31 Days Of CCS #18: Reilly Hadden, Andi Santagata

Reilly Hadden's comics are truly right in my pleasure-center wheelhouse. His art, his character design, and his pleasantly rambling fantasy plotlines have a deadpan quality that veers between horror and absurdity. Hadden just ended his long-running Astral Birth Canal series and has rebooted (with many of the same characters) as Astral Forest. The main difference is that unlike in the original series, which focused on a couple of characters per issue, Astral Forest flips between a few different characters in each issue. The first issue dives into a new storyline for Valentina, the earth woman who took off with space god Bork. In this story, they are living on a remote, icy planet with their baby Edward. In a long bit of scene-setting, it's revealed that some sort of anthropomorphic bird creature is watching them. In the second story, Hadden introduces Kath, a badass warrior who is on a quest while avoiding a bunch of demons who want her dead. An imp sent by her enemies winds up as her companion. Finally, there are brief interludes with Rona and Bird-Girl, who are told that there's an ancient tablet with their likenesses on it.

The second issue advances each of these stories. A group of rabbit bards hires Bork as muscle--uninvited, Bilbo Baggins-style. Kath uses the imp to escape some wolves. The tablet is actually part of a stone golem who declares that Rona and Bird-Girl are to be saviors of the Astral Forest. What I like best about these comics is that while Hadden spins a fun yarn, it's the corners and cracks of the narrative that he likes to invite the reader into. It's Bork trying to get the baby to sleep. It's Kath going on and on about the perfect sandwich and its ingredients. It's one of the bards singing an extended song. The small moments, the silly moments, and the absurd moments are the ones worth sticking around for.

Andi Santagata's work tends to deal with the reality of being embodied. It's just that the last comic I reviewed by him, Jed The Undead, was about a demonic teenager dealing with infernal ejaculation issues. The comics from this year are much more personal, including the autobio Trans Man Walking #1-2. Santagata employs a thin, scratchy line that offers that hint of horror expressiveness. It makes sense, given how many of these funny strips are about feelings of being trapped, or scared, or alienated. Santagata talks as much about being Asian as he does being trans. The highlight of the first issue was Santagata's CCS application strip, where the applicant is asked to include a robot and a snowman in their story. Santagata makes it funny and poignant, turning it into a relationship story gone horribly awry.

The second issue sees Santagata really lean into this kind of expression. The comics are tighter, funnier, and hit harder. There's a strip about how Santagata feels masculine most of the time...until he is hit with a period. The viscera and the scrawled lettering in that strip really pound its point home in a manner that's disturbing and hilarious. Santagata also points out in one strip how everyone always says the current year had so many bad things happen and counters it by noting that in 1997 his home country was returned to tyrannical overlords (Hong Kong, I presume), 9/11 happened, etc. It's a good point, one that he repudiates a few pagers later in an insert where Andi from the end of 2017 comes back from the future to warn present Andi that this really was going to be the worst year ever. The Time-Knife is a funny balance of sci-fi and autobio, as Santagata imagines how each decision we make creates an alternate self and universe where things are different. It's a warm story, as Santagata feels filled with regret at some of his decisions, but is well aware there are many others where he's truly an asshole. What it really does is speak to one's own potentiality at any given moment, and how powerful that truly is.

31 Days Of CCS #17: Melanie Gillman

Melanie Gillman's As The Crow Flies has piled up the awards, in part because their depiction of queer youth in a religious setting at a camp felt so painfully real. Gillman has a lot of equipment in their artistic toolbox, and they use every one for good effect. First, Gillman focuses on character detail. Who they are, what they like, if they're shy or outgoing, their racial identities, social background, etc. While Gillman naturally features queer characters who go through experiences identifiable to their readers, it's those details that truly bring them to life. Second, whatever setting Gillman happens to choose for their stories, they clearly research it fastidiously. The religious camp in As The Crow Flies felt so very lived in, whether that was from personal experience or simply asking the right people the right questions. In their new book, Stage Dreams, Gillman shares their research into the Civil War, its impact on the western US, and stories of queer and trans people at the time. Third, Gillman's painstaking use of colored pencils gives them total mastery of mood and tone in their stories. In a book with a lot of sweeping desert vistas, colored pencils had the desired effect of overwhelming, sheer beauty.

