Mini-Comics Round-Up: Sayers, Dinski, M.Hogan, R.Hogan, Trivial, Carcieri

Rob reviews another batch of interesting minicomics. Included are JUST SO YOU KNOW #1 by Joey Sayers; TRIVIAL, an anthology by Sean Ford, Alex Kim, Andrew Arnold & Alexis Frederick-Frost; MIND-MAPPING by Will Dinski; BEARD-GROWING CONTEST by Raighne Hogan; MANNY & BIGFOOT by Meghan Hogan; and PORTALS #1 & DREAM #1 by Nic Carcieri & Eric Dotson.



JUST SO YOU KNOW, by Joey Sayers. This mini is certainly a change of pace for the artist behind the "Thingpart" gag strips. Sayers generally employs a minimalist but nicely composed style for absurdist gags that skillfully subvert reader expectations. Her comics remind me a bit of Matt Feazell (in terms of the minimalist style) and Michael Kupperman (in terms of the quality of the absurd gagsmithing). JUST SO YOU KNOW is an autobiographical comic featuring anecdotes about Sayers' transition from male to female. I've actually read a surprising number of autobiographical comics about this subject, but Sayers' strips here are unusual because she takes great pains to provide every anecdote with a punchline. No matter how personal or serious a direction she takes the reader, Sayers always leavens the seriousness with a joke. The joke is frequently at her own expense. One gets the sense that Sayers was worried about being boring or preachy in a comic that was already (by definition) entirely self-centered. Pricking her own ego from time to time acts as preventative medicine for the reader who might think that Sayers takes herself way too seriously.

The impression one walks away with after reading this comic is that it's only because of the greater ease she feels in the world and with herself that she was not only able to write about this subject, but make fun of it. The first strip, "Freaking Out The Parents" starts off with some stiff medicine, as she tells her parents (and the audience) about the way she's struggled trying to live as a man, her depression and how she felt the need to turn to drugs. She kept going on like this for several panels, noting that she just wanted to be happy, until we are hit with her father saying, "Wait, you did drugs?" Sayers once again sets the reader up with one expectation and then pulls the rug out, establishing the formula for the rest of the comic.

Sayers gives us certain bits of the process of transition and the anxiety a transgendered person can feel, but isn't interested in presenting us with all the details. This comic is really about her own thoughts about transition, both funny and otherwise, as opposed to making a larger statement about it. There are vignettes about how hormones affect her emotional state (which create more than a little unease with both her and her girlfriend), being excited about growing breasts and getting a state ID confirming her new identity, and wondering if she's a bitch now in various circumstances. She closes things out by focusing on the relationship with her long-time and supportive girlfriend, as Sayers went from cross-dresser to transsexual. All told, this is a clear early front-runner for minicomic of the year for 2009, and I'm eager to see Sayers do more stories in this mold. She has a gift for relating personal details without being insufferable and of mining humor without forcing punchlines.



TRIVIAL, by Alexis Frederick-Frost, Alex Kim, Andrew Arnold and Sean Ford. The third of the Center for Cartoon Studies' "Four Square" anthologies is the strongest overall. Every quartet of artists in each issue works around a central theme, with this issue's being "trivial". That's a rather open-ended concept, which leads to four very different sorts of stories. Frederick-Frost's bold brush strokes and heavy use of blacks are a perfect way to open the book, drawing in the reader's eye with the starkness of his style. It's a style that fits the story well, being about the harsh beauty of Antarctica and a Shackleton expedition there. As he and his men trudge across the unforgiving landscape, the only way they could keep their sanity was by discussing the most inane of topics: conceptualizing new dishes and then debating their merits and originality. During a heated debate about the jam roll, Frederick-Frost underscores the nature of their struggle by printing the rather restrained text of Shackelton's account of the debate but showing a life-or-death struggle in the ice. It's a clever idea, well-executed.


Alex Kim and his weird, wavy line really go to town on a trivial conversation that turns into a graphic description of a weird nightmare. Kim throws us straight into a talking head with no explanation (not unusual in his comics), as the character is talking to someone we never see (one can surmise that the reader is really his conversational partner). The character talks about his obsession with hands and then relates a dream where he discovers his hands have become gigantic, sentient and murderous--eventually killing him, even as they were still attached to his body. What makes the story work is the way Kim uses panel-to-panel transitions, slowly panning down and around to up the horror content of the story. The effect is deliberately disjointed, creating an intense dream logic that continues until we slowly, creepily pan back to the character in real time. This is less a story than an image that Kim expanded and fleshed out, and it's the strength of that image that makes this chapter memorable.

Andrew L Arnold has an entry about a retired god/superhero who lives on a cloud. His day starts off reading a book, and he is then presented with a problem that is seemingly trivial at first but grows ever more problematic: a meteor heading toward a city that his explosive arrows just won't blow up. In the end, his luck (and aim) run just a little bit awry. This is a nicely designed chapter with a funny punchline that is deliberately stretched out like a shaggy dog story. It's a bit more conventional than the other stories in this anthology and less interesting to simply look at, but it's solidly crafted.



Sean Ford checks in with a couple of vignettes related to his ONLY SKIN series, featuring the odd ghost and new kid Clay. In the series, the ghost is mischievous at best and malevolent at worst, but he's more the former in these stories. In the first vignette, Clay and the ghost are mushrooming and the ghost urges him to give a poisonous mushroom to a nearby girl. When Clay refuses, the ghost mocks him like a grade schooler. In the second story, the ghost longs for nostalgic memories that are not really his, like drinking vodka and smoking cigarettes in a cemetery. The punchline comes when Clay actually does it for him and it's not exactly as exciting as he hoped. Ford's biggest strengths are character design and page composition. He solves the problem of what are essentially two talking head stories by varying his panel design, having the characters engage in visually interesting actitivies while they talk and dropping characters into shadow as a way of adding variety. All of that would be pointless if Ford weren't so adept at crafting dialogue. Clay acts as a nice straight man of sorts for the ghost, whose enigmatic nature lends itself to all sorts of possibilities. It's not surprising that a good chunk of the crew behind the SUNDAYS anthology would produce such a visually distinctive book with great production values, and it's clear that they all approached their contributions to this book very seriously.



MIND-MAPPING, by Will Dinski. Another winner from Will Dinksi, who always engages the form of his delivery system in new and exciting ways. This comic is about memory as it relates to pain, and the ways in which the things we recall tend to be very much by choice. It's about a map specialty store owner with a photographic memory, who laments that he is haunted by the specters of his memories, recalling them more sharply than most. He relates in excrutiating detail various incidents burned into his brain. Upon discovering that his store has been robbed, including of his laptop, he realizes that perhaps a lifetime spent dwelling on the mental recreation of trauma has left him more than a little unobservant. That realization perhaps let him realize that the ghosts he was haunted by were of his own making.



