Thirty Days of CCS, Day 20: Jeff Lok, Ben Horak & Alex Kim

There's a small but growing "sick humor" arm of CCS grads. It's work that veers between humor and horror. Jeff Lok and Ben Horak personify the humor-as-horror side of things, while Alex Kim works the angle of horror-as-humor.

In Gag Rag #3, Lok's collection of strips and effluvia isn't quite as pointed and raw as earlier issues of his one-man anthology. The drawing is loose and in the tradition of classic comics: lots of bigfoot drawings, bulbous noses, spaghetti arms, and distorted figures. My favorite thing in this issue are the series of "Old Testament" strips that posit god as a sort of baker who has to deal with the bureaucracies of time and doesn't quite know what to do with his new creation, Adam. There are brutal strips about chickens, a Friday Night Lights parody that's entirely on-point about the horrible behavior of the kids and the totally unflappable nature of the coach, and several one-off single-panel gags that draw genuine laughs. That includes a gleeful, running pig squealing "I'm cured!" that works because his face is so genuinely joyful. There's a slightly lesser gag where a cop in handcuffs says "I've uncovered a ring of police impersonators! I'm the leader!" The drawing is functional at best, serving only to deliver the textual gag's excellent punchline. Lok's skill is taking familiar comedic elements and injecting them with an underlying and anarchic sense of nihilism. His difficulty is in maintaining that strong voice when he ventures off into other kinds of storytelling; a strip about a prison ship drawn in this style felt forced and mannered. A compromise of sorts could be found in his Oily comic Ox & Co. It's about an elevator operator in an old-time department store, set in the past. The vernacular of his characters makes it feel like a cousin to one of Milt Gross's many comics, but the sheer weirdness of the set-up is uniquely Lok. The brief comic works because of its density, its commitment to maintaining the integrity of its time and setting, and the darkly idiosyncratic nature of Lok's sense of humor.

Kim's Oily series Dumpling King has been astonishing me with surprises in every issue. In the span of just ten pages per issue, Kim has advanced the story from a noir mystery surrounding murder, a powerful family, an alluring woman and dumpling delivery to something entirely different. All of those elements are still present, only Kim has added mysticism, dragons, magic, witches and their towers and other craziness. All of this is done with a mix of cartoony drawings (Kim loves angular faces) and surprising amounts of detail (he loves stippling even more), and the consistency of the reality he's creating on a visual level allows for the sudden and dramatic shift from a realistic scenario to a fantastic one. The cover alone of #3, with the stippling of a cloudy night sky using negative space to indicate the moon, contrasted against the cartoony face of one of the characters gets at Kim's aesthetic. He's simultaneously creating mood while bending the reality of his world to his will. Kim is a bit slow, so savor each issue when it's published.

Horak is a fine gross-out cartoonist who likes to employ cute images in disturbing ways, and his skill with drawing only heightens both the humor and gross-out nature of his work. His best strips in his one-man anthology Grump Toast #4 are the long-form ones. The "Business Baby and Infant Insidious" are pretty much Goofus and Gallant with slightly more evil intent, as the villainous character actually wears a top hat and black cape. Horak's "autobio" take on being lost at a curiosity shop as a boy and wondering what it would have been like if his parents had taken home a lizard corpse passed off as him was hilarious because of the details: the corpse playing Little League, graduating high school, getting married, etc. Speaking of detail, the "Pinky Palms" strip, featuring a variety of monstrous and anthropomorphic creatures throws the kitchen sink at the reader in terms of weird visual gross-out gags, then reveals that it's all misdirection as it follows home the bartender to follow his seemingly idyllic life. The payoffs for this strip are tremendous, as watching bat-winged chainsaws tear through his family was both awful and hilarious. The other long-form piece, "The Bitchin' Trials and Tribulations of Cheese Hammy Sammy", is a silent, existential biker epic. It details the titular character's (everyone here is a form of anthropomorphic food, Jon Vermilyea-style) horrible and over-the-top deeds, his bun-flipping reformation and his eventual doom as the pigeons come home to roost. Horak continues to mature and refine the sheer horror of his work, and this has allowed it to become effective at multiple levels.

Thirty Days of CCS #9: Ford, Forsman, Coovert, Kim, Martin, Gaskin

Let's take a look at some short comics from the remarkable graduating class of 2008 from CCS, many of whom spent time editing the Sundays anthology.

Simple Routines #18, by J.P. Coovert. Coovert's been honing his craft as an autobio cartoonist for some time now, and his most recent results have been increasingly poignant and poetic. That includes his line, which he has simplified thanks to the choice of using a thin weight (exactly the same as the weight he uses for his lettering), which gives each panel a sense of compositional unity. Considering that he uses a narrative caption for most of his panels, this is the biggest key to their success. His figures are simple and iconic without sacrificing clarity or expressiveness, which is important because Coovert explores the emotions he feels for his wife, friends and parents in many of the anecdotes described here. The final story, where he remembers playing with a sick kid as a child as a formative moment for how he views life, is poignant without being maudlin or too self-important. Through sheer hard work and repetition, Coovert has made the daily diary strip more than just an artist's exercise.

Teen Creeps #1 and Working On The End Of The Fucking World, by Chuck Forsman. Forsman is one of the smartest and most thoughtful cartoonists working today, with an intellectual curiosity about process and themes that reflects his status as cartoonist, editor and publisher. That curiosity has led to Forsman publishing several interview zines through his Oily Comics concern, as well as the Working On... zine that's comprised of commentary, an interview, sketches and thumbnails from his most well-known comic that began as a series of eight-page minis. Forsman notes that it's mainly an excuse to "play with 2 color printing", and he sounds a bit anxious about being pretentious in the interview, but it's clear that this is something he takes seriously, and rightly so. Documenting that process in a manner that's visually interesting and challenging was obviously a puzzle of its own for him. Teen Creeps is his new series of short stories involving "loosely connected" characters over time. The first issue starts a story featuring Hilary and her bad-ass friend Dawn. Hilary is slut-shamed by a jock at a high school when she won't put out after he goes down on her. When Dawn catches wind of this, she kicks the kid spreading a rumor about Hilary in the groin, ignoring the inevitable lecture from school officials. Forsman's specialty is teenage characters, and this comic features him tackling the subject from a different perspective. It's not just that the lead characters are girls (a rarity for Forsman), it's that he's examining a different set of character dynamics than usual. This set of Teen Creeps story seems like it's going to focus in on the friendship between Dawn and Hilary, and the ways in which that friendship blurs and strains. As always, Forsman's character design is cartoony and grotesque in a manner that feels real, from Hilary's pointy nose and long, stringy hair to a kid's flat-top, spiky haircut.

