D&Q: Sarah Glidden's Rolling Blackouts

The defining element of Gonzo journalism, as originated by Hunter S. Thompson, was that the illusion of objectivity was cast aside in favor of an acknowledgment that the journalist, in reporting the story, becomes part of the story. This is not to suggest that journalism, even Gonzo journalism, doesn't have its own rules and even standards. However, it is a way of letting the reader know that this was a specific set of circumstances interpreted in a particular way by a journalist. Making this acknowledgment is a way of cutting off at the knees the possibility of making an argument by way of anecdote, which is the weakest yet most common rhetorical method of argument. It puts the lie to the notion that the journalist has special knowledge or insight. All the journalist can hope is that their account, bias and narrow scope and all, is compelling enough not to give the reader all the answers, but to give them enough information to start asking more questions.

In Sarah Glidden's first book, How To Understand Israel In Sixty Days Or Less, Glidden clearly had the journalist urge without the journalistic tools to address her Birthright trip to Israel. She knew going in that Birthright was at least in part a propaganda exercise, but she was surprised at how emotional so many aspects of that trip made her. The weird artificiality of the setting made the book feel staged at times, even if she was trying to resist that staging. The book wound up being more memoir than a work of journalism, though the seeds were clearly planted to follow up later. In particular, she wanted to talk to people directly who didn't have a particular, prescribed political agenda they wanted to peddle to her. In the end, she was no less clear about her feelings and opinions about Israel than she was when she started, but she stayed true to that conclusion and did try for a pat answer.

That desire to talk to others, a curiosity about the nuts and bolts of the actual journalistic process, and a constant slamming on the metaphorical breaks regarding any kind of smooth narrative that emerged on a trip to the Middle East make up the bulk of Glidden's new book, Rolling Blackouts. This book is a work of meta-journalism, as she followed members of the Seattle Globalist to Turkey, Kurdish Iraq and Syria and documented their process. Throughout the book, there are two separate dynamics: the dynamic between the Globalist crew and the people they interview and use as contacts, and the dynamic between Sarah Stuteville of the Globalist and her friend Dan, an ex-marine who saw time in Iraq who happened to be one of her oldest friends. Glidden stood as an outsider in both sets of dynamics, in part because she didn't want to interfere with the work the Globalist journalists were attempting to accomplish. While Glidden was obviously a character in this book, she very pointedly noted that this wasn't a memoir. She got to shape it the way she wanted and wasn't obligated to share her feelings about anything in particular. As such, we never hear Glidden's feelings about being an American in the countries they traveled to, nor how she felt as a Jewish person in those countries. Indeed, her ethnic background wasn't brought up a single time in the book. Glidden the person in this book is a very intelligent and perceptive cipher, and that's as it should be.

It was interesting to see the differences in what Stuteville did and what Joe Sacco does in his comics journalism. Sacco inserts himself into the scene but never hesitates in making friends with the locals as he often stays in one place for months. There are also times when he's as ruthless as he needs to be in finding the story he's looking for, as depicted in Footnotes In Gaza. Stuteville is a more traditional journalist, as getting to spend a lot of her time with her subjects is unusual and there's not always the opportunity to engage in social interaction. It did happen on occasion, where Stuteville attended parties at people's homes and danced, or went out to get drinks. Glidden depicts Stuteville as professional but empathetic, probing but kind and a mix of supreme confidence and self-doubt. Some of her subjects were happy to talk to an American journalist, while others took the opportunity to use her as a vessel for venting their hatred of what the American army did to their country. In both instances, Glidden depicted Stuteville as almost infinitely patient and unflappable, always allowing her subjects to vent without once trying to justify what had happened. In almost every case shown, even the most vociferously hostile subjects would calm down and realize that it wasn't her fault and recognized that she was there to hear their stories.

