CCS Bonus Week: Jarad Greene's Scullion

This week, I'm going to do some reviews of recent work from students and alumni of the Center for Cartoon Studies. I generally tend to do this in December, but with some recent work coming in, I thought I'd post it now rather than wait nearly a year.

First up is Jared Greene's debut YA graphic novel, Scullion. From his earliest comics at CCS, it was clear that Greene had all the necessary tools to become a highly successful YA cartoonist. The clarity of his line, the whimsical quality of his ideas, and his distinctive character design marked him as someone who knew what he was doing. He turned his senior year thesis into this first book for Oni Press, and he had the fortune of having Hazel Newlevant as one of his editors.

The plot of Scullion picks up on standard fairy-tale tropes and subverts them in fun ways. The story revolves around two scullions--dishwashers--in the royal kitchen as it prepares for the wedding of the warrior Riqa and her intended, the captain of the royal guards Chapp. The scullions, Darlis and Mae, are trying to find their purpose in life and are inspired by the noble deeds and best-selling advice book from Riqa. In a very amusing send-up of celebrity culture, her fame draws obsessive fan interest and trashy media coverage.

Greene skillfully maneuvers his characters to cause all kinds of confusion. In many ways, this is a story of mistaken identity causing comedy, which goes all the way back to Shakespeare (and earlier!). What makes this book stand out, apart from Greene's art, is the sly way he subverts gender and gender expectations. Riqa is a huge icon for both men and women, and everyone has read her book. Darlis, a teen boy, bears a resemblance to her, and these mistaken identities aren't a big deal besides causing trouble within the context of the plot. No one says a thing about a male resembling a female, nor should they--but it feels like a bold move in a YA book. There are various characters of color in prominent roles, as well as women--and it's simply the foundation of the book.

The book also satirizes exploitative capitalism, as greedy troll bandits concoct all sorts of money-making schemes. When they kidnap Darlis, who through a ridiculous series of coincidences winds up dressed like Riqa, they think they have someone they can hold for ransom. Throughout the book, Darlis, Mae, Riqa, and the missing Chapp all have their own clever and brave moments. Greene smoothly navigates them from one bit of peril to another, even if it's all light-hearted.

Greene uses pages with standard grids, but also splash pages, open-page layouts, overlapping panels, and other layout tricks that reflect the unpredictability of the plot. The end incorporates the characters finding the bravery and resolve to seek out their best selves as well as some clever ecological statements, noting that ambition without moral action is corrupt. There are hints of future conflicts for the characters, and while another book would be welcome, it was a genuine pleasure to read a YA book that wasn't obviously designed to be part one of a twelve-volume epic. Indeed, the relatively low stakes in this book were refreshing, focusing on the character-generated comedy and the mechanics of how they get from one situation to the next. Greene's own quirks as a cartoonist (he often portrays his characters leaning forward while in motion) mark Scullion very much as its own entity, rather than more of the same. 

Minis: Michael Aushenker, Jenny Zervakis

Crows, by Jenny Zervakis. This was a zine that Zervakis produced for 2019's Zine Machine show. It's not a comic; instead, there are illustrations on the front and back cover of the Durham skyline and crows flying over it. This is a painfully difficult read, as it's about the slow dissolution of her marriage, yet her writing is intimate and full of wisdom. Zervakis adds the running element of associating her divorce with seeing crows. Though she's not superstitious, she wonders about this. Much of the zine is also dedicated to talking about the women of her family and their strength, and it's suggested that perhaps the crows are ancestors trying to pass on a message. The final lines, "They are neither villains nor ghosts. They are just birds, living their lives. I should be too." are powerful and worth pondering. Creating meaning in random events is a human thing to do, but obsessing on these details can create paralysis. Zervakis' story is a difficult one that emphasizes finding a way to mourn and move on; making this zine is clearly part of the process.

Professor Mrs. Miniver, by Michael Aushenker. A good rule of thumb for Michael Aushenker's comics: the more ludicrous the premise, the more entertaining the actual comic. And the three premises for Professor Mrs. Miniver are among his zaniest. The first imagines a third volume in the Mrs. Miniver film series (from 1942!), conflating the character's relationships with the actress who played her. Greer Garson, who played the feisty titular character, had an affair with the much younger actor who played her son. In Aushenker's version, she fakes her own death, goes to college, parties naked, and manipulates her "son's" love into committing an extremely minor crime. Then she goes off into the sunset with the Nazi she supposedly killed at the end of the first film. It's all total nonsense that's made even more hilariously lurid with his use of color.

