Fantagraphics: Joseph Remnant's Cartoon Clouds

Joseph Remnant’s Cartoon Clouds is the first book he’s written and illustrated, with Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland being a harbinger of his enormous talent as an artist. He’s very much influenced by underground comics and Robert Crumb’s naturalism in particular, along with his peer Noah Van Sciver. Unlike either of them, Remnant (both here and in his excellent comic, Blindspot [two issues self-published, third issue published by Kilgore]) eschews the more cartoony aspects of that kind of work and instead prefers an expressive naturalism that favors gesture, body language and the ways bodies interact with each other in space. Thanks to that skill, Remnant is able to exert a precise degree of control over his characters, but not so much that they appear inert on the page. Indeed, there’s nothing slick about his character work. He also likes adding drawing effects that are very clearly lines on paper, like cross-hatching and shadow effects. There are any number of simply beautiful-looking panels that reflect his intense amount of labor, but they’re not there for him to show off. They are to help him establish atmosphere.

That atmosphere is one of tedium and ennui, as the story follows four friends who have just graduated from a Cincinnati art school, each trying to pursue a career and figure out their lives in different ways. The result is a story that feels all-too-familiar: young, white twentysomethings moping around, trying to find meaning. Despite Remnant’s skill as an artist and storyteller, he falls into too many clichéd traps in the book, mistaking an unlikeable protagonist for being a compelling one. And the main character Seth, is both boring and annoying. He’s a relentless mope who hated art school almost as much as he hated his life after it. Cartoonists’ issues with art school are well-documented at this point, so if you’re going to critique it, you’d either better have a new point of view or at least be funny (like Aaron Lange’s comics about his experiences).

Every character seems narrowly defined and lacking in ambiguity, with the exception of Allison, a fellow student that Seth’s always had a crush on but never did anything about it. She wants a successful career as a gallery artist as much as anyone, but she eventually realizes that the shortcuts she took to get there weren’t worth her integrity. The other characters feel less like living people than cast for an indie film, leaning in hard on their most prominent qualities. Colby, the older, pretentious gallery owner with whom Allison hooks up, is less a character than a aggregation of art-world clichés: disingenuous, hypocritical, jealous of real talent and success, two-faced, secretly sexist, etc. Jeff is Seth’s best friend and he’s the art school grad who immediately stops doing art and starts nursing a prescription drug and later a heroin addiction. Kat is Jeff’s girlfriend who hooks into the art world by coming up with show ideas that have little or nothing to do with the art itself; she starts cheating on Jeff without bothering to actually break up with him. Cameos by an asshole trust fund kid and an aggressively atheist guy at a party add to that sense of caricature over character that plagues the book.

Seth is the protagonist, and it’s his tedious journey that informs the tone of most of the book. He loses his job as an artist’s assistant. He is disgusted when he realizes that art galleries and museums mostly offer unpaid internships to young people who either have a trust fund or else are willing to live in abject poverty in order to maybe make some connections. He takes a job in fast food, stops painting and hooks up with a pot-smoking teenager as his new girlfriend of sorts. It’s not til the end that things begin to pick up, as a lecture from a returning friend and a chance meeting with his idol, the local legend John Pollard. Pollard was supposed to be at an opening of his art but instead was at a working man’s watering hole to watch the Cleveland Cavaliers play. Pollard gives him the advice that was obvious to everyone: Seth should pursue something with his comics and drawings instead of his paintings. Pollard is much the stereotypical gruff, older artist, but simply by adding a layer or two to his personality, Remnant immediately made him one of the more complex characters in the book.

The book has its requisite happy endings for the “right” characters (Seth and Allison), as they go off to seek their destinies in new cities. Jeff is very much the “there by the grace of god go I” character, putting himself in a position that he knows will wind up in his death as an addict, sooner rather than later, in order to help his friend. Kat has sold out and is quite happy to do so. It’s an overly neat wrap-up for a book that at 160 pages feels bloated. In many respects, Cartoon Clouds feels like a book that Remnant needed to get out his system, that he sensed that he would only have one shot to write as a young person. It certainly put his craft to the test and found him passing that area with flying colors. Hopefully his next book won’t be about art and artists, as I think he needs a fresh, new area to explore. He certainly has the capacity to do it.

