Thirty Days of CCS #23: Bingo Baby

Bingo Baby is touted as an "experimental collaborative comic book" at its home site, Penny Lantern. The script was the result of a collaborative role-playing game called Fiasco, which aims to be a RPG version of a Coen Brothers movie, where you play characters with "powerful ambition and poor impulse control". The players included CCS alums like Amelia Onorato, Denis St John, Donna Almendrala, Joseph Lambert, and Bill Bedard, along with professor Jason Lutes. After recording the game and turning it into a script, the group parceled out storytelling responsibilities in a mainstream "assembly-line" style. Onorato drew the characters and some backgrounds. Bedard, Lutes and St. John drew other background details. Almendrala inked the whole thing to give it page-to-page consistency. Bedard and Lambert did the colors, while Alemendrala and Lutes lettered it. The results are interesting, if uneven.

The story concerns a handful of intersecting characters in a small town, each with their own set of obsessions and delusions. Carol Anne is sensible but obsessed with playing Bingo, the central metaphor of the book. Her (technically) ex-husband Rob is a dreamer who fancies himself an actor. His brother Jake is a petty drug dealer living with his elderly relative Nan, and he's trying to find money that she may have hidden inside her house after winning a big bet on a horse race as a young woman. There's Missy, who's trying to negotiate being a single mother after being thrown out by her parents, and Goldie, a drug-addled older man who fancies himself the father of her baby. Each of the characters has dreams that directly or indirectly interfere with the others, which seems to be a product in part of the game's mechanics. It also conveniently lays down a plot as the players/writers try to find a voice for each of the characters.

The problem with the book is that some of the characters don't escape the confines of the game. Rob is a key character, connected in many ways to several other characters, but he feels more like a twitching pile of scribbled-down character traits than an actual person. The same goes for Jake, who at least is written as a sort of darkly comedic, incompetent character in the Coen Brothers tradition. Of all the characters in the book, only Missy operates on a level that approaches logical, calculating desperation, and it's fitting that she winds up as the only real "winner" in the story. The problem with many of the other characters is that unlike in a Coen Brothers or caper movie, where ordinary people are thrust into desperate situations, Bingo Baby features characters with more outlandish personalities (or non-existent personalities) who have things happen to them. Indeed, the real "action" of this story occurs when one character accidentally burns down the house of another; the only other true actions taken are by Missy. Yet Missy isn't thrust into the spotlight quite as boisterously as the story does the crazy Goldie or scheming Jake. That makes the story's climax more interesting but results in some wheel-spinning along the way. Visually, the team does a good job of maintaining page-to-page continuity, with Almendrala in particular doing a great job at designing distinctive-looking characters. There's a frequent dearth of background details, but the Lambert/Bedard coloring team helps make up for that by constantly varying background hues. There was definitely a strong group mind behind the concept of the book; just like in the game Bingo, things had to line up somewhat at random and fortuitously for Missy to make her getaway. Hopefully, future iterations of this experiment will yield more nuanced characterizations.

Thirty Days of CCS #7: Joseph Lambert

Joseph Lambert told me at SPX that after the success of his book Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller, he was going to concentrate on short stories for a bit. The four minicomics I got from him at SPX show him to be at peak form as he continues to explore his primary storytelling interest: sibling dynamics. While some of his stories about kids still retain a touch of magical realism, he's starting to lean more on verisimilitude, depicting kids as they actually think and act. Let's take a look at each one.

Layaway deservedly earned an Ignatz award nomination. It is typically beautiful to look at and intricately designed; these things are givens with regard to Lambert. However, there's a new layer of narrative and emotional complexity to be found here. This story is about social awkwardness mediated through the history of two winter coats. Jumping back and forth in time, Lambert's anecdotes regarding the coats are devastatingly awkward and painful, as a coat that was initially beloved because of its puffiness is kept til its in rags and ill-fitting. Flashing back to how he couldn't feel a punch because of the coat's thickness, Lambert relates a story of telling a friend to punch him; when he does, he doubles over in pain and starts crying. It's a hilarious moment, one that reveals the social gap Lambert's stand-in feels as an older brother who feels out of place with his younger siblings and the awkwardness he feels with peers. That's made especially clear when he gets a 49ers jacket knowing absolutely nothing about the football team, instead inanely telling anyone who would listen that it was purchased from layaway.Throw in the awkwardness of trying to impress a girl with that story, and you have a surprisingly rich and textured story in just 16 pages.

New Worlds For Me And For You takes on the odd ways in which children become friends, and how socioeconomic factors can play a role in interpersonal dynamics. Two rough-and-tumble kids (one a gender-ambiguous tomboy) loudly dare each other to seize the moment in daring ways (leading to band-aids and casts) while the girl next door in a much nicer house injects herself into their own world. This comic is especially impressive in terms of pacing and restraint. The other seems like an odd thing to praise in a comic filled with hyperbolic dialogue and plenty of propulsive motion, but Lambert leaves out details in such a manner as to let the reader fill them in, giving the burgeoning friendship between the three kids an extra dimension of rich depth. The comic is also crammed with gags, even as Lambert peppers them with moments of self-actualization that are then popped by a viscerally bracing moment, like one kid breaking his other arm after feeling a rush of adrenaline that overcomes his fear of death.

Supposed To is more along the lines of Lambert's magical-realist works, where a kid is sort of fused to a house as a metaphor for isolation. It's closer in spirit and execution to those silent, crazed comics where kids get angry at the sun or moon, while retaining a strong sense of humanity in the plight of the child. WizZine is a sketchbook featuring drawings of wizards and magicians in various stages of performing spells. His character design is incredibly appealing, making me wish that Lambert was drawing Dr. Strange. There's a strong Ditko influence, but there's also bits of Steve Bissette (designer of John Constantine) and even the whimsy of Winsor McCay. If Lambert can craft a story around these images, it would look incredible.

