Mini-Comics: Pyle, Meuse, King/Vayda, Kerschbaum

Boatfire #1, by Kevin C. Pyle. When you read a comic by Pyle, one can be assured of two things: that it will be thoroughly and impeccably researched, and that it will have a powerfully argued point of view. This one is about death, and in particular its fetishization and cultural impact during certain critical periods during history. Pyle fixates on the idea of the momento mori in art, and how during the Black Plague era in Europe in the 16th century, this kind of imagery became highly prevalent. In essence, the images were reminders that in all aspects of life, death was lurking. Pyle then makes the connection between art created during the plague and how punk rose during an era in the late 70s and early 80s when nuclear annihilation was still considered a real possibility. He also connects punk to 1950s-era nuclear paranoia and how the cultural reaction in the 80s was in many ways a recapitulation of the 50s. By way of fascinating anecdote, he recounts living in Lawrence, KS, during the filming of the landmark TV movie The Day After, which depicts life after nuclear war. Pyle later posits that it was punk's very denial of death through nihilism that allowed him and many others to process the unthinkable and come out the other side. He then connects that to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, two works of art that look squarely into the void and acknowledge what it means. In an incredibly clever panel, he has a group of kids blasting out a loud song on a road trip, only it's the words to The Wasteland ("This is the way the world ends..."). By embracing the idea that the fragile structure of society might one day end, it reduces the anxiety of losing one's hold on that as the foundation of sanity. Pyle is a smart, clever cartoonist in terms of his visuals, depicting himself as an anthropomorphic vulture throughout the comic, because what better animal could there be in terms of circling around death.

Drawing Is Hard, by Adam Meuse. This talented artist from Cary is one I've always thought was deserving of wider recognition. His latest mini is the best distillation of Lynda Barry's "two questions" I've seen with regard to the creative process. The two questions are asked by the artist regarding their work: "Is this good? Does this suck?". In this mini, we see the artist in front of an empty sheet of paper as their brain pulls up a seat beside him. The design of the brain is both cute and grotesque, with eye stalks sticking out of its brain-body and tiny arms and legs. The brain used a subtle but powerfully manipulative and persuasive line of argument that would make Socrates proud, in which he tries to make the artist quit drawing. He even got the heart to come over and tell him he didn't "deserve to make anything good. You're not really a good person." Any doubt that the artist expresses as to what ideas to follow are seized upon by the brain as more reasons why he should quit. The mini ends with the brain going to bed and the heart furtively whispering encouragement. Meuse here gets at the essence of the struggle of the artist, because no one can argue themselves into being creative or feeling their art is worthwhile. While cognition is involved in making art, it's not a cognitive process per se. Instead, it's something more akin to a mystical or subconscious experience, just as experiencing art is. It requires a deliberate choice to make, but once the pen hits the paper and the tactile, visceral experience of drawing begins once again, that's when suspension of judgment (a purely cognitive process) ebbs. As Meuse hints at, the brain can manipulate emotions to trick the artist into not creating, often using the act of creation as a referendum on one's very worthiness as a human being. Meuse notes that this is only a trick, however, and when one can separate feelings from judgment, it's possible to pry oneself away from the two questions. For a simple, cute comic done with an open page format with four panels a page, there's a remarkable amount of complexity to be found here.

Next Week In New York City!, by John Kerschbaum. Kerschbaum is one of my favorite humorists, combining dense hatching with a goofy, cartoony approach to figure design. He uses satire, gross-out humor, wordplay and occasionally oblique imagery in telling his jokes, but it's fair to city that he loves jokes involving city life, and New York City in particular. This mini is a collection of four-panel strips that "predict" upcoming life in NYC, with most of the gags being specific and provincial. So there are jokes about local politicians (the Anthony Weiner joke is pretty clever), alternate side of the street parking and the cicada invasion that require some knowledge of the city, but there are also plenty of gags about social media, pollen and art--along with scatological jokes. Kerschbaum is not at his funniest when given these kinds of constrictions, but he still manages to craft some truly excellent pages, like the gag about sneakers hanging from electrical worries (a familiar image), then an umbrella hanging, then a plastic bag--and closes with a barefoot guy with an armful of groceries getting rained on. Most of the jokes in this mini aren't as good as that, though Kerschbaum compensates by hammering the reader with gags in every panel and even employing some running gags.

Left Empty Book One, by Alan King and Jamie Vayda. The King/Vayda team usually write stories about King's wild days and crazy anecdotes about sex, drugs, drinking and rock 'n roll. Vayda's dense and cartoony line combines heavy stylization (often verging on the grotesque and/or absurd) with thick hatching and cross-hatching that creates a moody but rubbery atmosphere. Usually, this is used to depict scenes of debauchery. In this comic, we follow a clearly upset man coming home and drinking til he blacks out and Th breaking down in tears. The first half of the story follows him dealing with loss and trying to self medicate, and the second half goes a bit further back in time when we learn it's the writer himself, and that his wife suddenly grew ill and died. The exaggerated and even trippy imagery that Vayda uses was put to use illustrating nightmares and emotional breakdowns, and it worked surprisingly well. Beyond a simple expression of loss, this series promises to be about the ways in which grief and even mourning are not one-time experiences, but rather are experienced over and over again--with the pain being fresh each time. Medical bills and old greeting cards are artifacts of that grief, transporting the mourning individual back to the original time and feeling of sadness that is so profound that it is somatic in nature--tremors, wracking sobs, etc.

The John Kerschbaum Interview

[Please note: This interview originally appeared in The Comics Journal #295.]

In a perfect and just world, John Kerschbaum would be one of its most famous cartoonists. In the world of comics, he instead carries the status of cult favorite, a cartoonist’s cartoonist. One reason his work is treasured among the discerning few is that there’s a surface blandness to his drawings that belie their content. His work becomes all the more jarring when he suddenly injects violent and viscerally powerful scenes depicted in that same cozy, cartoony style. Kerschbaum’s work demands full engagement from his readers, often crafting punchlines that are not immediately obvious unless one follows the verbal and visual clues he provides very closely. He is a gag craftsman of the first order, a total master of panel and page composition as well as the integration of word and image. Above all else, Kerschbaum trades in deception, luring the reader in with one set of expectations and then brutally subverting those expectations repeatedly.


Kerschbaum began his career trying to become a syndicated cartoonist with a number of false starts. He did freelance cartoons for any number of national publications in the early 90s and even had a collection of strips published (IF NEW YORK CITY WAS THE WORLD). In 1996, he received a Xeric grant for his one-man humor anthology, THE WIGGLY READER. Attendees of shows like SPX or MoCCA will recall a stream of hilarious, attractively-designed minis he crafted for those shows. TIMBERDOODLE was nominated for an Ignatz award and may be one of the most memorable minicomics of the last decade, all about a young boy named Wally Timberdoodle who happened to be born with an enormous wooden cock. His most recent creations, Petey and Pussy, were finally published in the format they deserve by Fantagraphics. The book is anchored by his longest sustained comics narrative, a dense collection of brutal gags that leads up to a final, sublime punchline.


Beginnings

CLOUGH: Where are you from originally? Did you grow up drawing? Were you encouraged in this pursuit by your family?

KERSCHBAUM: Farmingdale, Long Island. I drew a lot as a kid. My mom had been an art teacher. I recall getting a lot of encouragement both at home and in school.

CLOUGH: Did you grow up reading comics? What sort of things had the biggest impact on you as a child? Am I correct in assuming that MAD magazine, and Will Elder in particular, were influences?

KERSCHBAUM: I didn't read a lot of superhero comics. I was into Spider-Man for a few years; they sold it at a local drugstore. I always looked forward to getting the next issue. But at some point, I think Marvel started to weave the story line from the one comic into several other titles and in order to follow the story, you had to buy all of them. That annoyed me and I sorta gave it up.

I loved MAD - my favorite was Don Martin. I'd say he's probably my greatest influence. But I enjoyed the whole magazine - the fold- in, the movie and television parodies - Jack Davis and Mort Drucker wowed me. In my early teens, I started reading National Lampoon and Heavy Metal. I really loved the cartoonists in National Lampoon – Gahan Wilson, S. Gross, Bobby London, and Shary Flenniken. While looking in the humor section of the local bookstore for an S. Gross collection, I found one of B. Kliban's paperbacks and spent years tracking the rest of those down. Somewhere in there I stumbled upon Edward Gorey, too. I also enjoyed reading the comics in the newspaper.

CLOUGH: What sort of schooling or training did you receive in art?

KERSCHBAUM: I studied illustration at Parsons School of Design.


CLOUGH: Was the training you received there useful to you as an artist?

KERSCHBAUM: I learned a lot of stuff and met a lot of people who affected my career later. It was definitely a positive experience for me. I also met my future wife there, and it doesn’t get much better than that. She was also in the illustration program.

CLOUGH: What other cultural influences played a part in shaping you as an artist?

