Jonathan Baylis' So Buttons #15

Jonathan Baylis has been writing comics for about a decade now, working with cartoonists to relate anecdotes from his life in the tradition of Harvey Pekar. What's changed for him over the years? Well, as evidenced by the latest issue of his anthology series So Buttons, he's starting to think like less as a writer and more as an editor. What I mean by that is that the way he sequences has become more sophisticated and his themes are more emotionally resonant. 

In So Buttons #15 (with a cover by C.M. Campbell that pays homage to a Barry Windsor-Smith cover from a Machine Man miniseries in the 80s), Baylis quickly establishes his theme as fathers and sons. Frequent collaborator Noah Van Sciver is a perfect choice for a loose and expressive story about a younger Baylis going with his father to visit his father's old neighborhood in Brooklyn. The message of the story ("be yourself") was a little pat, but the details of his affection for his father, along with how Baylis was frequently mystified by him, are what linger. The follow-up story, where TJ Kirsch draws a brief anecdote about solid advice on take-out, is a good gag strip that gives further color with regard to their relationship.

Baylis is a film and TV guy, having worked in the industry for a number of years. As such, he often drops interesting anecdotes about various encounters but also describes how and why film has had an impact. Sometimes, like in this issue, it leads to interesting stories, like how David Lynch's films and shows made him feel like a little less of an outsider but also indirectly helped him land a job. (Bhanu Pratrap's angular, distorted cartooning was a perfect match for this subject.) When Baylis stays away from played-out, tedious references like Star Wars or superhero stuff (essentially, Kevin Smith territory) and focuses instead on more personal and meaningful work, it's easier to see how and why it is so resonant for him. 

The stories about his time as an intern at October Films (as drawn by Danny Hellman, Karl Christian Krumpholz, and Nathan Gelgud) are not only interesting on their own as anecdotes, but they also reveal a lot about what's important for him aesthetically and how it bleeds into his personal life. That focus on movie segues into a beautiful story about his recently-deceased mother's love for West Side Story, drawn by Becky Hawkins. What represents a step up for Baylis as a writer is that this isn't simply a sentimental, emotional anecdote (although that is part of it); it's also an examination of the lacuna that now exists about why his mother felt a certain way about things. It's something he will never really know, as there are many mysteries that parents leave behind. The single-page drawing from Eleanor Davis about his mother-in-law is the single best page in the whole comic; it's a beautiful visual explication of not feeling one's own age. 

The only real misstep was Baylis' text explaining his themes at the end. I get why he might have done this, but it felt unnecessary. The themes and how they connected were clear to any reader willing to read closely. That aside, Baylis was right in asserting that this was his most cohesive issue of So Buttons to date. As a writer and as an editor, this is a clear sign that Baylis has hit his stride, and I'm excited to see his work continue to evolve. 

K. Woodman-Maynard's Tuck Everlasting

Adaptations of prose works into comics form can be tricky. How much of the original prose should be kept? What should be trimmed? How does one transform one medium into another while doing justice to both? In the case of K. Woodman-Maynard, it's her use of layout, page composition, and especially color that sets her apart from similar, more visually mundane attempts at adaptations. 

That was true for Tuck Everlasting: The Graphic Novel (written by Natalie Babbitt) as well as her prior adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The evocative metaphors of Fitzgerald were taken to whimsical visual extremes by KWM. For Babbitt, KWM chose to use certain concrete metaphors (like life as a wheel) as a recurring visual motif, and it made each occurrence all the more resonant. 

The story, which concerns a young girl encountering a family made immortal by a spring in a forest near her home, raises all sorts of fascinating philosophical questions about the implications of eternal life. Meeting the immortal Tuck family and being asked to keep their secret while having to contend with the sinister and avaricious Man in the Yellow Suit is all secondary to the protagonist of the story, young Winnie Foster, being forced to examine her deepest beliefs. Beyond simply having an adventure and stepping out of a highly-ordered life, Winnie must think about death and its implications. Interacting with Ma and Pa Tuck, as well as their sons Jesse and Miles, gives her a number of points of view about immortality. Is life just an adventure? Is a life without roots meaningless? As Pa Tuck says, is immortality essentially throwing you off of the wheel of life?

