Anthology Round-Up

(This article was originally published in Savant back in late 2002.)


The anthology comic has a long and storied tradition in alt/underground comics. From the early days of the Zap Comix collective (Crumb, Spain, Rob't Williams, et al) in the late 60's and early 70's to the recent outstanding Drawn & Quarterlies, a number of the most important comics of the last 30 years first saw light in an anthology. Art Spiegelman's MAUS ran in RAW, the seminal 80's anthology that he co-edited with Francoise Mouly, along with many other cutting-edge comics. Contrasting its formalistic precision was Robert Crumb's WEIRDO, a grab-bag of expressionistic outbursts of id that Peter Bagge later edited. Kim Thompson of Fantagraphics took up the banner in the 90's with ZERO ZERO, an extremely eclectic book that featured long serials by Kim Deitch and some outstanding short pieces by Joe Sacco, among others. The aforementioned DRAWN & QUARTERLY is no longer quarterly, but its beauty as an art object combined with its exposure of European artists recalls RAW. The hippest and most beautiful might be Jordan Crane's NON. Finally, one can't forget groundbreaking all-women's anthologies like WIMMEN'S COMICS.

The anthology series is an extremely difficult sell these days, so most anthologies that are published tend to be yearly affairs or self-published labors of love. In the last six months, there have been an astonishing number of interesting collections released. They range from polished, bookstore-ready collections of well-known talent to self-published, hand-crafted creations consisting of up-and-coming artists. The fact that most stories in anthologies tend to be short and self-contained is both a strength and a weakness. If you don't like a story, just wait a few pages and you get another one. But sometimes one can feel cheated by just getting a few pages of an appealing artist. There are ways around this, however. For example, some anthologies feature extended stories by some artists (like the "Monsieur Jean" stories in D&Q) with shorter features by others. Another way is giving anthologies a theme. Much like a rock 'n roller having to find an interesting way to use three chords, limiting an artist's subject palette can lead to interesting results if you pick the right theme. The editor becomes crucial here, since they not only have to pick the right combination of artists, they must arrange the stories in an order that makes sense. In looking at the following works, how well the anthologies hang together as a whole will be considered, as well as a few standout stories (good and bad).


Beginning at the handmade, art object end of the spectrum, we have issue #5 of TYPEWRITER. The comic itself is 4x4, with a cardboard cover that is hand-fastened with clips. When you pull out a tab, the thing opens up to reveal a series of sections, each one folding up like a map. You pull out a section to read a complete comic, and then flip it over to read the next section. The content varies wildly, though in general most of the stories are dominated by images rather than strict narrative. The art tends towards the primitive, spearheaded by "cute-brut" enthusiast Ron Rege', Jr. A wildly imaginative designer, his style can be an acquired taste. At the other end of the spectrum is the Carrie Golus-Patrick Welch team. They did a straightforward history of an old theatre's history, with each image depicting a different year and state of either glory or decay. Golus' eye for describing detail always is good for a fascinating read. There's also a bit of slice-of-life, Jessica Abel-style, with Johnathan Russell's "Abercrombie Type". The centerpiece is David Youngblood's "Baby Grumpus" strip, a wacky retelling (of sorts) of the Moses myth of a baby being sent down the river that gets merged with bizarre creatures, tribal masks out of Picasso and other assorted weirdness. A lot of the stories seemed to lack much substance, just being quick one-offs; the page from the Shiver Bones Group is an example. Everything in here is at least worth looking if not exactly compelling, but the disparate nature of the stories and lack of stylistic cohesion make this kind of a jarring read. Interesting, but not essential reading.


An anthology with a similar feel but a radically different look is STUDYGROUP 12 #2. The cover is a beautiful silkscreened design from Zack Soto with jagged edges. The contributors are a grab-bag of artists from Highwater, Hi-Horse, Kramer's Ergot and other minicomics circles. There are a lot of things in here that aren't even really comics per se, such as Souther Salazars primitivist collage/poetry pieces, or sketchbook drawings from David Lasky & Marc Bell. Soto did a nice job arranging the stories in the book, alternating longer narratives with bizarre interstitial pieces by Salazar. The narratives all have a taste of the absurd mixed with a certain creepiness. Mat Tait contributes a tale of a teen trying to retrieve a certain object from an apparently dangerous blind woman--and what he has to do in order to get it. The story is very understated yet horrific, with an unspoken sense of menace surrounding it. The most clever story is "Wakaru", where artist Peter Conrad provides a meditation on language and its meanings. A man gets into a car with a man speaking French; the translations into English are then seen on things like t-shirts, road signs and cigarette packs. The most absurd piece is from Andrice Arp, a tale of a giant cat that has the moon clinging to its head. Wordless pieces from Sammy Harkham and Soto are the other main highlights. As a whole, it's more coherent than TYPEWRITER, but the sketchbook material and some of the cruder works detract from the more interesting long narratives. One gets the sense that it might have been a stronger work if it was 10-15 pages shorter than its 80.



HI-HORSE is perhaps the quirkiest selection in this group. Unlike everything else I'm reviewing, it's a standard-sized pamphlet, published roughly twice a year. The contributors have been pretty much the same from issue to issue--it's really more of a collective than a standard anthology. The four artists who usually contribute include Andrice Arp, Howard Arey, Joan Reilly and Bishakh Som, though #4 also has a story by Olivia Kate Schanzer. What I like most about this series is that while the styles of each artist contrast sharply, each artist shares a common sensibility. The stories all have a smart, ironic and often absurdist slant. The standout of the group is Arp, the best draftsman of the group. Her "Turnip's Progress" serial is a bizarre parody (of sorts) of Pilgrim's Progress, complete with Old English font and a 19th century-style illustrative style. My favorite writer of the group is Reilly, whose "Catharta" uses super-hero tropes to tell of a young woman who has the power to hear and solve other people's emotional problems in her role as a bartender. Som contributes a moody coming-of-age story with a sci-fi backdrop, while Schanzer tosses in a hilarious account of grade schoolers being taught by a Black Panther who encourages them to commit "insurrectionary acts." This book is a pleasure to look at and read and is created by skilled hands.



MEATHAUS #6 is another example of an anthology with many different styles but a common sensibility. Begun as a way for students at New York's School of Visual Arts to stay in touch after graduation, it's blossomed into one of the most graphically interesting collections around. Many of the contributors who started the anthology actually did not have an extensive comics background, instead having studied animation or illustration. It showed in the early issues, because there simply wasn't much narrative hung around the pretty pictures. The original members have gotten much more adept at making interesting stories and have recruited a number of new members. There's no surprise that Tomer Hanuka and Dash Shaw both have strong entries here. Shaw has a series of interstitial parodies of Bazooka Joe comics that are hilarious. Hanuka tells a charming little tale of a circus freak with a loving family and stable home life. There are a lot of surprises here, like a virtuostic piece from Tom Herpich, weaving in a brutal fairy tale about captured sprites and jackass-headed men with the pathetic mother imagining it. His sparse pencilling style captures the fear and lust in every panel and makes them palpable. Becky Cloonan contributes a nice-looking piece about being away from loved ones that is interesting for the way she uses shadow and contrast. Mu Dufaka turns in several hilarious stories done in a scratchy & scribbly style that reflects the mad energy and ideas therein. There are few clunkers in this volume and it reflects a group of artists who are serious about their work. It's also nice to see an almost completely fresh set of names in this book; in the alt-comics world, there tend to be a lot of the same people in anthologies. Editors Chris McDonnell and Stephen Q Stardog really have taken this book to another level.



Turning to a somewhat more lighthearted approach is BOGUS DEAD, a themed anthology with an impressive list of contributors culled from minicomics, Highwater and the usscatastrophe.com crowd. The theme is simple: zombies are roaming the earth and mankind is doomed. Draw the human reaction to this. Based loosely around George Romero's DEAD series of films (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD being the first), the results range from silly to ponderous. Standouts include Graham Annable's tale of a murdered zombie rising up, buying an airplane ticket, flying to a remote location, finding his killer and killing him with the same weapon, flying back, and crawling back into his grave. All very matter-of-fact and deadpan. Gabrielle Bell has a hilarious account of zombies in a hip San Francisco bar and beating them off with art installation objects and a copy of McSweeney's. K Thor Jensen has an amusing tale of a grad student turned zombie who finds himself alone and realizes that he can bring about peace in our time between humans and zombies--if he gets the chance. Megan Kelso continues her hot streak with a quickie about Alexander Hamilton rising from the grave and eating a Wall Street fat cat. Three of the creepier pieces are from Robyn Chapman, Kevin Huizenga & Ted May and Jenny Zervakis. Chapman tells a story of a woman whose sister-in-law rises from the grave--with her brother wanting to know why his wife killed herself and their baby. Huizenga & May retell the story of Red Riding Hood, this time with zombies. Zervakis stays close to the spirit of the film in a story where she winds up in a survivalist bunker and gets bitten--but this winds up saving her from an attempted rape. There's a lot of forgettable material in this anthology, but the theme prevents contributors from taking things too seriously or too lightly. The craftsmanship is very strong here and the common theme allows the different styles to mesh well. Perhaps not for all tastes, but it's interesting to see genre fodder mutated into something very unusual.


The most lighthearted of all these anthologies is GARLIC, whose content is so frothy at times that it threatens to float away. Fortunately, the list of contributors is the cream of the minicomics scene, dominated by the usscatastrophe.com gang. Despite the fact that most of the stories were one-offs and played for laughs, I couldn't help liking it. The theme had something to do with it: it's a comic entirely about garlic. Each story had to involve garlic, one way or another; the issue is the first in a series of anthologies about food. Beyond the inspired silliness of things like Dave Kiersh's "Vampire Silliness" and Souther Salazar's out-there song-comic "Radical Garlic", there were a number of quieter pieces. John Porcellino proves once again that he's the king of reflective, emotionally powerful stories that somehow aren't overly sentimental. Jenny Zervakis plays it completely straight, simply describing how much garlic means to her Greek relatives and even offers a recipe. The weirdest piece is John Hankiewicz's "Garlic Soup", a story about a man's personal odyssey after eating a bowl of especially powerful soup, where the images and text often seem unrelated. While most of the contributors are quite talented,most of the pieces here aren't necessarily the best example of their work, and some look practically ripped out of a sketchbook.



If GARLIC suffered from a certain sloppiness and silliness (even if that was part of its appeal) while sporting a stellar lineup, ORCHID doesn't make any of these mistakes. There are seven stories here, adapted from Victorian short stories or poems. The subject is horror, and the artists create a frightening atmosphere throughout. ORCHID opens with a bang with "The Story of the Demonaic Pacheco", adapted by Lark Pien and Jesse Reklaw. The story concerns a man who awakens under a gibbet and who hears a tale of terror from a man who is damned by sleeping with his stepmother and daughter, and is told with a wild, expressionistic flourish that matches the melodramatic tone of the tale. Gabrielle Bell, whose line has a Jason Lutes-like clarity to it, adapts a story called "Tobermory", about a cat who learns how to talk. He talks a bit too much, exposing the foibles of a Victorian household. Ben Catmull turns in a brief, spooky tale abouta haunting.

The book's real tour-de-force is Kevin Huizenga's "Green Tea", a nightmarish and sweat-inducing tale of his alter ego, Glenn Ganges. Ganges recounts a time in college when he was working feverishly and drinking green tea, when he suddenly started seeing hallucinations of a dog that he knew was going to harm him. He then comes across an account of a reverend who had a similar experience, with a demonic monkey that followed him around and eventually started speaking to him. Huizenga's deceptively simple style is at its peak here, playing with light and narrative in a masterful fashion. There's not a better story in this bunch.

The rest of the book does not impress as much as the earlier stories, but there's still a lot to look at. T. Edward Bak contributes a beautifully-drawn adaptation of a rather hackneyed vampire tale. David Lasky's adaptation of Poe's "The Raven" is Lasky at his most conceptual--there are panels with narration--but no actual drawings in the panels! The aggressive formalist later gives us an image of a raven cut across panel to panel. This is a unique approach to such a familiar work of literature. The book winds up with Dylan Williams doing a story about a doomed marriage called "The Man With The Nose." While he's a good storyteller (as anyone who reads his REPORTER series knows), his slightly ragged line felt out of place here. Overall, ORCHID is a superb example of artists both appreciating and transcending genre. Williams and Catmull both clearly have a firm hand as editors, with the book's feel being consistent even as the style and tone changing from story to story. The order of the stories was absolutely perfect, and everything is worth reading.



