Thirty Days of CCS #24: Queerotica

Queerotica is the aptly-titled anthology containing "queer erotica". What I found interesting about it is that the editorial team of Allie Kleber, Joyana McDiarmid, Laurel Lynn Leake and Sasha Steinberg specifically asked each contributor to come up with their own definitions of both "queer" and "erotica". That bit of editorial direction proved crucial in forcing each artist to think deeply about their choices in coming up with pieces (stories or illustrations) that fully expressed their own understanding of the term. Reclaiming pornography/erotica is something that every generation of cartoonists seems to do every few years, from the earliest underground comics (both gay and straight) to anthologies like Smut Peddler, True Porn, Dirty Stories and Thickness. Each one of those books had a strong editorial hand that both selected and directed their contributors to think about identity and sex in particular ways, and Queerotica's finely-honed editorial edict led to a surprisingly coherent and fluid read.

The anthology itself is beautifully designed. Leake's front cover is sensitive and evocative, with hands belonging to various genders and identities interlocking with each other, evincing both desire and tenderness. The back cover's parade of different shoes amusingly both recapitulates the front cover's theme of diversity and gives it a slightly dirtier take, suggesting what happens when shoes come off. The book's purple ink was an interesting choice, working well for the large variety of storytelling choices and line weights in the book. The pin-ups all contained striking images, some sillier than others. One person's erotic image is of course completely ridiculous to another person, so the pinup by "A.B. Fiddlestyx" featuring a furry reflection in a mirror just made me laugh. Laura Terry's monster orgy was deliberately funny but also had a strange erotic charge. Rio Aubry Taylor's beautiful drawing of two figures in an intimate embrace was the perfect complement to Terry's over-the-top image, once again recapitulating the kinds of pieces a reader would find throughout the anthology. That was repeated with Miz Moody's feather tickling illustration and Rachel Dukes' frank but tender image of a woman in front of her partner wearing a strap-on dildo.

The opening piece, Alexis Cornell's "Arbiter and the Bird", features two women in bed, as one is nervous about having sex. It's a funny, sensitive piece that explores the very idea of sex as a key component of relationships and how this can be difficult for many people. Cornell nails the characters' body language and relationship to each other in space, which is absolutely crucial for a story about this level of intimacy. Morgan Boecher's "To Share" is about how difficult it can be to find a sexual partner, someone to share his body with, after he made the transition from female to male. Boecher makes the most of his somewhat crude line to tell a story that's in turns sad, funny and hopeful. "Headspace", by Ivy Weine and Kleber, is a mild BD/SM tale, the sort that uses it as a healing force. Parts of it felt pretty rote and cliched, and at ten pages the story started to verge into self-indulgence. Kleber's illustrations for it were quite good, especially the weird, freckled character design for one of the protagonists.

Kimball Anderson and Leake's piece, "Are You Sure" is not unlike Cornell's piece, but this time it features two (physically gendered) men. Leake's choice to use a fuzzy, distorted line and a thin line weight was interesting and appropriate, given the difficult feelings discussed in this story. That fuzziness made the intensity of their actual sexual contact all the more intense as one partner engages the other in his reticence and gender ambiguity (the partner identifies as the non-gender specific "neutrois"), while the other has to confront his partner's differing sex drive. By contrast, Lena Chandhok's line in "Oral Sex" is smooth and even cartoony, as she relates an argument between two women experimenting with talking dirty to each other, the awkwardness and upset that this causes, and their eventual make-up sex. Chandhok's approach here is direct, both in terms of the humor and emotional content and the explicitly detailed manner in which she drew the sex scenes.