Autobio and Collaboration: Jonathan Baylis

Jonathan Baylis has been plugging away at his autobio series, So Buttons, for a number of years. He's put together a handsome and well-organized collection, titled So Buttons: Man of Like, A Dozen Faces, that's greater than the sum of its parts. Inspired by the Harvey Pekar formula of having a stable of illustrators to collaborate with depending on the sort of story he wants to tell, Baylis has become more and more adept at pulling back on over-writing (and indeed, writing over) the art and trusting his collaborators to "show, not tell." The book is organized into sections on childhood, working in comics, his thoughts on film, his relationships and his love of animals, among others. When some of these pieces originally appeared in his minicomics series, they stuck out in a discordant manner. Recontextualized in this book, these strips are far smoother and make much more sense.

Baylis is less interested in "spilling ink" about his deepest feelings and more interested in relating anecdotes and opinions. Indeed, in one strip where he talks about a doomed relationship in the context of a trip to Los Angeles and the discovery of what appeared to be a body on the beach, his musings on how the trip cemented the notion where he and his girlfriend were drifting apart seems wedged in unnaturally. Better to provide a little less information and let the reader pick up on context clues than repeatedly try to hammer home symbolism. On the other hand, Baylis reveals a lot more of himself when he simply relates funny stories about trying to edit the work of his professional comedian wife, or plays off his OCD tendencies as a gag. When he shifts into overly-sincere mode and feels the need to explain darker emotions, his stories just don't ring as true.

Fortunately, he keeps things on a fairly light but entirely sincere basis for most of the book. My favorite stories tended to be those that focused on his reaction to works of art, be they film, comics or paintings. The "Basquiat Jam", a trio of stories drawn by Victor Kerlow and Becky Hawkins, get at the heart of how seeing Basquiat paintings in Spain affected him at a deep level, both because of the art and because of the way it connected him to his native New York City. "So...Crumby", about a friend of his who shared R.Crumb's passion for obscure records, was drawn by Crumb descendant Joseph Remnant, who actually goes a little cartoony at times in this story. Indeed, Baylis reveals much about himself in the stories he chooses to tell about others, like his father, his mother and his wife. That's true of little memory fragments from his childhood, surprising revelations and details about the ways in which he was loved and loves them.

There is an essential warmth at the heart of Baylis's comics that's best exemplified by his ongoing collaboration with cartoonist T.J. Kirsch. It's accessible and slightly cartoony. The storytelling is solid and clear. Kirsch has a way with body language that's a perfect match for Baylis' character-driven stories, creating a naturalism that a more realistic style wouldn't necessarily convey. It's pleasing to the eye without trying to be funny. When Baylis is going for a specific kind of laugh, that's where Noah Van Sciver and Rick Parker come in. Van Sciver's wobbly style is perfect for embarrassment-related humor, while Parker's skill as a caricaturist who can go over the top makes him ideal for more outlandish anecdotes. Stories about his days as a Marvel intern are fittingly drawn by fan art legend Fred Hembeck.

While Baylis and his collaborators don't always stick the landing on every strip, what makes this such a delightful read is the obvious care and thought that went into each collaboration as well as the design of the book. Outstanding cartooonist and designer Will Dinski designed the book, showing off some of the drawings of Baylis that he commissioned from the likes of Gabrielle Bell, John Porcellino, Ed Piskor, MariNaomi and Jim Steranko (!). The book looks great and reads smoothly, so much so that even some of the more disposable strips feel added value rather than wastes of time. That Baylis has chosen so wisely and so well in his choice of artists speaks well of his eye for talent that works well with his project. That said, I expect Baylis to continue to grow as a writer, developing an even stronger sense of how to write visually without overloading his comics with text.

