Minis: K.Skelly/S.Horrocks

Agent 73, by Sarah Horrocks and Katie Skelly. Skelly's career breakthrough (after essentially earning her comics Ph.D with Nurse Nurse) was Operation Margarine, a book that saw Skelly finding subject matter that was at once fanciful and personal and that appealed to what she liked drawing most. One thing that I've always liked about her work is that her influences are vastly different from those of most North American cartoonists. Sure, it's not surprising that key manga artists have had an impact on her, but she's just as likely to have been inspired by psychedelic European comics from the late 60s and early 70s, as well as films from that era. Operation Margarine owes a lot to 70s exploitation and revenge films, with a far greater emphasis on the agency, independence and power of women. Skelly is as good a critic as she is a writer, as seen at tcj.com but also in the Trash Twins podcast she co-hosts with writer Sarah Horrocks (a distinctive critic in her own right). I mention that podcast because they are dedicated to appreciating the aesthetic qualities of what is perceived to be "trash" culture, like the aforementioned exploitation films that are often hyperviolent and sexualized.

Operation Margarine and a piece she did for the art-porn anthology Thickness seems to have unlocked a new direction for Skelly. Her sci-fi/porn series Agent 8 (and the subsequent Agent 9 and Agent 10) for Slutist takes some of the tropes she used in Nurse Nurse and takes them to their logical extreme. Then there's the horror-porn My Pretty Vampire, which is going to be collected and published by an alt-comics publisher next year. This is all context for her collaboration with Horrocks, Agent 73, which was written by Horrocks and drawn by Skelly. (I'm guessing the title is a sly reference to the 70s sexploitation film Double Agent 73). At heart, this is a romance comic with sci-fi/mad scientist/spy thriller overtones, as a woman named Dr Paracletus is seen dictating her memoirs to her assistant, Bertrand, in an isolated jungle facility where she is being held prisoner by the government. An assassin, the titular Agent 73, kills everyone in the facility as well as the assistant. That's before she realizes that the assistant was formerly a man, who had been a guard in the hellish facility of Dr Paracelsus. This is a story about revenge, transformation, secrets and abuse that's specifically designed with plot based lacunae that force the reader to fully confront the information at hand instead of being overly concerned with detail. That's an especially effective approach given Skelly's spectacular stylizations and lurid use of color, which was done by hand. The final panel, a sketchy flash-bang effect where Agent 73 pulls the trigger on Dr Paracletus, is especially striking, as the agent's red hair is rendered as splotches that could be seen as blood stains. The missing and irrelevant plot details and background helped keep the comic short, maximizing its impact without running into the common genre problem of diminishing returns when being repeatedly confronted with the same images. Horrocks and Skelly hit hard, hit fast and then quit, the narrative equivalent of only drawing the climax of a story.

Minis: J.Burggraf/V.Kerlow, A.Stoehr, P.Cline

Pyramid Scheme 2: This Time It's On The Beach, by Josh Burggraf and Victor Kerlow (Birdcage Bottom Books). These two illustrators did a two-man improvisational jam, taking some characters they made up together and alternating writing and drawing each page. The result is entirely unsubstantial, but that's no, but t really the point. The point is two distinctive stylists riffing off each other and having a bit of fun in what they decided to draw. The anthropomorphic dog/young man/robot trio has a picnic at a nude beach, and it's interesting to see what each chose to focus on. Kerlow's comics generally have copious amounts of nudity, but he almost completely avoided the use of nudity outside of the main three characters in the comic. On the other hand, Burggraf's sci-fi comics don't often have much nudity, and he essentially went for it on every one of his pages here, drawing all sorts of idealized body types on the beach. The most interesting thing about the comic is watching the way Burggraf and Kerlow bounce off of each other in terms of illustration choices. In some drawings, Burggraf's interest in drawing the eye to certain parts on the page through the use of black is made really obvious when Kerlow completely eschews such an approach. On the other hand, there are pages were Burggraf matches the scratchy approach of Kerlow, and other pages where Kerlow matches the more angular style of Burggraf. This is a comic made more to be looked at, rather than read.

I Dreamt Of You Touching Me, by Alice Stoehr. Being given a copy of Stoehr's comic at SPX is the essence of what I love about that show: being exposed to new, young talent as they're starting out. That's certainly true of Stoehr's mini, which uses a six panel grid and stick figures to tell its stories about relationships, anxiety, self-consciousness, rage and loneliness. While Stoehr's line is crude, that doesn't stop her from some inventive and clever drawings that have a dramatic impact on each strip's emotional content. Indeed, the drawings aren't there simply to have something to connect to a text-heavy comic (like many other stripped-down comics I've read), they actually shape and define the emotional narrative of these strips more than the text. For example, there's on strip where cruel words come out as a word balloon with teeth that devours the other person, which is a fantastic depiction of when simply saying "I'm sorry" just isn't enough to undo damage that is done. Not all of the strips are quite that raw; indeed, there are many moments of tenderness, warmth and humanity depicted as well. There are moments of regret because of a lost chance at connection as well as moments of gratitude that a connection is maintained against all odds. The one thing I wished I could have seen was Stoehr work a little bigger, giving her figures a little more room to explore the page. Some of the strips felt cramped and overstuffed, in part because the figures at times were so small that it was hard to make out expressions. That wasn't true of every strip, as Stoehr generally did a fine job of balancing the elements of each panel, but there were definitely ideas presented on the page that would have benefited from a different format.

...and the Gatepost, by Peter Cline. Cline uses simple geometric shapes and a jarring use of color in the tradition of Ivan Brunetti, Chris Ware and Jon McNaught. Another touchstone is Seth's recent stripped-down style in books like Wimbledon Green, where characters are literally a triangle attached to a circle in their essence. It's a cold style in terms of function, which is designed to contrast against the actual emotions of the piece. There's a great, weird tension throughout most of it, as two kids haunt an older man for unclear reasons, until the object of interest is finally revealed at the end. It's a comic about mysteries, the exotic and sympathy for both of the former. Visually, Cline goes all out with a color assault that features different colors of paper stock, riso coloring (either as spot coloring or in one or two tone strips), which adds a bit to the overall sense of mystery.