Shadow Hills #1, by Sean Ford. It's a brand new series for Ford after working on Only Skin for several years. This time around, the focus seems to be on a couple of children: a mute boy who collapses near a small forest town, and a girl who fancies herself a would-be detective who discovers him. Told in retrospect by the girl, it hints at ominous, strange events that seem to indicate that the boy was far from ordinary. Ford seems to have varied his line weight a bit here, giving his line a more fragile, tremulous quality. Ford also sets up the stakes of this story more rapidly than in Only Skin, with its narrative structure immediately instilling a sense of menace and foreboding from the very beginning. It was a bit strange to see Ford work this small, after seeing the wide-open vistas of his last book, but he may be going for something more claustrophobic here.

Timber Run 1 and Dumpling King 1, 2 by Alex Kim. If you were to ask me about a particularly underrated cartoonist, Kim would be one of the first names I'd consider. His idiosyncratic and piercingly angular character design, his lush use of backgrounds, and his quirky sense of humor all punctuate his status as an outstanding writer of suspense and horror comics. Dumpling King, published by Oily Comics, promises to be a creepily-paced breakout work that brings him deserved attention. It's remarkable how quickly he's able to establish the premise and setting of this comic, as a prospective dumpling making decides to abandon his tutelage in favor of being the store's delivery man after the former holder of that spot kills himself. He wants to investigate for himself the mysterious Grace Chang and her sinister family despite the protestations of his mentor. Kim quickly sets up steam and fog as recurring visual motifs, painstakingly rendered in a stippled line that gives the vapor a density that looks dangerous. The changing covers are also carefully considered, as we switch from character to character in each issue and the moon slowly sets. This is beautiful and meticulous cartooning that's in total service to the demands of the immediately engrossing story. Kim draws the reader into his world with pointy noses and wrinkled faces. Timber Run is the first part of a horror comic that features one of Kim's favorite motifs: the cabin in the woods. The reader is slowly drawn into a family drama, an abandoned relative and his sister's family attempts to find him. If the horror here is perhaps more conventional, Kim plays around with expectations by putting the family's drama out front until the monster is revealed in gloriously over-the-top style. Kim leaves the reader on a nasty cliffhanger, making it clear that a happy ending is not guaranteed.

Gnomes, by Sam Gaskin. This is a bit of smudgy silliness from a cartoonist who has always used fantasy and pop-culture tropes and images to fuel his humor. The strips here range between quotidian activities to out-and-out gags, like a gnome tricking a troll into falling into a hole and then pissing on him. Many of them are more like "tickle fight", which involves two gnomes tickling each other with the tagline "everybody wins!" This is a deliberately lo-fi, bawdy version of the famous 1977 book of illustrations that set off the gnome craze, one where plot and character are less relevant than world-building. Of course, the world-building here mostly involves gnomes getting drunk on mead and eating pumpkin bread. It's an amusing concept that's as sloppily drawn as the original book was fastidious.

Gagger 1, by Dane Martin. Martin has long been a cartoonist who's mashed together influences from the golden age of cartooning like EZ Segar with more modern influences like Tony Millionaire and Mark Beyer. Martin's comics have a feverish, nightmarish quality, even as they follow the adventures of cartoon birds who happen to be artists, animators and gagsmiths. There's a mix between characters that have a deliberate, energetic crudeness in terms of their rendering and a carefully-crafted set of backgrounds that feature intricate patterns and furiously-dashed marks. The eye doesn't rest on a Dane Martin page; instead, it dashes anxiously from image to image, never being allowed to relax or find comfort in any of the drawings. It's an anxiousness that's not unlike what Michael DeForge does on his pages, only cranked up to a more uncomfortable level. The main character here is a gag writer for "Uncle Saul" who's out of inspiration and ideas who takes a walk, only to reveal how useless and impotent he is a sentient creature, one completely unable and unwilling to help others. Of course, the character is ridden by guilt, because all of his emotions must center around his own negative conception of self no matter what. It's a powerful, bracing little comic that promises some fascinating insights into human interaction.

CCS-Powered Anthologies: Irene 2 and Sundays 5

Irene #2, edited by Andy Warner, dw and Dakota McFadzean. This is another strong entry from this mostly-group of grads from the Center for Cartoon Studies. I like the push-and-pull in its sensibilities with Warner (a naturalistic storyteller), McFadzean (an artist with a delicate but cartoony line) and dw (who specializes in abstractions, patterns and text appropriations), leading to a book that has a bleakly humorous streak. Take McFadzean's "Standing Water", for example. This one features a young boy making his way around his neighborhood wearing a mask, only the entire area is under water. Friends, family and pets float limply in the water, and his attempts at interacting with the world reveal a hidden well of meanings that have lost all their significance in the wake of what is essentially the end of the world. What seem to be acts of revenge or cruelty lose their meaning, leading him to a sense of sad resignation in a totally absurd situation.

Both sets of "Drawings" from dw serve to accent and set off the more conventional narratives, sounding a discordant and occasionally confrontational note in the way they use text and challenge the eye with their psychedelic patterns. After his first set of drawings come three dark stories in a row: Beth Hetland's "1838g", Warner's "Champions" and Sean K's "Ghosts". The first story is about the steady drumbeat of a nightmare that stops and starts. Is the woman in this story pregnant and afraid, imagining her baby to be a hideous parasite? Is she giving birth in the end or having an abortion? Warner's story is from the point of view of a young teen living in the rebellious glow of his older brother, following him as he storms away from his step-father and gets into a drunken snowmobile race that can only have tragic consequences. That Warner has the young narrator filled with nothing but hope makes its subtext all the more sad. "Ghosts" is shockingly straightforward: a young couple enters their house, douse themselves with gasoline and set themselves on fire. The causes of their despair are never mentioned; the drawing of a pentagram on the floor simply indicates that they had run out of options.

