Sequart Reprints: Tales Designed To Thrizzle

Tales Designed To Thrizzle, by Michael Kupperman (Fantagraphics, $4.95)

Writing about humor is extremely difficult and usually quite boring. In addition to being a matter of personal taste more than anything else in the arts, analyzing a scene to find out why it's funny often results in a killing-the-goose-that-laid-the-golden-eggs scenario. As an aside, I think humor being a matter of personal taste is the biggest reason why comedies in general and humorous comics in particular are so often looked down upon by critics.

Well, get me my carving knife, because that goose is about to get sliced up. First, let me discuss what I think is funny and what isn't. I think strips that rely on some sub-genre that requires specific knowledge of that sub-genre are perhaps my least favorite form of humor. I'm thinking of strips about video games or role-playing games here, like the extremely popular PvP or Penny Arcade. I suppose the authors of said strips are to be commended for finding an audience and giving it exactly what it wants, but my selfish concern is for what I find funny, and it's clear that I'm not a desired part of their audience.

The same goes for strips that rely heavily on pop culture references. Those go stale quite quickly, and rarely have anything interesting to say. I also detest the kind of frat-boy humor that several alternative artists throw out there; sexual innuendo is easy, but writing jokes with actual punchlines is hard. On the other side of the fence, I don't have much use for strips that shock for the sake of shocking or rely almost entirely on scatological humor in the world of alternative comics.

So what do I like? I love the exaggerated satire of Peter Bagge, the gag writing of Kyle Baker, the manic energy of Evan Dorkin, the stoopid-but-smart cleverness of Sam Henderson, the brutal willingness to go all the way that Ivan Brunetti possesses, and the postmodern silliness of Martha Keavney. But above all others, I love the absurd humor of Michael Kupperman.

There's a density to his work that adds power to every panel. He's a skilled gag writer, often choosing jokes that deliberately contrast his illustrative style. That style can best be described as using heavily rendered backgrounds (often almost looking like woodcuts) and often realistic figures doing absolutely insane things. Non sequiturs are common but always manage to be funny. His drawings themselves can be amusing, but he rarely uses stylistic exaggeration to make his punchlines. His work has what can be described as an "old-timey" feel, with the illustrations looking like something out of the 1930's, and he uses this to his advantage when coming up with his punchlines. It's Dada in the best sense of the word: unpredictable, cannabilizing other images, and absurd.

Let's look at the first issue of his new series. First of, I love the conceptual humor of dividing the issue into adult, kid's and old people's sections, with only the appropriate age groups allowed to read each one (for example, you must be over 82 to read the old people's section). In the adult section, we get an ad where a lurking Mickey Rourke sells his pubic hair stencil designs to an office worker in order to impress women ("Death Of A Bullfighter: This one I started as a novel, then I realized the story would work better within the medium of pubic hair). The art here perfectly mimics the sort of stiff comic-book ads that most everyone is familiar with.

Visually, the best strip is "Holiday Frolics", which begins as a standard educational strip about Christmas and Easter, and quickly moves into a paean to "Jesus' half-brother PAGUS!" Pagus is this sort of 1980's cartoon character that one might have seen in Thundarr or Thundercats. A sort of lion character with a tiara, a blanket tied into a cape, and wrestling tights with a big P on them. The simpler, more iconic character provides a hilarious weird contrast to the more heavily rendered scenes in the strip, which gets steadily more absurd as it progresses (surfing on lava in his underground kingdom, his CD Pagus Sings available through his website, and Pagus constantly laughing "HA HA HA HA HA HA!").

In the kid's section, Kupperman introduces a boy band (the closest he comes to using a recent topic) called Boybank, which also devolves into extreme absurdity after starting with mild absurdity. Then it takes a left turn into following their manager, a mustachioed 1800's villain-type. The narrator tells us what he's doing, going into a bad part of town, entering a building and then taking things out of a cupboard. The drawing here relies on heavy blacks: the black-adorned character, the shadowy streets, the woodcut-looking room, all to reveal him painting an easter egg…for Pagus! The last panel switches to that that 80's-cartoon look once again, as we see Pagus laughing. I love this strip because he switches visual styles (Boybank themselves get blue backgrounds and simpler rendering) and then brings back an older joke in the manner of a skilled improv artist who builds layers of references into sketches, repeating them at unexpected moments.

There are other repeating motifs, like his detective characters Snake 'n Bacon (literally, a snake and a talking piece of bacon that says things like "I'm tasty in a sandwich"), Sex Holes and Sex Blimps, and variations on using tired genre clichés to fuel funny stories. Perhaps my favorite along those lines is "Are Comics Serious Literature?", where two cowboys engage in a fistfight over that very topic. After the "good guy" wins, he asks "Now who else says comics aren't serious literature?" The genius of that strip is that it looks and feels exactly like a cowboy fistfight comic should look like in terms of action and character design, but it all serves to tell the joke.

