Uncivilized Minis: C.Jetsmark, L.Richard, A.George, D.Zender, R.Topka, M.McGrane, J.Shiveley

In addition to publishing a number of interesting collections, new graphic novels and foreign translations, Tom Kaczynski's Uncivilized Books also publishes new minicomics, mostly from young cartoonists. It's actually a brilliant move for a publisher who attends a lot of festivals and does a lot of business online, as it's a relatively inexpensive way to introduce one's overall aesthetic to an audience. That said, there's really no unifying aesthetic, theme or genre in this batch of minis from the past couple of years, other than "interesting, well-done work that Kaczynski thought was worth publishing."

My Dead Mother, by Clara Jetsmark. Opening up with a little magical realism, Jetsmark uses a clear line to tell this story of two young women, a dead mother's head attached to one of them, and a loa who has the hots for the other woman. Jetsmark's dedication to that clear line style, the use of lots of negative space and using a variation on a six-panel grid on nearly every page created a strong story rhythm that made the most of its transitions. In terms of the storytelling tone, Jetsmark uses irreverence instead of a more traditional fairy tale voice, reminiscent of a Gilbert Hernandez story more than anything else. Jetsmark goes through the mechanics of a story with familiar tropes and subverts all of them with humor. The studious young woman, Monga, only wants to pass an exam, even as she is simply used to her mother's bandaged head being fused to her. The boy-crazy young woman, Kitty, wants to help her friend. The magical being, a loa named Ghede, is a marvel of character design: huge, oversized head that's too big for his tiny body. So much so that he can't even stand up, which distresses him because he immediately becomes obsessed with Kitty. The ridiculousness of this character, who later pumps iron in an effort to impress Kitty, is particularly funny because Jetsmark plays all of this with a straight face. Indeed, Ghede's absurd attempt at seduction somehow works, thanks to his newly bulked-up arms. Ghede's magic doesn't succeed in freeing Monga from her mom, but it does put her mother into the form of a tiger. The cool and distant quality of Jetsmark's line and the structure of the grid is juxtaposed against the increasingly-absurd nature of the story, resulting in a delightfully silly ending.

Distant City, by Lilly Richard. This is a diary comic/travelogue of Richard's time in Berlin, only its unconventional nature winds up being a kind of commentary on the genre itself. Most travelogues tend to be heavily mediated with regard to the author's narrative point of view. Instead of letting the place speak for itself as much as possible, or else letting the dialogue guide the reader, many graphic memoirists have a tendency to overexplain to their readers, rather than trusting their reader to make certain inferences. In this comic, Richard doesn't have to say, "I am introverted and am nervous about going to Berlin." On the first page alone, in three consecutive panels, she is told about the sort of experience she is "supposed to" have. She reveals that the wildest early adventure she had was having a habit of falling asleep on the subway and getting home later than she wanted.

This is not to say that Richard was a distant storyteller; indeed, it's her dry sense of humor that leaves the deepest impression on the reader, like the bizarre story of being asked to buy some chickens from a creepy local seller, and the highly uncomfortable squirm humor of fending off the advances of a fellow student. Her safety as a young woman in the city is never really openly discussed, but the things she has to do in order to stay safe are always there in subtext. Social discomfort strikes repeatedly, like not remembering how to say "bag" in German and then feeling forced to buy an expensive tote, or leaving a departmental party early because she felt so out of place and then feeling depressed when the host wrote her a nice email after she disappeared. Richard's concluding piece, on the difficulty of trying to grasp the character of a city in a short amount of time having lived there, is thoughtful and smart, much like the rest of the comic. Her cartooning is solid, with body language and general expressiveness being her biggest strengths. She was also quite adept at showing the depth and breadth of the city itself.

Carpocalypse, by Andrew George. This is a classic, early-adulthood slice of life comic. It follows a character named Nick, an affable if somewhat aimless guy who has decided to take a year off after high school in order to figure out what he really wants to do. Employing a stripped-down naturalism in terms of character design, George isn't one to pass judgment on any of his characters, including Nick's parents who are obviously not happy about what their son is doing. When the diner Nick has worked at for years is closed down thanks to gentrification, he's forced to make a decision about his life. The result is somewhat surprising and evoked a bit of the end of Dan Clowes' Ghost World for me, if that story had followed another of its many potential possible paths. Nick pulls up stakes and moves away from his town (a big decision), but does so in order to move closer to his two best friends. This was Nick essentially deciding to punt on his future in order to make harder decisions later on, something that George portrays matter-of-factly, neither glorifying or condemning his actions in the eyes of others. That said, George makes the decision easier to understand thanks to the details he uses to show how much warmth and support the trio of friends expresses toward each other. Giving up that level of intimacy, especially for someone just beginning to explore the world, is difficult to ask. I'd be fascinated to read a follow-up where his support network starts branching out into new areas at college but Nick faces the challenge of finding his own niche.                                  

Escape Route, by Daniel Zender. This mood piece is like a supercut of psychological horror tropes, zeroing in on chilling close-ups. Shadow and negative space play a big role in this comic, which takes a few cues from the sort of thing that Emily Carroll does in her comics. It's not the big, scary monster that's the payoff, nor is it blood & guts. Instead, it's the hint of danger, the fear of the unknown being mixed in with the familiar, and worst of all, the fear of reality being warped around oneself that Zender explores here, free of all relation to or constraint by plot. There's an understanding that plot is just a delivery system for mood in these sorts of stories, Characterization only needs to be defined in terms of the familiar and the Other, and Zender nails that in pages where a pile of skulls suddenly piles up around a deathly still character, or someone becomes absorbed by their environment. The two best pages are opposites in terms of approach, as one is concrete and the other abstract, but both represent an unknowable, inescapable terror. The first image is a shot of a hand that's bound by rope at the wrist. In four panels, we see the hand try to struggle against it, to no end. The shot clearly suggests someone bound and hanging from a ceiling, unable to escape. The second image is four panels' worth of thin, branching lines. Are they branches? Are they runes? Are they rivers? What does the different configuration of lines mean in each panel? This is an example of how context provides so much information, because in a different book, those panels would have simply appeared to be a series of lines. In this book, they take on a more sinister appearance, much like the original Blair Witch Project scared its audiences with a series of sticks arranged on the ground. Zender understands that suggestion is more evocative than explicit imagery, and that last page is the ultimate example of that. What's ironic about the book is that the title suggests a way out of danger, but the reality is that there's no escape route; this in itself is another clever way of trapping the reader and warping expectations.

