Minis: Lauren Barnett's Bernadette

Bernadette (Tinto Press) is one of Lauren Barnett's longer stories and is a fine example of how she creates humor with animals that think like people. Barnett's best known for single-panel gags starring birds, jokes about stripper problems, and other absurd but off-beat ideas. (I'm not sure that there will ever be a better title for a comic than I'm A Horse, Bitch.) There is a deliberately crude quality to her comics that adds to the overall effect, especially when she uses watercolors to punctuate her humor. 

Bernadette features the titular cat complaining about its nemeses, household plants. She hates the way they look, they smell, and they taste. They are always in her way, and she's always happy to knock them over whenever possible. Then a new plant appears to replace one she wrecked, and she's inexplicably drawn to it. She starts talking to it and even dreaming about it. 

The dreams are the funniest part of the comic, as Bernadette dreams of driving a sportscar, only to be stopped by a plant. Later, she dreams that she and the plant were laughing and lounging poolside as well as playing on a see-saw. Finally, the cat gets another cat in the house, and they dream about playing cards together. Despite all of the silliness, I like how Barnett gets at the idea that even the most solipsistic of creatures needs others in her life, and her subconscious makes this very clear in her dreams. Even if Bernadette was unwilling or unable to articulate this concept, it was obvious that she had needs she didn't understand. Barnett's expressive use of watercolors amplifies all of these points.

Two From Kilgore: Unicorns Of Planet Earth, Kilgore Quarterly #7

Unicorns Of Planet Earth, by Lauren Barnett. Barnett doesn't do a lot of minis these days, but there's no question that she's become funnier and funnier over the years. Her latest comic is kind of a conceptual sequel to her excellent I'm A Horse, Bitch, except that it's from the point of view from Barnett as a "unicorn scientist" instead of from the animal's point of view, and it declares horses to be "snooze-fests". Barnett's comedy is mostly conceptual in nature, combining total absurdity with a deadpan quality that's razor-sharp. The crude drawings of unicorns (in full color, no less) are always funny in and of themselves, and made funnier by supporting text like "This unicorn is an alcoholic, though he would say he's just 'going through a rough patch.'" Even better is when she describes the fact that unicorns mate for life, she says, "I love knowing that true love is out there, even for unicorns! It doesn't make me want to stab myself in the face or anything like that. I'm just happy when others find happiness. Super happy."

The comic goes from there, absorbing aspects of the likes of Lisa Hanawalt and Lauren Weinstein and giving them Barnett's own sardonic spin. What makes the comic so successful is Barnett's comedic sense of rhythm and the way she plays it off the bright, colorful and silly imagery. The mini is the perfect delivery system for this kind of humor, as her design and sense of humor is all over it. Barnett is the master at taking a seemingly thin premise and absolutely wringing out every possible laugh.

Kilgore Quarterly #7, edited by Dan Stafford. This latest issue of the in-house anthology collects a number of "orphans"--short stories by various interesting cartoonists that are now hard to find. It opens with a superb Summer Pierre piece, "Dappled Light", that starts off exploring her current relationship with old TV sitcoms from the 1950s (including the humor-free Father Knows Best) and then slips into a reminiscence about how TV was an escape from what was hinted at as a rough and abusive childhood. Pierre's drawing of herself as a girl is perfect in this regard: dots for eyes, a simply-drawn face, long straight hair. In the scene where she imagines herself inhabiting the world of Leave It To Beaver, just for a little while, that simplified self-image perfectly encapsulates her fragile emotional state. To be drawn with any more naturalism would be unbearable.

Tim Lane's "Steve McQueen Has Vanished" is typical of his deeply noir-inflected stories, only with a twist. Drawn in Lane's typical naturalistic, shadowy style, the story sees a drifter approach a roadside motel in a beat-up pick-up truck. The twist is that the drifter might be the missing actor Steve McQueen, who disappeared for a time in the early 70s. Another interesting storytelling decision is Lane himself being the narrator of the story but having the dialogue play out in real time, as though the narrator has no control over it. It's a story about regrets, rivalries, identity and the sinking feeling that one has made the wrong decisions in life. Lane also uses a metanarrative of McQueen's disappearance being on the news program McQueen watches in his motel room, as well as one of his earliest appearances (in the monster movie classic The Blob) being on TV.

Joseph Remnant's "I Told You So" is a story about heartbreak, obsession, falling in love with someone through their work and jumping into a new relationship just to reduce the pain of an old one. He's also an artist who uses a naturalistic style, but unlike Lane, it's more in the R.Crumb tradition of lots of lines and lots of cross-hatching, giving it more of a nervous energy than Lane's cool comics. It's a story about doing everything the wrong way but things turning out for the best anyway, and it's got a mixture of brutally sarcastic supporting characters and impractically idealistic protagonists.