By way of contrast, the way Stuteville interacted with Dan reflected the full weight of their history and the ways in which she no longer understood him. As media-savvy individuals, they were both going after certain stories and were aware that the other was trying to shape the story in a particular way. For Dan, who had been as peace-loving as anyone in high school, he viewed enlisting as a way of trying to personally influence events in Iraq. It was a way of doing more than just protesting; in his view, it was a way of effecting real change. What Stuteville was looking for was him starting with perhaps that narrative and then seeing that narrative change when he met people who had been affected by the war. His immediate reaction, which he repeated again and again, was to say that the war hadn't affected him negatively at all, he was glad that he performed this service, didn't regret his actions at all and didn't feel any guilt. He was answering questions that weren't even asked, which immediately caused Stuteville to want to chase down the things he denied.

That led to a series of ever-more-frustrating, passive-aggressive interviews. Stuteville was constantly trying to figure out a way of circling around and drawing him out (even chastising Glidden for directly questioning him on some sensitive material when she didn't think it was an appropriate time). Every time, she would get stonewalled. Ironically, it wasn't until the very end of the book, when Dan heard some Iraqi refugees in Syria decry America, that he admitted that coming to Iraq was a mistake. The irony was that he told this to Glidden, not Stuteville, and Glidden was incisive in her analysis: Dan was looking for absolution from someone, anyone, and it would never come. Stuteville later talked about the mistakes she made in trying to interview Dan, acknowledging that she was simply too close to the subject to be truly objective. This interpersonal conflict added some spice to what was otherwise a fairly straightforward narrative. Many of the stories presented were interesting, but what the reader saw was the bare bones of that story that would later be turned into something more coherent. It was the equivalent of watching an unedited film, which was interesting up to a point but repetitive after a while.

The book picks up when the crew meets Sam, an Iraqi native who had lived in Seattle for a number of years before being deported. Technically, he was deported for falsifying aspects of his application, but the reality is that he was seemingly connected to a key Al-Qaeda member who helped mastermind the 9/11 terrorist attack. Sam claimed innocence and ignorance, which seemed fishy to the group until they actually spent a lot of time with him. This was an interesting bit of give and take, as the group sensed that while his story had some inconsistencies, the essential truth of him being innocent felt true to them. The amount of time spent with him in the book, small touches like him being obsessed with being able to have access to American snacks and his sheer lack of guile gave the reader the same kind of intimacy that the group felt with him. Glidden really shines in creating these scenes, creating a sense of ease on the page that was casual but also weighed with the seriousness of the charges and the sadness of Sam being separated from his wife and children. Glidden also gets at the idea of a sticky truth where it's impossible to know all of the factors that went into the arrest, like the politics influencing the US officials.

The final segment of the book in Syria is closer to what one would expect about a book set in the Middle East: focusing on human misery, the ramifications of war and individual tales of despair and hope. As grim as the refugees' lives were in Syria, the reality of Syria today is far more upsetting, given the horrific civil war and genocide. Entering Syria meant encountering state-enforced admiration of Assad, which was amusing for a while until it became clear that state surveillance was a real thing. There were moments of humor in this book, to be sure, but it was laughing in the dark. The title of the book refers to a phenomenon in Iraq where they were planned, brief blackouts at night, because there wasn't enough power to keep the city lit all at the same time. It became Glidden's metaphor for journalists facing long periods of uncertainty, often foisted intentionally on them, followed by moments of insight. It also refers to their perspective as Americans, and Dan in particular. The last big blowout argument between Stuteville and Dan took place during a blackout, where Dan makes the case that someone needed to stop Saddam Hussein, and Stuteville counters that it wasn't our place to do so, especially without any real sense of how to fix what happened next. The lights blinked on after that moment as the argument ended, a moment of enlightenment or at least having one's cards all out on the table achieved.