KWM gives each character their own wheel motif; the fun-loving Jesse has a rollercoaster, for example. Winnie's own dilemma is often spelled out in an omniscient narration that's written in the clouds, the trees, and other background elements. It's a clever trick that allows KWM to retain a lot of the original text without making it feel clunky. Indeed, she endeavors to make the lettering part of the art in a number of ways, like the sinister, persistent line of persuasion the Man in the Yellow Suit uses on Winnie's family, as the tails on his word balloons literally ensnares them. KWM's clever page composition often turns tree branches or roots into panels, creating a beautiful flow that allows the reader to process a lot of information very quickly.

However, it's KWM's use of watercolors to set tone and mood that does most of the storytelling work here. Shifting between the naturalistic hues of summer to highly expressionistic uses of color meant to depict emotion allows her to shift the mood in the comic without needing to make it obvious with her other storytelling. The result is something both lush and heartfelt, exciting but bittersweet. 

31 Days Of CCS, #8: Cuyler Keating

While Cuyler Keating's comics have fantasy elements, it would be more accurate to say that she's really a medievalist. What that translates out to is a great deal of misery, death, disease, and squalor. That's certainly the case in the first two issues of her series Oblivioun, but Keating takes that a step further. The setting is a world where the empire is in ruin, plagued by a disease that ultimately results in the afflicted losing their memories. This is worse than death for some--the utter obliteration of self and memory. 

Keating centers this around two scavengers: a one-armed former knight named Ollie and his young friend Remy. They pick over battles and gravesites in an effort to get enough metal and jewelry to get food and lodging. Their relationship is familial, with an easy sense of teasing between the two. The first issue sees them finding armor and weapons they can sell, but encounter an armored knight who begs them to tell him what his name is. The second issue finds them selling their scavenged loot, with Ollie attempting to woo the daughter of the smith. 

Keating's line is fluid, with a focus on sharply delineated character work. Ollie is drawing with a rakish grin but also an occasionally hollowed-out stare. Remy is still young and full of hope, but one gets the sense that Ollie sees no future. Indeed, the red-soaked flashbacks, full of violence and past battles, reflect that Ollie welcomes the idea. One gets the sense that Remy is the only thing keeping Ollie tethered to reality and day-to-day survival. It feels like there's a long way to go in this series, and things are only going to get worse. Keating has a strong sense of design on top of everything else, and the decorative aspects of the cover and inside covers adds to the overall aesthetic of the comic. 

31 Days Of CCS, #7: Ruby Arnone

What's most interesting about Ruby Arnone's Frankie & Jam is that, despite its origins as a formal cartooning exercise with some formal constraints, the actual comics are fluid and funny. It follows a trans woman anthropomorphic bunny named Frankie and a hoodie-wearing kid named Jam, with most of the strips featuring their observations, gags, and general quirkiness. One of the reasons why the comic is so enjoyable is that Arnone doesn't force things. Some of the strips aren't funny; they're just small but important moments in the lives of the characters. It reminds me a little of certain Peanuts strips that have small epiphanies, or like Pablo Holmberg's book Eden.

There are absurd and surreal strips as well, like the anthropomorphic college professor dog whose academic specialty is the habits of staplers, which he views as sentient entities. There's the imperious and threatening Lizard Queen, who is reduced to washing her clothes in a laundromat and eating at cheap restaurants after ruling a kingdom. Arnone's cartooning is sophisticated, but I also see a lot of experimentation here with grid vs no grid, multiple line weights, and silent strips that depend on flow vs gags that depend largely on the text. This is fertile ground for future ideas, as Arnone generated half a dozen characters and ideas that could be explored for a long time. 

