Two Comics From Mike Dawson

I've been writing about Mike Dawson for much of his career as a mature artist, starting with his memoir Freddie And Me. In that nearly twenty-year period, Dawson has shown a tendency to never want to do the same thing twice. That's even been reflected in the fact that he's had multiple publishers during this time period. There's a proving curiosity in how he thinks about comics and the world that's reflected in his highly eclectic output as a cartoonist. In his most recent years, he's published two excellent YA books centered around a girl who plays basketball and her family called The Fifth Quarter. He's also been a prolific essayist and political cartoonist, publishing his work in The Nib and elsewhere. 

Dawson is less interested in political cartooning as a form of polemic and more interested in a larger cultural commentary and exploration of issues from a personal point of view. It melds his interest in history and politics with memoir and storytelling. Above all else, Dawson centers everything around narrative, even in shorter stories. It's the main reason his work is so easy to parse and digest: one always has a sense of what the protagonist wants, or at least what they're struggling with. 

That clarity is at play even as Dawson has proven to be one of the most restless of cartoonists in this period. One gets the sense that he wants to do every kind of comic at once, and in every kind of format. Indeed, Troop 182 was published as a webcomic, a series of minicomics, and a book; each iteration was slightly different. I think Dawson's hit on something with his recent minicomics collections of material from webcomics and his patreon. There's a cohesion to them that feels like he's been regularly cranking out minis for years like John Porcellino.

Fun Time, which was published in Spring of 2022, features a lot of Dawson's frequent meta-thinking. He often comments about the comics scene at various points in his career, but especially when he was younger and it was still dominated by white men. The cover, which features characters from his other comics as well as a fanboy drooling over an issue of Wizard, is very much in this vein. Much of this comic, however, consists of short, snappy, political vignettes. There's a strip about cops being obsessed with the Punisher and a disgusting way to diminish him. There's a lot of thinking about Generation X and its failures. Some of the best strips are about his kids, like an understanding of the childlike joy of cartooning and drawing for its own sake before one worries about what others will think. There is reflection on his practice as a cartoonist and what he's learned since he was a teenager (and how he gently lampoons himself over it). The best strip is a reaction to the Joan Didion memoir, The Year Of Magical Thinking, and how as a younger person he couldn't absorb its lessons about grief. In the wake of aging, of COVID, and of tragedy in general, Dawson remarks on his good fortune and quotes Didion: "Time is the school in which we learn." Dawson is at his best when he expresses self-doubt and vulnerability, and this strip shows how hard he thought about some difficult lessons.

Sell-Out Comics (published in Fall 2022) is more pointedly about Generation X. There is limited utility in making cross-generational comparisons that don't take into account where someone is from, their ethnic and religious background, and so much more. It can be a lazy, broad brush with which to paint and make sweeping generalizations about things. That said, the temptation is understandable and some of the lived-in experiences he describes were things that were generalized for others. For example, he notes that the show Stranger Things, set in the mid to late 1980s, makes a point of scrupulous adherence to cultural references, yet as Dawson notes, there is no overt and showy homophobia among that group of boys. He points out how the 80s and early 90s were astoundingly reactionary in this regard (especially after the gains of the 1970s), and how remarkable so many kids today are in their enlightened acceptance, especially in the face of a newly reactionary right.

He discusses this further and says that a big difference between now and the 80s is that there wasn't a narrative of questioning the establishment as part of the larger cultural discussion, and points to events like Ronald Reagan's 1984 landslide and cultural touchstones like Rambo. The voices didn't have to be as loud or as violent because there were fewer voices speaking up against them. He also notes the contradiction of glam metal presenting its stars as at once hyper-masculine but looking utterly feminized as one of an almost unconscious revolt against masculinity. And he says that Generation X is the most complicit in fomenting the reactionary responses to a new enlightenment; I think this has less to do with Gen-X's supposed detachment and much more to do with a function of age, race and role in a capitalist state; again, this is a symptom of drawing too neat a series of assumptions about a particular age group. There are simply too many unexplored variables to make the kind of assertions that Dawson puts forward--unless one is only counting white people. Dawson's other observations about rhetoric being meaningless to fascism are spot-on, especially a joke about document storage that ends with him being in line to get shot. 

