Mini-Comics Grab Bag: Bagnarelli, Ghetti/Schiesaro, Lafler, Alabaster

January The First, by Bianca Bagnarelli. Bagnarelli is a big-time talent from Italy. Her cartooning looks and feels cool and detached even as the actual events of the story are intense and often upsetting. Consider this short story, a first-person retrospective narrator about a young woman going off for a drive with two shifty young men. Bagnarelli uses cool pastels and a stripped-down approach to character design, with a small line and a few simple loops here and there for faces. Those faces rarely betray the uncertainty felt or the later sense of betrayal, as everything and everyone is deadpan. That sense of restraint is almost agonizing, considering the outrageous but absurd level of violation she experiences. This one's from the Italian publisher Delebile.

Myriad, by Lorenzo Ghetti and Ugo Schiesaro. Also from Delebile is this first chapter of what promises to be a longer work. The art here is scratchy and cartoony, giving this story of life on a space station a grimy, lived-in feeling. As the first chapter unfolds, the reader is slowly made to understand the order of things on a station that's been inhabited for years. It's actually modeled on industrial revolution-era family life, where there's a child class, an adult worker class and an elder class. In the case of this ship, the elders are there to provide instruction to the children until they're ready to take over leadership from the adults, who then become the new elder class while the adult women are impregnated and prepare to have children. What happens to the former elder class is the subject of this issue, wherein conflicts between generations are hinted at and something goes horribly wrong when the elders are being "processed". This comic is a great use of genre as a setting, because it allows Ghetti and Schiesaro to create a social engineering experiment and expand upon its implications.

Death In Oaxaca #2 (Alternative Comics) by Steve Lafler. An alt-comics veteran since the 80s, Lafler continues to make great use of the periodical format. He describes the contents of this series in a text feature at the end as "reportage, satire, self-discovery, and surreal fantasy". In other words, it's Lafler as usual. Even his truly crazy series like Dog Boy that were essentially excuses for his id and subconscious to go on a walk together still had elements of political content, autobiography and social commentary. For Lafler, it all goes hand-in-hand, and no one element is more important than the other. That said, his fantastical elements have certainly always stood out, and this series is no exception. The story is about a family of ex-pats moving to the remote, historical city of Oaxaca in Mexico. Along the way, the father, Max, hooks up with a group of local musicians (much like Lafler) and starts having conversations with Death. Death is a musician who jams with him and reveals that he had been here before in a past life.

Meanwhile, Gertie (Max's wife), dons lucha libre tights and decides to fight crime. A friend of theirs is revealed to be an ancient vampire who was Max's father and Gertie's husband in a past life. Along the way, Lafler provides a loving look at the sights and smells of the city, gently mocks ex-pat culture, and generally rambles his way through the issue with episodic little vignettes. Lafler is in no hurry to get anywhere, as scenes in markets and with musicians jamming having a languid quality. At the same time, the issue feels packed, thanks to the weird images and rubbery art that's Lafler's trademark. Lafler's drawing fundamentals are rock solid, especially with regard to anatomy, body language and gesture. That allows him to loosen up his figures, sometimes going dramatic with the occasional use of hatching and detailed, decorative features on the story's more supernatural elements. Lafler's character design looks a lot like Steve Ditko's, especially in the confidence he evinces in the odd and slightly ugly nature of many of his characters. In Lafler's eyes, the world is beautiful just as it is and doesn't need any sort of idealistic sheen being added to it.

Mimi And The Wolves,Act I by Alabaster. I was introduced to Alabaster's work in The Complete Talamaroo, which highlighted the essential frisson in her comics. That is, her delicate line and ultra-cute character design are simply the facade for a much darker, weirder world where sex and/or violence can spring at the reader on a moment's notice. Consider the first few pages of this comic: we see the faces of the characters, and they're all adorably stubby-looking. Even we we meet a spooky figure in the woods, it's more pleasantly eerie than anything else. When we meet the titular Mimi (a sort of cat girl), she's busily gathering flowers with which to make garlands. She then goes off with her self-described mate Bobo (a little dog man), they go to work on the farm of friends and later go into town. It's a little jarring when the characters undress at the end of the day given Alabaster's style, but that should be the reader's first clue. This isn't a fairy tale, but rather a world that's quite real for the characters involved, and they act as anyone might. After that pleasant day, Mimi has a nightmare with some grotesque, violent and sexual imagery out of an Eamon Espey comic--and it turns out this is a recurring nightmare.