"Lincoln Horse" asks the question: "What is Abraham Lincoln had been transformed into a centaur?" Well, he would have personally ended the civil war, been in threesomes, and gotten a new owner. Aushenker keeps this silliness to a tight five pages. His Unstoppable Rogues also get a story as McDonald's employees, and the expected chaos ensues. Tonally, Aushenker likes his images, colors, and action as loud as possible. This sometimes belies the cleverness of his craft, especially his verbal gags, but it also befits the overall silliness of his ideas. From premise to execution, every aspect of this comic is designed to make the reader asks "WTF?"

Whit Taylor's Fizzle #3

The third issue of Whit Taylor's story of twenty-something ennui, Fizzle, continues to follow its protagonist Claire as she tries to figure out her life. Fizzle is now being published by Neil Brideau's Radiator Comics, an outfit that's slowly making waves in Miami. Claire works in a tea shop with an overbearing, pompous owner. Her boyfriend is a stoner from a super-rich family. Her boss and her boyfriend represent extremes that Claire is repulsed by. Her boss takes her role as a sort of tea lifestyle expert quite seriously. She is insufferable as she carries her employees in her wake, demanding that they share her enthusiasm. Her boyfriend hates his family's trappings of wealth but has no interests or ambitions of his own. The events of Fizzle chronicle her reactions to these extremes.

In the first two issues, Claire happens upon an idea for her own business: popsicles made from real fruit, with unusual blends. It's all related to her fantasy of being on this entrepreneur reality show not unlike Shark Tank, where investors fund ideas that they like. The third issue takes ideas that were on a slow boil early on and makes them more prominent. In the first part of the comic, her boss holds a tea tasting with the author of a ridiculous self-help book that uses a life jacket as a poundingly obvious metaphor.

The middle of the book details how Claire met her boyfriend Andy in college; not surprisingly, it involved getting high. It's implied that things didn't ever get much deeper than that. There's a well-designed sequence where Claire listens to the self-help book, and it strikes a chord with her. She's not happy with Andy, she fantasizes about her co-worker, and she's desperate to feel passionate about something, anything.

She attends the birthday dinner of Andy's dad and takes a deep breath before interacting with his family. Taylor makes them not so much monstrous as banal, especially Andy's priggish brother Rich. Rich loves his father but also clearly loves being the favored son. Andy plays golf with his dad to appease him but doesn't understand how easily he slips in and out of this life of privilege. The only person who talks to Claire like a person is Andy's grandfather, who takes an interest in her study of fruit. The final scene in the book is her receiving a book on the subject from him.

Andy gets drunk at the party and Claire confronts him on him trying to distance himself from his brother, who is having a fourth child. As dull as Rich is, he knows what he wants: family and material success. When asked point-blank about what he wants, he doesn't know--and then asks her the same question. At this moment, it becomes crystal-clear that a mutual lack of ambition is all that's keeping them together, an orbit of laziness and apathy. It's not his fault that she's chosen to stay in this orbit, but it's clear that she has the capacity to break out of it if she wants to. Receiving the book in the mail not only means important information that she can use, but it also represents an important sense of affirmation. Someone believes in what she's doing and takes it seriously, and this hasn't happened before. We'll see how quickly the plot spins around this one scene. Through it all, Taylor's cartooning is becoming increasingly whimsical and fun to look at, aside from telling the story.

Grace Kroll's Tulpa

Grace Kroll's incendiary debut comic, Tulpa, grabs the reader by the throat on the first page and never lets go. A tulpa is a kind of manifestation or doppelganger, and Kroll is tormented by their own tulpa, as the cover itself reveals. Kroll is at war with themselves and their mental health, and the first story sees their tulpa whispering to them that they're damaged and should just die. In a dream, Kroll imagines being at the top of a tall building for a suicide attempt but they don't follow through. Waking brings no solace; indeed, Kroll thinks "If I was dead, I wouldn't have to feel anything." This is all expressed through a series of chiaroscuro drawings mixed with their blank self-caricature.

In a series of short vignettes, Kroll explores their depression, body image, fantasy life, sexual needs, and their own productivity as an artist. While many of the images and stories are disturbing, it's fascinating to see Kroll wrestle with the darkest impulses of their id and work through them. It's not so much therapy as it is an exorcism, exposing what they hate and fear about themself and the world in such a direct and visceral manner. In "Skin," for example, Kroll sits in front of a mirror and compulsively picks at the skin on their face as their tulpa berates them. The images become more and more graphic, including a detailed schematic of the skin's many layers, and Kroll can muster no defense at being referred to as stupid and disgusting.

