The Kitchen Sink: Fearful Hunter

Sometimes, the best way to break through a creative block is to write and/or draw a story that has elements one simply enjoys playing around with. In creating Fearful Hunter, Jon Macy decided to draw and write about things that he liked and figure out how they connected later. In his case, that was punk rock, boys, druids, werewolves and trees. The result was a much looser, freer and more expressive work than what I've seen from Macy.. This is hindered in part by the ridiculous, fantasy bodies that speak to the sillier end of wish-fulfillment: six-pack abs and asses so curvy they would put Milo Manera to shame. Still, unlike his previous book Teleny & Camille (in which he added a ridiculous, tacked-on happy ending), Macy here is able to unite his "star-crossed lovers" themes in a way that was organic, exciting and entirely related to the plot.

In brief, the story is about a young, emerging druid who falls in love with a werewolf, and the jealous master that seeks to have the werewolf for himself. Along the way, there's an epic conspiracy designed to make a particular druid all-powerful over their gods, a werewolf caravan, various friendly animals and sex scenes that not only aren't jarring to the reader, they are integral to the story. The more mundane aspects of the story, like the daily lives of werewolves and the sexual and platonic friendships of the book, help balance out some of the nonsensical fantasy/magic-speak.

Every character has solid motivations and the fantasy elements of the story are well thought-out, fascinating and manage to avoid familiar cliches while still trumpeting "the power of love". Indeed, the book is one long exploration of sex as a function of love vs. sex as a function of power. This plays out in how the druids interact with their "allies" (the elder gods), including an excellent plot twist at the end that saves the day. At its core, this is a simple "outside forces conspire to break up an ideal couple" story, but Macy's storytelling instincts make these obstacles interesting to read about and far from arbitrary. By placing part of the conflict as one as professional duties vs romance, Macy hit on a point that will resonate with many readers. There is joy on every page of this book, as Macy's enthusiasm for his favorite subjects sings on every page. If Teleny and Camille felt clinical and slick, this book is personal and delightfully sloppy.

Indulgence: Teleny and Camille

Teleny is a novel that was written in secret by Oscar Wilde and his young circle of writer friends. It's rich and challenging both as a work of literature and as a work of erotica. Jon Macy, a cartoonist who's been making comics for twenty years, decided to try to adapt this novel to comics as Teleny and Camille. A veteran of drawing gay porn and horror comics, he would seem a natural fit to illustrate Wilde & company's frequently florid and sometimes horrific prose.  However, this adaptation has a number of major problems. Some of that lies in the source material. As the clever introduction indicates, Teleny was written serially by Wilde and his anonymous friends; each addition to the manuscript was delivered to a trusted bookseller. However, the result is all over the place.  Some writers are interested in focusing on the romance between a Victorian-age gentleman and a charismatic, foreign-born pianist. Others seek the liberating power of depicting gay sex as explicitly as possible on the page, knowing that if this work was exposed to the public that they ran the risk of hard labor in prison. After a while, it seemed like each writer was trying to top the next in writing elaborate, charged and extremely explicit sex scenes. The bigger problem is that the main characters suffer as a result, feeling more like vessels than vividly drawn, realistic men. Trying to piece together the romantic and explicitly erotic stories and their sometimes jarring tones was undoubtedly not an easy task for Macy.

Macy struggles to create a book that's consistently interesting on a visual level. Certainly, he's up to the task of depicting the book's many sex scenes, up to and including the sensational orgy scene that ends in tragedy. He does a fine job in balancing the beauty and emotion of sex with the raw animal passion of the act, depicting scenes with an expressionist flourish and intricate decorative touches. In the scenes that feature hallucinations or nightmares, Macy's horror background also serves him well, especially when one character dissolves into another. However, virtually all of his other scenes are boring and feel rushed.  Unless two characters are having sex or kissing, he doesn't have a great grasp on how bodies relate to each other in space, nor is his body language very expressive.

