On The Occasion of Two Anniversaries: Personal Observations on Koyama Press and 2dcloud

When I wrote a piece for the Comics Journal after Dylan Williams died in 2011, I made sure to ask two publishers for their thoughts on him and his influence: Annie Koyama (Koyama Press) and Raighne Hogan (2dcloud). I thought of them because apart from Williams' close friend Austin English, Koyama and Hogan have carried on the Sparkplug Comic Book tradition more than any other publisher.

Let's consider Raighne Hogan first. I started writing about comics in 2000 (a review of Joe Sacco's Safe Area Gorazde for Savant magazine, edited at the time by Matt Fraction), but I didn't get really serious about it until early 2006, when I decided to turn my occasional column into a weekly for Sequart.com. So when Raighne sent me the first two issues of his Good Minnesotan anthology, there's a sense in which we were both starting out. Hogan kept going back, eager to improve and expand. From his earliest days, Hogan's mission was championing young and unknown talent, giving them a chance to do whatever they wanted. In the early years, the focus was often on John & Luke Holden and Nicholas Breutzman (his Yearbooks is still one of 2dcloud's best comics). Hogan made a point of finding work by interesting young queer artists as well; Anna Bonbiovanni's Out Of Hollow Water is one of the best comics of the last ten years. He published Noah Van Sciver, MariNaomi and Gina Wynbrandt. Along with one-time co-publisher Justin Skarhus (almost always a part of the operation), Hogan's choices began to become more assured, to the point where a reader could have complete trust in whatever came into their catalog. 2dcloud is now the undisputed avant-garde of American comics, and Hogan publishes books relying on fundraisers so he at least can break even and at the same time determine the audience base for his releases. That 2dcloud continues to thrive despite being so uncompromising is a testament to Hogan's determination and vision.

Addendum: I was extremely remiss in not mentioning Maggie Umber as a crucial part of the operation. As she noted in the heartbreaking article Getting Divorced In Comics, she was the co-founder of 2dcloud, co-editing and contributing to the very first Good Minnesotan anthology. She wound up handling more of the day-to-day particulars to keep 2dcloud afloat, including mundane but crucial tasks like keeping the books, as well as donating time and money that had initially been reserved for other things. Maggie is the person who made sure I got review copies. Without Maggie Umber, 2dcloud would not exist. She also notes many others who have helped behind the scenes beside Skarhus, including Blaise Larmee, Kim Jooha, Melissa Caraher, Vince Stall, Will Dinski, Saman Bemel-Benrud and Aaron King. She says that Raighne has always been the visionary of the company, but he was carried along by many others, none more important than Umber.

What to say about Annie Koyama? She's been a force of nature and a champion to Canada's illustrators and up-and-coming stars. Her relationship with Michael DeForge is one where both publisher and artist greatly profited from each other's presence and support. She too has a keen eye for talent and is a remarkably nurturing and positive presence. Annie is very much like Dylan in that respect: someone who always has time for an artist who needs someone to listen to them and get encouragement. I love that she has a stable of artists (DeForge, Patrick Kyle, Jesse Jacobs, John Martz, Jane Mai, Dustin Harbin) but also that she brings in new talent all the time, like Eisner-award nominated Daryl Seitchik. There's no end to the list of artists who want to work with her, and it's especially heartening when a veteran cartoonist in need of a publisher fits in with her, like Julia Wertz. She has long supported the work of queer cartoonists and of course the work of women, actively looking to create diversity in publication while still keeping an eye on getting people to buy them. Then there's all of the behind-the-scenes stuff that she does that's been so important to so many. Koyama's genuine warmth, keen intellect and empathy shines through in her books as well as in person, just as Hogan's innate sweetness and curiosity shines through in his. Koyama has had many helpers as well, including her sister Helen and the irreplaceable Ed Kanerva.

