-solving to finished product, and it reflects how this shared passion can unite a disparate group of people in such an ebullient fashion. 

Sequart Reprints: More MOCCA minicomics (2005)

As I've noted before, it's always a bit awkward reviewing and analyzing comics whose main purpose is being funny. They either make you laugh or they don't, but examining exactly why this is like killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. That said, let's take a look at some recent humor minicomics and the different approaches they used.

Summer Fun With Elroy P Dinner is a mini that's an excerpt from an upcoming issue of Sam Henderson's Magic Whistle. Henderson is probably the preeminent gagmaster in this generation of cartoonists. In particular, he's a master at subverting situational humor, either by upending expectations, taking situations to their logical extremes, or by stacking so many absurd elements on top of each other that he destroys any semblance of logic or structure. This mini is his technique in microcosm. It's about a bearded restaurant critic who only gives good reviews to restaurants where everyone involved is wearing a beard. The restaurant owner panders to him by forcing everyone (including customers) to wear fake beards, then has to pander to a pirate food critic and a cowboy yodeling food critic. He then throws in the fact that the restaurant is famous for cat food sandwiches and takes us to the cat food factory (owned by a talking cat, of course). This insanity is made all the more effective by Henderson's crude but expressive characters, all of whom just look inherently funny to my eyes. Henderson flogs a premise until it starts to lose all meaning, and this commitment to a joke while finding a thousand different ways to warp it is what makes him a master. Check out http://magicwhistle.com for more.

Matt Wiegle of the Partyka group checks in with Your Karate Vacation. Wiegle's sense of humor is usually a bit dry, but he goes for all-out silliness in this comic. This is an 8-page mini that combines martial arts cliches with travelogue banalities, and the result is very funny. The cover image shows a karate warrior with his leg up, ready to strike--but with a martini balanced on it and standing on a beach. Every page is its own gag, and they're all funny. The best might be one captioned "Some tips on the use of public transportation:" for a diagram that shows our karate master leaping from the street to on top of a passing bus. Wiegle doesn't go for the kitchen sink like Henderson does, instead, he juxtaposes two unlike things and wrings every bit of humor out of them.

As Eavesdropped, Vol 2 by Suzanne Baumann depicts out-of-context scenes and overheard conversations. This works well because of Baumann's timing and rubbery style that gives the eye something to latch onto. The best story is about a movie theatre cashier who receives a compliment from an elderly woman about her politeness, only to get savagely critiqued when she reveals that she's 26, not a teenager: "Why on earth are you working HERE?" This mini is short and sweet, with a great premise.

Speaking of great premises, Teen Boat  #7 continues to follow the ridiculous adventures of the boy who can turn into a boat. John Green and Dave Roman take every 80's-movie cliche and pack them into one comic: the whiny hero who gets great advice from his female best friend who has an unrequited crush on him, the jock who gets all the girls he has a crush on, etc. The fact that he can turn into a boat (and is obsessed with nautical terms) is what makes this comic irresistible. The best thing about this issue, where Teen Boat tries to learn how to drive a car to impress a girl (with predictably disastrous results), is that "TB" is self-centered, obnoxious and a narcissist. This only makes him much funnier, as the audience actually enjoys him getting his comeuppance. I can't wait til this series gets collected, because it's going to be a dynamite "gateway comic" for a lot of readers. Check out http://www.myspace.com/teenboat for more.

Tom Gauld takes a completely different tact in Guardians of the Kingdom. He's deadpan and dry, but gets all sorts of laughs out of this story of two guards defending a wall from invaders that never come. They build snowmen, throw rocks, brew tea, piss off the wall--anything to alleviate boredom and their simultaneous need for each other's company and resentment of same. Gauld is known for his spare lines, but there's a lushness to this comic, thanks to the manic work he did crosshatching and shading so many of the pages. This comic is beautiful and wistful, but I found myself chuckling on every page as well. I picked up my copy from Buenaventura Press.

Most of the folks in this article are polished veterans. That's why reading Alexander Rocine's Binge of the Space Pig was just an unusual pleasure, because this comic obviously just flowed from the pen of a young artist who just wanted to draw something that made him laugh. The effect is sort of like a cross between Rory Hayes and Monty Python, as a group of pirate teddy bears sail the ocean, the author visits the YMACA (Young Man's Anti-Christian Association, an old Python joke) and winds up hanging out with Satan as he gets a tour of hell from a penguin demon. These comics are crudely-drawn but have an enormous amount of energy and imagination. As Rocine cycles through his influences, refines his style and firmly establishes his own voice, he could become quite a cartoonist. He's already a great stylist and has a no-holds-barred approach to storytelling, not to mention a considerable amount of enthusiasm. His sense of humor combines the absurd and the demented, and a willingness to try anything on the page. Seek out http://www.myspace.com/maskedcreature for more.

Last on this list is the one and only Matt Feazell, the Rembrandt of stick-figure mini-comics. I've been reading his work for close to 20 years, and he only keeps getting better. His stick figures are more expressive than most humorists' regular figures, and it's no accident--I've seen some of his test sheets where he perfects his methods. The result is pure storytelling, with no extraneous elements. Anything extra he packs into a panel is either devoted directly to the story, character, or gag--even if it's just a decorative element. The comics I got at MOCCA were The Amazing Cynicalman #15-18. These are collections of his weekly strip, featuring characters he's been writing for years, like Cynicalman, Cute Girl, Stupid Boy, etc. Feazell is pretty conventional when it comes to most of his punchlines, but the clarity of his storytelling is so powerful, that one's eye just can't get enough of what he's doing. On one page, he had a strip that ran for 15 tiny panels to get to its punchline, yet his sense of rhythm and timing is so impeccable that the eye just zipped across the page. Feazell veers from absurd gags (like an elevator to Alpha Centauri), to goofy puns, to clever observations ("Wonders of Domesticaton" traces the evolution of fierce beasts into pets, and ends with the hunter being turned into a sales manager), to sociopolitical commentary, to some jokes with nasty punchlines. Like many of my favorite artists, Feazell's features could only work as comics, and there's something about seeing them in standard 8-page mini form that's very comforting.