Minis: H.Newlevant, W.Taylor

Wallpaper, by Whit Taylor. Taylor's writing and conceptual design continue to grow sharper and more sophisticated. While the small size of this mini was a printer's mistake, it wound up being a fortuitous one. Told from a childhood point of view, the left side of each page is text and the right side is a beautiful, decorative and emotionally resonant wallpaper pattern or some other kind of visually significant pattern. The book's smaller size makes it feel more like a child's book. There are a series of events detailed by Taylor that slowly coalesce into a narrative about her grandmother's increasingly failing health. However, the story is really about the ways in which certain details are important to children on an emotional level that adults simply don't perceive. Indeed, the very title "Wallpaper" colloquially refers to the sort of bland, background decoration that's ignored on a day-to-day basis. Taylor highlights these decorations in a way that is both functional in their depiction and genuinely beautiful as they appear on the page. Her use of color is vibrant without being lurid, and it truly gets across why a child would notice certain colors and patterns. Not all of them are of wallpaper; there's a microscope slide, a piece of pizza and other things appreciated for their aesthetic, rather than their practical value. Even the boring patterns--like the beige the mother in the story ultimately picks out for the kitchen--have emotional resonance. The child was upset by that choice because it was boring, but what she was really upset up was the death of her grandmother, who had a bright color sense. Concealing an emotionally complex story in a simple package is what gives this mini its punch.

Tender-Hearted, by Hazel Newlevant. This is a thoughtful collection of short stories about relationships and identity. "Finding Place" is the standout of a strong collection, as Newlevant uses a beautiful watercolor wash in a story that connects her sexual identity with her budding interest in comics. The crux of the story is experiencing the difference between a theoretical and even intellectual understanding of identity with the actual experience of that identity. It's about the missteps that can be involved with that exploration, like putting identity ahead of human empathy. However, it's also about the importance of visibility as a creator, passing on information to younger creators or fans desperate for material that speaks to them, embracing both the responsibility and opportunities such a position provides.

"Apt #105 381 Troutman Street" is about being in a relationship with a self-harming individual, juxtaposed against the simple recitation of the contents of the titular apartment. It's as though the events unfolding before the reader's (and the narrator's, presumably) eyes is simply too much to take in, so there's a default back to simple, context-free description. "Enough" is a story I've reviewed elsewhere, though it obviously fits in seamlessly here. It's about emotional manipulation in a relationship where she was a caretaker, creating dangerous power imbalances and overcorrections. After that black & white interlude, Newlevant returns to color (one of her strengths as a creator) in "Bi-Furious", a story about a conversation she had regarding bisexuality with her mother. It's all about the concept of bi-erasure, and wondering that if she had lived in an earlier era, would she have had the courage to act on that aspect of her sexuality? Newlevant brings up a variety of bi women from recent history as examples, which is all part of Newlevant's larger project of exploring women's sexual identity throughout history, particularly in the arts. What I liked best about this story is Newlevant's willingness to honestly engage with the issue despite its hurtful premise, resulting in a discussion that sheds light (not heat) on the subject. Newlevant's figure drawing is appealingly fuzzy here, though there were times when the way she and mother looked stiff and posed, especially with regard to each other in space. This was surprising, because Newlevant's other figure work looks much more natural and fluid. I'm not sure if this effect was intentional, but it did feel a bit jarring.

Koyama: Jessica Campbell

Hot Or Not: 20th Century Male Artists, by Jessica Campbell. This is first-rate, layered satire that delves into some pretty rich territory. Campbell's heavy use of shtick belies the ways in which she lands strike after strike on the art world, art criticism, and the sexist nature of both. Starting with the cover, which is a masculine version of Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, complete with six pack abs, Campbell mirthfully takes on the male gaze and the dominance of men in relating the history of art. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was some pushback in Canada about depicting penises on the cover of this book, so some silvery UV ink (the kind used on scratch-off tickets) was added to create thongs, banana hammocks and shorts that covered up the offending naughty bits. The introduction, which is a nearly incoherent bit of art-crit speak, is appropriately pompous and sets up the on-a-dime tonal shift when the actual narrative begins.

That narrative is of Campbell as a docent leading a tour in an art museum, initiating a ridiculous q&a with the crowd. She elides the damning truth that the works in the museum were all by men and asks a far more important question: were the artists hot? In one stroke, she turns back not just the idea of the male gaze, but the inevitable sexualization of women who enter traditionally male spheres (like fine art). Or rather, the institutionalization of museums helps rewrite history and remove the historical involvement of many women. Campbell doesn't mention any of these facts, because what's the point? By objectifying men in precisely the same way women are objectified, she creates comedy gold on page after page, especially as she tries to guess whether or not an artist is hot based on his work. Campbell is an exceptionally witty writer, and her scratchy reproductions of famous works of art as well as drawings of the artists themselves complement her gags in a deadpan manner.

The more brutal Campbell gets in evaluating the attractiveness of the artists, the funnier she gets. She at first guesses the Canadian artist P.E. Borduas is the type to "toss you up against a bear and make rough sex to you", but the next-page reveal dismisses the severe-looking man by saying "Edgar Allen Poe cosplay was big in 20th Century Quebec." Malevich was described as having "the face of an adult baby" but Cy Twombly, whose paintings she guessed were made by "a fat guy in a bowtie", surprisingly made it to the Hot category. Of Modigliani, Campbell decrees him to be Hot and says "Paint me like one of your mangled Italian girls, Amedeo." Paul Gauguin is referred to as a child molester and Henri Matisse's lack of hotness is "probably why Picasso used him as a wingman." The book's punchline, where Campbell and the members of the tour weep over the unknown hotness of artists from antiquity, reduces the works to something totally unrelated to the quality of the work, which of course is something female artists deal with all the time. At a tidy 62 pages, this book doesn't outstay its welcome, making every gag count. Ultimately, the book succeeds because it fully embraces the vapidity of the internet-style snap judgments of physical attractiveness as the totality of worth. Campbell understands that the stinging critiques she's offering up are only effective as long as she works to serve up nasty, hilarious comments.

Uncivilized Minis: C.Jetsmark, L.Richard, A.George, D.Zender, R.Topka, M.McGrane, J.Shiveley

In addition to publishing a number of interesting collections, new graphic novels and foreign translations, Tom Kaczynski's Uncivilized Books also publishes new minicomics, mostly from young cartoonists. It's actually a brilliant move for a publisher who attends a lot of festivals and does a lot of business online, as it's a relatively inexpensive way to introduce one's overall aesthetic to an audience. That said, there's really no unifying aesthetic, theme or genre in this batch of minis from the past couple of years, other than "interesting, well-done work that Kaczynski thought was worth publishing."

