Minis: Suzy & Cecil

Gabriella Tito and Sally Ingraham's mini Suzy & Cecil is a cute, sincere and low-key series of vignettes about a girl and her dog. Produced by Frank Santoro's Comic Workbook program in Pittsburgh, one can definitely see evidence of Santoro's influence. There's a strict four-panel grid that Ingraham never deviates from. There's also a highly expressive use of color throughout the comic, using colored pencil.  That includes color being extended to the actual line, giving the entire comic a larger-than-life feel that contrasts with the low-key stories and stripped-down pencils. The comic follows the adventures of Suzy and her dog Cecil, as they poke around the city and hang around the diner where her mom works. Cecil is a floor-cleaner, going after scraps when they fall on the floor. The pigtailed Suzy is an adventurer, going on boat rides, long walks, car rides and sojourns through back alleys with her dog. 

The results are pleasantly meandering and remind me a bit of Melissa Mendes' Freddy Stories. That's a comic about a tomboy and her dog, negotiating the world on her own terms thanks to a number of understanding adults in her life. This is similar and despite the expansive use of color, the essence of each strip is rooted in rock-solid cartooning fundamentals. There's an emphasis on the relationship between figures in space, even when the figures themselves are quickly sketched out. For example, drawings of hands and feet are basic--even crude at times. However, the emotional relationship between characters is made clear thanks to body language and gesture. Indeed, Ingraham probably could have stripped things down even further for the sake of clarity, as some lines looked overly fussy. 

Of course, the use of color is the most eye-catching aspect of these comics. In a comic that aggressively sticks to fundamentals in every other aspect of page design, the use of color is strikingly expressionistic. One page is colored all in lavender. Another features a yellow-orange ground and a purplish night sky. Other pages mix pink, blue and yellow. It's fun to look at and provides a great deal of variety. The enliven the small moments of the story, like Cecil encountering squirrels and birds, Cecil or Suzy snoring loudly and ruminations on youth and mortality. This is very much a comic that's about celebrating the smallest of moments of youth and preserving them. It builds a balance between being totally unaware of time, like Cecil, and feeling like you have all the time in the world, like Suzy. In the case of both, there's an awareness passed on to the reader that time's march is inexorable, and so we should particularly enjoy the smallest of moments.