Mainstream publisher Dark Horse has been putting out single-issue anthologies under their creator-owned Maverick line, and they went for a real full-sized anthology this time around. HAPPY ENDINGS is a themed anthology revolving around that very idea. There will be a few names familiar to mainstream readers here, like Sam Kieth, Brian Bendis & Mike Oeming and Mike Mignola. Kieth and Mignola contributed some pleasant fluff, while Bendis shows that his intentionally funny comics are much better than his crime or superhero comics. MEATHAUS contributor Farel Dalrymple contributes a beautiful-looking, whimsical story about a boy and a blimp, while Craig Thompson's intense story will surprise those only familiar with his GOODBYE, CHUNKY RICE. The highlights are two pages of grimness from Harvey Pekar & Joe Sacco and the best work I've seen from Frank Miller in a long time. Miller does panel after panel of endings, most of them not exactly happy. His piece is playful but also raw with anger, creating some amusing and disturbing images. Overall, this is a worthy anthology though a bit like drinking lite beer--frothy, but not substantial.



Fantagraphics has returned to doing an anthology comic, sort of, with their first two SPECIAL EDITIONS of THE COMICS JOURNAL. The line-up is mind-boggling, with virtually every artist on their roster contributing something in one or both of the volumes published so far. The comics are just part of the issue, with the rest of it containing the usual sorts of interviews and features that TCJ normally runs. The bonus is that the comics are mostly in color, which is quite a treat in some cases. The problem here, as it is in many of the bigger anthologies, is that even though you might have big names contributing to your anthology, it doesn't mean that they're going to do their best work. Some artists simply aren't very good at providing interesting 1-3 pages stories. This volume's theme was "Cartoonists On Music" and it did produce a more interesting response than volume I, which was the very meta "Cartoonists On Cartooning". Many of the artists either weren't interested in grappling with the issue, spent the space whining about the comics industry, or babbled on about aesthetics in ways that weren't very interesting (Linda Medley's strip still gives me nightmares).

Writing about music gave the artists a chance to express themselves a bit differently. The book reads better if you're familiar with each cartoonist and what they normally do, because otherwise the strip to strip variation can be a bit jarring. (Of course, any transition to or from a scatological Johnny Ryan or Rick Altergott strip is automatically jarring.) There were a few biographical pieces, most of which were quite well done. Chris Ware contributed a beautiful, sad piece about an African-American singer named George Johnson who earned money singing an offensive "race record", and who fell on hard times when new recording techniques made him superfluous. Ware's design and the way he carefully couched the narration in dialogue, leading up to the strip's ultimate point was effective and heartbreaking. Ivan Brunetti used his more stripped-down style to relate the sad tale of chanteuse Francoise Hardy, while Craig Russell pulled out all the stops and pyrotechnics in discussing composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Both were quite effective in their own way.

Some played it for laughs, like Roger Langridge's clever punchline to a frustrated artist gaining inspiration through music or John Kerschbaum's demented rhyme about a man who can't get an annoying tune out of his head. Sam Henderson found a way to bring it all back to comics in his strip where music enjoyed the status in American culture that comics do today. Arnold Roth contributed a couple of pages of music-related gags and Peter Blegvad's ingenious "Anatomy Of A Hit" drawing uses multiple layers of meaning for an array of puns and visual gags. Others talked about music inspiring them, like Mary Fleener's encounter with Joey Ramone; or Carol Lay nearly getting into a fight with Slash. The best stories used music as both backdrop and focus for deeper feelings. That includes Phoebe Gloeckner's exquisite tribute to Janis Joplin with her own character, Minnie; and Megan Kelso's eloquent and understated ode to the waltz.
A lot of the pieces simply didn't resonate with me, even by artists whose work I normally admire. The pieces turned in by the Hernandez Bros. Seemed slight and rather rushed, while Michael Kupperman's strip was only mildly amusing. Robert Crumb turned in a nice-looking but silly strip about a dirty song his daughter once taught him. A lot of the artists here frankly didn't have much to say about the subject, which is a problem with all-star anthologies: the stars are more important than the work provided. That was the case here to some extent, and I think trimming a lot of the published strips would have created a stronger work overall.



SPX 2002 practically deserves a column all its own due to its size and scope. This is the first time that the anthology created to support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund as part of the Small Press Expo has been restricted to a theme. In this case, the theme is biography. Editor Tom Devlin did a superb job of mixing wildly different styles about a truly odd group of subjects. Generally, the stories about lesser-known figures turned out to be the most interesting. Some of the stories had an unfortunate tendency to lapse into "high school book report mode", making the book somewhat text-heavy. If you're looking for a flashy, innovative design, this isn't really the place to get it. On the other hand, SPX 2002 has an impressive array of familiar artists as well as a host of lesser-knowns and newcomers, with very few true clunkers in the bunch.

Josh Simmons contributed a text-heavy but fascinating piece about Ernest Bellocq, the photographer who created some famous shots of prostitutes in the Storyville section of New Orleans. Simmons cut through a lot of legends but even he didn't have all of the information about his subject. This led to an interesting discussion of what pornography is and how the way the subject is presented changes the context of the photo. His illustrations range from realistic to cartoony, with an excellent eye for design. Another fine piece was turned in by the team of Jim Ottaviani and Rachel Hartman. The tale of the mathematician Bourbaki, who influenced cryptography, was told in the usual chummy Ottaviani style, using a clever framing device and coming up with a great ending. Hartman's whimsical art is perfect for the piece. The great R.Sikoryak told three tales of Rasputin in the style of early 20th century newspaper strips; these pages were just jaw-dropping in their level of detail.

Other standouts include Paul Hornschmeier's time-fractured take on St Francis of Assisi as suffering from dementia; Martin Cendreda's minimalist take on turntable artists Invisible Scratch Piklz; Laurenn McCubbin's tale of an escort named "Jane"; Jamie Tanner's superb rendering of vignettes from artist Egon Schiele's life; Rob Ullman's visceral account of unstable hockey goalie Terry Sawchuk; Jon Bennett's clever rendering of Don Leslie, inventor of the Leslie Speaker; and Alison Taylor's evocative story about "Carolyn Keene", who wrote the Nancy Drew Mystery series.

The theme of the anthology turned off a lot of creators and some readers, though the sheer variety of subjects should prevent boredom. Interesting choices of mediums, like Chris Pitzer using cut-and-paste clip art to discuss a designer and Tod Parkhill using Space Invaders-type graphics to tell the story of an Atari programmer keep the book from falling into a rut. The stories may not be the best example of the works of the artists featured, but I was fascinated at the ways they approached the theme and had to find ways to solve the problems that it raised.



The last book in this survey is ROSETTA, which in many ways is by far the most ambitious anthology on this list. Comics Journal critic Ng Suat Tong put together an impressive lineup of both new material and reprints. The result is something is a cross between Jordan Crane's anthology NON and DRAWN & QUARTERLY. In particular, there are a number of European artists featured here, and not just from France, either. The quality of the contributors is unquestionable (with the exception of perhaps one or two artists), but the fact that the anthology is unthemed and has so many excerpts from larger works makes it a somewhat jarring read. It also doesn't help that two of the longer pieces had been printed before elsewhere. I also wasn't particular thrilled by smaller details like the intrusive interstitial introductions and the lack of page numbers. I'm harping on the details a bit simply because ROSETTA has a chance to be one of the best anthologies ever--the overall level of talent is that impressive.

Miriam Katin's piece about her memories of drinking condensed milk and facing anti-semitism ring with a sweetness and sincerity lacking in many such memoirs. Nick Bertozzi's own take on the many views of Mt Fuji, incorporated into a city story about a missing child was a showcase for his formal cleverness. Michael Kupperman's two strips were both absolutely hilarious, a perfect tonic to some of the more serious strips in the book. Renee French had an ingenious strip displaying different body parts, types of food eaten and mail received and other clues that let us identify a particular sort of stranger. The big discovery for me was Malaysian artist Lat, whose autobiographical account of his school days absolutely sucked me in and left me wanting much more. This was both a strength and weakness of the book: there were simply too few complete stories in here. Some of the excerpts did little more than tantalize me. If these were serials, that would be one thing, but it bugged me that I was only getting a taste of some of these artists.
Some of the better reprints here included a Megan Kelso story that first appeared as minicomic Artichoke Tales #2, a Dave Choe story about Palestine that was first published in his own Bruised Fruit, and a very clever Matt Madden strip called "Tinubu Square" that plays with narrative in an amusing fashion. Really, the only absolute clunker in the book was Swiss artist MS Bastian's strip "Bazooka Joe", a nightmarish, headache-inducing comic that was virtually impossible to follow.

ROSETTA was not the most satisfying read, even if it did have some of the best material. Hopefully the next volume will need to rely a little less on reprints. Despite my reservations, this book is a must if you want to become acquainted with talent outside of the United States, or if you're not very familiar with alt-comics at all. In fact, it's almost an alt-comics primer of sorts, with the visual inventivenesss of David Lasky providing an impressive show of formal techniques. Unlike the TCJ SPECIAL, ROSETTA is a good indicator of what kind of material these artists create, and for that reason I would recommend it above all of the others on this list for novice fans. In that sense, the anthology truly lives up to its name, providing a key to a segment of comics that many aren't even aware of.

A last note: there are many other anthologies that have come out within the last year that I didn't get to touch on. Kurt Wolfgang's LOW-JINX anthology deserves a column of its own, especially with its fourth issue out (featuring the work of alt-comics artists from when they were children). The Monkeysuit gang produces an engaging and accessible book about once a year. KRAMER'S ERGOT is an anthology along the lines of STUDYGROUP 12. If you're interested in learning more about alt-comics, anthologies are an excellent place to begin.

How To Find These Comics:

TYPEWRITER #5 is $5, available from Popzero Productions. Email editor David Youngblood at popzero@hotmail.com.

STUDYGROUP 12 #2 is available from editor Zack Soto while supplies last. Email him at zack@studygroup12.com .

HI-HORSE #4 is $3. Check out their website at www.hi-horse.com, which will give you further instructions, or send them mail at comics@hi-horse.com.

MEATHAUS #6 is $7 and available from Meat Haus Press. You can buy it straight from their website, www.meathaus.com, or send money to 184 Kent Ave Apt 322 Brooklyn, NY 11211. Contact them at meathauspress@hotmail.com.

BOGUS DEAD is the brainchild of Jerome Gaynor and is currently being distributed by Alternative Comics. Go to www.jeromanempire.com for the skinny; the book is 10 bucks and its ISBN is 1-891867-19-9.

GARLIC can be had from editor Sean Duncan if you email him at foodcomic@yahoo.com. Check out wiseanduncanny.com/food to get a good look at some of the stories in the anthology.

ORCHID is a bargain at twice the price for just 8 bucks. Happily, it is being distributed by Diamond. Go to www.sparkplugcomicbooks.com to learn more, including previews of every story. Contact publisher/co-editor Dylan Williams at dylan@sparkplugcomicbooks.com or write to him at PO Box 10952 Portland, OR 97296-0952.

HAPPY ENDINGS is published by Dark Horse Comics (part of their Maverick division) and thus should be available in those comic shop thingies. It's $9.95, and more information can be found at www.darkhorse.com. The book's ISBN is 1-56971-820-2.

THE COMICS JOURNAL SPECIAL EDITION Volume 2 is of course published byFantagraphics and should be available at fine comic shops everywhere. If it isn't, you can order it from Diamond or go to FBI's website at www.fantagraphics.com. For those interested, its ISBN is 1-56097-473-7.

SPX 2002 is a charity book published by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. At $9.95 for over 300 pages, it's quite a bargain. It can be purchased at Mars Import but should also be in any good comic shop. That Mars Import link is http://www.marsimport.com/display_comic.php?ID=3911&affiliateID=4

ROSETTA is a hefty $19.95 and is available from Alternative Comics. This just came out at fine comics shops everywhere a little while ago. You can order it online here: http://www.indyworld.com/rosetta/index.html. For the curious, the ISBN is 1-891867-22-9.

SPX 2002

(This article was originally published in Savant and is now being archived at this site. Note that SPX did not in fact merge with the Baltimore Comic-Con, and stayed in the same location for three more years.)

A Brief History of SPX

SPX has become a yearly opportunity for the alternative comics world to celebrate itself and take stock of its current status. This Small Press Expo, held just outside of DC in Bethesda, MD, has developed into a must-attend event for much of the alt-comics world. Since last year's SPX was cancelled due to the events of the 9/11 tragedy, this year's show was anticipated eagerly by all. There were a number of concerns hangingover this show, though in the end most of its veterans dubbed it the "Best SPX ever"--which has happened on a yearly basis. While SPX has its problems, it continues to amaze everyone involved by the way it changes and evolves each year. This year, the theme I noticed was newness. There was more new material debuting for the show than ever before; there were more new faces at the tables than ever before; there were more fans there than ever before. This show was the last in the Bethesda location; it will be moving to Baltimore next year and join forces with the Baltimore Comicon in a fashion that is not yet entirely clear and is cause for some concern for many of the attendees. As such, this show took on an air of finality in some respects, providing an opportunity for reflection on the show's history.