KERSCHBAUM: Do movies and television count as culture? I loved Monty Python. Saturday Night Live introduced me to the stand-up of Steve Martin (comedically, he was a big influence). Get Smart was a favorite. I'd stay up late to watch The Twilight Zone. That was awesome to me. I would guess that's where my affinity for twisty surprise endings came from. I really enjoyed cartoons like Looney Tunes, Rocky & Bullwinkle Show, and Pink Panther. As a kid I really wanted to be an animator. I studied those shows and tried to draw like them.

CLOUGH: When did you first start cartooning seriously?

KERSCHBAUM: In the late eighties, I tried pretty hard to be a cartoonist in The New Yorker. I was very serious about it for a while.

CLOUGH: How much drawing are you able to do on a daily basis that isn't directly related to your comics or illustration work? Does the physical act of drawing bring you pleasure?

KERSCHBAUM: I doodle occasionally but I rarely draw for the sake of drawing anymore. If I have some free time it's more likely I'll try to write.


CLOUGH: Do you consider yourself an artist that writes, a writer that draws, or neither?

KERSCHBAUM: I have a lot more experience in drawing than writing. I feel like I’m still learning what I’m doing as a writer, and so it’s more of a challenge. It can be fun. Writing for me is about trying to create a spark of an idea, or stepping away from an idea and coming back to it with a fresh eye.

Professional Work

CLOUGH: The earliest dated strips I've seen from you come from 1992 and were reprinted in If New York City Was the World (Citadel Press). What kind of comics or illustration work did you do prior to this time? Were you making a living as an illustrator before you started selling your comic strips, or did you do something else for a living?

KERSCHBAUM: During the nineties, I worked as a staff artist at United Media. I did the corrections on the syndicated comic strips (United Features & NEA). Back before all the art was digital, the artists would mail their originals to UM where the editors would have a go at them. I then made any corrections on the original art before it was sent to production.
Around the same time, I did a lot of freelance illustration for the Village Voice and Associated Press, among a few others. The AP relationship led to a lot of work for the short-lived sports daily, The National. They were fun to work for and paid well too!I was also actively submitting gag cartoons to various magazines like SPY, The New Yorker, and National Lampoon where, by that time, S. Gross was the cartoon editor. I freaked out the day I got home and found a message on my answering machine from him. It was hysterical. He sounded just like I imagined he would. I'm pretty sure I still have the tape from the answering machine the message he left for me.

CLOUGH: You've made a number of attempts at becoming a syndicated artist. Can you describe what went into making strips like Cartoon Boy (a superhero parody), the original Petey & Pussy strips, and Well Whatta You Know?

KERSCHBAUM: I did Cartoon Boy when I was still working at United Media. I wanted to create a good continuity/adventure strip that was also a gag a day. But I also included every current comic strip taboo. So there's smoking, sexual innuendo, and naughty puns… but all G- rated, really. It began as a joke but I kind of grew to like it. I submitted it to all the big syndicates - no takers. I'm actually considering giving it another shot. Well Whatta You Know? was just an attempt to do a fun and educational strip for kids, something, I felt, the comics pages lacked. Well, what do I know? The magazine I initially did Petey & Pussy for folded before it was launched. So I tried to self-syndicate the original strips to alternative weeklies. Creative Loafing ran it for a few weeks but I think readers complained.

CLOUGH: You've gone back and forth in your career from doing comics & illustration work for children and then doing incredibly visceral, profane, violent humor. Yet, a similar voice can be heard in each set of strips. How do you approach these two different worlds when you're given a particular assignment vs. your own work?

KERSCHBAUM: I enjoy doing both. They're kind of the same but different. They both pose a problem or a set of problems to be solved. With an illustration assignment, my main objective is to make the editor or art director happy - I'm a hired gun. So basically, you do what they tell you. And there's usually a deadline.

I have no real deadlines with my own work so I can shelve something indefinitely when I can't figure it out. And I get to be more self-indulgent. I get to do what I want. Otherwise, the basic approach to each is the same. And when you're doing work for kids you just leave out the cursing… and tits - no tits.

CLOUGH: Something that's remarkable about your style, both in terms of art and writing, is that it seems to have arrived fully-formed in those early-90s strips. The dense cross-hatching, the layers of jokes, the interplay between verbal and visual humor, the slack- jawed character design--it's all there. What went into developing your own personal style and voice? How long did it take you to reach that point? How long did it take before you became fully comfortable with your final, published output on the page?

KERSCHBAUM: This a tough question because I've never really consciously tried to draw with a certain look or style. I just keep drawing until it looks done. By nature, I'm a bit of a nitpicker and for good or bad, I think that's reflected in the art (and the writing, I guess). Just recently, I had a couple of experiences where someone commented on some aspect of the way I draw like, "Oh, yeah, I know your stuff, you draw everybody with big overbites!" And I had to think for a second before realizing, "Oh yeah! I guess I do!"

CLOUGH: Do you ever revisit old works?

KERSCHBAUM: I rarely revisit past projects. I have to re-read the mini-comics whenever I make a new batch (y'know, to check the page order). There are a few things that them make me smile but mostly, I find it difficult to look at old stuff. It usually takes me so long to finish a comic, I've already looked at it and read it dozens of times. So once it's done - I'm done. I must admit I'm enjoying flipping through the new Petey & Pussy book. I think Jacob Covey did a great job with the design – it's a fun little package.

CLOUGH: Dissecting what makes something funny is sort of like killing the goose that laid the golden egg, but here goes: How do you decide to layer the jokes in your strips? Some of your strips provide information that leads up to an ultimate punchline, while others deliver smaller punchlines in each panel. Others, like Timberdoodle, do both.

KERSCHBAUM: I'm not sure I have an answer for this either. There's no science to it that I'm aware of. I mean, there might be… but I don't give it much thought. I just write and rewrite stuff until it makes sense. The jokes kind of write themselves. My immediate goals when I write are, 1. Make it funny; Pack in as many gags as I can. This is probably due to that part of my personality that makes me crosshatch the hell out of everything. And, 2. Challenge the reader; force them to pay attention and maybe turn back a couple pages to check and see if they really saw what they think they saw. I like a punchline or ending that changes all of the previous jokes, sheds new light on them and makes them funny again only in a new way. It's also why I hope people can re-read my comics and laugh at a joke they missed the first time.

CLOUGH: There's often a tension in your strips between subtle and over- the-top. A strip with a lot of violence will often carry a punchline that needs to be carefully deciphered by the observant reader. Do you worry that some of your punchlines will go over inobservant readers' heads?

KERSCHBAUM: Yeah, I worry sometimes, but what can you do? Some people won't get it, some will get it and not like it. It's not everyone's cup of tea.


Tools

CLOUGH: Have you always used that intense cross-hatched style? How long does it take you to finish the average comics page?

KERSCHBAUM: I think it's grown more intense over the years but that wasn't a conscious decision. I just draw until it looks done. It's hard to say how long an "average comics page" takes. I don't generally work on one page start to finish. I've always followed a basic routine with comics. I begin with my penciling, and I roughly layout the whole book. I then go back and ink all the lettering and word balloons. I go through the whole book and tighten up the rough pencil drawings. I use a lot of tracing paper to draw and re-draw stuff and place it in the panel exactly where I want it. If there's a lot going on in a panel, I'll often draw all of the elements separately on tracing paper and then transfer each one to the panel. It's sort of like setting a stage, if that makes sense. After that I do the majority of the inking – all the major stuff. Then I erase any pencil peeking through, go back to the beginning again and do all the crosshatching and fill in the solid blacks if there are any. Lastly, I do all the whiting out and correcting. I use a lot of white-out. It's a time-consuming process that I increasingly feel the need to streamline and simplify. I'm having trouble doing that though.


CLOUGH: What do you draw with, in terms of pencils, pens, brushes, etc?

KERSCHBAUM: All sorts of stuff, rapidographs, brushes, etc. but I do most of the inking with a regular old Pigma Micron. I go through them quickly because I have a tendency to break the points coaxing a slight thick and thin out of the line.

I use a quality watercolor brush (size 0 or 1) to do my whiting out. My white-out of choice is Pelikan graphic white, which I always have a hard time finding. It's not great for inking over but that's not such an issue for me (large mistakes I usually patch over and redraw). I use the white-out to draw with. This particular one flows nicely off the brush (when mixed to the right consistency) and is really opaque even when it's thinned down.


CLOUGH: I've always liked your use of color--there's a dense, saturated quality to your hues. How long have you been working with color, and how did you develop your palette?

KERSCHBAUM: Thanks. Funny, this is something I feel I've always struggled with – seems like my color palette is all over the place. Most of my coloring is done in Photoshop these days. I used to use watercolors to paint, but since I never really learned the proper techniques it always was a bit of a crap shoot.


CLOUGH: In your illustration program in college, did you learn other art techniques? Print-making, photography, sculpture, etc? What impact did learning these other techniques have on your aesthetic and career as an artist?