I was unfamiliar with Omar Khouri's work before seeing it in Irene, but his smudged, brushy story about a young man in Lebanon refusing to accept his father's legacy as a political strongman was funny and fascinating. The story is filled with scathing political satire that reflects both the sense of hope and cynicism inherent in the "Arab Spring" of the past few years, getting across the sense that the reins of power are loose enough for protest to make a difference but leaving a lingering sense of doubt that any change could be lasting or real. The back half of the comic is slightly less bleak, as Sophie Yanow's account of being escorted by a kind African cabbie in Paris consists entirely of the view from the cab, with no human figures present at all. Marc Bell's rubbery drawings and comic eye-pops make for a nice contrast to dw's drawings. Jonah McFadzean's "Monster Soup" actually works to reduce a sense of active dread with a child's logic and problem-solving. Finally, Bailey Sharp's story about being a poor cartoonist working in an art gallery and being confronted by a high-rolling elite asshole ends the book on a much-needed laugh. Her grotesque approach and willingness to take the piss out of everyone (artists, punks, the rich) leads to a number of very funny plot and character twists, and her critiques of the art world are as dead-on as her self-critiques. The book is well-edited and nicely designed, and it has the potential to be an impressive series if the editors decide to do future volumes.

Sundays #5, edited by Chuck Forsman, Sean Ford, Alex Kim, Joseph Lambert and Melissa Mendes. The Sundays anthology debuted years ago at the MOCCA festival and caused a big stir, thanks to its production values, ambitiousness and unusual format. This was especially the case because it came from a group of total unknowns, and it acted as a shot across the bow from CCS that its cartoonists were worthy of attention. The third and fourth volumes were absolutely outstanding, with the third coming in an innovative three minis in way package and the fourth simply loaded with cutting-edge cartoonists. The fifth volume, released a year ago, is filled with strong work but doesn't hold together like past volumes. Simply put, I'm not sure every participating artist had the same commitment to publish their best work here as they had in the past.

For example, editor Chuck Forsman didn't even contribute a comic--just a two page illustration. Max de Radigues seemed to have contributed a few pages from his Moose comic. The first four pieces in the book took up a lot of room but looked ill-suited for a black & white anthology. The lack of a clear link or theme also made these stories a slog; I eventually gathered that a loose theme may have been "life and death" or more specifically the line between the two. Damien Jay's "leaf writing" comic was fascinating as an experiment in immersive comics making, but once again it seemed to cry out for color to add greater clarity. Some of its pages were very difficult to read.

Things picked up in a stretch that included a grim but hopeful story by Melissa Mendes and a James Hindle story that popped off the page thanks to its cartoony clarity. Joseph Lambert stepped up with one of his best-ever short stories about a fight between two best friends. No one expresses sheer rage quite like Lambert does, and though its protagonist winds up in hell, she makes things very unpleasant for the Devil. Michael DeForge contributes just a couple of pages, but he manages to cram in a lot of story, as a hunter brings back a stray animal from the forest for his family to eat. It's just that the animal is a human child, eaten entirely with nonchalance. Alex Kim's young girl bringing animal heads to her "papa" in the forest is chilling and enigmatic; even if this is just an excerpt.

John Brodowski's "Wolf Eyes" is a typically hilarious piece that follows his exceptionally-rendered heavy metal fantasies out into the desert, as a sax player's furious solo and the cries of a wolf become one. The final image, of his sports car driving off into a sunrise that features the image of a woman's legs and ass boldly astride mountains, is typical of the wonderful ridiculousness of his comics. The highlights of the final third of the book include Warren Craghead's fascinating drawings of what seems to be a tidal pool over the span of a few hours, his drawings directing the reader's eye by numbering lines as he tries to depict simultaneity; his comics are as much about time in a single image as they are about place or object. Jeff Lok's chicken comics are typically alarming in their comedic structure, as his use of static images clashes in an interesting manner with the cartoony nature of his stories. Colleen Frakes' story about a woman getting food from the ocean was later expanded upon in her own mini, but it fits snugly here. Finally, Alexis Frederick-Frost's short about balloonists encountering a giant bird was typically elegant, horrifying, funny and delightfully-rendered. Sundays 5 is not a bad anthology. At least 2/3 of the work is good-to-excellent. It's just not quite as groundbreaking or sharp as its most recent predecessors, which to be fair is a tough standard to live up to. Given that its editors are busier than ever with their own projects, I'll be curious to see if they continue to publish the anthology.

Another Look Inside the CCS Student/Mentor Process

In honor of the graduating class of 2013 at the Center for Cartoon Studies, here's some heretofore unreleased interview material that I did for my article on CCS for The Comics Journal #301. I asked each student the same questions. Here are some selected answers regarding my topic: the student/thesis mentor relationship.

Steve Seck

Steve Seck is in the middle

RC: Why did you choose Alex Robinson as your advisor?

SS: As someone who is attempting a serialized comic, I was interested in hearing his thoughts on how he went about serializing Box Office Poison (which works remarkably well as a book). I am a great admirer of his storytelling ability, sense of humor & drawing style & saw a lot of things he was doing well in his work that I needed to improve on in mine. He also seemed like someone who would be approachable & relatively easy to work with.

RC: What was the process of working with Robinson like? How hands-on was he?

SS: I had a great experience working with Alex. My girlfriend & I had moved back to New Jersey from Vermont in the fall of 2008 - I was one of the first low-residency students in the CCS program - so I was able to meet up with Alex in Manhattan a few times to review work, have a couple drinks & discuss comics with him. I would bring copies of my inked pages with me for him to sketch revision ideas on & show him my (very rough) thumbnails for upcoming pages. I always emailed him my scripts before I got started on a new comic to get input from him about what to add, remove, revise, etc. before I started drawing. His comments were thoughtful & he never tried to dramatically change what I was trying to achieve with a scene or line of dialogue. He was always very respectful of my work - he was encouraging & his suggestions were mostly in line with what I was going for.

RC:  How much of an influence do you feel he had on you as an artist, and in what ways?

SS: It's hard to say exactly how much of an influence Alex had on me as an artist - he was really much more into guiding me through my own way of working than telling me explicitly how to do things. If he felt something wasn't quite right with how I had done a panel,line of dialogue or gag, he'd often give me a few suggestions as to how he'd do it & leave it up to me to figure out my angle on it. He was always responsive if I came to him with a problem I couldn't solve, but mostly let me do my own work & guided or encouraged me whenever I'd give him a new batch of pages. He never imposed the ALEX ROBINSON WAY OF DOING THINGS on me, but rather helped me to further realize my own vision for my work.

RC:. How much of that influence was pre-existing, and how much came as a result of how he worked on you on your thesis?

SS: Box Office Poison - being one of the first books that got me into indie comics - had a pretty big impact on me; I'd say most of the Alex Robinson influence on my work was pre-existing. As stated previously, as an adviser Alex seemed interested in helping me continue to develop my own style & voice.

RC: What was the most valuable thing you learned from your advisor?