Minicomics: Nichols, Cantirino, Remnant, Gfrorer, Reklaw

Flocks, Chapters 2 and 3, by L.Nichols. These are the next two chapters in Nichols' meditation and exploration of faith and growing up as a queer born-again Christian. Each issue tends to cover similar ground, circling back to a variation on a theme. For example, the second issue, subtitled "body of conflict", gets at Nichols' body-image issues, knowing exactly what she wanted to look like as a kid but knowing it "wasn't OK". Using her distinctive rag doll self-caricature, Nichols depicts the forces and pressures she felt as a child and teen using the nomenclature of physics, though those arrows bearing down on her pierced and drew blood. The comic is heartbreaking in that she has a strong sense of identity but prays desperately to change, to conform, to not be a sinner. It never works, and at the end of the issue she goes back out into nature with the animals and woods that provide her so much comfort because they allow her to be herself as she is.

The third issue ("Nature vs Nurture") focuses less on body image and more on faith itself. A constant, running theme throughout this comic is Nichols refusing to demonize faith and religion, despite her experiences. She talks about the feeling of community she frequently felt, the power and mystical intensity of gospel services, and the comfort she felt in the idea that god was all around. At the beginning of this issue, she quotes a pastor quoting the Bible, referring to the "still, small voice of God". This concept made sense to her, that almost Buddhist idea that she was "part of something larger".Once again, that voice was best heard out in nature, where it was easier to see oneself as part of something larger instead of hearing the loud, angry voices decrying homosexuality and sinners. As Nichols notes, those were the voices of man, not God. While Nichols works through a lot of pain in these comics, it's not done in anger, but rather in appreciating beauty. Nichols' approach is to match the hate she felt for herself and the hate she felt from others with gentleness and care. Her use of full color to depict just how vibrant her environment was to her is a key to the success of these comics, because one can sense the joy radiating from those sequences. These comics are not a chance for revenge, but rather a plea for understanding. I hope she keeps going.

Turnpike Divides Part 2, by Sally Cantirino. The first issue sets up a story about a young man returning home to New Jersey to attend the funeral of his best friend, with the strong sense that said friend drove his car deliberately into a pole. This issue picks up on the ramifications of this event, as the man (Alec) tries to gain comfort from his ex-girlfriend (Lily). Cantirino nails the ways in which twenty-somethings relate to each other as they find themselves drifting through life, and this comic takes dead aim at narcissism and self-pity. Alec tries to find ways to blame himself for his friend's death and condemns those around him for not mourning him sufficiently, before Lily reveals a key fact about his death and generally puts him in his place. It's also about no longer being part of a place, about its relevance to one's life being entirely in the past. Cantirino's line is a little on the busy side, making the pages a bit denser to read than they need to be, but she does capture a sense of time and place. She notes that she used a lot of reference to real places for this story, and it's easy to see that; the spaces here look lived-in and well-trod. She also has a real knack for drawing night scenes and snow, which added a lot of atmosphere to the story. A student at the Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW), her ambition as a cartoonist is clear.

Blindspot #3, by Joseph Remnant. The latest issue of the talented Remnant's one-man anthology focuses on autobio stories this time around, but each of the four has a very specific tone and purpose. At the same time, each of them fervently questions both himself and the cultural values surrounding him. In "L.A. Coffee Shop", Remnant takes aim at all of the "creative types" who fulfill every LA stereotype one can imagine, both in terms of the way they dress and the things they say. Of course, Remnant takes a step back and aims those barbs for himself as well, letting the other artist he saw in the cafe draw a picture of Remnant looking like an idiot. "Pappy Ron's Pizza" takes dead square aim at the controversy over Papa John's Pizza refusing to comply with the Affordable Healthcare Act because it would eat into their profits and "force" a small increase of the price of pizza. Here, Remnant watches a "news" report from a right-wing TV network that fully supports "Pappy Ron". From there, driving to various locations during con season leads him to choosing that pizza joint...but he just can't quite go through with it. It's a strip where Remnant is literally nauseated by the patter the Pappy Ron employee is forced to spew out, but it's also a story where Remnant follows through on his principles.

