45 Days Of CCS, #5: Dylan Sparks and Sage Clemmons

Dylan Sparks is a 2024 CCS student whose cartooning occupies the space between love and horror. In particular, their comic Echoed Embrace focuses on body trauma that makes it nearly impossible for the unnamed protagonist to relax and settle into having sex with someone they truly desire. The way Sparks went about this is truly clever. Each attempt at intimacy starts off well, until their being touched summons the physical memory of the hand of a previous abuser/assailant. The protagonist is in black & white, their lover is in pink, and the many disembodied hands from their memories are dark red. Every attempt fails, because when things start to get more intimate and intense, so too does the memory of being held down, squeezed, and even choked. At each failure point, the fantasy respawns like a video game, as the protagonist tries again and again. It's not until the protagonist confronts the memory in a very specific way that things turn out differently. Sparks' line is sketchy and a little rough, but their cartooning is excellent, as they smartly take the tools and tropes of video games and apply them to PTSD. The frustrations and desires expressed are told in an achingly vulnerable but entirely no-nonsense way. 

Tryst is a fantasy story that nonetheless has a lot of similar elements to Echoed Embrace. While it's about a dragon woman who's captured by sadistic men, it's also at heart about a relationship. When the dragon woman's boyfriend shows up, she breaks out of her bonds and brutally kills her captors, all in an effort to show off. However, the narrative follows the boyfriend's thought processes, as he wonders after seeing that she was injured when a captor slapped her if what value he had if he couldn't protect her. It was a perfect moment of male fragility and ego, projecting his own insecurities on her. He does manage to catch himself in the end, but the reversal of gender expectations and roles is clever. The use of what appears to be crayon adds to the fantastical quality of the comic, as crayon tends to make exaggerating the visceral qualities of color much easier. 

Sage Clemmons' Everyone Is Sorry is done in gorgeous green colored pencil. A publication from Parsifal Press (Daryl Seitchik & Dan Nott's new press), this isn't so much a narrative as much as it is a meditation on remorse and what being "sorry" means. It's a sort of comics version of a  tone poem, where on each page, a different person expresses being sorry in a deliberate, downcast manner. There's a tongue-in-cheek quality to the comic as well, like when it's stated that "Your professors are sorry" and on the next page it says, "(very sorry)." It gets more and more abstract, as even tenderness and laughter are sorry. The final image, of a hand offering up a handkerchief, is another hint as to the mix of humor and absurdity with the central, grave concept. Is being sorry feeling remorse? Is it a willingness to offer reparations? Is it grief? Is it self-serving? Clemmons offers no answers, other than going back and reading it again, and enjoying their excellent, naturalistic cartooning.  

45 Days Of CCS, #4: Gabrielle Tinnirello and Al Varela

Al Varela's style features big-eyed characters, bright colors, and hearts worn on sleeves. It has a deeply humanistic quality to it, as it's clear that Varela loves all of their characters, whatever their flaws. Skate With Me, Baby! is a mini featuring teens Sandra and Mandy. Sandra is a new employee at a roller rink, and purple-haired Mandy is a frequent customer. What unfolds are the opening moments of a sweet romance that clearly presages a deeper summer relationship. Varela has a way of getting at those opening butterflies and sparks of attraction, especially when someone like Sandra is so shy and awkward. The more aggressive Mandy is nonetheless sweet and patient, and the scene where Mandy teaches Sandra how to skate is both tender and filled with sexual tension. This is less a story than it is a quick character study. The background details of the rink (cheap toys from game tickets, crying kids, an indifferent boss) all add to the magic of the central relationship. Varela's understanding of the relationship between bodies in space and gesture provide the reader with all they really need to know about the story. 

Gabrielle Tinnirello's career thus far has been interesting in terms of the minis I've seen from her. She seems more interested in a sort of narrative collage style of storytelling than traditional comics. That's certainly true with 27, a birthday zine celebrating her 27th birthday. The way she arranges her collage elements and then fills in with decorative drawings around them exudes warmth, and in many ways these comics feel like she's trying to put a certain kind of energy into her work. In drawing different playing cards for different people, she's aware of tarot and other divination techniques in terms of setting intentions for them. This whole mini seems to be about setting intentions after her birthday, and they include finding love and working collaboratively with others. I'm hoping to see something resembling even a further veering into comics-as-poetry given her decorative style or a more conventional narrative with lots of visual bells-and-whistles.