SPX premiered in 1994, a few months after the first show of this sort: California's Alternative Press Expo, or APE. APE began as an initiative of local publisher Slave Labor Graphics and has been a mainstay for the west coast's extensive comics community. Moving to San Francisco and allying itself with the San Diego Comicon-International seems to given it new strength. SPX began as an outgrowth of Dave Sim's "Spirits of Independence" tour, at a time when the comics boom was just starting to wane but there was still money to be made. The first four shows were single-day affairs, and the earliest were held in single rooms. Making the festival a benefit for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund gave everyone involved a cause to rally around.

1997 would prove to be a turning point not only for the show, but for alt-comics in general. The chilling speech by Mike Diana that described his absurd conviction for obscenity and what happened afterwards made everyone understand how important the cause was. A zine-making fan named Chris Staros teamed up with designer and anthology publisher Brett Warnock to create Top Shelf Publications. 1997 saw the debut of new imprint Highwater Books. While the mainstream comics market and longtime alt-publishers Kitchen Sink & Black Eye Books were heading into the financial toilet, more and more young creators were taking the plunge into creating comics that they wanted to see, with little regard to the financial end of things.The comics industry always gets in trouble when its ambitions stray beyond making as many good comics as possible and finding ways to get them into as many different hands as possible. When the industry is more concerned with movies, toys and merchandising, comics themselves suffer. Even when alt & indie creators are more wrapped up in their movie deals instead of their comics output, comics suffer.

With the sales and reputation of comics at a nearly all-time low in the late 90's, a number of great comics were created out of the spotlight of mainstream coverage. SPX was the place where these books were discovered and celebrated, while young talent was nurtured and encouraged. Now that comics are enjoying their generational rediscovery by the mainstream, it is important that the industry takes advantage of this not by flooding bookstores with crap (which occurred in the late 80's after MAUS) but by slowly and carefully putting out a diverse array of books that appeal to a number of different readers. I worry that everyone is so excited about the success of the Spider-Man film and how to cash in on that that we may be in for a repeat of creators trying to figure out how to sell their properties as quickly as possible, though the release of the GHOST WORLD film in conjunction with the brilliant EIGHTBALL #22 does give me some hope in the alt-comics world.

1997 also saw two more important firsts at SPX: the Ignatz awards, a jury-nominated but attendee-voted set of prizes; and the conjunction of SPX and ICAF, the International Cartoon Art Festival, an academic conference focused on comics. The latter would prove to be especially important because of its international scope, bringing cartoonists from all over the world to SPX. More than anything, this cross-pollination of talent in one small,intimate setting would prove to be one of the show's most important effects. Scott McCloud refers to the show as a "gathering of the tribes", putting the creators into the spotlight (since no retailers are allowed to have tables) and allowing them to network. In 2002, one creator sealed the deal for his next graphic novel by getting agreements for both a penciller and for a special color section by an overseas artist attending the show for the first time. In another room, Tom Hart announced the creation of the online comics site serializer.net with a dozen artists for the site right there with him.

More than just being a site for networking, the show is simply an inspiration for those who attend. Upon finding fans interested in their work and fellow creators who share their same hopes and frustrations, many artists report a renewed enthusiasm in returning to their drawing boards after the show.Of course, word of all this enthusiasm for an intimate but intense setting spreads quickly, and everyone wants to be involved. Thus, the show was moved from Silver Spring to Bethesda in 1998 and extended to three days, with the third day being a series of workshops for the creators known as the Small Press Summit. The 1997 show was a one-day affair with Diana's speech and a Jeff Smith chalk-talk the night before. Frank Miller and Neil Gaiman have both attended the show show, with Miller being overwhelmed by the variety of work that was out there. 2000 saw the festival at its zenith, given that that was arguably comics' best year ever and that the show was attended and blessed by Will Eisner, in some ways the grandfather of alt-comics.

As the years went on, SPX shed more and more of the trappings of a San Diego type show both in terms of both tthe exhibitors and the fans. That was exemplified in 2000 by the keynote speakers on the first day being Bill Griffith & Kim Deitch, as opposed to the Neil Gaimans and Frank Millers of earlier cons. In essence, SPX is the ideal, in many respects, of what comics should be all about: a diverse crowd (though not nearly as diverse as MOCCA) experiencing a staggeringly diverse and accomplished array of comics. The early years of SPX were weighted towards indie takes on fantasy, sci-fi, horror and super heroes. Some were actually quite clever and distinctive, with books by Bill Knapp and David Yurkovich coming to mind. Others were as bad or worse than material coming from the usual publishers. On the opposite end of the spectrum, autobio books were still dominating the alt end of the spectrum, with some being as embarrassingly bad in their own way as the fantasy books.

The most intriguing things to read were frequently the minicomics. Highwater ushered in an era of comic as art object, with hand-binding, silk screening and other personal touches made looking at the comic as important an experience as reading it. It was a perfect example of using low print runs and hand-making comics to one's advantage.The cancellation of 2001's SPX did quite a bit of damage to both the show and alt-comics in general. Necessity being the mother of invention, a number of smaller alt-comics shows popped up in the wake of its cancellation, including a Small Press room at the first Baltimore Comic-Con, MOCCA in New York, FLUKE in Athens and a few smaller get-togethers that emphasized the tightness of the alt-comics community. Before this year's SPX took place, it was announced that the show would be moving and would become part of the Baltimore Comic-Con. The reasons were threefold: SPX no longer had room to accommodate every creator that wanted to participate; the number of fans attending had finally reached critical mass; and the committee running the show could not afford to go to an alternate site in the DC area. Balti-Con proved to be a fairly friendly event for the alt-community last year, especially since the director of the con offered free tables for small press artists. While that show had many of the less-welcome trappings common to most comics conventions, it was distinguished by its emphasis on comics qua comics. The guests of honor were Jim Steranko and George Perez, not Jawa #3 and Sleestack #12. While there was a big, sweaty dealer's room, they were selling (for the most part) comics, not videos or toys.

The organizers of SPX will continue to organize it in the future, and they have made assurances that the show will continue to raise money for the CBLDF, will have a completely separate small press hall and will continue to have its own programming. Unfortunately, ICAF has decided to split off from SPX, which is a huge loss in terms of programming and its academic & international influences. SPX this year did have its own extensive programming track that was a roaring success, so this certainly bodes well for the future. Still, some creators I talked to were skeptical. One of the greatest charms of SPX was having a show where the alt-comics creators got all of the spotlight. Many creators report that their SPX sales were as high as their San Diego sales, which is remarkable when you consider how many thousands flood San Diego each year. Will fans at a split show be as willing to spend the same kind of money? Small press shows are also all about the creative process and the future, while mainstream shows tend to focus on nostalgia. The organizer of Balti-Con respects and likes alt-comics, so there is reason for optimism. It's clear that the new SPX will not the best of all possible worlds, but it may well preserve many of its best elements and introduce new positives.

Around The Rooms At SPX 2002

Speaking of the new, SPX 2002 was sold out nearly a year in advance (thanks in part to the cancellation of the 2001 show and the tremendous interest that the 2000 show generated), one reason why a new venue is so needed. What was interesting was just how many of the "old guard" of exhibitors did not show up. Dave Sim hasn't attended since 1997. Linda Medley, Jeff Smith, Donna Barr, Dave Cooper, David Lapham, Rick Veitch, Colleen Doran and Seth were also not there. In their absence, there were dozens of new cartoonists, many of whom were in high school when the first SPX was held. Furthermore, many of these cartoonists are banding together to form their own small press organizations.

Three examples of this phenomenon: Meathaus, Failure, and Sparkplug Comics. Meathaus started as a way for some graduates of the School of Visual Arts in New York to stay in touch. Most of them had backgrounds in either illustration or animation, so comics were a new world for many in the group. This shows in their early anthologies, but as they've developed and picked up new members, they've turned into one of the most interesting and aggressively experimental aggregations of talent out there. Foremost among them are Farel Dalrymple, whose POP GUN WAR was picked up by new publisher Absence of Ink Press and who also appears in the latest Dark Horse anthology, HAPPY ENDINGS. (Dark Horse editor Diana Schutz was a prominent presence once again at SPX, and editors from both Marvel and DC were also in attendance.) Tomer Hanuka and his brother Assaf's BIPOLAR series was just picked up by Alternative, while Dash Shaw (discussed here) also made a splash at the show.

The Failure group consists of some graduates of the Savannah College of Art & Design. The most prolific member is Drew Weing, also mentioned in my SPX preview. Also present were Rose Crowe, who does a charming mixture of both romance-related minicomics and fantasy comics; and Antar Ellis, who specializes in autobio and gag strips. The Sparkplug group may have had the most exciting books at the show. Led by publisher Dylan Williams (who also creates the experimental point-of-view comic REPORTER), it's publishing work from Ben Catmull (PAPER THEATRE) and genius Jason Shiga. Had I known that Shiga was going to be in attendance ahead of time, I would have included him as one of my twelve artists to seek out. Shiga's degree in mathematics shows in the way he designs comics that involve the reader and whose structure is remarkably precise. His experiments in narrative are engaging and fun, especially his choose-your-own adventure type book MEANWHILE and his half-story/half abacus epic HELLO, WORLD. Shiga is the single most original comics creator I've seen in years, and I'm eager to see how he continues to evolve.

SPX is held in four rooms. One of them is a huge ballroom which usually has the best crowd flow. Across from it are three smaller rooms that are interconnected. One of them was fairly large and constantly congested, while the other two rooms held no more than 10-15 tables each. In years past, these smaller rooms would be ignored by the fans who gravitated towards the larger spaces. This year, SPX tried something a bit different: they put at least one well-known small press company in each room, effectively "anchoring" it so as to draw people in. In the smallest room, it was Highwater Books. In the next smallest, it was Top Shelf and their huge & impressive setup. In the next smallest, Fantagraphics anchored one corner of the room while Drawn & Quarterly held the other. In the largest room, Alternative boasted the most tables and had a well-organized variety of artists signing and sketching at any given time. In another corner of the room, Slave Labor had their own tables. The idea worked reasonably well, though once again the crush of fans around Fantagraphics made things difficult for the tables directly across from them.

Top Shelf's room had all sorts of interesting people in it. Eddie Campbell and Rich Koslowski were signing books, while other Top Shelfers like Alex Robinson, Tony Consiglio, Steve Lafler and Scott Mills had their own satellite tables. Lafler was selling some gorgeous acrylic paintings based on his BUGHOUSE characters. Oni and Cyberosia also had their own smaller tables that drew a lot of attention. A few members of the Monkeysuit collective had their own attractive set-up, across from buzz creators Rob G and Rick Spears, who produce the appealing slacker slice-of-life comic TEENAGERS FROM MARS. With books like THREE FINGERS and CREATURE TECH, Top Shelf is increasingly dipping into the mainstream, though signing superior minicomics artists Kurt Wolfgang and Jennifer Daydreamer is certainly a positive sign that they're keeping up their "indie cred."

Highwater had Brian Ralph, Megan Kelso, Dave Kiersh, Greg Cook and several others at their table, which was notable for the lovely prints hanging up behind it. Next to their table was the USS Catastrophe crew, headed up by Ted May, Dan Zettwoch and Kevin Huizenga. Zettwoch's silkscreened, double-foldout comic IRONCLAD, about the Civil War ships Monitor and Merrimac, was another book that had everyone buzzing. The infamous "Dirty" Danny Hellman was also in the room, selling copies of LEGAL ACTION COMICS. Next to him was the remarkable Michael Kupperman, who may be the funniest cartoonist on earth. His SNAKE & BACON'S CARTOON CABARET was one of the best books of 2000 and had I known he was coming to SPX ahead of time, he would have been another addition to my "Artists To Watch Out For" article.

The room with Drawn & Quarterly and Fantagraphics was laid out in an interesting fashion. The row with D&Q had the ICAF booth and French-Canadian publisher F-52 on one side and Belgian publisher Bries across from them, creating a sort of Euro-alley. James Sturm, R.Sikoryak, Joe Matt and David Collier were all signing at the D&Q booth, which was debuting Collier's new HAMILTON SKETCHBOOK. On the other side of the room was Fantagraphics' popular booth that featured a row of their artists signing and sketching. This included Ariel Bordeaux, Rick Altergott, Bob Fingerman (whose MINIMUM WAGE will be finished and collected as BEG THE QUESTION this fall), a newly-shaven Ivan Brunetti, Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez, Jason & Charles Burns. Right across from them were Jessica Abel and Matt Madden, and down the aisle was Phoebe Gloeckner, sharing a booth with noted minicomics maker Lark Pien. No aisle was more crowded at SPX than this one, making it difficult to check out a number of the interesting-looking minicomics across the way.