Whereas Joe Sacco combines incredible skill with a pen and a sense of when to bend naturalism toward a more cartoony style, Glidden keeps everything sketchy and loose. Her use of color is key to the book, as mellow pastels dominate backgrounds and keep the book on an even keel in terms of tone. No matter what kind of story is being discussed, Glidden's consistency in this regard gives the book cohesion and adds a sense of restraint to the book. This makes sense, because the book is less about the Middle East than it is a book about process and craft. Glidden balances that discussion of process with interpersonal relationships, which was crucial in preventing the book from becoming too dry or academic. The book does drag here and there, and there are a few story tangents that don't quite go anywhere, but for the most part Glidden is able to turn quiet moments into important ones because they flesh out interpersonal relationships. Glidden does a fine job overall of humanizing a difficult job, providing context and understanding of how an important job is done, and explaining why it's as important as it is.

Sequart Reprints: Minis from Forsman, Ford, Glidden, Smith, Mardou, Overby, Latta

Time to check in on the world of mini-comics.

Snake Oil 1-2, by Chuck Forsman. This is a really excellent, unusual mini that combines slice-of-life slacker life with a truly demented fantasy narrative. It's told in a series of vignettes as a garbageman named Tim is kidnapped from a diner by several mysterious figures using some kind of magical powers. His best friend Bob and fellow garbageman tries to pursue them but is outfoxed. The lead sinister figure stops him by asking him his name, and then says, "Bob, quit doggin' me" and then laughs maniacally down an alley and disappears. Meanwhile, Bob's son Darryl is getting high with his friend Kim, who smokes what's in a mysterious pipe. She suddenly goes catatonic for no apparent reason. Tim finds himself in a mysterious land populated by nudists, while the bull-headed men who are driving him away in a van freak out on pills. In the back-up story, "Mickey The Man", a man goes from a state of being a human and then being an anthropomorphic duck and finds that his baby is stolen from him by unidentified, sinister forces.

It looks like Forsman is cycling through his influences in this mini, spinning them through his own unique point of view. I can sense early Chester Brown as an influence in the first story and his character design is very similar to Sammy Harkham's in the second. The way he mixes humor, fantasy elements, a gnawing sense of dread and everyday ennui as components in his story make it quite memorable. I like his character design and composition, though his line isn't quite assured enough to pull off every trick he attempts in this book. His ambition is impressive, as is his restraint in not overrendering his characters. Forsman is an student at the Center For Cartoon Studies, and it's obvious that he's developing rapidly as an artist. He's definitely one to watch.

Only Skin #3, by Sean Ford. This series reminds me a little of Gilbert Hernandez' work in some respects. The ensemble cast, the wide-open spaces, the eccentric character design, and the looming but enigmatic sense of menace that pervades the book are all reminiscent of a lot of Hernandez' recent work in particular. This issue starts to fill in some of the blanks regarding some of the key character's (Cassie) backstory, as we learn why she left the tiny, dusty town. She's confronted by a person who was the catalyst for her departure, who may play a significant role in the mysterious and brutal disappearances that are occuring in town. We also see more of my favorite character, the Pac-Man looking ghost that follows around Cassie's younger brother and nearly gets him killed. Some of the series' themes are also beginning to coalesce, especially mortality and the nature of human connection. I'm not sure how long this series is slated to run, but it quickly has become a favorite. Like Forsman, Ford has an excellent sense of composition and design but is still mastering the quality of his line. It's not always entirely assured, as though rendering certain scenes seemed to take an enormous amount of effort (especially character-to-character interactions). But also like Forsman, Ford avoids the pitfalls of overrendering.

How To Understand Israel In 60 Days Or Less, Chapters 1 & 2, by Sarah Glidden. Glidden is best known for her journal comics, and in these comics she takes her wry perspective to describe her journey to Israel on a "birthright tour". She took advantage of the Israeli government (combined with private donors) funding a program that brings young Jews to Israel from around the world. Glidden took the trip from a quite skeptical point of view, as a non-religious Jew whose feelings about Israel were ambivalent, to say the least. She was curious as to what kind of people she'd meet on the tour, if those running the tour would truly engage the tough questions regarding the Palestinian conflict, and how much of the trip would simply be an exercise in propaganda.

