Be Careful About What You Pretend To Be: Dustin Harbin's Diary Comics

Dustin Harbin's Diary Comics (Koyama Press) collects material that I reviewed here, here and here. Upon rereading both the book and my own critiques, I'd like to add a few more comments, especially since I've been reading a lot of different diary and memoir comics of late. Something nagged at my as I re-read his comics, and what I realized upon rereading the "Boxes" strip at the very end was that Harbin is his own best fictional character. Despite his obviously enormous talent as both an illustrator and cartoonist (especially with regard to imbuing his caricatures with so much life), Harbin just doesn't seem to have much to say as an artist. When he quit his journal comic for a while, he noted that he did so with the idea of moving on to bigger, better projects.

The problem is that Harbin's only creative project since that time has been a dinosaur book for NoBrow. As one might imagine, it looks great. It's a clever book for children. However, it's not the big project that's been anticipated for an artist of his talent. The end of Diary Comics reveals that the problem isn't so much that Harbin doesn't have anything to say beyond lowest-common-denominator humor strips, but that he has no idea how to express himself in a manner that's in any way authentic. What is revealed is that the "Dustin Harbin" we see in the strip is an invention, a character that's based on real life that is still a fiction. Often, that fictional character is a mechanism for gags, but there are occasional attempts at relating the character's depression as well. Those strips are frequently well-done and provide a fascinating visual attempt at depicting depression (as a sort of shadowy, heavily-crosshatched self), but the overall effect feels a bit off. It's bloodless.

I've read plenty of diary strips where it's clear that the artist is using them as an exercise, a way of keeping themselves drawing daily. Some have the effect of reading someone's account on twitter of eating oatmeal in the morning: a strip full of quotidian details that add up to nothing. Many cartoonists are either unable or unwilling to pour their emotions into their work, to "spill some ink" as Rob Kirby might say. The best diary strips (Jesse Reklaw is a sterling example) manage to use those mundane moments as the conduit for expressing a deeper series of emotional truths. What's different about Harbin's difficulty in being both unable and unwilling to spill that ink is that he's obviously painfully aware of this problem. A late strip where he reveals that he has trouble talking about his feelings features his on-then-off-then-on-again girlfriend Kate. While he says to her, "What about all the sweet stuff stuff I say in my comics about how I love you?", she replies "I'm sure that's very nice for that girl, but I'm a real person". It's a brutal quote and one of the few times that Harbin is able to step outside of himself and realize that in depicting his "real life" on the page, he instead created a whole separate existence that only tangentially connected to that real life. The last page, where it dawns on him that the choice in front of him is either to keep pretending to connect to others in an authentic way or else admit that he needs to change the entire way he approaches his very existence. There is no other conclusion, no neat tie-ups. It's a meta-commentary on the rest of the book.

While this is entirely a self-critique and evaluation, it does raise the question of to what extent memoir and diary comics are "real", and how much that matters. Where is the line between authenticity and artifice? What value does the rest of this book have (beyond sheer craft), given this revelation? Does it matter to the reader if it's "merely" entertaining? If one looks at this sort of comic as another person attempting to not only get across their experiences on the page, but to attempt to get readers to understand that experience, then the rest of the comic is an entertaining failure. If one views it as an ever-expanding process where the author is trying to understand what they're doing and why they're doing it, then Diary Comics is a success, albeit in the same sense that a shaggy dog story is a success. It wastes a lot of time and takes a number of distracting and ultimately meaningless detours to get there, but without that time wasted, the overall effect of the final revelation is not as powerful.

Sequart Reprints: So Super Duper, Superior Showcase #3

The sort of super-hero comics that I tend to discuss are off-beat in some way. The genre is usually at its best when it depicts motion, drama and action. Super-hero comics should have a propulsive quality to them and should be easily understood without even looking at the dialogue. Gesture and a body's relation to space and other bodies is crucial for such stories. The inherent fantasy limitations of super-hero comics limits its abilities to address certain ideas. Famous super-hero comics that deal with racism and other ills of the day almost always have a laughable quality to them, because the author's good intentions take the reader out of a believable sphere. That said, it's quite possible for super-hero comics to portray human interactions and dynamics in an interesting way, as long as the artist keeps everything within the rules of the world that we've been made familiar with.

Chris Pitzer's AdHouse published a fine anthology featuring indy/alternative artists doing their take on superheroes called PROJECT: SUPERIOR. Like all the books he releases, it was beautifully-designed and had a number of stories that successfully told off-beat tales that succeeded because they stayed within the parameters of the rules the artists created. So many of the artists had such a good time doing it that Pitzer occasionally releases a new issue of a periodical called SUPERIOR SHOWCASE, featuring three stories in this vein.