Dawson puts himself on the line with his opinions, and he's developed a style that seems to fit it. It's loose, cartoony, and doesn't fuss over details. He uses color to add weight and texture to his pages, and keeping his line loose makes sense for this approach. 

Uncivilized: Mike Dawson's Rules For Dating My Daughter

The one constant in Mike Dawson's widely varied narrative choices in his career is that no matter what he's doing, he always tends to use a bit of narrative misdirection in establishing his true themes. For example, Freddie And Me is ostensibly about growing up as a fan of the rock band Queen as he transitioned from living in the UK to the US, but it's really about the properties of memory as they relate to identity. By the same token, his collection of essays from Uncivilized Books (by my count, his fourth publisher to date), Rules For Dating My Daughter, bills itself as "The Modern Father's Guide To Parenting". In reality, the book is about moral and ethical paralysis, as Dawson repeatedly finds himself confronting the question "Am I Good?", especially now that he's a parent.

A word on the cover. I've been baffled by some internet comments I've seen about the cover that claim it's glorifying gun use, toxic masculinity and Dawson's privilege as a straight white male. One look at the book's contents (and the story the image is taken from) quickly reveals that this is an ironic image, one that's deliberately made as hypermasculine as possible. These are issues that he quite explicitly explores, without finding a way to resolve them adequately in his own mind. Indeed, the entire book reads like a philosopher carefully weighing both sides of an intractable issue, unwilling or unable to issue an appropriate, all-encompassing ruling. Dawson is exploring the world of ethics throughout the book, and the only firm decision he seems to come to terms with as a moral imperative is becoming a vegetarian, though the argument he makes for this position is personal and arbitrary. Otherwise, one of Dawson's missions in the book is thinking about extremist moral positions and how uncomfortable he is with them, even as he understands that having a framework that he didn't question would make his life much simpler.

Dawson begins the book by addressing a classical ethical quandary: is having good intentions and ideas enough to make one "good", or does it require a specific set of actions? Is believing in social justice or gun control in itself sufficient to be "good", or can only only consider oneself good if one is working directly to make change--especially if that person is in a position of relative privilege? Dawson is well off enough, as he relates in the book, to work part-time from home in order to draw and telecommute while taking care of kids, but he also has a part-time nanny. It's important that he acknowledges all of this up front, that posting political links on facebook and twitter is literally the least he can do in order to live up to a certain nebulous ideal.

The title story explores the idea of a "feminist father" t-shirt about the rules for dating his daughter, that in essence, she makes the rules because it's her body. He explores the idea of "you'll need a shotgun to scare off the boys", which is of course problematic for all sorts of reasons. It treats his daughter like property, it denies her agency, it turns relationships into primitive shows of strength, etc. Dawson deftly puts himself into that mindset and then tears it down as he imagines the future version of his daughter demanding her own agency, and then even his son objects to the idea of that possessiveness, asking if it was OK if other fathers wanted to shoot him. Dawson goes over a number of variations on "the rules" before concluding that the more rigid one is about future events, the less likely it is that your rules will have any relevance or value. More to the point, worrying about that hypothetical future only detracts from being able to build trust and foster agency now.

Throughout the book, Dawson's focus shifts from quotidian strips about what a day is like in his life at the moment as he and his wife raise their children to a particular point he might choose to bring up. His art is in the style of his recent book Angie Bongiovanni, which is to say using a lot of big, stylized heads and smaller bodies and an emphasis on naturalism otherwise. His frequent use of an open page layout instead of a traditional gig gives the book a deliberate photo album feel, especially when he starts stacking panels on top of each other.  Work/life and art/life balance is the subject of one strip, where he once again concludes that any notion that he has to have a certain level of productivity is arbitrary and an idea that simply isn't relevant for him anymore. In other words, if life dictates that he spend a certain amount of energy simply being a dad and being present with his kids, then so be it. It's a decision that female artists have had to repeatedly make throughout history.