45 Days Of CCS, #3: Jarad Greene

Jarad Greene is a cartoonist who was obviously going to go on to success doing YA and middle-grade comics even when he was a student at CCS. He's just a natural at that kind of storytelling, be it fantasy fare like Scullion or slice-of-life fiction in A-Okay (and the upcoming A For Effort). His latest mini, This Diary Will Self-Destruct, is a hodgepodge of travel diaries and Hourly Comics Day strips. Hourly Comics Day is more interesting as a discipline than as something to read, since it's almost entirely a series of fairly diffuse anecdotes. That's mostly the case with Greene here, although his hourly strips are beautifully drawn. They're mostly interesting just as a document for his work process, as we see him working on his thesis and then later on various book projects. Later, it transitions as he becomes a teacher at CCS, and the hour-to-hour activities take on a different meaning. Throughout, his line is wonderfully loose and expressive, as he mostly works either in pencil or directly with a pen. The quotidian, anecdotal stuff (meals, exercise) doesn't add up to much, and even interactions with friends feel strictly surface. Greene understands the assignment here and isn't interested in going much deeper; his fictional work feels far more personal than these hourly strips. 

The winter travel diaries, however, feel much more intimate. The sheer difficulty of trying to travel from White River Junction to pretty much anywhere is part of what's interesting here, but the contrast between his hermetically sealed life at Cartoon College and his opportunity to relive his childhood while staying at his parents' house is fascinating. Travel diaries always have a built-in sense of narrative propulsion while still offering moments of personal reflection, which makes them ideal for visual experimentation. The more leisurely pace of these diary comics allows Greene to really go to town on the pencils, as he goes out of his way to make pretty boring events seem so much more interesting because of his highly expressive and exaggerated figure work. Considering the way he has to rein it in a bit in his professional work, it was especially fun to see him distort his figures and use a bunch of different storytelling tricks and techniques. Greene isn't looking to reinvent the wheel here in terms of the stories, he's just looking to have a good time with a few constraints thrown on. 

Greene also contributed the short zine Former Event, a comic with a die-cut front and back cover that give glimpses into the story. It's another memoir zine, but this time it's much more focused than the diary comics. It focuses on the changes he perceives in his life: he no longer reads, eats, works, or reaches out to others with quite the same intensity or frequency that he used to. Greene reaches no particular conclusions about this, other than to note that he feels "breaks and boundaries have taken hold of the steering wheel." In other words, he's naturally course-corrected to not exhaust himself in any category, even pleasant ones, in order to maintain his own health. Indeed, the way Greene portrays himself here is contented, calm, and relaxed. He ponders the ontological question as to his own identity for a moment, then lets it slip away. His line here is as inventive and lively as ever; there's a small sense of irony at work in that it's clear he worked very hard at this mini about working less. 

45 Days Of CCS, #2: Johna Mandel

Johna Mandel is from the class of 2023 from CCS, and her mini Capture Culture, is the first time I've gotten to see her work. It's very much in the "applied comics" end of things, and I can see her in the tradition of CCS grad and instructor Dan Nott. This comic thoughtfully threads the needle between memoir and journalism, as Mandel starts off the comic by discussing how many digital photos she takes of her newborn son. It's a lot, and she then starts interrogating what this actually means. If she had taken, developed, and kept physical photographs at the same rate, she'd barely be able to move around her house. 

She notes that the culture surrounding documenting and then keeping everything digitally (especially on the cloud) is behavior similar to hoarding. This is especially true with regard to the emotional attachment people have to these images, with the very idea of deleting feeling horrifying. Mandel doesn't speculate why the urge to capture these images has spiked so severely, which I think is worth investigating, because I don't think it's the convenience of the technology alone. Or perhaps the technology tied into some deeper need that was amplified by convenience. Collecting and looking at images, but especially sharing them, seems to be part of a deeper need to communicate visually. 