In the end, this level of detail is what draws me to Kupperman's work. It's not just that he writes good punchlines, it's that every single panel is funny. It's not just that I find his non sequiturs funny (though I do), it's that he makes everything leading up to them hilarious. All throughout, he constantly deflects reader expectation, sometimes even from panel to panel. The result is a book that is steeped in comics, genre and illustration history that works without the reader needing to know specific information about any of that history in order to find it funny. Even stranger for a humor book, Kupperman's art and design sense is genuinely beautiful, and that aesthetic appeal is yet another tool in his comedic arsenal, because he uses that as part of technique of turning reader expectation on its head. The next issue of this series will arrive in stores in February.

The Modern Gorey: Ghosts and Ruins

Ben Catmull's presence in the comics world has been infrequent over the past decade, but a new book by him always tends to signal something beautiful, weird and wonderful. His Monster Parade book a while back combined a sense of wonder, a sense of humor and a sense of dread all in one package, and his new book, Ghosts and Ruins does much the same. In terms of sheer drawing ability and the ability to inspire mood, the only horror artists who come close to his chops are Josh Simmons, Renee French and Thomas Ott. Catmull's sensibilities are mirror images of Simmons', only Catmull inserts whimsy where Simmons might use visceral dread. The sheer intensity of Catmull's hatching, cross-hatching and use of shadow effects gives each page a nearly vibratory quality that's a bit short of what Ott does, but is still in the same vein. Catmull's sense of humor is closest to that of French, but Catmull makes a point of imbuing the everyday with a sense of fear and whimsy rather than creating fantastical characters.

The way the book is designed also reminds me a bit of Edward Gorey. Essentially, this book is a tour of haunted places, with text on the left-hand pages and images on the right-hand pages, so that it's less a comic than it is illustrated text. The narrator is knowledgeable but not omniscient. For example, there's the chilling "The Secluded House." The illustration is of a small, unassuming house in the middle of a vast field. The viewer's perspective is from a picket fence maybe fifty yards from the house. With a cloudy sky and densely-hatched and blackened grass, the drawing is somewhat ominous, but what really inspires dread is the description: "All that is known is that any person who ventures closer than this does not come back." After giving the reader intimate details of the history and effects of other haunted houses, that simple sentence is chilling. The narrator has no power to inform or save the reader, if they ventured any closer.

Other descriptions, like "Drowned Shelley", mix the morbid and the whimsical. This house is haunted by a girl drowned in a bathtub by her stepfather. The narrator rattles off various ways one can make the ghost of Shelley appear, from drowning you in your sleep to leaving hair in your breakfast dishes to kicking you "somewhere delicate" at midnight. Some of the images are just hauntingly beautiful, like a set of lace curtains blowing in the wind of a dark house with The Woman Outside The Window howling inside. Other stories are silly and strange, like the text for "Wandering Smoke" being smoke, as the house itself is beset by the weird vapors. Some of the houses that Catmull describes are just odd and mostly impenetrable, while others feature threats that will kill intruders, like the Crawling House (which moves northeast at the rate of ten feet per year, and reduces anything that stays in it to bones overnight). Every page is a beautiful new discovery, and this book is a must for fans of great horror drawings.

Sequart Reprints: Recidivist #3

Recidivist, by Zak Sally (La Mano, $15).

I've been peripherally aware of Sally's work for quite some time through an assortment of anthologies, but his collected work seen here floored me. There were a number of great comics published in 2005, but I would have to give Recidivist my highest honors, for its originality, complexity and compellingly dark tone. Sally is better known to some as the former bass player of the band Low. Their 2005 record, The Great Destroyer, was on many critics' lists for best album of the year. (It really is a fantastic record, and Sally does the art for it.) Recently, Sally decided it was time to quit the band for various reasons. With the life of recording and touring put aside, it's opened up more room for comics, his other passion. He started his own publishing company, collecting the work of his friend John Porcellino in the memorable Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man. Then he put out a handsome hardcover collection of his own work over the years, all before he officially decided to quit Low.

It is difficult to discuss this collection of short stories without giving away story points. While Sally isn't a cheap "twist" artist who relies on shock instead of craft, there are indeed profound surprises to be found in each story that a new reader should be allowed to savor. What I can note is that his stories require a careful reader willing to examine details, because Sally doesn't spell a lot of things out. Happily, the stories have a lyrical power and depth that invites and rewards multiple readings.

There are six short stories in the collection. None directly relate to each other, but there are strange interconnections here and there, not to mention certain thematic similarities. The first three stories ("Feed The Wife", "The Secret Girls" and "Animal Vomit") all have to do with secrets. The first story involves a man who keeps his wife locked up in their basement; what is the true nature of their relationship? Here, there is no narrator, no one to give the reader any clues as to what's going on other than the panels chosen by the artist. In the second story, we switch to an omniscient but not necessarily helpful narrator who tells us all about the Secret Girls, who come along to "save" you when you're about to utter that last secret.