The comic unfolds like a typical Dinski work: crisply stylized characters, word balloons that act as individual captions and a certain economy of line and storytelling. The comic folds out like a map, which not only refers back to the main character but also the way he thought of memory as a series of grids that one could access. When one has finished the comic, Dinski gives us a little surprise: turn out the lights and then look at the glow-in-the-dark images that pop up. It's a clever flourish for a story that had a lot of punch and wasted no time to get there. Dinski's been on a real roll the past couple of years, and this mini certainly continues his hot streak. I like how he goes out of his way to create comics that are difficult to reprint in standard format, fully embracing the freedom and difficulties that creating minicomics provide.





BEARD GROWING CONTEST by Raighne Hogan and MANNY & BIGFOOT by Meghan Hogan. This is a pair of tiny minis from the husband-wife duo behind the excellent GOOD MINNESOTAN anthology. Both of these minis are beautiful, weird art objects; they're less stories than quick impressions. R.Hogan's BEARD GROWING CONTEST is a brief little vignette about a little kid straining to grow a beard and unleashing a fart instead, with the real punchline being what happens in his dreams later on. The full-color MANNY & BIGFOOT feels like a story fragment, as a man and his pet rabbit are threatened by a mysterious kidnapping note, while his sweater-stretching roommate Bigfoot messes with him. The soft pastels grab the eye and create an almost blurry softness for the visuals. The production values of both minis are top notch, even if the comics themselves are the very definition of "slight". Still, it's clear that that's what both cartoonists were going for: a slight, fun comic that served as a useful test for some eye-catching techniques.



DREAMER #1 and PORTALS #1 by Nic Carcieri, Rantz, Jason Flowers, Joel Cotejar, and Eric Dotson. There's something comforting about a writer who is so devoted to creating genre comics that he puts them out bit by bit in minicomics form. There's no pretense to being rich or famous, but rather an intense need to tell one's stories. As part of United Fanzine Organization, these comics have the appearance of work by enthusiastic amateurs rather than polished pros, but this is honestly what is most appealing about them. With both DREAMER and PORTALS, we get a tiny snapshot of a larger idea, the effect being watching the first five-minute segment of a 25-part movie serial from the 1930s. DREAMER'S about a guy who receives a weird artifact of his father's that has something to do with some kind of ancient struggle. I like the unfussy line of artist Eric Dotson here, even if it is a bit stiff in places. Every story in PORTALS is a bit of high concept: both "Kylie West" and "Hot Wings" involve big-boobed heroines engaging in adventure; the former's about an astronaut who winds up on a weird planet, and the latter is about warrior angels. The stylizations of artist Rantz veer between sloppy and fetishistic, drawing equally from manga and Image-style art. As such, it feels more like pin-up art than something that really tells a story. Jason Flowers' work in "Are We Dead Yet?" (about an immortal detective) tries for noir but winds up being muddy (including the lettering). "The London Fog" is the most ridiculous concept in the book (a magical Victorian-era vigilante preying on killers in the form of fog) yet Joel Cotejar's linework makes the idea come alive. I like the enthusastic fan ambition of Carcieri in that he's writing five epics at once (if in dribs and drabs), almost as if he's finding out what will stick best. It's that purity of enthusiasm that shows through, even if some of the stories feel like well-trod genre ground. Other than the loopy-but-serious "London Fog", I can't say that I'd be eager to read further installments of any of these series, but I'm glad that they exist.

Thirty Under Thirty #5: Juliacks

Rob interviews the cartoonist Juliacks, the latest subject in the "30 Under 30" series of interviews, wherein an emerging cartoonist is profiled. I just profiled Juliacks at length, and I find both her training as an artist and point of view to be quite distinctive. She's the rare artist who approaches a problem from many different angles and is comfortable working in a number of different media in order to fully wrap her mind around an idea.



I. Formative Years

CLOUGH: Where did you grow up? Were/are your parents of an artistic bent?

JULIACKS: I moved around a bit growing up and lived in Los Angeles, Munich Germany, and New Jersey. My parents are not artists but they are creative in their own ways. They have shaped me in their zeal for knowledge and interest in multifarious stories while also being seemingly fearless.

CLOUGH: What effect, if any, did moving around a lot have on you as both a person and formative artist?

JULIACKS: I adapt to different settings and people somewhat easily. I'm attracted to people who seem unapproachable. I like challenges. I absorb places and people and also do not necessarily feel attached to one place. Sometimes I feel like a transient but I think I will eventually find a place that fits. Maybe not.

CLOUGH: When did you first start drawing?

JULIACKS: I remember drawing a collaborative fingerpainting with some kids in German kindergarten.


CLOUGH: Were your parents supportive of art as an activity?

JULIACKS: I think I always loved to draw but was definitely encouraged and supported by my parents, although I didn't always agree with their opinions. My father actually collected S. Clay Wilson and R. Crumb back in the day but my mother made him throw away those comics because she was afraid my siblings and I would discover them.


CLOUGH: Did you draw with your parents, friends, and/or siblings?

JULIACKS: I think that I mostly drew with friends. I had one friend in particular with whom I would make silly drawings. I always liked drawing games like the exquisite corpse and things like that.

CLOUGH: Do you approach each page knowing exactly what you're planning to do, or do you approach it as an improvisational exercise at times?

JULIACKS: Lately I've been planning out each page. The text determines what the page will look like.


CLOUGH: When did you first start drawing comics?

JULIACKS: I was drawn to comics in high school and started making ones with a very silly bent like transgendered robots that find love with my friend Alice Crackel. I didn't feel confident about my own writing skills until college.

CLOUGH: It's interesting that you were more confident as an artist than as a writer. How do you perceive yourself now--as an artist who writes, a writer who draws, or do you now perceive no difference between the two?

JULIACKS: They are both equally important but I do find writing extremely challenging whereas art is more of an intuitive impulse, but still hard. In turn, I think of myself as both...but still lean more toward art because it comes more naturally.


CLOUGH: I know you went to Carnegie Mellon. Did you study art there? Why did you choose to go to a liberal arts school as opposed to an art institute?

JULIACKS: I went to Carnegie Mellon University because I wanted to be in a University setting where I could take humanities courses. Specifically I went there for this special degree called the Bachelor of Humanities and Arts which is an integrative arts and humanities degree. My concentrations were art and creative writing. The art school was based in conceptual thinking determining the method and medium of execution. This was great for me as I was able to explore my stories with all the freedom I wanted.

CLOUGH: How did this program enable you to become a more confident writer?

JULIACKS: Well the School of Humanities at Carnegie Mellon housed one of the first departments of creative writing in the country. This department is special because there aren't any graduate students which means that if you are a dedicated and enthusiastic writer you can have wonderful mentors with small workshops. My mentors were especially Hilary Masters, and also Jane McCafferty, Jane Bernstein, and Sharon Dilworth.


CLOUGH: How long have you been reading comics?

JULIACKS: I started as a kid but was never zealous just about comics. I've always been a bookworm. What is it about the form that inspired you to want to make them yourself? In high school I started reading comics by R. Crumb (my friend's Dad didn't throw them out) and Daniel Clowes and loved how raw and personal and graphically tactile they were. There is and was something exciting about them in the reading experience. I like how comics are a combination of many different forms of thinking. Reading and drawing comics when you are really involved makes you think on many different levels: visually, metaphorically, character but also image, icon and symbols, repetition and meter.