Fairy Tale Comics

Following up the success of Nursery Rhyme Comics, First Second is aiming another book at younger readers. The formula, once again was to include a mixture of cartoonists and illustrators to adapt classic fairy tales. The results were mixed, and I found that the less successful comics were by the illustrators or cartoonists with whom I was not familiar. While the possibility of being previously biased toward cartoonists whose work I admire is certainly in play, I like to read anthologies precisely because it gives me an opportunity to discover new artists.

Editor Chris Duffy was quite smart about choosing the alt-comics cartoonists for this volume. Nearly all of them had at least some experience with doing all-ages stuff. Both Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez had experienced doing this, especially Gilbert, and it shows in their stories here. Beto's "Hansel and Gretel" is appropriately grisly and weird for a cartoonist who's currently exploring pulp/exploitation comics. Jaime's "Snow White" is appropriate because he's so good at drawing women, though it does inadvertently point out the problem that this story has an astoundingly passive heroine. Stuff just happens to her and she happens to get lucky in the end.

Vanessa Davis' "Puss In Boots" was one of the best stories in the whole book. Her painterly style combined with her strong cartooning fundamentals makes this a perfect hybrid piece for children, as it combines elements of comics and traditional children's illustration.  I can't imagine an artist more suited to do an original Toon Book than Davis, and I hope she gets a crack at that in the future. Luke Pearson's "The Boy Who Drew Cats" is done very much in his Hilda style, down to the muted color palette, thin lines and simple but solid character design. It's a story that's at once cute, funny and frightening. "Rabbit Will Not Help" (based on "Bre'r Rabbit") by Joe Lambert is another story perfectly suited for the artist, as he's great at drawing anthropomorphic animals. Using pages packed with as many fifteen panels on them in rows of three, Lambert crams a lot of detail into a small space, establishing a particular kind of rhythm as the story sets up and repeats a certain kind of gag again and again. Breaking that rhythm and establishing the final punchline (slightly altered from the original story but still the same basic idea of saying, "Oh no, please don't make me do something I really want you to do!") allows Lambert to unpack his panels just a bit.

Other highlights include Graham Annable's "Goldilocks", which is told without words and with a deadpan character that heightens its humor, as well as Jillian Tamaki's "Baba Yaga", which eschews the grid entirely to create an open page with two or three images slowly transitioning into each other. Craig Thompson's story about a young king demanding constant storytelling plays to his strengths as an artist who loves to add a lot of detail and decorative elements to his comics. David Mazzucchelli's story about a boy who couldn't shudder was clever but looked a bit on the dull and flat side. Raina Telgemeier's "Rapunzel" was solid as per usual but lacked the distinctive energy and pacing of her own comics. Most of the other stories didn't really make much of an impact on me as a reader one way or another, but Gigi D.G.'s version of "Little Red Riding Hood" was the only story that I thought went out of its way to look twee, like it was trying too hard to look like a story for children. Overall, I thought giving the cartoonists space to really flesh stories out made for a lot of successful results, and even most of the more uneven or forgettable stories were at the very least pleasant. I'll be curious to see if First Second tries to continue to market books to younger readers in the same vein.

Out With A Bang: Mome #22

The final issue of Mome is understandably all over the place, as Eric Reynolds wanted to encourage as many of its contributors as possible to submit a piece for the finale but also had a gaggle of new cartoonists he wanted to include as well. Given the new roster of cartoonists he published in this issue, I could have easily seen Mome go on for another dozen issues, replenishing its talent pool as older artists bowed out. I hope that Reynolds sees fit to do an occasional "Mome Annual" in the future, especially since Fantagraphics doesn't have a flagship anthology at the moment.

The last issue sees several more episodes of serials, many of which unfortunately did not get a chance to finish up. Kurt Wolfgang hilariously addresses that problem head on with his latest installment of "Nothing Eve." Right in the middle of this episode, Wolfgang (inexplicably depicted as a talking dog) yells "cut" and sends his characters home since Mome is ending. It goes on from there: dog-editor Reynolds informing Wolfgang that Mome was being cancelled because no one likes his comics, dog-publisher Gary Groth demanding zombies and hookers to liven up the series, and (best of all) Jordan Crane being brought in to write exactly the ending that Groth wants. Wolfgang is finishing up the real ending now for a Fantagraphics book, but this ending reminded me a bit of his Low-Jinx days, when he would cleverly savage everyone in comics (especially himself).

I don't have much to say about the other serials in this issue, like the Michael Jada/Derek von Gieson "Devil Doll", Ted Stearn's latest Fuzz 'n Pluck epic "The Moolah Tree", T. Edward Bak's "Wild Man" or Josh Simmons/Shaun Partridge's "The White Rhinoceros". I've discussed each of these at length in prior reviews. Bak completely reworked "Wild Man" into a book that will be out in the fall of 2013, and he notes that "it's a completely different work." I really hope someone picks up the demented Simmons/Partridge story. Speaking of Simmons, he also contributes a lovely one-pager that's essentially a series of happy endings about a group of friends meeting their maker.

At nearly 250 pages, Mome 22 must have been an enormous challenge for Reynolds to whip into something that had any kind of flow. Thanks to its size and variety of material, this issue indeed lurches back and forth, with some of the serials providing particular screeching halts. Reynolds clever gets around this to an extent by using a series of Steven Weissman strips as interstital material, giving the anthology a number of rest stops to cleanse one's aesthetic palate. These strips, featuring the members of Guns N Roses working in a deli, are some of the funniest comics I've ever seen by Weissman. With titles like "Chinese Chicken Salad Democracy" and "Appetite For Delicatessen", Weissman piles on the crazy in strip after strip, especially with his star character, the guitarist Slash. I could read a book's worth of these.