The largest ballroom was divided into two main sections. The smaller of the two was devoted to a variety of minicomics and books with a more mainstream sensibility; artists like Carla Speed McNeil, Jay Hosler, Evan Dorkin (and Slave Labor Graphics), Steve Conley, Batton Lash and Marc Hempel could be found here, along with minicomics giants like Matt Feazell and Sean Bieri. The bigger share of the room was dominated by the mighty Alternative Comics display, which at various points had 19 different artists signing at their tables. Publisher Jeff Mason also had an enormous array of new books out, including the impressive ROSETTA anthology, a collection of Gabrielle Bell's work, Leela Corman's SUBWAY SERIES, the new issue of BIPOLAR, the new issue of TRIPLE DARE, the first issue of Matt Madden's A FINE MESS, and tons more. Alternative is snapping up interesting talent left and right, and I hope to write about them in greater depth soon.

Across from Alternative was the aforementioned Sparkplug group, who were next to the creators of the beautiful and bizarre Hi-Horse anthology series. Also in that area were rising minicomics star Ellen Lindner; Chris Pitzer, Rob Ullman, and others associated with Ad House Books; NBM; and the gang from Meathaus. This corner of the room alone would have made for an interesting con, much less a small selection from an already overwhelming experience.

While the quality of Top Shelf, Fantagraphics, Highwater and Drawn & Quarterly is unquestioned, this area really brought home the theme of "the shock of the new." Most of the artists here are quite young, many of them under 30. Many have just reached the point where they are ready to produce fully realized comics while others are in a state of wild experimentation. For those that lament that alt-comics haven't produced anyone of note since Sacco, this group has the potential to create works that are not just good, but remarkable.

There are generally four levels of quality to the books one sees at SPX. At the lowest level tend to be those artists either just starting out or who simply possess no talent nor wit whatsoever. These books are beyond crude in terms of storytelling, art and production values and are worse than the worst mainstream books. There were certainly a few of these at the show, but a much lower percentage than in previous years. I certainly don't mind their presence, both because I admire the egalitarian nature of SPX and also because being exposed to better artists can only inspire them to get better. Then there's the indy genre books, which tend to be quite similar to either mainstream superhero comics or Vertigo/Crossgen-type fantasy. Most of them look quite nice and are usually self-published, pleasant reads. To be certain, the best of them are better than a number of alt-comics and deserve to be true mainstream books in terms of sales, thoughmost of them remain labors of love.

Where it gets sticky is in the next two categories: very good alt-books and essentials. There have been a number of very good books to come along in the last few years, solid, well-crafted tales with appealling characters and multiple levels of story to explore. But in the end, only a tiny number have set themselves apart as something new, bold and significant in the medium (SAFE AREA GORAZDE and JIMMY CORRIGAN come to mind, along with perhaps HICKSVILLE and a few others). The other works are simply good books that appeal to a lot of people--in any other industry, these would be the true, quality mainstream books. In the world of comics, where readers have been starved for so long for a succession of quality non-genre material, when a good book comes along it sometimes is overpraised. The key is praising a good book for being good without either overinflating its importance or panning it for not being great. Finding that middle ground will be important in the coming years as the overall bar of quality rises. The other sticky point is that the difference between art and entertainment is a difficult one to assess. Which books fall into what category is a subject that I will grapple with in another article--including an attempt at coming up with some kind of criteria. That said, comics as a medium can certainly afford to have many more "merely" good books--it's not like the bookshelf has been brimming with them throughout its existence.

Panels & Programming

One of the key concerns for SPX's organizers was crowd flow. Perhaps taking some lessons from the heavily-attended but smoothly-flowing MOCCA festival, they made some changes that alleviated what would have been a weekend-long traffic jam. Along with tinkering with room set-ups, they made sure to have programming going on in several different rooms at once, especially on Saturday. The programming was diverse, ranging from Art Spiegelman to Frank Cho on the sophistication scale. Many of the panels I attended were jam-packed, which had to help the cause in the exhibitor's rooms at least somewhat. There was literally not enough time to attend all of the panels I was interested in, given the way they were scheduled. This was quite intentional, especially in the 11-4 slots on Saturday afternoon when foot traffic at the show was at its heaviest. There were programs going on in four different rooms at once, along with CBLDF signings at the con itself. Among the artists I didn't get to see: Phoebe Gloeckner, Jessica Abel, Brian Talbot, Peter Kuper, Eddie Campbell, Ted Rall, and Francoise Mouly. Truly, an embarrassment of riches.

The first panel I did attend was a spotlight on Norwegian artist Jason, moderated by his American translator and publisher, Kim Thompson (of Fantagraphics fame). Jason drew quite a bit of attention with the publication of his book HEY WAIT..., which I discussed in the SPX preview. While his english was quite good, it was clear that he was a bit nervous in front of the group. He talked a bit about HEY WAIT..., revealing that most of the first part of the book was autobiographical. Jason said that most of his cartooning is improvisational, never writing scripts ahead of time, even if he has a general idea of where the story's going. He likes the flexibility that this gives him, so that he can shift pages around if need be, like a director shooting a film out of sequence and editing it later. Like many cartoonists, he was inspired by Chester Brown's autobiographical I NEVER LIKED YOU, which led him to the first part of HEY WAIT... The pivotal scene in the middle was fictional, but some of the second half was also from real life experience, like an unpleasant stint as a factory worker. Other influences included Jaime Hernandez, Lewis Trondheim, Italian artist Fabio, Herge, Charles Schulz and Tex Avery cartoons.

Jason was queried most often on two aspects of his works: why he has done so many silent comics and why he chooses to use anthropormorphic characters. While Jason acknowledged that removing dialogue takes away an important aspect of comics, he felt that silent comics are both easier to improvise and can make the reader feel like part of the story since they're more open to interpretation. While Jason thought the ending of HEY WAIT... was clear enough, he has been interested in seeing the number of different interpretations that have formed due to the surreal way he told the story. He noted that he uses anthropormorphic characters for similar reasons in that iconic characters allow the reader to project themselves more easily into the story. It also allows for a greater narrative fluidity, making his frequent narrative jumps less jarring and his magical realist elements more easily understandable.His next project is something completely different: an adaptation of a 1909 Norwegian mystery novel that will be called IRON WAGON, and it will be done in his anthropormorphic style, an effect that he already finds interesting. It should be released in the US in 2003. After that will be an adaptation of BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, told as a love triangle between the Bride, the Monster and the creator. He's structuring it in 3 page increments, such that the first page will be silent, the second page will have dialogue, and the third page will be silent.

Asked about what he thought of the US, he gushed about New York and expressed a desire to live there at some point. He found San Diego too hot and seemed a bit overwhelmed by the con there, preferring the less commercial SPX. His American audience is lucky that San Diego was so close to SPX on the calendar, because otherwise they never would have had an opportunity to talk to this up-and-coming artist. The toughest ticket all weekend was the Art Spiegelman talk on Friday night. Admission was ten bucks, all proceeds going to the CBLDF--and the place was packed. More and more, Spiegelman resembles the "Gummo Bubbleman" parody-caricature that Dan Clowes memorably created in PUSSEY!, and his legendary chain-smoking is the stone truth. They even had to put him in the hotel bar for a signing the next day (an ingenious solution, especially when you consider the crowd he drew). Spiegelman's talk was wide-ranging and engaging; it was clear that he was happy to be in a crowd where he didn't have to give his standard "Comics 101" lecture (or as he put it, comics lectures for the "ineducable").

The themes he kept coming back to were comics in relation to other forms of art and the effect of 9/11 on his artistic career. He worries about comics as simply a Hollywood feeder, while at the same time understanding the struggles that each artist must go through. He referred to doing comics as "not a career, but a calling." Spiegelman also expressed his discomfort with both the academy and criticism and their relation to comics, but understood their necessity. ("You want to sneer at the academy, but you need the academy if you want something to sneer at.") He admitted he was reluctant to come to SPX because he didn't know what the atmosphere would be like. He had a bad taste in his mouth from the savage review that Ng Suat Tong gave him in the pages of The Comics Journal and asked if TCJ's point of view reflected that of SPX in general (the crowd, not surprisingly, shouted out "no!"). Spiegelman noted that he had had as much difficulty dealing with positive criticism as negative, and that the former had an almost paralyzing effect at times--especially as he was trying to finish book two of MAUS.

In general, he said that the kind of criticism that he finds valuable is where the critic is genuinely engaged with the work, where they explore it on its own terms. He did reserve special scorn for the art world and those museums that put on exhibits of single panels of comic art. "Paintings are made for walls", not comics, and he felt that the form was ill-served by such a display. Time was passing quickly, so the moderator began a slide show that was a retrospective of Spiegelman's work in RAW, the New Yorker and other publications. He began by revealing that he had tried out for the New Yorker as a teenager. Seeing that he didn't understand the punchlines for any of the cartoons he read in them, he submitted a batch of cartoons that made no sense whatsoever! Spiegelman freely admitted that infamous magazine executive Tina Brown hired him strictly because he had won a Pulitzer, and he's convinced to this day that she never actually read MAUS. He went on to discuss a number of his controversial covers for the magazine, including some that were rejected. His greatest pride was getting various cartoonists journalistic gigs, like Ben Katchor doing a strip on a surfing competition (!). In the end he regarded the New Yorker as a necessary evil in his career, not differentiating too much between the magazine and his old employer, Topps (for whom he created the Garbage Pail Kids and Wacky Packs). They are all his "Medicis", his patrons with whom he has an uncomfortable but crucial relationship.

In discussing 9/11, he talked about going down to grab his daughter out of her school, which was smack in the middle of Ground Zero. As he, his wife and daughter were outrunning the debris cloud, he looked back at the missing towers and suddenly realized how much he loved the city. "For the first time, I understood why the Jews didn't leave Berlin after Krystallnacht." He noted that the event traumatized him into wanting to do comics again, and so a strip will be appearing in Germany and in The Forward (a Jewish newspaper in New York) called "In the Shadow of No Towers." His children came up a few times in the talk; he noted that they were almost of the age where MAUS was going to become a reading option for them. At this point, the only thing they knew their father had worked on is LITTLE LIT. One of his children asked him about MAUS when their friend mentioned it to them. "Is it a true story?" Spiegelman replied yes. "Is it sad?" Again, Spiegelman said yes. "Oh, well, forget about it!"

The last part of the talk focused on upcoming projects. Another LITTLE LIT volume will be coming out next fall, and this time he wanted a tighter focus. Thus, the subtitle, "It Was A Dark and Silly Night" will start every entry. Kaz will have an entry, and Neil Gaiman will team up with Gahan Wilson. He's planning a history of the artist Rudolph Toffler with Chris Ware, and then spent the rest of his time discussing his most ambitious and singular work: his comic book "opera". Called DRAWN TO DEATH, it's based on the comics code persecution of the 50's and the lives of cartoonists Jack Cole and Bob Wood, among other things. Spiegelman had no particular attraction to opera, other than the fact that it was a medium "even less lucrative than comics." His play is more musical than opera, and it will feature a multimedia presentation. He played a song called "Poison In The Nursery", a hilarious number sung by Frida Mensch (a Dr. Frederick Wertham stand-in) while a series of related images went by on Powerpoint. It will be interesting to see what his output is like, but it's good to hear him say that he's in love with doing comics again. It is unfortunate that he chose to abandon the medium for over a decade, with the exception of a few pieces here and there. The respect that he commands is still there and continues to grow as the years go by, and while he has a lot to live up to, it would be encouraging to see him try to meet the challenge that his own work presents.

Saturday brought a succession of panels. The first I attended was the announcement of serializer.net. It's an offshoot of the successful online comics site moderntales.com, aimed at the alternative comics crowd. It's being spearheaded by Tom Hart, noted creator of Hutch Owen and one of the vanguard of the early 90's alternative crop. He mentioned that a lot of the fare at moderntales.com was of little interest to the alt-comics crowd, and so he was asked to recruit a group of artists for a new site, one that would bring together some of the web's most interesting artists with some of the alt-scene's most innovative creators. Beginning, October 1, that's just what we'll see. The list of contributors is truly impressive and spans just about every genre. Hart will be working with Shaenon Garrity on a new Hutch Owen strip, and the artists he's recruited are known for their willingness to experiment with the form. From the alt-comics community comes Marcel Guldemond, Nick Bertozzi, Sam Henderson, Matt Feazell, Ben Catmull, and Ethan Persoff. From the world of webcomix comes John Pham, Derek Kirk, Joda Thayer, Lauren Weinstein, Tracy White, Drew Weing, and Jason Lex. The site will also be reprinting some of Howard Cruse's early work. Hart said he was looking for artists with a unique vision while trying to draw in different types of audiences.

