Minis: X.Gordon, S.Hanselmann, K.Czap, Nou

100, by Nou. This comic plays around with figure and text in a way that's meant to confront the reader. The figure, a young, nude girl whose anatomy is kept bare, looks out at the reader in various poses. We see her on the left-hand side of each two-page spread, and big blocky letters on the right side. There's a sense of trying to reach out, of knowing that the general We is out there, but at once being resisted by the reader and the girl gazing at us. Her poses are as disarming as her words are confrontational, and the way she moves from image to image invites the reader to flip the pages like a flip book to see her in action. It implies a sense of near-simultaneity in these words and movements, a sense of action that the reader can't immediately answer because it happens so quickly.

The New Cast, by Kevin Czap. This comic is a fusion of Czap's interest in creative/cooperative reality shows like Project Runway and their own utopian take on any number of topics. That metaphor allows Czap to examine the ways in which local creative scenes grow, ebb and flow over time, something that's especially pertinent to comics. Czap and Czap Books are one of the ascendant small-press publishers of the moment; in a real sense, Czap's artists are the new cast. Czap has always made the characters in his book incredibly diverse, as they all tend to be genderfluid and multiracial. Binaries don't really exist in Czap's comics. Even the new/old binary is explored in detail here, as there's a sense of joyful interaction in the new season between the casts, but one-by-one the old cast members drop off and go on to do their own thing outside of the purview of group activity. That kind of communal living and working together is difficult to maintain as one grows older, interests change and other things become more important. As an artist, there's also an awareness of one's audience, and that's reflected in the comic by some viewers staying on and others moving to different shows. Because it's a Czap comic and things tend to turn out for the best, the new cast gets it together at the end and essentially becomes the new vanguard. Visually speaking, what I found most interesting about the comic was the way that Czap was able to make scenes where the characters were in motion and scenes where they were just hanging out equally interesting, thanks to their understanding of body language and gesture. Small gestures sometimes pack as much visual wallop as intense activity.

Drone, by Simon Hanselmann. This story appears in Hanselmann's new book, One More Year. Starring Werewolf Jones and Megg from his Megahex series, this is a story about two lonely people who are desperate to having some kind of expressive, creative outlet while self-medicating themselves as hard as possible in order to numb any kind of emotional response as much as possible. Jones is an especially pathetic character throughout the series, but here there's an almost heart-breaking attempt at him trying to do something positive with his life for just a moment. Megg is a far more complicated character, and this story deals with her relationship with her mother. She's worried that her mom might be in seriously bad shape (or even dead) after getting out of rehab when she doesn't answer a call on Mother's Day. The story progresses as the duo actually makes some progress on their hilariously over-the-top music (with Jones wanting to be as offensive as possible at all times and Megg voting him down), even as they sabotage themselves when they use subox (a substance used to wean people off heroin) that causes them to vomit every few minutes. When Megg's mom eventually contacts her, the nature of that contact is heartbreaking as well, and only the promise of losing herself in something pure and joyous in the music is able to help her. There's something about the smudged, cramped version of this story in minicomics form (published by 2dcloud) that adds to the atmosphere, as Hanselmann's line is fat and even looks smeared across the page at times.

Kindling, by Xia Gordon. This mostly abstract comic done in red and blue is in many respects a creative shot across the bow by a talented young cartoonist. The sense of the comic capturing something utterly timeless and yet yoked to a specific time and specific place gives the story a sense of a benign push and pull, or rather a hermeneutic understanding of how it's both things at once, and how it can be neither thing without both aspects working together. It's both timeless and specific, this feeling it evokes of being at a beach, watching a night sky, being part of a group that's exchanging an ineffable energy among its members. There's a series of pages of looping lines in the middle of the comic which alternate between looking like a woman's hair and the wind whipping through that hair, until it resolves into a figure walking amidst a rainstorm on the beach. Gordon has incredible chops and a way of looking at the universe that reminds me a little of Aidan Koch, only there's a remarkable warmth and sense of engagement that unites her images that might otherwise seem cold, disconnected and emotionless.  The title of the comic itself brings to mind something that's going to be used to spark a life-giving fire, as though the creation of this comic itself being fuel for future works. Her work fits nicely with 2dcloud's aesthetic.