CLOUGH: It's interesting that you touch on repetition & meter and later reference John Hankiewicz. Do you see comics as, among other things, a form of poetry?

JULIACKS: I guess when I'm approaching the work I'm looking at the text which I have written which is sometimes written with poetic language. I think the experience of reading comics can be similar to reading poetry because of all the different visual and written elements both in sight and imagination that are happening at the same time.


CLOUGH: Is the act of drawing pleasurable for you, or a chore? Do you draw from life and/or keep a sketchbook?

JULIACKS: I love to draw. Drawing a comic is very challenging for me and each time I start I think that I am relearning how to draw. I used to draw from life and keep a sketchbook but not lately, I keep notebooks for ideas and composition concepts. I tend to draw on papers that are within my reach, I have many notebooks but not one sketchbook. I like to draw when listening to others speak.

CLOUGH: Why is that? Is it something about the rhythm of speech that makes you want to draw ?

JULIACKS: I like having an auditory distraction while drawing. As opposed to the rhythm of the speech, I like listening to other's ideas and stories while engaged with my own work. For some reason it helps me focus.



II. The Working Process

CLOUGH: Unlike most cartoonists, performance is as much a part an expression of your themes is the page itself. What is it about performance art that compels you to do it? Do you value either the page or performance above each other, or do you regard them equally?

JULIACKS: Both mediums are important to my personality and artistic process. Making comics is a solitary, reflective and meditative pursuit, which I am used to doing independently, while performance artworks are collaborative, social, relational, and energetic forces bringing together many people to participate and view live art! I regard them as equally challenging and dynamic and they suit my personality of being an introverted extrovert.


CLOUGH: The way you use text in your comics makes it very much part of the illustration; you focus on making the text illustrative on its own. Why do you do this?

JULIACKS: The way we read images can be interpreted in the same way that we read text. Making text illustrative is another method to tell the story and I find it evocative to think and work within that idea.


CLOUGH: Your pages tend to be crammed full: details, panels, decorative designs, solid blacks. Is this just your intuitive way of composing a page or is this a more deliberate strategy?

JULIACKS: Well, in a general sense I think artwork that is full of details makes you look longer and possibly see the picture differently each time you look at it. I like work with layers, showing subtlety and expression. Especially in regards to the book Swell which has certain pages that are intensely dense, the strategy for the first part: Open Faced Sandwich was to contain one scene on one page. This effect would not only impact the emotional presence I was portraying in the story but also show how the character's mind was fragmented and changing with memories and events. The borders on each page are also significant in terms of telling the story for the same reason.


CLOUGH: Your comics have what I call an immersive quality to them, in that the reader is dunked into a character's experience on their own terms. What do you hope your readers get from your comics, and do you feel that your work demands that readers approach your work on its own terms?

JULIACKS: My hope is to portray an engaging story that provokes the reader to be lifted into another world like any other storyteller. When I set out to make comics my mindset isn't to be demanding necessarily. When I am making work I want to be interested in what I am making, so I go slowly in order to become immersed in the page myself. I want the pages to be captivating images so that I am satisfied, otherwise it's a bad day.

CLOUGH: You've done a number of comics collaborations, and of course your performances are often collaborative as well. What is it that you like about working with other artists?

JULIACKS: Other artists have fascinating ideas and perspectives. Collaborations are challenging in that there is always compromise but usually the energy and motivation level is amped up so that you can achieve things you wouldn't otherwise on your own. In addition, besides being stimulated by others' ideas and expertise I like having an outside perspective on the worlds I have created where I am subjective and sometimes unaware of the effects of what I am making. Collaborators can clue you into that outside objective view in an insightful way.

Currently I'm collaborating with director Kathleen Amshoff on the final performance of Swell to coincide with the publishing of either the full book or the third part. We aim to work across disciplines as a means of finding new, transformative languages of performance by making a site-specific, multimedia, interactive performance intertwining the narrative of *Swell *with private rituals in which the audience is invited to participate.

CLOUGH: Your comic with Austin English is simultaneously dense and playful. What were setting out to accomplish with that story?

JULIACKS: That comic was a playful drawing jam where we were having fun just drawing together. I think that later on we could do a more extensive collaboration where the writing and the drawings are more planned out. It would be interesting to see the results.

CLOUGH: How are your collaborations with Matthew Thurber and Olga Volozova different, and why did you want to work with each artist?

JULIACKS: Well, the collaboration with Olga was actually Dylan Williams' (Sparkplug Comics) idea, which I immediately embraced because I thought that she was an interesting artist and I am always up for a challenge. Over the course of this book we have gotten to know one another and it has been a really different way of making a comic for me. The Matthew Thurber collaboration has yet to be finalized and I'm not sure when it will be finished. That collaboration also comes out of a drawing jam kind of thing where one person starts drawing something and then passes it on to the next person and they build upon it. The one we hope to work on, "The Opera" will hopefully one day be completed. The hope is that each page will be a song and may come with an operatic CD. Who knows?


CLOUGH: What do you get out of these experiences that you don't get working on your own?

JULIACKS: In addition, besides being stimulated by other people's ideas and expertise I like having an outside perspective on the worlds I have created where I am subjective and sometimes unaware of the effects of what I am making. Collaborators can clue you into that outside objective view in an understanding way.


CLOUGH: In what ways do you prefer working on your own?

JULIACKS: I love the freedom to pursue what I want and how I want it. Sometimes it is fun to be in control especially if I have an idea that I want to execute and know that I want to do it in a certain way.



III. The Themes

CLOUGH: A number of the same themes to tend crop up in your comics. I'd like to get your take on why each one of them is important to you as an artist.

JULIACKS: These themes you have selected are large and reflective of different fascinations, life experiences, fears and social causes. I think that many of these themes are relevant to society today and I try to process my own experiences in fictional terms. I feel that in some cases I would like to keep a personal distance between myself and the work. All of these themes are tied together...

CLOUGH: Is there a reason why you prefer not to work in a more explicitly autobiographical manner?

JULIACKS: A couple of reasons: One is that I am not really interested in that genre because it has been produced in so many different forms of comics already. I'm more excited about what you can do with a narrative by constructing characters, a story and a world. Second is that I'm not interested in that kind of exposure and I'd rather process my experiences through writing fiction and sometimes leave them behind altogether by entering someone else's mind.

1. Grief/grieving:

Things I am interested in related to grief and grieving: Repression, death awareness. Today there are adverse reactions: death denial, alienation and shame. How do we process these mourning movements today in a world that doesn't stop to recognize or have satisfactory methods of dealing with this particular form of madness?

2. Mental illness: Fear mongering. The easy lapses. How easy? The inner monologue. The provocations. Alienation. Isolation and the mind. Crazy. How and what is crazy? What is functional? HYSTERIA. Related to aging, the more alone, the more on the fringes--- the more willing to make and think without fear and without logic.

3. Aging. Where do we go physically and mentally? How often do we lose? How many do we love? What if we are alone? Aging and the search for identity are related in their confusion, their
place in society, and their desire for more.