Issue #3 featured a Street Angel story by Jim Rugg & Brian Maruca, a tale of superpowered siblings by Laura Park and an extended superpowered fart joke by Dustin Harbin. The latter story is drawn in a lively, playful fashion. It really is one long series of fart jokes invoked by a superpowered kid on the teacher he has a crush on and a school bully. The story dragged a bit as the same set-up was repeated with different variations and eventually became quite tedious. Still, there's no question that Harbin has great chops. The Street Angel story perfectly encapsulates the idea of creating a world and staying consistent within its rules, no matter how absurd. For Street Angel, the young skateboarder/martial artist/orphan, it wasn't odd for her to wind up in a hospital where all of the other patients were ninjas. It also wasn't too strange for her to face a monstrous opponent who was straight out of The Ring, something that was alluded to from the very beginning of the story. Rugg & Maruca tell a satisfying, very funny story that is told in an entirely deadpan fashion, while still being able to depict a lot of action.

Laura Park's entry is a quiet, wistful story that just alludes to superpowers without showing us much of them. It's really about the relationship between two latch-key siblings and how they react to the way their peers treat them as freaks. The older sister is quite sanguine about it, thinking only of the welfare of her brother. The younger brother gets into fights when people insult his sister but is unable to fully articulate his rage. A loving gesture by his sister helps him start to deal with his feelings. This story is lovely because of the details Park includes: the way his sister goes about the rituals of cooking, cleaning, washing and sewing for him. It's unspoken, but in many respects she acts as surrogate mother, thinking of nothing but him and how to make him happy and well-adjusted. Those details, evoked by Park's use of shadow, cross-hatching and lively character design, make this tender story a true highlight.

Brian Andersen's SO SUPER DUPER is similarly consistent in tone. That tone is one of constant, over-the-top enthusiasm as the story's hero, Psyche, deals with being an underpowered hero on a JLA-style team and his own repressed homosexuality. Psyche's the sort of gay man who is closeted pretty much only to himself, as virtually everyone else in the world knows he's gay. The funny thing about this comic is that it's incredibly sweet, goofy and good-natured. Andersen's art is crude and highly stylized, which somehow fits in perfectly with the ridiculousness of the scenarios he creates. Having Psyche get off witty, bitchy one-liners to the fairly square-jawed heroes surrounding him, stumbling around his own desires (very chastely depicted), and generally behave like the most hyper gay kid you've ever met is a delight. The effect is like reading a child's superhero comic, retaining a certain purity of design without a sense of self-consciousness or guile. One can feel Andersen's personality busting through on the page as he combines what is an obvious love of superheroes with a style of art and pacing that is pretty much the opposite of what one would expect from such comics. The comic works because Andersen takes this ridiculousness seriously, with detailed subplots surrounding the longer character bits much like a standard superhero comic. This comic couldn't be any more different from the ham-handed, tedious superhero comics that have appeared in recent years trying to deal with gay issues.

Autobio Minis: Shapiro, Harbin, Coovert, Baylis

Crushable: Ricky Nelson, Crushable: John Lennon, and The Hand Game, by Janice Shapiro. I read the first iteration of Shapiro's Crushable series in an online anthology, and it's a clever twist on the sort of sexual history comics that MariNaomi and David Heatley have done. It's a history of the crushes she's had on a variety of pop cultural figures from her girlhood to the present, which is an interesting method of getting at other formative events in her life over the years. Shapiro's line is scribbly and messy, leaning toward simplicity when depicting herself or her sister but more toward a scratchy realism when depicting her idols. In Ricky Nelson, six year old Janice crushes on the squeaky-clean TV and pop star, and that crush is a gateway toward discovering that her older sister's best friend loved Nelson as well. That gave her the in she needed to essentially take over that friendship, so long as Ricky Nelson was involved. Shapiro depicts this miraculous, almost utopic time when the two of them danced to Nelson's records and sat arm-in-arm when he was on TV, earning Janice the right to even get invite over to her friend's house. When Janice accidentally destroys the speaker of her parents' "hi-fi", so too is the friendship dissolved without that cultural medium. Shapiro notes that her crush was essentially transferred from Nelson to her friend, and when that ended, so too did her cultural infatuation.

John Lennon speaks to a different phenomenon. When the Beatles broke in America, Paul McCartney ("the cute Beatle") was the most beloved member of the group amongst teenage girls, and John was the least adored. Not so for Shapiro, who loved John but was forced by peer pressure to renounce that affection in favor of Paul. Shapiro muses on why she felt that connection, from sensing his leadership & intelligence, to the first sign of possessing a masochistic personality to an existential understanding of the darkness that lies at the heart of everything--but ultimately seems to chalk it up to the notion of the fact that we can't control whom we happen to fall in love with on any level. What's interesting is the shame she felt in later years for lying about it, a lie that betrayed her aesthetic sensibilities as much as anything. Speaking of masochism, The Hand Game is an interesting anecdote about playing this particular slap game with her father. The game is one where both parties hold out their hands and one person puts their hands on top of the other person's. They then try to slap one of the other person's hands as hard and fast as possible. If they miss, then it's the other person's turn. What was fascinating about this anecdote was that her father was considerably better at it than she was but refused to take it easy, leaving her hands bright red from slaps, even when she asked him if he'd take it easy. At the same time, each time he offered her a chance to end the game, she refused. Afterwards, her sister demanded to play the game with him. This was an interesting metaphor for the things we do to get attention from our parents as children, no matter how painful it might be.Shapiro reminds me a bit of Lynda Barry, both in terms of the crude but enthusiastic nature of their lines and the wistfulness with which they discuss the children in their stories.