"Elevator" finds Remnant confronting his past in the face of an old friend and an odd interaction with him, as well as going back to his old school. This unsettling story then quickly resolves in a way that makes sense, and the jarring ending doesn't feel like a cop-out because of the warning Remnant receives during the course of the narrative.  The story that sort of recapitulates all the others is "You Are Here", which is about depression and how Remnant used meditative hiking up a hill as a form of therapy. Walks have a way of first stirring up bad thoughts and then dissolving them through sheer physical exertion, and Remnant works through his miasma and depression by forcing himself through. It's a story that touches on John Porcellino and his zen comics poetry, using many silent panels to create a rhythm that Remnant feels while walking. The slow, steady progression from panel to panel is modulated by the density of Remnant's cross-hatching, especially when Remnant walks slowly through shadowy parts of a forest. It's interesting to contrast the relative calm and quiet of that darkness to the darkness Remnant wakes up to in "Elevator". As always, Remnant's skill as a cartoonist is superb, with complete control over his line and his page. Like many artists inspired by underground cartoonists, Remnant's layouts are relatively straightforward, though he does something unusual on many pages with a 3-2-3 grid. The reader tends to go to the center of the page in grid set-ups, but Remnant deflects the reader's eye with two central panels in the middle of the page, forcing them to take in both of the central panels as a single image and then the rest of the page. Remnant wants the reader to look at every panel and follow its rhythm to the next, even when there are silent beats and delays. The way he formats the page makes the reader do this if they want to follow the story, and he faithfully puts a lot of clear but detailed information in every panel. Location, mood and body language are all keys in Remnant's comics and it's obvious that he wants the reader to closely follow all three. Even though this issue is autobiographical, Remnant is less interested in being confessional than sharing relatable stories.

Black Light, by Julia Gfrorer. Ever since publishing her first book with Sparkplug, Gfrorer has been creating one astounding, unsettling and frequently erotic story after another. This mini collects four short stories from a variety of sources, and what's remarkable about it is the way she takes tired fantasy and horror tropes (a vampire, Death, a deadly water nymph, and a magical bear) and transforms them into something that's actually frightening and real. That's because while the genre trope is often part of the story's big reveal, it's never the most frightening thing about the story. For example, "River of Tears" starts with the sort of party scene that Gfrorer excels at depicting, but soon segues into a series of texts from a suicidal junkie girlfriend. The horror here is not the Grim Reaper coming to take her away, but rather the mind-rending horror of dealing with that kind of emotional manipulation. "Phosphorus" is horrifying not because there's a monster in a pond, but rather because it's about sexual violence and humiliation."All Is Lost" is a downbeat story because it flips around the expectation of a monster menacing a child and suggests that it's the mother who is really the monster. Finally, "Unclean" and its ultimate monstrous revelation only works because of the way Gfrorer sets up and details the woman's betrayal. Indeed, she even suggests that the vampire is less of a predator than the woman's cheating ex-boyfriend. Her line is scratchy, harsh and dense, all befitting the kinds of stories she tells. Gfrorer is a smart storyteller above all else; one can sense just how much thought goes into each story and how certain elements, once revealed, will resonate for the reader. Her work rewards multiple readings because of its thoughtfulness and attention to detail, as well as her deep understanding of interpersonal dynamics and how they become dysfunctional.

LOVF New York: Destination Crisis., by Jesse Reklaw. This is a harrowing, intense account of Reklaw journeying to New York City and inadvertently going off his meds and becoming homeless for a period of time. Published by Robyn Chapman's Paper Rocket Minicomics, it's a beautiful, full-color minicomic that contains comics, sketches, collaborations with others and tenuous threads of narrative. It's a comic that's as much about the process of making a comic as it is the material itself, because the original pages got rained on at one point and the colors bled into each other. It's a collaboration with the elements as well as other artists, and a document of Reklaw going through a manic phase when he was off his meds. The line between typical member of society and being homeless is shown to be remarkably thin, especially when someone is dealing with mental illness. This comic rewards multiple readings simply because each page is so dense and filled with detail, scrawled jokes, background gags and references to New York. The city plays a huge role, given how unforgiving it is to the poor, but also because Reklaw went to the city to try and do business, even going to the weekly open tryout at The New Yorker. This comic represents a side of Reklaw I've never seen before. He's an artist whose comics are generally neat and ordered, hewing to strict grids and other formal constraints. Here, he's all over the place in spectacular fashion.