4. The search for identity, especially as a teenager is the foundation of self. Exploration. Self awareness. Raging.

5. Memory. Our black hole. Where we can get lost. How we define ourselves. How we process our experience. The degradation. The idealization. The abstraction. The loose bits. Also: neuroscience: the way we tell a story reflects our inner psychological state.

CLOUGH: Can you explain how the latter plays out in your comics?

JULIACKS: The scientific ideas of neuroscience influence my performance installations more than my comics except for now with the book I'm working on Rock That Never Sleeps which features stories about the effects of memory as it wanes. These ideas fascinate me as do the people who are affected by neurological disorders. I like combining these ideas with fiction, although doing this will reflect a probably inaccurate representation of the idea as the scholar propagated.

6. The creative urge. A means to an end. Where does the compulsion to make art come from? For some people art comes out of a need to create. I realize that in a secular world, art-making fills the gap once occupied by community rituals and religion; I am interested in art as a therapeutic process-both its viewing and its creation.

CLOUGH: Do you find that first creating and then later viewing your own art is therapeutic for you?

JULIACKS: Creating work is helpful for synthesizing past experiences and in that way can be cathartic. Viewing my own work at a later date is not.

CLOUGH: What do you feel when you look at your own comics and performances later on?

JULIACKS: It depends on how much distance I have from the work. I usually do not get the response from my own work that I seek out in others, just because I'm too subjective.



IV. Other Questions

CLOUGH: As someone who has been part of both the comics world and the art world, how would you compare the two?

JULIACKS: The concerns of both worlds on the surface seem very different. This question is hard because both groups are so diverse formally and in ideas that I find it hard to grapple with specifics. The art world feels a lot bigger to me, but that may be because the levels of access are different than within comics which is much more accessible. I feel more of a sense of freedom when I think in terms of "art." than in "comics." but then again I feel free in comics to do anything because the medium has tons to explore and expand upon.

CLOUGH: Why do you feel more freedom in "art" as opposed to "comics"--is it the form of comics itself (and perhaps its history) that is limiting, or is it something else?

JULIACKS: I'm not really sure. I think it's related to my personal art school background that pushed students to make experimental individualized work and educated us within a broad spectrum. When I am at conventions there seems to be a dialogue that is contentious about the place of art comics within the tradition of comics and things that herald traditional forms, which isn't bad, but is not as free feeling to me. My view about these terms will probably change because they are based on how I feel today.............and it's all in my head. There aren't rules in comics like anything else.


CLOUGH: Is there a sense of community in either that has been important to you?

JULIACKS: I really loved my art school community that was always encouraging and promoted art creating as a form of research. My professors and fellow students were inspiring in that many had a singular vision but were accepting of other's flights of fancy. I've enjoyed starting to be a part of the comics community where I can have a dialogue with another artist on a few levels and interests. I remember my first Small Press Expo was so exciting to meet so many people who were as into comics as me and who made such sweet work.


CLOUGH: Are you currently able to make a living as a cartoonist/artist?

JULIACKS: Nope, but I am teaching comics and art to kids, so something halfway in between?


CLOUGH: What's the art scene like for you in Los Angeles?

JULIACKS: Well, I have just arrived and still am trying to find my bearings. I need more time for exploring the city and finding my way. Right now I'm not very engaged, but I'm sure it will get easier as time goes by.


CLOUGH: What comics are you currently reading?

JULIACKS: I just read Theo Ellsworth's Capacity and really want the international anthology Glomp, which features work by cartoonists that are portraying comics three dimensionally.


CLOUGH: Whose cartoonists' work do you find most inspiring, and which cartoonists have had the greatest influence on you?

JULIACKS: I always find this question hard because there are different elements that have grabbed me. I love the nuance of Chris Ware, the sincerity and moments of Austin English, the craftmanship of the Closed Caption Comics Crew and Chris Cornwell, the depth of the Codex Serafini, often I'm inspired by other works of art that seem to grasp what I strive for as well. This theater group Back to Back Theater in Australia made this piece, "Small Metal Objects" which was so amazing. and this artist, Eija-Liisa Ahtila makes incredible film art representing the inner workings of the mind in physical form. Language is important to me. I love comics by John Hankiewicz and Paper Rad for that reason. I love books and characters. Mostly, I'm ignorant and need to read, see and hear more and that is why I can't properly answer this question.


CLOUGH: SWELL, in my opinion, is your most ambitious work as a cartoonist. What was the inspiration for this story, and do you perceive yourself as doing something different in this work as opposed to your past comics? How do you feel you've evolved as a cartoonist in the past three or four years?

JULIACKS: This story began as a seedling in the fall of 2007 with the original plot and character founded. Later, while studying abroad in Australia, I lost a close friend from High School. This was a shocking experience for me filled with guilt, regret and assailing grief. I felt alienated and put these emotions into the story I had already structured. At the same time I began studying fiction that played with perspective and time like the author Marguerite Duras and looked back upon old favorites such as Hubert Selby Jr.'s "Last Exit to Brooklyn."

In terms of my evolution, I guess I'm still searching for what I am supposed to be. I still want more from myself. I want Swell when it's all said and done to live up to something unreal but something that I can't escape now. My friend Ben Powell who died kind of challenged me when I was 18 writing, "Where is a comic book that comes down screaming from the sky like a comic book should, full fucks, and lands in yer lap, ignites itself on your general area, and takes off, runnin' into you, the greatest superhero of all, so good it's better than cream dreams of the New Yorker, a super comic man to undermine J. Kavalos and separate Teaneck from the North American Continent. It puts me in contact with a comic to destroy the fucking green areas on the earth and the mold." So hopefully one day I will find it and make it. but i probably won't.

Immersion: The Comics of Juliacks

Rob profiles emerging young artist Juliacks and does an overview of her comics work to date.

The work of cartoonist Juliacks is a bit hard to pin down. She's part of an emerging trend in comics where the plastic qualities of text and image are equally emphasized as objects of one's aesthetic gaze. Words aren't used simply to impart information, drive a narrative or otherwise act separately from pictures. Instead, the actual letters themselves become part of the imagery, creating a reading environment that immerses the reader in the work in a way that can be exhausting and rewarding. This act of apprehending each page in order to make sense of the narrative is very different from the typical comics page in that in the latter instance it's much easier to compartmentalize one's reading experience, either looking at images and then reading text or vice-versa. Most readers don't consciously consider the choices they make reading such comics pages, and any skilled cartoonist can approximate a synthesis of the two experiences. Juliacks and the other practitioners of the "immersive school" (which includes Austin English, Theo Ellsworth and Olga Volozova) instead seek a true synthesis, where neither word nor image is privileged above the other and other forms of signifiers are used as well.

It can be a bit daunting to engage these sorts of comics; they demand that you accept them on their own terms or not at all. They can be difficult to begin and adjust to as a reader. Of course, once a reader has locked into this style, the stories become impossible to put down. It doesn't hurt that Juliacks has excellent compositional chops as a cartoonist, seamlessly assembling a number of complicated images on each page. Her figure drawing is simple and ranges more toward a primitivist technique, but it's also not unusual to see her go a bit more abstract in the way she represents her characters. Juliacks stuffs every one of her pages with powerful imagery, drowning the reader in drawings intended both as information and decoration (and frequently designed to do both). Trying to process that much information on a page (especially when the eye is not led to value one image over another) can be draining as a reader, and Juliacks often goes over the top in jamming her pages to the brim. Still, one can sense the raw energy and excitement present in her comics, and the level of detail certainly rewards repeated readings.

