Eight Publishers To Seek Out At SPX 2012

First, I wanted to note that I will be attending the Small Press Expo (SPX) in Bethesda, MD, this upcoming weekend (Saturday 8/15 and Sunday 8/16).  I will be moderating a panel on 8/15 at 11:30am called "British Comics: Does It Translate" featuring a number of UK creators and publishers, including Glyn Dillon (Shade The Changing Man, The Nao of Brown), Luke Pearson (Hildafolk, Everything We Miss), Sam Arthur (co-founder of NoBrow), Ellen Lindner (The Strumpet), and Nick Abadzis (Laika, Hugo Tate). Regular readers of my column will know that several of these artists have been long-time favorites of mine (I've been reading Lindner's comics for over a decade now) and others are new favorites.

There are any number of reasons to be excited by this year's iteration of SPX. Chris Ware, Dan Clowes and Adrian Tomine will make their first-ever appearances here. Mark Newgarden will be here screening some obscure animation. Francoise Mouly and the Hernandez Brothers will be making much-anticipated returns visits. There will be the usual exciting debuts from stalwarts like Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, NBM, Top Shelf and PictureBox (debuts from Sammy Harkham and Johnny Negron, among others) AdHouse (new books from Ethan Rilly AND Tom Herpich, among others). However, I wanted to shine a little light on several publishers who will be making their SPX debuts, as well as a couple of other important smaller publishers who continue to have a strong presence at the show. Their tables will be loaded with interesting books you may not have even heard of and will be jammed with representative artists.

1. Hic and Hoc. (Table H10) New Jersey's Matt Moses  (at right, above, with Pat Aulisio) is the publisher of this relatively new outfit focusing on collecting minicomics and webcomics, as well as new material. I'll have a big piece on them and a number of other smaller publishers at tcj.com soon, but I've enjoyed Moses' focus on gag and humor work, an area often ignored in the world of small press publishing. Lauren Barnett (Me Likes You Very Much) will be at this table, and she's up for Promising New Talent at the Ignatz Awards. My favorite book of Hic and Hoc's to date is The Complete Talamaroo, by Alabaster. This has just gone into a second edition, so there should be plenty of copies available at the show.

2. Koyama Press. (Tables J7-J10) Toronto-based Anne Koyama finally comes to SPX after several years of publishing extremely well received and highly eclectic comics in a variety of formats. Her table will be jam-packed with her artists and new debuts. Comics wunderkind Michael DeForge will make his SPX debut with the anticipated fourth issue of his comedy-horror series Lose. Julia Wertz joins Koyama Press with the debut of her book on her experience with illness, moving, bad jobs, libraries and other issues, The Infinite Wait (full disclosure: I wrote a blurb for this book). Fellow Old North Stater Dustin Harbin will debut the fourth issue of his Diary series. The Team Society League collective (Aaron Costain, John Martz, Steve Wolfhard, and Zach Worton) will be their with their Book of Answers. Koyama has an eye for developing talent while giving her artists total freedom, not unlike the way Dylan Williams used to run Sparkplug. She also has the well-earned reputation as being one of the nicest people in comics.

3. Retrofit Comics. (Table H14) Philadelphia's Brian "Box" Brown took a well-funded Kickstarter campaign to resurrect the alternative comic book in the form of a subscription service and has turned it into a publishing concern with some impressive books under its belt. Josh Bayer's Raw Power may well be the best of the bunch (a profile I did of Bayer's comics will be featured in the upcoming Studygroup Magazine #2), and he will be at SPX with four new minicomics. Brown will be debuting Flocks #1 by the increasingly prolific and confident L.Nichols and New Sludge City by up-and-comer Brendan Leach, as well as a new comic by himself called The Mark. Tom Hart will also have a couple of heartfelt and personal comics at the Retrofit table but will be repping his own Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW) table with his wife and fellow teacher Leela Corman, who will no doubt have copies of her excellent book Unterzakhn.

4. NoBrow. (Tables A1-A2) This is one of the top British publishers, making their US debut. They're bringing one of their best artists in Luke Pearson, author of Hildafolk, Hilda and the Midnight Giant and Everything We Miss. Known for their illustration books as well as their comics, each of the publications is an art object unto itself, each with impeccable design. In addition to several beautiful anthologies, they also have a number of shorter, affordable books in their 17x23 series (I strongly recommend books by Jon McNaught) and also publish Jesse Moynihan's excellent Forming. Co-publisher Sam Arthur and Pearson will both be part of my British comics panel while fellow co-publisher Alex Spiro tends to the table. Any fan of beautiful-looking comics owes it to themselves to give their table a look; their house anthology NoBrow #6 is up for an Ignatz award.