Macy drew his own introduction where he talks about how hard it was to adapt this work, especially in terms of what to keep and what to omit. In a moment that recasts that introduction into a moment of self-indulgence, he says "I think Oscar would approve".  After he finishes the book, he bemoans that so many gay-themed stories end in tragedy. His friend tells him that the book already has four or five authors, so why not add yourself to the list? This results in a ridiculous bit of self-indulgence as Teleny and Camille are rescued by a friend and run away to Paris. Frankly, it flies directly in the face of the characters as written; they didn't come to a tragic end simply because they are gay, but rather because of Teleny's pride. Afflicted by debts, he repeatedly refused to let the love of his life help him. Instead, he lied to Camille and slept with Camille's mother, who paid his debts in exchange for sex. Sure, it's a melodramatic ending, but it was clear that this was the direction in which the book was heading. It's very much a standard Victorian-era tragedy, where true loves are prevented from being together. Instead, Macy inserts what feels like fan fiction, complete with dialogue that is anachronistic at best and didactic at worst. While I understand that this was an attempt at self-empowerment after such a grueling adaptation ended on such a down note, it felt like something that belonged in a sketchbook, not as an alternate ending in an otherwise faithful adaptation. It simply didn't make sense and was one of many reasons why Teleny and Camille is a failure, albeit an ambitious and well-intentioned one.

Small Press Anthologies: Three #2, Candy Or Medicine, The Sorry Entertainer

Let's take a look at three anthologies of various shapes and sizes:

Three #2, edited by Rob Kirby. Nothing in this issue of the queer-themed anthology of Three matches Eric Orner's story from the first issue, which earned an Ignatz nomination. That said, there's a certain sweetness and vulnerability to be found in each of the three stories in this issue. "Dragon", written by Sina Evil and drawn by Jon Macy, is the least compelling of the three. It's about a young man who meets a cartoonist he admires and feels close to on the basis of his familiarity with his material. They have a romantic encounter during which the young man is coerced into doing things that made him somewhat uncomfortable, yet are rationalized away because of the connection he imagines between them. The "dragon" metaphor (and insertion into the story), however, is a painfully obvious metaphor, especially when something dramatic happens. It's annoyingly "cinematic", adding little to a story that's already a bit bland to look at.

Things pick up with "Help Wanted", a jam between Jennifer Camper and Michael Fahy. This is a delightful little comedy of misunderstandings with a distinct romance comic flair. What's surprising is that even though Fahy and Camper alternate panel tiers, there's a remarkable sense of continuity in terms of both story and art between the two. This is quite unusual for a jam comic, which usually tend to be huge messes. I don't know if the two improvised from tier to tier or if they wrote it beforehand, but the smooth result speaks for itself. I like the way that Camper and Fahy play up the romance comic tropes, down to lines like "Happy, darling?" being followed by "Oh yes! A thousand times yes!" coming after a man's FTM transexual boyfriend reveals that he's pregnant and once had a fling with his sister.
The best of the three stories is "Nothin' But Trouble", a collaboration between Craig Bostick & David Kelly. It's a story of a closeted country-western singer who picks up a prostitute after a gig but falls in love with him. There's a clever narrative trick where the story is told first by the singer (Jimmy, drawn by Bostick) and the prostitute (Butch, drawn by Kelly), alternating every couple of pages. The trick comes in terms of coloring: the red-toned pages belong to Jimmy and the green-toned pages belong to Butch, allowing the cartoonists to make whip-crack transitions with a minimum of narrative disruption. Bostick has always had an appealingly clear line, and the cartoony quality of his line is a nice counterpoint to the low-key melodrama of this story. There's no easy happy ending to be found to this story, yet both characters wind up having a surprising and positive effect on the other. It's a pitch-perfect slice of life story, with the two artists meshing remarkably well despite portraying two different but complementary narratives.


Candy Or Medicine: The Compleat First Year, and Candy Or Medicine #14 & #15, edited by Josh Blair. Blair decided to reprint the first four issues of his all-comers minicomics anthology which has a lower hit-to-miss ratio than virtually any other anthology, yet always yields some gems. As Blair notes in his introduction, this is a deliberate strategy. He's less an editor than an "OE", to use APAzine parlance. That is, he serves to collected and publish material sent to him, with the money he earns from sales (at just a dollar an issue, it can't be much) to support collating and copying each issue. His hope is that every story will appeal to at least some readers, even if they aren't necessarily the stories that he likes most. From the very beginning, Candy or Medicine attracted people who could barely draw or conceive of a coherent narrative as well as great cartoonists with no other print outlets. Brad W Foster (a Newave era stalwart) and Matt Feazell (the DaVinci of stick-figure minicomics) make early appearances with drawings instead of comics. The strip has also drawn an unusual number of international cartoonists eager for any kind of exposure to American artists, like Greek artist Kostis Tzortzakasis and Briton Kel Winser.