SS: First and foremost, giving my work to one of my favorite cartoonists was a big deal for me - I had never done anything of the sort until I gave Alex my CCS first year final project at MoCCA 2008. (I'm relatively "green" when it comes to cartooning - I didn't really start seriously pursuing it until right before I had been accepted to CCS.) Having him actually agree to be my adviser after reading it was also a huge deal - hey, he
thinks my stuff is worthwhile enough to spend a year helping me get better at it! Working with him gave me the confidence I needed to not only trust my instincts but also to keep at it & push myself to improve.

Alex Robinson

RC: What was the most frustrating aspect of working with your advisor?

SS: I really didn't have a frustrating experience with Alex at all - he was responsive & encouraging.

RC: What advice would you give to future CCS cartoonists on how to navigate the experience?

SS: My advice to future CCS cartoonists when choosing an adviser? Look at what some of the cartoonists you like are doing well that you'd like to see yourself do better. Don't be afraid to choose someone whose style isn't exactly like yours - look for someone who excels at the stuff you want to improve at.


Casey Bohn

RC: Why did you choose Paul Karasik as your advisor?

CB: I had previous positive experience working with Paul on a class project in my first year. Beyond that, I felt that an editor, especially one of Paul's standing within the industry, would be the best choice for an advisor. Someone who is expressly a cartoonist isn't necessarily able to explain in words how something is or isn't working. Paul has a lot of experience doing exactly that.

RC: What was/is the process of working with Karasik like? How hands-on was he?

CB: Paul was most involved in revising sketch versions of my comics. I would email him sketches, he would give me notes, I would revise it again, and he would give me more notes, until he was completely satisfied. The magic words were, "This is looking good. Now start pencilling." From my second book on I pencilled from blowups of my thumbnails, and while I showed Paul my pencils every time, once I started doing that there was very little that needed to be said.

RC: How much of an influence do you feel he had on you as an artist, and in what ways?

CB: Paul's focus was graphic storytelling. Does it make sense, does it read smoothly, is it getting the intended message across, is it compelling? These were the unspoken maxims that every critique was predicated upon, and I intend on taking a lot of that to heart from here on.

RC: What was the most valuable thing you learned from him?

CB: Getting to hear him laugh. We spoke on the phone twice and in person once, and hearing him laugh at the funny bits I had written was really satisfying. It was also much easier to…

RC: What was the most frustrating aspect of working with your advisor?

CB: Disagreeing with Paul. I didn't want to ever have to do it. Just before inter break he sent me suggestions for new endings of my second book, and I ddn't like any of them, but I didn't want to tell him that. So I just said I would table my thesis until after winter break. He came to the school in January for Visiting Artist Seminar and he read over the last email he had sent me about my thesis, and he couldn't believe his suggestions, either. "Was I high?" he asked with disbelief. I preferred to wait until Paul could
disagree with himself than to speak against him.

RC: What advice would you give to future CCS cartoonists on how to navigate the experience?

CB: Choosing someone for their editorial experience really helped me. Settle on a project in the first week, stick to it, and get cracking. Do multiple smaller projects, with the goal being to complete everything you start this year. Don't try to do a graphic novel. The momentous work that gets made by Seniors begins life as a bit of fun that snowballs.


Alex Kim

RC: Why did you choose Chip Kidd as your advisor?

AK: I chose Chip because I greatly admire his work. His book covers are some of my favorite pieces of art out there. Also because he loves comics and understands how they work but isn't a cartoonist himself so I thought his feedback wouldn't get caught up so much in the mechanics of my process, which I knew I would get a lot of in school, and more on the final product.
RC: What was the process of working with this person like? How hands-on were they?

AK: Well, the process we set up was that I'd work on my thesis and present when I thought I had enough work to show. It was more presenting finished portions of my comic rather than presenting an outline or thumbnails, etc.... I was able to get a lot of feedback from my teachers and classmates during the process and wanted the use the time w/ my advisor to go over more finished work. I thought this would be more helpful since it would allow me to keep working and working and then get feedback on a chunk of work. This was also driven by how I wanted to work - I wanted to try and get as much drawing done as I could and then take a step back and look at what was produced. I thought it would be an interesting way to work and that there would be a lot I could learn.

RC: How much of an influence do you feel they have had on you as an artist, and in what ways?

AK: A lot and on composition and using words and images together effectively.

RC: What was the most valuable thing you learned from your advisor?

AK: To draw everyday.

RC: What was the most frustrating aspect of working with your advisor?

AK: I ended up wanting more interaction with Chip. In the end, I think it was my fault. I think he would have been open to more interaction but I had to ask for it.

RC: What advice would you give to future CCS cartoonists on how to navigate the experience?

AK: Don't hesitate in asking for more face time with your advisor. Sounds like that goes without saying, but I know I should have asked for more.


Josh Rosen

RC: Why did you choose Aaron Renier as your advisor?

JR: It was James's  (Sturm, head of CCS--RC) idea, actually. It'd been the end of the first year, and I was at sort of a loss for who I wanted for a thesis advisor, so I met with James and asked his advice. And James just started rattling off names, and with almost all of them I was instantly, like, "that's a great idea! Why didn't I think of them!" And Aaron was one of them. On top of which, I remembered Alec Longstreth (who's good friends with Aaron) mentioning that Aaron was really good at "world building," which is something I was really interested in at the time. And I'd heard that Aaron was a really nice, positive person, which seemed like a good thing to have in a thesis advisor to me.

RC: Before you started working with your advisor, what was your understanding of what the thesis process would be like?

JR: I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, partially because I'd heard that the thesis advisor relationship often tended to vary from person to person (which makes sense). I knew I'd be sending them my work in progress over the course of the year, and getting their feedback on that, though I wasn't sure how involved the process would be. And I guess I assumed they would be a good potential resource for professional advice as well? I don't know, I suppose my expectations going in were ultimately sort of vague.

RC: What was the process of working with Renier like? How hands-on was he?

JR: Well Aaron lives in Chicago, which is far enough that we never had a chance to meet in person. However, we managed fairly early on to set up a schedule of meeting on Skype once a week, and having an hour or so long video chat about whatever it was that I was working on at the time. So we ended up working together a fair amount

RC: How much of an influence do you feel he had on you as an artist, and in what ways?