"Animal Vomit" is the most dazzling bit in the book. It too is heavily narrated, but this time the narrator is a nameless character in the story. It's about three men who have an unusual disease: they each have the head of a different animal (pig, monkey, wolf) and come to a facility for treatment. The story builds up unbelievable suspense to a climax that is utterly bizarre and over-the-top. It's really about what is done in the name of secrecy, the relationship between lies and information. It's a spoof on conspiracies and hidden knowledge, still told with an aura of dread.

Sally's art adds to the somewhat downbeat nature of his work. He combines a fine, thin line with the heavy use of blacks. The pages in "Animal Vomit" are all black, including gutter lines. This adds to the air of mystery and oppressiveness, the sense that everything is hidden and undecipherable/unrecoverable. The thin line helps ease the mood in some respects, reducing its dynamism. There is nothing overwrought or overstated on Sally's page. Subtlety is his hallmark, as the details of each panel never have a spotlight thrust upon them, telling the reader what to observe. Instead, his pages have a muted quality, making it all the more shocking when something mad happens on them. Sally's stories are not without humorous and absurd moments. "Animal Vomit" in many ways is hilarious, and there are moments of black humor throughout the book.

The second half of Recidivist deals with mortality, retribution and desperate pleas for help. "The Great Healing" may be the best story in the book. The narrative comes from one character, talking out loud to his friend who is missing. The images are of that friend, driving along, oblivious to the wondrous news his friend wants to tell him. The ending is inevitable and shattering. The narrative is amazing: "Miracles fell from the sky, like bullets...Lovers returned to their beds. Poetry was annihilated. Tears crawled back into wet eyes."

As nuanced and wrenching as that story was, Sally turns around and hits the reader over the head with his next story, about a disgusted surgeon laboring over a hopeless patient. Sally reverses ground in every way: white becomes the dominant color, there's a visceral quality on every page and an increasing sense of the author's cynicism and disgust. That carries over into the final story, "Your Black Fucking Heart". It's about a man who deserves to die and gets what's coming to him from above. What makes it fascinating is the narrator is talking to the "you" who dies, but who can't hear them. Like "The Secret Girls", the narrator lays everything bare for the reader, but this knowledge only creates more questions.

The title of the collection gives the reader a hint as to what's going on. There are patterns found in each story, patterns that reveal that the behavior found in each has been going on for quite some time, despite any attempt at reform or improvement. It's too late to change, even if there was any intention of changing. A heart was broken one too many times, another person committed one wrong too many, another person saw one horror too many and cracked. The result is a work like no other in 2005: full of real horror and terror, the struggle that is daily existence and how we find ways to cope (or not). These stories stay with you, both inviting and rewarding detailed readings. Any fan of art comics must get their hands on this book.

Examining Privilege: Little Fish

Ramsey Beyer's account of her first year of college, Little Fish, is a sort of Bizzaro version of Phoebe Gloeckner's Diary Of A Teenage Girl. The latter book is a blend of text and comics that detail all of the horrible things that happen to Gloeckner's stand-in character, thanks to the presence of all sorts of predators in her life. Beyer's book starts off by talking about her comfortable, safe life in a Michigan small town and then proceeds to discuss her first year in a Baltimore art school. For the most part, she's able to find friends, do well in school and have fun with very little trauma. She's the little fish in the big pond in any number of ways as someone who's far more innocent than her peers, but she gets along well with pretty much everyone. The most traumatic thing that happens in the book occurs when a friend gets hit by a guitar at a punk show, and even that just winds up with him getting some stitches in an ER. Readers looking for drama, conflict or seismic character changes will be disappointed. Readers looking for tales of wild parties and young people making bad choices will also be disappointed, since Ramsey didn't drink or do drugs, and most of her friends didn't party much either. So, without any sort of conventional story hook, what makes Little Fish worth reading?

Unquestionably, the strength of the book likes in Beyer's authorial voice and the authenticity of her observations. Beyer was a compulsive list-maker and LiveJournal addict who documented her life thoroughly, and much of the book consists of her type-written lists detailing every imaginable thought and whim. Things she liked, sounds she hated, feelings she had, plus/minus lists, etc. The fact that she wrote them on an actual typewriter is a charming quirk that greatly adds to the handcrafted, zine quality of this book. Indeed, about half the book consists of those lists and hand-lettered transcriptions from her LiveJournal at the time, and the other half consists of comics riffing off those items that she drew especially for the book. In the galley that I read, this mix works nicely, but there was some repetitiveness. For example, she introduced what would turn out to be her initial batch of college friends and their interests, and then did it again a few pages later in comics form. At 267 pages, there is certainly a bit of flabbiness that's a result of repeating the same kind of thoughts several times, and I thought the book in general needed a nice, tight edit that chopped out about 15 pages. That said, her comics themselves were impeccably designed with her warm clear-line style. We'll see what the final result looks like when it's published this fall.