In "Fantasy" and "Session," Kroll's tulpas seem to have a lot less ammunition. "Fantasy" is about their giving themselves permission to fantasize about whatever they want, no matter how lurid, because it's not hurting anyone. Their tulpa has to admit that it seems to be pretty satisfying. "Session" involves them being consensually tied up and flogged, and how freeing it feels. Their sexual tulpas (including a furry) try to make fun of them for all of this, but they're not having it; being in that submissive space is healing for them. "No Critique" features a wave of distractions and haters preventing them from drawing, but one of them (who redrew a page) actually provides a useful perspective. Who's the tulpa and who's the real Grace? Kroll deliberately blurs that line.

"Body Talk" is perhaps the roughest of all the strips, as this tulpa is so unrelentingly vicious to Kroll during a workout. It makes them push too hard, degrades their body as worthless, and pushes them to purge. The tulpa just wants Kroll's full attention, knowing that purging allows them to "feel a semblance of fucking control over your body." Of course, nothing ever really works, as the sight of their own body is too much for them to bear. Every aspect of this strip is painful and disturbing, and Kroll doesn't spare themselves at all. They are honest in every inch and every panel that overcoming these feelings isn't even on the menu; simply expressing them honestly is a powerful statement.

Kroll's mastery over body language adds to the emotional impact of these comics. A shorter comic, Dancers, is a gag story that uses the flattening, abstract forms of modern dance to tell the story of one lover asking another dancing lover to get them Milano cookies. There's a hilarious bit of dialogue along the way that leads to a funny conclusion, as the one thing that was unwanted occurs. Kroll has remarkable control over the page, whether it's disconcerting and grotesque naturalism or light-hearted cartoony work. This is an exciting debut.

November Garcia's Malarkey #4

At this stage of her career, November Garcia's one-woman anthology Malarkey is mostly comprised of reprints from other venues. Popula, Pen America, and The New Yorker featured some of the stories here, and it speaks to her versatility as a cartoonist in how she tailored each of them for publication while still retaining her essential irreverence. Of course, there are plenty of her own strips in Malakey #4, and they are very much in keeping with past work. For example, there's her obsession with the band FIDLAR, a loud and trashy rock band whose fans tended to be teens. Her obsession and crush on the lead singer are funny, but Garcia also notes that as a middle-aged woman, she's right on track for regressive behavior.

No one does self-deprecation funnier than Garcia. Take her story about being a young cartoonist and submitting a book to Fantagraphics, for example. Convinced of her own genius, she had the chutzpah to send it to her idol Peter Bagge (along with the rejection letter) and asked if the problem was the story or the art. His reply, "It is both," led to her thinking "With that, I officially entered adulthood." Garcia's willingness to deeply mine her memories of embarrassing events is what makes her so funny. A key element of that humor is her subtle mastery of pacing, Even in stories that are mostly dialogue and text captions, Garcia has a way of making them easy to absorb thanks to her understanding of how to use negative space.

"Travel Tips From A Tokyo Trip" was originally published in The New Yorker, and Garcia is much more reserved than usual. It's still a funny strip with a good punchline, but the tightness of the strip and punchline is different from her typical pleasant meanderings. Compare that to the next, wordless story. Garcia drops a nameless drug at the beach, listens to music, and rocks out. "Blind Faith," from Pen America, is about her religious upbringing and Catholic school days. Garcia smartly notes how omnipresent religious practices are when virtually everyone in the same country is brought up Catholic. A Filipina, Garcia shed her beliefs when she moved to America, but what was interesting was how lazy her own parents' practice was. Sure, they had to pray the rosary growing up, but it was ok to wait til after Melrose Place. No issue of Malarkey is complete without a funny story about Garcia's mom, and this issue featured a story about her mom's obsession with beauty regimens, culminating in something horrific called a "blood facial."

"Hole Number One" is a companion piece to "Blind Faith," as Garcia talks about trying to get laid as a teen and finding it hard to get privacy. Garcia talks about using confession as a way of getting rid of her sex-related guilt so this story takes the reader from under her bed to abandoned houses, a park, and finally a golf course. A neatly-trimmed green works every time. The final strip involves Garcia giving advice to her younger self about hard living, being cool, and how she will never lead a conventional life. Garcia's use of color throughout the comic adds a lot to each story; her use of blank space invites conventional, psychedelic, and decorative uses of color. Garcia's increasing confidence and command over her page makes all of this work some of the most entertaining autobio currently being published.

