Exploring The World of Cartozia Tales

I've read a lot of young adult fiction in going through books for the Eisner awards, and a fair number of them have been fantasy/action-adventure oriented. None have the level of ambition, playfulness, formal daring and fun of the Isaac Cates-edited Cartozia Tales series, which is an issue away from finishing up its initial run of ten. Cates and his artistic partner Mike Wenthe (a long-time friend from before his comics days, in the interest of disclosure) basically made Cartozia Tales a far more aggressive experiment than their work on their old series, Satisfactory Tales. Their interests in comics have always revolved around collaboration, formal experimentation, an almost whimsical sense of play (including plays on words and visual puns), and creating problems to solve. They seemed to really find a groove when they worked on an ambitious fantasy comic together, which perhaps provided the impetus for this series. The central thrust of the series is this: in a set of adjoining land masses dubbed Cartozia (the first of many, many place name puns in the series), the reader would follow all sorts of serialized adventures. Cates divided the map into a nine-panel grid. In each issue, one of the seven permanent creative teams would be assigned a sector and create a story. Each issue would feature two guest artists. In the next issue, the creators would move over one sector, so now they had the option of picking up from the previous artist (in a sort of narrative exquisite corpse game), creating a new character, or some combination thereof.

This approach has led to a crazy level of complexity, especially since some characters were created by one artist but not actually used by them; instead, they were given to another creator to use. And unlike the random approach of a true exquisite corpse, there was careful attention paid to continuity (both narrative and character), especially as each issue drew the overarching narratives of the series tighter and tighter, like a sort of fantasy Raymond Chandler novel. That's how it was supposed to go in theory; in practice, things got a little choppy at times. While the covers for each issue and the overall design have been excellent, it's been obvious (especially in some of the middle issues) that some cartoonists were rushing their entries. There have been a couple of fundraisers for the series, as Cates is paying everyone. Not every guest star has been a perfect match, nor has every narrative maintained a sense of fluidity. Frankly, unless the series is read at once, it can be difficult to remember exactly what was going on with nine different storylines. That said, it's remarkable to see how coherent the book is given the incredibly complicated logistics involved.

It was always obvious that when Cates & Wenthe worked together, they went all-out for the series. With a relatively smooth line and the ability to trade off with each other, that duo turned in some of the denser stories in the anthology, though that density often circled around how many puns and funny visual references they could throw in. Still, their works felt like going back to home base when reading this comic. The two most dependable cartoonists on the roster were Lucy Bellwood and Lupi McGinty. Bellwood works using a slightly thicker line and a looser overall style than McGinty's ligne claire approach, but they both possess a smoothly welcoming style that worked for every character in the series. The series' secret weapon has been Tom Motley, whose scratchy and inky style felt dissonant at first, but whose relentless commitment to formal experimentation (along with a few changes here and there to make his line clearer) makes him a great place in the book to get one's eyes challenged. He also shares the Wenthe/Cates proclivity for whimsy and wordplay, a nice contrast to the more straightforward styles of the other artists. His greatest achievement in the series was his homage to Gustave Verbeek's The Upside Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo, a classic comic strip that could be read one way, then turned upside down to continue the story using the same images. Motley's ability to precisely and flawlessly emulate that style within the context of the story itself was astonishing.

The early MVP of the series was Shawn Cheng, whose ultra-thin line and clean storytelling was simply beautiful to behold, but obviously work-intensive. He simplified his style later on, which was still perfectly functional but not quite the same in terms of impact. The other regulars (Jen Vaughn and Sarah Becan (often with Beckie Gautreua)) certainly had their moments. Vaughn created my favorite character/narrative in the series, the "Vagabond" narrative, and was clearly working hard in the early going. She had to skip an issue and some of her later work looks rushed, perhaps because she has a lot of other commitments on her plate. Of the two guest stars per issue, some were remarkably great, like Dylan Horrocks (oh, if he had been in every issue) and sublime work from Luke Pearson, whose young girl scientist Gret was a perfectly-designed character. Jon Lewis was a natural and another great artist to start out the series with, while Carol Lay was an interesting choice for a one-page story. Jon Chad and Chris Wright were fantastic gets in the same issue whose styles contrasted in a visually exciting way (Chad's detailed clear line vs Wright's scratchy and darkly eccentric style). The team of Kelly Sue DeConnick and Ming Doyle was interesting because it resolved a key plot point and did it in a naturalistic style--which was highly unusual for the series. Tom Hart's dreamy, poetic comic also addressed a key narrative concern and Nick Abadzis' strip was formally charming in a series full of formally intriguing comics.