Speakeasy, by Rachel Topka. This is an oddball fantasy comic in that it has fantasy tropes like a centaur, an anthropomorphic pig, etc. However, it's really more a grotesque tale that wouldn't have felt out of place in an old issue of Bijou Funnies, filled with sex, violence, jealousy and the extremes people go to for all of these things. The plot involves two rival speakeasy owners in a forest, one (a female centaur) who is extremely successful and the other (the pig) who is bitterly jealous because she isn't. The latter concludes that it's the centaur's diminutive lover that's the key to her success and so she kidnaps him, setting off an escalating series of violent events that include the pig using a pack of wolves to hunt the centaur, the centaur's men blowing up a bridge, and the rivals shooting at each other with machine guns. There's also plenty of sex, lust and even a crush held by the man with regard to the pig. The main attraction here, beyond all the silliness, is Topka's drawing style. Instead of drawing idealized fantasy figures, she draws brutes, weirdos, and just plain grotesque figures. It's interesting that they're the main characters of the story and that the more conventionally attractive figures are minor characters. Topka's background textures go a long way in establishing place and giving a sense of weight to this world, with zip-a-tone and a judicious use of grey-scaling providing a dramatic contrast to the thin line weight she used to draw all of her characters but the pig.

Ice Heist, by Madeline McGrane. This clever comic combines classic tropes of both supernatural and crime fiction in one amusing package, and adds the hellishness of the Minnesota winter as one of its key story elements. The unnamed protagonist (possibly based on McGrane herself) is confronted by the undead presence of three vicious and presumed dead murderers and bank robbers who request her help. What follows is a meticulously-detailed account of how they go about recovering some cash they left behind, an explanation of what they want with it now that they're dead, and finally the inevitable double-cross. The protagonist uses her one advantage (her superior speed) and outsmarts them in a clever way, leading to a satisfying ending. While the story beats are all fun and clever, it's McGrane's use of black as the dominant story element that makes her comic so distinctive, as well as he use of white for negative space. Once the action begins, it's almost all black filling up the panel, with only the characters filling out the rest. The protagonist's face is wide-eyed, thick-browed, and pony-tailed, matching the creepy energy of the criminals with enthusiasm. Following her eyes from panel to panel is the key to understanding the story's mood and emotional shifts, a clever device that provides a through line for key plot points.

Silver Wire, by Jordan Shiveley. Shiveley has really hit on something in drawing comics about mice. This comic is as nihilistic as it gets, addressing first the urge for self-annihilation in the form of the female mouse constantly staring at the baited mousetrap. Later, when she crosses the threshold and she's saved by her partner, she stares at his death in rapt fascination, revealing a deep level of sociopathic behavior that reflects her absolute disinterest in living. What's really tragic in this comic is not so much the horrible death of the male mouse, but rather his ultimately futile attempts to bring her back to the world of the living through companionship, conversation, sharing meals, getting out in nature, etc. In dealing with someone that fixated on the void, however, there really was no bringing them back, not entirely, in part because they viewed themselves and others as things rather than people, and as such watching their demise was the only activity that made sense. Shiveley delivering this brutal message using simple figures in some ways makes it all the more devastating, because the reader isn't distracted by imagery; instead, the iconic nature of Shiveley's drawings instead pushes the reader further into these scenarios, as they are forced to identify with both characters. Shiveley's pitch-black sense of humor further modulates the story in both the slightly absurd nature of the set-up as well as the darkly hilarious index at the end. Notating such concepts and events as "Blood", "Callous disregard", "Detached curiosity", "Willful disbelief" and "The yawning abyss", Shiveley comments on the story he just created while poking fun at the entire exercise. The design, execution and even decorative elements of this comic are all carefully and thoughtfully considered, which is a testament to Shiveley's own sense of the gestalt of his projects.

Minis: Nick Sumida, T.V. Alexander, Jordan Shiveley

Baybeez, by T.V. Alexander. This is a short, nasty and funny mini about babies, drawn in a grotesque and visceral manner. The results are absurd, hilarious and disturbing, like one strip where a woman seems to get pregnant from a toilet seat and then immediately starts giving birth to baby after baby, until all that remains is her skeleton. That strip was like a deranged cousin to the Chester Brown classic "The Man Who Couldn't Stop Going". Some of the strips are excuses to draw out puns, like "Babies shaving babies". It's an all-too-short collection for a clearly witty cartoonist.

Snackies II by Nick Sumida. This is a killer collection of gags that manages to work loneliness, pathos and a sharp satirical eye into a single, attractive package. Sumida is a great writer who sloughs off the self-loathing one would expect from this kind of comic with a powerful wit that results in real laughs. As an artist, he uses a clear line given weight and texture by making the entire comic red (this looks like the work of a risograph) and then adding extensive use of zip-a-tone and other effects. The lettering is not unlike Edie Fake's hand, a sort of cross between an old EC Comic font and a mechanical font. At the same time, Sumida shows some affinity for Michael DeForge style body horror, sneaking it into strips at key moments. What's amazing about his comics is that he manages to breathe new life into tired subjects like internet dating and personal ads in general. In "Meeting People Is Easy", Sumida describes using the hilarious "Arm's Length Method Of Intimacy Aversion (Practiced by 'Children')", including methods like throwing wads of wet paper at them, abstaining "from ordering food and just flick your tongue over the surface of a glass of tap water", etc. The slight cuteness of Sumida's drawing style is immediately subsumed by the sheer weirdness of his images. An ever better strip is "How To Deal With Stress", where Sumida tells friends he does things to let off steam, and we cut to Sumida setting fired to a car, taking a chainsaw to a mannikin while yelling "you're not my father", and more. Sumida stacks the deck with gag after gag, and then ends the story with a killer punchline. He skewers the narcissism of missed connections personals with one about mistaking his own reflection for another hot guy in an increasingly ridiculous set of scenarios, while trying to come up with a witty good-by phrase like his friends leads to an ear-piercing and glass-shattering scenario. I could have easily read another hundred pages of gags like this. Sumida's sense of pacing, page design and character design are all top-notch. The red tones got to be a bit much after a while, but they did create an interesting reading experience. This is a cartoonist who's ready for bigger things and deserving of a collection.