Joyana McDiarmid's "Nothing In this World" explores polyamory and one woman's struggle with the concept, as well as her (soon to be ex-) boyfriend's being OK with her having sex with women but not men. For this character, she views any sexual encounter outside of their relationship as cheating and is distressed to find out that he doesn't. This leads her to an encounter with a woman who talks about polyamory and her relationships with other women, bringing her into a moment concentrating totally on the present and what they bring to each other. McDiarmid certainly doesn't skimp on the sex scenes either, but they're completely integrated with the story's emotional content, down to the very end. Her rendering style, with angular faces that have a minimal level of detail combined with her fleshy way of drawing bodies, makes this one of the most effective stories in the book.

Fydor Pavlov's "Gentleman's Gentleman" is more traditional gay porn drawn in a thin, delicate line; there's not much more to the story than just the sex scene. Lawrence Gullo's "The Fisherman" and Laura Hughes' "The Outlaw" are two example of using fantasy tropes to explore sex and identity. Gullo's story about an alienated fisherman neatly ties in issues related to otherness as the title character winds up having a silent sexual relationship with a gender-ambiguous mermaid/man. Hughes' story doesn't escape its fantasy tropes, mostly goes for laughs and winds up as the only juvenile story in the anthology. The book ends on a strong note with Melanie Gillman's "Wrappers" is a different kind of fantasy story, one in which both gender and genitalia are totally different constructs. Her character design here is especially excellent, as she quickly deflects reader expectations while still being able to relate both the embarrassment and powerful sense of discovery when two people explore each other's bodies. The way Gillman also subtly explores concepts like gender pronouns is also quite clever. Steinberg's "Somnata" is a beautiful and later hilarious way to celebrate this anthology, as it starts with three figures dancing an erotic and delicate ballet (Steinberg's line is beautiful and thin here) and ends with Steinberg himself crashing the party. All told, Queerotica has a high batting average of quality stories for the initial volume of such an anthology, and its impeccable design and careful sequencing by its editors make it a feast for the eyes.

Thirty Days of CCS #23: Bingo Baby

Bingo Baby is touted as an "experimental collaborative comic book" at its home site, Penny Lantern. The script was the result of a collaborative role-playing game called Fiasco, which aims to be a RPG version of a Coen Brothers movie, where you play characters with "powerful ambition and poor impulse control". The players included CCS alums like Amelia Onorato, Denis St John, Donna Almendrala, Joseph Lambert, and Bill Bedard, along with professor Jason Lutes. After recording the game and turning it into a script, the group parceled out storytelling responsibilities in a mainstream "assembly-line" style. Onorato drew the characters and some backgrounds. Bedard, Lutes and St. John drew other background details. Almendrala inked the whole thing to give it page-to-page consistency. Bedard and Lambert did the colors, while Alemendrala and Lutes lettered it. The results are interesting, if uneven.

The story concerns a handful of intersecting characters in a small town, each with their own set of obsessions and delusions. Carol Anne is sensible but obsessed with playing Bingo, the central metaphor of the book. Her (technically) ex-husband Rob is a dreamer who fancies himself an actor. His brother Jake is a petty drug dealer living with his elderly relative Nan, and he's trying to find money that she may have hidden inside her house after winning a big bet on a horse race as a young woman. There's Missy, who's trying to negotiate being a single mother after being thrown out by her parents, and Goldie, a drug-addled older man who fancies himself the father of her baby. Each of the characters has dreams that directly or indirectly interfere with the others, which seems to be a product in part of the game's mechanics. It also conveniently lays down a plot as the players/writers try to find a voice for each of the characters.