JR: One of the earliest things was that Aaron's influence got me starting to use brush a bit more, something I hadn't had a lot of experience with before (I'd mostly just stuck to nib or technical pens previously). My main project for this past year ended up being doing a large thumbnail draft for a graphic novel that I plan to begin serializing after I graduate, and he ended up having a huge influence on that process as well. Honestly, that whole draft probably wouldn't even have existed without him. He encouraged me to just lay down a straight six panel grid, not to worry about layout or how the drawings look or anything like that, and just fill up the panels. Just write out the story. And the whole process proved extremely liberating, and made the whole writing process easier than it had ever been. It's a way of going about things that probably wouldn't ever have occurred to me on my own, and now I absolutely love it. So that probably turned out to be the biggest influence ultimately, just in terms of process.

RC: How much of that influence was pre-existing, and how much came as a result of how they worked on you on your thesis?

JR: I think the influence Aaron has had on my work came out more through working with him than anything pre-existing before. I of course really admired his work before, and I would look at a drawing by him and be like "woah, I wish I could do that." But I don't think I really tried to consciously emulate his work until I started working with him during my thesis year. And I think part of that is because his work is so obviously brush-y, and I really only started working with brush over the course of the past year. And part of that as well is just that when you're working with someone really talented like Aaron, you sort of can't help but be like "Aaron does this really well. Maybe I should try doing something a bit like that too, while he's still around, and see what tips he might have on that." And the influence that comes about just through going through that process.

RC: What was the most valuable thing you learned from your advisor?

JR: Oh, lord. I'm not sure, I find it hard to gage what's "most valuable" at this point. Again, starting to use the brush and the altered thumbnailing process I took from him both spring to mind as pretty big things. Um, I think setting personal deadlines was a pretty important thing Aaron helped me to learn a bit too. As soon as we decided to start setting deadlines for the project I was working on, my productivity went way up. And I don't know, there's little stuff too, like when he encouraged me to try to just draw the shading on a rock or something now and then. I suspect that stuff'll stick with me too.

RC: What was the most frustrating aspect of working with your advisor?

JR: Um, well I think we both tend to occasionally be somewhat absent-minded (and overly busy) people, so even though we did manage to more or less maintain a weekly meeting schedule we did both have a bad habit of occasionally accidentally missing, or needing to last-minute reschedule meetings, or even just changing the day we were supposed to be regularly meeting on several times over the course of the year. Which could occasionally become a little frustrating. Haha, but whatever, I think we were both just as guilty in regards to that, so what can you do.

Aaron Renier (on the left)

RC: Was the experience all that you had hoped it would be?

JR: Well originally I was imagining it to be absolutely magical and full of rainbows, and we would become instant best friends and dance off into the sunset. Haha, which, you know, wasn't entirely accurate. Although on occasion I felt like it would come close! Heh. But yeah. It was still fun. And I still consider everything I learnt from it to be pretty much invaluable.

RC: What advice would you give to future CCS cartoonists on how to navigate the experience?

JR: I'd say if you can figure out a regular schedule for talking/meeting with your advisor, and if you can establish a good rapport, then you're already a huge chunk of the way there. And, you know, remember that your thesis advisor is a person too, and they also have their own work and their own life. So remember to allow them time for all that.


Finally, here's the view from one of the advisors, Jeffrey Brown:

RC: What was it about this role that appealed to you enough to take it on, given your busy schedule?

JB: There were a few reasons. One, I feel like I've been extremely fortunate to have an older generation of cartoonists who have mentored me in various ways to various extents, and I think it's good to pass that on. I also think that there's a lot one can learn from trying to help someone else understand their work, things which can then help one see their own work in new ways. I've also thought about the possibility of teaching, and this seemed like a good baby step toward seeing if that's something I'd really like to do.

RC: What did you see as your role with regard to the student, or did you leave that up to each individual?

JB: For the most part, I tried to let the student guide things. I saw my role as having two basic components. One, that I would respond to any questions or needs the student expressed, be a foil to them in examining their own work, and give any insight I could that they may not be able to get elsewhere. Two, I felt that I could be a system of support as a fellow cartoonist, and as someone who'd been through what they're going through.

RC: What was your understanding of what the mentor role would entail when you agreed to participate, and how did that change over time?

JB: I don't think my understanding changed at all, except that maybe I felt less pressure as time went on, and I became more comfortable with the student-mentor relationship, as well as getting to know each other better. I saw my role as somewhat reactive rather than proactive; that is, to respond to the student's needs and desires, without being any kind of taskmaster or trying to push the student in a particular direction. After my experience, I felt like this was the right way to go about it, and that I was more helpful in that way - just being available and offering feedback, rather than telling the student what they need to do.

RC: What has been the most satisfying part of being a mentor?

JB: Seeing a student's work improve, as well as seeing their working methods improve, and feeling that I played a role in helping that happen. It's nice to know that I could have a positive impact like that.

RC: What has been the most frustrating part of being a mentor?

JB: Schedule-wise it's tough, and that was a constant frustration - both sides forgetting their was a phone call schedule, one or the other of us not responding too quickly. That said, those were relatively minor frustrations and tended to not distract from the experience at all, I think.

Horror, The Familiar and the Mundane: Alex Kim

One mini at a time, Alex Kim is putting together a body of work that's every bit as disquieting, quirky and visually exciting as any of the new wave of cartoonists whose stock-in-trade is cerebral and/or body horror. In addition to his trademark wavy, almost vibratory line, he's added a stippling effect that gives his comics more solidity and weight. Every one of his comics approaches something horrible from a skewed perspective, bringing unexpected and frequently uncomfortable laughs to otherwise horrific situations.

Let's begin with the truly outrageous Meat Bird, a story whose plot is right out of the horror cliche' playbook but whose execution is jaw-dropping. The reader is introduced to a nondescript couple who have just moved to the middle of nowhere in the woods. They stop by a creepy-looking general store that gives the wife bad vibes, but the husband is hungry and buys a chicken for roasting from the strangely silent woman behind the counter; it happens to total up to $6.66. The reader knows something bad will happen, but the sight of the bones and skin of the chicken attacking the man, the store revealed to be abandoned and the woman running it dead, and the HellChicken emerging from the man's guts was both genuinely disturbing and absolutely hilarious. Kim plays it entirely straight, right through the downbeat yet satisfying ending. There's a lot that's visually exciting in this comic: the sharp v angles of noses and eyes; the use of stippling to create some disturbing effects from a charred bird corpse, and the clever inversion of light and dark on a number of pages. 

I Am Beauty is another monster book, this time from the perspective of the Cthulu-esque shadow creature that emerges to take over the body of a crayfish and fight its way up the ocean's food chain. What's odd about this one is that the monster also narrates the story, telling the reader how powerful and beautiful it is after absorbing a shark. This comic is a showcase for Kim's pure drawing chops, as he renders fish and other sea creatures with great skill even as he contrasts them with the blobby-looking elder god character.