What I like best about the book is Beyer herself. She is an interesting study in contrasts. She's still very much a girl (as opposed to an adult) in some ways, down to her pigtail braids and glasses. At the same time, she thrived in her weed-out year at art school and found she did a much better job at time management and taking care of herself than many of her peers. She was comfortable in her tiny home town but was growing bored because she was never challenged, and consciously went to an art school in a city with a good punk scene. Even growing up, she constantly marveled at how good she had it. She wanted for nothing, traveled a lot and generally never had to worry about anything. Rather than feeling entitled as a result, Beyer felt grateful and even a little guilty if she ever felt unhappy or complained about anything. That's an attitude I found refreshing and unusual. In her diary, Beyer felt she was too trusting but also noted that she had trouble letting people in. She wanted a tight-knit group of friends but was still too scared to commit to anyone in terms of dating. Her painting teachers excoriated her for a lack of passion in her work. Her LiveJournal detailed her life and made her, in her words, "an open book", but it was obvious that she kept large portions of herself bottled up. What's interesting is that her self-awareness regarding this found her putting herself in situations where she would be challenged. Most people go through life reeling from life's challenges, but Beyer lived such a charmed existence that she had to seek them out for herself, pushing past her comfort zone time and again.

That even extended to her discomfort regarding dating, as she slowly fell into a relationship with a guy at her school and found her life enriched as a result. He introduced her to alt-comics, which she took on as her new challenge by the end of the book. Her friends challenged her politically and got her to think about things in a new way, especially regarding feminism. Beyer didn't so much radically transform as much as she simply had her consciousness raised a bit with regard to a lot of issues, simply needing the nudge that she received and wanted. Beyond her relentless self-examination, Little Fish is simply a wonderful document about the joys of being in a new place as a college freshman. It's about new starts, simple pleasures, rapid friendships created by being in a similar set of circumstances and the mix of stress and exhilaration that a challenging environment creates. Beyer captures all of those feelings in a unique, attractive format that will resonate with its young adult target audience.

A Plug for Sequential

I review a lot of comics from England, and if you've ever wanted to read some of those comics but found them unavailable at your local shop, then you may be interested in an app called Sequential. The artist Nick Abadzis passed along a link to the app that has books from the likes of Blank Slate, Knockabout and SelfMadeHero, including Abadzis' own recent Hugo Tate collection. Check it out, if you have an ipad and are so inclined.

Out With A Bang: Mome #22

The final issue of Mome is understandably all over the place, as Eric Reynolds wanted to encourage as many of its contributors as possible to submit a piece for the finale but also had a gaggle of new cartoonists he wanted to include as well. Given the new roster of cartoonists he published in this issue, I could have easily seen Mome go on for another dozen issues, replenishing its talent pool as older artists bowed out. I hope that Reynolds sees fit to do an occasional "Mome Annual" in the future, especially since Fantagraphics doesn't have a flagship anthology at the moment.

The last issue sees several more episodes of serials, many of which unfortunately did not get a chance to finish up. Kurt Wolfgang hilariously addresses that problem head on with his latest installment of "Nothing Eve." Right in the middle of this episode, Wolfgang (inexplicably depicted as a talking dog) yells "cut" and sends his characters home since Mome is ending. It goes on from there: dog-editor Reynolds informing Wolfgang that Mome was being cancelled because no one likes his comics, dog-publisher Gary Groth demanding zombies and hookers to liven up the series, and (best of all) Jordan Crane being brought in to write exactly the ending that Groth wants. Wolfgang is finishing up the real ending now for a Fantagraphics book, but this ending reminded me a bit of his Low-Jinx days, when he would cleverly savage everyone in comics (especially himself).

I don't have much to say about the other serials in this issue, like the Michael Jada/Derek von Gieson "Devil Doll", Ted Stearn's latest Fuzz 'n Pluck epic "The Moolah Tree", T. Edward Bak's "Wild Man" or Josh Simmons/Shaun Partridge's "The White Rhinoceros". I've discussed each of these at length in prior reviews. Bak completely reworked "Wild Man" into a book that will be out in the fall of 2013, and he notes that "it's a completely different work." I really hope someone picks up the demented Simmons/Partridge story. Speaking of Simmons, he also contributes a lovely one-pager that's essentially a series of happy endings about a group of friends meeting their maker.

At nearly 250 pages, Mome 22 must have been an enormous challenge for Reynolds to whip into something that had any kind of flow. Thanks to its size and variety of material, this issue indeed lurches back and forth, with some of the serials providing particular screeching halts. Reynolds clever gets around this to an extent by using a series of Steven Weissman strips as interstital material, giving the anthology a number of rest stops to cleanse one's aesthetic palate. These strips, featuring the members of Guns N Roses working in a deli, are some of the funniest comics I've ever seen by Weissman. With titles like "Chinese Chicken Salad Democracy" and "Appetite For Delicatessen", Weissman piles on the crazy in strip after strip, especially with his star character, the guitarist Slash. I could read a book's worth of these.