Also in the issue is a hilarious Sam Spina "autobiographical" comic about a fish named Sam Spina who's having trouble getting laid, seguing to the actual Spina who then gets beaten up for looking like a threatening homeless presence. It's wish-fulfillment and anti-wish-fulfillment, all in one story, and in Spina's typically frantic, scratchy style. Leslie Stein's "The Desk" was taken from an Oily Comic she did where she sets up a desk in front of her room as a child made of fake bricks. It's a story about playing being an adult (her mom leaves to go to a meeting) and working through crisis, in the most delightful of ways, as she uses her trademark stippled style. There are also a couple of interviews in the book that are handwritten, featuring the cartoonist Jason and singer Grace Slick (!). This is a nice, tight little anthology that is surprisingly cohesive, given the differing styles and subject matter.

Minicomics: Barnett, Henderson, Brunton, Tablegeddon

The Magic Whistle #13, by Sam Henderson. A new issue of Magic Whistle is always cause for celebration, and it's good to see that this is going to be a regularity with the newly-revived Alternative Comics. This is my favorite format for Henderson's work, because it allows him to display his full range as a humorist. There are single-panel gags, longer narratives, long-form callbacks, long-running serial gag features, conceptual jokes, scatological jokes and even funny anecdotes. Henderson excels in all of these areas and is perhaps the most versatile humorist in comics as a result, even as his deliberately crude visual stylings remain the same from strip to strip. This issue's highlights include a very meta Gunther Bumpus strip, wherein he doesn't get stuck in his cat flap and thus doesn't leave his ass hanging, leading to all sorts of angst and the eventual, ineffective intervention of Pickles the Exploding Dog (one of Henderson's best-ever jokes, especially thanks to the very serious and determined expression on the face of the dog). There's also a great Dirty Danny strip, a typically demented Lonely Robot Duckling strip, and a story about a bizarre encounter on a subway. Henderson also features work from the delightfully wacked-out Lizz Hickey, whose diary comics and jokes about being peed on fit right into the proceedings. David Goldin's back cover is drawn very much in Henderson's style. I like this mini-anthology approach, as it reminds me of what Peter Bagge was doing in Hate before he closed up shop on the regular run of the series.

I'm A Horse, Bitch, by Lauren Barnett. This comic begins with a reclining horse that says "Pleased to meet you. I'm a horse. Don't worry, the jealousy you're feeling is normal." Things pretty much go from there, as Barnett takes this concept and runs a mile with it, playing up the hilarious vanity of the horse ("I read books that would confuse you. I'm smart as fuck."; said books include Gravity's Rainbow, Twilight and Ecrits). Every page has a great joke on it, leading to a solid finish. What makes this a big step forward for Barnett is that this comic isn't just conceptually funny, but the drawings themselves lend a lot to the jokes as well. She sells a joke about how embarrassing ponies are with a really cutesy drawing of a pony, for example. From beginning to end, it's a perfectly-realized bit of  humor.

Second Banana, by Tessa Brunton. This is a funny story centering around Brunton's relationship with her brother regarding belief and influences. As the youngest member of her family, Brunton was susceptible to her brother's tendency to pontificate. Sometimes this led to him sharing "the good stuff" with her, like comics, HP Lovecraft, ghost stories and other unexplained phenomena. However, it also led to his point of view being the only correct one, which made it especially tough because he was precociously intelligent and Brunton struggled academically. This was a power imbalance, and Brunton sadly relates how it came between them, even as her brother meant well. This especially came to light when he abandoned his love of the supernatural for rationalism, a move that essentially cut Brunton off from her steady supply of wonder. Brunton's character work is expressive and loose but grabs the reader's eye because of her attention to detail and decorative aspects of her work. She's careful to add hatching and background details like wallpaper patterns and imaginative details like monsters and haunted woods. Her line weight is thin to the point of fragility, a quality that carries over to the emotional qualities of her work, which combines nostalgia and sadness in equal measure.