Aside from all that, Gillman's just a crack storyteller with a solid use of dialogue. In a shorter book like Stage Dreams, things zip along quickly without sacrificing character development. The story is set in the New Mexico territory in 1861 as the Confederacy is making advances in their effort to take the California territory and its resources. A bandit known as the Ghost Hawk is terrorizing stagecoaches, while a young trans woman named Grace is fleeing conscription into the rebel army. In a series of swift moves, The Ghost Hawk (aka Flor) robs a stagecoach and kidnaps Grace. When it becomes clear that Grace is trans and has no money, a scheme is hatched to crash a Confederate party and to steal some plans. Along the way, there are clothes to be altered as part of the plan (leading to a fascinating scene in the shop of a sympathetic tailor) and a budding romance between Flor and Grace.

The climactic party loops a character introduced earlier into the plot as a catalyst for the key action scenes. As Gillman notes in their endnotes, women made great spies in the Civil War because most men didn't take their presence seriously. The way Gillman uses and then subverts gender assumptions cleverly moves the plot along at key moments, and the romantic denouement feels well-earned. The result is a fun genre mash-up that never forgets the oppression and erasure faced by queer people of this era. It's a celebration of trans people in particular and the ways in which they found and find ways to survive and thrive. The fine details of Gillman's research only make the story richer and more authentic. The story isn't as profound or personal as As The Crow Flies, but it isn't meant to be. Stage Dreams is a light, breezy bit of historical fiction whose underlying themes and realities give it poignancy.

31 Days Of CCS #16: Angela Boyle, Denis St. John, Cole Closser

Bearskin, by Cole Closser. This comic is from 2013, from Ryan Standfest's "Rotland Dreadfuls" minicomics series, but I've only seen it relatively recently. Closser adapts the Brothers Grimm to forceful effect, as the story of a soldier who makes a deal with the devil has multiple twists and turns. Closser, who usually adopts the veneer of classic cartoonists in his comics, here instead uses a more traditional illustration style, albeit one fitting for a fairy tale. In particular, he really nails the early part of the book before we are officially introduced to the titular character, as small creatures in what seems to be a forest taunt an unseen presence. It's Bearskin himself, as the bet he made was that he wouldn't cut his hair or nails for seven years, nor would he bathe. It turned him into a monstrous pariah but also gave him riches that he used to help out a sad, bereft old man. In return, one of his daughters volunteered to marry him. In the end, the devil may have missed out on getting Bearskin, but Bearskin's action inadvertently led to him getting two other souls. It's such a brutal story because there is no moral, only the inevitability of death. The timing and grittiness of Closser's art is a perfect fit for this kind of story.

Artema The Beast #2, by Rachel Cholst and Angela Boyle. The second issue of this series about an exile from a peaceful society is more ambitious than the first, but it does have certain structural problems. Artema joins a small party of thieves and killers and proves to be far more bloodthirsty and deadly then the rest of them combined. Cholst gets at Artema's inner struggle here, as she doesn't know if she likes what she's become. Artema's loyalty to her country supersedes everything, but she is also aware that she's being manipulated. Boyle's bigfoot cartooning is an interesting match for a gritty fantasy story, and that is part of what makes the story visually interesting. There's a lack of fluidity in some of the fight scenes and some general clunkiness when it comes to characters interacting in space, but Boyle usually finds a way to work around it. Indeed, the stiffness of character interaction is more pronounced in non-combat scenes. There are also some panels suffering from a paucity of background detail that further accentuates some of the character design issues. Boyle's art was more interesting in close-ups and with just two characters together. When the series is hopefully collected one day, I could see Boyle re-doing certain pages here and there.

Continuing the monster/fantasy theme, let's check in with Denis St. John. His Monster Club Comix is a collection of short Patreon comics originally created for subscribers. St. John's level of detail and expressive scribbliness are a highlight of his comics, along with a ghoulish sense of humor. In the first couple of strips, we meet a teen who encounters a horrifying yet intelligent slug-like creature on a bus. In a later strip, it suddenly grows after being on her body while she's taking a bath. It's a hilarious take-off on that particular trope and even gives it a romantic bent. There are also several monster vs monster one-offs, and these suffer in a comic the size of a minicomic. The level of detail in the drawings sometimes makes it hard to tell precisely what's happening on a panel-to-panel basis. Some of the best strips are stories like "Passage," about an alien coming to this dimension and struggling with every aspect of it and finding a way out through a human. It isn't a gruesome ending--it simply jumps into his shadow. It's an interesting point-of-view comic with a twist worthy of an EC horror comic, which is a clear influence for St. John.