Things get more intricate and complicated, as the story takes on feminist undertones given the reactionary and controlling actions of Bobo when she starts to explore her dream and meets up with wolves who claim to worship the woman that Mimi sees in her dreams. When Mimi and Bobo break up at the end of this first chapter, she essentially cuts off her last tether to society as she knows it--and she says "I feel free." That said, the wolves seem to be on the up-and-up, but it's clear that they're not telling her everything. This comic is all about the freedom to explore one's true self and how that sometimes leads to uncomfortable and unpleasant conversations and confrontations. Alabaster creates a world that's bursting with life, with each page cluttered in all the right ways. She's careful to leave a lot of negative space in each panel so as not to get in the way of her storytelling, but the small panels and lack of gutter space between them is a strategy that allows her to use a lot of quiet moments at a fast pace.

Retrofit Extra: Kochalka and Alabaster/Forsyth

Today at tcj.com, I have a big feature on Retrofit Comics from the past few years. After I had finished that article, I got a couple of new entries from the publisher, so I thought I'd review those books here to supplement that article.

Elf Cat In Love, by James Kochalka. I've never been a fan of Kochalka's twee storytelling style, but I must that he's an underrated influence on contemporary cartooning and animation. This book is a mix of cute character design with dialogue that's very much in modern vernacular, which is the starting point for Adventure Time's formula. The book follows a typical fantasy quest as the titular character and his companion, a floating magic tennis ball, encounter a monstrous princess, a possessive and jealous dragon and a windy mountain. Elf Cat is cocky and conceited and denies the attraction between him and the tennis ball (who is female). The adventures are essentially a set-up for their relationship to spark, sputter and then blossom. While it's all a bit of fluff, there's no question that Kochalka's cartooning is top-notch if highly simplified. Considering that Kochalka was responsible for the infamous "Craft is the enemy" quote, his own craftsmanship is highly polished in its own way. He's very careful in the way he spots blacks, His use of negative space to divide his pages is crucial in getting his simple character designs to pop. His character designs are highly expressive and his panel-to-panel transitions are remarkably fluid. While I don't think cartoonists always take away the right lessons when drawing inspiration from his work, there's no question that his stripped-down style that emphasizes motion and emotion over everything else has considerable storytelling power.

Hellbound Lifestyle, by Kaeleigh Forsyth and Alabaster. With two dots for eyes, a tiny line for a mouth, and wavy blonde hair, artist Alabaster creates a memorable avatar for writer Forsyth's deadpan and hilarious commentary. In essence, this comic is an illustrated series of texts and notes made on a phone from Forsyth that get at a highly self-aware and self-effacing sense of ennui. As amusing as Forsyth is, Alabaster essentially one-ups the deadpan commentary with similarly understated but ridiculous drawings. In one section titled the "Self-Esteem Improvement Plan", one of the items denoted as "First find out: do I have an STD" is illustrated with Forsyth holding a hand mirror and putting one leg on the toilet. At other times, Alabaster is just there to provide a minimum of imagery, like in a series of attempts Forsyth made to learn other languages, translating sentences like "The tailor is my dealer" from German to English. It's rare that I see an artist/writer combo that works as well as this one, and that's not because Alabaster overwhelmed the text with her style. Indeed, her own comics are quite different in nature, though her raw sense of humor dovetailed perfectly with Forsyth's. The book was just under eighty pages, and I could have easily read another eighty pages of similar gags and observations and continued to enjoy it. That said, they were wise to keep the book relatively short and punchy, because the results were highly memorable.