The problem with the book is that some of the characters don't escape the confines of the game. Rob is a key character, connected in many ways to several other characters, but he feels more like a twitching pile of scribbled-down character traits than an actual person. The same goes for Jake, who at least is written as a sort of darkly comedic, incompetent character in the Coen Brothers tradition. Of all the characters in the book, only Missy operates on a level that approaches logical, calculating desperation, and it's fitting that she winds up as the only real "winner" in the story. The problem with many of the other characters is that unlike in a Coen Brothers or caper movie, where ordinary people are thrust into desperate situations, Bingo Baby features characters with more outlandish personalities (or non-existent personalities) who have things happen to them. Indeed, the real "action" of this story occurs when one character accidentally burns down the house of another; the only other true actions taken are by Missy. Yet Missy isn't thrust into the spotlight quite as boisterously as the story does the crazy Goldie or scheming Jake. That makes the story's climax more interesting but results in some wheel-spinning along the way. Visually, the team does a good job of maintaining page-to-page continuity, with Almendrala in particular doing a great job at designing distinctive-looking characters. There's a frequent dearth of background details, but the Lambert/Bedard coloring team helps make up for that by constantly varying background hues. There was definitely a strong group mind behind the concept of the book; just like in the game Bingo, things had to line up somewhat at random and fortuitously for Missy to make her getaway. Hopefully, future iterations of this experiment will yield more nuanced characterizations.

Thirty Days of CCS #22: Chuck Forsman

I covered a couple of his minis earlier in this month's worth of features, but the arrival of Forsman's second Fantagraphics book, Celebrated Summer, certainly is worthy of another article on him. Interestingly, he had completed this book prior to starting The End of the Fucking World and Oily Comics in general. TEOTFW was in some ways a reaction to the kind of storytelling he was doing in Celebrated Summer, a book that in turn sprang from a minicomic about the lead character, Wolf.  One can see the differences between the two, as Celebrated Summer is denser in terms of the art and far more internalized in terms of its emotions. The story follows Wolf and his friend Mike as they drop acid and go on a road trip after high school ends. Unlike TEOTFW, which is all about dramatic decisions, heightened experiences and young people who go to extreme measures in an effort to escape their lives, Celebrated Summer instead focuses on quiet desperation and confusion.

It's clear that the acid trip and the road trip are a means to try to escape, to experience thrills and to take a shortcut to the kind of adventures experienced by the kind of people who inhabited the world of TEOTFW. Of course, Mike and Wolf soon realize that LSD is not a drug that lets its users run away from their fears and tensions--it only heightens them. Forsman has total control over his line and his visual vocabulary in this story, propelling the duo (drawn in that Charles Schulz/Dik Browne mode) into a psychedelic state that is as accurately drawn as anything I've read about this drug experience. It's not just warped visual perception but rather the removal of sensory filters that allow us to go about our day. That results in Mike getting lost in rapt fascination looking at a bush or Wolf staring into a mirror, following along with the visual distortions and hallucinations that occur.  When a cityscape starts to warp, Wolf wisely and fearfully advises, "Just keep driving".

Of course, the drug trip, realistically as it is portrayed, is just a backdrop for talking about the relationship between Mike and Wolf and their own frequently unstated insecurities. Wolf is a big kid taught to restrain himself, and that he is being raised soley by his grandmother undoubtedly has everything to do with his difficulty connecting to others. He alludes to when "his mother started pulling away" while giving no other details, but that quick marker tells us everything we need to know about his anxieties. Mike talks loud but has many insecurities of his own, especially regarding women and intimacy. It's not entirely clear why they're even friends, as Wolf frequently resents Mike's aggression. Dropping acid has the potential to be a powerful bonding experience, because as Forsman demonstrates your acid buddy is going through the same kind of experience and looking at the world with the same set of perceptual filters being thrown out the window. However, Forsman shows that it's also an isolating experience, as communication becomes even more difficult.

The central metaphor of the book is the circle. Wolf sees images turn into circle, inverting black and white. He talks about his thoughts running in circles. The entire experience feels self-referential, as he constantly thinks about his childhood fears looping into his adult fears. Later, he loops back to the acid experience itself, regretting the loss of time, the lack of living in the moment.  It's a plea for wanting to be able to isolate moments instead of the inevitable sense of living in a headlong, rushing stream of experience. If anything, the acid trip explodes their sense of alienation: from society in general, from each other and from their own selves.