The Kiss Of Death is an individual issue of Monster Club, done in the style of a Jack Chick tract. With the Vampirella-style hostess "Hella'Rella" narrating, St. John goes to his other main well as an artist: sex. Just as monsters in his comics almost always have a humorous edge, so too is sex a subject of humor. In this story, the classic trope of the monster seducing and destroying the innocent human woman is hilariously subverted as the monster disintegrates upon a kiss. Hella'Rella then warns all innocent monsters about the depraved humans. St. John plays it up for all its worth, and the formal qualities of the comic all help sell the joke.

31 Days Of CCS #15: Betsey Swardlick, Ivy Allie

Ivy Allie is a first-year CCS student who's demonstrated some sharp comedic instincts in her work to date. Funny Fables is her take on the CCS Aesop project, and she did a meta version of "The Fox And The Crow" that was hilarious. She took the original story, where the fox flattered the crow into dropping a desired pie, and then turned it into a Tom & Jerry routine where each animal sought revenge and the pie. All the while, the narrator kept going, alarmed at what was going on, and coming up with new morals for each story after the latest turn of events. The narrator even winds up playing a part in the narrative itself, as the animals could hear them. Allie's cartooning is fluid and appropriately cartoony.

The Castle Caper reminds me a bit of Mathew New's comics in that there's an unlikely duo going on Indiana Jones-style adventures. In this comic, it's a mummy and a professor's assistant who go on a treasure hunt. The mummy (nicknamed "Monty") had his tomb robbed hours after his death, and being trapped for 4,000 years wasn't going to make finding it easy. This is another breezy, silly, and funny comic whose action is fluid and clear. Allie's use of color brightens up the empty spaces in her panel and even heightens the action at crucial junctures. Allie's character design is a bit fussy in some spots, like the scribbly character of hair for some of the characters. It distracts from the clean aesthetic of the comic and wasn't really needed, given that strong use of color. It's really the only element of her work that isn't simple and fluid. Other than that, it's clear that she's ready to tackle longer work.

I've long enjoyed Betsey Swardlick's punk rock monster-comedy comics for years, from Failwolves to her collaboration on Glamera. She's currently doing a one-woman anthology called Spaghetti Punch, where she's throwing out different ideas in an effort to see what sticks. The first issue features a story about a witch-powered ice cream stand with unusual flavors, whose price is a brief blood-letting. The exasperation felt when half of the clientele want something without dairy or gluten is hilarious. There's also a "debate" between two wrestlers about going shirtless or not and the understanding that disassociating while driving is not a good thing.

Spaghetti Punch #2 finds Swardlick hitting on her next great idea: "Party People." The concept is a world where vampires hold parties where the caterers/waiters are expected not only to serve them drinks but also to be available for blood-sucking. This is an absolutely brutal satire of the idle rich, but it's also a fascinating account of a particular young woman who really got into the experience of having her blood sucked. It's a kind of horror version of Upstairs, Downstairs, looking at both the vapid aristocracy and the foibles of the workers. Finally, Swardlick was the key mover in Ratburn, a comic about a band of anthropomorphic rats. This is mostly fragmentary, but it bounces between the band in its decadent punk rock heyday and years later, when the lead singer is a teacher but still invested in the dream. There's also a rat couple that Laurel Lynn Leake and Amelia Onorato do pin-ups for. This is an interesting set of ideas that bear further fleshing out.

31 Days of CCS #14: Advocacy Comics

This Is What Democracy Looks Like was published by the Center For Cartoon Studies itself. The comic is free and available as a .pdf, with the idea that it's a work of Graphic Advocacy, or Applied Cartooning, as the school itself might say. The lead cartoonist and writer is Dan Nott, and the project truly has his fingerprints all over it. Nott has an evenhanded authorial voice, even when he's passionate about a subject. He also has a knack for taking large, confusing institutions and breaking them down, piece by piece. In simple language and very clear graphics, he explains how governance works in the US. More to the point, Nott gets across the idea is that democracy, even a representative democracy like the US (as opposed to direct democracy), requires not just voting but a willingness to advocate. It's about raising awareness for what's important to you, finding other like-minded people, and making compromises with others. It's advocacy and consensus-building not just as an individual activity, but with the understanding that the whole point of democracy is acknowledging our participation in a greater society.

