TCJ Post #7: Awesome 2

Here's my 6th Comics Journal blog entry, a review of the anthology AWESOME 2.

TCJ #4: Sundays 3

My latest TCJ blog post is on Sundays 3.

3rd TCJ Post: Funny Aminals

Here's my third in a series about CCS anthologies at the Comics Journal site: Funny Aminals.

2nd TCJ Post: Dark Corners

Here's a link to my second TCJ column, a review of the CCS anthology DARK CORNERS.

First TCJ post: Werewolf

My first post for the new Comics Journal website is up, and it's the first in a series about recent anthologies from the Center for Cartoon Studies.

Work Ethic: Ghost Comics

Reviewed is GHOST COMICS, the new Xeric-supported anthology edited by Ed Choy Moorman and published by his own Bare Bones Press.




When I first became aware of the lineup of talent in Ed Choy Moorman's ambitious new anthology GHOST COMICS, I could hardly believe my eyes. Zak Sally? John Porcellino? Warren Craghead? Jeffrey Brown? Allison Cole? I wondered if the contributions of the bigger names would be strictly perfunctory, but (happily) for the most part, this was not the case. This anthology deservedly won a Xeric grant for its publication, and its stated purpose is as a benefit for RS Eden, a "multifaceted agency" that assists with chemical dependency and "correctional residential programs".



Its noble aims aside, Moorman put together this anthology around the theme of ghosts. He really managed to strike a nerve, because this topic evoked a startling range of interpretations. From the funny autobio recollections of Corrine Mucha to the straightforward myth-making of Sean Lynch to the comics-as-poetry of John Hankiewicz, I've rarely seen a themed anthology with this much variety and quality. One thing that no artist did was actually try to tell a scary ghost story, which I thought was interesting. The other interesting thing about this comic is how Minnesota-centric it is. This makes sense, given Moorman's time as a student at MCAD (Minneapolis College of Art & Design), but this book just goes to show how deep the roster of talent is running in that state. It's giving the cartoonist-rich cities of New York, San Francisco and Portland some serious competition for the best region crown already, even as much of its talent is still incubating. Fourteen of the artists in the book have direct connections to Minnesota, and a number of others are based out of another cartooning hotbed: Chicago. In particular, it was nice to see Will Dinski's "Mind-Mapping" as part of this anthology; I previously reviewed it in its original minicomics form and it's yet another solid effort from the artist who introduced me to the Minnesota scene.



Some other highlights of the book include Toby Jones' darkly humorous account of the death of his partner's mother and all the familial weirdness that insued; the ever-delightful Lucy Knisley's sharply amusing story of the dubious joys of capitalism; the welcome return of Allison Cole as she detailed popping ghosts like balloons; Hob's tale of a brontosaurus' ghosts staying on earth, looking for something mysterious; Moorman's own touching tribute to his family; Kevin Cannon's funny mash-up of architecture and the Transformers; Tuesday Passen dying happy; book designer Jenny Tondera's clever text/visual experiment with a ghost in the snow; and most especially the piece by Warren Craghead.


I greatly erred in omitting Craghead's name from the list of Immersive artists in prior articles on the subject; that is, those that play upon and around with the formal qualities of text in combination with image to force the reader to think about each letter of text and how it relates to both the other letters around it as well as the images. Indeed, Craghead was a pioneer in this regard. He also shares much in common with comics-as-poetry cartoonists like Hankiewicz, where the visuals form their own sort of rhythm and language that's meant less to be looked at than engaged by the viewer/reader. Craghead is distinctive because of the way he uses so much white space, using a small number of distinctive drawings to face off against the void. Here, the text, (spilling out on the page) comments on the way we see and experience ghosts as a sort of manifestation of memory and identity. The way images "rhymed" across pages and feelings were grudgingly exchanged created a delicious tension, forcing the reader to take in each detail as they were presented. The reader strains to try to get glimpses at that which is hidden as the cascading text has to be teased out a bit to understand--which is the whole point of the piece.