Diary Comics #4, by Dustin Harbin. When Harbin handed me a copy of Diary Comics #4, I told him, "I thought you said you were done with diary comics." He replied, "I had something to say." Indeed he did. Rather than the simple exercise in daily comics making (and a slow, tentative reveal of Harbin's inner demons) that marked his first three entries, Harbin here tentpoles a harder look at himself and the way he interacts with the world around events that force him to interact with others, namely comic-book conventions. Harbin's self-image as he presents it in the strips in the first half of the book is earnest, slightly goofy and self-deprecatory, often setting himself up for a gag. That all changes with "Boxes", a five-part series of strips that takes up the second half of the collection.

"Boxes" is by far Harbin's densest, harshest self-examination and it's probably the best thing he's done as an artist so far. The first three sections deal with the long break in autobio strips, the vagaries of the passage of time, a brief reprise of the funny and perceptive report he did about Canada's Doug Wright Awards at the Toronto Comics & Arts Festival (TCAF), and a brief recapitulation of the sort of strip he likes to do about conventions. At the end of each part, he stops the story cold and alerts the reader that this is a diversion and isn't what he really wanted to talk about. That in itself is an interesting meta-device that clues the reader in that Harbin is avoiding something. In the fourth part, we get to spend a lot of time in Harbin's head as he prepares to go do a post-awards dinner with many of his comics idols. Harbin is self-conscious to a degree where it's no longer so much about saying something stupid or offensive, but rather doubting the very possibility of communication itself. Harbin very cleverly plays around with time, space and point of view in this strip, eventually fading into Kevin Huizenga-style pastoral scenes as a way of representing his drifting mind, popping back into dinner at various intervals. I laughed when he started talking about dinner going well despite his feeling stressed in a regular word balloon (rather than a narrative caption or thought balloon), only to have Chester Brown interrupt him by saying, "Dustin, we can hear you.".

The last part of "Boxes" focuses on a review that Tom Spurgeon gave him on Diary Comics #3, where he says "The result is a comic about a life being lived for the sake of presenting amusing comics". I'm not sure I entirely agree with that point of view, given Harbin's strips about dealing with depression and other insights into his own feelings. I do agree that Harbin is almost afraid to talk about the way he perceives the feelings of others. Harbin's reaction was to agree with the review to an interesting extreme: he says "One thing I've learned, in the process of doing these comics, is that I'm fake, very fake..fake like 'pretend to be...something' then forget that you're pretending." In Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut famously wrote "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. Even as Harbin writes that he sometimes has trouble making real connections to people because of the way he has constructed their personae in his mind, the self he projects is kind, curious, self-reflective, funny, goofy and awkward in a sort of endearing way. Sartre has said much the same thing about identity in that the masks we think we wear are who we are in a real sense, or at least part of who we are. Harbin seems not so much fake but unmoored, as the self-image he projects is built on the shifting sands of depression. That's a harsh realization he shares on the last page of the comic, where he understands that he's stuck with the arduous task of recreating his self on a moment-to-moment basis or else find a way to fix his foundation. The latter is an even more arduous task, in part because the "how" in doing so is elusive (therapy? medication?) and mysterious even before trying to do so. That realization goes beyond the kind of deflective self-deprecation of earlier strips to the essence of a problem that goes far beyond the ability of self-expression on the page to handle. Leaving the comic without a pat answer for himself or the reader is an act of courage and an eloquent, if perhaps not consciously intended, response to Spurgeon's critique. As a reader, it was the first time that Harbin's used his top-notch rendering skills to provide a counterbalance to weightier matters, and for the first time I find myself drawn to Harbin's work for something other than its sheer charm. I wasn't wrong in my last review when I mentioned that Harbin seemed ready to move on to something more substantial than his preceding Diary output; I just didn't expect that substance to come in the form of another autobio comic.

So Buttons #5, by Jonathan Baylis and various artists. Baylis continues to improve both as a writer and a self-publisher, as this comic looks attractive without being too slick. The eye-catching cover by Tom Scioli, dramatizing a pet-related anecdote, is funny because it allows Scioli to do his usual kinetic shtick ("covering" Jack Kirby) with an an otherwise quiet comic. The actual story, "So...Extracted" was drawn by Paul Westover in a full-color, slightly cartoony style that didn't take away Baylis' anxiety about his pet getting some dental work done, but it did take away some of potential melodrama from the strip. "So...Caffeinated" was simply a great yarn of an anecdote, drawn sketchily by the also-developing Thomas Boatwright. What Baylis is starting to do well is give his illustrators space to have fun with his scripts; Boatwright's exaggerated figurework and the way he uses colors helps exaggerate the humor of the piece.