While Juliacks' narrative structure isn't as straightforward as Volozova's, there is always a fairly simple narrative, centered around one or more characters. She uses comics as one springboard to explore those ideas that she finds interesting: memory, loss, aging, grief, disease and emotional trauma. She slips in and out of first-person and third-person narrative but will present either in a sort of stream-of-consciousness fashion. That's entirely fitting with the immersive style of comics, given that stream-of-consciousness is all about creating structure without intentionality; that is, what appears to be random is in fact subliminally creating a narrative.

While Juliacks' comics are certainly self-contained entities, it's interesting to note that she's very much a multi-media artist. In fact, she often adapts her comics as performance art, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that both comics and performance art are different outlets for the expression of her ideas. The themes are all the same, but the experience of the pieces themselves couldn't be any more different. The live performances are built on a series of explosive moments instead of a more still, immersive experience on the page. If Juliacks' comics are the equivalent of being submerged in her ideas, her performance pieces are like having those themes splashed in one's face. It's fascinating to see a cartoonist reaching out to a live audience in such a way, achieving a sort of immediacy of reaction that is lacking in comics. These performances can be viewed on her website, but I'm guessing those clips fail to capture the viscerality of an actual live performance seen in person. What is obvious is the way Juliacks is able to completely rework her ideas into something that takes advantage of a live performance. The clips of her are kinetic, even frenzied, emphasizing body and movement on the stage as a complement to the way she exaggerates emotion on the page with her figure drawing and decorative flourishes.

It seems clear that Juliacks doesn't privilege one type of aesthetic experience over the other, and it may well be that she finds herself needing to engage in one type to balance out the time and creative energy she spends with the other. That said, it seems that comics may ultimately be a more effective way for her to explore her ideas, because it allows a greater degree of control. At the moment, restraint is not an attribute she seems all that interested in, but I sense that as she evolves as an artist, it will become something she seeks out.



One of her earlier comics (from 2006) is THE TALE OF OLD LADY MERRELL. It's about a woman living in a now-condemned house with the dolls that she's created, pondering what to do after she's learned that she's going to lose her house. This comic shifts visual tones on a page-by-page basis, making it a jarring (if involving) read. There's a density to each page--sometimes black & white, sometimes full color--that pounds at the reader. The line drawings are very typical Juliacks--thick black lines, grotesque figures, quirky decorative touches and text-as-art. However, as long as the reader commits and latches on to the narrative, it's a powerful experience.


The story is about what lies beneath the urge to create. The woman in the story created dolls, or rather, used the physical medium of creating dolls to tell stories. Those dolls were a form of therapy, embuing the essence of a particular event into physical form. It was no surprise that she viewed them as real, because as active agents of memory (and what is reconstructed memory but a kind of story?), they did have their own lives. With each doll, she disassociated a little more, after being separated from her own life for unspecified reasons. After an incident where two neighborhood girls freaked out when Merrell showed them a particular set of dolls, she became an outcast and created a doll that forever put her on the outside. For Merrell, the dolls were all she had left of life; she had long lost the ability to feel and connect to people. It was heartbreaking to see her give away her dolls, until she was only left with her first doll, an avatar of sorts. She left this world not just because her dolls were in danger, but her ability to continue as an artist and see her handiwork was being squelched. The reality is that this urge to create is what kept her alive, when she had no other reason really to live.



In her stories "Invisible Forces" and "Like Lace", we shift back to teen-aged years. The former follows a character over time, while the latter deals with a couple of particularly memorable days in school. "Invisible Forces", purports to be "a prelude to an apprenticeship in a mental home", detailing the "early tremors of Rody Plane". We see Rody's early years as she feels paralyzed by a feeling of smallness in the universe, being overwhelmed by infinity. That paralysis was exacerbated by her abusive mother and absent father and became more debilitating over time. As the comic ends, she's completely frozen, unable to move or think for herself. It's interesting that the cover of this comic resembles the title pages from Volozova's THE AIRY TALES and the splotchy use of color seems familiar in that regard as well. Color didn't really seem to add much to this story; Juliacks' most effective pages tend to be in stark black & white. This tends to highlight the decorative aspect of her pages most effectively.

"Like Lace" follows the torturous thought processes of Lydia, an outcast who is humiliated by her teacher after she bungles an oral book report. In this story, one can see Juliacks' work in a more formative state. While the emotional core of the story is painful and bold, and her figures are fascinatingly grotesque and distorted, she didn''t quite have the skill to create pages that conveyed information in a way that flowed smoothly. The crudeness of her composition clashed with the ambition of her storytelling here, but that ambition on display was certainly admirable. The story also lacked a number of decorative elements that we would see in future works, and it became clear that those non-narrative elements would go on to play a huge role in creating the immersive experience of her comics.

"Antelope Eater" followed a similarly tortured youth but for a different reason. It's about a young boy whose mother is suffering from multiple sclerosis and finds himself drawn further and further into a fantasy world to avoid dealing with the brutal day-to-day existence of watching his mother deteriorate. This story was successful in terms of merging word and image together for a gestalt experience. As a reader, that synthesis really added to the sense of entering a completely different world.


SWELL, however, is Juliacks' most accomplished and ambitious work to date. It's about a woman in her first year of college who is forced to attempt to cope with the sudden death of her older sister. Juliacks worked big here; the two issues to date are both about 12" x 11". The first part of SWELL, "Open-Faced Sandwich" had covers screenprinted on construction paper. What's most striking about these comics is the way in which Juliacks' sense of composition became much more advanced. There's a page where the story's protagonist, Emmeline, recalls an instance where her older sister, Lucy, smashed a bunch of eggs that Emmeline and her friends had decorated. There are decorative touches framing the page in the form of little eggs, and the panels are framed so as to form an egg. Juliacks changes her approach to a page at a frequently breakneck pace--going from a number of tiny panels in a row to huge splash pages.


The second issue introduced us to Emmeline's parents, who were equally at a loss to process Lucy's death. Juliacks drops hints that Lucy had some kind of mental affliction or processing disorder, judging by the awkwardness she felt in social situations and her general neuroses. This first part of this issue finds them all trying to sleep and struggling to do so. They all wind up "dreaming awake". Juliacks introduced each segment with a huge splash page depicting each of the individual characters, with a decorated egg-shape in their mouth that tells us they're dreaming awake. The next page is jam-packed with panels detailing each character's fears, hallucinations and neuroses, switching between an omniscient narrator and first-person stream-of-consciousness narration. It's occasionally a bumpy ride in a narrative sense, but Juliacks had a firm hand and never loses control of the page. When a sleepless Emmeline runs away, that throws her parents even further into panic and paralysis, even as Emmeline feels like she's moving toward some kind of resolution.




