Minis: Ansis Purins, Lukasz Kowalczuk, Anuj Shrestha, Sar Shahar, Jared Rosello

Vreckless Vrestlers #0, by Lukasz Kowalczuk. This is an odd little mini by Polish cartoonist Kowalczuk about a wrestling manager from the future who kidnaps warriors from across time and space to fight for a championship with the motto of "one rule - no rules". With a fat, cartoony line reminiscent of Johnny Ryan (Prison Pit would seem to be an influence here), Kowalczuk uses a wordless approach (save for brief narrative captions) in introducing the eight characters who will wind up fighting each other. From valkyries like Barbarica to creatures like Vegan Cat and Crimean Crab, every aspect of this comic is over the top and blatantly ridiculous. Unfortunately, there's not much here in this "#0" terms of actual carnage for the reader to enjoy, but it would seem that the eventual payoffs will be visceral, silly and imaginative.

Magic Forest #1, by Ansis Purins. This is a collection of bits and pieces from the upcoming and longer Zombre #3. The concept here is a magic forest where some of its denizens are in alliance with human forest rangers, resulting mostly in goofy and occasionally violent gags. Purins has solid comedic timing that particularly shines through in a strip about an elf desperately asking a ranger for aid against the Spider King and his army. The ranger, of course, had been contacted by another ranger about a spider infestation in a cabin, but Purins strings things along amusingly with the elf relaying an epic tale until the ranger reveals a secret weapon: a can of "Spider B Gone". In another strip, a ranger tries to get official information out of a mermaid who doesn't speak english, chastising her that nudity isn't allowed on the beach while desperately asking her to keep singing. What makes this comic interesting is the way that Purins balances bigfoot drawing, traditional fantasy character design and naturalistic drawing. The remarkable clarity of line allows Purins to juggle all three styles while still retaining a coherent overall visual approach. Part of the reason why Purins does this so well is the consistency in the way he depicts gesture and expression; even characters drawn in different styles tend to act and move in the same recognizable set of patterns, one that's heavy on body language to such an extent that a reader could ignore all dialogue and still understand the comic.

Genus 3, by Anuj Shrestha. The third issue of this crazy conspiracy/sci-fi/horror/mystery comic ramps up both the mystery and the craziness while still retaining its signature crisp, restrained style of art. The plot follows an office worker who first dreams that there are multitude of others whose heads have been replaced by vaguely obscene, bulbous plants. Then he realizes that he's become one of them and is guided, Matrix-style, by a phone caller who seems to be able to watch his every move. In this issue, he poses as a plant-executive, having gained control of the ability to transform, and is again guided to a building where his two subordinates are killed by his savior, another plant-headed man. Of course, things once again aren't exactly as they seem, as our protagonist winds up tied up and injected by his supposed savior while being given a speech about corruption and being expected to behave. Shrestha's line is incredibly thin and precise as the suits he draws are as crisp and clean as the plant heads he draws are bizarre and disturbing. It's difficult to review just a single issue of this series, as it's obvious that there's much more that's going to be revealed, but so far it's a fascinating critique of corporate culture and science told through sci-fi tropes, but designed to be as clean and antiseptic as possible in terms of its execution.

