Minis: Colin Lidston's The Age Of Elves #5

Having read the conclusion of Colin Lidston's slice-of-life comic The Age Of Elves, it's clear what kind of story he was actually telling. The plot involves a group of teenagers and their trip to GenCon, a huge gaming convention. Set twenty years ago, it came at a point just a few years before geek culture became the dominant culture, and this was intentional. This is a story about social anxiety, first and foremost. Every member of the gaming group is extremely socially awkward in their own way, and they find their own ways of coping. Sarah, the most "normal" member of the group and the only girl, finds the limits of her willingness to explore outside the group, even as she tires of them. Bram uses intellectualization to mediate social interactions, preferring to layer on a template of rules and gameplay because he has no idea how to interact otherwise. Evan is the burnout of the group, who drinks hard when he experiences social anxiety. Jamie becomes prickly and aggressive, as most of the boys in the group do. 

Indeed, this is an interesting examination of how just because someone is socially awkward, it doesn't justify their behavior. One can see in the modern-day phenomenon like InCels and other geek subcultures are every bit as vindictive, hierarchical, and (above all else) misogynistic as mainstream society. Worse, geeks are so often gatekeepers to their secret hobbies that the open resistance to diversity and change is frequently despicable. There are shades of that here, but there's also the palpable sense of camaraderie in the way that they all have each other. 

The previous four issues consisted of Sarah questioning her commitment to the group. She's an artist who felt her work went unappreciated by her friends, but she dreamed that upon meeting her fantasy illustration idol at the con, she'd get the spark to her career that she needed. Of course, when she did find new friends at the con as she sought to branch out, they turned out to be middle-aged swingers who tried to seduce her. Note: she was 17 years old. So she's already been burned once with trying to get out of her comfort zone, which is not surprising because the age difference is so huge at the show. Again: this was 2000 when most gamers were older and a generation hadn't been brought up gaming with the easy-to-learn 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. And to be frank, it's not like that older generation had social skills that were any better developed. It was a sea of people, many on the spectrum, lacking an understanding of their own neurodiversity and proper coping mechanisms. All they could was try to emulate neurotypical behavior as best they could, which was often not well. 

Sarah was burned yet again when her idol took one look at her portfolio and gently tore it to shreds. She also gently ignored Sarah's request to help make her get started, as she even asked for her phone number! However, the illustrator gave her a piece of sound, if difficult advice: think of something you really love, then make something that "makes you feel even more like that." The question for Sarah was, what exactly did she love? 

Lidston's art throughout is a great example of how to incorporate gesture and body language to do the bulk of your storytelling. Every angle Sarah stands or sits at betrays her anxiety and awkwardness. When she dresses up as Death (from Sandman) at the costume contest, she doesn't sell it in the least; she looks mortified to be onstage. What made it even worse was Bram coming after she told her friends not to, giving her an unsolicited gift (which included a lecture on things to choose in a particular game) and then expressed his attraction for her in the most awkward way possible. Sarah absolutely exploded at this, already having faced sexualization at the hands of people she thought were becoming her friends. Like her friends before her, she just reached her limit. The scene where Bram offers a hug is painful and hilarious, as she turns him down--again, Lidston's naturalistic style that borrows just a touch from the grotesque does most of the job in relating the narrative.

The denouement is clever. On the car ride back, all the things they got mad about were basically swept under the rug. That said--no one was ready for their regular game night just yet. When Sarah got home, her mother left her a book of paintings from Cezanne. Sarah hit upon one with four gamers sitting at a table with a grizzled sense of camaraderie. She obviously saw herself and her friends in this painting, for better or for worse. Any thought that she may have had that she was somehow better than her friends had been completely erased; all of them proved to be at their worst in a number of ways on the trip, yet they all still made it home together. For now, at least, these were her people. How much any of them learn or grow in the future was left entirely up in the air. 

Minis: Age of Elves #4

The fourth issue of Colin Lidston's slice-of-life story of four role-playing gamer friends circa 2000 once again focuses on Sarah, the sole girl in the group. In the last issue, it became clear to her that she was tired of doing all of the emotional labor in the group. She was tired of Evan's benders and of Bram's tantrums when people went outside of the Rules of the group. Indeed, it is ironic that groups of outcasts who can't seem to fall in step with social mores often tend to seek out subcultures with even more rigidly-defined rules of expected behavior. As per usual, Lidston favors a smudgy, slightly grotesque line that refuses to idealize its figures but also doesn't treat them as objects of derision. In particular, he excels at drawing people with larger body types in a way that makes sense, not as the object of a punchline.