My Dead Mother, by Clara Jetsmark. Opening up with a little magical realism, Jetsmark uses a clear line to tell this story of two young women, a dead mother's head attached to one of them, and a loa who has the hots for the other woman. Jetsmark's dedication to that clear line style, the use of lots of negative space and using a variation on a six-panel grid on nearly every page created a strong story rhythm that made the most of its transitions. In terms of the storytelling tone, Jetsmark uses irreverence instead of a more traditional fairy tale voice, reminiscent of a Gilbert Hernandez story more than anything else. Jetsmark goes through the mechanics of a story with familiar tropes and subverts all of them with humor. The studious young woman, Monga, only wants to pass an exam, even as she is simply used to her mother's bandaged head being fused to her. The boy-crazy young woman, Kitty, wants to help her friend. The magical being, a loa named Ghede, is a marvel of character design: huge, oversized head that's too big for his tiny body. So much so that he can't even stand up, which distresses him because he immediately becomes obsessed with Kitty. The ridiculousness of this character, who later pumps iron in an effort to impress Kitty, is particularly funny because Jetsmark plays all of this with a straight face. Indeed, Ghede's absurd attempt at seduction somehow works, thanks to his newly bulked-up arms. Ghede's magic doesn't succeed in freeing Monga from her mom, but it does put her mother into the form of a tiger. The cool and distant quality of Jetsmark's line and the structure of the grid is juxtaposed against the increasingly-absurd nature of the story, resulting in a delightfully silly ending.

Distant City, by Lilly Richard. This is a diary comic/travelogue of Richard's time in Berlin, only its unconventional nature winds up being a kind of commentary on the genre itself. Most travelogues tend to be heavily mediated with regard to the author's narrative point of view. Instead of letting the place speak for itself as much as possible, or else letting the dialogue guide the reader, many graphic memoirists have a tendency to overexplain to their readers, rather than trusting their reader to make certain inferences. In this comic, Richard doesn't have to say, "I am introverted and am nervous about going to Berlin." On the first page alone, in three consecutive panels, she is told about the sort of experience she is "supposed to" have. She reveals that the wildest early adventure she had was having a habit of falling asleep on the subway and getting home later than she wanted.

This is not to say that Richard was a distant storyteller; indeed, it's her dry sense of humor that leaves the deepest impression on the reader, like the bizarre story of being asked to buy some chickens from a creepy local seller, and the highly uncomfortable squirm humor of fending off the advances of a fellow student. Her safety as a young woman in the city is never really openly discussed, but the things she has to do in order to stay safe are always there in subtext. Social discomfort strikes repeatedly, like not remembering how to say "bag" in German and then feeling forced to buy an expensive tote, or leaving a departmental party early because she felt so out of place and then feeling depressed when the host wrote her a nice email after she disappeared. Richard's concluding piece, on the difficulty of trying to grasp the character of a city in a short amount of time having lived there, is thoughtful and smart, much like the rest of the comic. Her cartooning is solid, with body language and general expressiveness being her biggest strengths. She was also quite adept at showing the depth and breadth of the city itself.

Carpocalypse, by Andrew George. This is a classic, early-adulthood slice of life comic. It follows a character named Nick, an affable if somewhat aimless guy who has decided to take a year off after high school in order to figure out what he really wants to do. Employing a stripped-down naturalism in terms of character design, George isn't one to pass judgment on any of his characters, including Nick's parents who are obviously not happy about what their son is doing. When the diner Nick has worked at for years is closed down thanks to gentrification, he's forced to make a decision about his life. The result is somewhat surprising and evoked a bit of the end of Dan Clowes' Ghost World for me, if that story had followed another of its many potential possible paths. Nick pulls up stakes and moves away from his town (a big decision), but does so in order to move closer to his two best friends. This was Nick essentially deciding to punt on his future in order to make harder decisions later on, something that George portrays matter-of-factly, neither glorifying or condemning his actions in the eyes of others. That said, George makes the decision easier to understand thanks to the details he uses to show how much warmth and support the trio of friends expresses toward each other. Giving up that level of intimacy, especially for someone just beginning to explore the world, is difficult to ask. I'd be fascinated to read a follow-up where his support network starts branching out into new areas at college but Nick faces the challenge of finding his own niche.                                  

Escape Route, by Daniel Zender. This mood piece is like a supercut of psychological horror tropes, zeroing in on chilling close-ups. Shadow and negative space play a big role in this comic, which takes a few cues from the sort of thing that Emily Carroll does in her comics. It's not the big, scary monster that's the payoff, nor is it blood & guts. Instead, it's the hint of danger, the fear of the unknown being mixed in with the familiar, and worst of all, the fear of reality being warped around oneself that Zender explores here, free of all relation to or constraint by plot. There's an understanding that plot is just a delivery system for mood in these sorts of stories, Characterization only needs to be defined in terms of the familiar and the Other, and Zender nails that in pages where a pile of skulls suddenly piles up around a deathly still character, or someone becomes absorbed by their environment. The two best pages are opposites in terms of approach, as one is concrete and the other abstract, but both represent an unknowable, inescapable terror. The first image is a shot of a hand that's bound by rope at the wrist. In four panels, we see the hand try to struggle against it, to no end. The shot clearly suggests someone bound and hanging from a ceiling, unable to escape. The second image is four panels' worth of thin, branching lines. Are they branches? Are they runes? Are they rivers? What does the different configuration of lines mean in each panel? This is an example of how context provides so much information, because in a different book, those panels would have simply appeared to be a series of lines. In this book, they take on a more sinister appearance, much like the original Blair Witch Project scared its audiences with a series of sticks arranged on the ground. Zender understands that suggestion is more evocative than explicit imagery, and that last page is the ultimate example of that. What's ironic about the book is that the title suggests a way out of danger, but the reality is that there's no escape route; this in itself is another clever way of trapping the reader and warping expectations.