Rejoice, by Jordan Shiveley. This is a funny book of shorts by publisher/editor/designer Shiveley, whose Grimalkin Press has published some good-looking books. This is a collection of short strips about mice facing existential crises, relationship problems, and of course dilemmas relating to desire in the form of cheese. It's an interesting comic read right after Sumida's, considering that Shiveley has some similar points to make about relationships and loneliness, with a similarly cynical and darkly witty voice. A number of the strips don't have punchlines, as such, but rather painful endings (like the one above). Shiveley provides a number of punchlines after the fact with his index, with listings like "callous disregard", "disheartening truth of our situations" and "moment you realize she is leaving and nothing you can say will stop it" all getting multiple citations. Shiveley's line and page composition are remarkably open and light, yet he still manages to squeeze a lot of emotion and pathos out of these mice characters. The comic works because it provides a simple and even cute layer of imagery as a buffer for these painful emotions and thoughts. By not even attempting to anthropomorphize these mice, Shiveley wisely just lets their ids do a lot of the talking. Sex, death and sustenance resonate on every one of the pages, and Shiveley is wise not to overplay his hand. Instead, he keeps things light, crisp and in motion, as one strip bleeds into the next with few defined stops. If this strip was a form of therapy for Shiveley, I'd like to see more of it.

Autoptic and Everything Before in Minneapolis

From Friday 8/16 to Sunday 8/18, Minneapolis was the alt-comics capital of the US. Combining the resources of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), the minds behind PFC and the organizing committee behind Autoptic, comics fans were treated with a true comics arts festival. The focus was on guest of honor Jaime Hernandez, who gave a talk on Friday at MCAD in support of the closing of his exhibit in the MCAD gallery. However, collaboration was the theme of the weekend, as a week's worth of collaborations between North American and European artists was on display on Saturday. All of these artists attended the inaugural Autoptic show. Let's take a closer look at each event.

1. Jaime Hernandez exhibit and talk at MCAD. Friday night was the closing of the Zak Sally-curated exhibition of Jaime Hernandez' work, with the artist himself giving a talk in a packed auditorium. I had an opportunity to go through the show slowly before the crowds arrived. While I've never been a big proponent of comics in galleries, I thought Sally did a fine job in giving interested parties a good reason to study the show closely. Before one entered the main exhibition room, there was a wall dedicated to media coverage about "Los Bros" as well as posters and other ephemera. Sally sensibly arranged the art to reflect Hernandez's evolution as an artist over the years, dividing it into a variety of eras. He was careful to select a few stories here and there and display several pages in sequence, a decision that helped preserve the sequential nature of the work. There were also displays of the original, self-published Love and Rockets #1 and dozens of issues and collections under glass.

The top two pages were cut up and combined into the bottom page for "Spring 1982".

Hernandez is known as one of the greatest comics draftsmen in the world, so getting to see original art was fascinating. In the early days, he actually used quite a bit of whiteout. In the pages I saw from the recent story "The Love Bunglers", there was almost none. The real discovery of this exhibit is that Hernandez had a few out-take pages from several stories, including the only extant original art from "Flies On The Ceiling" (the originals were "lost" after being displayed in a gallery). Another outtake from "Jerusalem Crickets" was thrown out because it depicts Hopey writing a letter to Maggie while she's touring; Jaime realized that Hopey simply wasn't the kind of person who writes letters and scrapped the idea. Other pages were simply abandoned after a panel or two. It was also interesting to see him draw a couple of pages and later cannibalize them, combining them into a single page as he switched around or threw away panels. Also on display were a few pages from his scripts, which he continues to write on yellow legal pads. He used to throw them away until someone urged him to keep them. He told me he now has a huge stack of them and doesn't know what to do with them. I suggested he donate them to one of the many universities now collecting comics-related work. He said he's thought about that, but that he's also thought about selling them (he's selling some of his art now).

Outtake from "Jerusalem Crickets".

Stories highlighted in the exhibition include the aforementioned, "Spring 1982", "Home School"; and "The Death of Speedy"; Sally hit the highlights hard. At the end of the exhibition, there were two couches and a bookshelf with various volumes of L&R for readers to peruse. The crowd then streamed into the building's big auditorium on the campus of MCAD. It was standing room only in the hall, with a video feed being piped into the overflow room next door. Sally interviewed Hernandez in his heartfelt, passionate style, and it was clear that the artists had established a clear connection in working together on this project. As Sally enthused later, Hernandez indeed told stories he hadn't heard before. A big focus was on the role of his family in becoming a cartoonist. Jaime talked at length about his mother, who used to collect comics in the 40s and 50s but had to hide them from her own mother. He talked about drawing with his brothers one day, and his mom brought out a stack of drawings she had made of various comic book and comic strip characters. He and his brothers were awed by the fact that she had done this and it became something very cool to them.

The author in the reading section of the exhibition.

He noted that he and his brothers had simply always drawn comics. "It was just what we did. Get up, eat breakfast, draw comics". It was a cheap way to get a bunch of little kids to quiet down for a while. His older brothers did it, so he had to do it too. Sally made a joke about wanting to have introduced the Crumb brothers to the Hernandez brothers. I ran with that idea and asked Jaime about the hierarchy in the family, noting that Charles Crumb was the comics boss of the family and the other two brothers followed along. I wondered if he was ever told to draw a certain way, or if he was told he was doing something wrong. Jaime replied that it was never like that. Instead, it was just a constant sense of excitement from his brothers, but especially Gilbert:. "Hey, let's draw!" There were suggestions about fun things they could draw together but never orders.

An outtake from "Flies on the Ceiling".

Jaime said that during the academic year, comics were frequently forbidden until they got their grades up. When summer rolled around, his mom would take out a huge bag of Archies, Dells, Gold Keys, etc. (Mario's Marvel collection was considered to be "the good stuff" and off-limits for rough re-readings.) Those frequent re-readings refined Jaime's eye and made him realize what excited him. He remembered an issue of Dennis The Menace (most likely drawn by Al Wiseman) where Dennis and Joey walk down a street, having a conversation. This excited young Jaime for reasons he didn't understand, but he started to love the scenes in super-hero comics were they were in civilian clothes instead of the fight scenes. That launched him on his way.

Zak Sally and Jaime Hernandez. Photo by June Julien Morrisey.