Many of the returning regulars turned in some of their best work for this volume. Eleanor Davis' "Nita Goes Home" stands as one of the best five or ten stories published in Mome. It fits snugly into most of her themes, involving family and the ways in which women relate to each other, transplanted to a futuristic setting. The colors are bright and deliberately stylized, reflecting a future where the air is toxic but family relationships are still a matter of push-and-pull. There's a wistfulness to this story that reflects a woman coming back to where she was raised after having rejected it for a life as an artist and natural farmer, a bittersweet quality that reflects the experience of dealing with her father dying. The scene where the titular Nita and her sister, each wearing a cocoon-like anti-toxicity suit, spread their father's ashes out across the land and then weep wracking sobs into each other's arms. It's both absurd and totally heartfelt, a reflection of the way humanity can trump technology. I'm hoping this and her other excellent Mome contributions will make it into her upcoming Fantagraphics collection.

The other top-notch submissions by returning artists included stories by Joseph Lambert, Laura Park and Tom Kaczynski. I reviewed the Kaczynski story, "Music For Neanderthals", elsewhere. Lambert's "Lists of Lasts" continues his considerable leap as a storyteller, taking the intensely detailed and hyperkinetic stories about kids and once again transplanting that concept into a darker, deeper setting. In this story, two young boys suddenly have total freedom in their house and decide to make lists of things they have, as Lambert slowly reveals the apocalyptic reasons why they have this freedom. Lambert's creative use of lettering takes on an especially crucial role in the story telling. Park's "George" is a delightfully creepy little noir story about an unassuming man who secretly blows up movie theaters as a sociopathic way of lodging his protest against modern civilization. As always, her character design and sheer drawing skill are impeccable.

There were nearly a dozen other stories by past and recent Mome regulars that were also quite good. The always dependable Nate Neal's "Death" was his cheerfully morbid take on the end, focusing on the absurdity and inevitability of it all through the use of randomly named characters. Sara Edward-Corbett's "The Fanciful Companion" was typical of her melding of childhood whimsy and cruelty, drawn with her delicate line. Lilli Carre's "Into The Night" is another of her mysteries; she loves spinning yarns about unexplained and strange compulsions that appear without warning; This time, it was a sound in the middle of the night that had a slightly different effect on everyone, but it was something that could not be entirely ignored. There's a delicacy to her line as well, though it's put to slightly more abstract ends. Tim Hensley's "Sir Alfred" is a series of hilarious strips about the late, great film director Alfred Hitchcock. Hensley really gets after the gossipy side of Hitchcock and his many sexual obsessions, along with his impotence. I could have read a book's worth of these, and I was delighted to see Hensley return after finishing up his amazing "Wally Gropius" serial. When Noah Van Sciver was first published in Mome, he was just starting to build up steam as a cartoonist. Now he's entered into a more mature phase of his career, and it's remarkable to see how assured and funny his "Roommates" is. Van Sciver loves depicting toxic, disgusting and generally reprehensible relationships, and this short & sweet story really gets at that essence. Joe Kimball's story was another bizarre and immaculately drawn bit of visceral weirdness, while Sergio Ponchione provided another of his rubbery and fun Dr Hackensack adventures. Tim Lane's "Belly Gunner" abandoned his usual interest in life on the American road and instead flashed back to the possibility of instant death as a plane gunner in World War II, drawn in his usual naturalistic but fluid style.

Three of the original Mome artists returned for the finale (along with Wolfgang, who never stopped contributing): Gabrielle Bell, Anders Nilsen and Paul Hornschemeier. Hornschemeier's main contribution to Mome was his serial "Life With Mr Dangerous", which was later collected. In #22, he contributes an interview with Amy, the main character from that story, revealing influences and generally finding ways to talk about the story. It's a little gift for long-time readers of his. Nilsen contributes one of his funny and philosophical photo comics, the kind that make up his "Monologue" books. Bell, who was another MVP of this series, contributes a funny fantasy comic called "Unlucky", which sees her unable to get into a club where a party held in her honor was being staged. Things just get worse from there, as her evening and fortunes unravel bit by bit. It's a fitting final story for the anthology, as she was on the cover of the very first issue.

Eight artists made their debuts in this issue of Mome. Chuck Forsman's story "Francis", about a young man dealing with his own insecurities and his inability to cope with the fact that his mother was dying, was typically excellent. It's in turns crude, heartfelt and bubbling over with barely-contained and confusing emotions for its main character, who doesn't quite know how to express them. Forsman nails that feeling of being close to losing a close family member where that relationship is strained. Most of the newer artists worked in a more fantastic fashion, like Jesse Moynihan's excellent "Simon Magus". Moynihan has a knack for staging big, dumb battles between godlike beings who nonetheless have all the emotions and frailties of a human, but does it in a deliberately stiff and color-drenched manner. Malachi Ward's approach is a bit more restrained, but he also likes to use science-fiction settings to depict man's essential savagery, showing that the line between man and savage is a thin one indeed. James Romberger's "Loving Bin Laden" is reality based tale that quickly veers into fantasy, as a woman dreams of having an affair with the notorious terrorist after 9/11. Romberger is an incredible artist who makes great use of color in this bracing, bizarre story. Finally, Victor Kerlow's "Oh Man" is one of his fantastical stories of a man being devoured by invading vines, Nick Drnaso' "Keith or Steve" is a curiously flat story about a nobody who nonetheless takes on great significance for the narrator, while Jim Rugg's one-pager pokes gentle fun at serials by being an "original page" from a comic called "Suburban Love Tales".