Speakeasy, by Rachel Topka. This is an oddball fantasy comic in that it has fantasy tropes like a centaur, an anthropomorphic pig, etc. However, it's really more a grotesque tale that wouldn't have felt out of place in an old issue of Bijou Funnies, filled with sex, violence, jealousy and the extremes people go to for all of these things. The plot involves two rival speakeasy owners in a forest, one (a female centaur) who is extremely successful and the other (the pig) who is bitterly jealous because she isn't. The latter concludes that it's the centaur's diminutive lover that's the key to her success and so she kidnaps him, setting off an escalating series of violent events that include the pig using a pack of wolves to hunt the centaur, the centaur's men blowing up a bridge, and the rivals shooting at each other with machine guns. There's also plenty of sex, lust and even a crush held by the man with regard to the pig. The main attraction here, beyond all the silliness, is Topka's drawing style. Instead of drawing idealized fantasy figures, she draws brutes, weirdos, and just plain grotesque figures. It's interesting that they're the main characters of the story and that the more conventionally attractive figures are minor characters. Topka's background textures go a long way in establishing place and giving a sense of weight to this world, with zip-a-tone and a judicious use of grey-scaling providing a dramatic contrast to the thin line weight she used to draw all of her characters but the pig.

Ice Heist, by Madeline McGrane. This clever comic combines classic tropes of both supernatural and crime fiction in one amusing package, and adds the hellishness of the Minnesota winter as one of its key story elements. The unnamed protagonist (possibly based on McGrane herself) is confronted by the undead presence of three vicious and presumed dead murderers and bank robbers who request her help. What follows is a meticulously-detailed account of how they go about recovering some cash they left behind, an explanation of what they want with it now that they're dead, and finally the inevitable double-cross. The protagonist uses her one advantage (her superior speed) and outsmarts them in a clever way, leading to a satisfying ending. While the story beats are all fun and clever, it's McGrane's use of black as the dominant story element that makes her comic so distinctive, as well as he use of white for negative space. Once the action begins, it's almost all black filling up the panel, with only the characters filling out the rest. The protagonist's face is wide-eyed, thick-browed, and pony-tailed, matching the creepy energy of the criminals with enthusiasm. Following her eyes from panel to panel is the key to understanding the story's mood and emotional shifts, a clever device that provides a through line for key plot points.

Silver Wire, by Jordan Shiveley. Shiveley has really hit on something in drawing comics about mice. This comic is as nihilistic as it gets, addressing first the urge for self-annihilation in the form of the female mouse constantly staring at the baited mousetrap. Later, when she crosses the threshold and she's saved by her partner, she stares at his death in rapt fascination, revealing a deep level of sociopathic behavior that reflects her absolute disinterest in living. What's really tragic in this comic is not so much the horrible death of the male mouse, but rather his ultimately futile attempts to bring her back to the world of the living through companionship, conversation, sharing meals, getting out in nature, etc. In dealing with someone that fixated on the void, however, there really was no bringing them back, not entirely, in part because they viewed themselves and others as things rather than people, and as such watching their demise was the only activity that made sense. Shiveley delivering this brutal message using simple figures in some ways makes it all the more devastating, because the reader isn't distracted by imagery; instead, the iconic nature of Shiveley's drawings instead pushes the reader further into these scenarios, as they are forced to identify with both characters. Shiveley's pitch-black sense of humor further modulates the story in both the slightly absurd nature of the set-up as well as the darkly hilarious index at the end. Notating such concepts and events as "Blood", "Callous disregard", "Detached curiosity", "Willful disbelief" and "The yawning abyss", Shiveley comments on the story he just created while poking fun at the entire exercise. The design, execution and even decorative elements of this comic are all carefully and thoughtfully considered, which is a testament to Shiveley's own sense of the gestalt of his projects.

NYRB Comics: Soft City

The good people at the New York Review of Books have been rescuing out-of-print texts for quite some time now, performing an incredibly valuable cultural service. Under the guidance of series editors Gabriel Winslow-Yost (a writer whose work I've reviewed on this blog) and Lucas Adams, their task is to find key comics that are either out of print or have never been published in english. I'll be getting to all of them eventually, but I wanted to begin with one of the more unusual and remarkable stories in the history of comics.

In 1969, a Norwegian cartoonist who had renamed himself Hariton Pushwagner started a book-length comic about an average day in an Orwellian nightmare world titled Soft City. He had to abandon the project for three years, then completed it in 1975. At around that time, he lost all of the original artwork under somewhat vague circumstances. It was found about thirty years later, and after a considerable amount of legal wrangling, it was finally released.  Now, the New York Review is bringing it back into print. The best thing about this development is that they have a long-tail model, wherein their goal is to put quality (if obscure) works out into the market, create a backstock that will continue to slowly draw in readers, and patiently wait for the books to sell over time. The editors are determined to bring as many obscure and out of print works of quality as possible.

Back to the book: writer Martin Herbert, in the afterword, notes that the big influences on the book were Aldous Huxley and William S. Burroughs. The story, such as it is, is very simple. We look in on a family at sunrise in Soft City, starting with the baby and continuing on with the parents, whose glassy eyes never stop staring straight ahead when they take their mandatory "Life" pill. The nameless father gets ready for work, leaving with lockstep with dozens of others of people living in his concrete, high-rise apartment building. He drives to work, parks, goes to his desk, and works. We then flip to the mother, who is going shopping with thousands of other mothers. The only singular figure we follow is Mr. Soft, head of the monolithic SoftCo. The father leaves work, drives home, eats dinner and the book ends with the sun going down and the moon coming up.

That description, while entirely accurate, only hints at what makes this book interesting. The idea of a nightmare future of conformity isn't exactly new and certainly wasn't new in 1969. What is most interesting about the book, as introduction writer Chris Ware suggests, is this idea of "softness". Burroughs talked about that idea in The Soft Machine, which of course names humans as "soft machines", i.e., we are machines made of meat. Pushwagner is suggesting an entire city, and really, an entire culture that has become "soft". The book is an excoriation of the nameless, faceless city and buildings that we see, to be sure, but they are the symptom of what he's attacking, not the cause. The book is really an attack on the concept of capitalism run amok, commodifying every person in the city by way of Soma-like drugs (shades of Huxley, to be sure), It's also attacking that commodification's "softening" of language itself, the building block of culture and knowledge. Borrowing a trick from Burroughs, the very little dialog that we see is nothing more than words picked at random that nonetheless make sense in the context of the book. That approximate sense of meaning, or perhaps words being softened thanks to the soporific effects of drugs, batters the reader as it screams from the newspaper and billboards.