Thirty Days of CCS #21: Luke Healy, Max Riffner, Mathew New, Simon Reinhardt

This time around, I'll be discussing the work of three current students, set to graduate in 2014, as well as one graduate from the class of 2013.

Luke Healy's Of The Monstrous Pictures of Whales is one of the more fully-realized comics I've read from a student. Starting with the beautiful, silkscreened cover, continuing with the whale-themed endpapers and into the confidently rendered, simple clear-line style, Healy creates memorable and distinctive characters as well. Healy's watchword is restraint, as he slowly reveals the reason why two Irish sisters and their mother go on an ocean voyage taking off from Iceland while quickly establishing their fractious interpersonal dynamics. The ship is a whale-watching voyage, and one of the daughters, Liz, is an acerbic young woman who winds up being a sort of object of affection both for a whale (it only surfaces when she's out on a particular deck, soaking her every time) and the slightly buffoonish son of the ship's captain. Moby Dick and Herman Melville are name-checked a number of times, as the comic is indeed about a kind of obsession. In this case, it's about Liz's troubled relationship with her father. The end sequence, which uses larger panels at the bottom of the page to slowly relate in real time Liz's emotional reaction to having pitched something valuable at the whale "following" her and smaller panels on top to flash back to the history of the relationship with her father, is emotionally powerful. Indeed, Healy seamlessly incorporates humor (both absurd and sarcastic) into a comic that at its essence is about grief. I haven't read much else by Healy, but this comic establishes him as part of the very top rank of CCS artists.

Mathew New's Billy Johnson and His Duck Explorers is a Tintin-inspired bit of nonsense. Borrowing a bit of Herge's character design, the story mixes in aspects of Indiana Jones as well as Bill and his talking duck Barrace Wilcox open the comic with absurd dance moves that's a result of a competition performed at random for someone who came to deliver a package. New's sense of silliness goes from there, as they must deliver a trident to the middle of the ocean, Billy angers the statue heads on Easter Island by picking their noses, causing them to get up and walk into the ocean, and the intrepid duo encounters a Lara Croft-style explorer when looking for a valuable artifact. New's line is decidedly unfussy and utilitarian, aiding the gags in the simplest manner possible. The mini itself is an amusing trifle of perfect length, as I'm not sure the concept could sustain a narrative that was much longer than a few pages.

Simon Reinhardt's comic, Crime Planet, is a graphically bold, if extremely silly, comic about the rise and fall of a gangster that brings to mind classic crime series like Crime Does Not Pay. Reinhardt makes up for limited rendering skill with a bold, dynamic sense of page composition, employing dense blacks on some pages to draw in the reader's eye and carefully spotting blacks on other pages so as to move the eye around the page. Starting with a boy who declares that "Crude entertainment has eroded all my moral fiber", Eddie Ford "turns to a life of crime" as a result, He gets recruited to a mysterious criminal organization called Crime Planet, and his subsequent success and eventual downfall are documented in a manner that slips between deadpan and directly comedic. Inbetween, there are various "public service announcements" for neighborhood watch announcements with secret codes and a corpse protection service. Like New's comic, it's all good dumb fun. Reinhardt doesn't quite have the chops to pull off every visual gag he attempts, and that's a strain on the reader at times, but the boldness of his storytelling does offset this difficulty.