Many of the returning regulars turned in some of their best work for this volume. Eleanor Davis' "Nita Goes Home" stands as one of the best five or ten stories published in Mome. It fits snugly into most of her themes, involving family and the ways in which women relate to each other, transplanted to a futuristic setting. The colors are bright and deliberately stylized, reflecting a future where the air is toxic but family relationships are still a matter of push-and-pull. There's a wistfulness to this story that reflects a woman coming back to where she was raised after having rejected it for a life as an artist and natural farmer, a bittersweet quality that reflects the experience of dealing with her father dying. The scene where the titular Nita and her sister, each wearing a cocoon-like anti-toxicity suit, spread their father's ashes out across the land and then weep wracking sobs into each other's arms. It's both absurd and totally heartfelt, a reflection of the way humanity can trump technology. I'm hoping this and her other excellent Mome contributions will make it into her upcoming Fantagraphics collection.

The other top-notch submissions by returning artists included stories by Joseph Lambert, Laura Park and Tom Kaczynski. I reviewed the Kaczynski story, "Music For Neanderthals", elsewhere. Lambert's "Lists of Lasts" continues his considerable leap as a storyteller, taking the intensely detailed and hyperkinetic stories about kids and once again transplanting that concept into a darker, deeper setting. In this story, two young boys suddenly have total freedom in their house and decide to make lists of things they have, as Lambert slowly reveals the apocalyptic reasons why they have this freedom. Lambert's creative use of lettering takes on an especially crucial role in the story telling. Park's "George" is a delightfully creepy little noir story about an unassuming man who secretly blows up movie theaters as a sociopathic way of lodging his protest against modern civilization. As always, her character design and sheer drawing skill are impeccable.

There were nearly a dozen other stories by past and recent Mome regulars that were also quite good. The always dependable Nate Neal's "Death" was his cheerfully morbid take on the end, focusing on the absurdity and inevitability of it all through the use of randomly named characters. Sara Edward-Corbett's "The Fanciful Companion" was typical of her melding of childhood whimsy and cruelty, drawn with her delicate line. Lilli Carre's "Into The Night" is another of her mysteries; she loves spinning yarns about unexplained and strange compulsions that appear without warning; This time, it was a sound in the middle of the night that had a slightly different effect on everyone, but it was something that could not be entirely ignored. There's a delicacy to her line as well, though it's put to slightly more abstract ends. Tim Hensley's "Sir Alfred" is a series of hilarious strips about the late, great film director Alfred Hitchcock. Hensley really gets after the gossipy side of Hitchcock and his many sexual obsessions, along with his impotence. I could have read a book's worth of these, and I was delighted to see Hensley return after finishing up his amazing "Wally Gropius" serial. When Noah Van Sciver was first published in Mome, he was just starting to build up steam as a cartoonist. Now he's entered into a more mature phase of his career, and it's remarkable to see how assured and funny his "Roommates" is. Van Sciver loves depicting toxic, disgusting and generally reprehensible relationships, and this short & sweet story really gets at that essence. Joe Kimball's story was another bizarre and immaculately drawn bit of visceral weirdness, while Sergio Ponchione provided another of his rubbery and fun Dr Hackensack adventures. Tim Lane's "Belly Gunner" abandoned his usual interest in life on the American road and instead flashed back to the possibility of instant death as a plane gunner in World War II, drawn in his usual naturalistic but fluid style.

Three of the original Mome artists returned for the finale (along with Wolfgang, who never stopped contributing): Gabrielle Bell, Anders Nilsen and Paul Hornschemeier. Hornschemeier's main contribution to Mome was his serial "Life With Mr Dangerous", which was later collected. In #22, he contributes an interview with Amy, the main character from that story, revealing influences and generally finding ways to talk about the story. It's a little gift for long-time readers of his. Nilsen contributes one of his funny and philosophical photo comics, the kind that make up his "Monologue" books. Bell, who was another MVP of this series, contributes a funny fantasy comic called "Unlucky", which sees her unable to get into a club where a party held in her honor was being staged. Things just get worse from there, as her evening and fortunes unravel bit by bit. It's a fitting final story for the anthology, as she was on the cover of the very first issue.

Eight artists made their debuts in this issue of Mome. Chuck Forsman's story "Francis", about a young man dealing with his own insecurities and his inability to cope with the fact that his mother was dying, was typically excellent. It's in turns crude, heartfelt and bubbling over with barely-contained and confusing emotions for its main character, who doesn't quite know how to express them. Forsman nails that feeling of being close to losing a close family member where that relationship is strained. Most of the newer artists worked in a more fantastic fashion, like Jesse Moynihan's excellent "Simon Magus". Moynihan has a knack for staging big, dumb battles between godlike beings who nonetheless have all the emotions and frailties of a human, but does it in a deliberately stiff and color-drenched manner. Malachi Ward's approach is a bit more restrained, but he also likes to use science-fiction settings to depict man's essential savagery, showing that the line between man and savage is a thin one indeed. James Romberger's "Loving Bin Laden" is reality based tale that quickly veers into fantasy, as a woman dreams of having an affair with the notorious terrorist after 9/11. Romberger is an incredible artist who makes great use of color in this bracing, bizarre story. Finally, Victor Kerlow's "Oh Man" is one of his fantastical stories of a man being devoured by invading vines, Nick Drnaso' "Keith or Steve" is a curiously flat story about a nobody who nonetheless takes on great significance for the narrator, while Jim Rugg's one-pager pokes gentle fun at serials by being an "original page" from a comic called "Suburban Love Tales".