I've had the chance to grow as a critic in part because of the challenging and exciting work that they've published. I'm grateful that I've had the opportunity to review virtually everything in their back catalogs. I respect their integrity and am grateful for the respect they've shown my work. They represent what is best about comics, both in terms of aesthetic ambition and personal collaboration. May the next ten years be smooth sailing for them.                                                                            

Sequart Reprints: Nerd Burglar, Good Minnesotan 2-3

A couple of interesting mini-comics anthologies to ponder:

Nerd Burglar, published jointly by Tugboat Press, Teenage Dinosaur and Sparkplug Comic Books. This is a free anthology designed as a convention give-away for new readers by three like-minded small-press publishers. Containing the work of artists published by each of the publishers, it's an attractive mini with a variety of approaches. The standout here, as she was in the Awesome anthology, is Sarah Oleksyk. Her story "Fifteen Variations on 'The First Day We Met'" is not only a great concept, it also has a great punchline. The title says it all, as we view different variations on how a couple might have met, from childhood to doddering old age. What carries the piece is the way Oleksyk depicts and varies the body language of the characters from panel-to-panel, from intimacy to alienation and points in-between.

Elijah Brubaker's interpolation of a William Blake poem and his adaptation of a traditional ballad is typically clever and ambitious, while Chris Cilla and Jennifer Parks contribute stories with bizarre fantasy imagery. Aron Nels Steinke contributes mini-stories of self-reflection with his typically stripped-down, cartoony style. The major misstep in this anthology was Bobby Madness' ridiculously ham-handed political satire, though even that strip had a sort of admirable energy. The overall effect is like reading an especially eclectic issue of Papercutter, or the highlights of a longer anthology. While the variety of artistic and narrative approaches seems to be calculated, the overall effect is still take-it-or-leave-it. I'm not sure it would convert readers completely unfamiliar with art comics, but it might serve well to make potentially sympathetic or adventurous readers aware of these publishing concerns. For a reader already familiar with these publishers, Nerd Burglar is a pleasant little bonus.

Good Minnesotan #1 and #2. This is an anthology edited by Raighne & Meghan Hogan, and both issues have the air of raw talent and potential. Raighne in particular employs a heavy ink-wash technique that is highly stylized. The panel-to-panel transitions in his first story in #1, "Cookie" were at times murky and hard to follow, especially since he used a minimum of guiding dialogue. "Time Travel and Teddy Bears" was more focused but no less distinctive or aggressively experimental. Hogan loves light/dark contrasts, and there's one beautiful panel in particular where we see lightning crashing down on a village at night. The story flits back and forth in memory as a man recalls his relationship with his child's mother to her. Meghan Hogan's "Monkeys on the Bed" is similarly beautiful and stylish, but also suffers from some problems with clarity.

Issue #2 expands the anthology a bit, adding some new artists with different styles. "Back Pages", by Ed Moorman, takes on the legend of a very famous "good Minnesotan" in Bob Dylan. It's a clever story that projects a particularly aggressive interviewer with Dylan at his 1966 crossroads onto a flowing series of environments. That includes the Minnesota countryside as well as places mentioned in Dylan's lyrics, along with the iconic alley where he filmed a bit for "Subterranean Homesick Blues". It's a clever interpretation of Dylan's own words and relationship with the press. Meghan Hogan changes things around in this issue with two stories that employ a scribbly, sketchy style with a positive result. "Yard Work" in particular effectively conveys regret, resignation and new determination.

Several of the other newcomers made a splash in this issue. Joseph Nixon contributed a scribbly piece that combined what looked like sketches from life and graffiti-inspired art to depict a particular memory of a fire that he happened upon that temporarily inspired him to want to become a firefighter. Luke Holden employed a tiny 24-panels-a-page grid to create an effect that resembled animation cels as it did a comic to tell a story within a story of a yeti-like creature's journey. It reminds me a bit of some of Mat Brinkman's comics. Nic Breutzman teamed up with John Holden for "The Ripoff", a funny story about a man who loses a penile piercing in a very sensitive place, and the ramifications that provide the punchline.