In this issue, Sarah struck out on her own, hanging out with an older couple she had met in an earlier issue named Catherine and Alan. They gave her validation with regard to her interest in illustration and costume design in a way she didn't always get from her friends; more importantly, they represented new friends in an environment seemingly rife for making them at a gaming convention. Of course, her friends found it difficult to actually meet new people, mediating these relationships through the act of gaming itself, through drinking, or simply not interacting with anyone new. Sarah is the only one in the group looking to expand her horizons, if not reinvent themselves.

She learns how to make chainmail from Catherine. She's invited to go LARPing, though she declines. She attends an afterparty and has a good time. In particular, she has a conversation with Catherine that's telling. Catherine notes that she started playing D&D in the 1980s, when it was a fad for a while. At that time in 2000, with the fad long over, Catherine noted that the game now "belonged to us", meaning gamers. Catherine states confidently, "This is real life", but Sarah is unsure. That doubt is magnified when both Catherine and Alan make a pass at her as a couple, introducing a sexual world so far beyond Sarah's experience that she simply leaves as quickly as possible. It's another level of unreality, making her return to her friends a welcome experience. As imperfect and rigid as they are, they are what she knows. The question that remains is whether she will remain content with those imperfections in the long run or if she will address them. One issue remains in this surprisingly provocative series, one that offers up a number of subcultural critiques while still remaining respectful of those subcultures. It will be interesting to see if Sarah's story ends in resolution or resignation.

Minis: Colin Lidston, A.D. Puchalski

The Age of Elves #3, by Colin Lidston. This is the continuing story of a group of high school gaming friends who make a long road trip to the enormous Gen Con show. What the series is really about is how social outcasts who feel awkward around most people interact with each other, and how this interaction is not always a positive one. That's especially true when they find themselves out of their comfort zones. In this issue, for example, all is well for the first few pages of the story as they are amazed by the size of the con and get swept up in gaming sessions and merch tables. Then the sole girl in the group, Sarah, gets lost on the way to a dance later that night and encounters a couple who give her some encouragement.

It's when she gets to the dance that all sorts of awkwardness is triggered and well-illustrated in the body language depicted by Lidston. Sarah pulls Jamie on the floor to dance, leaving Bram and Evan on their own. Bram, who is clearly unnerved by social interaction outside of gaming contexts, walks away to find a game. Evan proceeds to get hammered on his own. There's a telling quote when Sarah later asks Bram if he made a new friend at the gaming table, and he replied "I was able to turn a marginal advantage into a rout, through..." Strategizing in lieu of other forms of interaction, as opposed to being a gateway to further and deeper interaction, is at the heart of the group's dysfunction.

That further comes to light when it turns out Evan doesn't make it back to the room and they are eventually informed that he passed out drunk in the lobby. Sarah is clearly the member of the group forced to do the emotional labor for everyone (not surprising, since she is a young woman), as she takes care of Evan and tries to deal with the tantrums of Bram and Jamie at the same time. That's especially true when they try to blame her for all of this. That plays into another aspect of the group: their friend Phillip who quit. The reasons why he quit are a matter of debate; some of the group play the old "he wanted to spend time with his girlfriend instead of us" canard, while others say that they embarrassed him now. Fealty to the group and the game superseded everything else, and the very idea that the game would end terrified Jamie. Hardcore gamers, those who arrange their entire lives around the hobby, often wind up recapitulating the same societal rules that they find themselves being alienated by. The new rules they create have different names, but they are still about dominance and competition in the worst of situations.

Pet: "The Garden Party", by A.D. Puchalski. This is an odd little story that starts as a courtly comedy of manners and turns into a supernatural slaughter. Drawn with a delicate, almost fragile line that is buttressed by dense cross-hatching, the figures look a bit like Dr. Seuss meets John Tenniel (illustrator of Lewis Carroll's Alice stories). The story starts along those lines, as a dashing anthropomorphic wolf captures a girl-cat thing to bring to a garden party. The young men and women at this noble affair have on animal masks of their own and mock the wolf, whom nonetheless makes an impression on one of the women. Meanwhile, the indolent partygoers summon an all-devouring demon who starts to destroy everything around him, scattering the characters at the end of the story.

There is a confidence in Puchalski's storytelling that is especially clear in her character designs. That slightly droopy quality in the wolf, the feral weirdness of the cat-girl, the delicate decadence of the garden party participants, and the blobby horror of the demon are all highlights in this leisurely-paced comic that only has two panels per page. Puchalski's commentary on the decadence of the rich, the desperation of those looking to move up in status and the sheer indifference of those without a chance are all on display here, told in a manner not unlike a deranged fairy tale. That's thanks in part to Puchalski's formalism with regard to dialogue and lettering that's as delicate as every other facet of her visual approach. This certainly left me wanting more.