Eric Reynolds managed to publish over 2,600 pages of comics in six years, and he did a fine job of recruiting new talent and shaping each issue in order to keep it coming out on time. For any serial publication, even one aimed at bookstores like Mome, keeping a regular schedule is key to it lasting any length of time. I think the key to Mome surviving was the combination of Reynolds' singular taste as an editor and flexibility. I know that the comics by David B and Lewis Trondheim may not have been in his particular wheelhouse as a reader, but he listened to the advice of Kim Thompson and published them in Mome because they would draw in readers and provide a home to material that would not otherwise appear anywhere else in English. He was a tough editor who could demand that young artists step up their game when submitting material, though there were times that some of his veteran artists didn't always submit their best stuff. I found Sophie Crumb's presence in Mome to be especially frustrating when she half-assed a story, or when Jeffrey Brown didn't seem to be saving his good stuff for Mome. On the other hand, he greatly nurtured the careers of Gabrielle Bell, Eleanor Davis, Dash Shaw, Lilli Carre', Tim Hensley and many other cartoonists who made it a point to really do their best for each issue. Mome wasn't necessarily avant-garde in the way that Kramer's Ergot is, but it reflected the rise of the alt-comics scene from its new blossoming around 2000 to the explosion of young talent present today. Reynolds was the steward of much of this talent, as so many cartoonists aspired to be in Mome, and the comics scene now lacks a similar guidepost for young artists. That's why I hope Reynolds will consider going back to producing a new anthology that returns to Mome's roots and rotates in the best of the younger cartoonists on the scene today. Even if he doesn't, he produced a body of work that is lasting and produced some of the best short stories of the past decade.

CCS-Powered Anthologies: Irene 2 and Sundays 5

Irene #2, edited by Andy Warner, dw and Dakota McFadzean. This is another strong entry from this mostly-group of grads from the Center for Cartoon Studies. I like the push-and-pull in its sensibilities with Warner (a naturalistic storyteller), McFadzean (an artist with a delicate but cartoony line) and dw (who specializes in abstractions, patterns and text appropriations), leading to a book that has a bleakly humorous streak. Take McFadzean's "Standing Water", for example. This one features a young boy making his way around his neighborhood wearing a mask, only the entire area is under water. Friends, family and pets float limply in the water, and his attempts at interacting with the world reveal a hidden well of meanings that have lost all their significance in the wake of what is essentially the end of the world. What seem to be acts of revenge or cruelty lose their meaning, leading him to a sense of sad resignation in a totally absurd situation.

Both sets of "Drawings" from dw serve to accent and set off the more conventional narratives, sounding a discordant and occasionally confrontational note in the way they use text and challenge the eye with their psychedelic patterns. After his first set of drawings come three dark stories in a row: Beth Hetland's "1838g", Warner's "Champions" and Sean K's "Ghosts". The first story is about the steady drumbeat of a nightmare that stops and starts. Is the woman in this story pregnant and afraid, imagining her baby to be a hideous parasite? Is she giving birth in the end or having an abortion? Warner's story is from the point of view of a young teen living in the rebellious glow of his older brother, following him as he storms away from his step-father and gets into a drunken snowmobile race that can only have tragic consequences. That Warner has the young narrator filled with nothing but hope makes its subtext all the more sad. "Ghosts" is shockingly straightforward: a young couple enters their house, douse themselves with gasoline and set themselves on fire. The causes of their despair are never mentioned; the drawing of a pentagram on the floor simply indicates that they had run out of options.

I was unfamiliar with Omar Khouri's work before seeing it in Irene, but his smudged, brushy story about a young man in Lebanon refusing to accept his father's legacy as a political strongman was funny and fascinating. The story is filled with scathing political satire that reflects both the sense of hope and cynicism inherent in the "Arab Spring" of the past few years, getting across the sense that the reins of power are loose enough for protest to make a difference but leaving a lingering sense of doubt that any change could be lasting or real. The back half of the comic is slightly less bleak, as Sophie Yanow's account of being escorted by a kind African cabbie in Paris consists entirely of the view from the cab, with no human figures present at all. Marc Bell's rubbery drawings and comic eye-pops make for a nice contrast to dw's drawings. Jonah McFadzean's "Monster Soup" actually works to reduce a sense of active dread with a child's logic and problem-solving. Finally, Bailey Sharp's story about being a poor cartoonist working in an art gallery and being confronted by a high-rolling elite asshole ends the book on a much-needed laugh. Her grotesque approach and willingness to take the piss out of everyone (artists, punks, the rich) leads to a number of very funny plot and character twists, and her critiques of the art world are as dead-on as her self-critiques. The book is well-edited and nicely designed, and it has the potential to be an impressive series if the editors decide to do future volumes.

Sundays #5, edited by Chuck Forsman, Sean Ford, Alex Kim, Joseph Lambert and Melissa Mendes. The Sundays anthology debuted years ago at the MOCCA festival and caused a big stir, thanks to its production values, ambitiousness and unusual format. This was especially the case because it came from a group of total unknowns, and it acted as a shot across the bow from CCS that its cartoonists were worthy of attention. The third and fourth volumes were absolutely outstanding, with the third coming in an innovative three minis in way package and the fourth simply loaded with cutting-edge cartoonists. The fifth volume, released a year ago, is filled with strong work but doesn't hold together like past volumes. Simply put, I'm not sure every participating artist had the same commitment to publish their best work here as they had in the past.

For example, editor Chuck Forsman didn't even contribute a comic--just a two page illustration. Max de Radigues seemed to have contributed a few pages from his Moose comic. The first four pieces in the book took up a lot of room but looked ill-suited for a black & white anthology. The lack of a clear link or theme also made these stories a slog; I eventually gathered that a loose theme may have been "life and death" or more specifically the line between the two. Damien Jay's "leaf writing" comic was fascinating as an experiment in immersive comics making, but once again it seemed to cry out for color to add greater clarity. Some of its pages were very difficult to read.