Kevin Czap did the cover, and it strikes all of the right notes. James Sturm and CCS grad Nomi Kane (who's done a great deal of political work) were also credited, but I couldn't discern what they did in particular. Cartoonists Summer Pierre and Hallie Jay Pope also contributed strips, with Pierre's strip, in particular, a stirring tribute to the importance of voting. That said, this is Nott's book. The way that he calmly explains why he's right, with a strong emphasis on facts and historical data, makes the book more pedagogical than polemic. Given its stated mission, this emphasis on clarity rather than passion is the right call.

On the other hand, Housing + Transit is very much about passion. Josh Kramer, who's been a tireless comics journalist throughout his career, is angrier and more direct when reporting his stories. He teamed with Nott for a strip about transit issues and with Joyce Rice for a story about Housing problems. Both strips originally appeared in The Nib and were written by Kramer. "Transit" traced the history of a lack of good transit systems in many high-density cities. There was a tipping point where antiquated transit systems simply weren't replaced by cars provided so much more individual, independent access. However, in high-density areas, traffic reduces this efficiency and creates health & environmental issues as a result. Kramer portrays it as something that the public must buy into as much as anyone in order to make it work. "Housing" zeroes in on zoning laws that prevent the construction of housing (never mind affordable housing) in many states, and these laws are often racist in nature, in order to "preserve the character of the neighborhood." The contrast in art styles was interesting. Rice's page layouts were clear and did the job, but lacked the astounding clarity of Nott's pages. Nott knows how to use an open-page layout in a way that still holds everything together and makes it easy for a reader to navigate the page.

Glynnis Fawkes is currently on faculty with CCS and drew this year's recruitment comic, The Brontë Sisters Go To The Center For Cartoon Studies. Fawkes just did a book on Charlotte Brontë, so this made sense. This is one of my favorite of the CCS comics (I'm not sure anything will ever top the one that Kevin Huizenga did), as it imagines Charlotte and Emily Brontë as cartoonists. It subtly gets at the reasons why going to a comics-focused school is a good idea: the availability of resources, both technical and research (the Schulz Library is truly a marvel); stretching skills through collaboration and learning the styles of other cartoonists; and being taught storytelling as a way to strengthen one's work. The sales pitch is funny and charming, with a distinct understanding of the Brontë sisters' background and interests while giving them a modern sensibility. 

31 Days Of CCS #13: Nhi Luu, Jess Johnson, Donna Almendrala, Kori Michele Handwerker

Nhi Luu is a first-year CCS student, and her mini Latchkey Kids serves as a preview of a larger work. She uses a thick, expressive line that's also quite scribbly in this story of two sisters who find themselves lost in a haunted hotel. Not much more than the premise is established in the mini, but Luu lets us know that the older sister is dissatisfied to be on a working vacation with her parents, and the younger sister is a kid who wants to have fun. The undercurrent of anxiety and dread that emanates from K.C. (the older sister) when her parents don't answer their phones and haven't returned by midnight is a palpable one. It's that kind of existential fear felt when a loved one is away and you're terrified they might die. It's also unclear what's going on in the hotel, but there's a late scene that's both funny and creepy: when Mai (the younger sister) leaves her crayons to mark their path, hands reach up from under the floorboards to take them away. The thickness of Luu's line would seem to indicate maybe using a color wash later in the process because the figures really cried out for it. The mix of YA familial tension and mystery leaves the reader wanting to know more.

Similarly, Jess Johnson's Student Council Yearbook features bits and pieces of a longer work about a slightly fantastical scenario involving the student council of a school. Of course, Johnson's work is highly informed by manga tropes, so there's a lot of drama, flashy uniforms, and odd relationships. Johnson spots a lot of black into her comics, which adds to that sense of dramatic confrontation. Johnson's line is really thick in this comic, and there are times when it doesn't seem she has total command over that line. Some figures look wobbly and half-formed. There are clearly plenty of ideas here, so hopefully, Johnson can clear things up on the page and also perhaps consider color.