KERSCHBAUM: I took intros to photography and printmaking. I didn't take to either really – too much process. Too many rules and ways to screw up. In printmaking, I was a few shy of the required finished assignments so I actually made a mini-comic as a sort of make-up assignment. I passed the class – barely. I think the teacher would have preferred I had silkscreened it rather than run it off on a Xerox machine…


The Works Themselves

CLOUGH: Building on that last question, can you go into how you developed the ultimate punchlines for your minicomic "Dumb Cluck" and your story from the Wind anthology (Bries)? The former forces the reader to very carefully examine what is being said and how you subvert their immediate expectations, while the latter relies on a subtle but prominent visual cue to explain the ultimate punchline.

KERSCHBAUM: I'm afraid it's hard for me to recall exactly the origins of either of these stories. But I remember for the Wind anthology, I wanted to do a story that wasn't obviously about the wind. Maybe even make the casual reader wonder, "How's that about the wind?!?" But it is - it's all about the wind.

With Dumb Cluck, I set out to create something for kids because they always come up to your table at a convention and most of what I had was inappropriate. So I just set out to do a little riff on a typical kids story. The only other thing I can recall about it is that it came to me very quickly. I wrote, paced, and drew it very quickly without any rewriting, something quite unusual for me. One other interesting thing about Dumb Cluck – at least to me – is that kids always seem to get it right away and adults do not.

CLOUGH: You've done a lot of commercial work over the years. How much do you enjoy working for Nickelodeon, DC Comics, Dolphin Log Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, etc? These strips seem very much "you", even if it was for another entity.

KERSCHBAUM: I've been fortunate to have some fun clients. Nick Magazine, Klutz Books, and DC are great to work with - the assignments are always rewarding and challenging. Most clients want the stuff to be "you". Hopefully, that's why they hired you. But again, ultimately, you do whatever the client asks you to do.

CLOUGH: Your "Shock of Recognition" strip for the Comics Journal Special edition has one of your best punchlines and best uses of subverting expectations. Have you always enjoyed drawing/reading violent humor? What do you like to give your comics such a sense of viscerality? Is it your intent to shock while provoking laughter?

KERSCHBAUM: This strip isn't even that old and I can't remember how I came to it. I know I struggled with the assignment initially because I wasn't sure I'd ever experienced a "shock of recognition." I generally shy away from writing about myself. I'm pretty sure the ending just came to me and then I worked out the pacing and set-up. Even though it's obviously a fictional story, it ended up being a fair dramatization of my "a-ha" moment.

I think I've always found that type of humor funny. I strongly suspect there is a close connection between fear and laughter in the brain. I remember seeing An American Werewolf in London and thinking how cool it was. It had me laughing one second and cringing the next, then it would have you doing both at the same time. The funny bits in that movie made the scary bits scarier and vice versa.

CLOUGH: Another thing I've noticed in your work is that you love to contrast word and image, with one undermining the other for comedic effect. Your "Cartoonist Anonymous" strip is one long series of self-deprecatory jokes merged with blowhard text, while "Little Billy Blumpkin" matches up fairy tale-text about a snail speeding away with panel after panel of a snail barely moving. What is it about subverting reader expectations that appeals to you as a humorist?

KERSCHBAUM: Yeah, this is just a gimmick, I suppose. I think there's something funny about saying or implying one thing and then blatantly doing or showing another. The contradiction creates a tension that, hopefully, you can generate some laughs out of.

CLOUGH: I've always looked forward to seeing your Christmas-themed comics. "Snowballs" shows us what a snowman looks like naked, "The Snowman" tells us why a snowman needs a scarf, and the snowman evolution panel you did was brilliant in its simplicity of design. Do you enjoy doing holiday-specific jokes?

KERSCHBAUM: I enjoy sending homemade cards or mini-comics to friends for the holidays. Most of my friends and family don't see a lot of the work I do, so the feedback I get from them is always interesting. I've even had some ask me to stop sending them.The evolution of a snowman card is one of those things that came to me in a flash. I was convinced that I must have seen it somewhere, forgot about it, and then remembered it as if I thought it up. So I spent a lot of time looking for it and asking friends if they'd seen it before (thus ruining the gag for them when they got it in the mail).

CLOUGH: For whom did you do IF NEW YORK CITY WAS THE WORLD? Was it a syndicated strip first, or did you pitch it as a book?

KERSCHBAUM: As I mentioned earlier, they ran in a very small Manhattan weekly called the Chelsea Clinton News (named after the NYC neighborhoods, not the ex-president's daughter.) I don't know how that came about, but I recall that all the editors there hated it and weren't shy about letting me know when I dropped off the strip. At the time, I had done illustration work for Carol Publishing. I think I had met the art director there, Steven Brower, at United Media. He liked my work and offered to pitch it at the next editorial meeting. That was a huge break!

CLOUGH: You’ve mentioned a few times about editors, friends or readers complaining about your work? What kind of effect does this have on you? Does it make you glad that you at least get some kind of reaction?

KERSCHBAUM: It’s not really a big deal. With the editors at the Chelsea Clinton News, they were old-timers who didn’t like the way my strip was soiling their newspaper. When introduced to one editor for the first time, I reached out to shake his hand and he just said, “Oh, it’s you.” I’m still friends with the guy I sent the dirty Christmas comic to. Still, it is nice that my comics always get some kind of reaction!

The Wiggly Reader

CLOUGH: You were an early Xeric grant recipient. What kind of impact did this have on you in terms of encouraging you to keep making comics?

KERSCHBAUM: Although I was doing well with my illustration, I was having trouble finding anyone interested in my comics or cartooning. The few magazines that would run my gags had either ceased publication or changed editors. I couldn't find a publisher for my longer comics, either. Kitchen Sink Press tried to publish a trade paperback of a comic I did about a family reunion, but as luck would have it, it was solicited at the same time DC killed Superman and they couldn't sell it. A friend and previous Xeric recipient, Stephen Blue, suggested I give it a shot. All in all, it was a great experience, and I seriously doubt I'd be doing comics today if not for it.

CLOUGH: What inspired the astoundingly demented and detailed Abraham Lincoln cover on TWR #2? Do you enjoy creating these finely-detailed scenes with all sorts of "eye-pops" in them?

KERSCHBAUM: Again, the original inspiration for this escapes me. I have always enjoyed working on large, crowded scenes. When I was in elementary school I used to tape 18 x 24 pieces of drawing paper together and draw these huge panoramic scenes. One time, I did a prehistoric landscape filled with dinosaurs and cavemen in little scenes with jokes and gags and I also remember doing a cut-away of the Starship Enterprise showing all the decks and inner workings with the crew running about.

CLOUGH: You really seem to enjoy the humor of cruelty. City Guy/Country Guy, where the title characters are killed off early in the story but are further humiliated even in death, seems to be an example of the way you use cruelty as a form of commentary. That's also true of the story about the dancing robots who get separated, torn into bits and then almost reunited the in most banal way possible. How often do you see yourself as a commentator on our culture and society? What sort of issues do you think humor is best equipped to take on?

KERSCHBAUM: My humor can be cruel. I hate to blame it on my ancestry, but I'm of German descent and I think it may just be innate. That schadenfreude thing.

I'm not trying to comment on culture or society, at least not intentionally. There may be some other psychological reason for that particular bent, but I'm not all that concerned with it. Sometimes a poke in the eye is just a poke in the eye. In fact, I'd generally say that I shy away from making political statements or such in my work. Believe it or not, I'm not looking to offend people or stir up controversy – I prefer my cruelty to be more generic, more random… which is not to say that humor can't be used to address societal ills or whatever. As far as I'm concerned, in the right time and place, nothing is really taboo.

CLOUGH: Your humor matches absurdism with horror on occasion. For example, the strip about the woman finding 2 exact copies of her husband making love, only to find that one is a gigantic lawn beetle masquerading as her husband, is perhaps the single-most disturbing and hilarious series of images I've ever seen. What was your thought process in creating that strip? Were you out to horrify as much (or even more) as you were to amuse?

KERSCHBAUM: This goes back to what I said about American Werewolf in London – that close relationship between scary and funny. When I wrote that strip, I was intentionally trying to be silly and absurd one minute and unnerving or gross the next. But it's all just silliness.

CLOUGH: Your characters often have what Sammy Harkham describes as a "falsely wholesome" appearance to them. They're cartoony and easy to look at, but you rarely rely on "funny drawings" to create laughs. Why is this?

KERSCHBAUM: Well I actually do try and draw "funny" some times, you're probably just not noticing it! But you're right, I don't do it often. I can tell you that when I do have occasion to review old work, it's those "funny" drawings that make me cringe the most. I don't think I'm very successful at it; I avoid it and try to mine the humor elsewhere.

In general, it’s hard for me to track back to how and why I thought something was a funny idea. It’s not something I really think about as part of my creative process. Also, the process or inspiration doesn’t work the same way every time.

