31 Days Of CCS, #5: The Final Dot

The Final Dot is one of the CCS group anthology projects. This one features Dylan Sparks, Ellie Liota, Michael Albrecht, and Anna Passlick. I was excited to get a copy at SPX, because I've never seen one of these outside of the library at CCS. Looks like the take on the assignment was a take on Harvey Comics characters. The artists, who shared tasks like in an old mainstream comic, chose to do a dark parody of Little Dot. The results, which include multiple pages of fake ads, are absolutely unhinged. Little Dot, for those unfamiliar with the concept, really liked dots and things with dots on them. In the first story, she meets an appaloosa (with speckled "dots"), and it kicks her in the face. In a later story, she accidentally puts her friend Little Lotta in the hospital stirring up a beehive, and her parents take away her dots..

This leads Dot to skin her dalmation, show up to visit Lotta, and realizing that the colors in the strip were actually Ben-Day dots. Dot starts absorbing all of the color dots in a bid to be eternal, but Lotta grabs a shotgun from a hilarious Daisy rifle ad and shoots Dot in the chest. The quartet of artists takes the concept absolutely all the way, using metafictional humor in a way that feels earned by diligently building up not just the basic premise but also the presence of the ancillary material. Some of the line art is a little wobbly here and there, but they otherwise just nail the features of your average Harvey comic before turning it into a sci-fi/horror story. I'm curious as to the division of labor here, especially since I know and like the work of Sparks, Liotta, and Albrecht.