The Vault is a self-contained, color version of a story he did for Joe Lambert's Too Far anthology.  Kim enjoys exploring apocalyptic scenarios, both literal and metaphorical, and this one concerns the stunning short-sightedness of one person in the wake of armageddon, only to find that loneliness does strange things to people. Another apocalyptic comic, Night Machine, is the most complex, haunting and visually exciting comic in this group. It concerns the paranoia of a man who appears to be living in two worlds: one where he battles ennui by sleeping with a particular girl (if only to get away from the rats) and another where he drives around in an armored bus, looking for the sinister source of that planet's destruction. The reader is rapidly flipped between the man at a therapy session, his time with his "girlfriend" and his quest to go after the monster behind everything until all three converge in an explosive and reality-bending matter. One is left to wonder if his psychosis created the real-life horror or if the horror found him, but it's interesting to see one man's fears and conspiracy theories given absolute material form.

The first issue of Kim's Oily Comics offering, Dumpling King, promises a story to top everything else he's done. In just 12 pages of glorious black & white, Kim sets up the story of an aspiring dumpling chef after his best friend (a dumpling delivery man) dies under suspicious circumstances (found hanging). Kim swiftly establishes the initial crisis and the relationship between the protagonist and the dead man (best friends) and then deftly reveals how the series will unravel: the chef becomes obsessed with finding out why his friend apparently killed himself, setting himself on the same path with a dangerous but enticing family named Chang, led by the enticing Grace. Though this story is all set-up, there's something wonderfully evocative about the way Kim juxtaposes the mundane, even grimy  nature of the restaurant with both the enticing world of the Changs and the general world of weirdness that Kim hints at. It's a very Lynchian concept, filtered through a different cultural context, and those differences will likely prove crucial in terms of character down the line.

Sequart #175: Sundays and CCS Minis

This review was originally published at sequart.com in 2007. I'll be doing reviews of a number of comics by Center of Cartoon Studies grads in the coming days, so I thought I'd republish this set of old reviews.

*****


I've been reviewing comics from the editors of the SUNDAYS anthology for quite some time. The core group of Joseph Lambert, Chuck Forsman, Sean Ford and Alex Kim produced one of the first splashy comics from the Center for Cartoon Studies, and it was one of the hits at MOCCA in 2006. Along with printing a new edition, the group continues to crank out minicomics.

Joseph Lambert is one of the most dazzling technicians in the CCS group, and the one who's the least interested in narrative at this point. His minis are cute, funny well-designed items that are simply a pleasure to look at. GRUMPUS is probably the most clever and personal of the minis in this group, about a cartoonist being lectured and yelled at by his many "selves", who then lash out at his partner. The situation escalates until we reach its inevitable punchline. YOUR MUG COMPANION MINI-COMIC is a micro-mini that shows off his absurd sense of humor, as it's suggested that mugs can be mittens, we see "Mug The Musical" and get a Chris Ware-style daydream story. It's one of my favorite of his comics. HEY. BE QUIET is another comic with an escalating series of events riffing on a single joke or premise, this time a series of fart jokes that ends with a really big fart joke.

Finally, there's his untitled and full-color comic about cavemen. The composition, rather than his linework, is the real star of this comic. The way he stages his action sequences and uses color to breathe life into his characters is remarkable. At this point, I've enjoyed most every mini Lambert's published. I'm curious as to where he's going next. I can see him collaborating with any number of writers (his THE BAIT AND SWITCH with Dane Martin was one of his best comics). I can see him simply collecting a number of short stories. What might be interesting is if he has a longer narrative in him, and how his voice will continue to develop.

Alex Kim continued the streak of CCS artists picking up a Xeric grant, and this is the first time I've dug into his work. He has an idiosyncratic, squiggly line that gives his figures a vibratory quality. It gives even quiet scenes a sort of liquid, kinetic feel. THE BIRD AND THE BEAR shows off his greatest strength as an artist: body language. His figurework is simple but expressive, but the way he positions his characters in relation to each other tells so much of his story--from where they lay next to each other in bed, how they eat, etc. This story is about a couple drifting apart who accidentally become masked vigilantes after a costume party. The way Kim shifts the story after the man is badly injured takes that body language that he carefully establishes and twists it. The way their "job" takes on a life of its own beyond them, making them wonder why they still did it (and by the same token, why they were still together) is one of those questions that the protagonists dread to answer.



Like many of the SUNDAYS editors, Kim enjoys collaborations. MEDUSA is an adaptation of a poem by Jessica Abston that once again uses posture as an important story element. Here, a woman "freezes" her boyfriend or at least tries to, as we see him leaning, stooping and bending in a swooping, trembling line. Trying to turn to stone something that's in frenetic movement is the contradiction that Kim captures from Abston's text. HEY GUY is an extremely attractive mini that he did with Chuck Forsman. One half of the mini is written by Kim and drawn by Forsman; flip it over, and the reverse is true. Forsman likes writing scenes in diners with salt-of-the-earth types, and "Fortune City" makes use of Kim's wavy lines in a diner argument and tale of woe. "Touch (Me)", written by Kim and drawn by Forsman, is a creepy but oddly touching story that makes use of Forsman's eccentric character design as we meet a healer who cannot talk to those she helps. The way the story is told as a conversation between the healer and her assistant (who talks to her "customers") is extremely clever. Kim sets up an off-panel conflict with her father while the action in the story is never explained.


Kim's Xeric-winning comic is WALL CITY. It's the story of a depressed EMS worker and a woman whose sister commits suicide, and how they find each other. Minty, the paramedic, is haunted by the suicide of his own father and his increasing inability to communicate with his girlfriend. That difficulty in communicating is a running theme of sorts in Kim's work. Eventually, Minty finds himself drawn to the woman, and she leads him outside of the city to a barren hole. This is where the story takes a sharp turn into metaphor, while still completely playing it straight.


Inside the vast hole is machinery that's stuck in there. She encourages him to join her in cleaning it out and creating a wall of electronics. When he protests "I can't help you. I don't even know what this is", she replies, "Does it matter? You can make it what you want. You can give it meaning." He wants to leave with her after a time, but she finds she can't leave the wall--and tells him that he's meant to leave. When he returns and someone asks, "Why have you come to our wall", he simply replies, "I've learned to live with it." What this means is he's come to terms with his depression. WALL CITY is about depression, desperation, the void, searching out and finding false connections, grief and the process of mourning. Kim has proven himself to be one of the most versatile of the CCS artists I've seen to date and has a promising career ahead of him.