Petey and Pussy

CLOUGH: This cat and dog pair seems to have really captured your imagination over the past few years. What inspired their design, with balding human heads on top of very-anatomically accurate bodies?

KERSCHBAUM: In the late 90s, a friend got me an interview with an editor who was in charge of re-launching some major cartoon monthly – like MAD or Cracked – I can't recall the name. Anyway, I met with the editor and he liked my stuff and offered me two bits of advice. First, he said it would be in my own best interest to do recurring characters as all the work would be creator-owned (I assume he meant that if you got lucky and the characters caught on, you'd have a chance to cash in.) Second, he said, "No people with animal heads, I HATE that shit!" or something along those lines. So I went home and sorta cheekily did the opposite. He ended up liking it, but the magazine never happened.

With regard to their "anatomically-correct bodies," it just makes me laugh. People see real dog and cat asses every day and no one thinks twice. Show them a drawing of one and they're repulsed, or giggle, or both.

CLOUGH: The long strip in your new Petey & Pussy book is your longest sustained narrative to date. How did you balance the demands of a longer story with the demands of being a gag cartoonist? Did you feel this story was a sort of summing-up or combination of everything you've done before in terms of gag-style and techniques?

KERSCHBAUM: I wrote that story in bits and pieces over the course of several years. I then peppered it with little jokes and gags that I'd also collected over the years in notes and sketchbooks. Then I rewrote it making sure it flowed and there was a strong story arc and point to it all. When I was done, it was nearly twice as long as it ended up in the final book. At the time, I knew I would never be able to finish something that long - I didn't have the time or the energy. So I edited it to the bare bones. As it ends up, it still took almost four years to draw and ink.

CLOUGH: How long had you been working on this longer story? When did Fantagraphics pick it up?

KERSCHBAUM: When it was almost done, I sent it to some publishers. Surprisingly, a few were interested. It took me a long time to figure out what to do. In fact, I shelved it, finished, for nearly another year before going with Fantagraphics.

Other Projects

CLOUGH: You've been somewhat absent from the comics scene for the past few years after steadily putting out a new mini-comic every year. Has it been difficult to balance your life as a commercial illustrator with your own work?

KERSCHBAUM: It has of late. But generally, it's not hard. Illustration work tends, for me anyway, to come in spurts, so there's always a little down time.

CLOUGH: Can you talk about the project you've been working on for the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the past four years? Do you see that as a culmination of sorts for your hyper-detailed style of illustration, with every corner packed with small visual or verbal puns, that you've done for others over the years?

KERSCHBAUM: A while back I did an illustration for a puzzle in Nick Magazine. It was the interior of an art museum that was actually a maze. I asked the Met if they would be interested in doing something similar. They were planning to redo their kids/family map and wanted to know what I had in mind. So I proposed, basically, a "Where's Waldo" type picture search using the Museum. So I've spent the past four years researching and photographing the Museum and a making a poster of it. I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into. The Museum is just an amazing place - it's alive. Not only do they move, rotate and change the art around, I would visit and swear that the walls had moved too! Although the drawing is dense, when I look at it I just think of all the really cool stuff I didn't have room for or missed entirely. But I did the best I could. The way I look at it, it needs to hold up to repeated viewings. If the Met wants to use this for years and years – and I want them to – people have to be able to spot something they didn't see the last time they looked; just like a visit to the Museum itself. I'm very close to being done – the Museum has been very patient but they want it for the upcoming holiday season and I'm very anxious to see what the response will be. I'm also a little nervous. I've been working on it for so long now that I'm not sure what I'm going to do when it's finished.

CLOUGH: What are you reading these days?

KERSCHBAUM: Funny. I think I read more comics now than I did as a kid.

I start every day by reading the newspaper strip Monty online. Jim Meddick is a good friend, but it's the funniest damn strip. In fact, he won a Reuben for it this year. I've recently started following Richard Thompson's strip, Cul De Sac, too.

I'm reading the old Peanuts reprints. I'm a few volumes behind but they're nice books. I love how mean the strips can be!

I recently enjoyed Mike Dawson's Freddie & Me. There's a brief section about how he remembers things that I thought was revealing and insightful. But it's all good and beautifully drawn.

Alex Robinson's latest, Too Cool To Be Forgotten, was a great read. I think it's his best book to date and that's saying something.

I got the complete Don Martin last Christmas and haven't finished it yet. There's so much of his early work I was unfamiliar with - I had no idea! And, oddly, the stuff that I'd seen before seems different to me now after not having seen it in so long… but I can't really describe how.

Kevin Huizenga's work is fascinating - I get everything he puts out. I also enjoy the Leon Beyond feature he does with Dan Zettwoch.

I've only read one issue of Dungeon by Lewis Trondheim. But I plan to get more of those. Great story. Great art. Very funny.

And I'm a big fan of Bob Fingerman's work. It is so well-crafted and beautifully drawn. I always wanted to be able to draw like him.

I don't get to the comics store that often, but when I do I like to pick up anything new by T. Millionaire, J. Ryan, M. Kupperman, Kaz, Tony Consiglio and Steve Weissman. They're always guaranteed to be quality, funny books.


CLOUGH: What impact have shows like SPX and MOCCA had on your career? Do you feel like part of a community when you attend these shows?

KERSCHBAUM: I enjoy these shows. They can be a bit exhausting even though you're mainly just sitting there. Over the years, I've met some fantastic people there and made some great friends. It's an opportunity to talk shop with talented folks.

Under the Surface: Petey and Pussy

Rob reviews the riotous new book from John Kerschbaum, PETEY AND PUSSY (Fantagraphics).


I've extolled the virtues of John Kerschbaum's work from time to time in this column as one of the most underrated humorists working today. His work has never caught on widely in the comics world (though many children have seen his work in Nickelodeon Magazine, among other sources) for reasons that have never been entirely clear. Part of it may be that his character design is intentionally bland. They have a pleasant cartoonishness that belies the weirdness lurking in his strips. Another reason may be the way he suddenly injects violent and visceral scenes drawn in that same cozy style. Kerschbaum also jars his readers with punchlines that are not immediately obvious unless one follows the visual clues in his comics very closely. Kerschbaum is a gag mechanic of the first order, a total master of panel and page composition.
Above all else, Kerschbaum trades in deception, luring the reader in with one expectation and then brutally subverting that expectation repeatedly.

There's a lot going on in each of his pages. Kerschbaum wants to simultaneously achieve a number of goals with his characters Petey & Pussy. He wants to tell a story about the nasty things animals do to each other and themselves. He wants to set up gags on every page and have a funny drawing in every panel, but he wants these gags to build to a master punchline in each story. He uses repetition in unexpected ways for comedic effect. Kerschbaum's style of humor is at once enormously sophisticated, refined & complex as well as crude, scatological and slapstick--sometimes in the same panel. Petey and Pussy are most definitely animals, but they have the heads of balding middle-age men, talk like people and even get service at a bar. They are driven by instincts and lusts that are sometimes hard to distinguish from that of a person and sometimes shockingly animalistic. Petey the dog is very much a dog-as-person (always looking to get laid or drunk) while Pussy the cat is very much a cat: short-tempered, prissy and vicious.

Petey and Pussy have been around for quite some time in other formats, but this book is the first true sustained narrative that Kerschbaum's created. Keeping up a complex narrative in the face of the demand to have gags on every page obviously made this a challenge, but Kerschbaum was up to the task, imbuing each page with a sort of raw power that compelled the reader to keep turn pages even as they were flinching. The action in the book can be defined as the way that friendships and enmities serve to create the story's central structure. Pussy is trying to kill the mouse who taunts it by spelling "Loser" with its droppings in front of its hole but falls prey to the mouse's manipulations. Bernie the bird either wants to be freed or killed, and no one in the apartment is in any mood to grant him any favors. The senile, deaf owner of the pets dodders around, occasionally doing horrible things to the bird in an effort to "clean" it. The longest story revolves around Pussy dropping his eyeglasses into a sewer and the efforts he makes to get them back. The final gag requires a close reading but is well worth the effort.

The backup stories are not quite as strong or complex, but they certainly have their moments. The set-ups for both strips are a bit more conventional but the way Kerschbaum manages to escalate the ridiculousness (and violence) of each premise while at the same time subverting reader expectation is masterful. Kerschbaum loves creating verbal and visual puns as a sort of aside to the overarching narrative, a bonus on the way to larger jokes. What's interesting about his work is that his dialogue is all very literal and direct; the jokes he makes with words are often funny, but rarely complex. On the other hand, the warm and inviting nature of his art brings in any number of readers, but Kerschbaum is often apt to make the visual nature of his gags more obscure, demanding the audience figures it out using the verbal clues he's provided.

