45 Days Of CCS, #28: Robyn Smith, Dylan Sparks, Kat Ghastly

Kat Ghastly's I Hunger may be short, but she packs a lot of conceptual power into its very silly punchlines. Its central idea--"What upset Cthulhu's tummy?"--is very dopey but also funny, and her gross-out drawings match the grossness of her puns. "Cult chowder," "Peopleroni pizza," and finally "This comic" are all culprits. This is like a wonderful Lovecraftian Garbage Pail Kids set. The sickly green cover is a nice indicator of its contents.

Robyn Smith's Night Fever won an Ignatz award for Outstanding Artist in an issue of the anthology Gladiolus. This is just an eight-page story, but it packs a wallop. Smith is best known for illustrating other people's stories, but she's actually an excellent writer in any number of genres. Her work has an edge that's certainly evident in this story of a group of college friends who drop acid at an outdoor Halloween party. They invite their friend Leanna to come out and meet them, and through a series of chaotic events, something horrible happens: she is dosed without her knowledge by a man she doesn't know. Smith cuts the story off before the inevitable consequences of this (something she's especially adept at--her own writing is filler-free), but the nightmarish visuals tell the reader all they need to know. 

Gallant Valor is Dylan Sparks' senior thesis, and it's one long play on gender and fantasy tropes. It's about a romance between a knight named Serim and an anthropomorphic dragon named Pet. That romance, as we learn in flashbacks, was born out of controlling and abusive relationships. For Pet, it was the king who treated her as more of a thing than someone who belonged in his court. For Serim, it was her devotion to the queen that obliterated boundaries by using her as a sex object. In both examples, it was a case of unequal power relationships taken to extreme levels. For Serim, the queen's need for total devotion led to the knight's death. For Pet, she defied her surrogate father's control and threats that she'd never fit in so she could find her own way. Finding and accepting each other was the key to their own personal transformations, as they started on their goal of marauding through the kingdoms. This was an ambitious comic, and some of the storytelling felt muddled. That includes some of the character design, which was a bit all over the place, but Sparks' line was also inconsistent. That said, Sparks nails the big shocks in this comic, and the romantic (and unsettling!) ending feels entirely earned.