This is a group of artists with an interesting and distinctive set of voices that's still working through their styles and influences. The Hogans in particular show a great deal of promise, bringing in influences to their work that are clearly outside the world of comics. The design and presentation of the anthology are already top-notch and striking. There's a good mix of storytelling styles and a palpable desire to experiment. That boldness is the anthology's greatest strength and what will carry it while its artists continue to refine their storytelling abilities, striking a balance between experimentation and clarity.

Anthologies: Little Heart

2D Cloud's Kickstarter-funded anthology Little Heart is uneven as far as the quality of its contributions goes, though in some respects that's beside the point. A portion of the book's proceeds went to [MN]Love, a nonprofit dedicated to marriage equality in Minnesota. As an adopted North Carolinian, enduring the results of Amendment One this past year was disgraceful, as it made so-called "marriage protections" part of the state constitution. Until the US Supreme Court rules otherwise, more states are in danger of having to deal with these barbaric and discriminatory practices. As such, one can forgive that some of the entries in this anthology either aren't comics or else display more enthusiasm than skill.

Let's take a closer look at the stories themselves. One thing that I liked about the anthology is that there was no specific requirement for the contributors to make their story about gay marriage. Indeed, a number of the stories are personal accounts from people who are single or have no desire to get married. I thought two of the better (if on-the-nose) stories came from Virginia Paine and Maurice Vellekoop, respectively. Paine talked about that even when she dated men, she never thought of marriage as an attractive option, but did say that having a choice like anyone else is important.Vellekoop, the great Canadian illustrator, interviews some friends after nearly a decade of equal access under the law in his country. It's a fascinating piece and a nice capstone to the book, as some of his friends discuss the pros and cons of marriage as well as their own mixed feelings about the institution. A couple of his friends felt it was too imitative of the straight world (a quite common claim), while others liked the idea of being part of an ancient institution and making it their own. It's a fascinating discussion of some finer points of the experience that many don't think about, drawn in Vellekoop's trademark angular, attractive style.

A couple of stories were personal accounts of deciding to get married, focusing in on specific aspects of the experience. For Emily Carroll and Kate Craig, their story focused on the simple engagement ring purchased online, which had an inscription from another couple. It's a simple sentiment, wondering about who these people were but focusing more on the present. Mari Naomi's account of proposing to her husband was more complicated, as she spoke to one queer friend whose less than enthusiastic "How nice for you, that you're able to do that" spoke to the divide between gay and bi individuals as well as the dilemma many hetero partners feel when they think about marrying. That said, the sheer enthusiasm and nervousness comes through on every page, and the splash page featuring the proposal was nicely understated, as Mari Naomi puts the image of her proposing in the bottom left hand corner, surrounded by tons of white space.

Some of the strips focus less on the idea of marriage than the experience of being queer and exploring that identity.Alex Fukui's "Footsie" for example, is a painful example of having desperate yearnings as a young person and wondering if someone you have a crush on is interested in as well, with the added layer of total fear about being a teen and being gay. Ed Choy and Sam Sharpe's "Roosterlegs" is by far the best-looking strip in the book thanks to the bold, confident lines, clever character design and interesting use of spot color. It's a strip about a young person trying to investigate the realities of what being queer means in nature and exploring the possibility of trans identity.

Other stories focus on being alone vs being with someone and the sacrifices one makes in either scenario. Christopher Adams' evocative silent story about a priest going about his day, hanging out with members of his congregation, speaks to the nature of the solitude of his position and the peace he has ultimately made with it. Hannah Blumenreich's story of a lovable pre-teen oddball who earnestly believes that she is psychic is endearing precisely because of her lack of self-awareness, even as she makes subtle shifts in attitude when reality dictates it. Joseph Remnant's excellent story about a guy crushing hard on a girl he sees at a bookstore and subsequently talks to at an art show is funny because of the quite deranged nature of obsessiveness overriding reason. The fact that this story gets a happy doesn't feel like a cheat so much as an indication that the leads occupied the same place in their circle of friends and really did find out by accident that they were perfect for each other. Noah Van Sciver's account of Richard & Mildred Loving's struggle to have their mixed-race marriage accepted in the south is especially poignant given that their union was opposed on many of the same supposed moral grounds as gay marriage is today. Jeremy Sorese's story about his divorced parents remarrying provides the structure for his own mixed feelings about marriage in an elegant and stylish series of highly stylized images. He gets at an interesting point: even if gay marriage is a big deal, why should a 23 year old be worrying about marriage anyway?

