Short Reviews Of Short Minis: Desmond Reed, Fredo Noland, Stuart Stratu

Troubled Teen, by Desmond Reed. Reed is at his best when he gets to depict highly detailed, grotesque characters. This is a first-person narrative featuring the titular character, who is pock-marked with acne, has that distinct teen stubble, and comically exaggerated nose and ears. Reed establishes the visual stakes right away with dense hatching and cross-hatching, dragging the reader into a world that is already discomfiting. Immediately upon establishing the character, Reed takes things in a totally absurd direction, starting with "Like most folks, I was discovered in a trash can when I was a baby. I matured over a period of four weeks." It goes from there, as he spawns mini-clones through his acne that he keeps popping and then tortures his little brother, an egg-shaped head atop a torso with disturbing amounts of hair. The whole thing is disgusting in a Basil Wolverton sort of way; there's not much in the way of narrative. It's more a chance for Reed to briefly sketch an amusing, gross idea. 

Stratu's Diary Comix, August 2015, by Stuart Stratu. Stratu is an Australian artist who does crude, full-color, 12-panel diary comics. His self-caricature dominates nearly every panel, and his head dominates the rest of his body. With giant eyes, spiky bangs, a two-tooth smile and lots of exaggerated expressions, Stratu gives the reader something interesting to look at on every page, which is important when one considers the general dullness of daily anecdotes. The text-heavy panels are mostly carried by that memorable self-caricature, as Stratu does at least endeavor to deliver a gag of some kind every three panels. That keeps things moving at a fast clip, and his strong opinions about music and movies keeps things lively. A month's worth of these strips is just about the right amount; a longer collection would be difficult to read. 

Black Sheep #4 by Fred "Fredo" Noland. Fredo was one of my favorite late 90s/early aughts alternative cartoonists, and his mini sees him in fine form. Centering around a music scenester and critic named Ivan, Fredo delves into an incredibly detailed and dense slice-of-life story that sees him being harassed by a woman named Lattie in an ongoing game of "insult tag." Ivan hits the record store. He goes to a punk show, antagonizes people, has difficulty with his own Latino background, and later goes to a record party. Vinyl, of course. Every character is so well-observed and precise, the character design is absolutely top-notch, and the ending is a wonderfully surprising swerve. There's also something wonderfully and painfully familiar about all of these characters and settings; if I didn't know a lot of people like this, then I saw them from across the room. Like the best slice-of-life stories, it was a pleasure to simply hang out with these characters, and I was disappointed when the comic ended.

Gag Work: Desmond Reed and Dina Kelberman

Uncles and Fruits & Vegetables, by Desmond Reed. Creepy uncles are not unusual in fiction, but Reed takes it to a whole other level in Uncles. This first issue of what appears to be a multi-part saga sees Reed channeling Basil Wolverton and the highly detailed and ugly MAD school of drawing in sending up zombie fiction in general. When a man and his girlfriend go look for their dog in the dark, they find a trio of deadly uncles lurking by a dumpster. When one of the uncles sticks his tongue in her ear, she sure enough is transformed into a hairy, fat-fingered and altogether unpleasant figure of terror. This is good dumb fun that's lent a bit of weight thanks to Reed's intense hatching style and overall level of detail. The jokes about the unpleasant hairiness of the uncles works because Reed lovingly draws every last follicle in excruciating detail.

Fruits and Vegetables collects his mini small minis from the past few years. Here are my reviews of "Todd", "Aloha" and "The Island", which happen to be some of his stronger gag comics, especially the funny twists of "Todd". Another strong conceptual strip is "The Usual", which is about sentient silverware wondering who's going to be on call fr that night's meal. When fork and knife realize that they have the night off, they briefly chat and then start making out. "Too Late" features sixteen blank panels followed by a robot bemoaning his lateness and wishing for more time, only to run out of panels. "The First Day" and "A Lesson Learned" both feature anthropomorphic objects (mugs and cups in the former, shapes in the latter) trying to find ways to act superior to each other, only to get undercut at the very end. Reed's simple, functional line is designed to deliver the gag as simply as possible, and this collection is a great starting point for a very funny cartoonist.

Important Comics Vol 2, by Dina Kelberman.This one came out in 2011 and is a fairly direct sequel to her series of cut-up observations from her website. Once again, Kelberman's tiny cylindrical character and little blob character with hair (both extensions of Kelberman herself) cut up at each other's expense, bemoaning a lack of motivation and interest in the world while desperately clinging to it. Her dramatic and decorative lettering, non-intuitive and at times garish use of color, and her weird page and panel design make her comics as disconcerting as ever, keeping the reader off-balance on a continual basis. For Kelberman, process is everything. The comic isn't so much about reaching a particular destination nor even the journey itself, but rather the moments of distraction. Kelberman's all about in-between time, what happens to characters when they go off-stage and passive-agressive confrontations. It helps her cause greatly that she has a sharp wit and has really refined these strips (as much as they can be refined) to something almost resembling a formula that works time and again. These are also some of my favorite strips about what it means to be lonely, what it means to encounter frustration when trying to express oneself, and what it means to repeatedly sabotage oneself. Combining this themes with the comics equivalent of having brightly-colored flashlights dance all over the page while you're reading it adds to the sense of discord that Kelberman is clearly trying to invoke. Kelberman is really in a category by herself.