Thirty Days of CCS #29: Irene 3

Irene is currently the best of all the CCS-related anthologies. The editorial crew of Andy Warner, DW and Dakota McFadzean is not only a talented group in their own right as artists, they also seem to have a great sense of how to bring each of their aesthetic approaches to bear in the anthology in a manner that produces a cohesive final product instead of a bunch of stories that clash. For example, DW's scribble aesthetic and repurposing of text for decorative reasons is in line with the old Fort Thunder group, so it only makes sense that Leif Goldberg should contribute a story here. In "Newton's Mist", we see a figure battling against the forces of physics in a magical forest; though just two pages, the images are primitive and powerful. DW himself takes on what I like to call the Mat Brinkman spot in the anthology: creating a series of related interstitial images. In this case, it's scrawled, funny images of a band called "Veronica and the Good Guys". Some of the drawings are tiny and fine, while others are blown way up in order to give the reader a sense of the thickness of the line. Indeed, the essence of DW's drawings is to constantly remind readers that they are drawings, that they're made out of ink.

Andy Warner's influence can be felt with the presence of Barack Rima, a Libyan cartoonist and filmmaker whose dream comic "Nap Before Noon" is a fascinating trip not only through his own subconscious, but through the cultural and political landscape of Libya. The shadowy, hand-constructed look of each page certainly bears the mark of his cinematic influence, yet he's interested in the single, striking image above all else on page after page. This story held down the middle portion of the book, and it served as a fascinating change of pace, resembling nothing else in the book. Warner's "Boatlife", by contrast, is a slice-of-life story told in his typical naturalistic style. Relating two teenage girls hanging out in a cemetery, it's the sort of "nothing happens" story that's nonetheless full of crucial emotional beats and events that create lasting memories.

McFadzean's closest aesthetic compatriot in this comic is Sophie Goldstein, whose "Edna II" I reviewed here. Like McFadzean, Goldstein's storytelling is crisp, clean and assured, which allows her to go off on flights of fancy or use cartoony figures in a story that is otherwise naturalistically told. McFadzean drew DW's story "Ten Minutes' Break", a fascinating and funny workplace strip about three creatures essentially dealing with creation myths and alien civilizations. However, it's entirely from the point of view of working stiffs taking a break from their otherwise endless labors. McFadzean's every bit as good drawing fantastic characters and weird scenery as he is drawing average people and the plains of Saskatchewan.

Certainly, there are creators present here who cross lines. Alabaster's "Gin" combines the fanciful, beautiful and cartoony art with a story that's emotionally painful and raw, all wrapped in a quirky, decoratively interesting package. Jess Worby's "The Sasquatch In Brooklyn" has a heavily-shaded, ramshackle aesthetic that fits right in with DW, but it's easy to see how its humor and characterizations fit in with the other editors. The same is true for Mark Connery's "Whots It Mean", bringing more of that ragged art that brings a bawdy sense of humor to the proceedings. I would guess that the origin of this fused editorial aesthetic is that the CCS experience is one that encourages artists to understand and appreciate the work of artists whose approaches are radically different from their own. I would also guess that the editors deliberately sought out work that combined different aspects of their own aesthetic interests.

The stories by Luke Howard and Ben Horak are other good examples of this. Howard's "Dance Yourself To Death" is perhaps his most original, best-realized story to date. Using a slightly flat line and character design style, this story of the dark ways in which artists gain inspiration has a powerful payoff at the story's climax and then another shock in its denouement. In an anthology filled with downbeat and often disturbing stories, it was the perfect capper for the book. Horak's "What're Fiends For?" is a more broadly comic story, but no less dark than Howard's work. It's the ultimate example of a well-meaning but utterly destructive friend. Horak impressively manages to up the ante of menace in a rhythm not unlike that of a Looney Tunes cartoon, only with a viscerally disturbing ending.

It's likely that Kramer's Ergot and perhaps Non are significant influences on Irene. Both of those anthologies were fueled in part by Fort Thunder's influence and contributors; Goldberg himself is a KE alumnus, of course. It's certainly not a straight copy, but rather an influence in the sense that the editors wanted certain kinds of aesthetic approaches to comics to be present in the anthology, and once selected, they wanted those artists to have total freedom. For example, Dan Rinylo's "Find 'Sleepy'" is less a story than a reader activity, as they must find the one "sleepy" ghost on page after page of other ghosts. Cleverly, the pages are designed to make the reader's eye explore a space in much the same way a Brian Ralph or Brian Chippendale story might, only it could easily appear in Highlights or the old Nickelodeon magazines as well. Irene continues to be an anthology that's greater than the sum of its parts, a statement that's all the more impressive when one considers how individually excellent many of the stories are.