Most of the other stories are pleasant enough, if forgettable. I thought the inclusion of spot illustrations didn't do much to strengthen the anthology, especially since few of them were especially memorable. The handwritten coming-out story of Tammy Ray was impassioned but wasn't really comics, and Rachel Kowarski's poem did not fit at all. Editor Raighne Hogan likes to take risks in his anthologies and errs on the side of leaving in submissions that perhaps should have been cut. He leaves it up to the reader to decide their worth, which is admirable, but I'd love to see him exercise a firmer editorial hand. Of course, this anthology wasn't necessarily the place to do so, and erring on the side of enthusiasm in this case made sense. There's no question that it's a beautifully designed book, as all 2D Cloud projects tend to be, and I hope that it makes a difference.

A Few Notes On Motherlover

I won't be formally reviewing the new 2D Cloud release Motherlover because I wrote the foreword to the book. Instead, I'll just contribute a few notes about the book, which is an anthology featuring the work of Nic Breutzman and the team of John & Luke Holden.

1. The Breutzman story "You Can't Be Here" was originally self-published as a broadsheet. In the anthology, it was redesigned and a layer of sickly green and purple was added by editor/publisher/colorist Raighne Hogan, giving the story another layer of alienation. Here's my original review of the story:

"Nicholas Breutzman is an exciting young artist whose grim comics inspire feelings of dread and malaise. Breutzman has been ambitiously and aggressively experimental with regard to format and design with his early works as he’s explored some uncomfortable subjects. You Can’t Be Here was done in broadsheet format, giving each panel a certain power and heft that he filled with zip-a-tone. Breutzman once again zeroed in the subjects that have informed his small body of work to date: the darker side of small-town life, the way the claustrophobia of such an existence leads people to do strange things, and the ways man and nature have an adversarial relationship. Breutzman is a master of both the single striking image and overall restraint with his storytelling, a combination that helps create that air of dread. The reader always gets the feeling that something awful has happened or will happen. The image of a washing machine on the side of a wooded road as roadkill and its subsequent “crossing” is Breutzman at his best, combining the absurd with the unsettling.

Breutzman’s style is unusual in that he mixes naturalism in terms of his backgrounds and character designs with slightly loose, rubbery expressions on his characters’ faces. The result is both amusing and disturbing, like a boy appearing on an ATV with bugged-out eyes, freckles and a crew cut. This comic concerns a down on his luck young man who leaves New York (after having been swindled by fake crack) to return to his small town. His recollection of two kids he knew when he was younger who did horrible things to the local opossums early in the story referred back to the title of the story, giving it a different meaning. It’s not just that he and his friend weren’t allowed at a nearly abandoned housing development, it was that simply being back in old patterns was going to lead him down a dark path, one that part of him knew he would enjoy taking. Breutzman is going to be an artist to follow for quite some time."

2. Speaking of which, Hogan has a huge hand in creating the atmosphere to be found in the Holden Bros' "The Boys". The spattered green & purple add a lot to the loose, grotesque pencils and sordid, haunted subject matter of a group of boys desperately trying to find pornography.

3. Breutzman's first story in the collection, "Photograph", is a crisp story about a missed connection on one end and the latest in a series of dead end encounters on the other end. Breutzman's stories are all about trying to establish connections and how difficult that ultimately can be.

4. I won't be ranking this book in my top 50 for conflict of interest reasons, but I would certainly place solidly in my top 25 if I did.