Donna Almendrala graduated from CCS in 2012 and she's worked on all sorts of clever, genre-oriented projects. She's doing these nicely-produced series that have a lot of color touches, focusing on some of her favorite subjects. Food Fanzine #1 isn't just recipes (though that's part of it); it's also stories and memories about food. For example, "Pizza Spaghetti" is a recipe for a rich, meat-based pasta dish. But the story is really about growing up and trying to connect with your far-away family by making beloved dishes. A strip about favorite ice cream flavors is about how eating it can momentarily distract from workplace stressors. The guest spots from Maia Kobabe and Alena Carnes were perfect fits in this kind of emotional narrative surrounding food.

Desert Dreamin' #2 sees Almendrala doing what she does best: draw cute animals. This is the story of a new mother owl who realizes that feeding her kids is going to be way more difficult than she had expected. Almendrala's combination of clear, naturalistic detail and cartoony grasp on motion and exaggeration make this comic a breezy delight. Indeed, the comic's comedic touches take it beyond the realm of simply being cutesy, especially when the owl is struggling.

Kori Michele Handwerker's career has been split between genre stuff, queer (and specifically trans) romance, and comics about the importance of pronouns and other signifiers of identity. Their Books About Gender Make Me Feel A Way is interesting because it's all about Handwerker's struggle with reading other people's experience being trans, in part because are worried about being triggered. More to the point, it's really a comic about what they really want to write about and what they're afraid to write about. Dancing around the issue of just how much ink to spill is difficult for any cartoonist who chooses to work in memoir, but even moreso when navigating these emotional pitfalls. They don't come to any particular conclusions but do wind up reading a book they were avoiding on the subject (Maia Kobabe's Genderqueer). That mere act sparked this particular comic, and it seems clear that it might just be the beginning.

31 Days Of CCS #12: Leise Hook, Ross Wood Studlar, Beth Hetland

Beth Hetland just can't stop creating things. Even when she and her writing partner Kyle O'Connell took a break after finishing their epic Half-Asleep, they crafted a super-fun project called Who's Counting? Hetland has often enjoyed formal experimentation by the way of making the actual delivery system of the comics unusual. From folding comics to color-coded narratives and much more, Hetland often seems to like to clear her creative palate by working on more craft-related projects. This "Collection of Tallies" has a single image on a page depicting something happening at a comics show or elsewhere, and a rotating series of images in a clearly divergent wheel that the reader turns by hand. It's a clever and fun twist, but there are subtle critiques as well. There's a funny page depicting a snooty artist using a number of different words to say very little, as well as Hetland's series of reactions to answering the question "What's it like to be a woman in comics?" This comic is just a bunch of these tiny illustrations and observations, with Hetland's self-caricature doing a lot of the work on each page in terms of leading the eye. There's also a sense of glee on some of these pages, as Hetland is clearly relieved to be doing funny work for a change.

Ross Wood Studlar has been quietly publishing interesting nature-related work for years, and his latest, Follow The Moon, fits nicely in that category. Studlar has also always been interested in local myths and legends regarding nature, especially those of Native American origin. This story follows a mother sea turtle telling her daughters about the first turtles and how they came to give birth on land. The story involved a turtle trying to hitch a ride with a heron and the whole experience going horribly astray, with one exception: the turtle learned how the heron followed the full moon as a guide. Studlar's art is both naturalistic and expressive, with gritty stippling grounding the details of the turtles laughing and showing other emotions. Studlar has a solid grip on how animals relate to their environments, and it shows in his drawing.

Leise Hook is a second-year student, and her comic The Moonbug Caper shows that she has a solid career in young adult and kids' comics if she wants to go down that path. She tells the story of an anthropomorphic rabbit family in a series of charming vignettes, grounding the story in the essential conflict between a younger girl named Jam and her teen sister Amma. Jam is pretending to be "Supercat," a masked superhero, while Amma is trying to summon magic using old radio equipment. Unbeknownst to them, an alien worm creature named "Secretary Moonbug" pops up and demands their help. The story is a wonderful mix of believing in the fantastic, as the rabbits help Moonbug on his mission, in part because he reveals that the stories in the book Amma loved so much were real. Hook's understanding of sibling dynamics gives the book the tension it needs to drive the rest of the plot, and the resolution of the story points to how their relationship is actually quite close. Hook's character design is irresistible, and her use of negative space, in particular, gives each character plenty of room to breathe in individual panels. She adds just enough grayscale shading to give each page enough weight. The book does seem designed for full color, and the line weights she uses would seem to support this nicely.