Switching gears, "So...Escalated" is almost entirely in black & white and contains an excellent gag about Schindler's List. Drawn by Noah Van Sciver in his trademark scratchy, heavily cross-hatched style, Baylis balances the intense gravity of having seen the film with a friend in a theater with a joke that out of necessity lightens the mood. Finally, "So...Brisk", drawn by Lisa Rosalie Eisenberg, once again takes a fairly lightweight anecdote and gives it weight and structure with confident characterization and allowing the artist to do what she does best: pleasant, simple and expressive character work. The light purple wash balances the linework nicely, a nice complement to the story about Baylis initially ignoring what seems to be hokey advice from his mother, only to find that mom knows best (sometimes). Baylis made sure to assign stories that played to the strengths of the artists he worked with, something that Harvey Pekar did so well for so long.

Salad Days, and Simple Routines #14-15, by J.P. Coovert.If Shapiro's work is about revealing bigger truths about herself through anecdotes, Harbin's are about how hard it is to communicate in a meaningful way, and Baylis' are a way of expanding anecdotes into vignettes, then Coovert's comics have are largely about being present and expressing gratitude for those moments that inspire joy. Coovert hasn't drawn nearly as much attention as other grads of the Center for Cartoon Studies, in part because his output has been steady but simple. His work isn't boundary-pushing or revolutionary, but rather focuses in on craft, character and the electric feeling of aesthetic & personal connections. Coovert gives the reader that in small doses in Simple Routines, which mirrors Harbin's work in the way it details going to conventions, visiting friends and amusing interactions with his wife. Coovert doesn't use comics as a form of therapy or a way of venting frustrations; instead, this is a graphic document of the ways in which his life is fun and rewarding in any number of ways. There's an utter lack of pretentiousness as Coovert flits from anecdote to anecdote: he's a happy, well-adjusted guy who loves his wife, accepts his limitations and tries to patiently expand his horizons as an artist.

At the same time, there's an almost child-like glee with how he sees the world, even as the understanding creeps in that he's not a kid anymore. That feeling is explored in Salad Days, a story about spending a weekend with a childhood friend, with the idea that they'll spend the weekend eating pizza, playing video games and drinking soda. The comic is rife with asides about the compromises they're making in their everyday, responsible lives while wishing they could do exactly what they want to do, all the time. Wistfulness begins to dominate the discourse of the comic until Coovert's character decides that they should tip over a port-a-john as a nod to their days together as boys when they used to get into mischief. That leads to an inadvertent, frantic scamper away from a passing police cruiser, with Coovert realizing that he can't get in trouble for something so dumb. They manage to get away with it, literally reaching for the stars as they hide out by a river, only to find them out of reach. It's a sweet moment that brings presentness into their friendship, taking them out of pure nostalgia and creating a new, thrilling moment of connection. Sure, that moment came about through a juvenile act, but that act was a symbolic corrective for nostalgia. As always, Coovert's simple line and clear design sense made these and his journal comics quite pleasant to look at; his use of color in Salad Days is crisp and understated. I'm not precisely sure what kind of cartoonist he's going to evolve into at this point; I know he'll be illustrating some work for First Second, but I'm not quite sure what sort of writer he's going to be. It's obvious that he'll apply his finely-honed craft to whatever he does.

Autobio Minis: Harbin, Boyce, Taylor, Gennis

Time to check in on the world of autobio minicomics:

The Melinderly #1, by Melinda Tracy Boyce. This full-color minicomic is the end result of a Kickstarter campaign. The Austin-based Boyce reminds me a lot of Vanessa Davis, both in the way she uses a slightly cartoony, painted style and the upbeat nature of her strips. Boyce's mission seems to be capturing magical moments on paper, like the events of "Drinkapalooza", a meandering story about a funny drinking game that involves adding bizarre articles of clothing where its participants wind up going to a party. The inebriated characters proceed to become the life of the party, even as Boyce hints at their slight obnoxiousness. "I Got You Something" reminds me the most of Davis, in that it's a strip about her mother and her gift-giving quirks that winds up with quite a punchline. Boyce makes great use of color (watercolors?) in her comics, giving herself a freckly, apple-cheeked complexion that's the cute anchor in a comic filled with cute-looking characters. Her use of detail in her stories gives them some nice comedic depth, like drawing herself, hiding in the bushes and smoking an apple bong at home. "Night of the Wonderful Wheatpaste" is an account of her boyfriend and another friend accompanying her on a late-night graffiti session, using home-made paste to put up art in the city. It's the essence of her work: distilling and capturing the sort of tiny moments one experiences in one's youth. The first chapter in her only fictional story, "Lustwander", establishes a very attractive food blogger with a video game-playing lump of a boyfriend who receives a secret admirer's love note. Boyce stacks the deck by making her character irresistible and her boyfriend a sexless lump, but we'll see where she takes this. It's clear that Boyce is as close to a fully-formed talent as I've seen in a young cartoonist, one with a strong and sweet voice with a knack for pleasing, low-stakes storytelling.