The good news about what will emerge as 400+ pages of interconnected anthology storytelling involving over thirty different artists is that actually really started to tie up loose ends, put characters together and gain some real momentum as it went further. I look forward to the final issue and how it finishes drawing together the various storylines, both grim and silly, enigmatic and simple, and pleasantly ambling and urgent. While the series had its ragged moments, I'm staggered at how much traffic Cates had to direct while still contributing to virtually every issue himself. And while the series had its misfires (the James Kochalka piece felt like it came from another series entirely and changed what had been a promising narrative thread into something that became sillier and sillier), I admired Cates' try-anything style of editing that still had a degree of narrative rigor. I should add that the all-ages character of the book was a key to its success, especially as Cates threw every kind of extra he could think of at younger readers: paper dolls, word searches, mazes, drawing exercises and more. It was clear that Cates was making the kind of comic he would have wanted to read as a child, or perhaps creating one for his own family. That level of sincerity, effort and creativity is a remarkable tonic to the level of cynical, money-making tropes that I see in so much YA fiction.

Maps-As-Comics: Cartozia Tales #1

The ambitious new minicomics series Cartozia Tales is a natural extension of the sort of thing that masterminds Isaac Cates and Mike Wenthe were doing toward the end of their run on their collaborative minicomic Satisfactory Comics. That duo loved the idea of exploring maps and territories as a way of generating stories and then handing off stories in that territory to new collaborators; their Mapjam comic is essentially the forerunner of Cartozia Tales.Of course, that comic stalled for any number of reasons, including the fact that a multi-creator collaborative anthlogy is incredibly hard work. That's why Cates has a kickstarter going on this comic: to get the eight regular artists and two rotating guest artists a decent enough page rate to make this project worth their time. At the moment, it's about 40% funded but has a long way to go. Please consider funding it if you find my review to be of interest.

This is an all-ages fantasy comic wherein each creator is assigned a quadrant of the map of the known world and writes a story involving a place in their quadrant. Each issue, the quadrant assignment will change. Characters designed by one artist will be used by another, creating a true collaborative environment across the board. The regular rotation of artists includes Sarah Becan, Lucy Bellwood, Cates & Wenthe (who collaborate on all their work), Shawn Cheng, Lupi McGinty, Tom Motley and Jen Vaughn. Of this group, I was only unfamiliar with McGinty and Bellwood prior to reading the comic. Cheng seems especially well-suited to this kind of endeavor, adding a pleasingly precise but gritty quality to the series. His story, "Master Cyrus and the Boy: Journey to Owl Rock", was one of my favorites in the issue. This is a simple quest comic, wherein a master magician and his apprentice make a journey to a remote location to perform a mysterious ceremony. The way Cheng arranges his unusually-designed characters on the page and the manner with which he uses varying shades of grey on the page gives the story depth and texture.

The guest artists in this issue, Jon Lewis and Dylan Horrocks, do not disappoint. Both have dipped into fantasy work in the past, and both feel quite at home here. Lewis uses a trembling line to tell a story about a boy's kindness gaining him a special reward. Horrocks' story is about a young girl happening upon a mechanical man who needs to be wound up, as she's on her way to get special wisdom from a magical fish. Horrocks' use of blacks is as lovely as ever, and the simplicity of his figures adds so much to this tale of developing friendship. Simply the way Horrocks draws a night sky or a hillside covered with flowers is poetic and elegant; few artists use negative space as well as he does.