Moorman wisely kept it simple in this volume. It's a nicely-designed (Jenny Tendura was the graphic designer for this comic) book, but not distractingly so. The author isn't given a lot of bells and whistles, which mean that some pros came over their tables and gave them some ideeas. He ordered the stories well, always managing to balance longer stories with shorter ones that served as palette-cleansers. He balanced humor with adventure, lighthearted flights of fancy with grim drama, pondering the afterlife and mocking it. There's a healthy mix of just-graduating students and old hands here, and what's remarkable is that neither side suffers from the juxtaposition. My only regret is that Zak Sally didn't contribute something more substantive than a single page that was really just an illustration. I thought his page was poorly placed with the actual stories in this book, rather than as a spot illustration (like the David Heatley frontispiece). It's a forgiveable enough misstep, especially given that Sally was one of Moorman's teachers at MCAD.

Dancing About Architecture: Side B

Rob reviews "the music lover's comic anthology", SIDE B (Poseur Ink), edited by Rachel Dukes.



Trying to get at the core of one's feelings about experiencing music is enormously difficult to do in ink, be it text or image. This is due, I think, to music being the most ephemeral of the arts. With music, there is no distinction between a copy of the recording and the original recording. Even the physical housing for a recording has no special aesthetic quality inherent to the art. There's an immediacy to hearing music that is so tied to temporality that hearing specific songs at certain times ties the two together forever in one's memory. The experience of seeing and hearing music live takes on a certain tribal quality for those who see it together, binding it even further to time and place. More than any other art form, one can talk about and around music, but never hope to capture the experience of listening to music with language.

Armed with both word and text, there have been a number of examples of comics that tried to tackle this problem. Steve Lafler's BUGHOUSE is probably my favorite, capturing the spirit underlying the creation of music, the camaraderie of being in a band, the sparks of collaboration and the power of live performance. Jaime Hernandez is well-known for his achingly accurate depiction of a music scene in his stories concerning the punk scene in Los Angeles and the travails of a small-time band. More than that, so many of his stories center around the ways that music creates meanings, often secret meanings (this was the centerpiece of his great "Wigwam Bam", for example).

Cartooning about music isn't easy and is rife for failure if one isn't completely committed. The old Comics Journal Special Edition centering around music from a few years back had an astonishing array of cartoonists, but many of the biggest names clearly mailed it in. Cartoonist and editor Rachel Dukes is so devoted to the topic that she has done a second anthology about music, SIDE B (the obvious sequel to SIDE A). It's a "mom and pop" operation, assisted only by her fiance Mike Lopez and self-published at considerable personal expense. It's clear that music is a strong enough force in their lives that they feel compelled to make this kind of commitment.

Unsurprisingly in an anthology comprised mostly of young and/or unknown cartoonists, the results were uneven. There also tended to be a certain amount of repetition in the themes chosen by the artists. That's inevitable in an anthology with a fairly narrow theme, but the better examples of each theme tend to make the lesser examples look even worse in comparison. The story categories roughly broke down as follows: the live music experience, music in relation to specific people in one's life, mixtapes, childhood remembrances of music, a special connection to a particular artist, love stories centering around music and the nature of music itself.



There were surprisingly few stories about the live experience, which I thought odd given the opportunity to draw audiences or bands in motion. Jeffrey Brown checked in with a funny anecdote about Cat Power looking right at him during a show and how that made him swoon. Dino Caruso and Josh Kemble's story about Caruso being sneaked into a David Lee Roth concert as a teen was also cute and revealed much about the strength of their relationship. On the other hand, a number of artists tried to tackle the nature of music and everyone came up short. For example, Rob Guillory's two pager was an illustration with a paragraph about his conception of music, and it just died on the page. R.S. Carbonneau and Jonathan Bass' clumsy attempt at depicting the way music can inspire writing metaphorically as a spacewalk spoke to two different problems. First, collaborating on this topic is enormously difficult, because a writer is most likely going to overwrite instead of letting the art tell the story. Second, as Brandon Graham noted in the clever introduction, depicting music is a matter of "show, don't tell", where the artist needs to "build a cool". Most of the lesser pieces in the book are too direct and earnest, trying to spell everything out instead of evoking something about the experience of listening to music.



