Thirty Days Of CCS #18: Kane Lynch

Kane Lynch’s four mini comics that he sent (My Grandpa’s Secret Son, Smooth As Glass, Behold The Man, & Answers) form the gist of a slightly longer story about his family. The first mini discusses his father’s father, an abusive alcoholic who had a son (Denis) with one wife and was thrown out. Later, he remarried and had another son (Joe, Lynch’s father) whom he also managed to alienate. There are details about his grandfather contacting Denis years later and essentially demanding a Father’s Day meeting in Disneyland, but Denis had no interest. In fact, they eventually learned that Denis changed his name to Alex Hanes and denied being related to Joe when he contacted him.

The second chapter details an unusual family reunion, as a number of people in the family pieced together that Denis had had a highly “colorful” (to use his term) life in that he changed jobs constantly and had six children in six years by four different women. He often used a fake sob story about a wife and child dying as a way of going for the closing move in seducing the various women he was with. Working with a reporter who was recording the story and planning out the comic he eventually made, they were able to gather together a number of the children and exes of Denis in one place. They were planning to confront him at the dock where he was going to take a ferry to preach (he had become a born-again Christian), but they just missed him. A year later, they tried again, in one of the most fascinating, painfully awkward comics I’ve ever read.

Joe had been in seminary but later became a philosophy professor instead, and the whole group went to his service—where Denis recognized none of them. Joe brought up the story of Nathan the prophet calling out King David for his sins (“Thou art the man!”) and when Joe gave Denis his card, he recognized his name and everyone, one by one, revealed their true identities. What’s most remarkable about this scene is despite being taken completely unawares, the family was just friendly enough not to panic Denis, but his relative calm spoke to his con man instincts—even though he was “saved”.

Lynch expertly captures the swirl of emotions surrounding Denis, from the shock of knowing that he has an extended family to the feeling of being ambushed after abandoning them for years. When they went to lunch after the service, Denis tries to deflect the emotion of the moment with jokes, but he’s also generally cagey. He doesn’t tell his wife on the phone about the various children of his who are there, for example. He hits on the reporter with goofy phrases. He worries about his children going to hell. He first denies talking to his father, then says that his father asked for money. Lynch draws him as friendly to the point of ingratiating, but it’s strongly implied that this is his strategy for dealing with questions that he’s uncomfortable with. Knowing that he’s been caught, he doesn’t opt to double-down on his lies, but he’s not exactly either forthcoming or remorseful for any of his actions. He’s a cipher, albeit an entertaining one.

Lynch noted that he’s working on an epilogue to tie all of this together as well as smooth out some other rough edges, but there’s a remarkable amount of clarity considering how complicated all of these relationships are. The second chapter had some moments where it was easy to lose track of who was who, and I wish Lynch had been able to flesh out the nearly-forming relationships of cousins and step-siblings a bit more, if only to bring some background characters briefly to the forefront. Lynch is a solid cartoonist who does a lot of labor in using gesture and facial expressions to express complicated series of emotions. While the dialogue is obviously very important, Lynch is careful to use his subtle drawing techniques to show emotions rather than describe them. His use of color is subtle but adds a lot to the story, giving a real feel for the story's environment. I’ll be eager to see how Lynch finishes this off, including to see how his grandfather feels about all of this, along with the other members of the family.

Thirty Days of CCS #12: Angela Boyle, Melissa Mendes, Kane Lynch, J.D. Lunt

A big thanks to Craig Fischer in lending me the following minis for review, from his excellent show At The Junction Of Words And Pictures: The Tenth Anniversary of the Center for Cartoon Studies at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. Craig was kind enough to invite me to do a talk with grads Beth Hetland and Rio Aubrey Taylor, and I had a great time. Thanks to Craig, I was able to flesh out my CCS feature this year, because missing SPX meant missing a number of potential contributions.

Final Frontiers, by Kane Lynch. This is comics reportage about highly dedicated Star Trek fans who have built their own sets and have continued the original series from where it left off. Lynch uses a multicolor approach free of black ink lines that mimics the absurdly bright color patterns of the original show. Lynch gets at the sense of creativity and passion of the fans who want to break out of simple cultural consumption and want to be part of something collaborative. He also dutifully reports on how different fans have different aesthetic interests in the show, and how that's led to a number of rifts.

Coping Mechanisms, by J.D. Lunt. This is an excellent if rough comic about mental illness, both with regard to the artist and those he served. It kicks off with his job as a person who takes shift with people who are on suicide watch. He meets one woman named Nicole who was given a guitar, and he saw that being able to play and sing about her life (as well as silly things) has a tremendously therapeutic effect. A strip about dealing with his PTSD is fascinating, as Lunt discusses the mechanics of how making abstract art proved to be a soothing activity for him, partly through the influence of Lynda Barry's writing about how putting pen to paper can be therapeutic, even if it's just doodles and spirals. The same was true for him owning a dog, taking care of it, going out in public with it and forming a bond with it. The heart of the matter that he got at was that despite his own fears induced by PTSD, he could be brave for his dog when the dog was afraid of so many things in the world. Lunt gets at the idea that nurturing a pet that has come to trust and love you unconditionally is enormously therapeutic, because it gets you out of the headspace of trauma and into something active and positive. Lunt's draftsmanship is still functional at best and he suffers from over-drawing and over-inking at various points, but it's clear that he's learned how to tell a story and has a lot to say.

More Than You Wanted To Know About Horseshoe Crabs, by Angela Boyle. This is a light-hearted but informative comic about the titular arachnids, which combines her interest in sequential storytelling with scientific illustration. Indeed, while there are plenty of cute panels where the crabs engage in silly activities, Boyle places a premium on anatomical accuracy throughout the comic. It's a comic that's maybe a shade too technical for a young reader to enjoy due to the nature of some of the terminology, but certainly would be great for middle schoolers and above to enjoy. I think the comic's greatest virtue is that while Boyle is interested in accuracy, each of the drawings is cartooned and has a life of its own, rather than the more static nature of a more detailed illustration. The story was the thing here, even if that story was simply the horseshoe crab talking about itself, and that's why the comic works.

The Weight #3, by Melissa Mendes. Mendes has distinguished herself as one of my favorite storytellers from CCS, especially with regard to the real empathy with which she treats her characters. There is a tremendous amount of affection demonstrated on the page for them, which makes it all the more emotionally powerful now that she's stretching out more and more with what's happening with her characters. This issue follows a girl growing up in an abusive family on a military base and her relationship with her best friend. We see the girl and her mother go over to a friend's house after an especially vicious incident and the delightfully quotidian rituals the girl and her friend engage in the next day. That leads to an encounter with friends that looks like it might lead to tragedy, but it only serves to stir up rage in the girl when it proves to be a trick. That brush with death portends a real tragedy at the end, serving up a powerful emotional shock that works so well because of the way that Mendes established the comic's relationships. Mendes' powerfully expressive style has become more confident and richer as she's expanded her storytelling range, but its overall spareness emphasizes the emotions of her characters above all else. This will make a powerful impact as a book when it's collected.