Herbert describes the book, despite its crushing and soulless qualities, as beautiful to look at because of Pushwagner's relentless images. I would have to disagree on how we each looked at the images. If Pushwagner had tried to draft these images with tools instead of drawing them by hand, I might agree with that assessment. Indeed, despite Ware's admiration for the book, Pushwagner's aesthetic couldn't be more unlike Ware's. Even though Ware draws everything by hand, there's a wonderful precision to his work. It might be melancholy, but it always celebrates the essence of life and the act of him bringing it to life. These are sharp, concretized images, and in Ware's work, it creates a charming panorama that often works in contrast to the content of the images as well as the text. For Pushwagner, everything is soft, including the cars and buildings. He is not trying to draft images of technology or draw tightly-rendered and detailed buildings. Instead, the drawings are "soft": loosely rendered, with a slightly wobbly hand. For example, on the page where we see the man waving goodbye to his family, there are dozens of windows drawn on a two-page layout. The effect, rather than being beautiful, is almost nauseating.

That effect gets even worse in the sequence where he drives to work, as dozens turn into hundreds of tiny, hand-rendered windows that disappear into a vanishing point. The cars are just as awful, as they are crammed together on the streets, each one containing four people, slowly moving to the same company for work. The massive parking garage makes the effect even more upsetting, as this monstrosity of a structure is dizzying to navigate as a reader. The vanishing point perspective frequently reappears in the comic, and the effect each time is vertiginous, as though one was falling into a void.

In a city where even language has been corrupted as a means of self-expression, the only ones immune are the babies. It is telling that Pushwagner begins and ends the story from the viewpoint of the toddler. Not having been assimilated into society, his actions are unpredictable, even as he retains the wide-eyed wonder of innocence. When the mothers go shopping at the sort of big-box store that did not exist at that time but certainly does now, all of them have that straight ahead, dead-eyed stare and a ramrod-straight posture. It's their children who are looking back, looking at each other and squirming around. Pushwagner also reveals certain cracks in the system, as a few workers fantasize on their way to work, only their fantasies bypass language and are pure visuals: living on a tropical island, being a fighter pilot, etc. This is a society where the exploitative nature of the military-industrial complex (there's a scene where Mr. Soft looks over his holdings on a variety of TV screens, and missiles are among them) reduces every adult to mere shells of living beings, and that includes Mr. Soft himself. Pushwagner evokes a hopeless situation with the tiniest amount of mitigation through the power of imagination. He suggests that a society entirely dominated by commodification and exploitation almost entirely crushes the possibility of unmediated, personal, aesthetic experiences. The only possible forms of resistance are intimate communication, empathetic understanding and the courage to find the possibility of the aesthetic experience. Pushwagner is less interested in a story where enough people find that courage than he is in laying out how things would work where most people find themselves being forced to conform.

Twelve Publishers and Creators To Seek Out as SPX 2016

I will be attending SPX in North Bethesda, MD this weekend, which will make my sixteenth time at the show. I'll be moderating two panels: one on independent publishing with Annie Koyama, Raighne Hogan, Kevin Czapewski, and C. Spike Trotman; and also one on truth-telling in autobio comics with Gina Wynbrandt, Sophia Foster-Dimino, Kris Mukai, and Anna Selheim. As always, I will be picking up comics for review, and will once again be picking up comics for my Thirty Days of CCS feature. Hope to see you all there; I will be wearing a grey hat. Below are some artists and publishers to seek out at this year's show:

1. Anuj Shrestha. With an exquisitely grotesque drawing style, his Genus series is one of the best body horror comics around.

2. Centrala. This Polish publisher (by way of the UK) has some startling original comics. I recommend Fertility if you want a disturbing experience or Moscow if you want a rollicking one.

3. Gabriel Winslow-Yost. A fine cartoonist in his own right, Winslow-Yost is also the editor of the New York Review of Books' comics line. Debuting at this show is the astounding Soft City by Norwegian artist Haritat Pushwagner.

4. Gina Wynbrandt. An Ignatz nominee last year, Wynbrandt will be on my autobio panel on Saturday at 4:30pm. Her hilarious book, Someone Please Have Sex With Me, is one of the top five comics of the year.

5. Hazel Newlevant. Best known for editing the popular Chainmail Bikini anthology, Newlevant's autobiographical and biographical series are all excellent.

6. Kevin Budnik. Budnik deals with some pretty severe issues related to mental illness (including OCD and anorexia) in his excellent diary comics, along with many other topics.

7. Kevin Czapewski. Publisher of Czap Books, Czapewski has published or distributed some of the most fascinating and challenging comics of the past few years.

8. Luke Healy. CCS grad Healy's aesthetic is a perfect fit with NoBrow, and he will debut How To Survive In The North with that publisher.

9. Luke Howard. Another CCS grad and current instructor there, Howard will have new books from Retrofit (Our Mother) as well as AdHouse (Talk Dirty To Me).

10. Meghan Turbitt. This hilarious cartoonist will debut Self at the show this year. Her over-the-top and fictionalized autobio stories are rivaled only by Wynbrandt's.

11. Tom Hart. He'll be here with students from the Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW). His book, Rosalie Lightning, is easily my choice for best book of the year, and it's baffling and disappointing that it was not nominated for an Ignatz.

12. Kilgore Books. Quietly publishing more and more great comics, publisher Dan Stafford will be here with Noah Van Sciver and his new comic (Blammo #9), as well as up-and-comer Tom Van Deusen.

Alternative; Kevin Scalzo, Jon Allen

Sugar Booger #2, by Kevin Scalzo. The oddest thing about reading the most recent issue of Sugar Booger is that Scalzo's gross-out/fairy tale aesthetic feels almost mainstream these days. The jokes involving the titular character blowing candy snot out of his nose, to the delight of the children, still carry that edge to them, thanks to mixing an ultra-cute drawing style with gross jokes that still fit entirely within the logic of the strip. In other words, nothing here is gross to the people involved in the story; it's only gross to outsiders. It seems obvious that Scalzo had to be a big inspiration (along with Marc Bell) for the TV show Adventure Time, which often uses precisely the same kind of gross/cute contrast for comedic effect. The only difference is that Adventure Time throws in a lot of bro humor parody along with action sequences. There's another big technical difference in terms of the drawings: Scalzo plays up the cute factor with the squarish heads and huge eyes of each character, while relentlessly adding sweat beads in order to simultaneously (but slightly) undermine the over-the-top cuteness elements of the story. The frequently melting environment brings to mind the melting/body horror elements of fantasy comics influenced by Adventure Time and its related spin-offs. What really puts Sugar Booger over the top and what continues to make it an unsettling read is that Scalzo never once winks at the audience. The absurdity of the characters is presented at face value in an almost deadpan fashion, daring the reader to find something strange about it. Scalzo's skill in character design within his aesthetic and the ways he uses strange angles and perspectives adds to the comic's dizzying qualities, constantly keeping the reader off-balance even as the actual storytelling is rock-solid and straightforward.