Tablegeddon, edited by Rob Kirby. Kirby's one of the best editors in comics, and this zine sees him quietly putting together a comic filled with some intriguing names from the world of alt-comics as well as queer comics, two camps that are rapidly converging and sharing energy these days. Everyone who is an exhibitor at a comics or zine festival can certainly sympathize with the stories told here. Beyond the simple fact that everyone featured here is a cartoonist, many of the creators tend to write about how introverted they are and how tough it is for them to deal with crowds. Max Clotfelter's densely-hatched comic is a nice introduction to the anthology, as it details his first friend in comics, his first (awful) show and his first disappointing experience with comics. Sally Carson and Cara Bean's jam comic about meeting & bonding at a CCS workshop and then tabling together at various shows is inspiring and revealing, especially in how they are able to help each other through shared insecurities and encourage the other to work through it. Their lines mesh well, with Bean's stubby self-caricature and Carson's cute, bespectacled figure making a great visual duo. Bean's line is slightly thicker than Carson's which works to help differentiate their figures a bit more, but both are careful to avoid spotting blacks.

Kelly Froh and Carrie McNinch both write about the downside of tabling: a lack of an audience, a room that's too cold or a table that's too windy, and crippling shyness. Along the same lines, Aron Nels Steinke relates a story (told in his anthropomorphic style of drawing) of tabling with a guy he got into making comics who was suddenly getting TV deals and the relentlessness of certain kinds of fans. Kirby, Mark Campos and Justin Hall all talk about specific experiences, as Kirby relates a difficult time at TCAF, Hall talks about a brutal 20 minutes wearing down a customer until he made a sale, and Campos talks about a "mystery comic" he made that had an amusing punchline. The centerpiece of the comic, Gabby Gamboa's depiction of a family of neanderthals having a picnic discussing their comics, is hilarious, as she really gets at the conversations and pettiness that can take place at these sorts of events. John Porcellino's comic about how any theories predicting a show's success or failure tend to be specious at best. Tony Breed and Jason Martin both did strips about the ups and downs of tabling and the feeling of connection one seeks out at events like this. The seriousness and sincerity of those comics is then paired against the weirdness of Matt Moses recalling a belligerent fan at TCAF, a show held at a library and the sweet hilarity of Rick Worley relating his crush on Dash Shaw at one show. In the former strip, drawn by Jess Worby, the bulging eyes of the patron made everyone think that he was surely going to snap and murder them. In the latter, Worley builds up a fantasy of getting married to Shaw until he's brought down to earth by being told that Shaw was attached...to a woman. Worley's "Bottomless Belly Button...bit overrated, don't you think?" made me laugh out loud. It was one of many such moments in this anthology, one designed to entertain fans and draw nods of understanding from other cartoonists regarding experiences both positive and negative interacting with the public and selling one's art.

Two New Anthologies From Hic & Hoc

The Hic & Hoc Illustrated Journal of Humor, Volume One: The United States, edited by Lauren Barnett and Nathan Bulmer. In my idle fantasies where I suddenly become a multi-millioniare, I dream of funding and publishing a cutting-edge humor anthology featuring the best of new and old talent. The Illustrated Journal of Humor is remarkably close to my vision of what that anthology would look like. Editors Barnett and Bulmer are funny cartoonists in their own right, and they've assembled a book that has a lot of key veterans as well as younger talent. Their "Note From the Editors On Humor" is one of two expertly-executed fart jokes in this book, and it's rare that scatological humor in general makes me laugh at all.

The book opens with a fantastic Noah Van Sciver piece that positions one of his typical sad-sack characters who is sick and can't get sleep. Suddenly, there's an insistent narrator who questions him and urges him to look at the naked one-eyed monster in his bedroom, rubbing his genitals all over the character's beloved and important stuff. Lines like "It's true. You do indeed have a gun. It's right there being rubbed all over a dick" made me laugh out loud. There's also plenty of anti-humor and meta-humor, like Bort's hacky-punchline busting series of strips, or most especially Martha Keavney's "Buster" strips. Keavney has been a long-time favorite of mine, thanks to her Badly-Drawn Comics and Spelt-Rite Comics, and she's certainly someone I'd be eager to publish. The "Buster" strip is a hilarious take-off on hacky pet comics/sit-coms, only it's from the point of view of aliens with a pet human. Keavney's understanding of the timing needed to make such mimicry work is incredible.

Some of the artists, like Nikki Burch, use an exaggerated visual style to tell a simple joke. Others, like Sam Spina's excellent "Pern", use a simplified style to relentlessly pound the reader with a series of jokes associated with a couple having sex. The jokes are mostly in the dialogue, with the exception of the screwed-up angry face of the woman when they're indulging in "age play" and she slaps him and snarls "Don't you EVER talk back to mama.". It's hilarious because it's so incongruous. Of course, there's also the king of minimalist gag work, Sam Henderson.  He's another obvious choice for such an anthology, and his mix of visual gags and puns always deliver. Then there are strips that are funny because they exaggerate everyday situations, like going shopping for clothes. Madeline Flores' page of simple but exaggerated drawings and screaming things like "This shirt makes my tits look GOOOOOD!" was another stand-out in a book that was incredibly dense with great contributions. The same is true for Jane Mai's outrageous page of designing men's lingerie, slapping packages into "snake" or "elephant" and humiliating her man into getting a "shame boner" before she simply goes to sleep.