The best thing about these comics is Glidden's forceful and unapologetic presence as a biased narrator. She is not Joe Sacco in Palestine, submerging his own ego in order to get the stories of others. These comics are about Glidden's feelings and point of view about this experience. Despite her strong opinions going into it, one can sense that the mixed emotions she feels about being in Israel cause her to really think over everything she sees and hears. There's a liveliness in how she depicts characterization that allows the reader to fly through the story, and one can't help but wonder how Sarah will react to what she encounters next. Her position as someone who leans to the left who has enormous sympathy for the Palestinian cause can't help but be tempered by the complex realities of everyday life. Glidden also livens up the proceedings by depicting the wanderings of her imagination: as she confesses that she doesn't know how the Six Day War was fought, she starts to imagine soldiers mounted on dinosaurs attacking each other. Another sequence finds her experiences "on trial" in her mind, as the prosecution attacks what she sees as propaganda while the defense notes how open-minded the guides are, halting when the judge declares a recess for a bathroom break at the next gas station.

Glidden's line is on the primitive side, more concerned with capturing gesture and expression than a meticulously crafted stylization. For the purposes of a story that is entirely about the emotions and expressions of her characters, her art is more than up to this task. She sticks to a rigid 9-panel grid on every page, which serves to keep the story flowing but cramps things a bit. That mostly plays out in her lettering, which is a bit too small on the page and seems rushed at times. It's the only thing that interrupts the otherwise seamless flow of the comic; one rarely notices lettering unless it's a distraction. One could actually see the lettering becoming much clearer at the end of chapter 2, and her pages in general opened up a bit and started to breathe a bit more. I admire Glidden's ambition in tackling this project and think that her combination of wit, outrage and skepticism will make for a fascinating personal account of one of the world's most controversial areas. One can already see that the challenges inherent in telling this story are making her a better artist.

Small Bible,  by Shannon Smith. This is a clever mini that's about points of view and description. Taking key portions of the Old Testament, Smith quotes extensively from Stephen's Defense in the Book of Acts, then quotes the original scripture, then provides an illustration--all in just 9 pages. It's a clever comic that's both a straightforward depiction of an event, and a commentary as an interpretation of an interpretation of an event that may or may not have happened--but has enormous importance. Joann Sfar's Rabbi character in THE RABBI'S CAT described Judaism as different from Western (Hegelian) thought, which is thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The history of Jewish thought, he explained, is thesis, antithesis, antithesis, antithesis, and so on. This mini is another step in the argument, providing a visual interpretation of the events that is action-oriented on nearly every page. An angel dramatically swoops in to prevent Abraham from sacrificing Isaac; Moses gets a magic glowing staff from god that cures snake bites; various epic battles are fought. Smith gets across the quite visceral experience of reading the Old Testament, a tact that is quite different from the purposes of either Stephen or the original Torah. It's quite a clever little project.

Washing Machine, by Mardou. I really enjoyed this slice-of-life mini because it subverted expectations at every turn. A story about a 20-something woman who breaks off an affair she's having with an older married man, Mardou sets up a situation where her protagonist Rachel seems to be on the way to finding an exciting new boyfriend. Instead, Rachel's night ends in disaster as the wife of her ex-flame confronts her, her potential new boyfriend drives the hysterical woman home, and her dumpy roommate actually finds a potential love interest. Mardou's character design and dialogue are clever and serve well in drawing in the reader's interest. The ending of the story serves to offer up a bit of justice to a character that is actually a bit vain, shallow and conceited, and the way Mardou brings these threads together in one explosive ending was quite satisfying.