Ohio Is For Sale, by Jon Allen. This series of stories about a trio of slacker roommates feels familiar at first in terms of the ennui and hijinks the twentysomething guys who live together engage in. However, things get much darker as the book proceeds while still mining the same kinds of laughs, making the humor all the more disturbing.The first story begins, after establishing the boring, suburban neighborhood the guys live in, with the writing frustrations of one of the main characters. He's constantly swinging between egomania and self-hatred, and the opportunity to make a late-night run to the 7-11 was irresistible at that point. Allen very quickly starts introducing the sort of quirky character that provides the protagonists someone to bounce off of in a clerk who offers a maniacal laugh and a refusal to sell cigarettes or provide change. After slowly easing the reader into this world, Allen then jolts the reader by having one of the character's car catch on fire while is friend is nonchalantly sipping on a Slurpee.That leads to the guy who left his cigarette burning in the car being forced to get a job, which he's fired from within minutes. All's well that ends well, however, as he simply steals the car of the person who got him fired.

That first strip was typical of the rest of the book. What starts off as typical slacker humor quickly zig-zags into an ever-escalating series of weird and sometimes terrible events. In the second story, for example, one of the guys accidentally kills his friend when a swing of a baseball bat goes awry. It would seem the strip would get as weird and dark as it could get when his other two friends bury his body, only we follow the dead guy to hell, where he meets a bro-tastic Satan who's desperate for company. The angst generated in this strip comes entirely from Satan, whose quote "Christ--I miss college" had me laughing out loud. The humor here is as dark as certain issues of Peter Bagge's Hate, like the one where Stinky accidentally shoots himself in the head and Butch panics.

Mental illness is a major topic of these strips, like in one strip where the writer character simply gets in the car and drives away, with no destination in mind, as a way of dealing with his depression. The fact that all of the characters are anthropomorphic animals only makes the emotions feel bigger and more intense, as Allen keeps his line simple and direct. The end of this story, where the writer encounters a deer who's dying on the side of the road, is as bleak as it gets. He notes that he comes home not because he's reached an epiphany or solved his problems, but because the realization that anywhere he goes will be more-or-less the same as the place he just left, so he might as well go home.

The final story ties up a lot of loose story threads as the sister of one of the housemates comes to visit, which winds up including her asshole boyfriend. Soon, the visit turns into a party that divides the guys along different lines. The writer is drawn in by the asshole boyfriend's macho nihilism, while the other guys are repulsed. The story incorporates fireworks purchased in an earlier story, demons from hell that escaped in that earlier story, and a simmering ennui and rage that makes itself manifest in a fistfight. After the party renders the house unliveable, the writer simply states "Let's just burn the house down." It's a fitting end for a story whose nihilism is barely kept at bay by the simple and symbiotic relationship of the housemates, though even those relationships are fragile and fraught with almost thoughtless cruelty. This isn't the freewheeling brotherhood of Boys Club, or even the codependent but at least somewhat hopeful relationships of Megahex. All these guys have is each other, and Allen intimates that that is nowhere near enough. Along the way, Allen delivers absurd and sharp-witted gags, perceptive character work that really nails the banality of certain kinds of dialogue, and a starkly illustrated (lots of blacks and thick ink), deceptively breezy storytelling style.

Floating World: Anna Ehlremark, Carlos Gonzalez

Winners, by Anna Ehlremark. The excellent comics store Floating World (in Portland, OR) has been publishing their own comics for quite some time now in addition to being one of the best comics stores in the US. Publisher Jason Leivian has made it a point to publish comics from the most obscure and challenging margins of the alt-comics world, and his most recent batch is no exception. Winners, by Swedish native Ehlremark, is unlike anything else I've seen from that country. Part of that reason might be because she's spent a lot of time in the Balkans like Serbia and Croatia, and it's clear that the political and social unrest in those countries over the past twenty years has had a profound effect upon her work. Croatian-Canadian cartoonist Nina Bunjevac says as much in her afterword, and it's a bit of illumination after the unrelentingly grim but absurd world that her short stories take place in. These aren't so much traditional narratives as they are narrative fragments that are more about time, emotion and powerful images than a specifically resolved plot with sharply defined characters. There are oppressors, the oppressed, and a disturbing third category where the oppressed becomes the oppressor.

Ehrlemark's art is marked by its reliance on blacks as well as distorted, grotesque figures. The book starts off on a disturbing note with "My Sister", which establishes a world with advanced technology, as the narrator notes that her sister was created in a lab to resemble her exactly but that she was the original, a sentiment that leads her to murder in the most savage way possible: hitting someone on the head with a rock. It's a Biblical allusion to Cain and Abel, but in this case her sibling's only crime was to exist. The starkness and bluntness of Ehlremark's art is leavened by the darkest of humorous notes, like the silhouette of a penis spurting out droplets "that jumped into the opening of a lusty lady". Things only get darker from there. "Prologue" is one of many silent stories in the book, and it's all about a future where bioengineering is real but is creating horrors, with women and girls the primary victims.

"Wake Up" is a very in-between kind of story about a woman in and out of consciousness in what looks like a wartime infirmary. "No" is one of the many stories that's simply a howl against the patriarchal qualities of the world, technology, sex, and the forces of rationality itself, opposing it with ritual and an allowance for creating one's own identity. In many ways, "Abundance" is the creepiest story in the book. It follows a group of what appear to be homeless people or outcasts scraping by for survival, until one of them is offered a chance to go with a stereotypically beautiful woman who offers them an opulent lifestyle. This story is a brutal takedown of capitalism and the "I got mine, don't worry about his" qualities that it creates. The book is full of stories about the apparent unity of a group or a couple being disrupted or completely ignored when the slightest of advantages presents itself, like in "The Big Escape".