This series is one of the best explorations of memory and its connection to emotion that I've ever read. Most intriguing is the way Juliacks connects the emotional to the somatic, in terms of the way that the feeling of grief is bottled up by each of the characters. Of all the emotions, grief seems to be the most connected to physiological processes: wracking sobs, shaking, and wailing acting as a necessary if painful way of finding catharsis. Juliacks zeroes in on Emmeline (her diamond-shaped eyes adding an otherwordly feel to her character, differentiating her from the dumpier Lucy) and her inability to find her voice for that grief. When buried, grief can be an enormously destructive emotion in ways that cannot be understood by the person suffering from it. That stream-of-consciousness style, where Emmeline is constantly dipping into her memories as a way of trying to process Lucy's death, is perfectly meshed with Juliacks' lettering. The entire package depicts emotion in an intuitive manner that a reader can instantly grasp without being hammered on the head. The size of the panels, the size of the lettering, and the greater abstraction of images all are ways Juliacks modulates emotion. Juliacks greatly improved the control she had over her line and figures, adding greater clarity to her work without sacrificing complexity.


Juliacks has become one of the most interesting cartoonists working in mini-comics form and is certainly due for a publisher to pick her up for a long-form work. A handsome collection of SWELL would certainly seem to be just the thing to start with. There's no question that she's prolific and diligent, very much devoted to improving as a cartoonist. Considering that her first published works are barely four years gone, it's amazing to see the way she's improved and advanced as a cartoonist. She's got a unique vision, an excellent sense of design and composition, a powerful narrative voice and distinctive visual flair. At this point, it's all about fine-tuning, refinement, and restraint for Juliacks as she continues to evolve and mature.

Delightful Ambiguity: Mome 14

Rob reviews the 14th volume of Fantagraphics' flagship anthology, MOME.


If MOME #13 felt a bit all over the place, #14 went much further with that sense of fragmentation, juxtaposing stories with ambiguous images and endings to create a dizzying and fascinating array of visual styles. The interstitial pieces by Derek Von Gieson add flavor and color throughout the issue, acting as a sort of visual palate cleanser between stories. These are open-ended, one page narratives that vary between first person accounts of post-apocalyptic landscapes or embarrassingly intimate details regarding a busted-up wedding to third-person accounts of a boy and his vicious parasites. What they all have in common is that they thrust the reader into the middle of a narrative with little context and no backstory and deal in quotidian details. That matter-of-factness extends to the weirdest of circumstances, adding to the sense of both enigma and familiarity the reader feels with each snippet. That sense of mystery, dread and resignation pervades much of the entire issue, giving it a thematic cohesion that wasn't always seen in past volumes.


Laura Park's second MOME offering, "Office 32F", felt a bit more substantive than her first contribution. It's a whimsical tale of paranoia and awareness, slipping in and out of autobiography as she writes a journal about her discovery that she was under surveillance by a tiny group of spies. The level of quirky detail she provides (like finding a tiny pair of saltines in her celphone, or finding a tiny pair of mittens in a spider web, bleaching them and then flushing them down the toilet) speaks to the way that she was simultaneously alarmed and comforted by the spies in her life. Her actions took on the bearing of ritual, both in the sense of daily actions that we engage in as a sort of comfortable groove as well as an active ceremony designed to evoke a particular desired outcome. When she learned that she was no longer being watched and may not have been the real subject at any time, there was more than a twinge of disappointment--as well as a wink to the audience. That seemed to indicate her simultaneous unease and excitement of having her work (much of it autobiographical) viewed and judged by an audience, creating an invisible relationship that nonetheless had a significant impact.



Olivier Schwauren's second entry to MOME has the feel of an unearthed artifact, bursting with a crude energy reminiscent of a Golden Age comic. If this story had been published fifty years ago, Dan Nadel would have already reprinted it. The washed-out sepia tones give the story that sense of being of a different era, and the deliberate lack of detail he provides in framing his stories of single-minded obsession further tantalize the reader. It's a room full of men engaged in some activity--is it a parlor? a bar? an mental institution? It's impossible to say. There are power hierarchies here even as some men strive to break out of their tedium. In this instance, one man shows another a crudely-drawn dungeon adventure page that he says is a sort of game and cajoles someone else into trying it. After being mocked, the protagonist loses it and his dragged away, but it's left open as to what kind of impact his game has on his friend. Schwauren's strips have their own loony internal logic that evokes a certain delight when followed. The only cartoonist I can think of that does anything remotely similar in intent is Gerald Jablonski, though both men are so idiosyncratic as cartoonists that their output is completely different.



There are a number of stories here whose appeal is primarily visual, leaving it up to the reader to make connections or draw conclusions. The Ben Jones/Frank Santoro/Jon Vermilyea team-up for a Cold Heat episode was the most striking of these, as aliens observe a rock star being consumed by a swirling demon whose reach apparently threatens the entire world. It's a wordless piece that slides us from image to image, never stopping to explain the hows and whys of the situation, instead forcing the reader to accept the information provided on the page and react to it. Vermilyea also continued his motif of homicidal, anthropomorphic food items with a strip about Kool-Aid Man crashing through a wall to give kids some "special" Kool-Aid...and then gruesomely pick up the pieces. That touch of the grotesque and the absurd was a great find by editor Eric Reynolds and makes for a great contrast with the more austere and inward-looking pieces publishing in MOME. That's also true of Josh Simmons, whose "Funny Pages" is an Ivan Brunetti-esque hijacking of a standard page of comic strips, turning them into something more brutal or coarse.



Stories by Dash Shaw, Sara Edward-Corbett and Conor O'Keefe are also striking in their use of visuals in very different ways. O'Keefe's story is a cross between Winsor McKay (in terms of the quality of his line) and EC Segar (in terms of story content). Like both of those cartoonists, this story has the feel of animation, with exaggerated action as a boat manned by an unusual cry is buffetted by the waves. Edward-Corbett's story is similarly slight and short but stands out because of her beautiful line work and bold use of color in a retelling of the tortoise and the hare. Shaw's use of color in "Scenes from the Abyss" is absolutely stunning. It's a simple story about an ambitious but banal young screenwriter trying to get his project made and impress those around him. Each segment of the story is introduced with a large panel dominated by a circular structure: a lamp, a tank of water containing a stage, a hot tub, a reel of film, etc. There's a sleazy sense of fakeness to this character, who in every stage of the story is finding a different way to distort reality, a practice reflected in the way Shaw blurs and distorts light and color in this strip.


There's plenty of straight-out humor in this issue, some of which is more effective than others. Ray Fenwick continues his funny "Truth Bear" series and the Stick's quest for truth takes an unusual turn when a non-omniscient creator shows up. Fenwick's work is pretty much an examplar of idiosyncratic, valuing both words and drawings equally in terms of their plastic qualities. Hernan Migoya and Juaco Vizuete check in from Spain (keeping up MOME's tradition of introducing American audiences to foreign cartoonists) with a bawdy story about a hard-luck Peruvian who winds up with a job as a gofer for a popular but monstrous popular singer. It's not exactly subtle in the punches it throws, but the cartooning is so weird and elastic that it's compelling. Speaking of a lack of subtlety, Emile Bravo's "Wild West Winging It" is a parable about current American politics down as a Western. While it was interesting to get a Frenchman's perspective on the 2008 election, the hits he lands are all too obvious. The same goes for the second installment of Gilbert Shelton's Not Quite Dead story. I will say that this segment was funnier than the first, thanks to getting much of the ham-handed approach to religion of politics being thrust to the side and a preponderance of funny drawings taking the forefront here.