Diary Comics 3, by Dustin Harbin. I tend to say the same thing about Harbin's comics every time I review them: he has a great deal of talent but is still trying to figure out what he wants to say as an artist. His diary comics, which conclude with this third volume, seem to have helped him a great deal in this process. A daily diary comic can help artists process their feelings, hopes and worries even if that deeper conversation mostly takes place in asides or deflections. In his strips, Harbin portrays his depression as a heavily hatched cloud that surrounds him as well as a shadowy other self that paralyzes him. There's an implication that he's literally trying to outrun his own depression at times, which can be difficult when one's career is both sedentary and solitary. The routine of a daily strip, even one that's polished up after the fact, takes away from the kind of preciousness and perfectionism that can doom an artist's productivity.

Harbin has two chief virtues as a cartoonist: he's funny and he's a superb caricaturist--especially of himself.  The big-eared, snaggletoothed, fuzzy-faced and gangly self-caricature is a delight to follow across the page. Despite his battles with depression, there's a light-hearted quality to all of his comics, especially the convention reports. Those positively glow with optimism and the thrill of camaraderie with a group of cartoonists he obviously admires but is still trying to understand how he fits in with them. One thing that comes across in this comic is his sense of gratitude to people like his publisher Anne Koyama and friend Kate Beaton, both of whom have boosted his confidence level simply by encouraging him. I'm not quite sure what Harbin being "there" would look like at this point. He's clearly a humorist at heart, but I'm still not sure what kind of fictional storyteller he is, especially for a longer narrative. If I had to guess, I'd say his best shot at success would be in adapting and expanding upon some of his childhood stories (his childhood caricature is irresistible). I just get the feeling that it's all going to click for him and he'll come out with something that really turns heads.

Relics, by Whit Taylor. Taylor is another emerging talent who's trying to figure herself out as an artist. This 26-page mini is her longest sustained effort, one that allows her to think about her past while her future is in flux. It's a simple idea: a trip to the magnificent Museum of Natural History in New York with her boyfriend. The trip allows her to muse upon her many worries while trying to put them in perspective. She thinks about her parents divorcing and wondering if people were meant to be monogamous for a lifetime, especially after one's offspring "become viable". She ponders the recent and sudden death of her grandfather and wishes she was part of a society that allowed itself more space to mourn. She considers her own creeping depression and anxiety and fantasizes a bit about animals not having to face existential depression. Above all, she wonders about her place in the world after graduating with an advanced degree in a brutal job environment. There are no answers to be found here, but she clearly draws inspiration from the "buck up!" quotes from Theodore Roosevelt and the show at the planetarium, along with the rest of the museum. "It's important to get outside of yourself", she notes, as she takes comfort in being reminded of her cosmic insignificance as well as the fact that her own existence is as important as anyone else's. While still limited as a draftsman (Taylor goes for a realistic style but doesn't get there), this is her best effort to date, as she clearly spent a lot of time in getting across the details of the museum as well as its incredible scope. The success of this comic hinged upon her ability to do that, and even someone who's never made it to the Museum of Natural History will get a sense of just how vast and impressive it truly is.. Taylor notes that she's going to concentrate on doing non-fiction in the near future, and this thoughtful and forthright comic is an excellent grace note for her early autobio career.

Spaz! #5, by Emi Gennis. Gennis is a sharp cartoonist who can go from naturalistic to cartoony styles with great ease.  Even her own self-caricature changes from story to story. Gennis' specialty is mining her own neuroses and obsessions for comedic purposes. For example, her ongoing series from the Wikipedia List of Unusual Deaths can vary from ironically amusing to downright chilling, especially the infant who died because her parents were off at an internet cafe, playing a game in which they raised a magical child. Contrasting that with her ongoing battles with the anthropomorphic Zygote that keeps urging her to have children before it's too late reflects her own obvious fears as well as the way she feels the desire to be a mother. Even as Zygote gives Emi a makeover and gets her tarted up to go to a club, Gennis uses her bug-eyed, cartoony self-caricature to deflect the seriousness of the subject matter. In "You Know What's Fucked Up?", she further explores this discomfort by discussing the mental illness called Munchausen's-By-Proxy, in which mothers deliberately but secretly harm their children to get sympathy from others. Here, she uses a realistic style but involves herself as the narrator, once again exploring the way that becoming a parent can either reveal or transform someone in a monstrous fashion. "Paul" is the flipside of this fear, as she recounts a younger boy she knew in high school who wound up murdering his father. Gennis lightens things up a bit with a strip about the various kinds of potential roommates who advertise on the internet, before concluding with another death story: this time of a guest who drowned at a party attended entirely by lifeguards. I love the way that Gennis fixates on the ways things that we deem to be certain and dependable are frequently the things we should trust the least, and the subtext of the comic is her own fear of being put into a position where she's any kind of authority. For a funny comic, there's a lot of bracing material from this very interesting young cartoonist.