He also flips to more explicitly political pieces, like one where he uses a couple of alpha male types in different poses to underline that Americans don't in fact like underdogs, they like underdog stories. Stories like that don't affect their equilibrium; in fact, it becomes part of the American myth. Dawson's further point that Americans hate underdogs is right on, although I'm not sure it's entirely because they "hate a loser for losing" (though that's part of it, since winning is an endemic part of American culture. I might posit that there's a belief that an underdog winning represents an open threat to them and their way of life, and it plays out in topics like immigration, race, gay rights, etc. Something that represents a gain for someone else is automatically perceived as a loss for them--and "losing" is intolerable.

In the most chilling story in the book, "overcompensating", Dawson takes that brew of toxic masculinity, glorification of violence as a solution to one's problems and an unexamined stance towards one's own beliefs and privilege and sets it squarely on himself. Throughout the book, Dawson takes great pains to show himself in a warts 'n all manner with his family. Sometimes his children frustrate him. Sometimes he yells when they're not listening, or are endangering themselves. There's a story where his daughter in fact draws him yelling. This story relates a time when he was younger and a girlfriend left him for someone at her job, and he went down to confront him about it. Things got physical. Dawson described himself as full of righteous fury, interspersing drawings of himself with 80s action heroes like Clint Eastwood and the Punisher. Throughout the story, he pops in domestic violence statistics and gun violence statistics. The comic is not an attempt to justify his actions in any way, but rather to express the remorse he felt for his pointless actions and attempt to understand what brought him to that point. This story is Dawson admitting that he's part of the problem and has tried to change, but is that enough?

Does being a vegetarian make him good? Does acknowledging his privilege, over and over, make him good? Does raising his children in a loving and supportive way make him good? What Dawson hints at throughout the book is that while this is perhaps the most anxiety-producing topic there is, as it is doing nothing less than figuring out where one stands in the cosmic scale of things, it's also beside the point. Worrying about the semantics of being good is less important than the intuitive properties of kindness, mercy and acceptance. It's not unlike the ethical approach to Lynda Barry's famous two questions. This is in relation to what happens when one looks at a story or a drawing or anything you've created, and instead of simply enjoying the action of creation, you start to ask "Is this good? Does this suck?" Similarly, asking "Am I good? Do I suck?" leads to the sort of moral paralysis that we see throughout the story. The reality of our situation is that we make hundreds of small ethical decisions every day, and after a while it becomes obvious which decisions are selfish and destructive and which decisions come from a place of kindness and empathy. Having an open mind, a willingness to change and evolve, and the ability to understand the beliefs of others are the keys to "goodness" in my view, where kindness and a simple respect for the humanity of others intuitively guide our decision-making instead of the sort of titular rules that are incapable of dealing with nuance. It's Dawson's ability to shift from all-judging editorial cartoonist to flawed but always striving husband and dad that display precisely that sort of kindness and empathy. It may not be something that comes easily or naturally, but Dawson's whole point is that it can be learned.

Check Your Privilege: Angie Bongiolatti

(In the interest of full disclosure, I was thanked by the author for offering him some suggestions after reading an earlier draft of the final book.)

Angie Bongiolatti (published by Secret Acres) is Mike Dawson's most interesting and challenging book. Dawson's comics tend to have a surface story covering up his real goals. (For example, Freddie and Me is on the surface a memoir about growing up as a fan of Queen but is really about the nature of memory.) On the surface, the book has two distinct threads: one follows a group of 20-somethings immediately post 9/11 amidst a great deal of personal and political turmoil, and the other follows the ways in which sex and relationships color our beliefs. Both threads center around the titular character, who is the one character who remains somewhat opaque in terms of her personal thoughts and dreams. Indeed, in my initial assessment of the book, I thought she was given too little to do. In thinking about Dawson's meta-story for this book, it became clearer that this book is really about the ways in which our points of view are inevitably colored by a number of sociopolitical factors, factors that are difficult to understand and empathize with.