That's why the most successful comics in SIDE B were those that focused on the relationship between music and memory. Liz Baillie's "Radio Radio Radio" and Box Brown's "A Beggar's Banquet" both tied specific songs to the funeral of someone close to them (one being fictional, the other autobiographical). In both instances, the song was a way of bridging the gap between life and death, and listening to it reinforced the connection they all shared. Here, music became a sort of shorthand for emotion. Ed Choy Moorman's story was along the same lines, going over a lifetime of musical experiences with someone close to him.


The comics form is obviously best known for its narrative qualities, and so stories about particular musicians and how they connect with each artist's life is a natural fit. Most of these tended to boil down to "I listened to band x in high school and his is how it made me feel", which unfortunately became repetitive after a while and uninformative unless you were directly familiar with the group in question. The stories that succeeded best told us something about the musician in addition to the cartoonist. That list included Colleen Frakes' story about Portland performance artist Jason Webley (done in her trademark loose style that featured a lot of black); Jim Mahfood's funny story about the effect Gary Wilson's odd stylings had on his personal aesthetic; and Noah Van Sciver's attempts at blazing out the bohemian's path ala Bob Dylan. There's an unabashed enthusiasm in each artist's story, showing that allowing someone to go on at length about an artist they admire can reveal something about the storyteller as well. The grittiness of the art of Mahfood (much less precious than much of his art) and Van Sciver brought the stories to life in a way that some of the slicker artists in the anthology don't.



Going back to one's youth so as to explore what music meant to each artist was another move that made sense, especially given the intensity with which teenagers feel everything, but especially music. I enjoyed Lucy Knisley's account of having all of her music disappear from her hard drive, with both a sense of loss and freedom from musical memories. Lawrence Gullo's story of Prague in 1968 was an interesting reminder of how Western music was a symbol of freedom to those behind the Iron Curtain, while Patricio Betteo's blotchy figures nicely captured the shadowy nature of music's grip.



Connecting music to love stories is another intuitive move, given that so many songs are about love. Three stories stand out here: Morgan Pielli's hilarious silent entry about dinosaurs and the first notes sounded (which brutally subverted sentiment in its final panel); Cathy Johnson's scribbly comic about missed opportunities for romance at a concert; and Warren Wucinich's stylish account of a night spent in the city, looking for live jazz and finding romance. The latter story wraps in the mixtape concept in slyly, with each song triggering a different memory. Jon Chad did something similiar in his mixtape story, with a specific track bringing back a particularly traumatic event while the character is making bread. Both stories are virtually wordless, instead using sweeping imagery and iconography to get their ideas across.



A few other stories bear mentioning: Mitch Clem's hilarious adaptation of the song "Checkers Speech" by the Mr T Experience, putting Richard Nixon in a new light; Jon Sperry's fun story about a band of anthropomorphic cats fighting aliens; Madeline Flores' twisty story about a teenager adjusting to the music and customs of a new land; the editors themselves with a cute entry about how the game Rock Band became a new way to bond over their shared love of music; and Megan Gedris' zip-a-tone heavy story about being courted by her various muses and how she wound up with the muse of comics instead of the muse of music. Like most anthologies with open submissions, I would have expunged about half of the entries and tightened it up a bit more. That said, Dukes' commitment to presenting a wide range of visual approaches was admirable, from the naturalistic Vertigo-esque art of Ryan Kelly to more abstract approach of Betteo. SIDE B's main problem was a sameness in conceptual approaches, which is where a stronger editing hand might have weeded out a weaker entry that was too similar to a stronger piece. Still, SIDE B's stronger stories were clever and affecting, displaying how motivated so many cartoonists were in addressing an art form so very different from theirs.

Short Reviews: Travel, Beeswax, Angst, I Saw You...,

Rob offers up a number of short reviews of various comics. Included are TRAVEL by Yuichi Yokoyama (Picturebox); BEESWAX #5 featuring the comics of Lydia Conklin; ANGST, an anthology of Norwegian comics from Jippi; I SAW YOU..., an anthology of missed connections stories edited by Julia Wertz.

