


MK Reed: About A Bull MK Reed's first official debut (Americus) will be out this fall from First Second. However, the ambitious Reed has been doing all sorts of minicomics projects for quite some time. She's taken on an even crazier project in About A Bull, an adaptation of the Irish folk epic Tain Bo Cuailnge. This is a convoluted story to be sure, but she's done a remarkable job of not only simplifying the narrative but also of modernizing the dialogue. This is a story about a king and queen who quarrel about whose possessions are worth more. It so happens that the king is in the superior position, thanks to him possessing a mighty bull. The queen connives to acquire an even better bull to win the argument. After a series of misunderstandings, a deal to get the ball falls apart and war is declared to obtain it. Along the way, Reed turns to Caroline Kelsey to illustrate a portion of her story, one where we see the clever origin story of the two bulls done in a "stained glass" style of cartooning. As always, Reed's draftsmanship is rough but serviceable, and her sharp eye for color helps carry the story a bit. That rough style doesn't hurt the story, which is told with her usual sharp wit, and I'm eager to see how the twists and turns of the legends play out in the story itself. The part of Reed's art that needs the most improvement is her lettering. I think she'd benefit by using a font instead of hand lettering this story, especially when one compares her work to that of the other cartoonists involved.
Terry LaBan: Muktuk Wolfsbreath: Hard-Boiled Shaman LaBan is one of my favorite alt-cartoonists of the 80s and 90s, with memorable titles like Tales of Unsupervised Experience, Eno & Plum and Cud. He later did some projects with DC Comics, including an adaptation of Muktuk Wolfsbreath by Steve Parkhouse, a more naturalistic artist. This project didn't wind up meeting with much success, but he did later stake out a career as a syndicated cartoonist with his still-running Edge City, a strip he does with his wife. As a project to earn a master's degree in Interactive Design, he decided to revive his old character. LaBan hasn't lost a beat with his folk-noir hero Muktuk. LaBan has the instincts of an old-school underground cartoonist in terms of the explicitness of his material, yet his actual cartooning is far more playful. He eventually seemed to become reconciled to this notion when he simplified his approach even further and took more direct cues from Archie comics master Dan DeCarlo. LaBan's mature style combines this simple, highly direct and emotionally charged style of storytelling with whatever weird idea he has in mind.
Quite honestly, LaBan's discouragement with comics as a career seemed to lead to a bit of floundering right before he quit doing alt-comics. This is not to say that the material was bad; in fact, his willingness to fully commit to humor led to some hilarious work. It's just that he seemed to be trying every approach in an attempt to find something that stuck. One of these approaches was the "hard-boiled shaman", Muktuk Wolfsbreath. He joined up Raymond Chandler-style noir-storytelling with elements of Siberian shamanic folk tales. It's a particularly delightful kind of fusion, one far more effective than the Vertigo version of this, simply because its combination of three contrasting styles (noir, folk tale, Archie comics) seems to work better in providing dynamic tension for the reader. The lighter visual elements are a perfect counterpoint for the heaviness of the story's thematic elements. They also serve to subvert the cliched oppressiveness of noir storytelling without derailing it altogether, thanks to the fantasy element linking the two together. In the opening segments of "Boo", LaBan gently leads new readers through the character's premise while revealing new information about Muktuk to long-time readers, all in the context of a noir-detective case that's easy for anyone to understand. Hopefully LaBan will be able to keep this going past the end of his thesis.
Christopher Adams: Strong Eye Contact Christopher Adams is a young cartoonist with an interesting approach. I took a look at a silent series of strips he did titled Strong Eye Contact that employ an elliptical narrative approach. The panel-to-panel narrative is frequently fractured, with one sequence slipping in and out of another. At its essence, these strips are about performance, as its balding protagonist not only has to find ways to deal with connecting to an audience at a comedy club, but in connecting with the world at large. The title of the strip almost seems to be an unspoken mantra of sorts, as the character muddles through as best he can by faking his way through his act and life. There's a vividness to each image that speaks to Adams' background as a painter. The way that he "rhymes" images back and forth speaks to his background as a musician; each strip very much feels like the verse of a song, or perhaps a separate song in a longer cycle. A blog is unfortunately not the proper place to really examine these drawings. Hopefully, Adams will be able to publish these strips in a format that flatters his work a bit more. I also get the sense that like Jerry Moriarty's Jack Survives strips, Strong Eye Contact takes on even more force when one reads a number of them in sequence. At the moment, Adams has published just eleven of them.
Devil's Lake: Minty Lewis & Melissa Mendes Devil's Lake is an online publication connected to the University of Wisconsin-Madison; its comics content is edited by cartoonist Lydia Conklin. This issue features an excerpt from Minty Lewis' minicomic Salad Days; here's my original review of the entire issue. It's a typically awkward, uncomfortable Lewis workplace story featuring anthropomorphic fruit that squeezes out wince-inducing jokes with impeccable timing. Conklin contrasts the spare line and restraint of Lewis with the expressiveness of Melissa Mendes' "The Bird". Whereas "Salad Days" employs a typical comics grid, "The Bird" takes advantage of its format to create a one-image, one-click story that pushes the reader through a day in the life of a young girl. Like in many of Mendes' stories, the girl is a latchkey kid who fends off loneliness with a rugged self-determinism. When she and her father discover a bird who stunned itself flying into the house, a clear line could be made between the girl and the bird: both alone, both vulnerable (as a bicycle accident earlier in the story attests) but both ultimately aided by someone else. Mendes is becoming a remarkably confident storyteller, working in a style that mixes the best of children's illustration with comics. Conklin is developing a sharp eye as an editor, and I only hope she becomes more ambitious in future issues by publishing a greater number of contributors.




Nice! It is good to see webcomics breaking out of their "house style" (i.e. gag strips about video games and/or furries) and more great artists moving from print to the web (and hopefully back again). I've read MK Reed's comic and it is great, I do agree with the lettering but the layouts and clarity in the art is great and I think the whole thing fits.
ReplyDeleteI will check out the rest soon.