There are a variety of political viewpoints espoused in this book. Dawson is careful not to turn characters into caricatures, however. For example, her boss (jon) at the online learning firm that's one of the hubs of the story is a little older and depicted as being politically conservative as well as kind of an asshole. However, his home life reveals a man under a great deal of stress with a new baby and the very real fears of losing his job. The intersection between sex and politics is often hilariously navigated, as a guy (Matt) from Angie's job attends a protest meeting in an attempt to get to hang out with her. Former college friends Amol and Malcolm are also in the mix, and flashbacks reveal how Angie and her then-boyfriend got them involved in a three-way. The privacy and secrecy of sex is strongly contrasted against the public nature of political activism, though Angie makes it clear that she's not ashamed of either.

Let's delve deeper into those sex scenes, because they're key moments in the book. The first, with the funny Amol, winds up being played for laughs, as he ejaculates on himself before anything even gets started and winds up going home. The second, with Malcolm, winds up being the real thing, but it turns out Angie's boyfriend was cooler with polyamorous activity more in theory than in practice. Angie sensed this when he kicked Malcolm in the head "accidentally" and later starts singing the song "You Don't Own Me" as a way of indicating just that--that her sexuality was hers and no one else's. When he grumbles about what he "let Malcolm do", that's Angie's breaking point: she's not owned by anyone. It's one of many cases in the book where a character utterly fails to recognize a divergent point of view and simultaneously fails to recognize the ways in which their social standing gives them a certain degree of privilege.

Dawson's visual choices were interesting. He went even cartoonier than usual, giving characters big heads in proportion to their bodies as a way of emphasizing emotions and the subtleties of slight facial tics--much like a caricaturist might. Angie in particular gives away everything with her facial expressions, and the scene in which she and her boyfriend have the confrontation that leads to them breaking up is especially masterful. Dawson wants us to look as these characters as people, small actors in a larger world stage but whose own point of view paints each of them as important players. It should also be noted that the slice-of-life situations Dawson puts his characters into are frequently quite funny; Dawson's gift for dialogue is crucial here, as it prevents the book from ever falling into didacticism.

Throughout the book, there are illustrated excerpts from the writer Arthur Koestler on the nature of the revolutionary, and how it related to both the religious zealot and the neurotic. The fuzzy, penciled art stands in sharp contrast to the rest of the book. The smart but cynical analysis is presented with no comment, other than its juxtaposition against the activities of the characters in the book. After 9/11, Angie joins a socialist organization and encourages those at work to attend. Koestler's comments seem to comment on Angie in particular, initially making her into a sort of naive figure. Matt and Amol hope that their attending the socialist meeting will get her attention, her boss Jon holds her views in contempt, and her radical friend Kim holds her views in contempt for entirely different reasons while still wanting to be around her. As the reader slowly discovers, Angie is no one's tool and has no time for fools. She more-or-less ditches both Matt and Amol at the meeting (she gets them to sit together!), she sneers at her boss and she winds up cutting Kim out of her life when she disparages Angie's attempts at being an activist while holding a cushy job.

Kim also winds up quoting Koestler's friend Orwell when she sees Amol while looking for Angie, a quote that essentially resigns one to the machine of the state and capitalism being all but impossible to change and advocates simply recording what one sees. In a sense, it's a nihilistic confirmation of Koestler's point of view, one sparked by a visit to the USSR as a witness to a Stalinist purging trial. The various layers of story and especially of Angie's history are crucial to Dawson's next move: quoting Langston Hughes' visit to the USSR at the same time Koestler was there. He notes Koestler's discomfort in areas of true deprivation and was less interested in that same trial than he delighted in the fact that he could walk around outside the courtroom and not have his behaviors monitored or prohibited in any way--a degree of respect and dignity for his personhood that he did not receive in his home country.