There were any number of other interesting anecdotes as Sally and Hernandez got to the heart of how comics and music were meaningful to them. One common theme to Hernandez talking about his own comics is authenticity; he wants to depict things accurately and honestly. That extends to growing up Mexican-American in Texas and California, to the punk scene in early 80s Los Angeles, to how women think and act, to writing gay and lesbian characters. When I mentioned to him that a mutual cartoonist friend was working as an apartment manager in LA like Maggie, he said that he had run into her and she had told him that story. His main concern: "Did I get it right?" The other interesting theme that emerged about him over the weekend is how important it is to him to be part of the current comics scene. There was a long period where "the phones stopped ringing" and he and Gilbert stopped being hot cartoonists. The show and the reception he got the entire weekend spoke to just how important he is to young fans and cartoonists alike.

2. PFC Exhibition. Coinciding with the Jaime Hernandez show and the Autoptic festival was Pierre Feuille Ciseaux #4, or "Rock Paper Scissors". Organized by the ebullient June Julien Misserey and brought to the US by way of Zak Sally's suggestion, this was a weeklong experimental comics camp that brought together artists from North America and Europe. PFC is all about constraint comics, wherein artists are asked to draw stories given time limits and particular limitations. In one "game", an artist would draw a panel. The next artist would continue the story by drawing a panel above that panel, to the right of the panel and under that panel. The next artist would have to draw five panels, and so on, all the while keeping up the narrative. Another game saw the artists have to draw themselves captured by Wonder Woman's lasso and forced to tell the truth about something. Another game, called "Fuck This Thing" (printed as a free mini) forced each artist to draw the the thing they hated drawing the most until they got sick of it; they got to write "Fuck drawing thing x" as a sort of reward.

The roster of artists included Kevin Huizenga, John Porcellino, Eleanor Davis, Lisa Hanawalt, Genevieve Castree, Jim Rugg, Anders Nilsen, Lilli Carre', Marc Bell, and Tom Kaczynski from the US and Canada. Representing France and Belgium were J.C. Menu, Misserey, David Libens, Max de Radigues, Benoit Pretesille, Domitille Collardey, Eugene Riousse, Sandrine Martin, and Pierre Ferrero. All of these cartoonists have reached their mature style, but all of them are still in their primes. There was a careful balance of styles, from naturalistic to cartoony to minimalist. The artists also collaborated with a group of MCAD students on a number of projects, and the students came up with their own games as well. Something remarkable about this assemblage is that even by Saturday, the last day of PFC, the artists still couldn't stop drawing. A number of professional cartoonists sat in with those stopping by for a public zine/mini making workshop. Lisa Hanawalt and Eleanor Davis made a last-second mini for Autoptic. When I stopped by the main studio on Saturday, the artists were hanging around, helping each spot blacks and make beautiful, accordion-style minicomics.

The Saturday Comics Workshop at MCAD. The author's wife is in the lower left-hand corner. Photo taken from PFC website (presumably by June Misserey).

In speaking to the participating artists, most of them were apprehensive to begin the week. The joke of the situation was that every artist felt like they weren't as good as their neighbor--they couldn't draw as well or as seemingly effortlessly as everyone else. That was true from John Porcellino to Jim Rugg, representing a beautiful and minimalist style to a highly elaborate, detailed line, respectively. Critic Xavier Guilbert  discussed how being forced to work with another cartoonist, especially a stranger, was a way of breaking the ice for you. You each had a project to do and had to find solutions together, which naturally led to talking about everything else. Menu noted that artists from both Europe and North America not only have drawing in common, but the common language of storytelling. Even someone like Marc Bell, who works in a kind of dream logic, is working in that common language of narrative. Being forced to engage in these games forced the artists to work in their most spontaneous and natural styles, putting down their purest line before doubt and the need to clean up lines or the urge to choke a drawing to death took over.

The assignment board for "Break Something".

The ostensible goal of the week was to create a screenprinted comic. Each artist was asked to pick a character from a list. A North American artist was randomly paired up with a European artist (in most cases), combining their two characters with the theme "Break Something".  The screenprinting studio Aesthetic Apparatus printed them and they were cut on site as the artists pitched in with folding and cutting. There are a lot of great collaborations, but the Kevin Huizenga ("The Devil") and Sandrine Martin ("God") was the best, as God was a cartoonist and the Devil kept burning up his work. I also quite enjoyed Eleanor Davis & Max de Radigues doing a Soldier and a Corpse. All of the cartoonists used the sort of rich color screen that popped when screenprinted on thick paper stock.

Another highlight of the day was getting a guided tour to the students' exhibition of their PFC challenges by Barb Schulz, a professor in the comics program at MCAD (I should note that Sally is also a professor there). She talked a bit about particular students and the curriculum for undergraduates. MCAD has offered cartooning as a major since 1997 and they're now up to fifty or so cartooning majors in a school that has about 700 undergraduates. A number of the cartoonists wound up tabling at Autoptic. Mandie Brasington was one interesting artist who runs the Dead Cartoonist's Society, which published an anthology. Dawson Walker is a senior who has serious cartooning chops. Frosh Rosemary Vallero-O'Connell's cartoons for PFC really stood out; despite her lack of publishing experience, it's clear that she has real talent and ambition. I'll have a more detailed MCAD artist report for my High-Low column over at tcj.com soon, once I plow through the pile of minis I got from the cartoonists who tabled at Autoptic.

L to R: Genevieve Castree, Zak Sally, John Porcellino, Jaime Hernandez, Max de Radigues. Photo by June Julien Misserey.

There was an interesting lightness I observed in the PFC artists as I saw them working. Combining the social aspects of a convention with an environment that demanded actual productivity led to work that was mostly light-hearted and even crude in nature, but there was also a lot of cleverness and truth-telling to be found in the PFC exhibition. The sheer amount of comics they produced was staggering. Even Jaime Hernandez got into the act on Friday night, drawing a couple of images for a Nancy animation and getting in on a couple of games. Lisa Hanawalt naturally started a comic involving a woman's ass, knowing that Jaime was taking part and knowing that he'd "knock it out of the park" when he got to it. (Needless to say, he did.) Porcellino and Misserey both described the week as one of the best of their lives. I imagine a number of the other artists concurred. The lingering memory I'll carry of the day is Porcellino flitting from table to table and room to room, cracking jokes, spotting blacks and whistling Led Zeppelin's "Houses of the Holy".