Max Riffner graduated in 2013 from CCS, but he's had a long career as a webcartoonist. He did a strip called Lydia that I quite enjoyed. The comics I'm reviewing here were part of this CCS thesis packet and include the minicomic Doomsday Democracy and the book The Crippler's Son. Using a sketchy, expressive style that reminds me a bit of a slightly less scribbly Jeff Lemire, The Crippler's Son is about a professional wrestler nicknamed "The Crippler" (a name he took from his wrestler father) and his much younger brother, James. James is an ER resident whose entire education was paid for by Jack ("The Crippler") and the success that his wrestling career brought him. The Lemire comparisons extend to his Essex County trilogy, which is a story about familial relationships and misdirection regarding same. It's also about James seeking an identity as a gay man who grew up without real family relationships or close bonds. It's also impeccably researched, as Riffner did a fantastic job researching the back story behind wrestling and the kind of terms that only insiders tend to use, and made it part of the book's vernacular. Whether or not someone knows what a "shoot" or "kayfabe" are isn't important, because the technical aspects of the sport are akin to the behind-the-scenes nature of being an ER doctor. Indeed, Riffner makes pointed comparisions between the ER doctor locker room and the wrestling locker room, even if what happens afterward is obviously different. The point Riffner makes is that James learns only too late just how much he means to Jack, and why, even as he tries to open himself up. While the relationship between the two becomes obvious at a certain point, the way Riffner ends the story gives it a powerful sense of emotional ambiguity.

The mini Democracy Doomsday is a far more labored (and labored-looking) comic using zip-a-tone and other visual effects, printed in blue ink. It's about a Nazi-smashing robot that wakes up in a world where the Nazis won World War II, and finds a way to wipe out every Nazi and everyone under Nazi occupation. While nicely drawn and designed (the tall, angular and slightly goofy robot is an especially great character design), the end of the story is a bit heavy-handed. Riffner's use of restraint in The Crippler's Son is what made it such an effective story.

Thirty Days of CCS #20: Beth Hetland, Colleen Frakes

Beth Hetland has slowly, subtly refined her line and storytelling through sheer hard work. The first chapter of a longer story that she's doing with writing partner Kyle O'Connell, Half Asleep, is easily the best work of her career. It's the first time that Hetland has seemed to be in control of her line on a panel-to-panel basis, particularly in the way she draws her characters. It's the second time she and O'Connell have collaborated on a major project (their first such project was Cycles), and this time around, O'Connell left a lot more room for Hetland to tell the story visually. That's generally the biggest problem with writer-artist collaborations, that the writer over-writes and doesn't trust the artist to tell the story, but it's O'Connell's sense of restraint as a writer that allows Hetland to reveal details through body language. The story involves an unusual university and a brilliant professor whose research in "Hypnology", a science that basis its neurological and engineering insights on dream symbols, makes her a campus celebrity. Conflict is set up between her and her eleven-year-old daughter, whose preciousness made her the youngest-ever undergraduate at the university. However, it also introduced tension between her hyper-focused mother and her status as a daughter. Hetland and O'Connell cover a lot of ground and background detail in the form of a campus tour given to a visiting dignitary, as the reader is slowly introduced to this world and the unusual technology that's come about as a result of the professor's research. By the end, the artists have laid down a lot of narrative pipe, and I'm eager to see how the conflict is further explored.

Colleen Frakes continues to mine her childhood spent growing up on an isolated prison island off the coast of Washington, and Ghosts & Pizza is in some ways the purest distillation of that experience so far. I noted in her earlier attempts at writing about McNeil Island that she seems to have a book's worth of stories and memories about the experience, and they seem to be seeping out, slowly but surely. This minicomic features both of her approaches to telling her story. "Ghosts" is written from a present-day perspective looking over the past, as Frakes employs a thick, brushy line on single-page panels to illustrate various buildings on the island and recall their status as either haunted or not haunted, wondering if ghosts only haunt old places. In "Pizza", Frakes uses present-tense story structure to describe she and her sister attempting to get a pizza from the mainland and the comic obstacles that get in their way. Here, Frakes uses a thinner line weight to reflect the "present-ness" of the story, as life lived in everyday moments rather than a more isolated look back at images. That's also reflected in the way she crams as many as eight panels into the small pages, once again reflecting time passing quickly. It was also a good move on Frakes' part not to worry too much about explaining the backstory of the island and how she wound up there once again; those who had read the other comics would certainly know what's going on, while the story was still perfectly intelligible for someone who hadn't. Frakes still seems to have barely scratched the surface of her experiences growing up there, and these stories seem to work best in bite-sized doses that are less reflective than they are immersive.