31 Days Of CCS, #6: Melody Calderon

With Arroyo, Melody Calderon does the best kind of horror comic: one that is almost entirely dependent on its visuals to tell its story. This is a story about the Latinx horror urban legend La Llorona, the "Weeping Woman." She was said to have drowned her children in a fit of rage against her husband's infidelity, and now she lurks around bodies of water, looking for new victims. An arroyo is a narrow gully formed by fast-flowing water. In the story, a man drinks from a fountain that is a statue of La Llorona in an almost flip manner. He falls asleep, only to awaken to a flooded house and city (an arroyo) and the long hair of La Llorona telling him to give her his hands to receive her blessing. As one would expect, it does not go well. 

What makes this comic so good is its attention to detail. From the elongated lettering for La Lloronna to the use of paint for spot color to depict her bleeding forehead, Calderon's willingness to lean into the exaggerated aspects of the story gives it power. Her page composition is innovative, especially as she has a repeating motif of hands being plunged into water. The outstretched hands initially seem to be praying hands, and La Llorona's similarity to the Virgin Mary in the story is not lost on me. There is no mercy to be had here, as her "affections" are arbitrary and merciless. Calderon's got it all working here, and this makes me want to see much more. 

31 Days Of CCS, #5: The Final Dot

The Final Dot is one of the CCS group anthology projects. This one features Dylan Sparks, Ellie Liota, Michael Albrecht, and Anna Passlick. I was excited to get a copy at SPX, because I've never seen one of these outside of the library at CCS. Looks like the take on the assignment was a take on Harvey Comics characters. The artists, who shared tasks like in an old mainstream comic, chose to do a dark parody of Little Dot. The results, which include multiple pages of fake ads, are absolutely unhinged. Little Dot, for those unfamiliar with the concept, really liked dots and things with dots on them. In the first story, she meets an appaloosa (with speckled "dots"), and it kicks her in the face. In a later story, she accidentally puts her friend Little Lotta in the hospital stirring up a beehive, and her parents take away her dots..

This leads Dot to skin her dalmation, show up to visit Lotta, and realizing that the colors in the strip were actually Ben-Day dots. Dot starts absorbing all of the color dots in a bid to be eternal, but Lotta grabs a shotgun from a hilarious Daisy rifle ad and shoots Dot in the chest. The quartet of artists takes the concept absolutely all the way, using metafictional humor in a way that feels earned by diligently building up not just the basic premise but also the presence of the ancillary material. Some of the line art is a little wobbly here and there, but they otherwise just nail the features of your average Harvey comic before turning it into a sci-fi/horror story. I'm curious as to the division of labor here, especially since I know and like the work of Sparks, Liotta, and Albrecht. 

31 Days Of CCS, #4: Sierra Edwards, Wayne Carter

Kiki is a small departure for the talented Wayne Carter. This 8-page mini is done in full color (I think it's a Risograph comic), and it packs a lot of punch. It's about two brothers who play a fighting video game on a day when the weather forces them to stay indoors. The real action of the comic is hearing a fight between their mom and dad, as the former accuses the latter of cheating. There's a loaded question about why "Kiki" is calling the house, with a response that she's "keke'n" (gossipping) with everyone. The competing narratives (visual vs the unseen fight between the adults that the kids keep trying to drown out with the TV but find it doesn't get loud enough) are heartbreaking precisely because the kids aren't all too surprised. The last page is a splash after a lot of 4-panel grids, and we see police cars pulling up to the house. This is a great example of working around a narrative without showing it; the pink and purple palette is the color of bruises. The visual of a fighting game standing in for the actual conflict, especially as a way for the boys to work out their aggressions and frustration, was extremely affecting. Carter was already good, but this represents a real levelling up.

Man Rock Lake looks like another Riso comic, and it's by Sierra Edwards. Each page is a splash, starting with the titular man on a rock in a lake. From the very beginning, it's an ontological query, as the man wonders if anyone else is there. He receives an immediate answer of "no," which then turns into an eventual negation of reality. It's cleverly done, as the final negation doesn't even have language--it's simply a dark page minus all of the original elements. The cartooning seems pretty basic here, but the real meat of it is more conceptual than visual. I'd love to see more of Edwards' work.