Yuichi Yokoyama's TRAVEL was a stealth "best of 2008" comic for many. It's a comic that is of interest strictly due to its formal innovations, which make up the entirety of the story. It's a silent story about three men who board a commuter train, and then get off the train at the end and look out at a waterfront. The end. This book is all about the journey, as Yokohama stunningly plays with time, motion, light and perspective in mind-bending ways. As the train is in motion, the three men are also walking forward, tugging at the reader's eye and daring it to keep up. There are weird, unexplained tensions felt among the characters and the people they encounter, but much like anyone's experience riding a train, we can only guess at the stories of those around us.

ANGST is a collection of short works from a variety of Norwegian artists, translated into English. Jason is the biggest name featured here (with two stories I haven't seen elsewhere), but in general this is a varied and beautiful anthology. It's perhaps structured and edited a bit haphazardly, but it's obvious that this book is an attempt to get the works of its featured artists out to an English-speaking audience. The number of approaches in this book are remarkably varied, with each artist pulling from almost completely disparate sets of influences. While the entire collection is strong, the main highlights include a strip by Lars Fiske & Steffen Kverneland and their quest to rediscover the works of 20th century Norwegian cartoonist Olaf Gulbransson; a hauntingly weird strip called "Borre is Dead" by Odd Henning Skyllinstad featuring anthropomorphic penguins; and a hilarious silent strip by Knut Naerum titled "Liberation", about an animal lover's good deeds getting punished. I had the rare experience of wishing this anthology was longer when I finished it, and there was little in the way of filler or perfunctory material. I hope that Norwegian publisher Jippi publishes further volumes.

Up and coming cartoonist Lydia Conklin was the featured artist in the fifth issue of BEESWAX, a mixed-media literary magazine that features poetry and short stories as well as comics. She continues to specialize in comics about children and the societies they form around each other, as well as the deep sense of mystery and awe between children and animals. Conklin has the uncanny ability to tap into the psyche of children, as seen in strips like "The Quietest Meal of the Year". That strip features several scenes of kids at summer camp holding utterly chaotic court, living their lives out loud. Then it switches to one of the girls at the table back at home, eating in silence, clearly suffocated by being forced back into an old role by her parents.

"The Hair" is a grotesque but funny strip about a girl chewing on a strand of her hair until it's tied so tightly around her tongue that she has to go to the emergency room. After it's removed, she finds that she's become hooked on the experience--a form of self-exploration and self-mutilation of sorts and one that clearly baffles adults. "One Second" sees a girl encounter a dog at camp, their eyes locking for a moment and then moving on. One can sense the girl knowing that the dog is looking at her, knowing that the girl is looking at it. That kind of mutual self-affirmation has even greater power considering that it felt like a secret or a mystery, that humans and animals aren't supposed to have these sorts of encounters. A similar feeling emerges from "Lubi", only this time it's tinged by a loss made more painful in that others around the girl protagonist didn't feel it as well. Finally, the two related "Riley" strips feature a girl who is moved to England and the extreme discomfort and alienation she feels, especially with her sole friend who is clearly in love with her. These strips don't quite have the same emotional power as the other stories from Conklin, who is most effective when her subject matter (and line) is at its rawest. It's that emotional rawness and unsentimental presentation of how children think and act among themselves that has made Conklin's comics debut such a forceful one.

I SAW YOU... in general has a very high hit to miss ratio, given that editor Julia Wertz had an open submissions policy. The way the anthology was structured was both a strength and weakness. The concept is simple: cartoonists adapting "missed connections" ads. Wertz provided the artist with a bunch of ads and they chose one to illustrate (or did something on their own). Those ads tend to be equal parts funny, sad and pathetic, which is the perfect blend for cartoonists. The strips that were most successful were the ones that turned the text on its head in unexpected ways--either for humorous or horrific effect. The least successful strips were the most straightforward; on their own, they were fine, but that cumulative effect of that much sameness led to pages and artists blurring together.