Eric Reynolds managed to publish over 2,600 pages of comics in six years, and he did a fine job of recruiting new talent and shaping each issue in order to keep it coming out on time. For any serial publication, even one aimed at bookstores like Mome, keeping a regular schedule is key to it lasting any length of time. I think the key to Mome surviving was the combination of Reynolds' singular taste as an editor and flexibility. I know that the comics by David B and Lewis Trondheim may not have been in his particular wheelhouse as a reader, but he listened to the advice of Kim Thompson and published them in Mome because they would draw in readers and provide a home to material that would not otherwise appear anywhere else in English. He was a tough editor who could demand that young artists step up their game when submitting material, though there were times that some of his veteran artists didn't always submit their best stuff. I found Sophie Crumb's presence in Mome to be especially frustrating when she half-assed a story, or when Jeffrey Brown didn't seem to be saving his good stuff for Mome. On the other hand, he greatly nurtured the careers of Gabrielle Bell, Eleanor Davis, Dash Shaw, Lilli Carre', Tim Hensley and many other cartoonists who made it a point to really do their best for each issue. Mome wasn't necessarily avant-garde in the way that Kramer's Ergot is, but it reflected the rise of the alt-comics scene from its new blossoming around 2000 to the explosion of young talent present today. Reynolds was the steward of much of this talent, as so many cartoonists aspired to be in Mome, and the comics scene now lacks a similar guidepost for young artists. That's why I hope Reynolds will consider going back to producing a new anthology that returns to Mome's roots and rotates in the best of the younger cartoonists on the scene today. Even if he doesn't, he produced a body of work that is lasting and produced some of the best short stories of the past decade.

Approaching The Finish Line: Mome #20 and #21

Let's take a look at Mome #20 and #21. Both were decent but mostly unremarkable issues, burdened somewhat by some of the serials that bogged down the newer work.  Let's go artist by artist and examine what was produced.

Dash Shaw: In #20, Shaw continued his recent attempts at adapting trashy dating TV shows like Blind Date (minus the wacky commentary and pop-ups that serve to interrupt the audience's experience of the couple on their date). Shaw's trying a lot of different things here: it's partly an experiment in having color drive the emotional narrative of a story. The subdued sea green wash here befits the low-key nature of the interaction. Shaw also omits the wacky trust-building activity central to each date in favor of simply following the couple around as they drive to their date, walk around and eat dinner. This also reflects his interest in exploring how two people interact in real life and how that translates to a page, while still retaining the staged quality of the TV show. I feel like this is all part of some larger problem-solving activity for Shaw, much like his comic about the making of Jurassic Park in #21. That documentary concerns itself with trying to create a relationship between things on a screen that don't exist (dinosaurs) and actual actors, trying to find ways to make that relationship come alive when seen in a theater. In a sense, this is what Shaw is trying to accomplish by pushing the envelope of multilayered drawings with a different color wash attached to them. He's not trying to create something real; he's trying to create something that feels real in an emotional and apprehensive sense.

Sara Edward-Corbett: In #20, her "The Bird, the Mouse and the Sausage" was one of her best pieces. Her comics have always had the preciseness of certain kinds of children's illustration, and this story is very much in the vein of a fable. Her use of negative space is exquisite, be it the bright white space in nearly every panel or the deep black of her trees, marked only be a series of thin, white vertical lines. As a result, the spot colors she uses really pop out on the page. The story is about an essentially polyamorous (but asexual) trio whose equilibrium is shattered when the bird mates with another bird. An act of jealousy winds up dooming both the mouse and the sausage, who calls into questions its very identity as an anthropomorphic being in the course of the story. Like most of her work, it's funny, sad and a little savage. In #21, "Afraid of the Dark" is a whimsical, delightfully-drawn story about an anthropomorphic desk, umbrella and box kite that leave a classroom late at night to wander the forest and cemetery. The denseness of her hatching and cross-hatching provides an interesting contrast to the benign nature of the story itself. It's a mood piece above all else, but that mood is "whimsical".

Josh Simmons and The Partridge in the Pear Tree: These two issues saw parts two and three of the truly demented serial "The White Rhinoceros". Two people (one of them apparently being 1970s Paul Lynde in full "Uncle Arthur" mode from the TV show Bewitched) find themselves in a terrifying and brightly colored forest full of what a couple of children call "racial magic". What Simmons and collaborator "Shaun Partridge" do here is transpose the most virulent of racial slurs into a fantasy world where those words have a completely different (and usually either neutral or positive) meaning. This world is quite dangerous for the newcomers, who lack the ability to negotiate and understand their new environment, though both try to figure it out as best as they can. I hope that someone is going to pick this serial up, because it's some of Simmons' finest work, with his near-psychedelic use of color in particular being a revelation.