Sequential Vacation II, by Sar Shahar. Secret Acres picked up the follow-up to Shahar's excellent first issue in this "travel" series, one in which the vacation is more of an imaginative one, one that draws a person out of their daily life. That certainly holds true in this issue, "Beach Fantasy". Grids are a key element of Shahar's art, omnipresent in his character's lives even as they try to find ways to break free of their boxes. It's no accident that the more fantastical aspects of Shahar's stories often have splash pages as opposed to the rhythm of a four panel grid or two panels on top and one panel on the bottom. After the opening fantasy sequence, the reader is literally presented with a huge grid: a sheet of graph paper that essentially makes up an office building. When that building explodes (literally destroying the grid), we see that our protagonist is watching a 3D movie in a theater, the idea of destroying the grid firmly implanted in his imagination. The next image, that of a hand scanning a UPC symbol on a flowery shirt, is a clever one because it's once again a splash page. The shirt represents fantasy triumphing over the grid, a dream of something else. Of course, the reader is then reminded that the grid is everywhere: on the cashier's computer, on the tile at the ice cream stand the hero goes to next, on the buses and in the city of Los Angeles itself. Wearing that fantasy shirt, the reader can see that he has a dating profile up on his computer ("Who's up for drinks?) along with itunes blaring, suggesting a party. We see the image of two beers being clinked, only to discover that it's on TV and the man is drinking alone. The man watches the box (TV), clicking from channel to channel in a dispiriting series of panel-to-panel transitions, the evening ending with a bomb on a TV show laying waste to its environment--in much the same way the evening has been a devastating failure, with the spilled cheetos and box of bagel bits a depressing reminder of this "party". The sun turns into the moon, which regenerates the beach fantasy, with a mystery man reappearing on this fantasy beach and a squeeze on the knee while boating providing a moment of aching delight. Of course, the final two pages contain the odd image of what appears to be a factory on the shore, with twin smokestacks framing the final image. Shahar has an uncanny knack for portraying the desperation of loneliness in a clever and frequently funny manner, using familiar imagery in unusual ways. When he has enough stories to fill up a book, he'll gain a considerable amount of attention for his work.

The Well-Dressed Bear (Will Never Be Found) Book One, by Jarod Rosello. Told in a narrative style not unlike Edward Gorey (and there's a touch of Gorey to be found in the page design and even some of its decorative qualities), it's about a bear who starts getting weird, unwelcome phone calls. The third chapter is when it starts to get cooking, when the Bear leaves his brownstone home to go about his business in the city. The city, however, is a bombed-out and decaying wreck, something not at all addressed in the narrative. There are almost hints of City of Glass to be found here, in that "it all started with a phone call" and that identity plays a key role in the story's proceedings. The narrative turns from simple description to balancing paranoia and even desperation. Rosello's crisp linework and rubbery, looping arms remind me a little of Megan Kelso's comics. I'd love to see this mini eventually reprinted at a larger size, as it would highlight the decorative quality of some of the pages more emphatically.

Minis From Across The USA

Most of the minis I receive tend to come from comics strongholds like Brooklyn and Portland. Of late, I've received minis from some unlikely sources. Here's a quick survey.

Foie Gras #1 & 3, by Edie Fake. Fake is the "minicomics sommelier" of the excellent Quimby's in Chicago, a city with a traditionally vibrant comics scene that is now spawning a younger generation of cartoonists. Fake's Foie Gras minis feature art appropriated from the old Joy of Cooking books, focusing in on desire and transformation (the twin subjects Fake usually tends to be interested in). Fake adds other images to the clear-line drawings of food cutting, preparation and assemblages while adding commentary that is frequently hilarious. In Fake's sexually charged fantasy comic Gaylord Phoenix, the penises of his characters are depicted as tubes--the sort of spiraling tubes that one sees folded and handled in The Joy of Cooking. So there's a superficial level of humor to be found here (like when a fist is thrust into a puckering hole in a pie), but there's also tenderness to be found in the commentary, as well as a commentary on how and why we adorn ourselves and what this means. (That's especially true of #3, which contains a number of highly elaborate food preparations with commentary hinting at why we play dress-up.) Of course, Fake turns these minis into beautiful little art objects, with silkscreened and brightly colored covers. These comics are an interesting take on comics-as-poetry.