Toward the end of the book, Ehlremark starts to suggest that the only way to properly resist the bonds of the new, ugly world is to escape to its margins. "Brothers" is about an unconventional relationship, where two brothers are together with the same woman, impregnating her at the same time as part of an entirely willing arrangement. "Pioneer" surrealistically suggests a new world forming at a sub-atomic level after being brutally sent out of this one. "Happy Ending" suggests the fragility of this world and that forces will always be arrayed against those on the margins. The book's title is heavily charged in and of itself, as the idea of winning and losing in life is heavily influenced by the competition engendered by capitalism, especially since the book strongly implies that there's no point in playing the game because it's already been rigged.

Test Tube, by Carlos Gonzalez. A musician/cartoonist/performance artist/filmmaker, Gonzalez picked up on a more recent wave of Providence hybrid creations following the initial impact of Fort Thunder in the 1990s. This collection of a three-issue minicomic series feels familiar and strange all at once. One can see that Gonzalez has soaked up influences from across the culture, both high and low, and the result is a style that feels familiar and evokes a great deal of deja vu', yet it's impossible to pin down specifics. It's fitting that Matthew Thurber blurbed the book because it's not a bad comparison, but the structure of Gonzalez' work and the overall tone is much different. I see echoes of Gilbert Hernandez and Dan Clowes as much as I do early 90s comic books, but most of all I see a singular aesthetic that's designed to tell a story in a fairly straightforward way while also totally baffling and unsettling the reader.

Gonzalez uses a clever storytelling trick designed to keep the audience guessing as he introduces a character, follows their narrative around for a little while, and then cuts to a seemingly completely unrelated character. It doesn't take long for him to tie the narratives together and to do so with a bizarre but quite clear plot point that lets the reader know precisely what's going on. The book embraces sleaze, as the proprietor of a decrepit movie theater finds himself drawn to a strange and run-down strip club with some unusual private shows. We then meet a woman who's drawn to a weirdo at her flea market stall as she's trying to sell records, temporarily hallucinating that there's a wasp on her hand and that a photo of a dog is a nude photo of herself fusing with a tree. We meet a journalist investigating weirdness, and a sex addict triggered by some TV nudity to go down to that strip club. Gonzalez also fools the reader a bit by shifting around time, so that even though the woman (Jill) is introduced later in the book, everything she does precedes the events that the men in the story experience.

In each narrative and throughout the book, every panel is littered with visual detritus. It's a fascinating move, because it's not so distracting that one can't read the panel (indeed, Gonzalez is a clear and direct storyteller who uses standard grid templates). However, the smudges, shapes, squiggles and random lines have an additive effect even as one's eye screens them off after a few pages. They contribute to the feeling of alienation and strangeness on every page, that feeling of familiar things seeming wrong somehow. It's a creeping feeling just out of sight and mind that's incredibly anxiety-inducing. All of that is simply the background for this story; Gonzalez isn't doing weird for weird's sake or deliberately trying to confuse the reader; indeed, he starts exploring and explaining the plot about halfway through. His own character design is stiff and stilted, freezing characters in place with a simplistic style that makes good use of so many other strange elements in a panel. It all makes for a perfect visual gestalt.

The story is really about a convoluted scientific/aesthetic collaboration to create tones and words that will immediately change, mutate and evolve those people who listen to it. It's revealed that the experiments went horribly awry years ago, but that they're being continued now in strip clubs, bars and small performances. Gonzalez leaves it up to the reader to decide if the nature of this evolution is positive or negative, but he does make it clear that it's something that's feared and resisted by many. The plot is resolved, but it's a remarkably open-ended story that could go in any number of directions. Gonzalez isn't the least bit interested in telling the reader what to think about what just happened in the book or judge the characters, nor is he clearly coming out in favor of or against the "evolution" that's depicted in the book. What he is interested in doing is depicting the struggle and urge to create and the process and possibilities of doing this in the underground. Sleazy bars, strip joints, and broken down theaters are all perfect venues for affecting a few people in a profound fashion, making the process depicted in the book a possible metaphor for his own work. Regardless, Gonzalez' tapping into body horror and (in essence) mad science is as traditional as it gets, and the way he plays off of and warps tradition is what makes the book so interesting.

Fantagraphics: Matt Furie, Simon Hanselmann

Boy's Club, by Matt Furie. There have been countless slice-of-life comics devoted to twentysomething slacker dudes who get high and/or drunk, eat pizza, play videogames and fart on each other. Matt Furie's Boys Club is the apotheosis of this sort of story for a number of reasons. Portraying the slackers here as cute, anthropomorphic animals gives their antics a sense of innocence that would have been impossible if they had been rendered in a naturalistic style. (I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that Pepe the Frog has become an internet meme.) Second, Furie deftly toes the line between satire and and genuine affection for these goofballs. Third, Furie's comic timing is superb, as he turns antics that might have been tedious into great gags. Finally, the sheer joy the characters in this book feel in being around each other is real and palpable. That sense of being young and knowing that you've found your tribe and absolutely reveling in that fact is liberating and exhilarating. Everyone knows that this can't last forever, but the expiration date on this experience is so far off at this point that it doesn't seem real.

That's why the funny-animal aspect of this book is so important. It's a land of make-believe wherein pranks, fart jokes, acid trips, filthy group houses are the only reality that matters. It really does feel like characters from children's literature grew up and partied together. The lighthearted nature of it all makes it feel like an extended, dirty and drug-infused episode of The Monkees. That show had a sense of its own ridiculousness, and it's obvious that Furie isn't presenting any of these characters as anything to aspire to. Indeed, he's constantly and subtly mocking these characters' speech patterns, musical references (e.g., The Black Eyed Peas), jokes, fashion interests, etc. However, he also uses their anthropomorphic qualities as a base for forays into psychedelic weirdness. The cute characters transform into monstrous versions of themselves as they stare off into space, Pepe's eyeballs pop out of his head and slink away, still attached by the optic nerve. Landwolf gets naked and dances with a strobe light flashing, spinning his penis into a circle. Most of the stories are just one to two page vignettes, with the exception of a story featuring Landwolf wanting to commemorate an especially large bowel movement. Furie's skill in being able to draw characters that draw the eye in and won't let go is a big key to the success of the series, and the single-color linework adds a touch of eye candy as the choice of color shifts every few pages. This is certainly a book about bros, but they're by far the most charming and harmless bros I've ever seen depicted.