Jessica, by Jason Overby. This is an unusual mini printed with a thick cardstock cover and heavy paper. While this is essentially an anecdote about a missed connection with a woman, what makes it unusual is Overby's visual approach. He alternates between a Paper Rad-style primitivism, pure iconic abstraction, and Frank Stack-style scribbly expressionism. The story drifts in and out of the anecdote, as Overby sometimes digresses to past memories and experiences. This mini is stream-of-consciousness and attempts to get across the experience of one's own consciousness visually. I especially liked the iconic abstraction that represented himself; ironically, his most abstract representation is the most straightforward in relating the narrative. This was certainly an interesting amalgamation of ideas and techniques, presented without compromise to conventional narrative concerns, and it'll be interesting to see how Overby develops his talent.

Rashy Rabbit #4, by Josh Latta. This is an outsized slice-of-life comic told in classic funny animal fashion. Indeed, Latta's skill in rendering his characters in that classic style is so considerable that the first page of this comic, featuring a sex scene, caught me totally off guard. The title character is a familiar 20-something loser, constantly (but often unsuccessfully) on the make and getting high. That opening sequence, featuring a sex scene and a stunning death, was quite a darkly hilarious introduction to this issue. Rashy as a character is a sad sack, without much ambition of his own and is thus easily manipulated by others. While the dialogue has a sort of sleazy verisimilitude that's amusing (especially Rashy's dirtbag stoner cousin), Latta takes a risk in having a protagonist that's so passive in this issue. Not having read the first three issues of the series, I'd be interested in seeing how Rashy interacted with other characters, and how that influenced the narrative.

Autobio Minicomics

Rob reviews a number of autobiographical comics. Included are minis by Liz Baillie, James McShane, Vanessa Davis, Laura Park, Raina Telgemeier, Marion Vitus, Sarah Glidden, Alec Longstreth, Julia Wertz, and Matt Hawkins.


One joy of attending SPX is finding the latest issues of autobiographical minicomics series, as well as discovering new and interesting takes on the subject.

9/27/08, by James McShane. This was an interesting little brick of a comic; it was not so much printed as constructed, its pages punched out. Its dimensions are 4" x 2.5" by 1" with a silkscreened cover. Apart from its nature as an art object, the book itself follows an interesting formal concept: a diary comic where one draws what one has done every ten minutes. The day begins at 7:40am as his partner wakes him up and proceeds from there, detailing the most minute details of daily life in rapid-fire fashion. This approach has as much to do with animation as it does with comics, because with McShane's stripped-down approach, the reader is not meant to linger on any particular image for too long.

McShane noticeably tells the story almost entirely with pictures, avoiding dialogue in most of his panels. I'm guessing that's partly a function of not being able to remember everything that was said and only focusing on bits of verbiage that would make the diary a little easier to understand. It's interesting that even in a comic that purports to report on the details of a day, there's still a lot of room for variation and interpretation on the part of the artist. Of course, one also has to account for the fact that drawing his log was part of this day--a snake eating its own tail, in a sense. I'm not sure I'd want to read another comic like this; this is an experiment that would quickly yield diminishing returns, but I admire the way McShane devoted himself to it for a day.

SING ALONG FOREVER, by Liz Baillie. It's always interesting to read an autobiographical comic by an artist who rarely makes them, and why they would choose to reveal themselves. In Baillie's case, it was simple: she decided to create an account of traveling to a music festival with a friend (fellow artist Robin Enrico) in order to meet her favorite band (the Bouncing Souls), see them play and take a photo with them. The comic, as she notes on the cover, is a "love letter" to the band, something that she describes as "messy, sloppy [and] gushing words of pure devotion", something that's "uncomfortably sincere".

The framework of this comic was a sort of cousin to what Jesse Reklaw is doing in his COUCH TAG series. She's revealing portions of herself through a mediated source. In Reklaw's case, it was through accounts of all the cats his family owned or the story of a particular friendship. In Baillie's case, it's the way the band became not just an obsession, but a security blanket of sorts. From the first song she heard, she felt like she was understood, that her pain was not random, and that she could find ways to put it to use. One reason why artists create is to externalize their emotions in a way they can't quite do otherwise, and Baillie's comics are filled with characters bursting with emotions they can't quite understand who express them in often inappropriate ways.