5. Oily Comics. (Table I12) Chuck Forsman (left, above, with Alex Kim) has ambitiously started to recruit fellow artists to publish serialized minicomics for his new publishing concern, and the results have been beautiful thus far. In addition to his excellent The End Of The Fucking World, he's publishing Melissa Mendes' poignantly sweet Lou, Max De Radigues' Moose, and new comics by Aaron Cockle, Dane Martin, James Hindle, Jessica Campbell and more. He'll be sharing a table with fellow Sundays editors/contributors Kim, Joseph Lambert and several others. Fans of quality minicomics should essentially buy the whole lot, because there's not a loser in the bunch he's chosen to publish.

6. 2D Cloud. (Table W61) This small outfit from Minneapolis begun by Raighne Hogan (above, with his wife Meghan) has been quietly publishing beautiful art objects and introducing new and exciting talent for a few years now. They will be out in force at SPX with new releases from co-publisher Justin Skarhus (RDCD Fist #1.5) and newcomer Christopher Adams' Period. Their table will also feature Nicholas Breutzman (Yearbooks, Motherlover), Sharon Lintz (Pornhounds, which includes personal, riveting stories drawn by the likes of Breutzman, Lindner and others), Meghan Hogan (debuting her new comic) Vincent Stall (with Things You Carry) and Will Dinski, whose 2D Cloud debut is a comic called Ablatio Penis. They also published Noah Van Sciver's excellent Igntaz-nominated comic The Death of Elijah Lovejoy. I would also strongly recommend picking up a copy of Good Minnesotan #4, which was one of the better anthologies of the last couple of years.

6. Secret Acres. (Table J11-J12) The Brooklyn-based publisher consisting of Leon Avelino and Barry Matthews (left to right above, with Gabby Schulz in the middle) have been showing at SPX for many years and have racked up a number of Igntatz awards, and for good reason. This year, they'll have Mike Dawson in contention for an Ignatz with his excellent Troop 142 and also have the debut of Theo Ellsworth's new hardcover, The Understanding Monster. Sean Ford will be at the show as well with his recent completed Only Skin. Eamon Espey will also be there, and I would urge you to check out some of his disturbing, intense minicomics that will soon be collected. This publisher has always combined a sterling design sense with cartoonists who have singular aesthetic senses.

7. Sparkplug Comic Books. (Table W59) Publisher Tom Neely (above) will be repping Sparkplug for SPX, the first after Dylan Williams' death last year. Katie Skelly will also be at their table with her recent complete Nurse Nurse, the first book Sparkplug has published since Dylan died. As always, Sparkplug always has a table full of marvelous minicomics discoveries thanks to their status as a major distributor of minis, and this year will be no exception. Be sure to check out Neely's own unique works, like The Blot, The Wolf, his anthology Bound & Gagged and his part in the amazing Henry and Glenn Forever. Tessa Brunton's Passage was nominated for an Ignatz, and she's also up for Promising New Talent.

8. Hidden Fortress Press. (Table C8) This is the name of Paul Lyons' (above, with Cheryl Kaminsky) publishing concern, and this former member of Fort Thunder will be debuting the new issue of Monster. This is one of the best of all alt-comics anthologies, pushing the line between fine arts and comics in a horror genre context. This will be one of the potential "book of the show" choices. Kaminsky, Roby Newton and possibly Brian Ralph will also be at this table.

The Art of Awkwardness: PS Comics

Rob reviews Minty Lewis' collection of stories, PS COMICS (Secret Acres).