Given that constraint of theme leading to some repetition, this is still an unusually strong collection with a number of standout entries. While making notes on the article, I name-checked nearly two dozen different creators whose strips stood out. Damien Jay's was the most formally clever while still working in the spirit of the assignment. His strip flowed from character to character, as they "spoke" their ad to their intended, and then moved on to another obsessive person. Ken Dahl and Laura Park both mined similar territory in their multiple strips, matching ridiculous prose ("let's try to show each other the full 'stick'") with misanthropes, losers, and creeps for an experience both comedic and unsettling. That realization that these ads are an expression of obsession and not necessarily something to be flattered by was brought home in Sarah Morean's funny strip about her own secret admirer and the eventual sinking feeling that she was being stalked. Mike Wenthe & Isaac Cates reversed that realization when someone who placed one of those ads on craigslist gets a vicious reply that sets him straight.

Robin Enrico and Damon "The Ink Lab" Brown have entries that are interesting mostly because of their extreme stylization. Enrico cleverly depicted a flirty arm-wrestling match as though it were a video game (a go-to graphic specialty of his), while Brown used unusual angles and line thicknesses combined with a deliberately busy use of word balloons to show us a bustling street-side encounter. On the other end, Gabrielle Bell and Kazimir Strzepek delve into the nature of human connections, with Bell relishing a conversation that resulted from her reaching the wrong person over the phone and Kaz using a seemingly unconnected narrator for a character rushing into work, only to deliver a crushing blow at the end. The layout for both strips is entirely conventional, but both artists thoughtfully explored the anthology's theme in interesting ways.

Most of the best strips in the book are played for comedic effect. Some of them work because the drawings themselves are funny, like Colleen Frakes' hilarious drawing of a hockey player as crush object or Peter Bagge's evisceration of text with his over-the-top stylings. Other strips with great punchlines include those by Jesse Reklaw, Lisa Hanawalt (who also contributes a funny drawing), Tom Hart, Wertz herself and Joey Sayers. Sayers takes an image from an ad and runs with it in the most absurd way possible. There are at least a dozen other worthwhile strips in this anthology, which has contributions from a great number of the most talented young cartoonists working today and a number of veterans as well. If the theme intrigues a reader in any way, then it's certainly a must-read.

The Anthologies of CCS

Rob reviews several anthologies from current and former students at the Center for Cartoon Studies. Works reviewed include SWORD (from One Percent Press), INDELIBLE, SORRY and NO. (This review was originally published at sequart.com)

I was happy to pick up a number of CCS anthologies at SPX this year, given how difficult it can be to keep track of the students going through that school. I've taken a great interest in the work of the artists who have attended the Center for Cartoon Studies and consider it to be one of the most interesting experiments in comics history. While I've reviewed a number of the artists who have attended the school (Annie Murphy, Sean Ford, Chuck Forsman, Alex Kim, Joe Lambert, Colleen Frakes, JP Coovert, and Jeff Lok just for starters), I'm always intrigued to see what kind of work other artists are doing.

While the crew behind the SUNDAYS anthology has been the most ambitious in terms of their output and presentation, these anthologies certainly have their own sense of ambition in style. Each one is themed, though only very vaguely and more as a jumping-off point. Indeed, the anthologies have the feel of art school exercises, the kind that can spark interesting ways of thinking. The 4-Square anthology series is a good example of that. The concept is simple: 4 artists work in one squarebound anthology (about 6x6 inches), doing stories around a loose concept. The first edition, SORRY, featured Caitlin Plovnick, Colleen Frakes, Emily Wieja and Mario Van Buren, and they all centered around the word "sorry".

Oddly, all four stories took a grisly turn. Plovnick's story is about a spurned mermaid whose desperate need to understand what love is takes a homicidal turn. Some of Plovnick's figures look a little awkward, especially in relation to each other, but she made up for it with a really strong sense of composition--especially in the panels where the mermaid went on a rampage. Frakes continued to mine the stuff of fables (as opposed to fantasy) in her story about a bluejay's miserable fate. She seems extremely comfortable and confident as a draftsman--her figures are simple but bold and distinctive, and I love the weight of her line. This was the first story I'd seen from Van Buren, a tale of a romp on a playground gone horribly wrong, and his character design was rather appealing--lots of sausage-like fingers, and a sharp use of geometric shapes to create his figures. Wieja's contribution was less a story than a study about fire. Wieja obviously loves to play up the contrast between light and dark, realistic depictions and primitive sketches. All told, this was probably the most consistently interesting of the four anthologies examined in
this article.