I'll be curious to see what the future of PFC might be. The last event in France had all sorts of logistical problems, and there was talk that that might have been the last one. Bringing it to the US was a logical move that obviously bore great fruit. I could see the event moving to England for a year, given the now-high concentration of interesting cartoonists there. I could also see it coming back to the US. The Center for Cartoon Studies would be a logical home. SCAD in Savannah might work as well, or perhaps Columbia College in Chicago (Ivan Brunetti would be a total natural in this scenario!). Those institutions might have the money to make this possible. A longshot but interesting possibility might be SAW in Gainesville, which would be fitting because Tom Hart is a longtime OuBaPo participant. This is a worthwhile experiment that foments enthusiasm and productivity, and I hope to see it continue on an annual basis.

The funkiness of the Aria Building.

3. Autoptic. The show itself was a one-day affair held at the Aria Building, a renovated former warehouse and theater that's now an all-purpose event space. Others have raved about the space for the purposes of this show and I have to agree. The exposed brick, the quirky accents and the airy feel of the place reminded me a bit of the Puck Building in the MOCCA festival's early days. The fact that the show was free combined with a sunny day meant a number of curious passers-by came to take a look, given that the building is in a walkable part of downtown near the Mississippi River. The organizers of the show smartly had a hot dog stand and a food truck set up outside the show, and there were raves about both. There was clearly a great deal of thought that went into any number of decisions related to the show, even as they ran into some last-minute snafus.For example, the programming for the show was supposed to be at Alliance Francaise next door, but there was a mix-up in scheduling on their part that froze out Autoptic after 4pm. So the organizers quickly made a room in the back of Aria into a makeshift programming area. This had mixed results, as the microphones were all hand-held and the ambient noise out in the hall muffled a number of panel members. Luckily, the room was small enough that most information got across.

The show itself was just the right size for a one-day event, with just over a hundred exhibitors. Some of them were printmakers, local radio stations and local independent music labels. A few artists noted that prints seemed to be the biggest sellers in the room. For the most part, the room was still dominated by cartoonists. What I found interesting about the character of this show was that it drew a number of west coast cartoonists who I'd never met who were able to afford a ticket to Minneapolis (and in the case of some, drive there). This show was also a chance for the thriving Minneapolis comics scene to make itself known, especially students and graduates of MCAD. Of course, the American and French PFC artists also tabled at this show and made a big splash. West coast artists on hand included Elijah Brubaker, Rusty Jordan, David King, Greg Means, Tom Neely, and Virginia Paine. There were a number of Chicago artists who made the short trip up, including Sam Sharpe, Laura Park, Keiler Roberts and Marnie Galloway. The locals filled out many of the other spots, including Anna Bongiovanni, Kevin Cannon, Zander Cannon, JP Coovert, Max Mose, Will Dinski, 2D Cloud, Tom Kaczynski, and MCAD students and alumni like Dawson Walker, Leigh Luna, Mandie Brasington, Danielle Chenette, Alexis Cooke, Amara Leipzig, Jay Ragorshek and many others. There were any number of other familiar faces and micropublishers, but seeing that local color in a juried show gave the show an unusually high level of overall quality.

The Dead Cartoonist Society table from MCAD. L to R: Jen Silverman, Joel McKeen, Kitty Berry

Sales ranged from low to solid. John Porcellino said he did quite well and sold a lot of comics to non-comics readers who were curious, including plenty of his own King Cat series. Annie Koyama also reported good sales despite having nothing new for the show. Having Jaime Hernandez on hand certainly helped Fantagraphics (repped by the tireless Jen Vaughn) move a decent number of books. The total attendance for the day neared 1500, which is about what the defunct Minneapolis Indie Expo (MIX) did in its second year. The low sales were perhaps not surprising give the fact that the show drew in lots of local fans who weren't necessarily sophisticated comics readers. However, even a publisher like Secret Acres, which pretty much took a bath at the show, said that they want to come back if possible when the show is held again in two years because of the show's many other attractive aspects.

I had a strong hand in programming the show's panels after volunteering in the early going. Bill Kartalopoulos suggested doing a Q&A with Menu. I didn't get a chance to see it, but Bill said that the Alliance Francaise had a bottle of white wine on the table and the two of them drained it over the course of an hour, leading to a very relaxed panel. I put together the "Impact and Future of Micropublishing" panel and handed it over to the very capable hands of local writer Greg Hunter, who was also a big help in the A/V department during one of my panels. That panel included Justin Skarhus (2D Cloud), Virginia Paine (Sparkplug), Kartalopoulos (Rebus Books), and Barry Matthews (Secret Acres). Zak Sally moderated a panel on "Independent Culture" that included Koyama, a printmaker and a indy record label producer, while Isaac Cates' "Animals as People" panel had Lisa Hanawalt, Anders Nilsen and Sally.

L to R: Max Mose, Anna Bongiovanni, Eamon Espey, Eleanor Davis.

I moderated two panels. The first, "The Dark Roots of Myth" took an unexpected and personal turn in the early going. Featuring Eleanor Davis, Caitlin Skaalrud, Eamon Espey, Max Mose and Anna Bongiovanni, each artist noted that their frequently dark and fictional comics are rooted in autobiographical concerns. For example, Davis said that she is every one of the characters in her stories, and so conflicts presented are really internal conflicts. Espey said that some of his violent, meat-grinding imagery reflects an unpleasant job he was working at the time. Skaalrud and Bongiovanni both said that comics are a way of working through their own personal issues without having to talk about it at a conscious level. Bongiovanni said that she depicts motherhood and babies in the unusual way that she does as a way of working through her own childhood trauma. Mose works through political issues that burn at him (like the Louisiana oil spill) using monsters and horror so as not to be didactic. All of them mentioned using primal imagery as something direct and easy to understand by a reader and easy to translate as a creator.

L to R: Eleanor Davis, Caitlin Skaalrud, the author.

The second panel was a conversation with Jaime Hernandez and Lisa Hanawalt. I was well-prepared for my first panel, but I was mostly winging it here, counting on Lisa to make Jaime laugh for an hour. This is more or less what happened, to my great delight. I had a few questions prepped for them, mostly along the lines of when they first encountered the other's work, what you saw in their work that you wish you could do, etc. Right before the panel, Lisa brought Domitille Collardey up to the panel to participate, to my great delight. Jaime recalled meeting Lisa in a van at Comicon in San Diego, getting a ride with Matt Groening and Lisa to some location. He remembered being thrilled to actually hang out with some of the younger cartoonists. Then he said that he signed up as "an old man" on twitter, stalking his favorite young cartoonists. Domitille said that one of her crowning achievements in life was getting Jaime to favorite a fart joke that she made, but he replied that he favorites all fart jokes on twitter.