New Comics from Noah Van Sciver and Joseph Remnant

Cartoon Clouds Part 1, by Joseph Remnant. I talked about the web version of this story by the talented Remnant, but he's releasing it in minicomics form. I'm not sure this makes any sense, but the story simply reads better on paper than on the web; it really feels like Remnant is most comfortable with this format. I'm not sure where Remnant is taking this story of a self-pitying recent art school grad named Seth, his fellow students that he mostly despises, and his female best friend on whom he has an obvious crush. From the cloud following Seth around on the cover to his generally miserable demeanor throughout the comic, Remnant makes it clear that Seth is the architect of his own fate in all sorts of ways, even if he is surrounded by an array of hilariously annoying people. Remnant is the master of the awkward social exchange at parties, as Seth has to make it through a gauntlet of privileged assholes going on trust fund-bankrolled European trips to the cutting-edge atheist who bases his entire career on that bit of iconoclastic behavior. Again, I'm not sure where he's going with all this, but he's off to an amusing start.

Blammo #8, by Noah Van Sciver. In this issue of Blammo, Noah Van Sciver returns to a lot of his very old ideas, like his Chicken Strips saga and his Punks vs Lizards feature. What's interesting is that he's become such a confident and skilled artist that these older ideas have taken on a new level of proficiency; they're simply being executed better. Even though these ideas are silly in the extreme, Van Sciver treats them with utter seriousness and really throws himself into them. The results are more tightly-plotted stories, better gags and better overall storytelling. They act as an apertif of sorts for an issue that's otherwise fairly downbeat and contemplative. "Expectations" is yet another excellent relationship comic by Van Sciver, who seems to hit on new emotional angles every time he tackles a new story like this. This one is about a guy who fell apart when his longtime girlfriend suggested "a break" and who completely disappeared from her life and the lives of their friends. The storytelling device of the park that was a pauper's cemetery is incredibly clever, since the whole story is about the past, and in particular, the ways in which we poorly handle our pasts and the people in them. Like Remnant, he has a real knack for getting across the awkwardness but also the potential for magical connections that can be found at a party.

Van Sciver's facility as a draftsman is on display in his adaptation of the Brothers Grimm's "The Wolf and the Fox", which is about a wolf and his hostage fox companion. Van Sciver expertly hits all of the key beats in this depiction of an abusive relationship that is escaped both through cleverness and a keen understanding of the weaknesses of one's abuser. The decorative aspects of the story are also beautiful and do a fine job in framing each page, especially the pages with acts of violence. Shorter stories, like the bizarre and funny "She's Losing It" and the "Dog on Wheels" short strips, displaying Van Sciver's continuing affection for the weirder side of his underground comics influences. The former story turns from a creepy and inexplicable relationship between a man and a little person into something that's far more weirdly poignant than one would have expected. The "Dog on Wheels" strips remind me a bit of what Evan Dorkin does in Dork!: mining comedy in the darkest of places with the most benign of set-ups. Throw in a great letters column, a guest strip from Matthew Thurber and other ephemera, and you have a genuinely exciting comic book done by an artist who's really coming into his own.

Anthologies: Little Heart

2D Cloud's Kickstarter-funded anthology Little Heart is uneven as far as the quality of its contributions goes, though in some respects that's beside the point. A portion of the book's proceeds went to [MN]Love, a nonprofit dedicated to marriage equality in Minnesota. As an adopted North Carolinian, enduring the results of Amendment One this past year was disgraceful, as it made so-called "marriage protections" part of the state constitution. Until the US Supreme Court rules otherwise, more states are in danger of having to deal with these barbaric and discriminatory practices. As such, one can forgive that some of the entries in this anthology either aren't comics or else display more enthusiasm than skill.