Pondering the End: Puppyteeth Volume 3

The third volume of Puppyteeth represented a big step up in terms of both format and the quality of the contributions. Every cartoonist takes maximum advantage of being able to use color, and as a result every story looks great without going too over the top into slickness. I also liked that there wasn't an explicit theme stated anywhere, but the contributors nonetheless submitted stories that dealt with issues related to death, mortality and legacy. Matt Czap's opener is a bright bit of silliness, wherein a narrator starts babbling about a story featuring a group of entirely unconnected characters. The foreward (sic) by Dan Tallarico strains really hard to try to advance its shtick and falls well short of being funny. Jory Griffis' parody of the TV show Pawn Stars is another bit of silliness that led me to believe that this anthology would be all dumb goofery, all the time.

Things pick up a bit with stories from Eric Kubli, Brandon B and Jessi Zabarsky. Their art is all of the "cute" variety, with a clear line, bright colors and strong animation influence. Kubli's story is about two kids who find a cel phone that turns out was misplaced by the Grim Reaper. It's a funny story that grows increasingly dark until they walk away from it. Brandon B's story was one of the best in the entire volume; it extrapolates a horrible cyst/boil he had on his leg and turns into a voraciously hungry and evil supernatural entity. The scene where his doctor tells him "Your leg is haunted" was one of the best beats in the whole book, and the slight flatness of his line works nicely. Zabarksy's mostly silent story involves the main character (of whom we strangely get a lot of panty shots) opening up a door in her apartment to find a flattering supernatural presence that later becomes more menacing when she steps all the way through. The transition from the cool, metallic blue in the early part of the story to the garish and disgusting extradimensional room is the best part of this mostly one-joke story.

Just as the anthology seems like it's going to be just a succession of gags, things go in a different direction. Liz Valasco contributes a genuinely strange strip done in a thin and wavering line with a subtle color wash. It's about this tiny figure who confesses to his host that he ate her cat in one bite. There's no set-up or explanation, other than the figure revealing at the end that he's some kind of avatar of death (his eyes read "you are next"), albeit one who speaks in a halting and slightly nagging vernacular. Alex Martin's strip is a pixelated series of color patterns combined with some word balloons from old Marvel comics.  The pixels get bigger from page to page until they become blocks of color, given context solely because of the word balloons. The story after that features more abstract work by L.Nichols, as she addresses the concept of entropy by starting with a photograph and slowly breaking it down into fractal patterns. This is a very effective piece of comics-as-poetry, as her connections between chaos and order cleverly play themselves out in the images she chose to use. Kevin Czap's collage/paint/comics piece "Nude Heaven" is another visual stunner, a witty piece about chasing utopia that fairly uses doodles and scribbles almost as a kind of graffiti on top of the other images.

Niki Smith's "Your Hair" is about the death-throes of a relationship done in an elegant, slightly scratchy pen-and-ink style with a russet and olive color wash. Hair is the metaphor for both connection and dissolution, as a planned haircut is a sort of death-knell. Pieces by Keith Pakiz, Mandy Sampson and Cherry Au are all visually striking but not especially memorable as narratives. Au's piece is the stereotypical "artist who doesn't know what to draw and procrastinates" non-story, redeemed by the fact that she's an excellent artist. Pakiz' story is a silly one about a World War I flying ace, while Sampson's details a childhood memory. The real stand-out piece in the back of the book is Liz Suburbia's homage to Joan of Arc as a kind of punk rock figure. This is a beautiful, funny and apt framing of the famous martyr that combines stained-glass framing and iconography with comics technique and the quintessential punk attitude. She really has become a major talent and her work really shines in color. Overall, this is a solid anthology that ranges from good to very good, with a couple of excellent pieces that stand out. As a showcase for a particular group of cartoonists, it's an impressive sign that they are committed to getting better in public.