Minty Lewis first came to my attention with a funny story in an SPX anthology (the travel-themed edition) about featuring anthropomorphic fruit as her characters. Her PS COMICS minis have alternated between the travails of various fruit-oriented characters and the lives of anthropomorphic terriers. The cuteness of her character design boldly contrasts with the bitter awkwardness of her slice-of-life stories. Lewis mines the humor of cruelty for her characters, especially the office-life set-up for the fruit character stories. It reminds me a bit of the UK version of The Office, in that there are a number of characters who are desperately lonely and unhappy but don't know how to reach out without inflicting pain on others. In Lewis' stories, it's the most pitiable characters who often wind up saying and doing the most awful things. The clarity of her line and the sharpness of her dialogue make this a compelling read. The juxtaposition of her cute drawings (which grab the reader's eye and are just funny drawings) and the nastiness of tone both more effective. A naturalistic style of art would have made these comics feel somewhat leaden, but the simplicity and flow of Lewis' pages help the reader fly across these pages, soaking up the dialogue.

There are a number of highlights here. "'Me' Time" features the simultaneously abrasive and lonely Apple rejecting his obnoxious workmates because he was inspired by a character from a TV show who did the same thing. In a creepy but hilarious sequence, Apple has a running commentary with this character (Lemon), pretending that she was actually with him as though she were her soul mate. When Apple stayed home the next day from work (at the "urging" of Lemon), he was stunned to see a TV interview where she described the character as a loser and used method acting to inhabit the role. Chastened, Apple sought out his coworkers for after-work recreation, even if he still hated them.

"Bitter Fruit" was a stunning account of workplace romances gone horribly wrong, as Pear is rather casually dumped by Banana in favor of Kumquat. Apple stepped in, rather clumsily, in an effort to offer comfort to the bitter Pear (who said things to Kumquat like "Check it out, Apple! The monkey learned to shave its face!"), first insulting her and then trying to advise Pear to start writing. Apple, who felt like someone somewhere on the Asperger's spectrum, tried to get Pear to come over to his place to hear him read his script. Faced with that and the possibility of having to hang out with Banana & Kumquat at an after-work get-together, she chose the latter. There were some hilarious images in this story, like the (literally) pear-shaped Pear being thrown out of her ex-boyfriend's apartment wearing sweat pants.

"Out of Season" featured Apple trying to hit on the new temp, Strawberry, only to discover the she was even more unbalanced than he was. She turned out to be the sort of borderline personality disorder person we've all met from time to time, rigidly defining everyone she came into contact with as either friends or enemies. Apple, with his rigid ideas on how to advise others, naturally managed to alienate her even as he was trying to hit on her. The highlight of the story came when the office went to see Pear at an open mic poetry night, which included lines like "And my vagina remembers/what you used to feel like/every morning...there is cereal/but every night...there's just slices". In each story, Apple makes a ridiculous protagonist, someone who is acutely aware that he's at the bottom of the social power structure and hates it, but will press any small advantage he can find. He wants to be "understood", but is such a narcissist that he can't understand other points of view and experiences. He wants to be considered compassionate and understanding, but is completely devoid of empathy. In short, everything he does makes everything worse, and provides a lot of bitter laughs.

I wasn't quite as drawn to Lewis' stories that star Yorkshire Terriers, with the exception of "Yorkie Matrimony". The humor in the other stories isn't quite as biting and the drawing felt a bit more stiff, especially with regard to character interaction. "Yorkie Matrimony" was so over the top yet true to life that it felt agonizingly real. The story involved a pair of female apartment mates, one of whom gets engaged. The other roommate feels betrayed and abandoned, worried that she won't be able to take care of herself. That started a series of passive-aggressive moves on both of their parts, culminating in a bridal shower game of Scrabble that featured insults to the groom.

Lewis has a knack for relating the power struggles at the heart of many relationships and how we choose to engage them. That sense of push-and-pull, where we need intimacy but also have the urge to dominate and control our partners and friends, powers the tension of her stories. The ways in which humans interact with each other, trading in self-deception, is absurd on its face, which makes Lewis' storytelling choices all the more resonant. Humans are ridiculous, so why not portray them as fruit or dogs or salt shakers? It's a way of softening the blow while playing up the humor inherent to the pain of human interaction. This collection, by playing up the connections between stories and characters in subtle ways, actually strengthened the original source material and gave it a surprising coherency for material collected from so many sources. Secret Acres once again provided a public service by getting stories that were once part of minis out to a wider audience.

Public Service Announcement: Monsters

Rob reviews the bracingly personal new comic from Ken Dahl, MONSTERS (Secret Acres).