The love letter approach, while indeed sloppy, led to some delightfully spontaneous, expressive art. Baillie carefully crafted the comic to include flashbacks as to how and why the band became important to her, but the actual events of the day she met the band went beyond her expectations. As she met the band, got sketches, got a photo and watched them play from backstage by their invitation, one could sense the sheer bliss she was experiencing. She met her heroes, men she had never met but who in a sense had saved her life, and they turned out to be superheroes. Baillie had the rare experience of interacting on an intimate level with that which was by its very nature larger-than-life in her own eyes. As an artist, she had to capture these rare feelings, feelings that couldn't entirely be captured in a coherent fashion. A little sloppiness was part of the process.

SPANIEL RAGE 2008, by Vanessa Davis. Davis is probably my favorite diarist in comics and this recent minicomics collection shows that she's only gotten better. Davis has organically created a formula for her comics that plays to her strengths. Her comics are intimate without being overly confessional. They have a warmth, immediacy and spontaneity while still clearly being carefully composed. They are revealing of neurosis and worry without being pathetic. Davis' comics are funny without devolving into shtick. This volume details the ups and downs of being in a relationship without lapsing into being overly cute or sentimental. I especially enjoyed the way she and her boyfriend tease each other about various subjects, and the way she depicted the way she veered between sheer bliss and insecurity. It was interesting to see her connect her desirability as a partner with her productivity as an artist.

The key to Davis' success is providing the illusion of intimacy to the reader. The reality is that by withholding the context of the events she depicts, she actually creates distance between herself and the reader. As a result as that safety net of sorts, this allows her to talk about deeper feelings. That sense of intimacy and immediacy is further aided by the way she designs her pages--there are rarely grids or panels, yet the reader never feels lost. Her comics owe as much to the classic New Yorker cartoonists or Jules Feiffer as they do modern alternative comics. About the only drawback to her spontaneous style in this mini is her lettering. It's clear that she didn't always measure out word balloons properly for certain anecdotes, and some words spill out of the balloons. I imagine that will be corrected for the eventual larger collection of these strips.

DO NOT DISTURB MY WAKING DREAM #2, by Laura Park. Park was probably my favorite discovery in 2008, an artist with fully-formed chops who is finding her way around sequential storytelling. Her comics are a great companion piece to those of Vanessa Davis and Julia Wertz, with each artist simultaneously revealing intimate details while keeping the reader at a distance. The only problem with this mini is that the reader doesn't get to experience the sumptuous way she employs color on her flickr page for these strips. The grayscaled strips in this mini look a bit muddy in comparison.

The subtext of these strips details Park's social anxiety. Like many cartoonists, she's shy and solitary by nature, and these strips provide a window into the comfort she feels being along against her urge to be with others. "Good Time Gal About Town" crystalizes these feelings, as she tells herself to go to a nearby party but can't quite do it, telling herself "Probly wouldn't have had fun". That said, these strips really aren't about misery, but rather simple joys. "The Bestest Damn Hobo What Ever Was" is a delightful strip about an especially busy and accomplished day as she shot around Chicago on her bike. The final, contented image of Park lying in a chair with her sore feet propped up was a particular pleasure to look at.

Park is a skilled draftsman who uses a spontaneous approach to her line. The result is a series of pages that are beautiful to look at with simple, expressive figures. The way Park draws her own facial expressions on her lumpy self-caricature is this book's biggest draw. Her self-caricature captures her energy, her curiosity, her urge to create and the way she delights in the world around her. The way she frames each anecdote into structured grids (often telling the same story more than once) speaks to both wanting to make these anecdotes readable to an outsider and that she constantly thinks about her world in comics terms. Hopefully some wise publisher will publish a collection of her strips in full color. In the meantime, Park will have a story in an upcoming issue of MOME, and I'm delighted to see that she'll soon be getting wider recognition.