Without possessing a slick, exaggerated style, Kerschbaum create a world that favors neither word nor image. Instead, he creates a gestalt that must be apprehended on several different levels simultaneously. His work manages to evoke the violent anarchy of a Warner Brothers cartoon with a level of sophistication that can be found in a New Yorker strip. He doesn't rely on "funny pictures" or funny-looking characters to get across his punchlines; indeed, those funny-looking characters soon become funny in some unexpected ways. The drawings are not mere props for his verbal punchlines and rarely even serve a decorative purposes; they're there to quickly convey information, especially information that's not immediately obvious to the characters.

Every aspect of this book works to sell its gags, even down to its design. The dust cover flaps are "testimonials" by characters we'll meet inside, making reference to events unknown to the reader when they start the book. Jacob Covey, one of the top designers in comics, did the book's design, and it's enormously clever. In the inside front and back covers, look very carefully at what the mice are doing, for example. All told, this book is one of the best of the year to date and certainly the best humor-related publication. Hopefully it won't be the last book we see by Kerschbaum from Fantagraphics.

10 artists to seek out at SPX 2002

(This article was originaly published in Savant, in advance of SPX 2002, and is being archived here.)

The Small Press Expo (SPX) will be upon us in just a week, and the con has grown so large that it will be moving in 2003. Yes, this will be the last year possible to experience SPX "the way it used to be" before it merges with the more mainstream Baltimore Comicon and leaves the charming Bethesda area. Whatever its flaws, it still stands as the single most important gathering of the small press, its fans and those who choose to study it, thanks especially to the International Comics Arts Festival (ICAF) that takes place alongside it. ICAF almost always brings in interesting European artists and holds interesting crossover events with SPX itself. This year's SPX has its usual impressive array of well-known artists, with first-timers including Art Spiegelman, and Los Bros. Hernandez.

The complete list of attendees is staggering, with nearly 160 tables in four different rooms. A reasonably educated fan of alternative comics will know to seek out big names like Spiegelman, Bryan Talbot, the Hernandezes, etc.; but with the dizzying array of choices, one might well overlook some very worthy artists. The list I present contains a number of names that I feel don't get enough notice, even within the alternative community press. The list rather eclectic one, with a few artists who have been in the businessfor years and some who aren't even old enough to buy alcohol yet. Some work for major companies like Fantagraphics and Top Shelf, while others are self-published. There are humorists, historians, formal innovators, skilled storytellers and those whose work has difficulty fitting into any category. While not all may be for every taste, every one of them deserves your attention--and all of them will have tables at SPX. They are presented here in alphabetical order, with links to their websites where applicable.

** Sean Bieri: He is a longtime and quite accomplished creator of minicomics and part of a thriving Detroit-area scene that loves minis for their own sake and doesn't view them as a stepping-stone to something else. Like his friend Matt Feazell, Bieri excels at humor, though his style couldn't be more different. New readers will want to pick up his minicomic collection JUMBO JAPE. His full range of styles and clever wordplay are on display here. Bieri is a skilled mimic who knows how to parody with particularly trenchant punchlines in mind. His two best features are "Jesus The Savior Man", a hilarious series of strips that crosses the Popeye characters from EC Segar's THIMBLE THEATRE with the Gospels. What is especially impressive here is a complete mastery of the Gospel stories of Christ as well as an uncanny rendering of Segar's thin lines. Almost as funny is "Good Ol' Conan The Barbarian", a mixture of Conan and PEANUTS.

Bieri's art style can vary from project to project, though his defacto style is somewhat loose and cartoony, much like Terry LaBan. Unlike LaBan, he doesn't go for long narratives, instead preferring parodies (like the two mentioned above or a SIN CITY take-off set in a dentist's office) or mixing a sight gag with a punchline. Not all of his gags work well as comics, or rather, they work effectively as just jokes. (His "Worse Than Hitler" strip is a good example.) Bieri also throws in the odd personal observation or two, which can be amusing but rarely as funny as his other material.

Bieri frequently takes full advantage of the DIY possibilities that minicomics can offer. He's done comics with hand-silkscreens, hand-constructed and decorated covers and has experimented with size and format. In his hands, the minicomic form isn't just a comics starter set, but a legitimate means of expression in its own right with its own special rewards. The biggest drawback is low print runs and circulation, which makes shows like SPX so crucial in getting a good understandings of what's out there. Bieri isn't just a punchline man, as he did a mini contrasting the lives of Gertrude Stein and Kiki (a wild woman of the night) in 1920's Paris. Another clever comic is a tongue-in-cheek listing of some Nazi aircraft that didn't quite get off the ground, with hilarious manglings of the German language.

I wouldn't say that Bieri is a unique talent or trailblazing innovator, but rather is a skilled craftsman who brings a high level of imagination, care and energy to his work. Humor is a difficult thing to bring off well, especially when working within a certain tradition, and this is what Bieri does best. I would start with JUMBO JAPE and then just get one of everything if you really dig it. JUMBO JAPE was nominated for a 2001 Ignatz and richly deserved it.


** Paul Hornschemeier: One of the most interesting and aggressively experimentative of the group I call the "neo-formalists." They are artists, often with animation backgrounds, that are interested in what makes comics tick, take them apart, stretch them to their limits and take risks. Many of them are not coherent in terms of narrative structure, often by design. Some of them have clearly been inspired by Chris Ware in terms of their fascination with form and its possibilities of getting across emotion, but many of them seem to have come from outer space. On this list, I have included two, Hornschemeier and Dash Shaw (see below). Including both reveals the range of what is possible in exploring these aspects of comics.

Hornschemeier, like Kevin Huizenga, has dutifully self-published for quite some time in an effort to improve as an artist. He's also clearly invested a great deal of money in getting the best possible productions values for his work, so as to fully realize his vision of what he wants it to look like. Those of you who associate minicomics and/or self-published work with cheaply-printed scrawls on typing paper will faint when you see his SEQUENTIAL #7.

His interests as a storyteller are all over the map. A lot of his comics are funny, but with a long cruel streak intrinsic to them. His ideas have gotten bolder and more fully realized as he's evolved and had a better idea of exactly what he wanted to do. After doing a broad range of interesting but unremarkable stories in minicomics format in issues 1-4, he switched to a tabloid format that was as much a comics criticism publication as it was a comic, featuring an interview with Dan Clowes among other things. This was possibly his least successful effort, as it really seemed that he didn't know what he wanted to do. Then came #6, which really made me sit up and pay attention to this work. In it, he has any number of funny but disturbing stories ("Too Many Monkeys" being an amusing Seuss tribute), but he also introduces several features that show his successful use of experimentation.

First there's "The Peculiar Mr Williams", which is an EC comics tribute of sorts, complete with a gruesome but funny ending. The odd thing is that the story never quite goes away, as the unfortunate title character is written about as a missing person by a local newspaper, and the writer of said paper often drifts off into writing melancholy snippets about life in general. Then there's "The Devil's Lonely Day." As we read it (a gorgeous grey-scaled, meticulously drawn strip), we notice that there seem to be pages missing...and that not only was this deliberate, but that the author hasn't drawn and doesn't know what will be on the other pages yet! An experiment drawn out of a dada tradition, to be sure. A continuing feature called "The Supression of William T Andrews" details the title character's struggle to accept his own sexuality, done in this issue in the form of a conversation with a "friend".

SEQUENTIAL #7 is his true masterwork to date: a slick, attractive package that fortunately is merited by the contents within. New episodes of "The Devil's Lonely Day" and "William T Andrews" may be found within (with the latter being the best episode yet of that feature), along with two other noteworthy features. The first, "Ex Falso Quodlibet", appears to be at least partially autobiographical. It's about an anthropormorphic fish who is having difficulty facing life in the absence of a loved one. The second, "Language Lessons", ironically ignores the lush production values of the issue and is comprised of variation of the sort of stick figures you would see on a "Safety Instructions" card. Hornschemeier even provides advice at the end of the issue for how he was able to print the issue.

FORLORN FUNNIES is his newest effort, a full color comic that has evoked more Ware comparisons than anything else, though it traverses some territory that is quite different. It's a story that's about characters, essentially--fictional characters. We start with a stereotypical villain from a western, complete with long moustache, who somehow walks off the set and past a lonely woman who goes up to her apartment to watch an animated show. The star of the show is fired, but escapes cancellation by magically jumping intoother shows, or worlds. The whole issue carries a dreamlike but desperate quality with it that requires rereading. Hornschemeier has deservedly gotten an Ignatz nomination for Outstanding Artist. He represents comics' true cutting edge, so if you want a challenging but fascinating read, I would strongly recommend SEQUENTIAL #6 and 7 as well as the first issue of FORLORN FUNNIES. Find out more at http://www.sequentialcomics.com/.

** Kevin Huizenga: Huizenga is one of the best exemplars of the concept that minicomics can provide a training ground for development for new artists. Tracing his improvement from issue to issue of his comic SUPERMONSTER is remarkable. The most recent edition, #14 (GLORIANA), is an amazing formal and narrative achievement that really should be required reading for any serious comics fan. Tom Spurgeon wrote an excellent article on him and this issue in particular that appeared in the Comics Journal #240, and I would urge interested readers to seek it out.