Minis: Summer Pierre, Colin Lidston

Paper Pencil Life #5, by Summer Pierre. Pierre's quickly become one of my favorite autobio artists, thanks to an approach that is full of warmth, wit and intelligence. Pierre's ability to balance light and dark on a page, as well as her cartoony self-caricature with figures drawn from photo reference, make every page a pleasurable experience to read. That ability to balance form and content in such an intuitive manner is rare, even in the rare strip that's heavy on text. Pierre works in vignettes focusing on a single topic, like "Dappled Light". I've reviewed this elsewhere, but its focus on the family TV sitcom as a form of escape for young Pierre was both poignant and understated, as her cute-as-a-button child caricature roved around the world of Leave It To Beaver, eating cake and taking naps in the Cleaver household as her abusive father was left behind.

"Radio Radio" is one of the wordier pieces, yet Pierre's skill in evoking the warmth she feels in not only hearing the songs that radio stations across the nation play, but also the sense of location and community they create, makes this comic enormously satisfying. Music is a big touchstone in this issue, as another story about her finding an old mixtape and remembering the friendship and incredible depth of musical knowledge of someone from years earlier once again was evoked by Pierre's use of blacks as she depicted a night drive. Pierre's ability to zero in on small but important moments, both past and present, is in the tradition of John Porcellino and Harvey Pekar. Whereas Porcellino is most interested in the poetry of the moment and Pekar the profundity that can be found in the ordinary, Pierre seems to be fascinated with mindfulness and soaking in the joy of a moment. Whether that moment is a series of fun thing she spontaneously did with her son or if it was remembering a moment that she felt lost as a person, there's a fundamental sense of gratitude, of being glad for the joy of existing that can be felt in her work.

The second half of the comic is interesting because it addresses the election of Donald Trump. Suddenly, quotidian and timeless observations became rooted in specific events. It reminded me, to a much lesser degree, of the career of Jen Sorensen. She mostly did silly, funny cartoons until George W. Bush got elected, and then went full-on political and hasn't stopped since. I don't think Pierre will ever move in that direction, but she did clearly start to use her drawing board as a kind of escape and therapy from how upset she felt about the election's results. Interestingly, her non-political strips really got back to basics: doing a strip about taking a run and the way it made her feel in the moment, as well as a "24 hours in the life" comic that crammed 40 panels into two pages. There were more comics about her son and family (like a touching story about her uncle). The strips were more directly about comfort, like drawing a scene from Love & Rockets are having a day to herself. The issue finishes up with "I'll Never Be Cool", a hilarious list of how and why Pierre is a hopeless square, and a comic about a party she attends in New York with Francoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman that takes a rather astounding turn before the reader is clued in on what's happening. That was Pierre having a little chuckle at the reader's expense, a sort of cheery wink at the reader that reveals that her sense of humor is more than intact. It's a great capper for a collection that's over fifty pages but never once feels stale or repetitive. Pierre is in a great groove right now, and hopefully she will keep it going.

The Age of Elves Issue Two, by Colin Lidston. This continues the slice of life saga of four high school friends who are avid role playing gamers, set in 2000. This comic is once again interesting because of the incredible amount of detail Lidston devotes to showing off his understanding of gaming, yet despite that it's not really about gaming. It's about relationships, and how the sort of person who views gaming as a major part of their lifestyle and identity interacts with others. There's social awkwardness to be sure, but there are also more nuanced, intragroup conflicts that arise thanks to seemingly trivial differences between group members. It's the paradox of gamer culture both being welcoming of outsiders but also frequently rigid with regard to thinking. That plays out in this comic in a long road trip to a huge gaming convention, as nerdy thought questions turn into arguments, with the two more conservative members of the group teaming up against the Goth guy.

Lidston reveals that there are both cracks and connections with everyone in the group, as the sole girl (Sarah) gets into it with the others when she critiques the awful writing from a panel description. There are times that the art got a little murky, as Lidston chose to go with a fairly heavy line weight throughout the issue. It didn't help that Lidston also chose to spot a lot of blacks on already-dense pages. That said, Lidston's line also had a spontaneous quality that allowed for expressive figure drawings. There's a sense that Lidston knows everything about these characters, down to the tiniest details, and that shows up on the page in terms of their body language and small facial expressions. That's the key to this comic, as long-term friendships among teens (especially among boys) are often dependent on that kind of visual signifier if they're unwilling to actually talk about their feelings.

Minis: Ricky Miller/Julia Scheele, Colin Lidston

The Age Of Elves #1, by Colin Lidston. This mini (published by Robyn Chapman's Paper Rocket Mini Comics) is a bit of a rarity these days: a straight-ahead, slice of life story. These used to be as common as autobio back in the 90s but it's a kind of storytelling that's fallen a bit out of favor these days. The story is going to be familiar to many comics readers, as it's about a group of friends who happen to play fantasy role-playing games together. It's set in the year 2000 and the initial focus of the story is on Sarah, one of four high-schoolers who are getting set to go to a big gaming convention. She has dreams of being a fantasy illustrator and the story begins with her showing her portfolio to her high school art teacher and then talking with her dad. There's a diner scene where she argues about the film Pulp Fiction with her friends Evan and Jamie, and then there's a montage of game-playing at their friend Bram's house.