Ken Dahl's MONSTERS created a sensation when its first few chapters were released as minicomics, winning an Ignatz award. In their original format, the minis were barely-disguised autobiographical comics about a particular relationship he had and how it came crashing down when both partners realized they had herpes--and that he probably gave it to her. The final version, published by outstanding small press concern Secret Acres, changed some of the details and appearances but left the emotional core of the book intact. Dahl, working very much in the tradition of underground comics, created a hilarious but bracing story about living with a disease that by its very nature creates a state of perpetual alienation. The craving for intimacy is permanently balanced by an intense feeling of guilt and self-loathing, a sense of not being worthy of intimacy because of the disease. That feeling is further multiplied by the understanding that while herpes is incurable, it's not especially harmful. There's always the temptation to simply withhold one's diagnosis from potential partners.

After all, as Dahl noted, something like 60% of all adult Americans has herpes in one form or other--but most people don't know it. For a conscientious person, the feeling is akin to shoplifting being the only method one can use to obtain a product. Shoplifting is clearly a crime and an ethical lapse, but the line between right and wrong becomes very thin at that point of desperation and little harm that can be caused.

MONSTERS turned from the dynamics of a particular relationship to the specifics of day-to-day living with what was once euphemistically called a "social disease". Dahl infused the book with a weird tension. It's part confessional, part educational comic, part gag book at his own expense. Living with constant pain in his mouth, and without proper insurance for medication that might help, led to a miserable day-to-day experience. At the same time, Dahl felt guilt for being that miserable, considering that nothing was really "wrong" with him. Of course, the worse part of the experience was the sense that it was not only not possible to experience intimate contact ever again, but that he didn't even deserve intimacy. What separated this book from simple melodrama was two things: Dahl's acidic sense of humor and his virtuostic linework.

Dahl used a clever trick in depicting life with the disease, creating an anthropomorphized version of herpes as a sort of constant companion. Dahl leaned heavily on the comically grotesque in the depiction of his "friend" as well as himself, going over the top on many pages for humorous effect. Crumb was an obvious influence on his line, but there's a bit of Peter Bagge in there too, especially in terms of character design. Any influence he took from others was mostly that of inspiration and boundaries of what was possible in comics--seeing what could subjects could be addressed. Dahl is very much an original, who manages to walk the line between intense rendering and clear page design. His figures went from simplistic to naturalistic to cartoony, sometimes all on the same page.

MONSTERS is a book that has a lot of narrative text, but it's just in support of the intensity of the images on every page. Dahl either employs a funny drawing or grotesque drawing in nearly every panel, powerfully underlining the central theme of unearned alienation. It's a tribute to his skill and sense of humor that this unrelenting intensity doesn't become overwhelming to the reader. It does help that Dahl employed several series of silent pages, including detailed renderings of actual herpes sores, the morning routine of assorted pills and powders and a hilarious sequence where the herpes-ridden finger of god squashes his head.

The central plot arc of this story is a simple one. Dahl goes from oblivious, to denial, to shirking of responsibility and knowledge of herpes, to overobsessing about the details of the disease. The quotidian details of the various "homeopathic" remedies he tried to relieve his oral discomfort dovetailed neatly with several hilarious sequences depicting his job making food at a Whole Foods-style, vegan grocery store. Dahl excels at depicting screaming, pompous & deluded lunatics from all walks of life, but he saved a special sort of venom for the health food fanatics he used to serve. That sequence pointed out that stress tended to trigger his pain, but it also pointed out how much he was beginning to hate a group of people that he theoretically thought of as like-minded folk. Overcoming his fear of humiliating rejection and self-loathing, the feeling that he deserved to be alone, became his biggest task, one that he finally achieved when he acknowledged his need for intimacy with a particular person while being honest with her. When she told him it wasn't really a big deal, Dahl depicted himself as having layers of slime and goo falling away from his skin, revealing just another person. He even had sympathy for the anthropomorphized disease, acknowledging that it was just another form of life trying to get by.

That climax is followed by a twist-ending epilogue that comically took the rug out from under Dahl, rendering five years of his life a "corny sex-ed PSA". It's an ending so unlikely that it has to be true, but it didn't nullify the emotional truth of what he was trying to accomplish with this comic. There are a number of pages of fairly didactic material, but Dahl's skill as an artist (and some truly gross drawings) made these fascinating to read. Slightly less interesting was the time spent on the laundry list of foods he was trying to avoid, and how that clashed with his attempt at the time to be a vegan. The book was at its best when Dahl simply went about his day and tried to figure out how to relate to others.