Huizenga's comics always carry a sort of gentle intelligence in the way they're written, and are formally exciting without flaunting their stylistic innovations for their own sake. While his comics are sometimes astonishing, there's a calculated lack of pyrotechnics in his stories. Huizenga's background in philosophy fuels his curiousity about the world, with the technique of phenomenology clearly at play in his art. Put simply, this is a method of observing the world where one looks at something understanding its context, removes it from its everyday, understood use...and then describes it. With Huizenga, we get pages of drawings of forested neighborhoods, parks, children, etc--drawn without judgment or particular moral value, other than a profound respect. The other major influence one can see at play is that of Asian paintings of a certain era. It's well known that certain of these paintings focused on landscapes and backgrounds--rarely would we find any people in them.

Huizenga does an entire issue of these sorts of drawings, done while walking around. In a later issue, he takes it a step further, actively mimicking these paintings while using as narrative the adoption papers of a child in China. At his heart, Huizenga is a comics guy, and draws from a number of inspirations. John Porcellino is an obvious one, from the top lists at the end of his earlier issues to the quiet, small bits of autobiographical and semi-autobiographical detail that we learn. Huizenga is also inspired by the loose, flowing line of early 20th century cartoonists, particularly Roy (WASH TUBBS) Crane. There are moments of humor here, though it's mostly gentle and rarely laugh-out-loud. They sometimes relate to his religious beliefs, which are clearly quite sincere and earnest but are never actively promoted in the comic. When asking "What Would Jesus Do" about having to run an ad offensive to zen, his imaginary Jesus almost obnoxiously points a finger and says, "I forgive you!" Kevin's character is annoyed because that advice had no relation to his dilemma, so he draws a flowsheet illustrating each of his options.

Supermonster #14 (subtitled "Gloriana Comics") has been nominated for Outstanding Minicomic. In an unusually strong field, I think that this was truly the best. At 100 pages, he throws in three stories that follow Glenn and Wendy Ganges. One is a story about Wendy at work, or rather, a particular stretch of time where every event happens at once. Then the two are at home and each imagines what their future unborn child will be like...except that time slows and accelerates without warning, with "real" time being replaced by a fantasy. The masterpiece is "The Sunset", where Glenn tells a friend about a sunset he saw. We the reader get to experience the full event, frame by frame, often out of order, of the sunset and even when his vision blurs. We get to see his thoughts and even fantasies of the notes from bird whistles wrestling with each other. It's a fascinating experiment in showing simultaneity. The last Glenn story has him trying to reassure a family that the earth isn't coming to an end despite the presence of a huge, blood-red moon--complete with astronomical diagrams!

Huizenga's talent really all came together with #14, but the other issues are quite worthwhile on their own. It does make me wonder where he's going next. I can see him continuing to publish beautiful minicomics, and I can also easily see him using a more standard format. But there's no polishing necessary in his work: it's fully realized and beautifully produced. See some of his strips online at http://usscatastrophe.com/kh/issues.html and drop by his table in the Versailles Room.

** Jason: Though he's represented by Fantagraphics, he's one artist that not everyone may be aware of yet...though they should be. Jason is a Norwegian who does a comic called MJAU MJAU (Norwegian for "Meow, Meow"). One story, called "Wait A Minute", was translated and published by Fantagraphics as "Hey, Wait..." It concerns two teenaged boys named Jon and Bjorn and their adventures over a particular summer, until a horrific event occurs that changes the tone and direction of the comic. To give away more specifics of the plot would be an injustice to the reader, but I will talk in more general terms about his work.

Jason's characters tend to be anthropomorphic, in this case dogs. That first layer of distance between reader and subject makes it easy for him to bend both time and reality. The story is rooted in the everyday details of summer that so many of us will recognize, yet its magical realist touches will fracture our expectations of what comes next. An early clue in how to read the comic comes when one of the boys, asked what time it is, replies "Summertime!" A period where time takes on a sudden flexibility, frequently whipping by at a furious pace, sometimes slowing to a crawl. It's important to approach each page as potentially both true and imaginary, as actual event or simple reminiscence. There are some really striking images here: a character sneezing and then changing into an adult in the next panel; a character noting that certain photographs seen by a friend are of him in fifteen years; the use of all-white and all-black panels. The book is deceptively simple to look at and yet symbolically complex; as such, it rewards many re-readings.

Meeting Jason will be a rare privilege for US audiences, especially as a new collection of his work from MJAU MJAU has just been released here, called SHHH! As the title implies, it's a wordless comic, drawn from considerably different themes from HEY, WAIT... Check out his style from his Norwegian publisher Jippi Forlag at http://www.jippicomics.com/english/index.html and see him at the Fantagraphics table.

** Megan Kelso: Despite her long association with Highwater Books, Megan Kelso remains one of the most underrated talents in the alt-comics scene. Part of the reason this is so is that her work simply hasn't been as visible as some of the other names on the Highwater roster. The only collection of hers currently in print, QUEEN OF THE BLACK BLACK, is an eccentric collection of stories, many of them delicate & intricate, and others a bit too ephemeral to take seriously. Her simple, breezy line has always been an attractive starting point, but she has now really found her voice through a series of minis (to eventually be collected) called ARTICHOKE TALES.

In fact, over the past year Kelso has hit a remarkable stride no matter where she's appeared. The problem is that she's mostly popped up in anthologies and in minis; until ARTICHOKE TALES is compiled, I fear she won't get the exposure she deserves. She had one of the best three strips in both the Winter and Summer editions of the COMICS JOURNAL SPECIAL, had one of the best strips in the zombie-themed BOGUS DEAD, and her surprisingly explicit version of her ARTICHOKE TALES characters in the erotica compilation DIRTY STORIES VOL III was one of the few stories that was arousing on an emotional level. And of course, a long chapter of ARTICHOKE TALES was one of the best things in the groundbreaking anthology/art object NON #5 that came out last summer.

ARTICHOKE TALES is her most notable achievement to date, and is unusual for alt-comics in that it has significant fantasy elements. I'm not talking about unicorns 'n' dragons type fantasy, but rather a fanciful setting and not-quite-human characters. Like all great fairy tales, AT at its heart examines humanity's higher aspirations and its grim realities. The characters in the story look human with the exception of their hair, which looks like artichoke leaves. This slight distancing of the characters from our reality makes it easier to fall into their world's mythology. It's a world where a village was once part of a war, where another community is still at war, and healing has yet to take place. A soldier separated from his company meets the granddaughter of an apothecary. A love story emerges, but not necessarily one with a happy ending. One of the key components of the series is the story within a story--the origins of various conflicts are told as myths or fairy tales themselves. And like true fairy tales, the stories often contain gruesome elements and rarely end happily.

Kelso's art perfectly complements her sparse narrative. The reader is provided with little information early on, and must rely on the clues her art provides. The essential lightness of her style contrasts well with the often grim story; the entire story is about forcing contradictions upon the reader to figure out and making the reader work to decipher what's below an often still surface. This conflict is never heavy-handed because the art is always in service to the story and never exaggerated. As stories are told within stories, the art for those sections grows cruder and more iconic, reflecting a more simple abstraction from the world.

Essentially, anything that Kelso's put out in the last year or so is pure gold. We are seeing an artist fully realize her potential, and it's an exciting journey to watch. She'll have a new chapter of AT available at SPX, along with the first two chapters. Check out her website as well at http://www.girlhero.com/. Kelso is up for four Ignatz Awards at SPX, and this honor is well-deserved.

** John Kerschbaum: Kerschbaum's gags seem cute and innocuous until you dig a little deeper and notice with horror the real punchline of some of his strips. His comics owe little to anyone and often make the reader work for the punchline. I am delighted that he received two Ignatz nominations, because he deserves both the recognition and the publicity. Kerschbaum matches a solid level of detail in his backgrounds with more iconic characters that thrusts the focus of his strips on what they do. The background detail often dominates the reader's focus in a strip's early panels as we're trying to figure out what's going on--he always starts subtly. Oftentimes, he will quickly derail a story and go way over the top to deliver a punchline.
A good example is a woman who comes home, makes dinner and settles in on her couch to watch TV under a blanket. A weird look of discomfort appears on her face and she stands up, looking confused. We then see a pair of breasts on a hairy, sleeping man...and they're giggling. Looking back, we can see the woman was top-heavy and that when she stood up, she was flat as a board.

Some strips begin with a shock and then twist it and twist it beyond all recognition. One example is a story of a woman who comes home to find her husband having sex with an exact duplicate of himself. The two men try to convince the woman that she should stick with them...until one of them reveals that he's not human at all, but a gigantic beetle in human disguise. The way that one ends is both hilarious and unsettling.