OUTREACH, by Raina Telgemeier. Telgemeier got her start doing minicomics, so it was nice to see her first such effort in several years after laboring over four Baby Sitters Club adaptations. This short mini is autobiographical, detailing anecdotes from conventions and classes she's taught to children. Her line, as always, is enormously appealing and spare. Telgemeier is an artist who really knows how to play to her strengths: gesture, expression and depicting energy and enthusiasm (especially from children). I could have read a book full of these modest, easygoing strips. I've read plenty of comics much like this one, but it's Telgemeier's distillation of both the joys and frustrations of working with children that make it such a pleasant read. There's a rhythm to these strips that's framed by the disciplined simplicity of Telgemeier's line, effortlessly setting up punchlines with visuals rather than gag lines. Telgemeier's own autobiographical book, SMILE, will be published by Scholastic in a couple of years, and I expect that to be the best work of her brief but productive career.

NO IN-BETWEEN #7-9, by Marion Vitus. Vitus has been working on this rite-of-passage/travelogue series for some time now, and it's clear that she's built up quite a bit of momentum with it now that she's serializing it on the web. The latest collection of issues stands alone quite nicely, as we see her in Austria, visiting the relatives of her ex-boyfriend--though they aren't aware that they've broken up. This series is about breaking out of one's shell, taking risks, confronting fears and experiencing intense highs and lows. Vitus mixes a naturalistic and expressive styles interchangeably, which sometimes makes for some awkward moments. Some of her figures have odd body proportions that change from panel to panel, for example. On the other hand, Vitus' more expressive drawings do a fine job of telling the story, especially in the way she draws faces. These comics have a compelling quality to them, mostly because of Vitus' narrative voice. That voice is of someone who had obviously been quieted by people in her life and was just starting to find ways to break out. That exploration of how tentative this process can be, of one step forward followed by three steps back, compels the reader to want more. Vitus' voice is self-deprecating without being self-pitying, which is a rare combination in autobiographical comics.

EIGHT DAYS OUT, by Sarah Glidden. Glidden is the artist behind the award-winning HOW TO UNDERSTAND ISRAEL IN 60 DAYS OR LESS minicomic that got picked up by Vertigo's new line of original graphic novels. I tend to think of her on the "writer that draws" end of the comics spectrum, as much of what she writes would be nearly as compelling without comics to go with them. It'll be interesting to see the end result of that comic, because I imagine Glidden's work will move more towards the middle of that art/text distinction as her line grows more confident. This mini is the perfect sort of comic to balance those interests, given the warmth and immediacy of the art. It's a travelogue (which seems to be Glidden's go-to subject at the moment) about a trip she and her brother took across country from New York to Los Angeles.

It's funny that she and her brother chose to listen to podcasts of "This American Life", because her own storytelling style is not unlike a feature on that show. Her narrative voice has a gentle, warm, probing wit. She looks at her world with eyes wide open and openly seeks out new experiences and sights. That openness translates well to comics, as the reader feels like they are traveling with her, listening to her tell a story. The sketchy quality of her art has a certain immediate power to it, but she has difficulty getting across the beauty of her surroundings with some of her less detailed drawings. It's clear that experiencing the natural beauty of the American southwest had a profound impact on her, one that she wanted to share with her audience, but this venue was not quite the right one. It really required the use of full color and/or an elaborate series of visual tricks that aren't quite in her arsenal to date. At eighty pages, Glidden does serve up a meaty account of her trip that still manages to reveal little in the way of personal detail but much in our understanding of how she perceives the world. Glidden is already a talent to watch and someone who should only improve as she continues to evolve as an artist.