Things picked up in a stretch that included a grim but hopeful story by Melissa Mendes and a James Hindle story that popped off the page thanks to its cartoony clarity. Joseph Lambert stepped up with one of his best-ever short stories about a fight between two best friends. No one expresses sheer rage quite like Lambert does, and though its protagonist winds up in hell, she makes things very unpleasant for the Devil. Michael DeForge contributes just a couple of pages, but he manages to cram in a lot of story, as a hunter brings back a stray animal from the forest for his family to eat. It's just that the animal is a human child, eaten entirely with nonchalance. Alex Kim's young girl bringing animal heads to her "papa" in the forest is chilling and enigmatic; even if this is just an excerpt.

John Brodowski's "Wolf Eyes" is a typically hilarious piece that follows his exceptionally-rendered heavy metal fantasies out into the desert, as a sax player's furious solo and the cries of a wolf become one. The final image, of his sports car driving off into a sunrise that features the image of a woman's legs and ass boldly astride mountains, is typical of the wonderful ridiculousness of his comics. The highlights of the final third of the book include Warren Craghead's fascinating drawings of what seems to be a tidal pool over the span of a few hours, his drawings directing the reader's eye by numbering lines as he tries to depict simultaneity; his comics are as much about time in a single image as they are about place or object. Jeff Lok's chicken comics are typically alarming in their comedic structure, as his use of static images clashes in an interesting manner with the cartoony nature of his stories. Colleen Frakes' story about a woman getting food from the ocean was later expanded upon in her own mini, but it fits snugly here. Finally, Alexis Frederick-Frost's short about balloonists encountering a giant bird was typically elegant, horrifying, funny and delightfully-rendered. Sundays 5 is not a bad anthology. At least 2/3 of the work is good-to-excellent. It's just not quite as groundbreaking or sharp as its most recent predecessors, which to be fair is a tough standard to live up to. Given that its editors are busier than ever with their own projects, I'll be curious to see if they continue to publish the anthology.

Brief Comments On Short CCS Minis

Finding Moby Dick, by Laura Terry. This is "a collection of sketches, drawings and comics"; more half-formed ideas than anything coherent. I don't have any interest in critiquing the content, given that the ideas are half-formed. Instead, I wanted to mention that this little sketchbook mini (in full color, no less) is further evidence of just how far Terry has come as an artist. Her figure work is so much more self-assured, for one thing, as is her general command over line and using different line weights. Most impressive, however, is the highly expressive way she uses color. In one story snippet, she shapes the story of a shipwreck using only midnight blue and blacks for spotting. Another image of three skeletons dancing on the ocean is rendered in aqua blue and sea-foam green. Her figure work in general is lively, full of personality and edged with humor. This is an artist who's ready for a leap forward in terms of the scope of ambition in her projects.

Zee Leetle Prince, by Katie Moody. This mini is an interesting exercise in style, as Moody takes the classic story by Antoine de Saint-Exupery "as filtered through Ed Emberley". Moody turns the book into kind of a goof for kids, rendering the characters in illustration teacher Emberley's trademark simple style (everything is basic geometric figures, lines, and squiggles--things almost anyone can draw) and adding a Pepe' LePew style French patois (The first line of the comic is "Zere wonce was a leetle prince"). The only problem with the comic was that there simply weren't enough images, and most of those images were just too small. An Emberley-style book packs a lot of visual punch into each page, even if the figures themselves are tiny, and this was dominated by text. That's not to say that the mini didn't have its charms, especially since Moody never strayed from the silliness of her text, but it didn't succeed in what she set out to do.

Moose #3 and #4, by Max de Radigues. De Radigues' series takes true narrative form in these two issues. The protagonist of the series, a nervous teen named Joe, is exhibiting all sorts of odd behavior, we learn, because of the way he's harassed by a bully. He has the opportunity to talk to a teacher about it in #3, but with his tormentor standing right outside the door, he has to hold it in. This issue is all about setting up the hopelessness of his situation in conventional terms. The fourth issue is about Joe managing to hide from the bully and his crony (whom he keeps in line with threats of physical violence when he's not gung-ho about torturing Joe). There's a sweetness to this issue as Joe doesn't exactly solve his problem, but he does derive some satisfaction from frustrating his nemesis (whose self-esteem seems to derive entirely from tormenting him). As always, de Radigues uses a fragile, simple line that emphasizes angles and negative space. His characters, though simply-rendered, are lively and bursting with emotion. de Radigues' ability to portray body language is remarkably intuitive, and he seems to thrive doing this short episodes that include eye-catching covers and incidental illustrations by guest artists.

Freeloader #1, by Nomi Kane. This is a typically charming and well-drawn set of short strips about being unemployed and living with one's parents after graduating from college. Her thoughts turn from her preferred job (illustration) to slightly less glamorous pursuits (like waitress, delivery person and stripper). Kane's all about the gag in this story (her bit about being unable to jiggle as a stripper was especially amusing), though the gag covers up real stress. This comic is also about the rare opportunity she has to live with her parents for an extended time as an adult, which is both stressful (because of the limbo she finds herself in) and an unexpected delight. Kane's character design and self-caricature are enormously appealing and have always been her major strength as an artist, and this comic is no exception.

Twelve New Drawings, by DW. DW is a CCS student who is clearly heavily influenced by Fort Thunder and the old Highwater Books comics. His drawings have the raw, hypnotic power of Ron Rege and Marc Bell, without the level of craft and sophistication of those two masters. There's not much narrative at work here, but each page is worth close inspection as DW mixes decorative patterns with hidden messages, surprising images and even small narrative snippets. It feels like sketchbook work, a form of graphomania almost, in that the artist is drawing just to draw, to make marks on paper. His bold sense of design is something that will serve him well as he shapes this vision, especially since CCS emphasizes narrative structure in even its most avant-garde students. He's someone to keep an eye on.
Early, by Joseph Lambert. This is a full-color charmer that involves Lambert's typical subjects: quarrellous little kids and the sun and moon as anthropomorphic beings. This eight pager finds a kid getting mad at the sun for melting his ice cream cone and throwing a spider at him. The sun freaks out and sinks early (a lovely metaphor for the way time can pass for a child), only to reemerge later and ask the moon if she's afraid of spiders. What's interesting about this strip is that Lambert cuts way down on his typical level of detail in favor of letting the color tell the story. The back cover has the unexpected bonus of telling the story from the poor spider's point of view.