Finally, let's discuss SUNDAYS 2. The circle of artists involved in this edition was a little tighter, with just 13 artists in 70 pages. There seemed to be a bit more editorial consistency in this edition and the result was a more coherent gestalt. Most of the stories in SUNDAYS 2 were funny. Some had gags, but most had the mark of some truly cruel senses of humor. There's more than a little hint of madness in many of the stories as well. Ken Dahl's recurring "Professor Obstacle" character teaches operant conditioning by forcing his young , annoying assistant to lick his boots or else get shocked. Dahl really sells his gag by detailing just how disgusting the professor's boots are and how fried the assistant gets by the end. Dahl reminds me a bit of Roger Langridge in this story. Joseph Lambert did the introductory and endpieces, punning on "Sunday" and creating a flowing narrative of a couple of kids interacting with their environment--and not always peacefully.



Chuck Forsman tells the story of a mad ice-breaking captain and his sorry fate, while Jeff Lok spins a twisted fairy tale. The scene where one of two anthropomorphic animal bank robbers starts to lose his mind and shoots the sun istruly disturbing. Bryan Stone details the quotidian adventures of Onionhead, a sad sack who works at an electronics store and is quite a pathetic figure. Sam Gaskin throws out the single funniest page with a straightforward "documentary" about the rapper MC Sleepy ZZZ, piling joke after joke atop a loony premise. Sean Ford does a dialogue between two ghosts where we slowly learn who they are and why they're there, creating a narrative out of the antagonistically friendly relationship between the two ghosts.


Alex Kim's entries are about the fighting eagle Ambassador Sqwaa, and work both as stylish, brooding adventure stories and parodies of same. In the first story, he is regretfully forced to kill his enemy, a fish in a robot suit. In the second, his wife is killed by a rodent in another robot suit. Alexis Frederick-Frost's story is more straightforward, using heavy brushwork to tell the story of a bird plucked out of a jungle for a woman in a shop. J.P. Coovert tells a similarly kinetic tale about a boy and his dog going through all sorts of adventures to wind up in heaven, in the form of a castle in the sky (a tribute to CCS itself). The most impressive story came from Dane Martin, an awesomely strange and violent fairy tale about fratricide and betrayal. Martin's completely loopy character design, settings and dialogue somehow make the violence portrayed even more devastating. Betrayal of the most personal kind seems to be a running concern in the few Martin stories I've read, and their visceral quality is what makes them so effective.


The format of the book was in landscape this time, which seemed to better fit most of the artists. Every artist in the book seems to have grown bolder and more confident with both their art and their subject matter since the last edition. I had a real sense that the stories in SUNDAYS 2 were done with a lot of commitment in mind, specifically for the anthology. There was very little throwaway or filler material in here, and all of the work fit nicely together, a tribute to the editors of the book. Working together seems to have brought out the best in the CCS artists, and I hope they're able to keep the anthology going.

Mini-Comics Round-Up: Sayers, Dinski, M.Hogan, R.Hogan, Trivial, Carcieri

Rob reviews another batch of interesting minicomics. Included are JUST SO YOU KNOW #1 by Joey Sayers; TRIVIAL, an anthology by Sean Ford, Alex Kim, Andrew Arnold & Alexis Frederick-Frost; MIND-MAPPING by Will Dinski; BEARD-GROWING CONTEST by Raighne Hogan; MANNY & BIGFOOT by Meghan Hogan; and PORTALS #1 & DREAM #1 by Nic Carcieri & Eric Dotson.



JUST SO YOU KNOW, by Joey Sayers. This mini is certainly a change of pace for the artist behind the "Thingpart" gag strips. Sayers generally employs a minimalist but nicely composed style for absurdist gags that skillfully subvert reader expectations. Her comics remind me a bit of Matt Feazell (in terms of the minimalist style) and Michael Kupperman (in terms of the quality of the absurd gagsmithing). JUST SO YOU KNOW is an autobiographical comic featuring anecdotes about Sayers' transition from male to female. I've actually read a surprising number of autobiographical comics about this subject, but Sayers' strips here are unusual because she takes great pains to provide every anecdote with a punchline. No matter how personal or serious a direction she takes the reader, Sayers always leavens the seriousness with a joke. The joke is frequently at her own expense. One gets the sense that Sayers was worried about being boring or preachy in a comic that was already (by definition) entirely self-centered. Pricking her own ego from time to time acts as preventative medicine for the reader who might think that Sayers takes herself way too seriously.

The impression one walks away with after reading this comic is that it's only because of the greater ease she feels in the world and with herself that she was not only able to write about this subject, but make fun of it. The first strip, "Freaking Out The Parents" starts off with some stiff medicine, as she tells her parents (and the audience) about the way she's struggled trying to live as a man, her depression and how she felt the need to turn to drugs. She kept going on like this for several panels, noting that she just wanted to be happy, until we are hit with her father saying, "Wait, you did drugs?" Sayers once again sets the reader up with one expectation and then pulls the rug out, establishing the formula for the rest of the comic.

Sayers gives us certain bits of the process of transition and the anxiety a transgendered person can feel, but isn't interested in presenting us with all the details. This comic is really about her own thoughts about transition, both funny and otherwise, as opposed to making a larger statement about it. There are vignettes about how hormones affect her emotional state (which create more than a little unease with both her and her girlfriend), being excited about growing breasts and getting a state ID confirming her new identity, and wondering if she's a bitch now in various circumstances. She closes things out by focusing on the relationship with her long-time and supportive girlfriend, as Sayers went from cross-dresser to transsexual. All told, this is a clear early front-runner for minicomic of the year for 2009, and I'm eager to see Sayers do more stories in this mold. She has a gift for relating personal details without being insufferable and of mining humor without forcing punchlines.



TRIVIAL, by Alexis Frederick-Frost, Alex Kim, Andrew Arnold and Sean Ford. The third of the Center for Cartoon Studies' "Four Square" anthologies is the strongest overall. Every quartet of artists in each issue works around a central theme, with this issue's being "trivial". That's a rather open-ended concept, which leads to four very different sorts of stories. Frederick-Frost's bold brush strokes and heavy use of blacks are a perfect way to open the book, drawing in the reader's eye with the starkness of his style. It's a style that fits the story well, being about the harsh beauty of Antarctica and a Shackleton expedition there. As he and his men trudge across the unforgiving landscape, the only way they could keep their sanity was by discussing the most inane of topics: conceptualizing new dishes and then debating their merits and originality. During a heated debate about the jam roll, Frederick-Frost underscores the nature of their struggle by printing the rather restrained text of Shackelton's account of the debate but showing a life-or-death struggle in the ice. It's a clever idea, well-executed.