Let's take a closer look at the stories themselves. One thing that I liked about the anthology is that there was no specific requirement for the contributors to make their story about gay marriage. Indeed, a number of the stories are personal accounts from people who are single or have no desire to get married. I thought two of the better (if on-the-nose) stories came from Virginia Paine and Maurice Vellekoop, respectively. Paine talked about that even when she dated men, she never thought of marriage as an attractive option, but did say that having a choice like anyone else is important.Vellekoop, the great Canadian illustrator, interviews some friends after nearly a decade of equal access under the law in his country. It's a fascinating piece and a nice capstone to the book, as some of his friends discuss the pros and cons of marriage as well as their own mixed feelings about the institution. A couple of his friends felt it was too imitative of the straight world (a quite common claim), while others liked the idea of being part of an ancient institution and making it their own. It's a fascinating discussion of some finer points of the experience that many don't think about, drawn in Vellekoop's trademark angular, attractive style.

A couple of stories were personal accounts of deciding to get married, focusing in on specific aspects of the experience. For Emily Carroll and Kate Craig, their story focused on the simple engagement ring purchased online, which had an inscription from another couple. It's a simple sentiment, wondering about who these people were but focusing more on the present. Mari Naomi's account of proposing to her husband was more complicated, as she spoke to one queer friend whose less than enthusiastic "How nice for you, that you're able to do that" spoke to the divide between gay and bi individuals as well as the dilemma many hetero partners feel when they think about marrying. That said, the sheer enthusiasm and nervousness comes through on every page, and the splash page featuring the proposal was nicely understated, as Mari Naomi puts the image of her proposing in the bottom left hand corner, surrounded by tons of white space.

Some of the strips focus less on the idea of marriage than the experience of being queer and exploring that identity.Alex Fukui's "Footsie" for example, is a painful example of having desperate yearnings as a young person and wondering if someone you have a crush on is interested in as well, with the added layer of total fear about being a teen and being gay. Ed Choy and Sam Sharpe's "Roosterlegs" is by far the best-looking strip in the book thanks to the bold, confident lines, clever character design and interesting use of spot color. It's a strip about a young person trying to investigate the realities of what being queer means in nature and exploring the possibility of trans identity.

Other stories focus on being alone vs being with someone and the sacrifices one makes in either scenario. Christopher Adams' evocative silent story about a priest going about his day, hanging out with members of his congregation, speaks to the nature of the solitude of his position and the peace he has ultimately made with it. Hannah Blumenreich's story of a lovable pre-teen oddball who earnestly believes that she is psychic is endearing precisely because of her lack of self-awareness, even as she makes subtle shifts in attitude when reality dictates it. Joseph Remnant's excellent story about a guy crushing hard on a girl he sees at a bookstore and subsequently talks to at an art show is funny because of the quite deranged nature of obsessiveness overriding reason. The fact that this story gets a happy doesn't feel like a cheat so much as an indication that the leads occupied the same place in their circle of friends and really did find out by accident that they were perfect for each other. Noah Van Sciver's account of Richard & Mildred Loving's struggle to have their mixed-race marriage accepted in the south is especially poignant given that their union was opposed on many of the same supposed moral grounds as gay marriage is today. Jeremy Sorese's story about his divorced parents remarrying provides the structure for his own mixed feelings about marriage in an elegant and stylish series of highly stylized images. He gets at an interesting point: even if gay marriage is a big deal, why should a 23 year old be worrying about marriage anyway?

Most of the other stories are pleasant enough, if forgettable. I thought the inclusion of spot illustrations didn't do much to strengthen the anthology, especially since few of them were especially memorable. The handwritten coming-out story of Tammy Ray was impassioned but wasn't really comics, and Rachel Kowarski's poem did not fit at all. Editor Raighne Hogan likes to take risks in his anthologies and errs on the side of leaving in submissions that perhaps should have been cut. He leaves it up to the reader to decide their worth, which is admirable, but I'd love to see him exercise a firmer editorial hand. Of course, this anthology wasn't necessarily the place to do so, and erring on the side of enthusiasm in this case made sense. There's no question that it's a beautifully designed book, as all 2D Cloud projects tend to be, and I hope that it makes a difference.