Bellwood and McGinty's comics are the cleanest-looking in terms of the line and character design. I thought Tom Motley's comic, by comparison, was harder to follow; his work stuck out and lacked the clarity of the rest of the contributors. We'll see if his style matches up better in future issues, but his story added a discordant tone to a book that was otherwise quite harmonious in style despite the large number of contributors and complexity of the set-up. Becan and Vaughn obviously really worked hard on their stories, as their art has never looked sharper. Becan's story was also the most clever in the book, giving it a fairy tale flavor that I enjoyed. Cates and Wenthe's story was surprisingly downbeat, revealing that while the book is all-ages and won't have graphic content, not every character necessarily gets a happy ending. These stories are smart, well-drawn and avoid the kind of cliches that plague other fantasy comics that I've read.

Sequart Reprints: 10 Great Minis From MoCCA 2005

This article was originally published in 2005 at sequart.com. It was my first-ever column on minicomics.
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Readers only vaguely familiar with the concept of mini-comics will be relieved to know that it's nearly impossible to pin down what is and isn't a mini-comic. Generally, they are small (but not always), usually relatively brief (anywhere between 8 and 80 pages), hand-made, frequently self-published, and often with personal touches like silk-screened covers, hand-stitched bindings, etc. Often, they serve as a sort of proving ground for young and/or inexperienced artists, though there are several accomplished artists who publish nothing but minicomics. The line between minicomics and zines is often blurred, but they often share similar content, a similar aesthetic, and the same sort of autobiographical self-expression.

The ten mini-comics I picked for this list were chosen based on how substantial they were (I skipped over some worthy 8-12 page minis simply because there wasn't enough "there" there), notable aesthetic or narrative qualities (preferably both), and formal elements unique to the world of minicomics. The artists range from absolute newcomers to those who have books from major publishers.

1. VAGABONDS #1.5: OF TWO MINDS, by Josh Neufeld (http://www.JoshComix.com). $2, 16 pages. Neufeld recently won a Xeric grant for A FEW PERFECT HOURS, distributed by Alternative. It's a collection of travel comics he had done over the years in his two-man anthology, KEYHOLE, and various other places. But Neufeld is also well known for doing a number of collaborative works (AMERICAN SPLENDOR the highest profile), and this mini is an exceptional collection of such stories. Neufeld adapts the poetry of several authors to comics, the most notable being "Time of Arrival". This is a single page with a 4x6 panel grid arrangement. The entire grid taken as a whole is an airplane, and Neufeld chops up the words of the poem into individual panels that comprise the plane. It's a clever formal trick and an effective means of getting across the poem's intent. Neufeld also did a story drawn with his non-dominant hand, imagining that such a person existed in his mirror and setting the story from the point of view of that character, and also draws a page using dialogue from an issue of Superman and completely recontextualizes its meaning with his new art. The mini is attractively packaged and extensively notated.

2. SATISFACTORY COMICS #6, by Isaac Cates & Mike Wenthe (isaac.cates@aya.yale.edu). $3, 28 pages plus extras. Full disclosure: Mike Wenthe is a long-time friend of mine. However, the work that he and his partner have produced speaks for itself. The duo has long thrived on experimentation with the form for their attractive minis, with other participants drawing panels for inclusion, providing built-in story constraints or throwing in random elements for the Cates-Wenthe team to work into their stories. As one might expect, jam comics are frequently better in theory than in practice, and some of their stories suffer from a lack of narrative cohesion. However, their output in the last year or so has shown considerable and sustained growth. Their latest effort is so jam-packed with different kinds of stories, ideas and clever geegaws that the result is a sort of miniature version of the comics issue of McSweeney's that Chris Ware edited. This issue features two comics based on a map created by a group of creators; an autobiographical story about online game addiction; a detective story wherein each page must mirror the form of a stanza of a sestina; an adaptation of Job 41, and a minicomic tucked into the front cover and a random shuffle comic paperclipped into the back.