Thirty Days of CCS #19: Adam Whittier, Josh Kramer, Andy Warner

Josh Kramer's fifth issue of his comics journalism comic The Cartoon Picayune continues its steady improvement, thanks in part to the participation of two polished artists known for their powers of observation and history. Andy Warner's "Sex Workers of the World, Unite!" is an even-handed history of the sex worker movement that was born in San Francisco. It's a movement designed to gain rights and legal protections for all classes of sex worker, from stripper to porn actress to prostitute. Warner did the legwork of getting interviews from a variety of different points of view and key members of the movement. Starting from a place of at least being sympathetic to the plight of sex workers led Warner to making a number of fine distinctions in the internal conflicts within the movement, which I found fascinating. As always, Warner's naturalistic style is clear and bold, with an emphasis on thick lines and spotting blacks as a way of drawing in the reader's attention, and a slightly cartoony style used for character design.

The other major story in this issue, Emi Gennis' "The Radium Girls", fits into her interests by being about unfortunate and unusual deaths but also snugly fits into this issue by unearthing the facts regarding the radium poisoning of female factory workers and the astounding callousness with which the Radium Dial Company treated these young women. Radium poisoning, which was in fact encouraged by the factory owners when they told the workers to swirl the radium-laced paintbushes in their mouths, is an especially painful way to die, but the company sandbagged and died until the end. Gennis' elegant, clear and decorative style frequently used an open layout and distinctive lettering, making it an appropriate pairing with Warner's piece. Kramer's own "Feeding the Meter" is much sketchier and lighter by contrast, which makes sense for this short story about a food truck owner's struggle to stay solvent in the face of onerous new laws. Erik Thurman's "Seoul Grind" is about the explosive coffee shop market in South Korea, how shops struggled to find out the best ways to make coffee and how shops manage to survive in the face of stiff competition. It's less a story than an interesting anecdote, one suited for just a couple of pages. This issue really seems to get it just right, mixing past and present while juxtaposing certain commonalities between both while getting at issues with some resonance.

Andy Warner's The Complete Brief Histories of Everyday Objects is a skillfully assembled mini that uses a consistent design model to deliver interesting stories about the origins of common objects. He manages to find intrigue in objects like ballpoint pens (which initially sold for an outrageous $12 apiece as part of a speculative demand bubble), cinnamon sticks (which were protected and monopolized by Arabs for nearly 3000 years thanks to a monster story) and the safety pin (created in a rush to settle a debt). I especially liked his piece about the bath tub, which is less about the tub and more about legendary writer H.L. Mencken gleefully spreading misinformation about its origins. This makes him the father of fake trivia. Warner then ends each two-page piece with bonus "fun facts", cramming additional research into one row and creating punchlines with single panel commentary. 

Adam Whittier's Phoenix: The Ford Pinto Story, is a tirelessly researched history of the Ford Motor Company's disastrous and dangerous Pinto model that was responsible for several deaths due to the way its rare gas tank leaked and exploded, even at slow speeds. Whittier documents the culture of auto makers at the time, which was that "safety doesn't sell", which led to the Pinto being rushed into production to compete with foreign competitors. The comic directly quotes the many outrageous things said and done by Ford executives, led by Lee Iacocca. Whittier makes some interesting story choices by going with a bright, whimsical drawing style as well as the decision to make "Phoenix", the Pinto prototype, have anthropomorphic qualities. In the context of the story and Whittier's rendering choices and (especially) color choices, having Phoenix talk made sense. In a story with events that were hard to believe (balancing profit over human lives), the fantasy element of Phoenix (as well as the prototype Edsel that came around telling Phoenix the real story) fit right in with larger-than-life characters like Ford and Iacocca. Balancing that fancy with direct quotes and stringently-researched hard numbers gives Phoenix the unusual distinction of being a critical documentation of corporate culture that's also entertaining. Whittier also touches on the idea that trying to recreate historical scenes always adds a fictive, narrative element; putting a talking car in there simply heightens that for the reader and allows Whittier to create a sort of Candide-like character whose fate is controlled by others.