The most recent volumes (#14 and #15, sold as a two-pack for two dollars) show that the anthology is both much the same but has also started to attract a better quality of cartoonist. #14 is a particularly strong issue, with a strange and beautifully drawn story about how the mold in a kitchen spawned a new ecosystem and saved a marriage as its centerpiece. Emi Gennis contributed one of her "Wikipedia List of Unusual Deaths" comics, this time about an old man who was exercised to death by his wife, who happened to be a MTF transsexual and who also happened to be the child of old family friends thirty years his junior. Gennis' line just gets sharper and sharper, matching her wit as well. Lauren Barnett's absurd scribble is typically funny, especially in the way it makes fun of her own limited draftsmanship. Issue #15 doesn't feature any stand-out strips but is still interesting for publishing short comics from Lithuania and Guatemala. I love that Blair is so committed to this anthology, giving cartoonists the opportunity to get better in public.


The Sorry Entertainer, edited by Simon Moreton & Nick Soucek. This is a cheap newsprint anthology from the UK that includes contributors from Ireland, the US and Argentina, based around the theme of performing and performers. The results are a mixed bag, as some of the artists don't really rise to the occasion of using the space in an interesting manner. On the other hand, there's plenty to like here from a number of artists who have been making some noise in the UK and US scenes the past couple of years. Moreton's own strip follows a schoolboy persecuted by his peers who slips into fantastic reveries, acting as a sort of prologue for the kinds of stories that follow.

The tone of the anthology slips from light-hearted to the contemplative. Paddy Lynch, for example, submits a wispily-drawn story about a man going to a park musing about how difficult it is us for to live in and enjoy small moments while listening to a guitar player, only to have a policeman come by and shoo the guitarist away. Jason Martin's adaptation of Mike Watt's tour diary is hilarious, with his rough style a perfect match for Watt's whole demeanor. Another example of that swing is David Z. Greene's full-page wrestling strip that winds up with a silly (if bloody) punchline. Greene's one of the few artists in the whole broadsheet who really makes use of the space, filling up the page with big images that go a long way in selling his gag. Rol Hirst and Andrew Cheverton's "Face For Radio", on the other hand features an ex-DJ with a new gig: introducing records at a retirement home.

The ubiquitous Noah Van Sciver contributes a story about a four-eyed man shunned by society who joins a traveling freak show, grows embittered and kills his audience and the circus. Van Sciver crams the story into fifteen panels, yet nothing feels cramped and his drawings carry the story. The bitterness of performing is ground that's covered by Richard Worth & Jordan Collver as well as Chris Fairless. The former story is a detailed character portrait about a magician who first waxes nostalgic about his career, and then when the page is flipped, complains bitterly about it. Its outer border is that of a playing card, and his story is supported by a lightly penciled series of figures in the background. It's a clever bit of cartooning. Fairless' story is about a young immigrant who performs in a park by speaking truth to power until he gets busted, and then simply performs as a statue. Fairless uses shadow and light contrasts to tell his story, and the modulation of these tones is what gives the story its emotional power.

Other highlights include a typically goofy strip by Lauren Barnett about a sad clown who performs for Jesus, a funny strip about a comedian with a particularly lowest common denominator for a gimmick by Sam Spina, Peter Batchelor's story about a psychic with a horrible secret, Soucek's account of a story about a rock band who got the greatest gig of their lives under dubious circumstances, and of course an epic bit of full-page lunacy from the inimitable Rob Jackson. His account of an entertainer who recalls his life's story is full of hilarious non sequiturs, with his typically rough style somehow accentuating the effect of his silliness. While there were no true duds in the anthology, none of the rest really registered after an initial reading. That said, this broadsheet was an interesting alternative to the typical minicomics anthology, allowing artists the opportunity to go big with a theme vague enough to allow them to tell the sort of story they wanted.