3. NO PUNCHBACKS, by Kelly Denato & Christine Nimocks (http://www.nopunchbacks.com). $5, 28 pages. Amazingly, this is the debut comic for this duo, although initially No Punchbacks Press contained more contributors. Denato is an animator by trade, and it shows in her story, "Nanni-Nanni Boo-Boo". It's a wordless tale about a man who buys a bird and a fish from a pet shop whom are already friends, and how the fish is taken away. Her style resembles CHUNKY RICE-era Craig Thompson and Sara Varon, with a clean, assured line creating a cartoony world. Nimocks is a fine artist whose style and content is radically different than Denato's. She employs a scribbly line and deals with more autobiographical subjects, including internet dating. This is a remarkably accomplished first comic, with attractive packaging and smart storytelling. Interestingly, the duo was inspired by past visits to MoCCA to create their own comic.

4. SEE SAW, by Sara Edward-Corbett (http://www.greenfog.com, http://www.partykausa.com). $8, 35 pages plus extras. The artist is the most impressive member of the Partyka collective, and her strips here are reprinted from the New York Press. She uses a thin, precise line but balances this with heavy blacks and cross-hatching, giving these tales of schoolchildren an extra weight. The strips are about brother & sister Georgie & Olga, psychopathic Chucky and lovesick Meals. Georgie is an ultra-intelligent little nebbish, while his sister is constantly paranoid. Her dreams of being killed by a gangster octopus (complete with mask) are vivid, and while we feel her fear, the whole set-up is still hilarious. The comic is hand-stitched, with a "cootie-catcher" enclosed in the back.

5. APOLLO ASTRO #9: JOURNEY OF GEORGE, by Jack Turnbull. (http://www.jackturnbull.com). $5, 30 pages. Turnbull abandons his anthology-style for his mini and devotes an issue to his Walking George Potato character. The simplicity of the George and Veggie characters are balanced by Turnbull's lavish backgrounds and the Dreaded Bellpepper Storm Toucan, not to mention a gorgeous silkscreened cover It's a simple story, well-told, that owes as much to Dr Seuss as it does to Chris Ware. Turnbull's biggest strength is his ability to draw out every ounce of expression from his characters using just a few lines. He took a chance using characters that had mostly inhabited one-off strips and plugged them into a larger narrative, and it worked well. This issue is part one of a larger story.

6. COUCH TAG #2, by Jesse Reklaw. (http://www.hobocomics.com). $2, 20 pages. Reklaw is the artist of the syndicated dream strip, SLOW WAVE. This mini has a simple premise: it's about the thirteen different cats Reklaw had during his childhood. What makes this such a great read is that this is really an autobiographical account of his family, but telling it through the device of when certain pets were around and making that the focus of the narrative makes the side details all the more intriguing. Little touches like designing different logos for each cat's introduction and skipping long periods of time between pets make this a great read.

7. THESE THINGS THESE THINGS, by Jeffrey Brown. (http://www.theholyconsumption.com). $4, 36 pages. Brown's scratchy art style and his focus on his love life in his major works for Top Shelf have made him a love him or leave him sort of artist. Personally, I can't get enough of his comics and their lack of adornment when dealing with major drama. Beyond his graphic novels, his minis are often just as compelling for very different reasons. Brown lets his sense of humor show more in his minis, and tells different kinds of stories. This mini deals with some of the events in ANY EASY INTIMACY, providing a sort of closure as Brown deals with yet another broken relationship, the quest to find the artist who performed a particular song, and a book tour with some fellow artists.

8. SUMMA CUM LAUDE, by Eve Englezos & Josh Moutray. (http://www.icecreamlandia.com). 10 pages. The comics that this duo creates are unlike anything else out there today. This latest work, a little bridge between issues of the sublimely strange Icecreamlandia, is designed to look like a minature diploma case. As you open it up, the pages fold out accordian-style, revealing a bizarre science fair. For some reason, the adults are all in 18th century aristocratic dress (complete with powdered wigs and corsets). The dialogue follows from this absurd set-up ("Why, yes, it seems pretty obvious to me now that the dinosaurs were in 3-D.") As always, the realistic, clear-line art belies the insanity of the set-up.