The second volume, NO, isn't quite as attractive. I thought the blue paper it was printed on didn't do a lot of favors for some of the stories, for starters. I did greatly enjoy Jon Chad's hilariously disgusting story about a sad sack who eats too much alphabet soup before declaring his love, and winds up vomiting it out in a way that spelled out foul insults. His grotesquely humorous character design and detailed linework were all in the service of the story's gags. From the finely-rendered we went to the very sketchy in Lauren O'Connell's "Fancy Clue" story. It's an amusing concept (a female superspy being sent on absurd missions like figuring out if a girl was attracted to a particular FBI agent), but it felt literally ripped out of a sketchbook and photocopied. I can appreciate the energy and immediacy of such work, but this was just sloppy--illegible lettering, tons of spelling errors, etc.

Frakes checked in with another entry in this anthology, part of which was reprinted elsewhere in a more polished form. This felt like a first draft for that story, albeit a well-designed and composed first draft with unusual ideas. This one's about a girl adopted by a family of talking bears who were getting ready to make war on humans. Frakes' work looks best in crisp black and white, and I thought the blue paper was an especially unfortunate choice for this story. Finally, there was a Morgan Pielli bit of lunacy. His story was a bit of Chuck M. Jones inspired fourth-wall breaking as his characters chase each other around and between comics gutters.

SWORD is the most attractive-looking of the four anthologies, featuring artists with some bold and distinctive visual styles. Each short story is about a magic sword, with each artist picking up the story thread from the next but taking it in some very different directions. JP Coovert and Stephen Floyd share a similar quality of line and story sensibility, spoofing the fantasy aspects of sword-related quests. James Hindle takes things in an interesting direction, rendering the discovery of the sword in a series of darkly humorous one-panel gag strips titled "Hello, Only Friend". Alexis Frederick-Frost, one of the most interesting visual stylists in the CCS crew, tells a story about a crow who manages to find the sword at the climax of his story, giving him a bit of a magic boost. Frederick-Frost loves to play with thick, bold lines and light/dark contrasts while using a stripped-down character design style. Lastly, Joe Lambert checks in with a single, silent page that quickly establishes a connection to the prior scene, sets up the scene and end then ends it with an implied act of violence and theft--all in three panels. This book is a pleasant diversion or a fun group art exercise-- not the most important or interesting work of these artists, but still a surprisingly tightly-wound series of distinctive stories.

INDELIBLE is the most uneven of the four anthologies, which isn't surprising since it's less a comics anthology than a "collection of creative endeavors" done by the women of CCS--students, faculty, staff, fellows and interns. There's plenty in here that's not comics but is still plenty entertaining, like Jessica Abston's poetry (some of which has been adapted into comics form by Alex Kim), Rachel Gross' illustrations and short stories by the likes of Frakes and Betsey Swardlick. These submissions contribute to the sense that this publication wasn't really intended to be a cohesive collection of comics but rather a group project where everyone contributes somehow.

As such, a number of the stories are excerpts from longer stories printed elsewhere, which is one of my pet peeves when it comes to anthologies. Excerpts can be fine when carefully selected to fit in with other submission, but here it felt more like artists throwing in a few related pages of recent work. I say this as a fan of one excerpted story, Robyn Chapman's SOURPUSS, and as a fan in general of Colleen Frakes' work. The latter's MARYA AND DEATH seems intriguing, however, and it's interesting to see her once again take apart fables and fairy tales to create a new context for them. In a school where most of the artists enrolled are decidedly influenced by art-comics, it was odd to see Chrstine Williamson's manga-inspired excerpt. Her rendering style felt fairly derivative and inert, but it's hard to say much more about it given how little the reader was shown of the story.