The centerpiece story in this issue of MOME is Lilli Carre's "Carnival". Carre' in some respects is a perfect replacement for Gabrielle Bell in MOME (though Bell may contribute some more stories in the future, she will be far from a regular). Her line is somewhat similar, though Carre's work is a bit more stylized, especially in her character design. Like Bell, Carre' went through a period of rapid improvement and is not publishing some striking stories. "Carnival" is a blend of magical realism and heartbreaking loneliness played out as a sort of emotional deadening. The Carre' stories I've read tend to be about longing denied or somehow frustrated. This story concerns a man who can't make lasting connections (we're tipped off by his profession of car salesman) who nonetheless feels the void in his life encountering a free-spirited single mother at a carnival. Their potential connection goes awry on both their parts for different reasons and both of them are left with fantasy as their only real outlet.



The variety of visual approaches and storytelling styles, along with the international flavor of the anthology, have transformed MOME from a showcase for a handful of young artists to a sort of latter-day RAW. Obviously, it's not the sort of sui generis creation that RAW was, but it's appealing to the same sort of sensibilities. It no longer seems to be aiming to be an entry-level comics anthology for highly literate audiences; instead, it's now assuming that those literate audiences are quite capable of handling any number of styles. MOME might also become a place where work that was going to be printed in comic books that are no longer being published due to industry & economic concerns might now find a home. The balance struck by editors Eric Reynolds and Gary Groth between unpublished, up-and-coming artists, alt-comics legends with short stories to publish and international stars with stellar work that needed translation has been a delicate one, but when everything comes together just so (especially in issues 12 and this issue), then MOME becomes a crucial component in understanding alt-comics as they stand today.

Knots Tying Knots: Dungeon Zenith, Volume 3

Rob reviews the latest collection of translations from the DUNGEON: ZENITH series, BACK IN STYLE (volume 3), by Lewis Trondheim, Joann Sfar and Boulet (NBM).

The third volume of the english translation of DUNGEON has been long-awaited, but I wouldn't recommend reading it until one has reread the first two volumes. The saga becomes increasingly plot-heavy here and immediately follows the events of the last volume. There are some ways in which the fantasy send-up/homage by Lewis Trondheim & Joann Sfar reminds me a bit of Jeff Smith's BONE. Both started their series on extremely lighthearted notes and spent a number of pages carefully establishing character relationships. Once Smith spent a couple of years doing that, it was off to the races with a quest, action scenes, plot twists and the like. He had earned his audience's trust before he simply shipped his characters all off into their wars by carefully but casually dropping mysterious clues as well as seeing them interact in a mundane matter. We knew each character's quirks, desires and loves as well as the ways in which they interacted with each other, which made the conflicts they wound up later all the more involving.

DUNGEON's first volume (with each volume collecting two of the original French albums) introduces us to an anthropomorphic duck named Herbert and a peculiar lizard named Marvin. Herbert's a smartass dungeon flunky and Marvin's a fierce but quirky warrior, and the whims of fate throw them together. Their hijinks manage to simultaneously parody sword 'n sorcery stories while at the same time put together a startlingly intricate, straight-faced fantasy epic. Seemingly trivial or even farcical details from these stories either have complicated backstories (explored in the Early Years stories) or have serious ramifications in later years (as detailed in the Twilight stories). The "main" narrative, or the "Zenith" story, mixes humor with action, making neither seem out of place.

That said, there's a certain grimness to be found in the two stories in BACK IN STYLE where one can begin to see how Herbert and Marvin wind up in such dire circumstances in the future. That's felt in the Keeper being kicked out of his own dungeon at the end of the first story (after a series of cleverly designed action pieces that ramped up the tension and the stakes in succession) and Herbert returning to his home city and finding a deadly welcome in the second. Both stories have a downbeat, uncertain ending--a far cry from the more neatly tied-off story threads in earlier volumes. Despite the intricacies of the plot, building on dozens of story developments from prior volumes, these stories work because of the way Sfar & Trondheim found every aspect of the story on character relationships.

Herbert and Marvin are obviously the foundational relationship of the series, but the interactions between Herbert and his oily nemesis Delacor established a delightful, mutual aggravation. Delacor's general sliminess (hiring a lawyer to seize the dungeon) made him a source of friction for everyone he encountered. The ass-kicking princess, Isis, was another interesting catalyst in the way she prodded Herbert and moved so easily in the company of thieves. The dungeon Keeper himself emerges as a sympathetic character, taking on a paternal quality to his minions when he realized he was about to lose it all. Herbert's parents are introduced in this volume, and their complicated relationship with him adds another layer of intrigue to what was once a seemingly simple parody character. Even seemingly incidental characters like the postman Pollyplume, a sad sack thrust willingly into an exciting new life, add
new perspectives to the saga.

The most startling change to be found in this volume is that Trondheim passed on the art duties to Boulet. For the most part, Boulet stays faithful to the character design that Trondheim established. However, the quality of his line is much slicker and clearer than Trondheim's slightly ramshackle line. The effect is a jarring one; the idiosyncratic nature of Trondheim's art was a perfect fit for the slightly off-kilter nature of a saga that was half serious and half joking. Boulet doesn't really try to make funny drawings; even ridiculous scenes have a slickness to them that takes a while to get used to. I almost would have preferred an artist try a completely different approach (like in the Dungeon: Monstres side-series) than this sort of hybrid approach. That said, Boulet did quickly master drawing a cast of thousands and really is a master at propelling adventure stories forward. The sequence where Herbert and his friends escape from a tavern by taking to the rooftops and eventually flying away was a particular highlight, a spectacular and visceral set of panels that perfectly balance drama and wisecracks.

Despite missing Trondheim's line, the Sfar/Trondheim duo did not disappoint in this latest volume, taking crazy story risks and throwing in plot twists and character reversals at the drop of a hat. DUNGEON remains my favorite genre-related series of all time, and anything that helps new volumes appear more quickly is fine by me. If Boulet is going to be the regular artist for Zenith from now on, it'll be interesting to see how he adjusts his style in future volumes.

Open-Ended: The Airy Tales

Rob reviews the debut comic from Olga Volozova, THE AIRY TALES (Sparkplug Comic Books).



Something I've noticed as a recent trend in comics is a style that somewhat trades in primitivism or outsider art on the surface, but in reality is a sophisticated integration of word and text. The plastic qualities of text are not something separate to be read in the comic, but instead are meant to be looked at as much as the other images on the page. As a result, the way each page is composed and meant to be read is dramatically different from what Westerners are used to in comics. The artists I'm thinking of working this particular corner include Austin English, Juliacks and most recently Olga Volozova. She passed by Dylan Williams' Sparkplug booth at a show, found herself drawn to what was on the table, and then asked if she could submit something to him for publication. Her comics fit neatly into the Sparkplug aesthetic: idiosyncratic, personal and with a touch of the fantastic.