Mandel instead shifts, and rightly so, to the environmental impact of this seemingly innocent compulsion. The Cloud is a place that is housed on real servers in real buildings that consume enormous amounts of electricity. Mandel's channeling a bit of Nott's deep dive into the internet in his book Hidden Systems, but it's been a topic of discussion in the general public the last couple of years thanks to cryptocurrency and NFTs. She also brings up other issues like cybersecurity and companies' willingness to share data with the government. All good reasons to let go, she notes, but she adds "I'm not sure I can." It's the personal touch at both the beginning and end that make this such a good comic. Mandel's visual approach is clear and clean, focusing on novel composition with fluid and unfussy linework. The use of pink and blue for spot color is a clever move, considering the initial focus on baby pictures. Mandel is a thoughtful, smart cartoonist whose curiosity and willingness to dig into details could lead to some thought-provoking longer works in the future. 

45 Days Of CCS, #1: Ashley Jablonski

I am kicking off this year's feature on the students and alumni of the Center for Cartoon Studies by first announcing that due to the volume of work I've received, I'm extending it out to 45 days. Starting the series is a rare treat: the entire thesis package of Ashley Jablonski, down to the elaborately painted box the whole thing arrived in. This kind of flourish is not surprising from the painterly Jablonski, whose decorative touches are a key element of their work as a cartoonist. 

The thesis is a fascinating document in an attempt at a very specific kind of project that Jablonski was unable to complete for several reasons, mental health being among them. Jablonski displayed a few different kinds of comics in the thesis package, but the central idea was a memoir surrounding a specific event: Jablonski's otherwise-beloved father picking up a knife and trying to kill them, due to symptoms surrounding his paranoid schizophrenia. It is a heartbreaking story, but Jablonski realized that they were still too close to the event, still too traumatized, to gain the distance they needed to properly turn it into a narrative. A key element of making memoir work is understanding that it is a genre like any other, and in order to tell stories about difficult events, it is necessary to remember that the character in your memoir is not you. It may be based on your experiences, but even one's literal memories don't form a coherent narrative. They have to be shaped like any character narrative is shaped, and some experiences need distance in order to use them in such a detached way. 

The thesis winds up being about why they couldn't do this particular story, as well as some other potential future paths for Jablonski. It's clear that Jablonski has an interest in horror. This Journal Belongs To Frederick Ransom cleverly uses plain brown paper for the cover and has the name hand-written. The story itself is the diary of an early 19th century man done in a painted style with the edges of each page torn and/or burned. Each entry details the young man getting sicker without understanding why, until it becomes clear that he's becoming a vampire. The ending is abrupt and amusing. What's interesting about this is Jablonski's use of visual flourishes to bring a fairly simple concept to life and make the eventual gag even more effective. 

Danou is a four-pager about a vampire who develops a crush on Jablonski, done in vivid reds and greens, with blood dripping from each panel. Once again, it's horror with a dash of humor. Starseeds is a dream comic where Jablonski imagines waking up on the star Vega, They received telepathic messages from the former inhabitants, who revealed that this used to be their home. Once again, Jablonski manages to inject humor at the end of this otherwise contemplative, dreamy narrative. Their use of watercolors is an immense strength as a cartoonist, amplifying the emotional narrative in subtle but distinctive ways. 

Those are looks at potential future paths for Jablonski. However, their current path still lies in memoir, and the four other comics included are all reflections of their larger project regarding their father, but also their interest in reportage and other techniques surrounding memoir. Their Sketchbook Of Ashley Jablonski 2022 features an interview and subsequent sketches made for a story about a feature on stone carving with the Vermont Folklife Center. There are a few other random sketches and drawings as well; this one is purely a process zine that nonetheless is clearly part of a search for what kind of cartoonist Jablonski is trying to be. Similarly, their zine Aries: A Collection Of Meanderings isn't so much a comic as it is a zine using found images as Jablonski performs a post-mortem of a failed and toxic relationship. Using rhyme and a blunt expression of feelings, Jablonski paints a picture of being present for someone who continuously tried to distance himself from them. Jablonski notes that making the zine was a way of reclaiming their power. 

The true substance and heart of the thesis are the mini In Between This and In Between Diary Comics. Both are less about the actual incident (although it is extensively explored) and more about the dawning understanding of complex PTSD. The latter diagnosis, Jablonski's therapy for same, and their utter frustration at how it affects everything in their life, forms the bulk of the narrative that lurches forward and then backward in fits and starts. In Between This is Jablonski's attempt at writing the story, beginning with a letter they wrote to him about it and then a series of comics that take on this epistolary format. The repeated "Dear Dads," wishing for nothing else but to go back in time, are heartbreaking. But they can't. They can't move forward, they can't move back--hence, in-between. The rest of the mini dips into some of Jablonski's diary comics regarding their ambivalence toward therapy. 