The Top 75 Comics Of The 2010s

Over at Solrad, I compiled my list of the top twenty comics of the 2010s. This was an extremely difficult task, as I had to leave out many worthy entries. Here's my list, ranked 21-75, of the other best comics of the decade.

A few notes:

* I excluded anthologies from the list, with the exception of the Jason Martin-written issue of Papercutter. That's a separate category to consider, in my opinion.
* I excluded most big collections of artists, with the exception of Mark Connery's Rudy, because that work had never been collected before in any format.
* I only allowed one entry per artist. The exception was John Porcellino, in part because the two works I chose are both exceptionally good and are completely different in terms of format and style.
* I stuck to printed matter only, with the exception of Laura Park's piece.
* I am limiting myself to a single line of description for each comic. I've reviewed most of them already.

Here's the list of 20 I published with Solrad:

1. Rusty Brown, by Chris Ware (Pantheon).
2. Rosalie Lightning, by Tom Hart (Macmillan).
3. Pretending Is Lying, by Dominique Goblet (NYRB).
4. You & A Bike & A Road, by Eleanor Davis (Koyama Press).
5. The Love Bunglers, by Jaime Hernandez (Fantagraphics).

6. Soldier's Heart, by Carol Tyler (Fantagraphics).
7. Leaving Richard's Valley, by Michael DeForge (Drawn and Quarterly).
8. The River At Night, by Kevin Huizenga (Drawn and Quarterly).
9. Everything Is Flammable, by Gabrielle Bell (Uncivilized Books).
10. Chlorine Gardens, by Keiler Roberts (Koyama Press).

11. Infomaniacs, by Matthew Thurber (Drawn and Quarterly).
12. Someone Please Have Sex With Me, by Gina Wynbrandt (2D Cloud).
13. Girl Town, by Casey Nowak (Top Shelf).
14. The Heavy Hand, by Chris Cilla (Sparkplug Comic Books).
15. Artichoke Tales, by Megan Kelso (Fantagraphics).

16. All The Answers, by Michael Kupperman (Gallery 13).
17. Blammo #9, by Noah Van Sciver (Kilgore Books).
18. Sir Alfred #3, by Tim Hensley (Buenaventura Press).
19. The Unofficial Cuckoo's Nest Study Companion, by Luke Healy.
20. Book Of Days Daze, by E.A. Bethea (Domino Books).

And here's #21 - 75:

21. King-Cat 75, by John Porcellino (Spit-And-A-Half). This is the tribute to Maisie Kukoc issue, and it's a magnificent, sincere, and loving eulogy for a beloved pet.
22. Recidivist #4, by Zak Sally (La Mano). Haunting, poetic, and complex work--and printed by hand.
23. Hagelbarger And That Midnight Goat, by Renee French (Yam Press). An absurdist piece about the ways in which beauty, kindness, cruelty, humor, and horror can all share the same space.
24. Education, by John Hankiewicz (Fantagraphics). The master of comics-as-poetry once again puts together an extensively immersive and challenging series of images in creating a powerful narrative of sorts.
25. Frontier #17: "Mother's Walk," by Lauren Weinstein (Youth In Decline). No one gets more real than Weinstein, and this account of childbirth and its accompanying stressors and pleasures holds nothing back.

26. I Want You #2, by Lisa Hanawalt. One of the funniest, most stylish, most disgusting, and most bizarre comics I've ever read; this is what I mean when I refer to a reading experience as "the full Hanawalt."
27. Approximate Continuum Comics, by Lewis Trondheim (Fantagraphics). Endlessly witty quotidian observations from one of the world's greatest cartoonists.
28. The Infinite Wait And Other Stories, by Julia Wertz (Koyama Press). This is Wertz at her height, with a fully-realized drawing style and attention to narrative detail that makes her usual hilarious observations all the more poignant.
29. Susceptible, by Genevieve Castree' (Drawn and Quarterly). Brutally honest personal account of how a toxic parent can traumatize a child, and how that child reacts to the experience as they grow up.
30. Bright-Eyed At Midnight, by Leslie Stein (Fantagraphics). An ode to art and beauty as a worthwhile thing to pursue done in a bright, colorful style that is in itself gorgeous.