Four New CCS Anthologies

Anthologies have long been the lifeblood of the students and alumni of the Center for Cartoon Studies. Self-published anthologies are frequently the first place they publish, but many alumni continue to edit and publish them long after graduation. Let's take a look at four recent anthologies by alumni, students and faculty of CCS.

Too Far, edited by Joseph Lambert. This is a very strong anthology from One Percent Press, the minicomics and music collective that includes Lambert, JP Coovert and James Hindle. They've done a number of anthologies but this one shows both their growth as artists as well as their taste in picking new contributors. Of course, this is really Lambert's show in terms of editing and design, and one can clearly see him evolving in every aspect of comics. Hindle's piece, "Microscopic", combines the very specific pain of dealing with a one-way breakup with the sort of phenomenology of space as it applies to emotional states that Tom Kaczynski does so well. Alexis Frederick-Frost contributes a story done in his recent, more relaxed style that's not quite so heavy on the blacks. With that thinner line, he crams a ton of ornate but clear detail into a hilarious period piece about society functions and how women started wearing ever more ornate hats with live birds on them. This is a wonderfully witty story that fully exploits its premise and ends with a great punchline. Coovert's piece is one of his fantasy/autobio pieces involving an argument with his finger after he picked at it. This is a wisp of a story, but some of the cartooning involved is clever.


Jose-Luis Olivares offers a typically visually crazy story about Superman and Storm giving birth to a baby hurricane. His line is simple but dense, using thick, swirling strokes to create an atmosphere of chaos. At the same time, this story is whimsical yet strangely affecting emotionally. Even when Superman learns that Mickey Mouse is really the father (a move that scored Olivares a hat trick of copyright infringement), he embraces the baby as his own--even as it destroys the world. Lambert follows a story by one of the most original stylists from CCS with another, as we get a Dane Martin story involving his bizarre bird people. There's always an inchoate rage present in Martin's comics that matches the bleakness of his dotted backgrounds and the blank expressions on the faces of his characters.


Lambert's own story is his best-ever, perfectly encapsulating the theme of the anthology as expressed by its title. Lambert's stories tend to center around sibling rivalry and the viciousness it can entail, putting that conflict on a fantastic, over-the-top stage. This story sees a scared child literally eating his father and then the entire world (truly a "going too far" moment) and then following up on the ramifications of this action by exploring what happens to the world when it's eaten. Lambert always had flash and slickness in his line, but he's now branching out with experimental and even quirky solutions to visual problems. Finally, Alex Kim picks up on the eschatological themes present in this book with a story about a man at an Antarctic base being confronted by the end of the world in the person of a woman who shows up at his door to tell him the news. "Too far" in this instance is less about nuclear devastation than about an extra act of shocking cruelty, and the paranoia in the story is heightened by Kim's trademark wavy line. There's no question that Too Far is on my short list for best minicomic of the year.

Stranger Knights #2, edited by Bill Volk. Volk expanded this genre-based anthology from the first issue, and while there's some interesting and off-beat stories to be found, the anthology as a whole is sloppily assembled. The work of some of the contributors feels rushed and even dashed-off in some cases. It doesn't seem like any editing or proofreading was done on any of the submissions and the errors are glaring as a result. Mary Soper, for example, has a pleasant enough style, but it's hard to tell her characters apart. This comic looks like it was drawn on a computer, but in any event Soper's line lacks weight, depending way too much on gray-scaling to give its characters some presence on the page. Volk's own stories are typically eccentric, but I'm not crazy about his new style. It's cartoonier and more spare than his old style, adding some interestingly deformed character designs, but it still feels like Volk isn't quite comfortable with it yet. What is never in doubt is Volk's wit, as the story of a "future archeologist" interpreting 21st century culture entirely through tattoos was very amusing. The weakest story in the anthology was Shawn Atkins' "The Rise of Phoenix Nine": the narrative is one cliche' after another, it's rife with spelling errors (due, no doubt, in part to its computer font), and the occasionally lively facial expressions are marred by pedestrian layouts.

On the other hand, the offerings by Morgan Pielli and Casey Bohn were a cut above the rest of the entries in the book. Pielli's "A Forged Man" is visually stylish, playing on Frank Miller-style figures and use of blacks to tell a story of a hero trapped in an awful loop. Pielli is really starting to hit his stride of late. Bohn's lumpy style is reminiscent of Steve Ditko, down to the stark simplicity of his character design and clarity of action. There's something slightly crazy going on under the surface of his staid-looking comics, creating an interesting tension between form and content. Overall, I'd say Volk's desire to expand the anthology's contents got the best of either his editorial judgment or attention to detail with regard to the other submissions. The idea of an alt-genre anthology is a good one, but the overall level of craft and care is not yet up to the standards of other CCS anthologies.


Subterranean #3, edited by Sean Knickerbocker, Alex Bullett, and Andrew Greenstone. All three of these artists were new to me, but this mini was surprisingly tight and impressive. Each brings a different set of visual and narrative approaches to the table. Knickerbocker is a student at CCS, and he draws his inspiration from underground comics and contemporary cartoonists who take their cues from classic comics, like Sammy Harkham. His story "Hunters and Gatherers" is a grim take on two hunters exploring an environment, with the tragic outcome for one being mourned but briefly by the other. "Pekar" is a meditation on the great writer, done in the style of a Pekar/Crumb collaboration. His true gem is "My First Panic Attack", a (presumably) autobiographical story about a young man who experiences a panic attack when confronted with the age difference between him and his girlfriend. The attack manifests as he and his girlfriend transform into Floyd Gottfredsen-style, vaguely anthropomorphic characters and are menaced by a spider/cop. Knickerbocker clearly has a bright future, especially when he's fully processed his influences.