Kerschbaum will go for the gross-out, but only in the service of an actual joke--it's never gross for its own sake. More disturbing than any gross-out is the relentless (but hilarious) nihilism of his comics--he's incredibly cruel to his characters. A strip where two dancing robots are separated, abused, stripped to spare parts and then "united" in the cruelest and most banal manner possible is both heartbreaking and funny. Another long strip retells the story of the city guy and country guy, both meeting the cruelest fates imaginable--and getting abused even worse after death.

Most of the following strips come from his 3-issue series, THE WIGGLY READER. Issue 2 of that series has one of the best covers of all time, which I will only describe as being a series of reimaginings of Abraham Lincoln, Mary Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre. In some ways, his minicomics are even better than his other works. His latest, HOMECOMING, was nominated for an Ignatz. It's about salmon swimming upstream to mate--except that they're anthropomorphized into 1950's high school kids. His crowning achievement, however, is TIMBERDOODLE, a mini about an ordinary young man born with an enormous wooden cock. Every single panel dances with ingenious combinations of both verbal and visual jokes, and the final payoff is classic Kerschbaum: ambiguous and over-the-top. Kerschbaum does put his minis online when they go out of print, and they're worth seeking out. Many of them are true art objects in their own right. Check out http://www.fontanellepress.com/ for more on this demented genius, and come see him in the Washington Room, table 2.

** Steve Lafler: Lafler's been in the business for over twenty years, self-publishing his own series DOG BOY and co-editing the anthology BUZZARD. But it wasn't until he collected a series of stories called BUGHOUSE that everything seemed to really click for him. Lafler's comics have always relied on a sort of stream-of-consciousness inspiration, with storylines that alternated between overtly political rants, psychedelic journeys, and sexually charged explorations of his id. While interesting, not all of his experiments were equally successful or bore rereading. That changed when he started doing BUGHOUSE, which harnessed everything that made his work interesting into a gripping narrative.

Working with Top Shelf editor Chris Staros, he wove all of the disparate Bughouse vignettes into one story, writing new bits to connect the previously published chapters. The key to understanding and appreciating Lafler's work is that he has always valued improvisation as a creative device, making him an ideal candidate to write a story about improvisational jazz musicians. With Staros as editor, Lafler's story gained structure and organization, much like a good rhythm section holds down the bottom, allowing the soloist to shine. While there are any number of excellent Top Shelf artists I could recommend, I feel that Lafler has been the most overlooked considering the excellence of his work.

Describing BUGHOUSE is relatively straightforward: it's about a sax player named Jimmy Watts and his journey as a musician. We trace his development as a child to meeting musical partner Slim Watkins in music school in the big city. Watts is from the midwest while Watkins is a city slicker, but the two quickly form a tight musical bond. When the story takes place is somewhat vague, but it's at around the time when bebop was just being born. The two gig with a Duke Ellington stand-in named Buggy Eckstein before getting kicked out and starting their own group: Bughouse.

It's the twists that make this something to pay attention to. First, all of the characters are drawn as anthropormorphic insects. Like many artists who use this kind of tactic, it allows them to make reality just a little bit more fluid. Lafler uses this to maximum effect and he has to, because it can be so difficult to depict music in comics form. It works, partially because he occasionally adds little graphics to illustrate the songs, (like when Jimmy springs a number about cats) or when Jimmy hallucinates something associated with the music he's playing.

This brings up another aspect of the book: Lafler deals with addiction in relation to the creative process. The drug of choice for many of the musicians is something called "bug juice", which is really just a stand-in for any drug. Jimmy gets hooked on it by his girlfriend Julie after being convinced that every great jazz man needed it for inspiration, and struggles with it for much of his career. This struggle and the kind of shady characters he winds up dealing with as a result are a major source of the tension in the book.

But the heart of the book is the joy of the creative process and the camaraderie found in in collaboration. Lafler's fluid, expressive art and jaunty dialogue makes this a page-turner and simply a joy to read. I also strongly recommend BAJA, a follow-up to the original story concerning Jimmy's young bass player Bones and his adventures in Mexico while laying low from police attention. Anyone interested in music, the creative process or simply a good yarn should give this one a shot. Check out Lafler's website at http://stevelafler.com/ or the Top Shelf website at http://www.topshelfcomix.com/topshelf/index.html.

** Roger Langridge: A master gag cartoonist with the cleanest, purest line in all the land. Originally from New Zealand (which seems to have more interesting cartoonists per capita than most countries), Langridge now lives in England and has been cartooning for about 15 years. His work with his brother Andrew writing was published by Fantagraphics in their comics ART D'ECCO and later ZOOT. The latter was collected in a hilarious and demented edition called ZOOT SUITE and is a great introduction to Roger's clean and precise style.

Currently, Roger is publishing a series about an idiot clown called FRED THE CLOWN, a sort of catch-all character for his extremely expansive imagination. Langridge clearly has drawn inspiration from MAD, both in its pre and post Harvey Kurtzman incarnations. Before the current FRED series, he did a one shot that reimagined Fred throughout the history of comics, where Langridge drew him in the style of virtually every important cartoonist of the 20th century. Langridge is not especially concerned whether or not you get the reference or the joke--he truly is cartooning for his own pleasure and that's what sets his gags apart. His skill as a mimic is astonishing, able to pull off Winsor McKay, Robert Crumb and Jack Kirby with equal ease. In the regular Fred series, Langridge shows off his love of 20's era animation with strips that evoke the weird feel of that time. While it's his art that's the main attraction, both in terms of humor and in sheer beauty, Roger can also get off a dizzying array of absurd lines. Within a panel about how "the strip is made", the narrator says: "The final decision, however, is always made by Fred the Clown himself." Fred: "Fred like this one." Roger: "That's a bank statement, Fred." "Fred insist." Narrator: "It's a jolly good thing that Mister Langridge's bank statements are in fact quite hilarious!"

Langridge is coming in from England to attend the show and will have a new issue of FRED with him. With a gag-heavy and classical style, his work is better seen than described, and he fortunately has a website at http://www.hotelfred.com/ that has tons of current and older work. He also appears on the roster at www.moderntales.com.

** Ellen Lindner: Lindner is my prime example in the "one to watch" category. Her talents and interests have been all over the place in her short life, but her self-assuredness as an artist grows from project to project. A mixture of wild abandon, trenchant wit and erudite scholar, Lindner's comics are utterly idiosyncratic and difficult to pin down. Some of them in fact go nowhere but are interesting exercises, while others capture the essence of some experience. There's a great graphic novel in her that's dying to get out (and from what I hear, it's slowly in the works), but in the meantime I'll simply enjoy the steady stream of minis and zines that she produces.
Linder publishes a zine called LITTLE WHITE BIRD/MEGACOM, which I took a shine to initially because it reminded me so much of my own zine days. Some of the layout is crude and a lot of the pieces are fluff, but the interviews are fun and the pieces that Lindner contributed on music and city life are enjoyable. The other half of the zine is all comics, and their quality varies. Some of Lindner's early, more unfocused efforts can be seen in last year's edition, but one can note her progress as a storyteller and an artist in the more recent edition.

Of greater interest to me are her minis. I would begin with BLONDE ON BLONDES, #1 and 2. Lindner is absolutely all over the place, with straight autobio stuff (a strip about 9/11 that appeared in Dark Horse's anthology), more veiled autobio material, stories about high school all-girl rock bands, biographies, slice of life and surreal accounts of films. One can sense how eager she is to explore a number of genres, particularly those that haven't had a lot of attention in comics of late. Her story of a Catholic schoolgirl and her rock band nails smartass teenage angst. Another story dealing with a beatnik girl going to college in the 50's also shines with smart dialogue.

Her autobiographical and semiautobiographical material demands the most attention, however. Lindner's most interesting story may be "The Best Year of My Life" followed immediately by a story called "The Worst Year of My Life"--with both stories covering exactly the same period of time, a year spent in France. Lindner's own stories resonate because they are told as stories, not autobiography, and so escape the tedium and navel-gazing that so often plague that genre. Instead, real life sneaks into her interesting anecdotes. Another favorite strip is Lindner's character in therapy, with the therapist giving her some unusual instructions. Then there's a strip about about a hip elderly woman who looks like Ellen in about 40 years or so. Another mini, THE EGG MYSTERIOUS, details a film and discussion Linder saw in person, said film leaving her mouth agape.

Lindner uses a lot of thick, bold black lines. There's very little use of grey or crosshatching, nor much feathering. The results are unusual, with a realistic style where the characters all look very slightly grotesque or distorted. The result keeps the reader off balance, with the stories themselves coming from a similarly skewed point of view. There are a lot of contradictions in the feel of her work: cynicism and romanticism, euphoria and dissolution, playfulness and lost innocence. Her comics keep a certain cool distance from the reader, but her lust for life comes through all of her work.

Check out her website at http://www.fantasticteam.com/lwb/. Lindner will also be in the SPX anthology this year, which is always recommended reading. Within a couple of years, I expect her to produce some truly lasting works. Until then, make sure to follow the development of a great artist in progress.