9. A CASE IN TOKYO, by Damien Jay. $10, 22 pages. This comic wins the "most beautiful mini" award, hands-down. Printed on a heavy cardstock and hand-assembled, the coloring process used to illustrate this creepy little story makes the whole thing feel like a children's book gone horribly wrong. The story describes a mental patient who in fact may be possessed, and the momentary clarity she displayed in this state. Her clarity was so incisive that everyone couldn't stand to be around her, until the spell faded and "she became a stupid person once again." While a very quick read, the visuals alone make this a worthwhile purchase. Jay gets the most out of the minicomic format, using every hand-crafted trick in the book.

10. ISOLATION CHAMBER #2, by Ed Piskor (wimpyrutherford@hotmail.com). $1.50, 16 pages. Of the comics on this list, this is the only diary strip. Diary strips (much like personal zines or blogs) can get boring quickly if the author simply devotes it to standard quotidian concerns. It's important to establish some sort of angle early on to differentiate it from other kinds of autobiography. Piskor does this through establishing his voice loud and clear in the early going: he's a curmudgeon who knows a lot of strange people, and isn't afraid to dish. He manages to inject sincerity into his description of his relationship with his baby sister without seeming overly sentimental. He struggles with what to put in his journal and what to censor, some interesting interactions with his parents, and a local group of comics creators. There are weird stories about his interactions with junkies, talks with Harvey Pekar and his feelings about becoming semi-famous. At the end, Piskor announces that the cartoon journal took up all of his time and discontinued it--an interesting statement in itself. Piskor is a real talent and has an interesting voice; it'll be interesting to see what he does after he finishes up his work with Harvey Pekar.

Off-Beat Genre: Mini-Comics

Rob concludes his look at unusual genre comics with several short reviews of minicomics. Included are NURSE NURSE #3 by Katie Skelly, SATISFACTORY COMICS #8 by Isaac Cates & Mike Wenthe, THE NATURAL WORLD #1 by Damien Jay, MOTRO #1 by Ulises Farinas, and three comics by Jarrett B. Williams.

Minicomics have the freedom to take genre ideas in some unusual directions. Each of the artists discussed in this article looks at science-fiction, fantasy, heroic epics, and manga-inspired adventure in different ways to different effects.

NURSE NURSE #3, by Katie Skelly. The third issue of Skelly's psychedelic sci-fi series starring a nurse's adventures in outer space was especially enjoyable. The action in this issue centered around the weird goo emitted from a certain kind of butterfly infecting Nurse Gemma's ship, causing a love-induced short circuit. A pair of sharply-designed pirates then infiltrate her ship, one of them a half-human/half-panda. This series is dominated by Skelly's unusual stylistic choices, both in terms of character design and page design. There are all sorts of unusual angles, characters in odd poses and flourishes that dominate whole pages, like Gemma sliding through a tube. Skelly's command over her line and the world she's created grows issue by issue, immersing the reader into a freaky and fabulous environment. Her use of body language, gesture and character interaction carries the story, with just enough background details to impart information without detracting from the real action. My only complaint is that each issue is too short (18 pages); I sense that the story will really cohere once it's collected.

SATISFACTORY COMICS #8, by Isaac Cates & Mike Wenthe. The comics of Cates & Wenthe are best known for two things: the closeness of their collaboration and the self-imposed rules, limitations and formal boundaries they like to place on themselves when they are creating their comics. While the latest issue is no exception, the result is perhaps the most entertaining, organic effort I've seen from them yet. The format, unsurprisingly, is quite clever: each page is presented as a separate postcard, bound by a wrap-around strip of paper. The back of each postcard/page reveals the particular constraints placed upon them (some of them revealed in highly specialized comics jargon) and which of their colleagues suggested the constraints.