This issue is in every sense an establishing point meant to set mood and give the reader a sense of the story's pace and stakes. It is unspoken, but it is also clearly a story of finding your tribe after not fitting in (the time period is key, as geek culture had not yet completely overtaken popular culture at that point) and finding ways to express your dreams. Evan is a familiar sort of character as the sort of Asperger's-spectrum literalist who is often drawn to gaming, and while Bram does not utter a word in the story, it's clear that he comes from a socially awkward place as well. These characters are the bizarro Eltingville Club, as their love of gaming and fantasy has become fused with their friendships in a positive way, as opposed to the possessive and competitive manner of those Evan Dorkin. It's a case of having specialized interests and knowledge and choosing to share that knowledge and spread it as opposed to hoarding it as a hard-won treasure. There is a warmth that Lidston expresses in this modest story that has everything to do with his drawing. The body language of the characters when they're gaming is comfortable and grows moreso as the evening goes on and the natural introverts fully commit to forming connections. Lidston uses a loose but naturalistic style that allows for a few grotesque flourishes here and there; none of his characters are conventionally attractive, and he takes advantage of this to emphasize their humanity and connection rather than as objects of ridicule. The verisimilitude of the dialogue is another key to the issue's success, and I imagine future issues will zero in on particular hopes and dreams of all the characters, as well as dissect the group's dynamic. All the reader needs to know with this issue is that these four people are friends who genuinely enjoy spending time with each other.

Metroland #2 & #3, by Ricky Miller, Julia Scheele, et al. The first issue of the series introduced us to Ricky Stardust and Jessica Hill, two members of a band called Electric Dreams. Jessica had a profound impact on Ricky's life in a story that might be labeled speculative musical fiction. The world as we know it is slightly different, mostly in terms of its music, which was initially revealed when a poster for a Beatles reunion tour was seen on a building. Everyone who met Jessica knows there was something strange about her, but only Ricky (who would disappear for days at a time with her) knew the truth. At the end of the first issue, we see Jessica pull Ricky through a mirror in a club called Metroland, off to what we presume is some kind of fantasy world.

As it turns out, as we see in these next two issues, that wasn't quite it. Issue two is told through the point of view of Kathy, the forceful and charismatic keyboardist of the band, who has apocalyptic dreams. Her life is kind of a mess and gets worse when Kurt Cobain kills himself...in the year 2014. She loses her job, she's worried about the band's future and her Five-Year-Club (formed by David Bowie enthusiasts who feel like they can figure out the date the world will end) is made all the more dramatic when she declares that the date of the apocalypse came to her in a dream. Meanwhile, Jessica has apparently gone for good and Ricky is increasingly despondent and erratic as a result. The third issue starts to make plain what had been hinted at, thanks to the band's roadie being hired by two members of the band to find out more information about the relationship of Ricky & Jess.

The third issue is quite a bit of fun as a result of the fleshing out of alternate music history, conspiracy theories and internet paranoia--all of which is true. As it turns out, Jessica came from the future to observe and influence various musical scenes, and Ricky became part of it. He went back in the past and "fixed" things: helping Brian Wilson finish Smile, stopping John Lennon's killer, making sure that Janis Joplin didn't die, getting Elvis healthy, etc. The problem is that in the modern day, Ricky (who became the producer Ricky Starwalker in the past) is having trouble keeping things together, which leads Kathy and others to believe that the whole world will come crashing down. Miller takes the reader down some surprisingly byzantine paths with the time-travel and reality-altering qualities of the story, but always keeps it anchored in the band's dynamics. Miller also introduces a wild-card: the fact that Jessica has a daughter who lives in the future and idealizes the music of the past like her mother.

This is the story not just about a band, but the ways in which bands are fragile, can grow and mutate and oftentimes cease to exist. Scheele keeps everything grounded with her superb character design and understanding of body language. The humor in the book is often down to the way she draws the characters reacting to one another. The contrast in pink and midnight blue as the book's two tones reflect the conflict between the dreaminess of life in pink and the darkness and uncertainty that are represented by midnight blue. This is a story about finding in-between places, creating magic in tiny pockets of time and immortalizing those fragile moments of collaboration. Ricky's story is one where he cannot be satisfied with those moments and tries to find a cheat code to make them last forever, and this issue starts to reveal the implications of the problems that come with taking shortcuts.