Another Worthy Kickstarter Effort: Motherlover

I'd urge interested parties to donate to the Kickstarter fund for Motherlover, an anthology featuring Nic Breutzman, John Holden and Luke Holden. It's edited and colored by Raighne Hogan, whose 2D Cloud will be publishing it. I wrote the introduction to the book, which is unsettling and beautiful.

The Betrayal of Dreams: Yearbooks

Rob reviews the new comic by Nicholas Breutzman, Shaun Feltz and Raighne Hogan, YEARBOOKS (2D Cloud).



Nick Breutzman is an artist I've been vaguely aware of for quite some time. I know he was part of the CRITICAL CITADEL crew and he had the strongest story in the latest issue of up-and-coming anthology GOOD MINNESOTAN. On the basis of that story, I was excited to hear about his first book, YEARBOOKS. Breutzman drew it and co-wrote it (with Shaun Feltz), while Raighne Hogan did the colors. This is more of a novella than "graphic novel", given its length (40 pages) and overall concision in its storytelling. The one word that describes Breutzman's stories best is "dread". He has a way of coming up with an atmosphere of impending doom and pain that is more tense than any actual depiction of horrific deeds.

YEARBOOKS has a look and feel that seems to borrow from a number of sources, yet eventually come up with a perspective that is entirely Breutzman's. The coldness of the narrative reminds me a bit of Dan Clowes. The slightly grotesque and exaggerated depiction of the characters is not unlike Lauren Weinstein, down to the vivid (and deliberately garish) color scheme of Hogan. The dream sequences remind me of the sort of thing Dash Shaw might do. However, Breutzman's view of humanity and the way people interact in high school is far more grim and unsparing than any of those artists; if anything, he has more in common with filmmaker Todd Solondz. There's a similar distrust of the motives of all people, but especially those in authority.



The book begins with a creepy dream sequence featuring a teacher turning into a bat-creature and shooting guano all over them, as the skies outside darkened ominously. We then meet Ryan, a teen near the bottom of the brutal power hierarchy that is high school as he negotiates a particular day. He has an odd but compelling bond with his art teacher, who starts to show him some truly disturbing work from earlier in his career. He had avoided showing them to his acolyte until Ryan started to think he was a poser and started to avoid him. Ryan starts to get a hint as to what his teacher is all about when he sees the merciless eye that created these drawings from life, but it isn't until he sees his teacher with his best friend and starts to put together the nature of their relationship that the full horror of what he saw sinks in. We then cut back to the dream from the beginning, whose portentious tones have given way to all-out disaster as children are drowned in a schoolhouse thanks to actions by the teacher.

One reason why the story was so effective and chilling was that there was no resolution beyond Ryan's newfound understanding of a situation he didn't want to know anything about. Instead, we slip directly back into a nightmare sequence. Part of the horror of what's implied at the end for Ryan is the level of trust he had in this teacher and the way he identified with him. This was someone Ryan wanted to emulate, wanting to know more about his life and career. The teacher was resistant to this form of connection because he knew that he wasn't really a worthy choice as a mentor, but was desperate to create some form of validation for his career (and as a human being)--and recast a younger artist in his own image. It was telling that whenever Ryan started to non-judgementally raise certain moral issues related to the art, the teacher became defensive and even witholding. When the full picture of his teacher started to coalesce, it was as much a judgment on Ryan's own choices as it was on the teacher.

Breutzman's visuals tell the story effortlessly. His character design, body language, use of gesture and unusual placement of panels give the reader subtext and a richer understanding of the story's ultimate emotional resolution. Breutzman also raises an interesting issue vis-a-vis the relationship between an artist and their responsibilities as a moral agent in the world. Can art be evil if it's made by predators, or is this entirely in the eye of the beholder? These questions are raised but not explicitly answered, but what is unquestionably true is that the experience brought an end to what was left of Ryan's innocence. It's one thing to survive high school when you have the carrot of college waiting at the end and a new life. It's quite another when you've been told that the person you want to become is a monster--and it may be too late to stop.