This story was brought up by a speaker at a socialist meeting attended by Angie, and gets to a key point: we talk about the importance of freedom, a somewhat abstract concept. (I'm not about to write off the Stalinist purges as glibly as the speaker does, considering how many millions were killed--though I think this may have been another intentional device by Dawson to indicate that she's as unable to see the point of view of the other side as the pro-capitalist set is). She notes that in a capitalist society, freedom is considered to be an absolute, while racism, poverty, etc are considered to be unfortunate but not priorities. Again, it's a matter of understanding how privilege informs one's worldview, even when one is not aware of it. The bottom line is that both points of view to some degree ignore simple humanism: respecting, nurturing and collaborating with others. Dawson seems to be saying that it's not enough to not do harm to others; we must actively help. The key word here is "active": Angie tries to change things, and Matt actually comes around to her point of view when he witnesses police brutality firsthand.

A friend of mine who's a college professor, when discussing the French revolution with his students, enjoyed putting them to the test in an interesting manner. He discussed the three ideals of the revolution: liberty, equality, fraternity. He asked the class to close their eyes and raise their hands as to which of the three was most important to them. Invariably, the men chose liberty, the women chose equality, and hardly anyone ever chose fraternity. That sense of brotherly and sisterly love for one's fellow person is so often left behind when there's a paradigm shift of ideas, yet it seems to be the crucial bridge between liberty and equality co-existing as ideals. It's also an ideal that must filter down to every aspect of human relations, be it race, gender, sexuality or something else. It's interesting that Koestler himself was notorious for being a ladies' man, using his status as a famous writer to bed star-struck fans. It's one more way that his focus regarding freedom was a narrow one, indeed.

Sequart Reprints: Peter Conrad, Superior Showcase

I happen to love comics anthologies, in all their beautiful sloppiness. I love panning for gold in them, hoping to get at least one great story even in an anthology that's otherwise a waste of time. I enjoy seeing authors stretched to put something together for a themed anthology, to be put out of their comfort zone either by the length of the story or its theme. In the history of comics, there have been so many significant talents that were discovered in anthologies, so much important history made. I especially enjoy reading minicomics anthologies, as so many artists get their first significant exposure (such as it is) in these venues.

One advantage of self-published, self-constructed minicomics is that the formal and design possibilities are almost limitless. They can become as much art object as a vehicle for delivering narratives. Peter Conrad has done a lot of exploring with both form and design for his comics. His best known was a comic he affixed to a Rubik's Cube, where every twist and turn created different stories. It wasn't just an ingenious idea, it actually made for some good comics, because he took the time to break down every panel and how it might connect to every other panel.

Along these lines, Conrad conceived of an anthology where every artist had to draw their story using their non-dominant hand. I was intrigued by such a severe formal constraint, and it was Conrad's aim to get each artist out of their comfort zone. What was interesting is that a number of similar themes popped up from story to story, including twins, mirrors, and other states of not quite being oneself. Conrad's formal constraint wound up producing a set of stories that fit well together, but was not burdened by the sort of repetitiveness that a thematic constraint often brings.

Highlights from On The Other Hand include Josh Neufeld's "Josh And I", Diana Tamblyn's "Cat Scratch Fever", John Hankiewicz's "Left Side/Right Lung", K. Thor Jensen's "Business Plans", Luciano Cruzado's "Secrets" and most especially Renee French's "Tooth Fairy". Neufeld's story is told from the perspective of his mirror twin, wondering about the odd person he sees in the mirror every day. Using his other hand loosened up his normally fine line considerably, adding a nervous energy that seemed to suit the personality of his mirror self. Tamblyn wrote about a cat whose "bad" paw caused it to get into all sorts of mischief. It seemed a sly way of talking about how difficult it was to work with her "bad" hand. The subject matter of Hankiewicz's story fit right into the rest of his typically cryptic tales, but still meshed nicely with the overall theme. There's his typical sense of foreboding here, about a man who can't sleep on his left side without his right lung causing him agony. Hankiewicz is another artist who normally employs a tight and spare line, which belies the tension beneath. Here, the nervousness and claustrophobia is all on the surface with an almost rubbery quality.