Autobio/Diary Roundup: Dabaie, Wertz, Baylis, Spina, Marcej, Harbin

Let's take a look at a variety of diary and autobiographical minicomics.

He Also Has Drills For Hands!, by Marguerite Dabaie. This is a self-curated collection of Dabaie's best daily strips over the span of a year, and the result is a minicomic that leaves the reader wanting more. These are drawn in a sketchbook and combine the intimacy and loose feel of such a drawing with a surprising level of detail and some attractive decorative features. In her Hookah Girl comics, Dabaie isn't necessarily known for her sense of humor (though there are funny moments), but her daily strip is far more likely to end with a punchline of some kind. The title of the strip refers to one of her childhood crushes--a character from a video game with drills for hands. Dabaie throws in bits and pieces from her childhood, creativity, daily life, her then-fiancee (and now husband) and a tale about inadvertently meeting John Cusack. In the selection of comics she published in this mini, it seems that she takes great pains to tell an entertaining story of some kind in her strips, rather than just focus on relating particular quotidian events. That said, Dabaie does reveal bits and pieces about her life through stories about her grandmother and things she sees on the streets of New York--it's just that every strip has the same slightly comic and exaggerated flavor, heightened by the charming immediacy & roughness of her line.

Spinadoodles: The Second Year, by Sam Spina. This is the latest big batch of diary comics from Spina, a cartoonist who's clearly attempting the daunting task of getting better in public. In over a year and a half worth of daily strips (he never missed a day), Spina tries different art styles and moves a bit away from the obvious influence of James Kochalka. The overall experience of reading this was not as rewarding as reading the samplers from Marcej and Dubaie, two cartoonists who pared down their strips to a "best-of" selection. Spina chose to steam ahead with every last strip, no matter if they were half-assed, uninspired or repetitive. This mini is a document not only of his life, but also of his development as an artist. It wouldn't be quite truthful to omit strips done while he was dead tired from a long day at work, but the resulting reading experience was a bit of a slog at times. This is not to say that there weren't highlights; indeed, about 1 out of every 4 strips either landed a decent laugh, contained a personal revelation or had an interesting drawing. Given that there are 400 or so strips (with 4 crammed to a page), that's still a fairly solid showing. And some of the best strips (like the ones where he shows snippets of arguments with his girlfriend) are all the more effective because their tone is so unlike his other comics. The strips that work best are usually the ones that look the least like Kochalka's; that is, strips with less line weight (especially in the panels) that rely more on the basic figures rather than textures.

One thing that surprised me was that after a certain point, the rhythm of the strip started to grab me. It wasn't so much that the individual entries became noticeably stronger over time, but rather the kind of observations Spina was making started to become appealing on their own. Spina portrays himself neither as a deep thinker or someone who's especially introspective, but the raw surface energy of his observations has a propulsive quality. Eventually, Spina's simple caricature of himself (big, angular nose and sharp chin), frequently childlike enthusiasm, and self-deprecatory charm leave more of an impression than any particular anecdote. Projects like this eventually tend to have diminishing returns (Spina himself complains about how much more productive he might be if he wasn't doing a daily strip in one entry) unless they become one's life's work, ala Ben Snakepit. I don't think this is true of Spina, so I imagine there will come a point where what he's getting out of drawing these strips is far exceeded by the amount of time and effort he puts into them.

So Buttons #4, by Jonathan Baylis and various artists. Baylis has been writing autobio comics drawn by others for the past couple of years, but this issue of So Buttons represents his biggest leap forward in all respects. First off, the format and coloring of this mini are clean, attractive and reflect a lot of attention to detail. Second, the ordering of the stories was deliberate (as Baylis notes in his introduction) and far more effective than in past issues. There's a beautiful flow of styles as Baylis roughly moves in chronological order. Third, everyone in his roster of artists did a fine job. More on that in a moment, but Baylis' past contributors in particular have made real strides in their storytelling. Lastly, Baylis has finally learned to rein himself in a bit. A huge flaw for many writers who don't draw (especially those that do autobio) is that they tend to over-write their stories. They simply don't know how to let the visuals of the story work as an equal partner. There's also a tendency to ramble on for too many pages instead of distilling an anecdote to its essence, the way that Harvey Pekar did so well. Baylis still has a tendency to overexplain the significance of certain events rather than letting the event speak for itself, but that tendency is lessened when he writes shorter stories. The fact that the stories in this volume were all between two to four pages seems to be a key as to why they were so effective.