Megahex and Megg & Mogg In Amsterdam, by Simon Hanselmann. Hanselmann's slacker comics feel like a response to Furie's work in some regards, especially in terms of what happens when living an aimless and hedonistic lifestyle extends past its expiration date. Hanselmann draws from a number of disparate influences, including what appear to be some autobiographical events, to tell the story of three housemates and their slacker, degenerate friends. The most obvious and celebrated is the Meg and Mog children's series by Helen Nicoll and Jan Pienkowski. Hanselmann takes Furie's concept of cartoon characters growing up to become degenerate slackers and runs with it, using characters more familiar to UK and Australian audiences than American. In particular, the odious Werewolf Jones appears to be a response to Furie's Landwolf, the most obnoxious of the Boy's Club quartet.

The Megahex stories are filled with psychedelia, pranks, slacker slovenliness and young people refusing to grow up. While Hanselmann's comic is frequently far funnier than Furie's, it's devoid of the satire Furie employed so deftly in his book. Instead, Megahex is a meditation on the dark side of living this kind of lifestyle. The relationship between Megg (the redheaded witch), Mogg (her housecat and lover, which gets exactly as uncomfortable as one would expect) and Owl (an anthropomorphic Owl who's the only one who has a job and some pretense at trying to grow up) is frequently quite abusive. Werewolf Jones in particular is the epitome of the out-of-control, aimless, obnoxious and ubiquitous asshole who latches on to people, exploits them, abuses them and then is offended when people get angry at him. He initially establishes his worth by providing drugs and outrageous party hijinks, but there's a difference between being amused by someone like that from a distance and actually having them in your life.

One thing that I love about these books is that Hanselmann makes absolutely no apologies for his characters, but he also presents them as complicated and broken. There's one brutal scene where Megg, Mogg and Werewolf Jones present a birthday "surprise" to Owl, which turns out to be Jones trying to sexually assault him. Even Megg and Mogg knew things went too far that time as they buy Owl a present as a form of apology, but they refuse to acknowledge its importance later on in the book. The pranks they pull on Owl often wind up landing him in jail, in the hospital or fired from his job. They have the same flavor as the meanest of Johnny Ryan scenes, only Hanselmann pulls back and makes everyone involved realize that these are horrible things that the characters are doing. As the book proceeds, vignette by vignette (some are one-pagers, some go on for much longer), Hanselmann reveals that every character in this book is a broken person in some way.

Both Megg and Mogg are on antidepressants, but Megg still often falls prey to crippling bouts of depression that land her on her "sadness mattress", unable to even get up and use the toilet. Megg also sees a therapist whose behavior and methods start off as head-scratching and devolve into hilarously inappropriate, especially when Megg ambushes Mogg into coming to a session for couples therapy. Mogg frequently asked for sexual acts that made Megg uncomfortable and was intensely insecure about his own sexual capabilities. They were the working definition of a codependent couple, and when she tried to break up with him, they both realized they had nowhere else to go. Mogg's hilarious and pathetically sad "solution" was to wear a Hamburglar mask. Owl consistently sabotaged his own sobriety and ambitions (modest as they were) by choosing to keep these people in his life, in part because his own feelings of worthlessness no doubt contributed to him accepting the abuse that was constantly heaped upon him. Werewolf Jones proved to be the most broken character of all, unable to hold down a place to live and being the world's worst father to his out-of-control sons. The scene where Jones starts crying and tells Owl that he has feelings for him leads to one of the best comic breaks in the book, as we see Owl on a plane to Amsterdam in the panel right after that revelation. What makes each character's behavior even more difficult to bear is that they are all capable of moments of kindness and empathy (even and especially Werewolf Jones), but they choose to do so rarely.

The moments that being drunk or high that provide  joy, relief and escape are just that--moments. Hanselmann depicts an increasing amount of ennui, paranoia and worst of all--pointlessness. When Owl decides to quit drinking alcohol at one point in the book, Megg and Mogg secretly get him drunk with a "health smoothie", leading to a hilarious and awful sequence where Owl berates a couple in a video store for their choice of movie and then laughs off a punch in the face. Owl's flaw is that he's driven by fear, especially a fear of his own success. Like the others, he drowns out the buzzing feeling of self-hatred in his head through stoner and drunk rituals, until the end of the first book when he's decided he's had enough abuse at the hands of his so-called "friends". It's an interesting character moment, because it was made clear in the second book that Megg & Mogg are essentially helpless without Owl at least partially tethering them to reality.

The structure of the book, sliced into vignettes, means that Hanselmann can simply reset and choose any road to go down with regard to the emotional content of the strip. In a given story, you might see a short gag, a longer vignette focusing on the darker side of one of the characters, a story that ties into the overall emotional continuity of the book, or a spectacular visual sequence that embraces the psychedelic aspects of the narrative. The magical realist nature of the characters allows Hanselmann a great deal of leeway here, as the initial premise of the book and its characters is highly elastic. It's easy to snap back to the three housemates sitting in their living room at the beginning of a story without taking the reader out of the narrative. The same is true for Hanselmann's visual approach to his stories, as he has a central style that features an 8 - 12 panel grid, a fairly thin line weight and and an active (if muted) use of color. Depending on the mood and demands of the story, he might switch to a 16 or 20 panel grid (he had 35 panels on a few pages!) in order to accelerate the narrative, which usually zips along pretty quickly for a comic where a lot of people sit around on many of its pages. The color in some of the stories is richer and more vivid than in others, but Hanselmann never lets things get too far away from his template. Even the guest artists like Furie himself and Sammy Harkham fit right into Hanselmann's overall aesthetic.

Megahex is not just about the sensation in one's life where it feels like the party's about to end, it's also about the feeling that the party wasn't very good in the first place. It's filled with characters who are not only totally out of equilibrium with themselves and others, it's not clear that they were ever healthy or in sync. It's funny and sad in the same way and at the same time, because the things that people do when they're sad are every bit as ridiculous as the things they do when they're happy. For a series about slackers, these books are remarkably emotionally visceral and intense.