Jensen's story is a bit of autobiography: an embarrassing, drunken night. It's funny and the crudeness of his drawing looks perfect in this context. Cruzado's entry is perhaps the most beautiful-looking piece, suggesting that he may be ambidextrous. Regardless, it's a creepy yet touching account of a young boy finding a roomful of secrets and dreams, where he learns the most important secret of his young life. Finally, there's the insanity that is Renee French. Blessed with some of the best chops in the business, her disturbing-yet-charming style remains intact with her off hand. The story tells us what the Tooth Fairy really looks like, and it's not pretty.

Many of On The Other Hand's stories stayed with me for awhile, which is unusual for an anthology. I think part of that was due to the strength of the writing. While most of the stories clearly showed how much the author struggled to even get them on the page, it was ultimately their themes and execution that made this a memorable experience.

Turning to a thematic constraint, Superior Showcase #1 ($3.95, AdHouse Books) spun out of Chris Pitzer's beautiful Project: Superior anthology. That one was pretty simple: artists told stories about superheroes they way they wanted to. Whether it was superheroes as romance, straight-ahead stories, slice-of-life or humor, the results were at worst amusing and at best quite charming. Showcase is a "regular" comic book that continues the theme, and the three artists featured turn in very different pieces. The ultra-versatile Nick Bertozzi gives us "Super-Mart". In TOP TEN, Alan Moore gave us a city where everyone has superpowers and wears a costume, so that those two things no longer serve to differentiate members of the populace. "Super-Mart" works on a similar level, only with the more mundane setting of a convenience store. Mike Dawson shows us the fate of "Ace-Face", a retired superhero turned college professor. When he decides to stop a brutal vigilante, the real world catches up to him. Finally, Dean Trippe (with John Campbell) brings us a tale of "Butterfly", the son of a Superman-like character. He meets up with a disaffected Robin-like sidekick named Birdie, and they encounter Hipster Ghosts on Halloween.

The stories vary in tone, with Dawson's becoming unexpectedly grim. Trippe's is sweet and frothy, while Bertozzi's is absurd with a healthy helping of smart-ass. The book is aided by a gorgeous Hope Larson cover and publisher Chris Pitzer's impeccable design sense. I like superheroes and enjoy seeing artists put them to uses beyond simple action. What I've enjoyed about Pitzer's vehicles is their sense of fun. Superhero comics are really not very good at dealing with "serious" subjects; the inherent ridiculousness of the genre tends to make attempts at seriousness collapse. This is not to say that one can't do character work in a superhero setting, just that the artist has to have a grasp on the absurdity of that sort of world.

Finally comes, a miniscomics version of Conrad's webstrip Paper Dummy, which Conrad describes as a cross between a blog and a comic strip. What this winds up meaning is that formally, every entry is a comic strip. It's just that Conrad doesn't feel constrained to stick to a particular genre. Some days, it's gags. Other days, it's slice-of-life stories. And on other days, it's just little observations: things he's noticed in nature, or odd things that he's heard. The punchline here is that I'm reviewing a minicomics version of an online comic strip, which of course provides certain constraints of its own: the size of the paper, the order in which I am to read the strips, etc. While there are some web cartoonists who are uninterested in being published in "real" books, there are plenty who happily view the web as a great place to get the kind of daily / weekly / monthly exposure they might get from more traditional (but hard to obtain) means of serialization. After reaching a certain critical mass, they can simply use a service like lulu.com to whip up print-on-demand collections. For artists with more clout, they can cut a deal with either an established comics publisher or even a "real" book publisher; there seem to be more and more of these kinds of deals every day.

Of course, that's a whole 'nother story. Conrad's own contribution has lots of great gags. I especially liked the story about his parents moving to California and him getting them a TiVo and subscription to Wired so as to fit in; staying awake on the road by watching movies in other cars; and a dog reading a book called "Where The Ball Went" in bed. My favorite gag was "That Tingle Means It's Working", depicting a man with his hair on fire. The strips definitely have that sketchbook feel, looking quickly drawn. That aids in their immediacy, but their visual component is not all that compelling. I like a loose style that contains a certain energy, but I also appreciate the craft that goes into honing a line to perfection. The beauty of the online sketchbook is that an artist can do both: draw something every day to keep their skills in practice and get the instant gratification of having the world as an audience; and working on that long-range, slow project that can take years to finish.