Much of this issue is an ode to filmmakers that have meaning for Baylis, often in connection to specific life events. "So...Chalk It Up To Konglateral Damage", drawn by Thomas Boatwright, is interesting because Baylis associated the movie with Thanksgiving--and that he never got to see it all the way through. "So...Stranger Than Parrot Eyes" (also drawn by Boatwright) is a more cartoonish story about Baylis seeing director Jim Jarmusch on the street. Baylis fantasizes about hanging out with him and his "Sons of Lee Marvin" friends while ruminating on what appeals to him about film and what turns him off. Noah Van Sciver draws "So...Loyal", a history of his baseball fandom. Van Sciver eschews a literal approach in terms of the imagery he uses to illustrate Baylis' narrative in favor of a more whimsical take. It's an approach I haven't seen before in a Baylis comic, and it works. Fred Hembeck draws a very funny story about Baylis' internship at Marvel Comics and how he was put in a position to correct John Romita, Sr. on a piece of art. That there are so many stories in this issue (eleven plus a bonus page from Van Sciver) gives it a nice weight and denseness; the issue turns out to be greater than the sum of its parts.

My World And Welcome To It, by Richard Marcej. Marcej is a toy designer and occasional cartoonist who decided to do a diary comic as a way of getting himself to draw every day. The subject matter is mostly standard diary work: movies he sees, bathroom habits, notable sights and events from his life. He is, however, extremely open about his life in terms of his dating habits and family tragedies, treating them with respect but also with the same level of detail he uses in his other strips. What sets this strip apart from similar work is the fact that each entry is cleverly composed and extremely well drawn. Marcej uses a single large panel frame and varies the strip's internal structure depending on what sort of story he's telling. For things like movie reviews, he splits the page up into four panels, underneath the date and a title for the strip. In the strip above, a single image dominates the entire page. In other strips, he'll lead the reader in three different panels that bleed into each other. Marcej pays special attention to clarity in his storytelling while adding a lot of detail such as hatching, cross-hatching and carefully-rendered structures. Marcej is also a fine letterer, a crucial but overlooked aspect of diary comics--especially for wordy artists like himself. The clarity and simply pleasing quality of his lettering makes even the most text-dominated strips nice to look at. Marcej isn't exactly being innovative with this strip, but it's one of the best examples of this sub-genre.

The Great Pretenders And Other Stories, by Julia Wertz. Some of these stories have appeared in past Wertz minicomics, but this mini is the best collection of Wertz's new trend in storytelling until her new book comes out. All of the stories here are from Wertz's childhood and they're entirely unsentimental, raw takes on the ways in which children parse the adult world. There's a reference in the title story to a baby in Wertz's family dying when she was just a child, leading to a game with her older brother wherein he pretended he was his own fictional twin brother. There's a running theme in Wertz's comics of wanting to be someone else, wanting a different life and identity. There's a tension between being a near-solipsist and someone desperately craving meaningful interaction, and that conflict is evident in these childhood strips as well. Wertz has a constant sense of things not being quite right (like the amazing strip where she and her brother are momentarily excited that they might be getting a heat lamp for Christmas instead of a Nintendo video game system), and that feeling is hilariously warped through her own logic as a child. The dread that Wertz felt as a child also emerged in her anxiety over "killing" Jesus in a tea party game and living at the foot of a mountain that supposedly housed vicious flying monkeys. Wertz's bug-eyed drawings are getting more and more self-assured; she's found a clear, distinct and funny drawing style that works well for her.

The Doug Wright Awards 2011, by Dustin Harbin. This is a collection of the strips Harbin did at tcj.com earlier in 2011 as part of their Cartoonist's Diary series. It's essentially a love letter to Canada and its Doug Wright Awards, a ceremony honoring the best of English-language Canadian comics. Harbin is impressed by the simplicity (just four awards), sincerity and seriousness of the event. It's an event that everyone involved believes in, a group that includes the greater Canadian cultural community, not just comics. Harbin heaps on the praise a bit exorbitantly, though he's aware that his status as an outsider perhaps blinds him to Canada's flaws. That said, there's no question that Canada has produced some of comics' greatest artists over the past thirty years or so, and so an event like the Doug Wright Awards is certainly warranted. The real appeal of this comic is Harbin's remarkable skill as a caricaturist, really nailing artists like Chester Brown & Seth without belittling them.

Diary and Autobio Comics: Harbin, Kelberman, Taylor

Dharbin #1-2 Collected Edition and Diary Comics 2, by Dustin Harbin. The former minicomic is a collection of older work; the latter is Harbin's latest collection of diary comics and is published by Koyama Press. The difference between the two books is striking in a number of ways. The former book is a mixed bag in terms of content, mixing some great gags with some duds as well as several excellent autobiographical stories. The collected edition shows Harbin as a cartoonist just starting to get a handle on his talent and understanding of what is possible when he started to amp up his ambitiousness. Harbin's line is delicate to the point of wispiness and his character design is imaginative and funny. At times, he lays it on a bit too thick; his line sometimes gets fussy and overworked as unnecessary hatching and detail clogs up some strips. Harbin is at his best when he draws himself as a little kid, with a huge head and a single snaggletooth, looking like a weird cross between a Bil Keane kid and a James Kochalka character. His stories about his mother are all on point, as he reins in some of his fussiness to tell some of his clearer, more focused stories.