31. Make Me A Woman, by Vanessa Davis (Drawn and Quarterly). Davis' trenchant observations and her innovative open-page layouts make her one of the best, most singular memoirists.
32. Your Black Friend, by Ben Passmore (Silver Sprocket). A devastating, incisive, personal, and funny statement about race and the ways in which white people unfairly look to people of color for instruction.
33. Our Mother, by Luke Howard (Retrofit). Howard's personal and painfully funny account of his mother's mental illness and its creeping inevitability in his own life.
34. Out Of Hollow Water, by Anna Bongiovanni (2D Cloud). With quiet but powerful restraint, Bongiovanni spins horrible fairy tales that reflect the cruelty of real life, especially with regard to women.
35. Incidents In The Night, by David B (Uncivilized Books). This is a wild bit of autobio, detective story, and magical realist conspiracy theory epic--all done in David B's trademark dense black line.

36. War Of Streets And Houses, by Sophia Yanow (Uncivilized Books). Yanow is an ace at depicting the intersection of personal and political hotpoints, with a shambling line that is irresistible.
37. Raw Power, by Josh Bayer (Retrofit). It's punk as fuck, like all of Bayer's work, matching the expressive energy of the line with a steady narrative framework and a powerful understanding of history.
38. The Hospital Suite, by John Porcellino (Drawn and Quarterly). Still maintains the poetic nature of King-Cat while telling a straightforward narrative about his mental and physical illnesses.
39. Chunk, by Emma Hunsinger. A perfectly and expressively drawn comic about art school that delves deep into each character's emotional narratives.
40. By Monday I'll Be Floating In The Hudson With The Other Garbage, by Laura Lannes (2D Cloud). Autobio doesn't get any rawer than this, as Lannes holds nothing back in talking about her relationships with a line so expressive that it practically jumps off the page.

41. This One Is Mine, by Laura Park. In a single page, Park displays their stunning skill as a cartoonist and their storytelling brilliance in discussing their life with cancer.
42. This Is The Last Day Of The Rest Of Your Life, by Ulli Lust (Fantagraphics). This is a horrifying coming-of-age comic, filled with toxic friends and predators at every corner, told with commanding cartooning skill.
43. Sex Fantasy, by Sophia Foster-Dimino (Koyama Press). This is a funny, weird, and deeply intimate mix of personal and fictional stories--and the line between the two is deliberately blurred.
44. Dragon's Breath And Other Stories, by MariNaomi (2D Cloud). A sensitive, poetic, and deeply personal series of short memoir vignettes, tinged with a deep sense of melancholy and regret.
45. Arsene Schrauwen, by Olivier Schrauwen (Fantagraphics). This outrageous "biography" traverses areas like colonialism, fantasy, weird sex, surrealism and many other categories.

46. Young Frances, by Hartley Lin (AdHouse). This is both an exquisite character study and a knowing, hilarious parody of what it's like to work in a high-powered law firm, drawn by an artist who understands the tiniest nuances of character interaction.
47. New School, by Dash Shaw (Fantagraphics). This may be Shaw's masterpiece: a complex exploration of identity, adventure tropes, and sophisticated use of color for narrative purposes.
48. House Of Women, by Sophie Goldstein (Fantagraphics). A beautiful merging of design, color contrast, exquisite linework, and a complex takedown of colonialism, religion, and capitalism.
49. Exits, by Daryl Seitchik (Koyama Press). This is a beautifully surreal, personal, and angry book about the male gaze and what it means to be seen.
50. The Angriest, Saddest Black Girl In Town, by Robyn-Brooke Smith. With delicate and expressive pencils, Smith expresses her rage and alienation with regard to race, identity, and being the other.

51. Demon, by Jason Shiga (First Second). An outrageous, hilarious, over-the-top series of action sequences as logic problems and ultraviolence presented in context with its ethical & ontological implications.
52. Rookie Moves, by November Garcia. A funny and fresh voice in autobio who manages to express her own enthusiasm for comics and its creators as sharply as she does with regard to her own life.
53. I, Rene Tardi, Prisoner Of War In Stalag IIB, by Jacques Tardi (Fantagraphics). Tardi is a legend, but this is his crowning achievement: telling the story of his father's wartime experiences.
54. Beta Testing The Apocalypse, by Tom Kaczynski (Fantagraphics). This is a smart and frequently chilling satire of culture and philosophy in a market-driven world.
55. Windowpane, by Joe Kessler (Breakdown Press). A trippy look at the twin poles of creation and destruction, filtered through a color scheme that often abstracts the subject matter.

