Autobio As Spoof: Nick Sumida

On the surface, it may seem strange to cast Nick Sumida's gag-heavy work as being autobiographical, but Snackies, a riotous satire of self-importance and common knowledge, is so successful precisely because Sumida himself is the main character in his stories. Starting the comic off with a filthy Sumida's roommate bringing him a video game called "Snackies", in which "you play this narcissistic millennial with a an art school degree and an addiction to external validation". The collected version is superior to either of the first issues of the same title, in part because the way the book was edited makes it far more cohesive (there are some funny interstitial features) and in part because the color scheme is a perfectly-chosen midnight blue and sea foam green.

The first killer story is "Fake It Til You Make It", wherein Sumida pretends to know how to use PhotoShop in order to get a job. The freak-out Sumida depicts when he realizes that he can't fake his way through is over-the-top (my favorite is a toothy Sumida ordering pizzas, being told "Ma'am, calm down" and Sumida screaming "I'M A BOY!"), and it gets even better when he tries to pass off things like "a picture of a cartoon vagina smoking a joint" as his assignment, to which he replies, "That, I do not recall..." What makes Sumida such an effective humorist is a perfect sense of building and how to build a premise in such a way that the comedic payoff is almost always unexpected. For example, in a strip about how Sumida deals with stress, we are suddenly jolted into his demented brain, as we see him taking a chainsaw to a mannnequin, huffing paint and setting fire to a car. A strip about being disappointed about seeing a potential crush on a subway, only to be disappointed by his haircut turns into increasing levels of crazy, as he repeats the premise only to see him growing Lord Voldemort out of his head and turn into a terrifying monster that licks him. We are then thrust back to the beginning, with Sumida's eyes bugging out, afraid to check out the guy that's really in front of him. Another strip has Sumida as a physical trainer giving practical exercise tips while telling the subject to tapping into their "wellspring of deep emotional trauma". Another variation on this theme finds Sumida giving baking tips while trying to eat his sadness over being alone on Valentine's Day.

Sumida is one of the few cartoonists who manages to engage the concept of social media as a societal force in an original and funny manner. The interstitial bits in the book are iphone chats with God, who is either insulting or uncaring in his communications with Sumida. It's a great running gag, because it's sort of the ultimate check on narcissism. Sumida also plays around with tired old gags such as the ROFL acronym and takes it to absurd places, like ROFWHAMUTSH (Rolling on floor while holding a mirror up to society's hypocrisies). The acronym is funny enough, but Sumida sells it with the drawing--a serious, even self-righteous figure holding up a mirror.

Like his contemporary, Michael DeForge, Sumida is skilled at adding body horror as an over-the-top way of satirizing our common understanding of societal mores. There's a strip about a "how'd we meet" situation that winds up being about ritualistic grisliness. A strip about revealing secrets in a relationship turns hilariously grim when, after a minor revelation from a partner, Sumida reveals that he is, in fact "a pile of seven furby dolls stuffed inside a human skin suit". The fact that furbies are unnerving enough to begin with makes his uncannily accurate drawings all the more effective.

A strip where he obliviously asks others about which pair of glasses to buy while the apocalypse occurs around him has a clever idea, but once again, it's the tiniest of details that he gets right that makes it so hilarious. It's the fact that "Nick" gets self-righteously pissed off that no one's listening to his dilemma, the fact that he has preconceived notions about why any answer is wrong, about how he only starts to freak out when he realizes there's no internet that turn a one-note joke into a delicious self-indictment. Sumida transforms his obvious anxiety and emotional rawness into the stuff of brutally honest and frequently absurd gags. The line between autobiography and what serves the gag is one that ceases to matter, because in Sumida's hands, they become one and the same. His humor is painfully true, and his own anxiety is painfully hilarious. The attention to detail in terms of design and use of color is a tribute both to Sumida and his publisher, Youth In Decline.

Minis: Nick Sumida, T.V. Alexander, Jordan Shiveley

Baybeez, by T.V. Alexander. This is a short, nasty and funny mini about babies, drawn in a grotesque and visceral manner. The results are absurd, hilarious and disturbing, like one strip where a woman seems to get pregnant from a toilet seat and then immediately starts giving birth to baby after baby, until all that remains is her skeleton. That strip was like a deranged cousin to the Chester Brown classic "The Man Who Couldn't Stop Going". Some of the strips are excuses to draw out puns, like "Babies shaving babies". It's an all-too-short collection for a clearly witty cartoonist.

Snackies II by Nick Sumida. This is a killer collection of gags that manages to work loneliness, pathos and a sharp satirical eye into a single, attractive package. Sumida is a great writer who sloughs off the self-loathing one would expect from this kind of comic with a powerful wit that results in real laughs. As an artist, he uses a clear line given weight and texture by making the entire comic red (this looks like the work of a risograph) and then adding extensive use of zip-a-tone and other effects. The lettering is not unlike Edie Fake's hand, a sort of cross between an old EC Comic font and a mechanical font. At the same time, Sumida shows some affinity for Michael DeForge style body horror, sneaking it into strips at key moments. What's amazing about his comics is that he manages to breathe new life into tired subjects like internet dating and personal ads in general. In "Meeting People Is Easy", Sumida describes using the hilarious "Arm's Length Method Of Intimacy Aversion (Practiced by 'Children')", including methods like throwing wads of wet paper at them, abstaining "from ordering food and just flick your tongue over the surface of a glass of tap water", etc. The slight cuteness of Sumida's drawing style is immediately subsumed by the sheer weirdness of his images. An ever better strip is "How To Deal With Stress", where Sumida tells friends he does things to let off steam, and we cut to Sumida setting fired to a car, taking a chainsaw to a mannikin while yelling "you're not my father", and more. Sumida stacks the deck with gag after gag, and then ends the story with a killer punchline. He skewers the narcissism of missed connections personals with one about mistaking his own reflection for another hot guy in an increasingly ridiculous set of scenarios, while trying to come up with a witty good-by phrase like his friends leads to an ear-piercing and glass-shattering scenario. I could have easily read another hundred pages of gags like this. Sumida's sense of pacing, page design and character design are all top-notch. The red tones got to be a bit much after a while, but they did create an interesting reading experience. This is a cartoonist who's ready for bigger things and deserving of a collection.

Rejoice, by Jordan Shiveley. This is a funny book of shorts by publisher/editor/designer Shiveley, whose Grimalkin Press has published some good-looking books. This is a collection of short strips about mice facing existential crises, relationship problems, and of course dilemmas relating to desire in the form of cheese. It's an interesting comic read right after Sumida's, considering that Shiveley has some similar points to make about relationships and loneliness, with a similarly cynical and darkly witty voice. A number of the strips don't have punchlines, as such, but rather painful endings (like the one above). Shiveley provides a number of punchlines after the fact with his index, with listings like "callous disregard", "disheartening truth of our situations" and "moment you realize she is leaving and nothing you can say will stop it" all getting multiple citations. Shiveley's line and page composition are remarkably open and light, yet he still manages to squeeze a lot of emotion and pathos out of these mice characters. The comic works because it provides a simple and even cute layer of imagery as a buffer for these painful emotions and thoughts. By not even attempting to anthropomorphize these mice, Shiveley wisely just lets their ids do a lot of the talking. Sex, death and sustenance resonate on every one of the pages, and Shiveley is wise not to overplay his hand. Instead, he keeps things light, crisp and in motion, as one strip bleeds into the next with few defined stops. If this strip was a form of therapy for Shiveley, I'd like to see more of it.