A number of the print artists expressed a keen interest in working in color, and several saw this as a replacement for the comics "pamphlet"--they could get their work out on a regular basis and then collect it in graphic novels when they were ready. Most online comics have left me cold, partially due to format and partially due to their content, so this site could be one to watch if the web is to be taken seriously as a place where comics can really grow. (Of course, webcomix patron saint Scott McCloud was in attendance, cheering the group on.)

The humor panel featuring Evan Dorkin, Sam Henderson and Roger Langridge went as one would expect: total chaos and Dorkin snapping off one-liner after one-liner. It began with no moderator and Dorkin picking people out at random to ask them questions, and the conversation focused in on the bitterness of those cartoonists who were dumb enough to focus on humor in their comics career. Dorkin said that humor comics were ghettoized in a medium that was already ghettoized, and that went double for alternative comics humor. He went on at length about the problems with comics shops, comics fans, comics distributors, etc. He was also derisive when asked about web comics, saying that Scott McCloud looked thinner every time he saw him and wondered when web comics would actually pay anyone. Henderson was his usual deadpan self, making a crack on Dorkin when he left the room that one person took seriously. Native New Zealander Langridge seemed a bit overwhelmed at times but did manage to get in a few words here and there about his influences and how they differed from the US-based Dorkin and Henderson.

While all three actually had a number of the same influences (with MAD magazine being a prime one, especially the Kurtzman stuff), the three couldn't be more different in style. Dorkin uses a frenetic, pop- culture soaked, fill the panels to the gills with detail approach from the Will Elder school. Langridge uses clever panel design and an elegant,fluid line to get across both cheap puns and clever visual humor through his idiot character, Fred The Clown. Henderson uses a deliberately crude but expressive style that works both as a series of ass jokes and a simultaneous commentary about crude humor. In the work of all three, there is a both a fury and a sharp sense of intelligence that permeates every panel, to the point where even the jokes that fall flat are still interesting to read.

One of the most eagerly-awaited panels of the day featured Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez of LOVE & ROCKETS fame. They very rarely make it to the east coast these days, so they were mobbed pretty much the entire weekend and their panel was jam-packed. The panel was mostly just a career retrospective and slide show that went back and forth from Gilbert to Jaime, looking extensively at both their early work and more recent creations. An amusing aside came when Art Spiegelman burst into the room, looking for the lecture being given by his wife Francoise Mouly. After leaving loudly, one of Los Bros blurted out "Hey, we talk for free!"--an amusing but cutting reference to Spiegelman's $10 lecture the night before.

The last panel of the day was the annual New Voices In Comics panel, featuring David Lasky, Kevin Huizenga, John Kerschbaum, Greg Cook and Nick Bertozzi. It was a bit odd to see Lasky as a "new" voice, considering that he was a Xeric recipient back in 1993. In fact, with Kerschbaum (1996) and Bertozzi (1999) present, it was practically a Xeric reunion. All of the artists present have somewhat idiosyncratic styles and several of them are known for their aggressive formal experimentation. Yet Bertozzi andHuizenga see themselves as storytellers above everything else, with their innovations being happy accidents that occur when they ask themselves, "Hey what it be like if I tried that?" All of the artists talked about writing comics that they would enjoy and find interesting and didn't worry much about seeking out an audience. Bertozzi said that he has three people in particular whom he seeks out for their advice and critique, and considers them to be his true audience. All five mentioned that their biggest challenges were in finding ways to make money and making time to actually draw, since a couple of the artists also were raising families.

The other question they grappled with for awhile was the role of the editor. The consensus of the panel was that there are both good and bad editors, and a good editor can be valuable to the artist if they share similar sensibilities. Bertozzi, Huizenga and Cook were the youngest members of the panel, and one can see their work evolving over time. I discussed Huizenga in my SPX preview, and suffice it to say that his work is among the most thought- provoking I've come across in comics, challenging on an intellectual and aesthetic level while still retaining a human core. Cook is fascinated by the use and occasional subversion of imagery found in children's stories; his CATCH AS CATCH CAN is a cross between a fairy tale and a Tarantino film. Bertozzi has had the steepest curve of development, going from an inane TOO MUCH COFFEE MAN rip-off to sophisticated and nuanced works like his new RUBBER NECKER series and his entry in the NEW THING: IDENTITY anthology. Lasky has been all over the place in the last decade, with minis like BOOM BOOM and his satire URBAN HIPSTER, at once both an affectionate look and poke at the hipsters found in comics like Adrian Tomine's. Kerschbaum is another artist I described in my SPX preview, but he was a wild card in this bunch, seeing as how he focuses on humor comics. Still, he fits in because of his warped approach and solutions to interesting formal problems he presents for himself. I can say without reservation that the work of all five is worth seeking out.

The Ignatz Awards & One Man's Ballot

The last major event of Saturday night was the Ignatz Awards. The Ignatz is a festival prize determined by vote of the attendees of the show. The nominees are determined by a jury of five artists that changes every year. Each juror is allowed to nominate one person or work in each category. As a result, the nominee lists often take on a "how the hell did THAT get on there" look to them, depending on the whims of the artists selecting them.The nadir of the Ignatzes came in 1999, when juror Frank Cho nominated himself twice, and won both times. A rule was installed afterwards that disallowed jurors from nominating their own work. Happily, this year's group did an outstanding job in the nomination process, selecting work that at worst was pleasant and at best represented comics at their finest.

The ceremony was held in the large ballroom that earlier in the day held dozens of creators and hundreds of fans. Attendance here quickly became standing room only, which emcee Chris Staros noted gave those standing easier access to the bar. Staros was his typical upbeat self as he introduced the ceremony, noting that comics as an industry seemed to be on the rebound. He mentioned the increasing number of book deals that comics have been getting, the Hollywood deals that seem to be cropping up for everyone, and the scrutiny given comics on the internet. Staros stated with a wry grin that he knew more than anyone about how powerful the internet comics community could be, given his company's near-death experience earlier in the year. After his distributor (LPC) went bankrupt, taking a number of promised payments with them, Top Shelf was very close to extinction themselves. A plea by Staros for help from the internet comics community brought in an avalanche of orders that brought them back to solvency.

Staros introduced 2002's recipient of the CBLDF Defender of Liberty Award, Frank Miller. Miller really seems to enjoy himself at these small press shows, even (as he admits) he doesn't understand everything he sees and thinks a lot of it isn't very good. There's no question that he's been a long-time stalwart for the CBLDF, however. Staros took the opportunity to announce that he had just been named to the Fund's board of directors, a position he had long coveted. He had even gone as far as to tell Dennis Kitchen five years ago that when he had earned it, he wanted to be a member of the board. It's certainly a good move for both parties--Staros cements his place as one of the biggest movers and shakers in comics, while the fund gains a tireless fundraiser and salesman. Staros has already laid out a number of incentive-laden offers to boost membership in the Fund.

On to the awards themselves: each nominee had their work projected onto a screen while their names were read. The first award was for Outstanding Comic, and the presenter was supposed to be Art Spiegelman. After Staros gave a long and glowing introduction, it became evident that Spiegelman hadn't yet arrived. An embarrassed Staros said, "I guess he's being a bit of a mouse" and read off the nominees himself. While comics like BIG QUESTIONS #4 and DOUBLE CROSS: MORE OR LESS were indeed quite good, everyone in the room knew that EIGHTBALL #22 was going to win. Win it did, and quite deservedly. This was by far the best comic Dan Clowes has ever written and it's one of the top five comics I've read in the last decade.

The next award was Outstanding Graphic Novel, presented by Bryan Talbot. There were a number of strong contenders here: HAW was not Ivan Brunetti at his best, but it was still hilarious; SUMMER OF LOVE had some coloring issues but it's Debbie Drechsler exquisitely detailing the ups and downs of teenagers; FALLOUT was an ambitious look at the Manhattan Project that suffered from inconsistent art; and NON #5 was a superb anthology, innovatively packaged. The winner was the deserving THE GOLEM'S MIGHTY SWING by James Sturm. The third in a series of books about Americana and tragic events surrounding it, it tapped deep into Jewish legend and combined it with theNational Pasttime. My choice would have been NON #5, simply because of the number of outstanding contributions in it, but as a single work, GOLEM was a solid choice.

Presenting Outstanding Story was critic Ana Merino, who was quite active at the ICAF booth all weekend. The lineup here was again quite impressive. Two came from the aforementioned NON #5: "Retreat", by Megan Kelso; and "Where Hats Go", by Kurt Wolfgang. Both were discussed in my SPX preview. Also nominated were "Royal Sable" by Mira Friedmann, part of the Israeli Actus Tragicus group, "Wir Mussen Wissen, Wir Werden Wissen" by Ron Rege (in D&Q Volume 4) and TRENCHES, by Scott Mills. The inclusion of the last item seemed odd, since it was in itself a graphic novel. Why was it included in this category and not in Outstanding Graphic Novel? It did go on to win the award, and a visibly moved Mills embraced Staros, his publisher. TRENCHES was a good work and deserves praise, but I didn't see it in the same league as the other nominees. I had voted for "Where Hats Go" here, with "Retreat" a very close second.

Next came Eddie Campbell, presenting Outstanding Debut Comic. This is kind of an odd award, since the comics on the ballot are things that few people will have read since they must be books debuting within a week of SPX. As a result, fan-favorite authors might be rewarded (like Evan Dorkin in 2000) even if fans haven't actually read the book yet. The ballot was also a bit odd--even though it clearly said to vote for only one choice, the ballot was broken up into four discrete sections (one for each room). A number of folks who voted wound up voting four times because they didn't read the fine print and had their votes thrown out as a result. Another problem with the award, not that it was a fault of the SPX folks, is that some of the books on the ballot did not actually debut in time for the show. Drawn & Quarterly's PAUL GETS A SUMMER JOB, for example, will not actually debut until next spring. I voted for a debut that I actually had read at the time (Leela Corman's SUBWAY SERIES), but the winner, Joel Priddy's PULPATOON PILGRIMAGE, was a worthy one. It was one of SPX's "buzz books", by a newcomer artist (and company--Ad House Books) whose work looked like a cross between Craig Thompson and Megan Kelso. Priddy actually had became ill before the show and didn't even get to attend the ceremony! His publisher, Chris Pitzer, accepted for him.

Outstanding Series was next, a category that may become an anachronism in a few years as alt-comics continues its migration to the graphic novel format. Presenting it was Jaime Hernandez, over whom Staros gushed quite openly, even noting his fanboyish index to the world of LOVE & ROCKETS that he had published in an issue of the old Staros Report. The favorite for the award was Dave Cooper's ever-bizarre WEASEL, but the more popular and influential SKETCHBOOK DIARIES by James Kochalka was the winner. The other nominees were Chester Brown's historical series LOUIS RIEL, David Hahn's slice-of-life PRIVATE BEACH and Sam Henderson's wacky MAGIC WHISTLE. I actually went with MAGIC WHISTLE on my ballot, mostly because I thought Henderson deserved more recognition. Kochalka provided the best bit of comedy of the night. After thanking his cat and his wife, he noted that he felt stupid because at dinner, he had obtained a bite of Tom Hart's Pad Thai in exchange for the Ignatz Award, if he won it. When Kochalka returned to his table with the award, Hart grabbed it and ran gleefully down the aisle with it.

Presenting the award for Outstanding Minicomic was former award winner Brian Ralph. Before he presented the award, he said (with tongue in cheek) that he was embarrassed telling his family that he had won an award for something called a minicomic and wanted everyone to come up with a better name, on the spot. After the suggestion of "graphic pamphlet" got roundly booed by the audience, the backup suggestion of "story rocket" carried the day. This year's field was an especially good one. Works like Tony Consiglio's quasi-autobio DOUBLE CROSS ASSORTMENT or Lark Pien's delightfully cute LONG TAIL KITTY: HEAVEN would have been easy winners in other years. John Kerschbaum's HOMECOMING was one of his most clever minicomics and Kevin Huizenga's GLORIANA: SUPERMONSTER 14 was one of the best comics of the year, period. It's the one I voted for, though Megan Kelso's ARTICHOKE TALES #1 was a fully deserving winner. This is the story that made me sit up and take notice of her talent. Kelso wryly noted that she was proud to be the first recipient of an award for a "storyrocket."

Jeff Mason, the publisher of Alternative Comics, presented the award for Outstanding Online Comic. The Ignatzes are definitely ahead of the curve in giving awards for this and minicomics, understanding where a lot of innovations are taking place right now. Mason also described the work of each of the nominees, a smart move given that a large portion of the audience was unfamiliar with them. Tom Hart was nominated for his HUTCH OWEN series, Jordan Crane for his KEEPING TWO at Highwater's site, Derek Kirk for his remarkable SMALL STORIES site, and Tracy White for her autobiographical site TRACED. The winner was formalist supreme Jason Little for his BEE, a beautiful adventure/mystery strip that is being collected and published by Doubleday Books. This was what I had voted for, though I like all five sites, especially Kirk's.