Whittier's A Most Unfortunate Face is a smaller minicomic that shows off his facility for creating grotesque character designs, something that plays into Phoenix on a lesser scale. Whittier's exaggeration is limited to that character design, because he's careful not to overstate his case by using erroneous information that overinflated the number of people who had died in Pintos. Phoenix isn't Whittier's attempt at doing a Ralph Nader-esque Unsafe At Any Speed screed. Indeed, he is even-handed and understanding of certain aspects of corporate logic, especially when it's driven by consumer demand for cheaper products that don't sacrifice certain luxury add-ons. He condemns Ford and Iacocca for the lengths they went to in ignoring the pleas of their safety engineers and their sheer arrogance in how they thought a jury would never punish Ford. Whittier also notes how this trial was the flashpoint for making safety something that consumers would start to demand. This is a solid piece of historical writing, one backed up by primary documents and that has a carefully considered point of view that focuses on historical context as well as the events themselves.

Thirty Days of CCS #18: Lena Chandhok

Lena Chandhok is one of many CCS cartoonists who are looking for a style and a voice. Her collection of mostly student work, Leftovers Are Good Luck, is filled with a number of charming comics rendered in a variety of different styles. There's the clever design conceit of the cover being a refrigerator and the top portion being the "freezer section" and the bottom portion the "fridge section", with the two sections actually cut separately. That top portion is an hourly comics challenge as well as a nicely drawn Peanuts pastiche, featuring Chandhok looking not unlike Lucy. The hourly comics capture a day in the life of a CCS student, from the interesting lectures given (like being made to watch La Jetee and 12 Monkeys) to how dinner plans can change on a time because of heavy snow. She packs a surprising amount of detail into what are obviously hurried comics.

The rest of the stories range between fantasy to autobio to visual experiments. I especially enjoyed "Robot Baby", a funny and touching story about a couple who give birth to a robot and all of the weird complications that ensue. When Chandhok uses a fantasy trope, it's always in service of a greater metaphor, and that was certainly the case in that story. "Fear" and "A Week of Ups and Downs" are both autobio involving her boyfriend (the cartoonist Paul Swartz, who was entry #1 in this series) in a variety of stressful situations. "It Never Knows In San Papel" sees Chandhok use a thick, chunky line that's less effective than the thinner line weights she eventually chose. "Blue" is about a faceless woman turning invisible like so much plastic packaging in a store; I got the sense that this one was originally in color and it suffers a bit in greyscale here. In short, this is decent student work, but is fragmented in the way that early work inevitably suffers from. Still, there are a number of sparks of inspiration to be found, especially thanks to Chandhok's solid character design and wit.

One can see how all of that paid off in her most recent comic, Pony Tale. Once again, Chandhok uses fantasy tropes to explore identity issues. In this case, it's about a young woman named Callie who is half-centaur in a world where mythological creatures are quite real. Her only problem is that she looks like a normal, bipedal human; her centaur heritage is hidden. It's a clever metaphor for any number of identity issues, from race/culture to sexuality, where one's assumptions regarding another person are based solely on appearances. It's also about the hurt that results when someone trying to identify with a particular group is excluded because of some arbitrary criteria. Using a chunky, cute line and giving her pages a bit more thickness with more greyscaling and spotting blacks, Chandhok avoids bludgeoning the reader with her message by coming up with an amusing, well-designed cast of characters as Callie's circle of friends. The repeating motif of Callie staring into the mirror at various angles before leaving is a clever one, especially as it gives over to greater confidence toward the end of the comic. I'd love for Chandhok to revisit this world, perhaps from the perspective of one of the other characters.