The diary comics are the main event of this package, and it's one of the better collections of such comics that I've read. While there's plenty of quotidian detail here typical of the form, there's an underlying tension throughout that occasionally explodes on the page. In addition to dealing with the PTSD surrounding their father, Jablonski is also trying to go to school at CCS during the middle of COVID, at a time when travel and other restrictions were just starting to lift. Nothing here is "normal," even as Jablonski's own nature is to revel with delight at beauty and in the company of their friends. CCS should have represented a triumphant time, as they were totally going for it in the quest to become a cartoonist, but it instead was an experience filled with confusion and an increasing inability to deal with trauma.

They noted that when the incident with their father first occurred, they were able to focus away from it as an undergraduate, pushing down the feelings and dissociating past them in order to succeed as a student. What they learned is that this kind of coping mechanism has a price that is paid when least expected. Jablonski explores a number of topics in the collection, including life as a student, coming to terms with their gender identity, sorting through the ashes of a toxic relationship, an unnamed crush, exploring Vermont, taking delight in their friendships, and a nightmarish trip back home to see their father. Jablonski doesn't bother to draw every day, instead taking the wiser tact of drawing when inspired. The diary eventually segues into an intense account of therapy, trauma, and facing up to the immense pain and despair they feel, a sense of feeling totally unmoored. It is here that it becomes obvious why Jablonski can't write this story, at least not yet. However, what they did write is a more-than-worthy substitute: a real-time grappling with trauma that sees them finally starting to understand what has happened to them and why. With thick, expressive lines and a loose immediacy to their drawing, Jablonski's comics have a raw and sensitive quality that still retain an innate brightness in the face of chaos and trauma. 

Jonathan Baylis' So Buttons #13

There's a real throwback feel to the latest edition of writer Jonathan Baylis' So Buttons. (Poor Baylis chose a silly, throwaway title for this series, and now he's stuck with it as his brand. Cf. Julia Wertz's The Fart Party.) The amiable Baylis is a born networker with an extensive and deep curiosity about the history of comics and cartoonists. Meeting former Harvey Pekar collaborator Joe Zabel at a show led Baylis to hire him for a piece in this issue, which, in turn, led to him working with Gary Dumm and Brian Bram (last seen in American Splendor #2!) Can Alison Bechdel and Alan Moore be far behind? Other 80s indy stalwarts in this issue include Bernie Mireault and Michael T. Gilbert. 

Like Pekar, Baylis has a real sense of what stories to pair with which artists. It's fascinating to see him work with so many of Pekar's former collaborators, because as writers, Baylis and Pekar couldn't be any more different. Pekar's work, while deeply humanistic, was often cynical and even miserablist. However, he was also a keen observer of others and excelled in telling their stories. He was also the classic working-class intellectual, as his reviews of jazz records and literature in his comics revealed. Baylis doesn't truck with irony or spend much time wallowing in sadness (though there are hints of it); instead, he prefers to look at beauty, joy, and deep moments of connection with others and with art. As his story with Zabel revealed, what he does share with Pekar is a deep need to be a writer, and to have his thoughts expressed visually. Baylis' stories are almost always centered around himself, either in terms of the action or his reaction to same. I think this stems from his deep need to be a storyteller first and foremost, unlike Pekar, who was more interested in being an observer. What sets Baylis apart from other writers who collaborated with cartoonists like Pekar, Dennis Eichorn, or David Greenberger is a total sense of sincerity. Every one of these stories is important to him, and it's clear he spends a lot of time thinking about how each one will look. 

Tony Wolf was a good choice for "So...Swampy," given his affection for mainstream comics. This one-pager is more a style exercise than a story; it doesn't amount to more than "my grandma sent me some comics at camp when I was miserable and one of them was an Alan Moore Swamp Thing." On the other hand, "So...Premiered" (with art by Zabel and Dumm) is a meaty story that Baylis refers to as an "origin story." Baylis' background is interesting because while he loves comics, he went to film school at NYU. As such, he's had a number of gigs in the entertainment world, including with the Sundance Channel. That allowed him to meet Harvey Pekar at the premiere of American Splendor, where the writer gave Baylis encouragement. The story is full of funny visual flourishes that I'm guessing Baylis put in his script, like drawing Pekar as Dr. Octopus as part of an extended shtick. 