There is quite a bit to like about this anthology, especially in the stories that had more finite boundaries. Caitlin Plovnick has a dark sense of humor and a great ear for dialogue, along with a sense of the absurd; combining high school dramatics and politics with the apocalypse was a masterstroke, and her ugly, scratchy style was a great fit. Lucy Knisley has nice chops as a cartoonist, and her story about femininity showed off the expressiveness of her character design. Penina Gal combines the storytelling approaches of John Porcellino (in his carefully studied minimalism) and David Heatley (in the active dreaminess of his scenarios) to create a charming, bizarre bit of narration.

Kubby Barry's retelling of the story of the Tortoise & the Hare cleverly has them pairing off against each other in a race of self-esteem. She was perhaps a bit overambitious in what she tried to render, yet she captured all of the story's emotional nuances. Emily Wieja once again contrasted light and dark to put together a few images and ideas--this time, it was a cloud and a snake. The unquestioned star of the issue in my view was Annie Murphy, whose brief story about a boy adopted by a magical horse was given a surprising level of depth, weight and pathos. The story had Murphy's usual concerns: the line between life and death, the possibility of connection, the relationship between humans and animals. Murphy is a good but not great draftsman, but she combats that with an impeccable design sense and bold use of blacks.

I'd like to see further volumes of all three of these anthology series. I like the tighter focus of the 4-square series, the design sense of the One Percent Press anthology and the sheer variety of INDELIBLE. The CCS artists who have improved the most tend to be those with the most diligent work ethic. Anthologies are a great way to force oneself to get better quickly so as to keep up with one's peers. There's tremendous potential in these pages, with some artists closer to fulfilling it at the moment than others.

Anthology Round-Up: Good Minnesotan 3, Papercutter 8, Fluke 6

Rob reviews three fairly recent anthologies: Papercutter #8 (edited by Greg Means), Good Minnesotan #3 (edited by Raighne & Meghan Hogan) and Fluke #6 (edited by Drew Weing). (This review was originally published at sequart.com)

Three attractive anthologies to tackle in this column, each with distinctive editoral and aesthetic viewpoints:



PAPERCUTTER #8, edited by Greg Means. PAPERCUTTER, as I've noted before, is one of the most attractive anthology series currently in publication. This issue follows the established formula of the anthology: one long story by a feature artist, a shorter story by a second artist, and a very short (2 pages) story by a third artist. The concept behind the anthology is to feature young and/or underpublished cartoonists in the most flattering format possible. Varying story length adds variety to the reader's experience and editor Greg Means is careful to feature artists whose styles and interests are different in each issue.

The featured artist in #8 is Corinne Mucha, who brought a very interesting sense of design to her autobiographical story of being haunted as a child. She thought she was being menaced by witches that lived in her closet and came up with a byzantine set of rules and regulations regarding her own behavior and safety. The most visually striking aspect of her comics was her lettering, often using huge, decorative font designs to emphasize fear, ridiculousness or a sense of being childlike. Lettering is an underappreciated part of the art of comics, and Mucha makes a point of fully integrating it as part of her page. Her work reminded me a bit of Lynda Barry's comics, especially the shifting perspectives and the diagramatic nature of the comics page. Mucha turns this account of her experience into a discussion of memory and perception, and the ways one's brain creates connections when it needs to make sense of the world.

Brubaker has the 2-page slot in a story that integrates some amusingly freakish character design with his typically angular style. It's a little spoof of one tough high school outsider's aggressive posture and serves its purpose as a palate cleanser of sorts after the dreamier first story. The third story, Jeremy Tinder's "Pete At Night" starts off as a typical slacker pity-party sort of story, but takes a right turn into violence and the absurd. The story's punchline picks up the story thread regarding his lack of confidence with regard to women and manages to tie it into the weirdness he just experienced, a hilarious stroke of genius. PAPERCUTTER succeeds because it has modest ambitions. It's not trying to reinvent the comics wheel or provide a showcase for avant-garde' creations. It features distinctive voices, styles and narratives and makes them look good. Each issue is simply a pleasure to read.