Not every strip uses exaggeration in its visuals, nor do they go for strict gags. For example, Grant Snider's comics are contemplative and amusing, where every panel is funny in its own way without building up to something larger. Dustin Harbin's "Lives of the Generals" similarly starts with a simple premise and riffs on it for panel after panel in his crisp and cartoony style. Sam Sharpe's strip about a boy's relationship with a beloved superhero of his youth carrying on into the bigger questions is more bittersweet than laugh out loud, even as the conceit of the strip (the answer to the question asked in every panel is "no"). Julia Wertz's amazing "Life Like This" equates being a "funny" cartoonist to a vaudeville act that's booed off the stage when she tries to discuss something serious. Despite (and really, because of) the gruesome ending, Wertz still manages to throw in a punchline. It really is her entire career boiled down to a single bit of brilliance. There's also solid work by Jeff Lok, Dakota McFadzean, Patt Kelley (pretty much the ultimate fart joke), Nathan Stapley and others. Even the worst strips in here are still solid, as Barnett & Bulmer both did a fine job of balancing the absurd, the grotesque, the whimsical and the flat-out funny. This is a smash-hit success.

Hic & Hoc Presents: Unknown Origins & Untimely Ends, edited by Emi Gennis. The titular subjects are objects of fascination for Gennis, who frequently writes about weird but true deaths in her comics. This anthology is the comics version of shows like In Search Of... or Unsolved Mysteries, further combined with urban or folk legends particular to certain areas. As is generally the case in such instances, I found that the stories that had more of a foot in reality were more interesting than the stories that relied on the potential of ghosts, monsters, UFOs and other some ephemera. For example, Jackie Roche's "The Leatherman" is a very humane look at an enigmatic man who made the rounds on foot in northeast America. Aaron Whitaker's "The Monster With 21 Faces" is one of several stories regarding unsolved crimes; this one was about a group that kidnapped the head of a candy company, let him go, threatened to poison his product and then later taunted the helpless police department. "The Voynich Manuscript", by the always excellent Julia Gfrorer, turns her spooky storytelling style on a mysterious manuscript that has never been decrypted. I also thought "Goo" by Jason Bradshaw and "Meat Shower" by Noah Van Sciver were funny and weird examples of strange stuff falling out of the sky for no discernible reason. Though it crossed over into urban legend territory, Tod C. Parkhill's "Polybius", is an elegant and creepy tale. It's about a legendary arcade game similar to the vector graphics action of Tempest and the nightmarish effect it had on some gamers, and it's done in that same vector line drawing style. Though the story devolves into men-in-black style conspiracy theories, it was stylish and just credible enough to be of interest.

In the "Untimely Ends" section, there are plenty of stories about unsolved murders, people who mysteriously disappeared, death that are totally unexplained, and certain famous people. WIthoutcomingout and saying it, for example, Phillip Sevy links the death of a young would-be actress named Elizabeth Smart to Orson Welles, connecting the dots in such a way as to explain why he left Hollywood, why he became so depressed and why his career never recovered. Lizz Lunney's take on the influence and death of Rasputin is played for laughs thanks to her cartooning style, alleviating the heavy sense of dread and mystery that most of the other stories in the book are burdened with. I appreciated the thoroughness with which Emi Gennis and JT Yost approached their murder-mystery stories, sticking as close to the facts as they were known while acknowledging the crazier theories surrounding their cases. Jenn Woodall and Sam Alden approached their subjects (a haunted forest, a ghost ship) in a more poetic manner, relying heavily on illustrations as a way of juxtaposing rather than simply guiding the text. For the most part, the very specific voice of each cartoonist was turned down a bit in service of their anecdotes, which makes this anthology something to pursue if you're interested in the subject rather than a particular cartoonist. 

TCJ Post #27: Candy Or Medicine #8, Lauren Barnett minis

Rob reviews the latest issue of the Josh Blair-edited CANDY OR MEDICINE #8 as well as a couple of minicomics by Lauren Barnett over at http://www.tcj.com/minicomics/minis-lauren-barnett.