THE AIRY TALES is a series of short stories with deliberately open endings: fairy tales with morals or instructive qualities. Roughly the first half ot the bookis in full color (watercolors, if I'm not mistake) and the back half contains line drawings with a single tone. It takes a moment for the reader to adjust to the way she composes a page. In some of the stories, the text dances around a center image, twisting around it in unusual ways. In other stories, the text is incorporated directly into the image, like part of leaves on a tree or falling raindrops. The small commitment it takes as a reader to full engage Volozova's work is rewarded by the fully realized worlds she creates.



This is especially true starting with the second story in the collection, "Mukamuka Lives In The Rain". It's about a man whose house is made of raindrops, an elusive figure who is able to touch other lives in strange ways. His telling a crying boy to embrace his crying causes his tears to magically produce what he wants. He briefly turned the passengers on a bus into crystal goblets because he wanted to hear the sound of ringing, an experience that brought them closer together. He gave a woman a magic bird that eventually lifted her burdens. This is a perfect example of the range of Volozova's imagination, exploring a character and idea and taking it as far as it would reveal itself to her.

Even more open-ended is "The Tree People", a story about people who lived in a tree that was like a house, or a house that was like a tree (depending on one's perspective). There's a progression in this story as each family or individual on each leaf grew, but was distracted by a man in a yellow sweater who had and seemed to desire nothing--and his leaf drifted ever higher every time the wind blew. This is a story about the inevitability of transformation butting up against the foundations we try to root ourselves to. Like every other story here, it's open-ended but it's strongly implied that this transformation is not to be feared, and clinging to it is illusory.


"The Rooster" is a story about art and spectacle, and whether or not there's a difference between the two. It's the most conventionally drawn piece in the book, with its bright colors giving it a bit more weight than some of the other stories. "The Moon Birds" is a very matter-of-fact description of the birds who live on the moon and control humanity with threads that they manipulate, tying into the first story of the book, "The Golden Thread" by giving a backstory to the phenomemon of a man discovering that everyone is being manipulated from above by strings. "The Moon Birds" is almost like a nature documentary in the way it describes the different kinds of birds, how they interact with human souls, etc. There's not really a standard plot here, but it doesn't matter because once again Volozova thrusts us into the world of her imagination and the reader feels compelled to take a look around.

The last set of vignettes, "The Street Walkers", has an almost Ben Katchor-esque quality. She introduces us to a man made of ice cream who is in danger of being licked to death, a crow and a street pole who meet cute, a man with an artificial smile who has it worn away, a snow hat that no one dared to wear, and a man who lost everything--including his head. Each of these little vignettes is a sheer delight, documenting the lives of people in a city whom the reader really gets to know in a short span of time. Volozova finishes the book with her most direct integration of word and image, "The Shelltales". They're about a scholar who discovers that crying and laughter come from the tip of one's nose, and a country where everyone only begins everything and another where everyone ends everything. Here, Volozova blurs the difference between text and image, with words morphing into illustrations and illustrations acting as part of a sentence. Like any good fairy tale, this is a book aimed at adults that children should be able to enjoy as well. Volozova is already quite ambitious, and I'll be quite interested in seeing how she evolves as a creator as she refines her talent.

Cityscapes and Backyard Adventures: The Latest from Toon Books

Rob reviews the newest releases from Toon Books: LUKE ON THE LOOSE, by Harry Bliss; and BENNY & PENNY in THE BIG NO-NO!, by Geoffrey Hayes.

The Francoise Mouly-edited Toon Books are among the best edited and conceived books in all of comics (regardless of genre). It's hard to think of a better introduction to the art form than these books, which cleverly disguise their pedagogic nature in the form of their stories. At their heart, these books are Comics 101 courses, carefully breaking down and isolating what makes comics successful and how to make this plain to anyone. Take the covers, for example. Great care is taken to indicate that this isn't simply another illustrated picture book, but rather something far more immersive. The word balloon attached to a character on the cover screams "comics!" and makes a new reader pause to try to figure out how word and image are interacting. Above the main illustration on the cover are a couple of panels depicting action, whetting the reader's appetite for the book's content and again letting them know that this is something different from what they're used to.


The latest books are once again from artists not known for sequential storytelling. Geoffrey Hayes, who checks in with his second Benny & Penny book, THE BIG NO-NO!, is best known for illustrating his own children's books. Harry Bliss is an illustrator who also does cartoons for the New Yorker. Both artists are longtime comics fans being given an opportunity to do stories in the style of comics that inspired them.


Hayes once again manages to combine his delicate, feathery line with unusual page & panel composition along with an unerring sense of propulsiveness. The way he obviously manages to tap into his relationship growing up with his brother, deceased underground cartoonist Rory Hayes, gives the story a sense of verisimilitude that any children with siblings will instantly recognize. This story finds the pair going over the fence into the yard of a new neighbor in quest of Benny's missing pail. The sight gags and gentle humor of the story is fueled by the mutual love and mutual sense of aggravation that the brother and sister share for each other. They give each other a hard time one minute and are concerned for their welfare the next. Hayes' lush style will be instantly familiar to any child reading a comic for the first time, especially in the way he draws anthropomorphic animals as his characters. He uses that familiarity to go to town on the page, leading the reader's eye around the page at a near-whiplash pace. He even leads the eye entirely out of panels and into gutters, like the mysterious footprints of their new next-door neighbor.



After I finished reading Bliss' LUKE ON THE LOOSE, I immediately thought "This is an entry-level Will Elder comic". Reading his bio, he notes that he grew up loving Will Elder, so it was no surprise to see all sorts of eye pops and background gags in addition to the manic main storyline. This story is also a love letter to New York city, in all its diverse glory. It's about a little boy named Luke who squirms away from his father in Central Park in order to chase pigeons, and his tireless chase leads him halfway across the city, causing chaos in his wake.



This book is completely different in approach than THE BIG NO-NO!, yet both books have a certain flowing, kinetic quality to them. Bliss's line is much thinner and his use of color much flatter than Hayes, whose comics have a lot of decorative drawings that help draw the reader along the page. Bliss instead packs layers of gags Elder-style on each page, often inserting famous comics characters into his scenes or having animals provide commentary. The way he uses animals in particular is very funny, as when a dog leaps into his owner's arms and hugs him like a person.

While both books have a lot of action, THE BIG NO-NO! is a softer and gentler tale while LUKE ON THE LOOSE ramps up the action and the stakes on each page. I love the way the latter depicts New York as being simultaneously perilous and packed with potential adventure, yet still full of caring individuals. The former book nails sibling interaction and vividly creates a world that any young reader will relish visiting. Both books are remarkable in how well constructed they are, given that neither artist is greatly experienced crafting long-form comics. The design of the books (simple and elegant) and the steady editorial hand of Mouly no doubt made it easy for these artists to adapt to a new form. The long-term effect of Toon Books won't be felt for quite some time, though one hopes it will encourage a new generation to read comics and continue to read comics throughout their lives.