56. Architecture Of An Atom, by Juliacks (2D Cloud). This is the most ambitious project yet by Juliacks, whose immersive style demands total attention and commitment from the reader--and this poetic story about human connection is worth it.
57. Houses Of The Holy, by Caitlin Skaalrud (Uncivilized Books). This is an enigmatic howl, a journey through the darkest recesses of memory told through symbols and language created just for this narrative.
58. Stroppy, by Marc Bell (Drawn and Quarterly). This surreal bit of utter nonsense has its own iron-clad logic and narrative momentum, resulting in a gleefully strange adventure.
59. Rudy, by Mark Connery (2D Cloud). A quarter-century's worth of subversive, Dada, punk humor (with remarkably traditional comedic structures), collected in one overwhelming volume.
60. Spinning, by Tillie Walden (First Second). This is a beautiful, dense memoir about the demands we place on ourselves and how this distracts from many of our real issues.

61. Couch Tag, by Jesse Reklaw (Fantagraphics). It's a fascinating episodic memoir, wherein Reklaw repeatedly uses the idea of writing about one thing as a way of exploring a deeper emotional issue.
62. Sky In Stereo, by Mardou (Revival House). This is a bracing, brave story about a psychedelic experience gone horribly wrong, and the harrowing subsequent stay in a mental institution.
63. Magic Whistle #3.2, by Sam Henderson (Alternative Comics). Henderson remains one of the premier humorists in comics, and he added the editor hat in expanding his series into a humor anthology.
64. Too Dark To See, by Julia Gfrörer. The horror of this brilliant, scratchily-drawn comic is in its deeply cynical attitudes regarding love, sex, and relationships. 
65. Operation Margarine, by Katie Skelly (AdHouse Books). It's a combination of stylish clothes & poses, a kickass adventure, and a deep meditation on trauma.

66. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, by Emil Ferris (Fantagraphics). A sprawling, visually astounding monster mystery book.
67. Papercutter #17 (Tugboat Press). This is the issue where every story was written by Jason Martin, and drawn by an all-star team's worth of cartoonists;
68. The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song, by Frank M. Young and David Lasky (Abrams). The research and verisimilitude for the famous singing family's dialogue is top-notch, but it's Lasky's astonishing cartooning that's the true draw.
69. Invisible Ink, by Bill Griffith (Fantagraphics). A startling family memoir that leaves judgment behind and focuses on empathy instead.
70. Megahex, by Simon Hanselmann (Fantagraphics). Launched Megg, Mogg, and Owl into the public imagination; it's still the ur-young degenerate book of the last decade.

71. Lost Cat, by Jason (Fantagraphics). This Phillip Marlowe pastiche is one of the best of Jason's mash-ups of culture and explorations of loneliness.
72. Plans We Made, by Simon Moreton (Uncivilized Books). An emotionally impressionistic account of youth with a beautiful, spare line.
73. Hilda And The Mountain King, by Luke Pearson (NoBrow). This is the capper to one of the greatest kids' comics series of all time, by an artist at the height of his powers.
74. Forming, by Jesse Moynihan (NoBrow). A hilarious, profane, and hyperviolent account of the gods and aliens that walked the earth.
75. Pornhounds #2, by Sharon Lintz and various artists. A series of stories about working in the porn industry turns into a sensitive and funny account of dealing with breast cancer.

31 Days Of CCS: The Master List

Here's the master list of every day of my annual 31 Days of CCS, my month-long look at work from students and alumni of the Center For Cartoon Studies.

1. Mary Shyne
2. Gilmore Girls Fanzine and Doug Catches Up
3. Amelia Onorato and Daryl Seitchik
4. Anna Sellheim
5. Sam Nakahira
6. Natalie Wardlaw
7. Kat Ghastly
8. Cuyler Keating, April Malig, Lillie J. Harris
9. Alexander Washburn
10. Emma Hunsinger, Kazimir Lee
11. Sage Persing, Ben Merrylees, Issy Manley
12. Leise Hook, Ross Wood Studlar, Beth Hetland
13. Nhi Luu, Jess Johnson, Donna Almendrala, Kori Michele Handwerker
14. Advocacy Comics
15. Betsey Swardlick, Ivy Allie
16. Angela Boyle, Cole Closser, Denis St. John
17. Melanie Gillman
18. Reilly Hadden, Andi Santagata
19. Brainworm 3-5
20. Colleen Frakes, Sean Knickerbocker
21. Filipa Estrela
22. Jai Granofsky, DW
23. Kristen Shull
24. Charles Forsman
25. Sandy Steen Bartholomew
26. Aaron Cockle
27. Emil Wilson
28. Liam McTaggart
29. Luke Healy
30. Andy Warner
31. Mike King/Michael Sweater