Bullett's story about two bumbling aliens sent on a mission to assassinate a political leader feels like a Heavy Metal pastiche/parody, and as such it's got a wicked wit. From the (subdued) spectacle of the villain wearing only a mesh tank top and sunglasses (a funny comment on the way women are dressed in such stories) to the distorted and grotesque figures, Bullett's chops are just good enough to tell the story the way it needed to be told without unnecessary clutter. Certain panels could have used backgrounds and more decorative detail to fully bring this world to life, but he certainly gets the point across. Greenstone's thick lines and clutter make his story about a vampire wage slave looking for love and inspiration at a hipster party spring to life. His cartoony style gives every drawing a springy energy, one that's contained by the generous helping of zip-a-tone effects he adds to nearly every panel. About the only problem I had with this story is that his lettering is just a bit too big and intrusive; the lettering itself is fine, but I would have preferred a little more visual impact in each panel and a bit less word balloon. All told, this was an impressive showcase for all three of these young artists, each of which has talent and potential.



This Isn't Working: Comics About Ex-Boyfriends, edited by Robyn Chapman. Chapman was never actually a student at CCS (she went to the Savannah College of Art & Design), but she's been an active part of the school in various capacities since virtually its inception. After years of editing and self-publishing her own comics as well as anthologies like True Porn and zines such as Hey, Four Eyes!, Chapman has officially launched her own minicomics publishing concern: Paper Rocket. She'll be reprinting classic minicomics series as minicomics (an ingenious idea) as well as doing new comics and anthologies. This Isn't Working is an anthology that includes several CCS folks in the mix, and it's exactly what the title suggests: autobio comics about relationships that didn't work out for one reason or another. The range of cartooning styles as well as experiences helps create a variety of stories. There are tales of woe, angry anecdotes and funny stories about crazy relationships. It's a short, tightly-edited anthology that doesn't overstay its welcome.

Cara Bean's pleasingly ornate tale of a rocky relationship she had with a man who was as miserable as she was ends with a tragic but not surprising result. Her self-caricature as a sort of walking potato was simultaneously endearing and self-deprecating. I've always admired Caitlin Plovnick's ability to use her limited skills as a draftsman to nonetheless create clear, simple and direct narratives. This story of a hideous recurring dream that turns from warm to horrible when an ex-boyfriend pops up is especially effective as she cleverly renders herself losing all definition after she wakes up from the dream. Chapman's spare and cartoony style has always grabbed my attention through the use of a thick, economical line surrounding key aspects of people and objects. Her story concerns her slight obsession with a long-ago boyfriend, wondering if he thinks of her the way she sometimes thinks of him.

Liz Prince's story of the hurt that remains long after the breakup with her boyfriend was surprisingly powerful. I thought her depiction of that relationship in Will You Still Love Me If I Wet The Bed? was lightweight and twee, but there's a level of thematic complexity at work in this story that goes beyond the simple drama of a break-up as she ties music into the narrative in an interesting way. Jen Vaughn's "Let's Go Out" is hilarious, depicting why cunnilingus after eating hot sauce is always a bad idea. As always, Vaughn is better at depicting clever visual solutions to compositional problems than in rendering actual figures, a factor that detracts a little from the story's punchline. Finally, Mari Naomi contributes another of her "Kiss and Tell" stories of people she's dated; this time, it was a rebound relationship after she broke up with her fiance'. The stark simplicity of her line, the frankness of her confessional story and sheer storytelling momentum she manages to conjure up out of minutia make this a strong closing act for an anthology that will hopefully have future volumes. Chapman clearly knows what she's doing as an editor and publisher.

Sequart #175: Sundays and CCS Minis

This review was originally published at sequart.com in 2007. I'll be doing reviews of a number of comics by Center of Cartoon Studies grads in the coming days, so I thought I'd republish this set of old reviews.

*****


I've been reviewing comics from the editors of the SUNDAYS anthology for quite some time. The core group of Joseph Lambert, Chuck Forsman, Sean Ford and Alex Kim produced one of the first splashy comics from the Center for Cartoon Studies, and it was one of the hits at MOCCA in 2006. Along with printing a new edition, the group continues to crank out minicomics.

Joseph Lambert is one of the most dazzling technicians in the CCS group, and the one who's the least interested in narrative at this point. His minis are cute, funny well-designed items that are simply a pleasure to look at. GRUMPUS is probably the most clever and personal of the minis in this group, about a cartoonist being lectured and yelled at by his many "selves", who then lash out at his partner. The situation escalates until we reach its inevitable punchline. YOUR MUG COMPANION MINI-COMIC is a micro-mini that shows off his absurd sense of humor, as it's suggested that mugs can be mittens, we see "Mug The Musical" and get a Chris Ware-style daydream story. It's one of my favorite of his comics. HEY. BE QUIET is another comic with an escalating series of events riffing on a single joke or premise, this time a series of fart jokes that ends with a really big fart joke.

Finally, there's his untitled and full-color comic about cavemen. The composition, rather than his linework, is the real star of this comic. The way he stages his action sequences and uses color to breathe life into his characters is remarkable. At this point, I've enjoyed most every mini Lambert's published. I'm curious as to where he's going next. I can see him collaborating with any number of writers (his THE BAIT AND SWITCH with Dane Martin was one of his best comics). I can see him simply collecting a number of short stories. What might be interesting is if he has a longer narrative in him, and how his voice will continue to develop.