At its heart, this is a book about ethics in its truest sense: what do we do about others? How do we relate to them, and why do we want to? Do we treat them as objects at hand or as ends unto themselves? Dahl was confronted by a scenario that forced himself to ask these questions every time he wanted to kiss someone, have sex with someone one or initiate any kind of intimate contact. It underlined not only the ways that we take such things for granted, it illuminated the entire issue of how our material needs intersect with our conception of self and other. It also highlighted the ways in which society's taboos on openly discussing sex and sexuality lead to situations where disease is spread. MONSTERS is both a funny confessional story highlighting the mistakes of its protagonist and an attempt to open a dialogue, and it's a rousing success on both counts.

The Density of Dreams: Sleeper Car and 1-800-MICE

Rob reviews SLEEPER CAR, the new comic by Theo Ellsworth (Secret Acres) and 1-800-MICE #1-3, by Matthew Thurber (PictureBox).

Theo Ellsworth's CAPACITY was one of my favorite books of 2008, one that provided a road map of sorts for his fevered imagination. Many artists have felt the sensation of not really coming up with ideas, but rather acting as a conduit of sorts for ideas that are simply floating out there in the ether. CAPACITY was a series of stories, a description of method, and a warm, personal invitation to share in these ideas. Ellsworth crams an enormous amount of frenetic detail into each panel and page, leaving very little negative space to breathe. He counters what could be an incredibly off-putting reading experience with narrators who talk to and guide the reader, making sense of the page. He's literally laying the composition of each page out for the reader, gently introducing them to his world and visual language. Within a few pages, one is immersed in the style and the nearly vibratory quality of his line and crammed-in details feel normal--all part of the scenery.

With SLEEPER CAR, Ellsworth offers a much shorter comic--almost a palate cleanser for both artist and reader after the exhausting (if exhilarating) trek of CAPACITY. Included are a number of unconnected (other than by general theme) stories about a bet made by robots, an unusual journey by train, the adventures of a dream recorder, how to make a pajama tent and the many faces of the author waiting for a bus. "Sleep Study" is a recapitulation of his work, as an adventurer literally walks through the dreams of a creature and records all of the strange and wonderful things that he sees. That's Ellsworth to a T, simply relating all of the odd things he sees in his mental wanderings that compel him to draw. Ellsworth is very much an artist who writes, with the images driving the story instead of the other way around.

The opening image of two robots having tea in a forest sets "Norman Eight's Left Arm" into motion, a story about a bet about the existence of gnomes between the two automatons. There's nothing Ellsworth enjoys portraying more than journeys--the more convoluted, the better. Here, there's a journey of one robot in his quest to find gnomes and an internal journey from the other robot to keep himself entertained in the meantime. The woods he draws feel like places that are being inhabited, an indication of how real the author clearly feels these places are in his imagination. The story ends with a sight gag after cycling through a number of jokes--yet another palate cleanser of sorts for the reader. "Travel Report" takes a somewhat dimmer view of taking a journey, given its dreadful description of a train ride, yet the protagonist notes that he wanted to travel shortly after he got home. There's a pleasant restlessness to Ellsworth's comics as one senses that he can only hope to transcribe a tiny portion of what he sees in his mind, but that the comics he draws are better than nothing.

I knew little of Matthew Thurber's work (except by reputation) before I read the first three issues of 1-800-MICE, and I was prepared for a stream-of-consciousness narrative with primitivist art (the mark of many PictureBox releases). While the first couple of pages were difficult to parse at first, it quickly became evident that this was a stunning, multilayered story with a deep wellspring of themes and a dizzying array of memorable characters. It's not dream logic like Ellsworth's comics, but what it does instead is present a series of absurd premises and build an iron-clad narrative stemming from them. While there's a primitivist veneer to Thurber's art, his page composition is not only spotless in how easy it is to process, but it also rewards multiple readings as one tries to connect the various unfolding plot threads.


The story revolves around a huge cast of characters in and around Volcano Park, a city built on an active volcano controlled by sentient trees. The main tension of the story revolves around events that are about to happen: a meteor crashing into the city, a banjo contest with sinister consequences, and (most of all) the potential eruption of the volcano. Fatalism and eschatology are two running themes in the comic, as a constant state of dread stalks the characters even as they whir and buzz around their lives. Exploitation, reconciliation and conspiracy are also ideas in play, with the forces of the corrupt and immortal "Banjo Shogunate" conspiring to work against a potential rapproachment between humans and tree-creatures. Even the three members of that cabal work at cross-purposes: one as a gang lord in Los Angeles, one the personification of crazy evil coming down in the meteor, and a third as a sort of omnipresent entity that passes herself off as a force for benevolence.