** Dash Shaw: Of all the artists on this list, 20-year old Shaw has the best chance of being a truly innovative comics master. Loosely associated with the neo-formalist group Meathaus, Shaw's work differs in that his work is strongly rooted in narrative. This doesn't prevent him from going absolutely crazy in the use of formal innovations and unusual techniques in panel design. There's nothing he won't try, and while not all of it is successful at this stage, it's all fascinating to watch. Shaw likes to use thick, expressive brush work and lots of blacks, throwing in mixed media techniques like collage. Matching his daring as an artist is his vivid imagination as a writer, plumbing his academic influences while always focusing on richly defined characters.

He has two projects currently available: a planned 10-chapter series called LOVE EATS BRAINS! and a mini-graphic novel called GARDENHEAD. He describes the former as "a zombie romance" and that's exactly what it is. It centers around a young man named Williams who is being yelled at by his girlfriend Julie because of his involvement with another woman named Nachi. Nachi was an outsider raised in Japan who became obsessed with comics--but primarily in the spaces between panels. This obsession with spaces inbetween led her to film zombies in the local graveyard, because she felt that with death, zombies were no longer concerned with the survival instincts that prevented humans from fully being able to create art. (Yes, zombies are taken as a given here.) Chapter 1 makes you stand up and pay attention, but the visual pyrotechnics begin in chapter 2. Shaw often views panels as puzzle pieces, connecting and then fracturing images. Panels warp and bend as the story gets stranger, and Japanese language characters pop up and plays significant roles. I believe Chapter 4 (the newest one) will be available at SPX.

LOVE EATS BRAINS! is a fascinating series, but it was really just a warmup for what he did with GARDENHEAD. The story is concerned with learning, language, school and our roles in society. It skips from being a kindergarten-type primer, matching up things under the letter A (apple with a drawing of an apple, arrow with a drawing of an arrow), until it reaches "art"--a frame hung in a gallery. This is continued as we are introduced to our three characters: a boy named Raymond, his older brother and a college age woman. Raymond is struggling with his kindergarten art class, as his teacher constantly berates him for not following the standards of art--but praises all of his classmates, comparing their work to Mondrian and Giotto! His brother is a college librarian whose real love is phrenology, the old pseudo-science that claimed it could determine a person's character by the bumps on their head. He has a date with the young woman, a bulimic with a vehement distrust of language. The comic details their relationship and Raymond's struggles, often inserting clip art or anatomical diagrams for effect. It's nothing short of the best comic I've read in 2002.

That said, Shaw's work is still a bit rough, with errors in spelling and lettering here and there. The production values are also somewhat primitive at this point--GARDENHEAD very much has the feel of a DIY zine rather than a professional graphic novel. That is part of its appeal, but I don't see it as essential to Shaw's work. Rather, I see him as someone still absorbing influences both within and outside of art. Shaw's influences vary, but his writing is informed by philosophy and cultural studies, as well as art history and criticism. He'll have a story in the upcoming NEW THING anthology, and you can read his comics athttp://www.dashshaw.com/. He'll be sitting at the Meathaus table at SPX.

** Drew Weing: A common kind of comic seen these days is the cartoon diary, an innovation made popular by James Kochalka in his very popular SKETCHBOOK DIARIES. It's an appealling kind of strip to do because it's a combination of doing sketchbook exercises, having them printed for all the world to see, and blogging. That's why you'll see lot of these cartoon diaries on the web, and as one would guess, they vary wildly in quality. One of the best is from a young artist named Drew Weing, a graduate of the Savannah College of Art & Design's Sequential Art program. His JOURNAL COMIC can be seen on a nearly-daily basis at his website, (http://www.drewweing.com). Compilations of his JOURNAL COMIC as well as his other work will be available at SPX.

What separates Weing from the other diarists is that first, he treats each strip as a truly discrete entity and not just a throwaway sketchbook item. Second, each strip has a definite sense of closure. That closure is not always a punchline, but it does always get his theme across. Third, Weing is genuinely amusing. Even though he's living the typical lifestyle of a 20-something (group house, unsatisfying job, never enough money), he rarely mines the kind of humor one would expect, and never tries to pretend that his life is especially compelling. Weing views himself as a person, not a character, and that viewpoint is refreshing after reading more egomaniacal autobio comics. As he writes in his masthead: "A daily comic 'diary.' Why should you care about my life? Beats me." This lack of pretension makes it easy to like him.

The other interesting thing about the strip is that unlike many diarists, his strip is not relentlessly upbeat. In fact, an undertone of ennui that borders on desperation permeates the strip as he struggles to find ways to stave off boredom. The journal strip was clearly his answer to finding a way to keep doing work while struggling with his difficult advertising job. Despite that streak of desperation, Weing as depicted in this strip is not a loser; he has a number of friends and rarely feels sorry for himself. Of course, the tricky thing about autobio is that the artist chooses what we get to see, but Weing does a good job at depicting the mundane as well as more significant events in his life.

The other thing that recommends this strip is the high quality in its craft. Weing keeps it simple visually, imparting an iconic quality to himself and his friends, but his uses of thick lines and blacks helps the strip avoid too cutesy a look. The JOURNAL COMIC looks like a series of exercises designed by Weing to help him keep doing comics and improve, but his attention to detail makes it a delight for fans. This is not formally innovative work in any sense; both the format and subject matter have been done many times in alternative comics. Also, the format is inherently limiting in some ways; at some point, I'd like to see Weing take up a more ambitious project. Regardless, I would recommend Weing's work to anyone who enjoys well-crafted autobio with an eye towards entertaining an audience, not just the artist himself. I recommend reading it from the beginning if you have the time, as well as picking it up in paper form.

** Kurt Wolfgang: He's the biggest smartass in comics and the creator of some of its most tender, sensitive moments. Wolfgang both writes evocative, sad stories about loss and love and then creates minicomics slagging just that kind of story. Often associated with Highwater Books he's a sort of court jester of the alternative comics world, skewering its pretensions better than any outsider could. At the same time, he makes fun of himself. Contradictory? Sure. But it's no contradiction to enjoy every single thing he publishes, writes and/or edits, because his humor cuts deep and his stories are genuinely touching, all with a startling visual style.

Wolfgang has primarily been known for being able to assemble that rarest of creatures: the quality minicomics anthology. It's called LOW-JINX, and has had an amazing list of talent in its three issues. The second issue was subtitled "The Horrible Truth About Reinventing Minicomics (The Bastard Format)", and it featured Wolfgang, Johnny Ryan, and Tony Consiglio. Among others. Wolfgang's features stood out, as his first was not only a hilarious parody of Scott McCloud, it actually tried to define minicomics (in a chapter appropriately titled "What The Fuck Is A Mini-Comic?"). Wolfgang struck again with a story about the lonely life of a minicomic creator, with lines like "I'm sorry, Mr Wolfgang, but we've just recently discovered that india ink causes impotence".

Wolfgang and friends take it to the next level with LOW-JINX #3, subtitled "The Big Rip-Off". This was a full-out assault on alternative comics, with an artist choosing to satirize or parody another well-known artist's work. Part of the fun was figuring out which artist did which parody. Do yourself a favor and seek this out. While Jordan Crane eviscerating Chris Ware was brilliant, Wolfgang was once again the star of his own anthology with a riff on potty humor cartoonist Johnny Ryan that takes on the entire indy scene. Wolfgang won an Ignatz for Outstanding Minicomic for LOW-JINX #2 and #3 was nominated for the never-awarded Ignatz last year as well.

Just when you think that Wolfgang is making a career as a wiseass parodist, he turns around and produces WHERE HATS GO, a wordless comic originally printed as part of the 5th issue of the anthology NON that is now sold on its own. HATS is a sweet tale about a boy who loses a prized hat given to him by his grandfather, and the extraordinary lengths he goes to in order to retrieve it. Along the way, he is aided by a girl clearly in love with him whom he essentially ignores--except when she assists him in finding his hat. What makes this more than a sugary trifle is the ambiguous relationship between the boy and girl, and Wolfgang's eye-popping art. Wolfgang favors heavy blacks with a style influenced somewhat by 20's animation and somewhat by more familiar underground artists. But his panel design and layout is wholly unique.

You can really see Wolfgang go to town in his new project, an adaptation of the classic PINOKIO. He's printed the first chapter as a minicomic and it already is several leaps ahead of HATS in terms of its innovative design. The darker, sadder subject also lends itself well to Wolfgang's approach. Once again, this comic is wordless, and Wolfgang effortlessly conveys emotion and meaning through his design and clever visual cues. An example comes when the elderly Gepetto has just fixed a radio and puts it on. The radio becomes the center of the page, fracturing it and creating different panels for each station it's turned to. Wolfgang may be found at Top Shelf's booth, since they will be publishing PINOKIO once it's completed. Check out his style at http://members.aol.com/noefiepub/.