 L to R: Domitille Collardey, Lisa Hanawalt, Jaime Hernandez, the author.

The panel was an interesting mix of frivolity and sincerity. After taking up about half the panel with my questions (mostly of the explanatory nature mentioned earlier), I turned it over to Lisa, who had told me she had taken some notes during Jaime's lecture on Friday night. Jaime talked a bit about how embarrassing but true it is that he has a crush on a number of his characters, but especially Maggie, because he "knows" her best. Paradoxically, he puts her through the emotional wringer because he's interested in seeing her display a range of emotions in different situations, but he exclaimed that when he does it, he wants to yell, "I'm with you, Maggie!" He also revealed a couple of simple narrative tricks that were head-slappingly obvious when he talked about them but were things that I had never noticed. Because he knows Maggie, we the reader get full access to her thoughts and feelings, but from the point of view of an outsider. Hopey is a character who is a little more unknowable, and so the reader never gets to see her thought balloons. Ray is a sort of reader substitute so his comics feature first-person narration in captions.

The artists also talked about process, with both Lisa and Domitille both being relieved to hear that Jaime encounters problems he sometimes can't fix when trying to tell a story. Jaime mentioned putting some stories in a drawer and coming back a few months later to see if the problems magically worked themselves out. If not, back in the drawer they go. Lisa described her version of this process as putting her pages in a drawer in order to "let them think about what they did." Lisa and Domitille also talked a bit about Pizza Island, their old studio were all the artists were women, which received some funny publicity as a result. I noted that Pizza Island is the sort of concept that Jaime would have done twenty years ago.

At one point, Jaime suggested that Lisa aim some of the questions meant for him over to Domitille. On cue, Lisa said, "So Domitille, what was it like to grow up as a Mexican-American?" Jaime ended the panel by saying that he was happy to do it to tell the artists how much of a crush he had on their work and to let them know it. Lisa elaborated on a point I made toward the end, in that Jaime is drawing packed rooms and has a lot of younger fans: "Deal with it!"

The Autoptic organizers spelling out "Thanks!!" at the end of the show.

Regarding Autoptic as a whole: as others have noted, the lighting was too low in some parts of the room, there was no easy access to an ATM, and while the crowd was decent, many of them weren't interested in buying comics. Still, there was a tremendous amount of goodwill in the crowd and affection toward the organizers and volunteers (mostly MCAD students) who tried to solve problems and offer help as quickly as they could. Like the city of Minneapolis itself, the home team wanted the out-of-towners to have a great time and love their city and scene as much as they did. The show and the city certainly made a believer out of me.

Critic Xavier Guilbert and the author, both in black, at the kick-off party on Friday night. Photo by June Julien Misserey.

4. The Social Scene. I generally tend not to focus on this sort of thing very much in my convention reports, because it's not generally relevant to the show, and no one really cares unless you were there. That said, the kick-off party, held at the CO Exhibitions building that was housing an Anders Nilsen-curated exhibit of the PFC artists, featured cheap PBR and a number of interesting musical/performance art pieces. This is when guests of the show started showing up en masse, and the place was packed and full of nervous energy. After Autoptic, there was an afterparty at a restaurant/bar called the Red Stag Supper Club. While the ambiance and weather were both absolutely perfect, the restaurant was a bit overwhelmed by the crowds of cartoonists and service was spotty as a result. When the hour grew later, the place emptied out of non-cartoonists patrons and a great time was had by all. The evening benefited from the general good vibes of the show, as crowds ebbed and flowed together and artists of multiple generations entertained each other. Goodbyes were long and lingering, and the conversations ranged from serious discussions of art to fall-down laughing anecdotes. I know of at least one editor who got a cartoonist to quickly sign on to his anthology as a result of their conversation. Even though some cartoonists and publishers didn't make a lot of money, the low-key vibe and relatively small size of the show (the juried guest list was top notch) made for an intimate and pleasant weekend for all and struck a powerful claim for the Minneapolis comics scene as one of the most exciting in North America.

Special thanks to the ever-amazing Laura Jent-Clough for taking photographs (all photos taken by her unless otherwise credited). and to Annie Koyama for being Annie Koyama.

New and Old : Hive #5

The fifth volume of Jordan Shiveley's anthology of new and old material, Hive, is unsurprisingly hit and miss. However, Shiveley is to be commended for the sheer breadth and depth of the material in the book, as many of the cartoonists here are relatively new to me and show exciting potential. Let me start with Cole Closser, a student at the Center for Cartoon Studies whose "Finnegan Frog" stories channel both the style and spirit of golden age comic strip cartoonists like EC Segar or (especially) Billy DeBeck. The ways in which the poor title character gets beaten down by life in strip after strip is hilarious and evocative of later work (Chris Ware crossed with Tony Millionaire, perhaps). What makes Closser's work great is the organic nature of his line. He's not simply doing a pastiche but rather looks to have achieved his own style after much trial and error after looking at a lot of different kinds of comics. I could read a book full of these gags.

Shiveley did a nice job in getting a number of non-US cartoonists for this anthology, and these artists in particular piqued my attention. German artist Lilli Loge's darkly humorous "Make The Most Of It" plasters that platitude atop a number of funny and grim situations in which a wheelchair-bound woman goes out of her way to overachieve in the most ridiculous of situations. I enjoyed her bleak but absurd sensibility in this strip and found myself wanting to see more, which is certainly the mission of a good anthology. Liliana Velez wrote and Paola Gavira drew Velez's  story "Naked In The City", a straightforward account of a provocative act done with no thoughts toward eroticism, but rather a way of truly inhabiting (and forcing others to confront) the sense in which we are embodied. It's a fact that we literally cover up as people, a fact that is eroticized or shamed but that is always present. Her plaintive cry of "Don't they have a body?" as she is mocked, scolded and/or leered at rings true. Gavira's nervous line reminds me a bit of Julie Doucet in the way it wavers and is slightly on the grotesque side, a factor that helps ground the nudity in the story.