Gag Comic Round-Up Nowacki, Viola, Reed,, Latta, Aushenker

Time to dip into an array of gag-oriented minicomics.

Moe, by Piotr Nowacki. Nowacki, a Polish artist, uses a delightfully simple and blobby line in depicting his anthropomorphic protagonist and the mysterious blotch who both aids and hinders him. This is a silent comic with an open four panel-per-page layout that emphasizes each character's body language above all else. Nowacki values exaggeration of action as the hero is punched in the face by the blob (after being offered a bone), winds up in jail, gets busted out by the blob, smokes a joint with a Rasta angel blob in a cloud, and finally rescues a beautiful woman underwater. The mischievous blob reminds me a bit of Al Capp's Shmoo character, only it's black with white eyes. Nowacki's work is incredibly self-assured in its simplicity and expressiveness; there are no wasted lines. The gags are reminiscient of the sort of thing Lewis Trondheim does so well in his silent humor comics: set up a character, provide an antagonist, then subvert reader expectations. Nowacki's imagination isn't quite as wild as Trondheim's, but Moe's ambitions are modest and this mini is a rewarding read.

Some Stories #1, by Desmond Reed. Reed is another artist who uses a simple line in order to tell his shaggy dog twist gags. Sort of like the O.Henry of minicomics gag work, Reed uses his exposition to set up an unexpected punchline. I wish Reed would vary the thickness of his line from time to time in order to make his pages more interesting to look at (as well as giving him more storytelling options); his art is merely functional, though it is effective. This latest effort, published in a larger size than his earlier micro-minis, is a mixed bag. "4 O'Clock" is too much of a shaggy dog story, dragging out the fate of a lab guinea pig who is killed by accident and is trying to sort out his afterlife. The eventual resolution of this story felt predictable in a way his prior comics hadn't. On the other hand, "Todd" represented a step up for Reed. As we meet two fish who are madly in love, we continuously flash back in time three seconds at a time, a clever way of detailing their extremely short attention spans and memories. It's a sort of underwater version of Memento, where Reed adds layer on top of layer until he reaches the final payoff. Unlike the first story, every single page is funny on its own, working first as a kind of non sequitur and then finally cohering in the end.


Herman The Manatee Volume 4, by Jason Viola. Viola's meandering strip about a manatee and his "lousy friends" hits a nice groove in this collection. Viola has an appealing line and great character design sense, but the quality of his work has varied as he's tried to figure out just what he wants to do with his strip. He quickly ran out of variations of his initial premise (the titular character getting hit in the head by passing boats), but attempts at piecing together extended storylines fell flat. His characters are simply too silly to support such attempts. In this volume, Viola strikes a balance with the Candide-like Herman, depressed (to the point of absurdity) Lester and vicious narwhal Knuckles playing off each other. Instead of trying to attach these characters to a plot (even a plot that was a parody), Viola instead simply structures gags around each character's quirks and how they interact. The result is a consistently amusing set of strips, drawn in a clean and assured style with a minimum of fuss.


Those Unstoppable Rogues Party Hard!, by Michael Aushenker. Of all the humorists discussed in this article, Aushenker's work is certainly the weirdest. Even in this series of strips about a turtle named Brett and a chicken named Clucky, it's hard to pin down Aushenker's style. There's a kitchen sink quality to it that I admire, as he throws in wordplay, absurdity, puns, double-entendres, purely visual gags, meta-humor, and character-based jokes. It's a loud, sprawling series of strips that features my favorite character designs of Aushenker's; there's an almost geometric appeal to Clucky (all triangles) and Brett (all curves). That balance makes this strip work better than his Greenblatt the Great! strips simply because I like looking at these characters more. There's also no real attempt to bring in other characters as concept gag generators, which sometimes proves to be a distraction in Aushenker's other comics. Brett and Clucky are at the center of every storyline and other characters serve purely to react against them, and then leave. Most of these strips are pretty old (dating from the early 90s) and there are some pages that have a bit of clutter that interfere with the overall storytelling. However, there's mostly a happy lack of fussiness to these strips. Aushenker has such a heavy line that keeping things relatively simple on the page winds up being the best approach. That simplicity allows Aushenker to create a strip that's simultaneously dumb and smart.


Rashy Rabbit Droppin' Anchor, by Josh Latta. Latta returns with another Gilbert Shelton-style adventure of a slacker rabbit done in a rubbery, lively anthropomorphic style. Latta has all but abandoned any sense of verisimilitude in his comics, as Rashy winds up at sea after his girlfriend dumps him and meets a group of sexy mermaids. While the comic is well-paced and balances its chaotic and ridiculous elements with straightforward storytelling, it's far sillier than Latta's earlier comics. Latta is better at mining humor out of awkwardness and sleaze than he is out of pure absurdity, and as a result this story winds up being fairly forgettable. The characters, divorced from prior continuity, all feel fairly stock and paper-thin. The sea captain Rashy ventures off with (and with whom he discovers he has a surprising connection) is ridiculously cartoonish. As a result, this issue isn't silly or absurd enough to be memorable in a Michael Kupperman sort of way nor is it tethered enough to actual character relationships to keep the reader focused on the page. That said, it certainly looks like Latta had a great deal of fun drawing this issue, especially the mermaid sequences. If Latta does decide to commit to more of a fantasy element in his stories, I hope he takes his concepts further.