There's not much point in discussing the plot any further, given that Thurber obviously still has much to reveal and that it's so tightly wound that unraveling it would take the fun out of reading it. Suffice it to say that Thurber is interested in societal roles and how they change (especially in the person of a police officer), the concept of institutions & people being poisoned, the ways in which communication is always a form of intervention no matter how far removed we wish to be (personified in a company that sends mice to deliver messages but not otherwise intervene), and the ways in which we interact with our ecosystems. Thurber isn't afraid to throw in absurd commentary on activism, either--his "Peace Punk" character is a walking pile of scattered activist thoughts and identities. He winds up at a year-long alt-music festival held in a city's sewers and has to dodge a trio of sushi-chef assassins who hilariously have to get minimum wage jobs and listen to a prescribed course of music before they were allowed passage.

While Thurber occasionally dazzles the reader with a densely packed splash page (like the one introducing the reader to the bustle of Volcano Park), he concentrates most of his effort into character design. He favors the slightly grotesque (like the wildly gesticulating Officer Nabb, with a beaklike nose, bulbous pate and pointy ears), the anthropomorphic (like the various mice) or the ridiculous (like his badass sushi chef assassins). In terms of composition, he's all over the place, rarely repeating a panel set-up twice from page to page. He goes from splash pages to 12-panel grids to a page with 4 triangular panels meeting each other, where one has to turn the page around. None of this feels gratuitous; indeed, Thurber has an uncanny sense of meeting the story's needs with the construction of the page. He meets claustrophobic scenes with small panels, disorienting sequences with skewed panels, and grander scenes with much more white space. Some panels are crammed with background details, while intense scenes between characters have a white backdrop. It's Thurber's composition in this regard that makes this such a compelling read. He may want to slowly unveil information in the style of a mystery, but he doesn't want to deliberately confuse the reader. There's always enough information to know what's going on, though I would recommend reading all three issues to date one after the other.

The biggest reason why the comic is successful is that Thurber softens his thematic points with laugh-out-loud gags and absurdism. It's as though Thurber took a few Michael Kupperman-style concepts and spun a deliberate narrative from them. The events may well be grave, but the characters themselves are ridiculous. Despite the crazy conceptual nature of his cast, Thurber has fully-fleshed out backstories for each of them, pulling tighter the threads of the story in unexpected and delightful ways. It seems a bit odd to describe a story this crazed and complex as a page turner, but there's really no other way to say it. When it's over and collected, it will create a huge sensation in the alt-comics world. For now, it's a delightful treasure for fans of comics periodicals.

The Nesting Egg: Capacity

Rob reviews the new book from Theo Ellsworth, CAPACITY (Secret Acres).


Theo Ellsworth's book CAPACITY defies easy description. I admire Secret Acres' publishers, Leon Avellino and Barry Matthews, for taking on yet another highly unusual project of an artist whose work up to that point had only been in mini-comics form. Like with Sam Gaskin's FATAL FAUX-PAS and Eamon Espey's WORMDYE, CAPACITY isn't simply a collection of minicomics, but a fully cohesive work with all sorts of unusual thematic connections. It's part autobiography,
part transcription of a series of waking dreams, part epic and part art exercise. It is, in a sense, a senior thesis for Ellsworth's own personal art school. It's filled with false starts, left turns, haunting images, abandoned ideas and a conclusion that stitches them all together. It is the artist's way of tricking himself into getting at other stories. It is a form of ritual and sacrifice that is only concluded upon having been read. It is a nesting series of eggs that give birth to each other.

Ellworth's main dilemma, as outlined in the beginning of the book, is that he is constantly beset by the stories and ideas of countless characters in his head. He can't seem to make them sit still long enough to actually draw a story that makes any sense. He literally rearranges his life in such a way to make it easier for him to do so, without distraction. Ellsworth lives an itinarant lifestyle, one where he relishes the freedom of living out of his car and hanging out on the beach, but it's mostly done in the service of trying to find a way to get his stories to make sense. When he isolates himself in a house, he's able to begin to record a story that ends abruptly. That starts him on the path to making a minicomics series called CAPACITY, determined not only to make it but to make sure that others see it, no matter the reaction of the audience and critics. A story has to be told to activate it, and it was clear that in order to complete that part of the story's ritual, he would have to be able to face public reaction.