The story, "Stepan Crick and the Chart of the Possible", is an extremely clever fantasy story about a young wizard's apprentice sent to procure a map from a particular mapmaker. The apprentice winds up having all sorts of unexpected adventures against a set of opponents he winds up feeling some sympathy for. While Cates & Wenthe manage to tell a dense, satisfying story in just ten pages, they leave the ending quite open for further adventures. Much like Lewis Trondheim & Joann Sfar's DUNGEON, I found myself both amused by certain formal tricks on the page and the slight tweaking of the genre, but also genuinely wrapped up in the story itself. As for those constraints, they ranged from style mimicking of Steve Ditko or Peter Bagge to drawing a page without a panel grid. My favorite, where references to Marcel Duchamp were required, was a stunning action sequence done in the style of Duchamp's famous "Nude Descending A Staircase" painting. The comic was done in full color, which greatly flattered the pencils and made each page pop. Hopefully we'll be seeing more of these characters from this art duo.

THE NATURAL WORLD #1, by Damien Jay. Jay is one of the most underrated artists in comics. His minis are consistently beautiful and entertaining art objects. Jay's character design is clever and expressive, and this comic is no exception. This purports to be the first issue of a series, and it's set in some generic medieval village where a pious village elder has hired a crew to completely remove a huge and supposedly evil thicket inhabited by a witch. Meanwhile, the elder's mentally deficient brother is out hunting mushrooms when he is startled by something and runs to tell his brother, who happens to be philandering with a local woman. The issue ends with an image that indicates things aren't quite what they seem.

Jay is quite leisurely in parceling out plot points in this issue, concentrating on character. He has a marvelous looseness to his line reminiscent of Jules Feiffer in this issue. The characters are all simple, sharp angles punctuated by a line here or there to indicate motion or emotion. There's a flow to this comic that made it a breezy read even as it was mostly just characters talking to each other. That's a tribute to Jay's skill in depicting expression and gesture, even with fairly simplified, iconic character designs. Like many of the other minis reviewed in this article, I only wish another issue would arrive shortly.

MOTRO #1, by Ulises Farinas. MK Reed recommended this comic to me, and it's a pretty delightful mix of Conan-style heroic fantasy and psychedelia. MOTRO can be found at the act-i-vate.com website, but Farinas gives the reader their money's worth with the intricate design of this comic. The cut-out cover, the string binding it and the clever use of hidden color immediately drew my eye. This issue discusses the fate of a boy deemed to be Motro, the warrior who would end winter. We see him go through a variety of trials that turns into an encounter with a Yellow Submarine-inspired character named the Master of Fate.

Farinas merges bigfoot character design, a very thin line, a touch of psychedelia with a sharp use of black and white contrasts. The result is a comic that is too weird to take at face value, yet tells an entirely coherent, straightforward story. It's by far the most eccentric of the comics reviewed in this article, moreso even than Skelly's comics. His aesthetic is certainly in the "take-it-or-leave-it" realm occupied by folks like Brian Chippendale and Gary Panter (though in a very different way), and for some a little might go a long way. Overall, I found this comic charming and funny, enjoying it more with each subsequent reading.

SUPER PRO K.O.!, ACTION FRIENDS, and EBALL & CHADWICK by Jarrett B. Williams. These are all very short (8-10 pages) minicomics that show off Williams' skill in character design and interaction. SUPER PRO K.O.! introduces us to a mixed martial arts fighter's apprentice with a lot of potential; ACTION FRIENDS is about a group of animal commandos who rain death on a group of developers; and EBALL & CHADWICK is a wordless tale of two creatures in a forest. Williams' style reminds me a bit of Brandon Graham, mixing manga and graffiti stylizations into pages filled with unusual composition and design choices. Williams loves using weird angles, unusual grid construction and going big and loud on his pages. The weakest of the three comics was ACTION FRIENDS, written by a different person; the gags here were all sort of obvious. The strongest was the very strange EBALL & CHADWICK, a short story following the title characters (a little walking puff of flame and a one-eyed horned creature) on a journey with a group of anthropomorphic, singing leaves. The slickness of Williams' line was a perfect match for the simplicity of his character design. It's difficult to say much more given the shortness of these comics, but he certainly has a lot of potential as a storyteller and illustrator.