There's a lot in here that I've already seen, but I'm guessing many American readers haven't. Comics by Joe Decie, David Zggy Greene, Craig Collins &Iain Laurie come to mind in that department, representing diary comics, gags, and skewed horror, respectively. There was also an excerpt from Noah Van Sciver's excellent comic The Hypo published long before that book debuted. The tone and subjects of this anthology are really all over the place and have no particular flow; really, it's less an anthology than a sampler of work that Shiveley happens to like, published in a highly attractive package. (The hand-printed vellum dustcover is a beautiful little art object.) That said, Shiveley publishes work by artists not usually seen by wider audiences, like Hawk Krall's excellent comics about being a chef or Danny Hellman's lovingly-rendered exercises in hilarious filth that he drew a number of years ago.There's a couple of amusing Jonathan Baylis stories from his minis and lightweight but well done pieces from Lauren Barnett and Annie Mok (the former Ed Choy Moorman). Generally speaking, there's simply less dross in this volume than in the prior one. The comics in general look better and are visually distinctive. There's less genre tedium (not to say that all genre work is tedious, but there's nothing more tedious than bad genre work) and more risk-taking in the sort of storytelling approaches that are attempted. Even the most conventional of stories, like Paul O'Connell's by-the-numbers stories about jazz musicians and other cultural figures from the 1950s, are at least readable and competently done. I can't help but think that Shiveley is on the verge of being able to make Hive uniformly excellent, but that may require a rethinking of the way he gathers some of his material. There's no question that he has a knack for identifying talent and anticipating its rise.

Minicomics Round-Up: Willberg, Vasile, Shiveley, Stiner, White, Cass, Gustavson/Peck

Trackrabbit #5, by Geoff Vasile. Jesse Reklaw has long listed this series as one of his favorites, and this crazy first issue that I read does not disappoint. Subtitled "Guy and Kylie's Tiny Dinosaurs", it posits a slightly different America where the nightmarish idea of Sarah Palin as president has come to pass, forcing a geneticist named Guy out of a job. Guy has a bone-dry sense of humor and a sense of ethics that is gray at best, making his new job as head of a home for developmentally disabled adults all the more hilarious a match. Paired up with a hippie caretaker named Kylie, his main conflict in the issue is to come up with a way of deflecting the hatred the residents of the home aim at him after he puts their pet dog outside, leading to its death at the hands of a couple of deranged teenaged kids. Guy's background as a geneticist mixed, his access to a lab and the residents' need for pets inspires him to create the titular tiny dinosaurs, which the residents name things like "Batman", "Santa Claus" and "Paul Bunyan". Vasile's clear line and lack of fussiness in designing his pages allows him to put the pieces he builds into play with some darkly comic results. For example, the scene where the residents take the dinosaurs (which are incredibly cute, yet obviously dangerous) out for a walk results in one dinosaur eating a cloth flower off of a little girl's dress, a triceratops chasing a panicked dog, and a pteranodon munching on someone's kite.

When Guy finally has to get rid of the dinosaurs, his solution (breeding a flesh-hungry mini-T-Rex) is as demented as it is brilliant, though this leads to his eventual exit from the home. In Vasile's world, life and death come at a pretty cheap price, as does loyalty, considering that Guy winds up being forced to work for the government in order to breed more tiny dinosaurs for military purposes. Just as cold is Guy's dismissal of the highly deluded Kylie, who had fallen in love with the highly unavailable Guy (as he hints: "Don't ask, don't tell") and is brushed aside. The essence of Vasile's work is its light-hearted nature, even when it touches on violence and morally questionable acts. None of the characters in the book are meant to be especially likeable or easy to identify with, but that constant deflection of audience identification is what gives this book its comedic charge. I wasn't crazy about Vasile's slightly bland character design, but I suspect that choice was made in part to point the reader toward the real stars of the issue in terms of pure drawing: the dinosaurs. They were just exquisitely drawn and a constant source of both action and sight gagsin a comic whose humor otherwise was either dry bon mots from Guy or else a broad send-up of crunchy-types in Kyle.

A Guide To Injury Prevention For Cartoonists, by Kriota Willberg. Willberg is a professional massage therapist as well as an artist and teacher. This 56-page mini is frankly a public service for all cartoonists, given the way that it not only addresses all of the ways in which cartooning is not only debilitating because it's a sedentary activity, it's harmful because it can encourage poor posture and muscle damage. On top of that, Willberg provides a battery of stretches and muscle-strengthening exercises designed specifically for cartoonists and even provides a couple of sample routines that artists might follow. The mini is obviously copiously illustrated with her own clean-line cartoons, many of which are quite funny. That's especially true of the running motif of a cartoonist working til her arm falls off. Even as a non-cartoonist, there were bits of the mini that made me check my posture and how I stretched my muscles; she notes that improper care of one's muscles can literally shrink a person down as muscles shrink. I'd especially recommend this mini to young artists who are just starting to develop their work habits that will no doubt follow them for life. They may well be less likely to listen to pain or go to doctors, so the advice given in this comic could be quite important for a long time. Willberg's key point to cartoonists is to think of themselves as athletes and to train as athletes, given that they are involved in a very specific kind of intense physical activity on a daily basis. That's a simple but effective technique in getting artists (many of whom lead very interior lives) to think of their bodies before they start thinking about their pages.

March 29, 1912, by Jordan Shiveley. The date is the giveaway on this comic: it's about the end of the ill-fated Robert Scott expedition in the Antarctic. It's quite literally about the end, as Shiveley provides clues about the desperation of the four men in this crew: the cans of food were all eaten, the bones of whatever small animals they could capture are long picked-over, and the inadequate tents reveal that most of the party is dead. The last member (presumably Scott himself) desperately trudges out into the snow before keeling over, as the unforgiving night falls on him, only to reveal the haunting beauty of the aurora australis. This is a slight yet beautiful-looking little comic, done in landscape to accentuate the hugeness and hopelessness of Scott's quest.

Underwater Crystal Zone, by Daniel Thing Stiner. This is a small collection of playfully psychedelic comics originally published on the web whose look is somewhere between Skip Williamson and Fort Thunder. That is, the figures in this book are clearly designed if somewhat loopy-looking, with lots of long and exaggerated limbs and bizarre character designs, but the comic itself is very much an exploration of environment for its own sake. The taste that we get in this mini features a lot of clean and attractively-designed characters going about their business: finding underwater gems, playing music, building "reindeer machiens", and interacting with Mayan gods from the past/future. The comic feels more like a variation on a theme than something truly original, but that variation is still enjoyable.