Alex Kim continued the streak of CCS artists picking up a Xeric grant, and this is the first time I've dug into his work. He has an idiosyncratic, squiggly line that gives his figures a vibratory quality. It gives even quiet scenes a sort of liquid, kinetic feel. THE BIRD AND THE BEAR shows off his greatest strength as an artist: body language. His figurework is simple but expressive, but the way he positions his characters in relation to each other tells so much of his story--from where they lay next to each other in bed, how they eat, etc. This story is about a couple drifting apart who accidentally become masked vigilantes after a costume party. The way Kim shifts the story after the man is badly injured takes that body language that he carefully establishes and twists it. The way their "job" takes on a life of its own beyond them, making them wonder why they still did it (and by the same token, why they were still together) is one of those questions that the protagonists dread to answer.



Like many of the SUNDAYS editors, Kim enjoys collaborations. MEDUSA is an adaptation of a poem by Jessica Abston that once again uses posture as an important story element. Here, a woman "freezes" her boyfriend or at least tries to, as we see him leaning, stooping and bending in a swooping, trembling line. Trying to turn to stone something that's in frenetic movement is the contradiction that Kim captures from Abston's text. HEY GUY is an extremely attractive mini that he did with Chuck Forsman. One half of the mini is written by Kim and drawn by Forsman; flip it over, and the reverse is true. Forsman likes writing scenes in diners with salt-of-the-earth types, and "Fortune City" makes use of Kim's wavy lines in a diner argument and tale of woe. "Touch (Me)", written by Kim and drawn by Forsman, is a creepy but oddly touching story that makes use of Forsman's eccentric character design as we meet a healer who cannot talk to those she helps. The way the story is told as a conversation between the healer and her assistant (who talks to her "customers") is extremely clever. Kim sets up an off-panel conflict with her father while the action in the story is never explained.


Kim's Xeric-winning comic is WALL CITY. It's the story of a depressed EMS worker and a woman whose sister commits suicide, and how they find each other. Minty, the paramedic, is haunted by the suicide of his own father and his increasing inability to communicate with his girlfriend. That difficulty in communicating is a running theme of sorts in Kim's work. Eventually, Minty finds himself drawn to the woman, and she leads him outside of the city to a barren hole. This is where the story takes a sharp turn into metaphor, while still completely playing it straight.


Inside the vast hole is machinery that's stuck in there. She encourages him to join her in cleaning it out and creating a wall of electronics. When he protests "I can't help you. I don't even know what this is", she replies, "Does it matter? You can make it what you want. You can give it meaning." He wants to leave with her after a time, but she finds she can't leave the wall--and tells him that he's meant to leave. When he returns and someone asks, "Why have you come to our wall", he simply replies, "I've learned to live with it." What this means is he's come to terms with his depression. WALL CITY is about depression, desperation, the void, searching out and finding false connections, grief and the process of mourning. Kim has proven himself to be one of the most versatile of the CCS artists I've seen to date and has a promising career ahead of him.



Finally, let's discuss SUNDAYS 2. The circle of artists involved in this edition was a little tighter, with just 13 artists in 70 pages. There seemed to be a bit more editorial consistency in this edition and the result was a more coherent gestalt. Most of the stories in SUNDAYS 2 were funny. Some had gags, but most had the mark of some truly cruel senses of humor. There's more than a little hint of madness in many of the stories as well. Ken Dahl's recurring "Professor Obstacle" character teaches operant conditioning by forcing his young , annoying assistant to lick his boots or else get shocked. Dahl really sells his gag by detailing just how disgusting the professor's boots are and how fried the assistant gets by the end. Dahl reminds me a bit of Roger Langridge in this story. Joseph Lambert did the introductory and endpieces, punning on "Sunday" and creating a flowing narrative of a couple of kids interacting with their environment--and not always peacefully.



Chuck Forsman tells the story of a mad ice-breaking captain and his sorry fate, while Jeff Lok spins a twisted fairy tale. The scene where one of two anthropomorphic animal bank robbers starts to lose his mind and shoots the sun istruly disturbing. Bryan Stone details the quotidian adventures of Onionhead, a sad sack who works at an electronics store and is quite a pathetic figure. Sam Gaskin throws out the single funniest page with a straightforward "documentary" about the rapper MC Sleepy ZZZ, piling joke after joke atop a loony premise. Sean Ford does a dialogue between two ghosts where we slowly learn who they are and why they're there, creating a narrative out of the antagonistically friendly relationship between the two ghosts.


Alex Kim's entries are about the fighting eagle Ambassador Sqwaa, and work both as stylish, brooding adventure stories and parodies of same. In the first story, he is regretfully forced to kill his enemy, a fish in a robot suit. In the second, his wife is killed by a rodent in another robot suit. Alexis Frederick-Frost's story is more straightforward, using heavy brushwork to tell the story of a bird plucked out of a jungle for a woman in a shop. J.P. Coovert tells a similarly kinetic tale about a boy and his dog going through all sorts of adventures to wind up in heaven, in the form of a castle in the sky (a tribute to CCS itself). The most impressive story came from Dane Martin, an awesomely strange and violent fairy tale about fratricide and betrayal. Martin's completely loopy character design, settings and dialogue somehow make the violence portrayed even more devastating. Betrayal of the most personal kind seems to be a running concern in the few Martin stories I've read, and their visceral quality is what makes them so effective.


The format of the book was in landscape this time, which seemed to better fit most of the artists. Every artist in the book seems to have grown bolder and more confident with both their art and their subject matter since the last edition. I had a real sense that the stories in SUNDAYS 2 were done with a lot of commitment in mind, specifically for the anthology. There was very little throwaway or filler material in here, and all of the work fit nicely together, a tribute to the editors of the book. Working together seems to have brought out the best in the CCS artists, and I hope they're able to keep the anthology going.