2007 PHASE 7 SUMMER SUPPLEMENT, by Alec Longstreth. The most enthusiastic artist on artist cranked out an attractive-looking story as a 24-hour comic, no less. Longstreth enjoys writing about the craft of creating comics, and time management in particular. This comic was a sort of meta-commentary on time management, since it's all about his decision to become a fellow at the quite isolated Center for Cartoon Studies in a small Vermont town. Longstreth throws in nice-looking splash pages, a number of fairly detailed drawings, diagrams, caricatures of over a dozen people and more in this high-energy mini. It's a comic about wanting to draw comics, and the purity of Longstreth's enthusiasm for the form has always been one of his biggest strengths as an artist. The simplicity of his line has always made his work appealing if not always compelling. When his "Basewood" serial is done, that will most likely his best early work, and I sense that he's best suited for clever genre-related work with occasional pit-stops and detours into autobio and other experiments.

BEFORE THE FART PARTY and THE LEGEND OF REBOB MOUNTAIN, by Julia Wertz. I'd describe Wertz as another "writer who draws", only unlike Sarah Glidden, Wertz is rambunctious, all over the place and sloppy. She mixes her potent sense of humor with a healthy dose of anger, bitterness and self-deprecation. Wertzpretty much pours all of her feelings on the page, and these two comics show the results at different points in her career. BEFORE THE FART PARTY contains the strips she did prior to launching the webcomic that has attracted a fairly substantial audience. It's an interesting mini, as Wertz is trying to find a voice both as writer and artist. She actually started off trying a more naturalistic style for her autobio strips, but it was clear that she was best suited for a more cartoony, almost bigfoot, style. She very quickly honed her chops as a comedic writer even before settling on a style of art that worked for her, as was evident in strips like "Hospital 1982-2004" (wherein she discusses her history of falling down and her desire to give birth to kittens), "First/Last Date" and the hilarious "Robot Vs Snowman" (a pitched battle between her left and right brain selves that leaves both dead--this was her application strip to CCS!).

REBOB MOUNTAIN is not a comic, but rather an illustrated story from Wertz's childhood. There are a few interesting uses of misdirection here, as we expect an irreverent story from her early life (which had many unusual stories attached to it), but instead we get a fairly sober meditation on how & why children attach meaning to certain events. In this case, the unthinkable death of a friend of theirs from cancer was shifted into their ongoing angst about the creatures they thought lived at the top of the mountain near their house. It's about the rituals children use to ward off the unexplained, about the feeling of being kept in the dark by adults and wondering about how to gain access to the world's real secrets. This mini is an interesting fit with the rest of Wertz's work, since one can't fully pigeonhole her. Most of her work is funny, but it also has a diary strip quality to it, as well as days where it's more a straight rant than a punchline. Still other days are expressions of pure joy, once again with no punchline. Wertz took a fairly common internet phenomenon and has carved out a unique identity for herself.

UNLUCKY #3 & #4, by Matthew Hawkins and various artists. Hawkins does Harvey Pekar-style autobio collaborations with a variety of artists, focusing almost solely on stories about his own misfortunes or the very strange things he's seen. He has a raunchy, visceral wit as he zips back and forth in time for these short anecdotes. Issue #3 matches a story with scatological and broken-heart elements with Matthew Bernier's minimalist (almost symbolic) art, which fortunately blunted the gross-out factor of the story while playing up its humor. I thought Dave Savage's scrawled-out art for a story about the various weirdos he knew in school was another appropriate choice, looking as though it had been scribbled on someone's book cover. Hawkins' stories seem to go best with collaborators whose art is heavily stylized (which is why I thought Toby Craig's moody but naturalistic art was a bad fit), partly because Hawkins' writing has a certain deadpan quality to it no matter how weird the situation he describes. That matter-of-fact storytelling style is perhaps his greatest strength; he never oversells his premises but rather lets them play out with restraint on his end, allowing his artists to go hog wild. I'd like to see Hawkins illustrate one of his own stories--he's certainly got the chops to do so.