Baylis is frequently clever in his transitions from story to story. He follows this Sundance story with another one (drawn with flair by Mireault) about seeing the movie 28 Days Later at midnight and enjoying it because of the way he and the audience reacted together. It's a sharp observation of why seeing movies in a theater can be so rewarding. He follows that zombie story with one about his wife and kid drawn by Whit Taylor. Taylor is great at drawing stories about parenting, and this gag about a "zombified" Baylis walking in is set up nicely, complete with a plop-take at the end. Stories about being friends with Eli Roth as a film student and being delighted by his performance in Inglourious Basterds and a brief documentary bit with a memorable New York character fall more into the "anecdote" category as opposed to an actual story, and they feel a bit thinner as a result than some of the other stories. 

However, "So...It's A Viscous Cycle," featuring Maria & Peter Hoey, is the unquestioned highlight of the issue. Those two are extremely clever cartoonists and storytellers, and Baylis sets them up with a great premise regarding not just his vision, but the process of getting Lazik surgery because a film looked blurry. Keeping with the film theme, a piece on composer Enrique Morricone was interesting because Baylis notes that hearing his music just didn't sound right without accompanying film. Artist Rick Parker is a capable comedic cartoonist, but I thought a lot of the gags (did an image of John Cage need to be put next to an actual birdcage?) distracted from the overall content of the story. 

The other major highlight of the issue was his easy and natural collaboration with Karl Christian Krumpholz. It's a story within a story, told at a bar between Baylis and Krumpholz at SPX, about a particular, rare sort of bourbon that Baylis managed to acquire. It works as a captivating yarn and also provides some insight into their friendship, as well. Krumpholz' highly stylized character design and moody palette make this feel like a true collaboration. Speaking of which, it wouldn't be an issue of So Buttons without a team-up between Baylis and longtime collaborator TJ Kirsch. The latter's design for another Baylis strip about someone who shares his birthday (in this case, former baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan) was clever, riffing on Ryan using pickle brine to help strengthen the skin on his hands. 

Baylis has a pretty deep well of stories to turn to. This one hit a little bit more on his love of movies and life in the entertainment industry than usual. I'd be interested in seeing more stories hitting on fatherhood, relationships, and friendships. More bar stories with Krumpholz would also be fun. There are some artists he just seems to vibe with more than others, and the Hoeys and Krumpholz are definitely on that widening list. The other thing it would be interesting to see from Baylis is a longer narrative. I'm not quite sure what that story would be, but one senses that he's got a few of those laying around. Baylis' commitment to craft, design, and editorial coherency are on clear display, as his writing and editing chops have matured to the point where he's willing to take risks. Not everything worked in this issue, but even some of the misfires were at least interesting to look at. Baylis wasn't interested in playing it safe, and one hopes that this trend continues for future issues. 

Alaina Ewins' Night Things

Night Moves, by Alaina Ewins, is a delightful romance comic in a fantasy/magic setting. The plot, surrounding classmates Spica and Muna, sees them secretly preparing glamour spells for the big Valentine's Day dance. The complicating factor is that Muna develops a crush on the charismatic Spica. Ewins then deftly drops in the big plot device: if you don't cast glamour with pure intent, the "consequences can be dire!" Inevitably, the glam duo has a fun time at the dance but things go horribly awry as everyone at the dance is drawn and attracted to them--very aggressively! The cute confession that seems to fix everything dissolves into a surprise ending. 

The plot structure is cleverly constructed, but the real star of this mini is Ewins' character design. The attention to detail regarding garments, hair, and a variety of different faces and body types is essential to conveying the emotion and attraction between the characters. Despite this being in a fantasy setting, Ewins' attention to dialogue and high school social dynamics adds to the verisimilitude necessary to pull this off without feeling forced or cloying. Instead, the stress that Muna feels combined with her ambition in trying to impress Spica with glamour imbues the plot with real comedic tension. Ewins' drawing style is dense, with lots of hatching, spotting blacks, and a minimal use of negative space. Despite that density, Ewins' is an adept storyteller whose composition never confuses the eye, even if it does deliberately distract it with a lot of decorative touches. This immersive style works at quickly placing the reader right in the middle of this world that her characters are in without having to do much in terms of excessive narrative explanation. Ewins seems poised for longer and more complex stories of this nature.