Promising New Talent also had a solid field, and it was presented by former co-editor of RAW and current New Yorker editor Francoise Mouly. The group was a diverse one, with avant garde artists like Sammy Harkham and Anders Nilsen, slice of life artists like Mike Dawson and Jeffrey Brown, horror artists like Rick Smith & Tania Menesse, and unclassifiable artists like Greg Cook. Cook was the winner, on the strength of his bizarre and hilarious CATCH AS CATCH CAN, a cross between fairy tales and Tarantino films. Cook was my choice here, though Brown's debut graphic novel CLUMSY was very impressive and both Harkham & Nilsen are producing some very interesting work.

That left only Outstanding Artist to be awarded, and this task was left to the great Gilbert Hernandez. Once again, the field was jammed with outstanding nominees, and it was really too close to call. The field was interesting because of the range of styles. In one corner, you had artists like Renee French and Thomas Ott, known for their exquisite textures and rendering. Both are also heavy on atmosphere, though French's SOAP LADY was a departure in terms of subject matter, being a book for children. Then you had an avant garde formalist like Paul Hornschemeier, whose named proved so daunting to Beto that he pronounced it "Paul Mxyzptlk"". John Kerschbaum works in a stripped-down, humorous style while Megan Kelso's cartooning relies on her delicate and expressive linework. I voted for Kelso here, on the strength of her Artichoke Tales stories and her impressive showings in the Comics Journal Winter and Summer SPECIAL anthologies, the DIRTY STORIES III anthology and the BOGUS DEAD anthology. Kelso was the winner and seemed very surprised to get the award. She said that something she had said at an earlier con, that that she hopes to still be creating comics when she's an old lady, is not only still true but that this award had validated that hope.

Highwater really cleaned up at the Ignatzes, picking up two wins for Kelso and one for Cook. Top Shelf took home two awards, for Kochalka and Mills. Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly and Ad House Books all brought home one award each, for Clowes, Sturm and Priddy, respectively. Once again, the jury deserves a lot of credit for the proceedings, and this year's was Alex Robinson, Suzanne Baumann, David Lasky and Nick Bertozzi. A fifth juror dropped out sometime during the process, making the fifth selection in each category hotly contested. All four jurors have their roots in minicomics, with Baumann still publishing exclusively in that format. Robinson's work is more mainstream-friendly than some of the others, though his own tastes run the gamut. All in all, the jury seemed very well-informed about the important comics of the past year.

Many have noted in other reports just how relaxed and downright invigorating the proceedings seemed to be, as opposed to more frenetic cons like San Diego. The creators were in friendly territory and got to relish seeing fellow artists, exchanging ideas and relaxing over a drink. As others have reported, the bar on Friday and Saturday nights in SPX's Holiday Inn location was quite a scene, with dozens of artists, fans and publishers mingling for hours. Bethesda is a great town for restaurants, and I was not surprised to find myself in a nearby Thai restaurant, surrounded by dozens of artists and publishers. A number of artists stuck around for the Small Press Summit and the annual artist-Diamond softball game and pig roast, always making for a relaxing end to an intense weekend. Perhaps my favorite image of the entire festival was right after the Ignatz Awards. The room was kept open with a bar and free food, and dozens of folks lingered for quite some time. That led to some interesting pairings: Art Spiegelman engaged in a long conversation with Eddie Campbell; Chris Staros being embraced by an enthusiastic Peter Kuper; an emotional Tom Devlin noting that these were the first awards that Highwater had picked up at the Ignatzes. Several decades worth of creators of all interests and abilities were relishing each others' company. Perhaps the comics community isn't a team or a family, but at the very least it's an orphanage-and on a night like this, it becomes clear that the only thing all these artists had in common was their struggle to create art, and that was enough.

10 artists to seek out at SPX 2002

(This article was originaly published in Savant, in advance of SPX 2002, and is being archived here.)

The Small Press Expo (SPX) will be upon us in just a week, and the con has grown so large that it will be moving in 2003. Yes, this will be the last year possible to experience SPX "the way it used to be" before it merges with the more mainstream Baltimore Comicon and leaves the charming Bethesda area. Whatever its flaws, it still stands as the single most important gathering of the small press, its fans and those who choose to study it, thanks especially to the International Comics Arts Festival (ICAF) that takes place alongside it. ICAF almost always brings in interesting European artists and holds interesting crossover events with SPX itself. This year's SPX has its usual impressive array of well-known artists, with first-timers including Art Spiegelman, and Los Bros. Hernandez.

The complete list of attendees is staggering, with nearly 160 tables in four different rooms. A reasonably educated fan of alternative comics will know to seek out big names like Spiegelman, Bryan Talbot, the Hernandezes, etc.; but with the dizzying array of choices, one might well overlook some very worthy artists. The list I present contains a number of names that I feel don't get enough notice, even within the alternative community press. The list rather eclectic one, with a few artists who have been in the businessfor years and some who aren't even old enough to buy alcohol yet. Some work for major companies like Fantagraphics and Top Shelf, while others are self-published. There are humorists, historians, formal innovators, skilled storytellers and those whose work has difficulty fitting into any category. While not all may be for every taste, every one of them deserves your attention--and all of them will have tables at SPX. They are presented here in alphabetical order, with links to their websites where applicable.

** Sean Bieri: He is a longtime and quite accomplished creator of minicomics and part of a thriving Detroit-area scene that loves minis for their own sake and doesn't view them as a stepping-stone to something else. Like his friend Matt Feazell, Bieri excels at humor, though his style couldn't be more different. New readers will want to pick up his minicomic collection JUMBO JAPE. His full range of styles and clever wordplay are on display here. Bieri is a skilled mimic who knows how to parody with particularly trenchant punchlines in mind. His two best features are "Jesus The Savior Man", a hilarious series of strips that crosses the Popeye characters from EC Segar's THIMBLE THEATRE with the Gospels. What is especially impressive here is a complete mastery of the Gospel stories of Christ as well as an uncanny rendering of Segar's thin lines. Almost as funny is "Good Ol' Conan The Barbarian", a mixture of Conan and PEANUTS.

Bieri's art style can vary from project to project, though his defacto style is somewhat loose and cartoony, much like Terry LaBan. Unlike LaBan, he doesn't go for long narratives, instead preferring parodies (like the two mentioned above or a SIN CITY take-off set in a dentist's office) or mixing a sight gag with a punchline. Not all of his gags work well as comics, or rather, they work effectively as just jokes. (His "Worse Than Hitler" strip is a good example.) Bieri also throws in the odd personal observation or two, which can be amusing but rarely as funny as his other material.

Bieri frequently takes full advantage of the DIY possibilities that minicomics can offer. He's done comics with hand-silkscreens, hand-constructed and decorated covers and has experimented with size and format. In his hands, the minicomic form isn't just a comics starter set, but a legitimate means of expression in its own right with its own special rewards. The biggest drawback is low print runs and circulation, which makes shows like SPX so crucial in getting a good understandings of what's out there. Bieri isn't just a punchline man, as he did a mini contrasting the lives of Gertrude Stein and Kiki (a wild woman of the night) in 1920's Paris. Another clever comic is a tongue-in-cheek listing of some Nazi aircraft that didn't quite get off the ground, with hilarious manglings of the German language.

I wouldn't say that Bieri is a unique talent or trailblazing innovator, but rather is a skilled craftsman who brings a high level of imagination, care and energy to his work. Humor is a difficult thing to bring off well, especially when working within a certain tradition, and this is what Bieri does best. I would start with JUMBO JAPE and then just get one of everything if you really dig it. JUMBO JAPE was nominated for a 2001 Ignatz and richly deserved it.


** Paul Hornschemeier: One of the most interesting and aggressively experimentative of the group I call the "neo-formalists." They are artists, often with animation backgrounds, that are interested in what makes comics tick, take them apart, stretch them to their limits and take risks. Many of them are not coherent in terms of narrative structure, often by design. Some of them have clearly been inspired by Chris Ware in terms of their fascination with form and its possibilities of getting across emotion, but many of them seem to have come from outer space. On this list, I have included two, Hornschemeier and Dash Shaw (see below). Including both reveals the range of what is possible in exploring these aspects of comics.

Hornschemeier, like Kevin Huizenga, has dutifully self-published for quite some time in an effort to improve as an artist. He's also clearly invested a great deal of money in getting the best possible productions values for his work, so as to fully realize his vision of what he wants it to look like. Those of you who associate minicomics and/or self-published work with cheaply-printed scrawls on typing paper will faint when you see his SEQUENTIAL #7.

His interests as a storyteller are all over the map. A lot of his comics are funny, but with a long cruel streak intrinsic to them. His ideas have gotten bolder and more fully realized as he's evolved and had a better idea of exactly what he wanted to do. After doing a broad range of interesting but unremarkable stories in minicomics format in issues 1-4, he switched to a tabloid format that was as much a comics criticism publication as it was a comic, featuring an interview with Dan Clowes among other things. This was possibly his least successful effort, as it really seemed that he didn't know what he wanted to do. Then came #6, which really made me sit up and pay attention to this work. In it, he has any number of funny but disturbing stories ("Too Many Monkeys" being an amusing Seuss tribute), but he also introduces several features that show his successful use of experimentation.

First there's "The Peculiar Mr Williams", which is an EC comics tribute of sorts, complete with a gruesome but funny ending. The odd thing is that the story never quite goes away, as the unfortunate title character is written about as a missing person by a local newspaper, and the writer of said paper often drifts off into writing melancholy snippets about life in general. Then there's "The Devil's Lonely Day." As we read it (a gorgeous grey-scaled, meticulously drawn strip), we notice that there seem to be pages missing...and that not only was this deliberate, but that the author hasn't drawn and doesn't know what will be on the other pages yet! An experiment drawn out of a dada tradition, to be sure. A continuing feature called "The Supression of William T Andrews" details the title character's struggle to accept his own sexuality, done in this issue in the form of a conversation with a "friend".

SEQUENTIAL #7 is his true masterwork to date: a slick, attractive package that fortunately is merited by the contents within. New episodes of "The Devil's Lonely Day" and "William T Andrews" may be found within (with the latter being the best episode yet of that feature), along with two other noteworthy features. The first, "Ex Falso Quodlibet", appears to be at least partially autobiographical. It's about an anthropormorphic fish who is having difficulty facing life in the absence of a loved one. The second, "Language Lessons", ironically ignores the lush production values of the issue and is comprised of variation of the sort of stick figures you would see on a "Safety Instructions" card. Hornschemeier even provides advice at the end of the issue for how he was able to print the issue.

FORLORN FUNNIES is his newest effort, a full color comic that has evoked more Ware comparisons than anything else, though it traverses some territory that is quite different. It's a story that's about characters, essentially--fictional characters. We start with a stereotypical villain from a western, complete with long moustache, who somehow walks off the set and past a lonely woman who goes up to her apartment to watch an animated show. The star of the show is fired, but escapes cancellation by magically jumping intoother shows, or worlds. The whole issue carries a dreamlike but desperate quality with it that requires rereading. Hornschemeier has deservedly gotten an Ignatz nomination for Outstanding Artist. He represents comics' true cutting edge, so if you want a challenging but fascinating read, I would strongly recommend SEQUENTIAL #6 and 7 as well as the first issue of FORLORN FUNNIES. Find out more at http://www.sequentialcomics.com/.

** Kevin Huizenga: Huizenga is one of the best exemplars of the concept that minicomics can provide a training ground for development for new artists. Tracing his improvement from issue to issue of his comic SUPERMONSTER is remarkable. The most recent edition, #14 (GLORIANA), is an amazing formal and narrative achievement that really should be required reading for any serious comics fan. Tom Spurgeon wrote an excellent article on him and this issue in particular that appeared in the Comics Journal #240, and I would urge interested readers to seek it out.

Huizenga's comics always carry a sort of gentle intelligence in the way they're written, and are formally exciting without flaunting their stylistic innovations for their own sake. While his comics are sometimes astonishing, there's a calculated lack of pyrotechnics in his stories. Huizenga's background in philosophy fuels his curiousity about the world, with the technique of phenomenology clearly at play in his art. Put simply, this is a method of observing the world where one looks at something understanding its context, removes it from its everyday, understood use...and then describes it. With Huizenga, we get pages of drawings of forested neighborhoods, parks, children, etc--drawn without judgment or particular moral value, other than a profound respect. The other major influence one can see at play is that of Asian paintings of a certain era. It's well known that certain of these paintings focused on landscapes and backgrounds--rarely would we find any people in them.

