Jonathan Baylis' So Buttons #15

Jonathan Baylis has been writing comics for about a decade now, working with cartoonists to relate anecdotes from his life in the tradition of Harvey Pekar. What's changed for him over the years? Well, as evidenced by the latest issue of his anthology series So Buttons, he's starting to think like less as a writer and more as an editor. What I mean by that is that the way he sequences has become more sophisticated and his themes are more emotionally resonant. 

In So Buttons #15 (with a cover by C.M. Campbell that pays homage to a Barry Windsor-Smith cover from a Machine Man miniseries in the 80s), Baylis quickly establishes his theme as fathers and sons. Frequent collaborator Noah Van Sciver is a perfect choice for a loose and expressive story about a younger Baylis going with his father to visit his father's old neighborhood in Brooklyn. The message of the story ("be yourself") was a little pat, but the details of his affection for his father, along with how Baylis was frequently mystified by him, are what linger. The follow-up story, where TJ Kirsch draws a brief anecdote about solid advice on take-out, is a good gag strip that gives further color with regard to their relationship.

Baylis is a film and TV guy, having worked in the industry for a number of years. As such, he often drops interesting anecdotes about various encounters but also describes how and why film has had an impact. Sometimes, like in this issue, it leads to interesting stories, like how David Lynch's films and shows made him feel like a little less of an outsider but also indirectly helped him land a job. (Bhanu Pratrap's angular, distorted cartooning was a perfect match for this subject.) When Baylis stays away from played-out, tedious references like Star Wars or superhero stuff (essentially, Kevin Smith territory) and focuses instead on more personal and meaningful work, it's easier to see how and why it is so resonant for him. 

The stories about his time as an intern at October Films (as drawn by Danny Hellman, Karl Christian Krumpholz, and Nathan Gelgud) are not only interesting on their own as anecdotes, but they also reveal a lot about what's important for him aesthetically and how it bleeds into his personal life. That focus on movie segues into a beautiful story about his recently-deceased mother's love for West Side Story, drawn by Becky Hawkins. What represents a step up for Baylis as a writer is that this isn't simply a sentimental, emotional anecdote (although that is part of it); it's also an examination of the lacuna that now exists about why his mother felt a certain way about things. It's something he will never really know, as there are many mysteries that parents leave behind. The single-page drawing from Eleanor Davis about his mother-in-law is the single best page in the whole comic; it's a beautiful visual explication of not feeling one's own age. 

The only real misstep was Baylis' text explaining his themes at the end. I get why he might have done this, but it felt unnecessary. The themes and how they connected were clear to any reader willing to read closely. That aside, Baylis was right in asserting that this was his most cohesive issue of So Buttons to date. As a writer and as an editor, this is a clear sign that Baylis has hit his stride, and I'm excited to see his work continue to evolve. 

K. Woodman-Maynard's Tuck Everlasting

Adaptations of prose works into comics form can be tricky. How much of the original prose should be kept? What should be trimmed? How does one transform one medium into another while doing justice to both? In the case of K. Woodman-Maynard, it's her use of layout, page composition, and especially color that sets her apart from similar, more visually mundane attempts at adaptations. 

That was true for Tuck Everlasting: The Graphic Novel (written by Natalie Babbitt) as well as her prior adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The evocative metaphors of Fitzgerald were taken to whimsical visual extremes by KWM. For Babbitt, KWM chose to use certain concrete metaphors (like life as a wheel) as a recurring visual motif, and it made each occurrence all the more resonant. 

The story, which concerns a young girl encountering a family made immortal by a spring in a forest near her home, raises all sorts of fascinating philosophical questions about the implications of eternal life. Meeting the immortal Tuck family and being asked to keep their secret while having to contend with the sinister and avaricious Man in the Yellow Suit is all secondary to the protagonist of the story, young Winnie Foster, being forced to examine her deepest beliefs. Beyond simply having an adventure and stepping out of a highly-ordered life, Winnie must think about death and its implications. Interacting with Ma and Pa Tuck, as well as their sons Jesse and Miles, gives her a number of points of view about immortality. Is life just an adventure? Is a life without roots meaningless? As Pa Tuck says, is immortality essentially throwing you off of the wheel of life?

KWM gives each character their own wheel motif; the fun-loving Jesse has a rollercoaster, for example. Winnie's own dilemma is often spelled out in an omniscient narration that's written in the clouds, the trees, and other background elements. It's a clever trick that allows KWM to retain a lot of the original text without making it feel clunky. Indeed, she endeavors to make the lettering part of the art in a number of ways, like the sinister, persistent line of persuasion the Man in the Yellow Suit uses on Winnie's family, as the tails on his word balloons literally ensnares them. KWM's clever page composition often turns tree branches or roots into panels, creating a beautiful flow that allows the reader to process a lot of information very quickly.

However, it's KWM's use of watercolors to set tone and mood that does most of the storytelling work here. Shifting between the naturalistic hues of summer to highly expressionistic uses of color meant to depict emotion allows her to shift the mood in the comic without needing to make it obvious with her other storytelling. The result is something both lush and heartfelt, exciting but bittersweet.