In #21, Simmons also contributed a story called "Mutant", which is more what one would expect from him. Simmons quickly creates a strange scenario: a bunch of people standing outside somewhere at night. Someone gets beaten up, and a guy goes after the responsible party: a tiny demon with a plastic mask. After he stabs the demon to death with desperate gusto, he is told that it is now reborn, mutated and angry. Simmons has a way of generating dread and lingering doom like no one else; the specifics of the story and the reasons why anything are happening are important. What's important is that this guy who felt empowered and righteous one moment is irrevocably fucked, with his doom to come along at any moment. That's why he creates hands-down the most genuinely unsettling horror comics today.

T Edward Bak: These two issues offer the last part of chapter two and the first part of chapter three of his "Wild Man" serial about the explorer and scientist Georg Steller. They mark an interesting transition point in the story, as Bak goes from Steller in Europe with his fiance, passionately having sex with her as well as engaging in clever repartee with her; she is clearly his equal. Of course, the promises he makes to her are all doomed, as chapter three opens with a dream of sex turning into Steller having to deal with wild wolves in a near-Arctic setting. Bak really gets as the desperation and the human drama played out in the wild, the sense that there's no hope but trying to keep on living. A revised version of this story will soon be published by Floating World Comics.

Conor O'Keefe: Issue #20 debuted his new serial, "The Coconut Octopus". O'Keefe is a great example of an artist who really benefited from being part of Mome, as he refined his style noticeably over the past few years. I've come to enjoy his softly penciled and colored blend of Winsor McCay and Maurice Sendak, mixing whimsy and melancholy in equal measure. The titular octopus of the story is a very funny and cute figure, and I hope that O'Keefe can keep up this new story and the continuity of his characters elsewhere.

Nate Neal: Neal may not have the name recognition of some of the other Mome artists, but he was one of the most consistently interesting contributors during its run. "Magpie Inevitability" in #20 feels like a modern take on a Bob Dylan song from the 60s, with a cadence similar to "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)". Brightly drawn with a varied color palate, it's typical of Neal in that it focuses on how destructive modern culture is and the ways in which each individual is complicit in this emptiness. The combination really works well here, as the images balance out the stridency of the text. Neal has also been interested in the roots of language and how that ties into how we make images. "Cha-ul Nu Mon-Mon" in #21 is a beautiful, brutal story about a group of cave-dwellers. A young boy named Jani is taught by his mother ("Mon-Mon") how to paint on the walls of the cave; it's a thunderbolt of a moment for a young man who has found his destiny. His mother is young and beautiful and has drawn the jealous ire of her fellow wives of the chieftain; they use him in a plot to kill her. Flashing forward years later, Jani is the tribe recorder, painting another triumphant hunt by his father at his behest. When the story concludes with Jani sneaking off to draw a portrait of his mother, Neal gets at the heart of art's ability to bring to life what is gone and keep it alive forever.

Michael Jada & Derek Von Gieson: Their "Devil Doll" serial, mashing up hard-nosed WWII soldiers wandering into a potentially haunted town and finding madness, dragged in every single segment. Von Gieson is a talented artist, but his storytelling here is murky and difficult to follow, and the story feels bloated and tedious. I enjoyed Von Gieson's previous contributions to Mome, but this story just doesn't suit what he does best.

Steven Weissman: The comics veteran was a welcome addition to Mome, but his first entry in #20 was not what I expected from him. Sure, it was about kids and the ways in which they heap abuse on each other, but it quickly turned into a gruesome horror story with a number of wholly unexpected twists and turns. It's a must for fans of the artist, because he takes expectations and simply mangles them in a way that's emotionally powerful. The end was also unexpected in terms of both its plot twists and ultimate poignancy. #21 featured a number of his hilarious "Barack Hussein Obama" strips that would later go on to get their own collection. These strange and wonderful accounts of Obama and Joe Biden off on adventures, developing superpowers, and generally interacting as somewhat fractious best friends fits in perfectly with his Yikes! material, as the characters here are child-like in their demeanors and emotional states, and they balance that sense of cruelty and kindness that children can express at a moment's notice.Weissman's scratchy line and extensive use of effects like zip-a-tone add to the sense of fantastic, even if the figures are depicted more-or-less naturalistically.

Sergio Ponchione: Ponchione is another slightly odd fit for Mome, given the slightly goofy and bigfoot nature of these stories. That said, they look absolutely terrific in full color, coming on the heels of his excellent Ignatz line series Grotesque. #20 sees "The Grotesque Obsession of Professor Hackensack", a charming prequel to Grotesque. It's got the same manic energy that reflects Ponchione's interest in early American cartooning, with touches of Milt Gross and Rube Goldberg to be found. #21's "Sgnaz" channels Dr Seuss but also gets at the darker parts of the imagination that Ponchione is so fascinated with, especially those memories that are repressed but bubble up in unexpected ways. Without any hope for further Grotesque stories in English, it was a treat to see them in Mome, just like many of the foreign short stories that were translated and published.