The Dudes, by Alex Schubert. Schubert is from Kansas City, MO, and these three stories mix slacker lowlifes, a biographical comic about two weird brothers, and a set of gags about "famous last words." The title story is the most interesting one in this short comic, following a group of guys who hang around in parking lots to pass the time, with one claiming to be in a gang called "The Dudes", allowing him carte blanche in their narrow world. There's a relaxed, almost benign sleaziness at work in this short story, aided by Schubert's simple character design. His "famous last words" strip takes actual last statements from various historical figures (the "uh-oh" quote from space shuttle Challenger captain Michael Smith was especially nasty) and piles them up, juxtaposing the funny, the poignant and the tragic. Overall, this feels like an old-fashioned kind of mini with mild ambitions. It's a dumping ground for ideas, scenarios and relaxed drawings, and Schubert makes the aimless, vaguely dangerous world of his slackers sleazily appealing. Schubert would fit comfortably in an anthology like Hotwire, and I hope to see more of his comics.
Sequential Vacation #1, by Sar Shahar. Shahar is from Los Angeles. This silent comic was a compelling read and the artist shows a great deal of promise. The comic centers around repetition and grids, as it follows a window cashier at a fast-food restaurant through his life. The book starts with nine straight panels of the world outside his window: different faces from different cars who all want the same thing. We then follow the character to a club, where he waits in line (lines and waiting are also repeating motifs in the comic) to get in, but is slump-shouldered and miserable until a young woman wearing huge sunglasses takes him by the hand and they wind up sleeping together. For him, it's a transformative experience. For her, it's another day, a fact hammered home when she drives through his line at the fast-food joint. She's not just another face in the window for him, but she very much views him as an "object-at-hand", a person who does a job. There's evidence that him being a fast-food worker turns her off, given that she seems to lead an idly rich life (going to a matinee of the hilarious named movie "Motorcycle Vs Helicopter II" while he's working, perhaps breaking a date they had set up earlier to see the film at night). When he meets a new girl who happens to start working at his story who looks a bit like her, it all seems like fate will break his way--until she tragically is killed and he has to clean up the mess. (That bit of commentary on the dehumanization of minimum wage workers was especially affecting.) He winds up with another lookalike in the end, but it's unclear what will come of it. Unlike the other comics in this survey, this story feels closely tied to the locale of the author. The city feels like LA, with its car culture, emphasis on grids and night life. The repeating visual motifs are clever and striking, and the stark use of black & white reminds me a bit of what Robert Sergel does in Eschew. Shahar is not as clean a draftsman as Sergel, especially in terms of character design, but the page composition shows an artist who clearly thinks a lot about images and how they carry a narrative. I'm eager to see Shahar's next comic.


Brain Dead Phylum #1 & #2, by Kyle Nolan. Nolan is from Davenport FL, which is near Orlando. It's obvious, however, that he's heavily inspired by Fort Thunder-era comics, bringing a slightly more jokey version of the Brian Ralph/Mat Brinkman/Brian Chippendale aesthetic to his minis, the sort of thing that Sam Gaskin does. The backgrounds are dense in the way they create a solid environment, with every brick and stone drawn in detail. Nolan's not nearly in their class in terms of his draftsmanship, so some of the pages look a bit wonky in terms of their rendering, distracting a bit from the overall visual effect. Fortunately, this comic is played strictly for laughs, so the occasional slapdash drawing is ameliorated by the gags at hand. The comic follows a couple of robots out in "The Sludge Pit" who desperately need some coffee and go on a quest to get it. Their dialogue is amusing and contains random influences to pop culture (some of it outdated), like one robot being named Parker Lewis and another asking what Survivorman would do. Their spaceships are oddly named after brands of cheap beer. The second issue brings them to "Salt City", wherein they encounter a not-exactly-subtle parody of Mormons awaiting their arrival. What I like most about these comics are the shapes of the protagonist robots; their character design compels the reader to look at them move across the page, thanks to their appealing boxiness. I get the sense that Nolan is throwing every idea he has against the wall to see what sticks in this series and will hopefully refine his style, narrative focus and humor as he progresses from issue to issue.


Class Reunion #2 & #5, by Charlie Newton. Newton is from Birmingham, AL, which is not exactly a comics hotbed, but these minis also show heavy influence from underground and Fort Thunder style comics. Each of these comics is very short (six pages, plus front and back covers), but they have a strong visual impact. Issue #2 features a character that's a cross between an octopus and Humpty-Dumpty sitting at a table and hallucinating all sorts of horrible thing, including a brain oozing out of the bottom of a skyscraper. This silent comic is about the ways our minds can wander to the most grotesque of images. #5 features two characters with enormous heads having a conflict over waffles, only for one of them to be pursued by a waffle-hungry monster. There's also a wordless comic involving one of Newton's blobby characters trying to find out where "the delicious" is, starting a dialogue with the man in his TV set about it. There's no real attempt at true narrative in these comics, but rather a stringing together of emotional, visceral images. Newton doesn't have total control over his line and page design, so the going can be rough at times, but his draftsmanship is good enough to provoke the reader into paying attention, even if the rewards are small at this point. Certainly, his comics are interesting for his strange point of view, and I suspect they will become increasingly coherent but complex.