Artists To Seek Out At SPX 2011; High-Low @SPX

I will be at SPX 2011 this year. I'll be hosting a panel on 9/10 at 3:30 in the Brookside Conference Room on "Stories Of Cultural Identity". I'll quote the blurb from the website: "America’s own culture wars are only part of a global struggle with identity, as nations the world over attempt to address the challenges of assimilating multiple cultures within a stable society. Moderator Rob Clough will talk to Jessica Abel (La Perdida), Marguerite Dabaie (The Hookah Girl), Sarah Glidden (How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less) and G. B. Tran (Vietnamerica) about comics that deal with issues of cultural identity." I'm looking forward to it.

As always, I'm happy to review whatever comics cartoonists choose to give me.

Here are ten young artists to seek out at SPX, on the basis of their potential and/or significant debuts at the show. A number of them are up for Ignatz awards. In alphabetical order:

1. Darryl Ayo. Ayo is an Ignatz nominee for Promising New Talent and is someone who has been steeped in comics and comics culture for a long time, even for a cartoonist as young as he. He's become a sharp observer of social mores as well as a mark-maker whose style has begun to coalesce.

2. Pat Barrett. This graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies is one of its best draftsmen and stylists. His Oak & Linden minicomics are well-crafted one-man anthologies, and the actual anthologies he's been a part of (Nymphonomena and Tag Team in particular) are rather good.

3. Marguerite Dabaie. Dabaie is on my panel and has proven to be an interesting young voice with her Hookah Girl comics, which are autobiographical stories about growing up as a Palestinian-American. Dabaie is a fine draftsman with an eye for intricate detail.

4. Mike Dawson. Dawson is one of the more established cartoonists on this list, but his new book Troop 142 debuts at the show and it's his strongest work to date. He'll also be hosting a panel on his Ink Panthers co-host (on ten years since the publication of his first major work, Box Office Poison) that will likely be hilarious. Look for an extensive interview with him (by me) at tcj.com very soon.

5. Lisa Hanawalt. She's one of the top humorists in comics, full stop. I don't know if she'll have anything new, but now is your chance to pick up both issues of her awesomely gross and hilarious series I Want You.

6. Melissa Mendes. This CCS grad has a bright future ahead of her and will get a bit of spotlight with the release of her collected Freddy stories. Mendes' scratchy line and ear for children's dialogue make her comics a wistful pleasure.

7. L.Nichols. Nichols is a talented artist still restlessly searching for her ideal style. Her Jumbly Junkery one-woman anthology comics feature an assortment of diary strips, longer autobio stories, fiction, comics-as-poetry and other experiments. Like the other young cartoonists on this list, she has a relentless work ethic and it shows in her improvement.

8. Laura Terry. Terry's up for an Outstanding Minicomic Ignatz award for Morning Song, a comic I greatly enjoyed. Terry's work has a lyrical quality that complements her interest in formal experimentation quite snugly.

9. Matthew Thurber. Thurber is the genius behind the 1-800-MICE series, which is now done and will debut in its collected form from PictureBox. He'll be on a panel at 1pm on Saturday titled "Drawing The Grotesque".

10. Noah Van Sciver. Van Sciver is another hard-working cartoonist who's gotten better thanks to his willingness to publish everywhere possible. His recent mini The Death of Elijah Lovejoy will likely be one of my top 25 minis of the year. He has a book coming out with Fantagraphics next year, but until then I'd buy up copies of his one-man anthology comic book Blammo.

TCJ Post #32: Troop 142 #1 & 2

Rob reviews the first two issues of Mike Dawson's new minicomics series, TROOP 142, over at The Comics Journal.