Jeremy Tinder: It's a shame that Tinder hopped on to Mome so late in its run, because he really fit right in. "Time and Space" had this sort of Archer Prewitt quality to it that I enjoyed, as the main character was a sort of blobby figure seeking out satori and the ability to practice remote viewing. In a strip with lots of funny drawings and an absurd premise (he succeeds and joins his guru remotely on Mars, where they encounter the giant floating head of god and send out & receive good vibrations), its execution is done with deadly seriousness. There's no punchline, but rather a resolution to a problem posed earlier in the strip. That uncomfortable zone between the serious and the silly gives this strip a charge.

Aidan Koch: Koch's comics always have an elusive and slippery quality to them even as she provides all sorts of visual cues as to potential meanings. "Green House" in #20 is no exception, and its very title offers clues as to what's really going on. A woman brings a man over to her apartment, and he immediately puts the moves on her and they wind up having sex. He leaves early in the morning, and while she does not overtly comment on this, there's a moroseness in her body language that the reader can feel. The title refers directly to all of the plants she keeps in her apartment (which he comments on, baffled as to why she has so many); their growth is essential to her growth. When she offers to trade plants with a girl across the way, it's a way of creating a real connection, as Koch's drawings of the two of them sharing their plants together indicates. Indeed, that drawing has a shadowy circle surrounding them, as the two of them were in a flowerpot together. Having found a connection on her own terms, the guy calls her back, apologetic for leaving and wishing to get together soon; he'll have found her already blossomed. There are few artists who think through every line and its effects the way that Koch does.

Nicolas Mahler: I've always thought Mahler was kind of a curious fit for Mome; that European, cartoony bigfoot thing felt more like something that Kim Thompson would have put into an anthology, not Mome editor Eric Reynolds. However, his autobio short stories display a crackling, straight-ahead sense of humor that is unusual in Mome. "Convention Tension" and "Goodbye, Mr Nibs" in #20 deal with Mahler's experiences at comics shows and teaching, respectively. A cartoonist doing a strip about a con is not exactly a new idea, but I liked the way in which Mahler favorably compared comics nerds to art snobs ("at least the comics nerds have genuine despair going for them"). The second story speaks to the frustration Mahler felt with utterly disinterested students, a frustration that's heightened when a friend of his acts as a substitute for a class and has a great time. In #21's "Moving Pictures", Mahler first vents his spleen against an old art teacher and then goes into hilarious detail about how a government grant helped fund an animated project of his, talking about finding voices, finding an animator and being relentlessly hounded by the government for a final project -- including years after it was actually released! Mahler was never an essential part of Mome, but these shorts acted as an appealing palate cleanser.

Ted Stearn: There's not much more to say about Stearn's "The Moolah Tree" serial (which appeared in #20) other than it's funny, mean and impeccably drawn. It's a slow-moving serial that didn't seem to come close to finishing up by the end of Mome; indeed, it just seemed to get going. Stearn has a knack for making almost every character simultaneously lovable, completely stupid and dangerous to themselves and others.  

Kurt Wolfgang: Wolfgang is another MVP from Mome and is certainly one of the five cartoonists who made the greatest impact in the series. While his early entries in Mome were good, it was his "Nothing Eve" serial that really stands out. As we follow the protagonist of the story, Tommy, around the city on the last day before the end of the world, the reader knows he's trying to find his only real love, a girl named Edie. This chapter reveals that Tommy wasn't always the kindest person, as his reunion with an abandoned friend/fling named Patti reveals. Indeed, this portion of the story finds Tommy taking a hard look at himself for occasionally being a rotten friend. Wolfgang's drawing just gets better and better, mixing rubbery & stylized character designs in with heavy blacks and densely-crosshatched backgrounds.

Tom Kaczynski:  Please see my review of "The Cozy Apocalypse" in my review of Kaczynski's collection of stories, Beta Testing The Apocalypse. Kaczynski was unquestionably one of the best and most productive cartoonists in Mome.

Jon Adams: Adams' delicately drawn and seriously strange strips have mixed naturalism and surreal, violent, nighmarish and cartoony imagery. "Almost Candied Chimera" is typical of his stories, involving a redneck father/son hunting duo, a whimsical creature, a violent death and a horrible fate.The silliness of the action is juxtaposed against the horror of what actually happens.

Nick Thorburn: Thorburn really plays to Reynolds' fondness for the gross, grotesque and silly. His crude strip about an alternate, even bawdier history of Benjamin Franklin deliberately riddled with as many lies as possible in #21 was very funny, revealing a strong influence from underground comics.His other strip was less funny than it was drawn in a lively matter. These strips were another nice palate-cleanser.

Lilli Carre': Carre's carefully designed and constructed figures point to her background in animation, but her stylizations always serve the neuroses, fears and wonders her characters encounter in her stories. In #21's "Marching Band", a woman wakes up one morning to hear a marching band pounding out a tune in her head that only she can hear. She eventually comes to accept this bit of madness until it disappears one day, which makes things even more maddening. Carre' gets at the common fear of being attacked or infested during one's sleep in an absurd way, and then makes a comment about the ways in which we internalize madness. It's a clever short for a cartoonist whose Mome entries were among the best the series had to offer.