His SPX diaries are true treasures; while they tend to be a bit on the "inside baseball" side, Harbin's focus is really on the joys, pressures and sheer craziness of attending a con. Cartoonists are a naturally solitary lot, so the opportunity for compressing several months worth of partying and socializing in just three days is clearly intoxicating for Harbin, especially as this mini documents his slow integration into the small press community. Harbin's Diary #2 carries the common hallmarks of a diary zine, with a four panel grid constraint, quickly-drawn stories, a focus on quotidian and work details and a certain sense of repetitiveness. Harbin himself refers to diary strips as "the lowest form of comics", yet it's clear that these daily exercises have had a powerful effect on him as an artist.



Harbin's lively wit and whimsical nature inform these strips, adding life to the usual quotidian detail. Harbin is also bracingly honest, talking about the ways he battles depression while coming up with clever graphic solutions in depicting it. His strips about his girlfriend are playful and endearing without being treacly, as Harbin's m.o. of always keeping things light leavens any potential sentimentality in the happier strips, while preventing the heavier subjects from getting too morose. Harbin does occasionally go in for the quick and easy laugh a bit too often, though he does seem to be leaving behind some of the easier scatological gags that dominated his earlier work. More than anything, the sheer energy and enthusiasm Harbin has for comics is palpable in his work. He's still more of an artist that writes rather than a writer that draws, but drawing and writing dozens of pages of his own material is starting to hone his voice as a writer. His best work is clearly ahead of him, but he's already produced a lot of worthy comics.



Crocus, by Whit Taylor. Taylor introduces this comic as material she came up with after "a particularly rough and unproductive 1st winter in Boston", invoking the crocus as the first flower that blooms after winter. While there is certainly charm to be found in Taylor's voice and a certain energy in her character design, these comics definitely have the feel of an unpolished first crack at creating after a long hiatus. Taylor's line is crude but expressive, though I get the sense that she would like to be a better draftsman given the sorts of things she tries to draw. The way she overdraws and overscribbles at times is a common tell for young artists who aren't yet confident in their line. In that regard, Taylor needs to simplify her line; indeed, the pages that are talking heads are the most expressive and effective. Taylor has a knack for relating the juiciest, funniest parts of party conversations, and these are her best strips in terms of content. One story is about Taylor relating a weird comment she got after giving a blow-job; another is about Taylor and some female friends suggesting a "Princess Fantasy Wedding Party", going into great detail about cakes, clothes, cheesy party favors and bad music, only to get shot down by her male friends. Her "Shit I Won't Do Anymore" series is also pretty funny, though this was one area where I hoped for a funnier, clearer image and lettering to go with the gag. I'd be curious to see more of Taylor's work, especially since her sunny but sarcastic tone is a winning one.



The Regular Man #17-21, by Dina Kelberman. I thought I'd save a few of these for a stack so I could see the progression of ideas and images by Kelberman. While these comics are not explicitly autobiographical in terms of using her actual name and likeness, Kelberman has stated that these odd little comics emerge from her everyday life. #17 is really clever, as Kelberman draws on top of a schematic drawing of a series of shelves, drawing herself on shelves from top to bottom as though they were panels. Each of these comics finds Kelberman's tubular, tousled-haired stand-in struggling once again with engaging the world. She worries when it's a nice day and friends don't contact her. She resists going out on nice days and ignores a thirsty friend on a hot day when she creates art. Her other stand-in of sorts apologizes to a friend after she got drunk and then learns that learns that it was no big deal, but worries that if she's no longer an asshole, "then who am I?" Finally, she mockingly pats herself on the back for reading a book instead of tooling around on the internet, only to have the internet take on a fuzzy personification that hectors her.


Kelberman uses a dizzying array of styles, splashing color across panels in an almost abstract expressionist manner to alter each strip's emotional tone, drawing over other material, varying paints on the page (and sometimes using paint for scrawled lettering), or changing the very background of the comic (in one issue, we see Kelberman's sketchbook laid out on a table, her hand at the bottom of the page as she takes a photo of it). Kelberman's comics are constantly fascinating to me because decorative, narrative and formal aspects all have an equal standing on the page. There's a story she's telling through dialogue, she tells it using all sorts of crazy visual devices, and each page has a half-dozen odd decorative flourishes. That's especially true of the lettering, which often rolls into little circles and other shapes, bursts on the page in vibrant colors and also gets across Kelberman's feelings. The series will end soon and Kelberman will collect these strips into a book, which is exciting because more readers will have a chance to get their hands on this.