Huizenga does an entire issue of these sorts of drawings, done while walking around. In a later issue, he takes it a step further, actively mimicking these paintings while using as narrative the adoption papers of a child in China. At his heart, Huizenga is a comics guy, and draws from a number of inspirations. John Porcellino is an obvious one, from the top lists at the end of his earlier issues to the quiet, small bits of autobiographical and semi-autobiographical detail that we learn. Huizenga is also inspired by the loose, flowing line of early 20th century cartoonists, particularly Roy (WASH TUBBS) Crane. There are moments of humor here, though it's mostly gentle and rarely laugh-out-loud. They sometimes relate to his religious beliefs, which are clearly quite sincere and earnest but are never actively promoted in the comic. When asking "What Would Jesus Do" about having to run an ad offensive to zen, his imaginary Jesus almost obnoxiously points a finger and says, "I forgive you!" Kevin's character is annoyed because that advice had no relation to his dilemma, so he draws a flowsheet illustrating each of his options.

Supermonster #14 (subtitled "Gloriana Comics") has been nominated for Outstanding Minicomic. In an unusually strong field, I think that this was truly the best. At 100 pages, he throws in three stories that follow Glenn and Wendy Ganges. One is a story about Wendy at work, or rather, a particular stretch of time where every event happens at once. Then the two are at home and each imagines what their future unborn child will be like...except that time slows and accelerates without warning, with "real" time being replaced by a fantasy. The masterpiece is "The Sunset", where Glenn tells a friend about a sunset he saw. We the reader get to experience the full event, frame by frame, often out of order, of the sunset and even when his vision blurs. We get to see his thoughts and even fantasies of the notes from bird whistles wrestling with each other. It's a fascinating experiment in showing simultaneity. The last Glenn story has him trying to reassure a family that the earth isn't coming to an end despite the presence of a huge, blood-red moon--complete with astronomical diagrams!

Huizenga's talent really all came together with #14, but the other issues are quite worthwhile on their own. It does make me wonder where he's going next. I can see him continuing to publish beautiful minicomics, and I can also easily see him using a more standard format. But there's no polishing necessary in his work: it's fully realized and beautifully produced. See some of his strips online at http://usscatastrophe.com/kh/issues.html and drop by his table in the Versailles Room.

** Jason: Though he's represented by Fantagraphics, he's one artist that not everyone may be aware of yet...though they should be. Jason is a Norwegian who does a comic called MJAU MJAU (Norwegian for "Meow, Meow"). One story, called "Wait A Minute", was translated and published by Fantagraphics as "Hey, Wait..." It concerns two teenaged boys named Jon and Bjorn and their adventures over a particular summer, until a horrific event occurs that changes the tone and direction of the comic. To give away more specifics of the plot would be an injustice to the reader, but I will talk in more general terms about his work.

Jason's characters tend to be anthropomorphic, in this case dogs. That first layer of distance between reader and subject makes it easy for him to bend both time and reality. The story is rooted in the everyday details of summer that so many of us will recognize, yet its magical realist touches will fracture our expectations of what comes next. An early clue in how to read the comic comes when one of the boys, asked what time it is, replies "Summertime!" A period where time takes on a sudden flexibility, frequently whipping by at a furious pace, sometimes slowing to a crawl. It's important to approach each page as potentially both true and imaginary, as actual event or simple reminiscence. There are some really striking images here: a character sneezing and then changing into an adult in the next panel; a character noting that certain photographs seen by a friend are of him in fifteen years; the use of all-white and all-black panels. The book is deceptively simple to look at and yet symbolically complex; as such, it rewards many re-readings.

Meeting Jason will be a rare privilege for US audiences, especially as a new collection of his work from MJAU MJAU has just been released here, called SHHH! As the title implies, it's a wordless comic, drawn from considerably different themes from HEY, WAIT... Check out his style from his Norwegian publisher Jippi Forlag at http://www.jippicomics.com/english/index.html and see him at the Fantagraphics table.

** Megan Kelso: Despite her long association with Highwater Books, Megan Kelso remains one of the most underrated talents in the alt-comics scene. Part of the reason this is so is that her work simply hasn't been as visible as some of the other names on the Highwater roster. The only collection of hers currently in print, QUEEN OF THE BLACK BLACK, is an eccentric collection of stories, many of them delicate & intricate, and others a bit too ephemeral to take seriously. Her simple, breezy line has always been an attractive starting point, but she has now really found her voice through a series of minis (to eventually be collected) called ARTICHOKE TALES.

In fact, over the past year Kelso has hit a remarkable stride no matter where she's appeared. The problem is that she's mostly popped up in anthologies and in minis; until ARTICHOKE TALES is compiled, I fear she won't get the exposure she deserves. She had one of the best three strips in both the Winter and Summer editions of the COMICS JOURNAL SPECIAL, had one of the best strips in the zombie-themed BOGUS DEAD, and her surprisingly explicit version of her ARTICHOKE TALES characters in the erotica compilation DIRTY STORIES VOL III was one of the few stories that was arousing on an emotional level. And of course, a long chapter of ARTICHOKE TALES was one of the best things in the groundbreaking anthology/art object NON #5 that came out last summer.

ARTICHOKE TALES is her most notable achievement to date, and is unusual for alt-comics in that it has significant fantasy elements. I'm not talking about unicorns 'n' dragons type fantasy, but rather a fanciful setting and not-quite-human characters. Like all great fairy tales, AT at its heart examines humanity's higher aspirations and its grim realities. The characters in the story look human with the exception of their hair, which looks like artichoke leaves. This slight distancing of the characters from our reality makes it easier to fall into their world's mythology. It's a world where a village was once part of a war, where another community is still at war, and healing has yet to take place. A soldier separated from his company meets the granddaughter of an apothecary. A love story emerges, but not necessarily one with a happy ending. One of the key components of the series is the story within a story--the origins of various conflicts are told as myths or fairy tales themselves. And like true fairy tales, the stories often contain gruesome elements and rarely end happily.

Kelso's art perfectly complements her sparse narrative. The reader is provided with little information early on, and must rely on the clues her art provides. The essential lightness of her style contrasts well with the often grim story; the entire story is about forcing contradictions upon the reader to figure out and making the reader work to decipher what's below an often still surface. This conflict is never heavy-handed because the art is always in service to the story and never exaggerated. As stories are told within stories, the art for those sections grows cruder and more iconic, reflecting a more simple abstraction from the world.

Essentially, anything that Kelso's put out in the last year or so is pure gold. We are seeing an artist fully realize her potential, and it's an exciting journey to watch. She'll have a new chapter of AT available at SPX, along with the first two chapters. Check out her website as well at http://www.girlhero.com/. Kelso is up for four Ignatz Awards at SPX, and this honor is well-deserved.

** John Kerschbaum: Kerschbaum's gags seem cute and innocuous until you dig a little deeper and notice with horror the real punchline of some of his strips. His comics owe little to anyone and often make the reader work for the punchline. I am delighted that he received two Ignatz nominations, because he deserves both the recognition and the publicity. Kerschbaum matches a solid level of detail in his backgrounds with more iconic characters that thrusts the focus of his strips on what they do. The background detail often dominates the reader's focus in a strip's early panels as we're trying to figure out what's going on--he always starts subtly. Oftentimes, he will quickly derail a story and go way over the top to deliver a punchline.
A good example is a woman who comes home, makes dinner and settles in on her couch to watch TV under a blanket. A weird look of discomfort appears on her face and she stands up, looking confused. We then see a pair of breasts on a hairy, sleeping man...and they're giggling. Looking back, we can see the woman was top-heavy and that when she stood up, she was flat as a board.

Some strips begin with a shock and then twist it and twist it beyond all recognition. One example is a story of a woman who comes home to find her husband having sex with an exact duplicate of himself. The two men try to convince the woman that she should stick with them...until one of them reveals that he's not human at all, but a gigantic beetle in human disguise. The way that one ends is both hilarious and unsettling.

Kerschbaum will go for the gross-out, but only in the service of an actual joke--it's never gross for its own sake. More disturbing than any gross-out is the relentless (but hilarious) nihilism of his comics--he's incredibly cruel to his characters. A strip where two dancing robots are separated, abused, stripped to spare parts and then "united" in the cruelest and most banal manner possible is both heartbreaking and funny. Another long strip retells the story of the city guy and country guy, both meeting the cruelest fates imaginable--and getting abused even worse after death.

Most of the following strips come from his 3-issue series, THE WIGGLY READER. Issue 2 of that series has one of the best covers of all time, which I will only describe as being a series of reimaginings of Abraham Lincoln, Mary Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre. In some ways, his minicomics are even better than his other works. His latest, HOMECOMING, was nominated for an Ignatz. It's about salmon swimming upstream to mate--except that they're anthropomorphized into 1950's high school kids. His crowning achievement, however, is TIMBERDOODLE, a mini about an ordinary young man born with an enormous wooden cock. Every single panel dances with ingenious combinations of both verbal and visual jokes, and the final payoff is classic Kerschbaum: ambiguous and over-the-top. Kerschbaum does put his minis online when they go out of print, and they're worth seeking out. Many of them are true art objects in their own right. Check out http://www.fontanellepress.com/ for more on this demented genius, and come see him in the Washington Room, table 2.

** Steve Lafler: Lafler's been in the business for over twenty years, self-publishing his own series DOG BOY and co-editing the anthology BUZZARD. But it wasn't until he collected a series of stories called BUGHOUSE that everything seemed to really click for him. Lafler's comics have always relied on a sort of stream-of-consciousness inspiration, with storylines that alternated between overtly political rants, psychedelic journeys, and sexually charged explorations of his id. While interesting, not all of his experiments were equally successful or bore rereading. That changed when he started doing BUGHOUSE, which harnessed everything that made his work interesting into a gripping narrative.

Working with Top Shelf editor Chris Staros, he wove all of the disparate Bughouse vignettes into one story, writing new bits to connect the previously published chapters. The key to understanding and appreciating Lafler's work is that he has always valued improvisation as a creative device, making him an ideal candidate to write a story about improvisational jazz musicians. With Staros as editor, Lafler's story gained structure and organization, much like a good rhythm section holds down the bottom, allowing the soloist to shine. While there are any number of excellent Top Shelf artists I could recommend, I feel that Lafler has been the most overlooked considering the excellence of his work.

Describing BUGHOUSE is relatively straightforward: it's about a sax player named Jimmy Watts and his journey as a musician. We trace his development as a child to meeting musical partner Slim Watkins in music school in the big city. Watts is from the midwest while Watkins is a city slicker, but the two quickly form a tight musical bond. When the story takes place is somewhat vague, but it's at around the time when bebop was just being born. The two gig with a Duke Ellington stand-in named Buggy Eckstein before getting kicked out and starting their own group: Bughouse.

It's the twists that make this something to pay attention to. First, all of the characters are drawn as anthropormorphic insects. Like many artists who use this kind of tactic, it allows them to make reality just a little bit more fluid. Lafler uses this to maximum effect and he has to, because it can be so difficult to depict music in comics form. It works, partially because he occasionally adds little graphics to illustrate the songs, (like when Jimmy springs a number about cats) or when Jimmy hallucinates something associated with the music he's playing.

This brings up another aspect of the book: Lafler deals with addiction in relation to the creative process. The drug of choice for many of the musicians is something called "bug juice", which is really just a stand-in for any drug. Jimmy gets hooked on it by his girlfriend Julie after being convinced that every great jazz man needed it for inspiration, and struggles with it for much of his career. This struggle and the kind of shady characters he winds up dealing with as a result are a major source of the tension in the book.

But the heart of the book is the joy of the creative process and the camaraderie found in in collaboration. Lafler's fluid, expressive art and jaunty dialogue makes this a page-turner and simply a joy to read. I also strongly recommend BAJA, a follow-up to the original story concerning Jimmy's young bass player Bones and his adventures in Mexico while laying low from police attention. Anyone interested in music, the creative process or simply a good yarn should give this one a shot. Check out Lafler's website at http://stevelafler.com/ or the Top Shelf website at http://www.topshelfcomix.com/topshelf/index.html.

** Roger Langridge: A master gag cartoonist with the cleanest, purest line in all the land. Originally from New Zealand (which seems to have more interesting cartoonists per capita than most countries), Langridge now lives in England and has been cartooning for about 15 years. His work with his brother Andrew writing was published by Fantagraphics in their comics ART D'ECCO and later ZOOT. The latter was collected in a hilarious and demented edition called ZOOT SUITE and is a great introduction to Roger's clean and precise style.

