An upcoming grad (Class of 2018), Rainer Kannenstine’s work is sort of
gleefully nihilistic. This Sucks is a story that demonstrates his pitch-black
sense of humor, as an extremely hung over young woman is chosen by Death to
work out an old philosophical problem with a creature who’s the representative
of another world/universe. Our planet and their planet were on a collision
course that would destroy both of them…but if one person chose to destroy the
other planet, it would save their own. The alien talked about the over-the-top
idyllic circumstances in its universe, and when asked about her universe, she
could only muster “It kinda sucks.” Of course, one reason why it sucks is you
just can’t trust people, which leads to the eventual, darkly hilarious outcome.
To say that this is not a polished comic is an understatement. It’s a whole lot
of expressive scribbling that works pretty well, though the many spelling
errors were a distraction. Still, the so-over-it facial expressions of the protagonist
and black void of death’s form brightened only by a permanent, cheesy grin
helped give this comic a great deal of energy.
Lasers is a far stranger little comic with the following
admonition: “Don’t go to the playground. The pelicans are made of lasers.” That
statement is repeated, each word filling up part of a panel. The pelicans do
indeed to strange things on the playground, and when repeated, we zero in on a
molecular level so as to see just what’s going on in that bill of theirs. This
is a sort of children’s nursery rhyme comic, only far more unsettling. Far more
polished is He Comes To The Club At 6:00 AM, which shows us fragments of the
handsomest bear to ever grace a dance club, and how if you’re lucky, you might
go home with him. It’s image after image flashed at the reader, like they were
fever dream memories from hours later. There’s a beautiful crispness in the use
of grayscaling here, as Rainer is careful to let each image wash over the
reader and also use great care and precision with the all-lower case lettering.
Anna Sellheim submitted a couple of short stories for 30 Days of
CCS this year, one of which appeared in Comics 4 Choice, the
pro-choice comics anthology. That was "My Mother's Story", a comic in
the form of an interview about her mother's experiences with not just abortion,
but also childbirth. Sellheim here uses her more naturalistic line (as opposed
to the slightly more abstract figurework she uses for much of her own autobio
material) and plays it straight with a nine panel grid. The comic is
text-heavy, yet Sellheim is able to apply a few visual flourishes here and
there. The narrative is one of the best I've read with regard to abortions, because
it demonstrates that the decision to have the procedure can vary with age,
circumstances or any number of other choices. There were points where she was
adamant about having a baby the next time she got pregnant, and other
circumstances where she was apart from her partner and knew it wasn't the right
time to bring a child into the world. The point of the story is that in every
instance, it was her choice, and the state had no business interfering with
it.
"Safe" is a story about a gay couple named Carl and
Kamon, the latter of whom was from Thailand and had a history of abuse at
the hands of his father. It’s a sweet story that gauges the concept of safety
for a gay couple in the wake of Trump’s election. There’s a scene where Kamon
gets a dirty look for speaking in Thai in public from a guy in a MAGA hat. The
story is as much about negotiating the unwritten rules of relationships as it
is coping with a frightening new reality, as Carl bristles somewhat at being
told that he has a bad singing voice. Later, Kamon reveals that Carl may have a
bad voice, but he loves to hear him singing, because it makes him feel safe to
know that Carl is happy in that moment. There’s more of Sellheim’s slightly
cartoony naturalism here, which is a nice match with the impressive
verisimilitude she shows in the story’s dialogue and relationship dynamic.
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