Ellsworth is clearly in the category of "artist who writes", meaning that he's more comfortable drawing than writing a story, and in fact the latter is clearly a struggle for him. At the same time, even when he gave up trying to write and just drew, story ideas came to him. CAPACITY, to some degree, is the story of how he tried to overcome this problem. I can't help but think of Lynda Barry once again and her solutions to the problem of writing. One can't sit down and simply write an epic (as Ellsworth longs to do); instead, a writer has to focus on a single character and/or situation and keep going until inspiration strikes and the words simply start to pour out. It's almost a sort of self-misdirection for one's right brain, a ritual giving one access to one's creativity. For Ellsworth, he reified this notion of gaining access to his subconscious as finding a way to create a mechanical egg so as to offer it to the guardian of his subconscious.

The seven issues he wrote and drew of CAPACITY were part of the process of creating this egg, even if he didn't quite understand it at the time. CAPACITY was Ellsworth's attempt at getting at the characters in his head, watching them in "skits" and recording that story. Ellsworth is constantly drawn to stories with a recursive quality, like "You Must Really See My Hat", about a guy who demands that people look at the image on his hat, which has an image of something else inside of something else, ad infinitum. "The Flash In The Woods" zeroes in on time, another of his primary interests, as the image of a fairy drew him to write a story about a man who disappears for what appears to be just a second but in fact he frolicked with a fairy for seven years. Ellsworth turns the reader around when he introduces himself as the narrator halfway through as a sort of magical creature in fairyland. Back in the "real world", Ellsworth is excited to share his secret with that character.

Ellsworth is constantly inserting himself or aspects of himself into his stories. He seems to have a fundamental need in this book to explain himself. One gets the sense, however, that he's trying to explain himself to himself rather than the audience. It's interesting to compare this book to Espey's WORMDYE, a book filled with mysterious images and enigmatic stories that still have the same kind of thematic similarities that can be found in Ellsworth's book. The difference is that Espey has no interest whatsoever in explaining anything to the audience, whereas for Ellsworth the entire book is one long explanation. Both artists' work is incredibly dense; one can sense the images pouring off the page for both of them.

Ellsworth's work is a bit more delicate and ornate than Espey's, with an underlying warmth that is evocative almost of children's illustration. That's mixed with a loopy, psychedelic design sense that makes looking at each page a sheer delight. The sense of enthusiasm and naivete one gets from Ellsworth's persona is almost palpable and is quite endearing. As one gets the sense that the epic quest that he's always wanted to write about turns out to be an epic quest about telling that epic quest, one can't help but root for him at the end. The underlying structure is almost more interesting than the actual stories he tells, as a surrogate for the reader becomes an integral part of the book and encounters all sorts of odd characters. Some of them are directly
named as aspects of Ellsworth's personality, while others are the creatures he is drawn to think about, write about and draw.

The lingering question is where Ellsworth goes from here. This sort of self-referential art-as-ritual is the kind of thing you can only get away with once. At the end of CAPACITY, we get the sense that the process of creating it has solved some of his organizational problems and that he's ready to tackle his great unfinished story. I will be intensely interested to see what his next project looks like. Ellsworth's vocabulary really is the image, and he shouldn't feel compelled to become more of a "writer". Indeed, the clunkiest strips in CAPACITY were those where he forced poetry on his images. His war comic/poem stood out as something that did not work at all; the forced and banal nature of his rhymes distracted from images that were otherwise beautiful. Ellsworth has drawn a lot of attention because what he's done is so unconventional, so one can only hope that he plays to his strengths rather than try to force himself into a creative box into which he does not fit. I hope to see a future Ellworth epic that maintains the quirkiness, eccentricity and sheer joy of this book. Such a story can only come about organically, and it will be very clear to see what is forced and what comes naturally. As Ellsworth notes toward the end, "Every thought I've ever had is all part of this big invisible project that I'll keep working on until I die". As long as each subsequent project is part of that continuum, each new Ellsworth book will carve out its own space in the world of comics.