Alex Kim and his weird, wavy line really go to town on a trivial conversation that turns into a graphic description of a weird nightmare. Kim throws us straight into a talking head with no explanation (not unusual in his comics), as the character is talking to someone we never see (one can surmise that the reader is really his conversational partner). The character talks about his obsession with hands and then relates a dream where he discovers his hands have become gigantic, sentient and murderous--eventually killing him, even as they were still attached to his body. What makes the story work is the way Kim uses panel-to-panel transitions, slowly panning down and around to up the horror content of the story. The effect is deliberately disjointed, creating an intense dream logic that continues until we slowly, creepily pan back to the character in real time. This is less a story than an image that Kim expanded and fleshed out, and it's the strength of that image that makes this chapter memorable.

Andrew L Arnold has an entry about a retired god/superhero who lives on a cloud. His day starts off reading a book, and he is then presented with a problem that is seemingly trivial at first but grows ever more problematic: a meteor heading toward a city that his explosive arrows just won't blow up. In the end, his luck (and aim) run just a little bit awry. This is a nicely designed chapter with a funny punchline that is deliberately stretched out like a shaggy dog story. It's a bit more conventional than the other stories in this anthology and less interesting to simply look at, but it's solidly crafted.



Sean Ford checks in with a couple of vignettes related to his ONLY SKIN series, featuring the odd ghost and new kid Clay. In the series, the ghost is mischievous at best and malevolent at worst, but he's more the former in these stories. In the first vignette, Clay and the ghost are mushrooming and the ghost urges him to give a poisonous mushroom to a nearby girl. When Clay refuses, the ghost mocks him like a grade schooler. In the second story, the ghost longs for nostalgic memories that are not really his, like drinking vodka and smoking cigarettes in a cemetery. The punchline comes when Clay actually does it for him and it's not exactly as exciting as he hoped. Ford's biggest strengths are character design and page composition. He solves the problem of what are essentially two talking head stories by varying his panel design, having the characters engage in visually interesting actitivies while they talk and dropping characters into shadow as a way of adding variety. All of that would be pointless if Ford weren't so adept at crafting dialogue. Clay acts as a nice straight man of sorts for the ghost, whose enigmatic nature lends itself to all sorts of possibilities. It's not surprising that a good chunk of the crew behind the SUNDAYS anthology would produce such a visually distinctive book with great production values, and it's clear that they all approached their contributions to this book very seriously.



MIND-MAPPING, by Will Dinski. Another winner from Will Dinksi, who always engages the form of his delivery system in new and exciting ways. This comic is about memory as it relates to pain, and the ways in which the things we recall tend to be very much by choice. It's about a map specialty store owner with a photographic memory, who laments that he is haunted by the specters of his memories, recalling them more sharply than most. He relates in excrutiating detail various incidents burned into his brain. Upon discovering that his store has been robbed, including of his laptop, he realizes that perhaps a lifetime spent dwelling on the mental recreation of trauma has left him more than a little unobservant. That realization perhaps let him realize that the ghosts he was haunted by were of his own making.



The comic unfolds like a typical Dinski work: crisply stylized characters, word balloons that act as individual captions and a certain economy of line and storytelling. The comic folds out like a map, which not only refers back to the main character but also the way he thought of memory as a series of grids that one could access. When one has finished the comic, Dinski gives us a little surprise: turn out the lights and then look at the glow-in-the-dark images that pop up. It's a clever flourish for a story that had a lot of punch and wasted no time to get there. Dinski's been on a real roll the past couple of years, and this mini certainly continues his hot streak. I like how he goes out of his way to create comics that are difficult to reprint in standard format, fully embracing the freedom and difficulties that creating minicomics provide.





BEARD GROWING CONTEST by Raighne Hogan and MANNY & BIGFOOT by Meghan Hogan. This is a pair of tiny minis from the husband-wife duo behind the excellent GOOD MINNESOTAN anthology. Both of these minis are beautiful, weird art objects; they're less stories than quick impressions. R.Hogan's BEARD GROWING CONTEST is a brief little vignette about a little kid straining to grow a beard and unleashing a fart instead, with the real punchline being what happens in his dreams later on. The full-color MANNY & BIGFOOT feels like a story fragment, as a man and his pet rabbit are threatened by a mysterious kidnapping note, while his sweater-stretching roommate Bigfoot messes with him. The soft pastels grab the eye and create an almost blurry softness for the visuals. The production values of both minis are top notch, even if the comics themselves are the very definition of "slight". Still, it's clear that that's what both cartoonists were going for: a slight, fun comic that served as a useful test for some eye-catching techniques.



DREAMER #1 and PORTALS #1 by Nic Carcieri, Rantz, Jason Flowers, Joel Cotejar, and Eric Dotson. There's something comforting about a writer who is so devoted to creating genre comics that he puts them out bit by bit in minicomics form. There's no pretense to being rich or famous, but rather an intense need to tell one's stories. As part of United Fanzine Organization, these comics have the appearance of work by enthusiastic amateurs rather than polished pros, but this is honestly what is most appealing about them. With both DREAMER and PORTALS, we get a tiny snapshot of a larger idea, the effect being watching the first five-minute segment of a 25-part movie serial from the 1930s. DREAMER'S about a guy who receives a weird artifact of his father's that has something to do with some kind of ancient struggle. I like the unfussy line of artist Eric Dotson here, even if it is a bit stiff in places. Every story in PORTALS is a bit of high concept: both "Kylie West" and "Hot Wings" involve big-boobed heroines engaging in adventure; the former's about an astronaut who winds up on a weird planet, and the latter is about warrior angels. The stylizations of artist Rantz veer between sloppy and fetishistic, drawing equally from manga and Image-style art. As such, it feels more like pin-up art than something that really tells a story. Jason Flowers' work in "Are We Dead Yet?" (about an immortal detective) tries for noir but winds up being muddy (including the lettering). "The London Fog" is the most ridiculous concept in the book (a magical Victorian-era vigilante preying on killers in the form of fog) yet Joel Cotejar's linework makes the idea come alive. I like the enthusastic fan ambition of Carcieri in that he's writing five epics at once (if in dribs and drabs), almost as if he's finding out what will stick best. It's that purity of enthusiasm that shows through, even if some of the stories feel like well-trod genre ground. Other than the loopy-but-serious "London Fog", I can't say that I'd be eager to read further installments of any of these series, but I'm glad that they exist.