The Index #1, by Caitlin Cass. Cass, best known for her Great Moments In Western Civilization Postal Consituent, takes a stab at long-form narrative with this first issue. There are certainly traces of her Great Books-inspired series to be found here in the story of two people whose pathology is that there's nothing wrong with them. Susan's totally bland life devoid of conflict was only given comfort thanks to buying several thousand blank index cards; for her, they represented the hopes and struggles of everyone who had hopes and struggles--she could project the lives of others on them. Her ex-grad school boyfriend John was crippled with the inability to finish any endeavor, getting 75 pages into his dissertation before he realized he had no thesis, and so he set out to fill up the cards. That's where the issue ends, setting up a non-conflict conflict for two passive-aggressive individuals who might well have thrived if they simply had a conflict that needed to be overcome and resolved to completion. The couple is essentially reduced to the philosopher's dream of living a life of the mind, but neither has anything to say or anything to think, until their own conflict begins. It never even occurred to them to create their own chaos as a way of alleviating boredom until John felt compelled to do so. Cass' line continues to improve, which is crucial given the way she relies so much on facial expressions in this comic. She still has a way to go to truly refine her line to the point where its crispness would be a perfect match for her dry, refined storytelling tendencies, but she's getting there. I'll be curious to see just how far she takes this series.

Territory, by Andrew White.White, an artist whose work I know through working with Brian John Mitchell's Silber comics, drew this mini working with Frank Santoro's comics correspondence course, and White credits Santoro as the editor. It's got Santoro's influence all over it mainly through the way White uses color (and color contrasts in particular) to drive both the story narrative and emotional narrative. This 16-page story is very simple but also completely enigmatic: a young man goes off to the woods under false pretenses, leaving behind his partner. He's there to play an unspecified strategy game against an unseen opponent, something he keeps hidden from his partner for unknown reasons. The comic is told using a time-fractured scheme, something that is only revealed with the appearance of a beard on his chin. Blue in the story represents the tether he has with his partner; her scenes are done entirely in blue and he's colored in blue when he's talking to her on the phone. Red represents the game, fire, danger and alienation. Yellow is a neutral color here, and the hidden connector to the sight of the forest as it actually might look, since yellow and blue combined make green. The title of the book refers to territory won and lost during and because of the game, as he makes a phone call to her in a panel where the phone keypad looks like the game board. The man, talking out loud to his unknown opponent, at one point understands that his mere appearance there was part of a larger game that he played into in order to try to make some kind of sense out of his life. White leaves it vague as to whether he is able to truly leave the game and go back to his partner, or if the moves he's made have trapped him forever.

Mogman, Prologue and Chapter 1-3, by Henry Gustavson and Tyler Peck. This is a very odd comic that flirts with horror but instead is simply enigmatic and strange. It follows a man with a disfigured face who lives in an abandoned factory with a Frankenstein doll that talks to him and what he does with his night. Early on, the reader's perspective is that of a new security guard at the factory, who is frightened by the monstrous presence of the man before realizing and understanding that while enigmatic, he seems essentially harmless. After the guard goes away, the man and the doll have an extended argument, capped by the man going out for a walk and seeing what sort of reactions he might get. There's a funny scene where he silently walks up to a woman outside her house, ignores her questions and then simply says "Do you know what it feels like to die?" before she goes back into her house.  Later, he admonishes himself for saying something so dumb--the monster having second thoughts. The third issue ends with him being assaulted and left on the ground by a homeless man, who steals the doll. This is a slowly unfolding comic that is extremely heavy on atmosphere, shadows, wrinkles, and thick lines in general. The artists aren't afraid to go off on long, strange visual tangents, like the man staring at his hand and causing it to break up into first a cubist form and then an abstract one. The artists list Bernie Wrightson as an influence and one can see them try to create an almost Gothic atmosphere for a story that otherwise feels quite modern and even quotidian, despite its strange trappings. At the same time, each issue does significantly advance the story, even if the story itself still seems rather shapeless. I have no idea where this is going, which in itself is intriguing.

Comics Readers Digest: Hive #4

Hive is an odd duck as far as anthologies go. It's not a standard anthology where all of its entries are new stories. Instead, editor Jordan Shiveley reprints stories from some of his contributors and gets new work from others. Shiveley's selections as editor are all over the place, ranging from personal & autobio stories to slick genre stories, arranged in a manner that occasionally defies rhyme or reason. Hive reminds me a bit of Josh Blair's Candy Or Medicine in that it looks like it takes all comers, from veterans looking for a venue to publish to new creators trying to get exposure. Hive is well-designed and attractive, but the size of the anthology doesn't always do its contributions justice.


For example, in issue #4, Hurk's story "Sculptor" is ill-served by the book's 5 x 8.5" dimensions. With 16 panels per page, there's a level of detail that's hard to parse given the small size of the page. The same was true for O'Shell's story, which had up to 17 panels on a page with tiny lettering. Even the strongest material in the book, a selection of Noah Van Sciver's best stories, doesn't look nearly as good as it did in his Blammo! series. There are other questionable publishing decisions, like publishing Jose' Antonio Alonso Barrueco's story in its original Spanish. I appreciate Shiveley's willingness to publish international material, but printing a story that its target audience can't read doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Another problem with the anthology is that Shiveley's tastes as an editor are too broad. Peter Richardson & David Orme's "Cloud 109" is a standard genre story, and a horrible example at that. The story is ill-suited to the anthology (it looks like this was originally a color story that was reduced to gray-scaling here), the lettering is tiny, the art is slick and soulless and the story itself trite & dull. That it takes up a full twenty pages of a 130 page anthology makes its presence all the more tedious.


That's unfortunate, because there are certainly the makings of a good anthology to be found here. Joe Decie is a real talent and the two-page anecdote he relates about his parents, New Year's Eve and toilet seats is hilarious. Cole Closser's "Sweet Sammy" looks like Shiveley took a minicomics version of the story, put it on a photocopier, and then printed the results. Strangely, that adds appeal to what looks and feels like an ancient artifact, as though Milt Gross did a minicomic decades ago. While Van Sciver's work isn't printed in a way that flatters it, these really are some of his best stories, like "Fame", "Process" and "Convention". Stories by Malachi Ward, Iain Laurie & Craig Collins were all welcome, if familiar contributions. In terms of artists who were new to me, I was impressed by John Kinhart's "Screw You" (a funny reminiscence of the consequences of swearing as a child) and Gloria's sparely-drawn strips about travel and grotesques. I'll be curious to see where the anthology goes from here; I like the idea of a well-designed entry-level anthology, but one with a sharper focus (even at the risk of printing lesser material) would make this a more consistent read.