Sequart #62: Elfworld

Elfworld was first conceived of by Jeffrey Brown, best known for his autobiographical comics. Fans of Brown will also know that he's fond of doing skewed takes on genre conventions as well. His Bighead is his version of a superhero character (adapted from stuff he used to do as a kid), and his upcoming Incredible Change-Bots does the same for The Transformers. On the Comics Journal message board back in 2004, he solicited entries for an anthology dealing with sword-and-sorcery type fantasy tales from fellow indy artists, to be called Elfworld. For a variety of reasons, he abandoned the project, but it was taken up by San Francisco artist Francois Vigneault, who started his own publishing concern (Family Style) for this and other projects. Most of the entries in this volume came from that original solicitation by Brown, in a nice-looking package edited by Vigneault and designed by Jonas Madden-Connor.

It's clear that the audience for this book is supposed to be indy-comics fans, and there are a few big names in here, like Brown, Martin Cendreda, Souther Salazar and Ron Rege'. It's unfortunate that their contributions are among the weakest in the book--single or two-page strips that don't really go anywhere. The problem with doing this kind of story is that a straight-up parody is going to be as tedious as one that slavishly adheres to the trappings of the genre. Cendreda does a parody of indy comics with his, with an elf character falling into the same kind of "lonely-boy" loser situations as one might see in some typical autobiographical comics. Even at just four pages, it feels like the joke was beaten to death in the first panel or two. The same went for Ansis Purins' "Gnome Gathering", which tried to meld fantasy with Freak Brothers-style humor. While the final joke about eagles was clever, this was another story that beat the same concept into the ground on page after page.

The stories that work best here are the sort that take after Lewis Trondheim's approach in Dungeon. There, the sword-and-sorcery stories are ridiculous but told with a straight face, and the humor comes out of the situations that arise rather than with easy parodic targets. Walking the line between understanding what makes the genre work and how to transcend its limitations isn't easy, and only a few of the artists in Elfworld got it right to my eyes.

The best stories by far were "Adventures In Mead", by Matt Wiegle, "Basilisk" by Kaz Strzepek, and an untitled story by K. Thor Jensen. Wiegle's story is spaced interstially throughout the story, and involves a drunk fighter with an uncanny knack for killing everything in his path. As we learn as the story proceeds, this ability isn't necessarily helpful. Wiegle's art is beautifully scratchy and cartoony, a nice balance between the strip's violence and its goofiness.

Jensen's story is familiar: a group of adventurers in an underground cavern looking for a fabulous lost city. This tale has a lot going for it. First, Jensen's art style resembles classic Elzie (Popeye) Segar here--a perfect model to emulate in terms of melding humor with adventure. Jensen's secret weapon here is his spot-on dialogue, especially with one member of the party whose constant complaining and skepticism about everything winds up saving them. This was one of the few stories in the book where the characters and situation were interesting enough for me to want to see more of them. Jensen takes the adventure seriously, but his funny art lightens up the action. It's a perfect compromise between the two sensibilities seen so often in this book.

"Basilisk" is a fantastic story about a smart-ass researcher trying to find the legendary basilisk near a small town. The creature is supposedly part-bird and has the power to turn anything it gazes upon into stone. The researcher talks a kobold in a bar to take him to the where his party encountered the creature so he could draw it. The basilisk turns out to be both more and less than what was expected, and the story's ending has a delightful twist. This story has it all--humor, a deep vein of D&D/fantasy references (I especially liked the appearance of a beholder), and a liveliness to its line. It's both funny and exciting, with a great final punchline. I don't think it was a coincidence that Strzepek was able to succeed here because of his comfort with stories that deal with fantastic elements. It was clear which artists were in their element and which weren't in this volume.

There are several other stories that pretty much took on a serious approach to the subject that didn't do enough to entertain as pure genre stories, or else tried to inject a "poignant moment" into fantasy settings. The one other story I did want to note was Erik Nebel & Jesse Reklaw's "The Little People", about a sort of blob-couple. The male is always off on some kind of quest, leaving his mate behind, and never gives her any details. Years later, when she and their son finally leave them, the real reason for his vagueness came out and it's not clear if he's a raving paranoid or had good reason for his actions. It's not quite as accomplished or interesting as the best stories in this book, but it's still clever and visually interesting. The story is quite grim, but it's balanced by the fact that the blobs are funny-looking.

Overall, this book falls prey to some of the traps that indy books tackling genre subjects fall into, but there are several stories that transcend these difficulties. When dealing with the same topic, story after story, there's a certain numbing effect that can take over for the reader. At the same time, the stories that manage to capture the theme in a unique manner are all the more memorable. Writing genre fiction creates a certain set of limitations and expectations for an artist, and it's a testament to an artist's skill if they can create something truly memorable given a reduced palette of storytelling options. There will be a second volume of Elfworld in 2008, and it'll be interesting to see which artists return and what new voices Vigneault brings in. While I appreciate Vigneault's attempt to bring a variety of approaches (serious and otherwise), the next volume may work better as a whole if every artist successfully walks the line between genre fantasy and playfulness. The book was solicited through Diamond and is also available at Family Style's website at http://www.family-style.com