Currently, Roger is publishing a series about an idiot clown called FRED THE CLOWN, a sort of catch-all character for his extremely expansive imagination. Langridge clearly has drawn inspiration from MAD, both in its pre and post Harvey Kurtzman incarnations. Before the current FRED series, he did a one shot that reimagined Fred throughout the history of comics, where Langridge drew him in the style of virtually every important cartoonist of the 20th century. Langridge is not especially concerned whether or not you get the reference or the joke--he truly is cartooning for his own pleasure and that's what sets his gags apart. His skill as a mimic is astonishing, able to pull off Winsor McKay, Robert Crumb and Jack Kirby with equal ease. In the regular Fred series, Langridge shows off his love of 20's era animation with strips that evoke the weird feel of that time. While it's his art that's the main attraction, both in terms of humor and in sheer beauty, Roger can also get off a dizzying array of absurd lines. Within a panel about how "the strip is made", the narrator says: "The final decision, however, is always made by Fred the Clown himself." Fred: "Fred like this one." Roger: "That's a bank statement, Fred." "Fred insist." Narrator: "It's a jolly good thing that Mister Langridge's bank statements are in fact quite hilarious!"

Langridge is coming in from England to attend the show and will have a new issue of FRED with him. With a gag-heavy and classical style, his work is better seen than described, and he fortunately has a website at http://www.hotelfred.com/ that has tons of current and older work. He also appears on the roster at www.moderntales.com.

** Ellen Lindner: Lindner is my prime example in the "one to watch" category. Her talents and interests have been all over the place in her short life, but her self-assuredness as an artist grows from project to project. A mixture of wild abandon, trenchant wit and erudite scholar, Lindner's comics are utterly idiosyncratic and difficult to pin down. Some of them in fact go nowhere but are interesting exercises, while others capture the essence of some experience. There's a great graphic novel in her that's dying to get out (and from what I hear, it's slowly in the works), but in the meantime I'll simply enjoy the steady stream of minis and zines that she produces.
Linder publishes a zine called LITTLE WHITE BIRD/MEGACOM, which I took a shine to initially because it reminded me so much of my own zine days. Some of the layout is crude and a lot of the pieces are fluff, but the interviews are fun and the pieces that Lindner contributed on music and city life are enjoyable. The other half of the zine is all comics, and their quality varies. Some of Lindner's early, more unfocused efforts can be seen in last year's edition, but one can note her progress as a storyteller and an artist in the more recent edition.

Of greater interest to me are her minis. I would begin with BLONDE ON BLONDES, #1 and 2. Lindner is absolutely all over the place, with straight autobio stuff (a strip about 9/11 that appeared in Dark Horse's anthology), more veiled autobio material, stories about high school all-girl rock bands, biographies, slice of life and surreal accounts of films. One can sense how eager she is to explore a number of genres, particularly those that haven't had a lot of attention in comics of late. Her story of a Catholic schoolgirl and her rock band nails smartass teenage angst. Another story dealing with a beatnik girl going to college in the 50's also shines with smart dialogue.

Her autobiographical and semiautobiographical material demands the most attention, however. Lindner's most interesting story may be "The Best Year of My Life" followed immediately by a story called "The Worst Year of My Life"--with both stories covering exactly the same period of time, a year spent in France. Lindner's own stories resonate because they are told as stories, not autobiography, and so escape the tedium and navel-gazing that so often plague that genre. Instead, real life sneaks into her interesting anecdotes. Another favorite strip is Lindner's character in therapy, with the therapist giving her some unusual instructions. Then there's a strip about about a hip elderly woman who looks like Ellen in about 40 years or so. Another mini, THE EGG MYSTERIOUS, details a film and discussion Linder saw in person, said film leaving her mouth agape.

Lindner uses a lot of thick, bold black lines. There's very little use of grey or crosshatching, nor much feathering. The results are unusual, with a realistic style where the characters all look very slightly grotesque or distorted. The result keeps the reader off balance, with the stories themselves coming from a similarly skewed point of view. There are a lot of contradictions in the feel of her work: cynicism and romanticism, euphoria and dissolution, playfulness and lost innocence. Her comics keep a certain cool distance from the reader, but her lust for life comes through all of her work.

Check out her website at http://www.fantasticteam.com/lwb/. Lindner will also be in the SPX anthology this year, which is always recommended reading. Within a couple of years, I expect her to produce some truly lasting works. Until then, make sure to follow the development of a great artist in progress.

** Dash Shaw: Of all the artists on this list, 20-year old Shaw has the best chance of being a truly innovative comics master. Loosely associated with the neo-formalist group Meathaus, Shaw's work differs in that his work is strongly rooted in narrative. This doesn't prevent him from going absolutely crazy in the use of formal innovations and unusual techniques in panel design. There's nothing he won't try, and while not all of it is successful at this stage, it's all fascinating to watch. Shaw likes to use thick, expressive brush work and lots of blacks, throwing in mixed media techniques like collage. Matching his daring as an artist is his vivid imagination as a writer, plumbing his academic influences while always focusing on richly defined characters.

He has two projects currently available: a planned 10-chapter series called LOVE EATS BRAINS! and a mini-graphic novel called GARDENHEAD. He describes the former as "a zombie romance" and that's exactly what it is. It centers around a young man named Williams who is being yelled at by his girlfriend Julie because of his involvement with another woman named Nachi. Nachi was an outsider raised in Japan who became obsessed with comics--but primarily in the spaces between panels. This obsession with spaces inbetween led her to film zombies in the local graveyard, because she felt that with death, zombies were no longer concerned with the survival instincts that prevented humans from fully being able to create art. (Yes, zombies are taken as a given here.) Chapter 1 makes you stand up and pay attention, but the visual pyrotechnics begin in chapter 2. Shaw often views panels as puzzle pieces, connecting and then fracturing images. Panels warp and bend as the story gets stranger, and Japanese language characters pop up and plays significant roles. I believe Chapter 4 (the newest one) will be available at SPX.

LOVE EATS BRAINS! is a fascinating series, but it was really just a warmup for what he did with GARDENHEAD. The story is concerned with learning, language, school and our roles in society. It skips from being a kindergarten-type primer, matching up things under the letter A (apple with a drawing of an apple, arrow with a drawing of an arrow), until it reaches "art"--a frame hung in a gallery. This is continued as we are introduced to our three characters: a boy named Raymond, his older brother and a college age woman. Raymond is struggling with his kindergarten art class, as his teacher constantly berates him for not following the standards of art--but praises all of his classmates, comparing their work to Mondrian and Giotto! His brother is a college librarian whose real love is phrenology, the old pseudo-science that claimed it could determine a person's character by the bumps on their head. He has a date with the young woman, a bulimic with a vehement distrust of language. The comic details their relationship and Raymond's struggles, often inserting clip art or anatomical diagrams for effect. It's nothing short of the best comic I've read in 2002.

That said, Shaw's work is still a bit rough, with errors in spelling and lettering here and there. The production values are also somewhat primitive at this point--GARDENHEAD very much has the feel of a DIY zine rather than a professional graphic novel. That is part of its appeal, but I don't see it as essential to Shaw's work. Rather, I see him as someone still absorbing influences both within and outside of art. Shaw's influences vary, but his writing is informed by philosophy and cultural studies, as well as art history and criticism. He'll have a story in the upcoming NEW THING anthology, and you can read his comics athttp://www.dashshaw.com/. He'll be sitting at the Meathaus table at SPX.

** Drew Weing: A common kind of comic seen these days is the cartoon diary, an innovation made popular by James Kochalka in his very popular SKETCHBOOK DIARIES. It's an appealling kind of strip to do because it's a combination of doing sketchbook exercises, having them printed for all the world to see, and blogging. That's why you'll see lot of these cartoon diaries on the web, and as one would guess, they vary wildly in quality. One of the best is from a young artist named Drew Weing, a graduate of the Savannah College of Art & Design's Sequential Art program. His JOURNAL COMIC can be seen on a nearly-daily basis at his website, (http://www.drewweing.com). Compilations of his JOURNAL COMIC as well as his other work will be available at SPX.

What separates Weing from the other diarists is that first, he treats each strip as a truly discrete entity and not just a throwaway sketchbook item. Second, each strip has a definite sense of closure. That closure is not always a punchline, but it does always get his theme across. Third, Weing is genuinely amusing. Even though he's living the typical lifestyle of a 20-something (group house, unsatisfying job, never enough money), he rarely mines the kind of humor one would expect, and never tries to pretend that his life is especially compelling. Weing views himself as a person, not a character, and that viewpoint is refreshing after reading more egomaniacal autobio comics. As he writes in his masthead: "A daily comic 'diary.' Why should you care about my life? Beats me." This lack of pretension makes it easy to like him.

The other interesting thing about the strip is that unlike many diarists, his strip is not relentlessly upbeat. In fact, an undertone of ennui that borders on desperation permeates the strip as he struggles to find ways to stave off boredom. The journal strip was clearly his answer to finding a way to keep doing work while struggling with his difficult advertising job. Despite that streak of desperation, Weing as depicted in this strip is not a loser; he has a number of friends and rarely feels sorry for himself. Of course, the tricky thing about autobio is that the artist chooses what we get to see, but Weing does a good job at depicting the mundane as well as more significant events in his life.

The other thing that recommends this strip is the high quality in its craft. Weing keeps it simple visually, imparting an iconic quality to himself and his friends, but his uses of thick lines and blacks helps the strip avoid too cutesy a look. The JOURNAL COMIC looks like a series of exercises designed by Weing to help him keep doing comics and improve, but his attention to detail makes it a delight for fans. This is not formally innovative work in any sense; both the format and subject matter have been done many times in alternative comics. Also, the format is inherently limiting in some ways; at some point, I'd like to see Weing take up a more ambitious project. Regardless, I would recommend Weing's work to anyone who enjoys well-crafted autobio with an eye towards entertaining an audience, not just the artist himself. I recommend reading it from the beginning if you have the time, as well as picking it up in paper form.

** Kurt Wolfgang: He's the biggest smartass in comics and the creator of some of its most tender, sensitive moments. Wolfgang both writes evocative, sad stories about loss and love and then creates minicomics slagging just that kind of story. Often associated with Highwater Books he's a sort of court jester of the alternative comics world, skewering its pretensions better than any outsider could. At the same time, he makes fun of himself. Contradictory? Sure. But it's no contradiction to enjoy every single thing he publishes, writes and/or edits, because his humor cuts deep and his stories are genuinely touching, all with a startling visual style.

Wolfgang has primarily been known for being able to assemble that rarest of creatures: the quality minicomics anthology. It's called LOW-JINX, and has had an amazing list of talent in its three issues. The second issue was subtitled "The Horrible Truth About Reinventing Minicomics (The Bastard Format)", and it featured Wolfgang, Johnny Ryan, and Tony Consiglio. Among others. Wolfgang's features stood out, as his first was not only a hilarious parody of Scott McCloud, it actually tried to define minicomics (in a chapter appropriately titled "What The Fuck Is A Mini-Comic?"). Wolfgang struck again with a story about the lonely life of a minicomic creator, with lines like "I'm sorry, Mr Wolfgang, but we've just recently discovered that india ink causes impotence".

Wolfgang and friends take it to the next level with LOW-JINX #3, subtitled "The Big Rip-Off". This was a full-out assault on alternative comics, with an artist choosing to satirize or parody another well-known artist's work. Part of the fun was figuring out which artist did which parody. Do yourself a favor and seek this out. While Jordan Crane eviscerating Chris Ware was brilliant, Wolfgang was once again the star of his own anthology with a riff on potty humor cartoonist Johnny Ryan that takes on the entire indy scene. Wolfgang won an Ignatz for Outstanding Minicomic for LOW-JINX #2 and #3 was nominated for the never-awarded Ignatz last year as well.

Just when you think that Wolfgang is making a career as a wiseass parodist, he turns around and produces WHERE HATS GO, a wordless comic originally printed as part of the 5th issue of the anthology NON that is now sold on its own. HATS is a sweet tale about a boy who loses a prized hat given to him by his grandfather, and the extraordinary lengths he goes to in order to retrieve it. Along the way, he is aided by a girl clearly in love with him whom he essentially ignores--except when she assists him in finding his hat. What makes this more than a sugary trifle is the ambiguous relationship between the boy and girl, and Wolfgang's eye-popping art. Wolfgang favors heavy blacks with a style influenced somewhat by 20's animation and somewhat by more familiar underground artists. But his panel design and layout is wholly unique.

You can really see Wolfgang go to town in his new project, an adaptation of the classic PINOKIO. He's printed the first chapter as a minicomic and it already is several leaps ahead of HATS in terms of its innovative design. The darker, sadder subject also lends itself well to Wolfgang's approach. Once again, this comic is wordless, and Wolfgang effortlessly conveys emotion and meaning through his design and clever visual cues. An example comes when the elderly Gepetto has just fixed a radio and puts it on. The radio becomes the center of the page, fracturing it and creating different panels for each station it's turned to. Wolfgang may be found at Top Shelf's booth, since they will be publishing PINOKIO once it's completed. Check out his style at http://members.aol.com/noefiepub/.