GOOD MINNESOTAN #3, edited by Raighne & Meghan Hogan. Minnesota is fertile ground for comics talent these days. Zak Sally is probably the best known name from the north country, though Will Dinski is starting to get more recognition. The GOOD MINNESOTAN anthology proves that there's a full-blown comics scene, rapidly improving from issue to issue. There's a delicate balance between trying to provide exposure for as many artists as possible and tightening up the content a bit. There are a number of short pieces that seem ripped out of the artists' sketchbook that fail to leave much of an impression and some longer pieces about relationships that feel perhaps a bit too self-indulgent for this sort of anthology. Ed Moorman's well-drawn "Polaroids" especially falls into the latter category; it's almost too intimate in the way it presents anecdotes without context, and there's just not enough for the reader to grab onto.

There are a number of strong stories in here that merit further discussion, however. Meghan Hogan's own "You Are The Great Horned Owl" is a beautiful and distinctive excerpt from a larger work about the inner life of birds. Its only problem is that it's clearly meant to be a color piece but is presented in greyscale here. Without that color, some of the story's impact is blunted. I enjoyed both of the rambling stories about apartment living: Justin Skarhus & Raighne Hogan's "Sex Box" and John & Luke Holden's "Fuckleberry Hinn". The former uses a blotchy line and heavy use of blacks to detail one man's frustration with his sex-crazed housemates--only to add the not-unexpected punchline of committing the same indiscretions at someone else's house. The latter story is even blotchier and much cruder, depicting several days in the life of a man who is forced to become homeless. The grotesque character design is compelling and makes this quotidian story a page turner. There's also a deadpan sense of humor perfectly set off by the art; there's a sense that the protagonist's entire life is just a series of absurd moments and he's become quite resigned to it.

The standout story in this issue is Nicholas Breutzman's "My Town". It's cleverly well-designed, integrating word and text in interesting ways. Breutzman manages to balance his depiction of ennui and horror in pitch-perfect ways. The story functions both as a literal horror story and a metaphorical account of loneliness and alienation. The way Breutzman wildly varies panel size and placement from page to page was key to modulating the story's emotional rhythms. One brief story deserves a mention: Anna Bongiovanni's "To Take Back" is a wonderfully unsettling piece that sees a naked woman laying in a forest. She has apparently just given birth, takes a look at the baby, and swallows it whole. In the last panel, her back is turned to us so as to prevent the reader from seeing the expression on her face--adding to the sense of mystery and ambivalence in this piece. I hope we see more of her work in future issues of GOOD MINNESOTAN. The format and design of this issue of the anthology as a whole continues to become more distinctive, and I hope at some point that they'll be able to introduce color.

FLUKE #6, edited by Drew Weing. FLUKE is a minicomics/zine event that takes place in Athens, GA and provides a spotlight for a number of southern cartoonists that may not get a lot of exposure elsewhere. Drew Weing is a graduate of the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) and a fine cartoonist. He drew one of liveliest journal comics for a time but is better known for his lush online work. He has a fine eye for talent and produced a strong minicomics anthology for FLUKE 2007. FLUKE #6 is jam-packed with SCAD graduates, artists from the Partyka collective and even Joseph Lambert, a CCS graduate.

The anthology reflects Weing's tastes in that each piece is well-drawn and fluid. This is not to say that every story is straightforward, especially given the presence of artists like Chris Wright; indeed, Weing makes a point of including a number of different storytelling approaches. There are stories with oblique narratives (Michele Chidester's "Invention"), slice-of-life concerns ("." by Mel Stringer), the absurdly grotesque ("Meat Cute" by Eleanor Davis), and fantasy ("The Acker Brothers" by Mike Laughead). Weing's own "Algernon Lamb", about a detective who specializes in art-related crimes, is a particular highlight. There are very few duds in this anthology, which is rare for such books created for comics festivals. That's a tribute both to Weing's discernment as an editor and the way he placed the stories. FLUKE #6 succeeds, much like PAPERCUTTER in having modest goals and exceeding them. I don't want to overstate the value of these comics; I wouldn't consider either to be among the best comics of the year. That said, they are fine collections of short, strong pieces by young artists, carefully edited and skillfully designed. They are worthy of emulation by any young editor with similar aspirations.