Jonathan Baylis' So Buttons #14

My review of Jonathan Baylis and his collaborators' new issue of So Buttons (#14) comes at a momentous time for the writer, as this issue was just nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Anthology. It's unusual for a self-published minicomic to be nominated for any award, so this is quite an achievement. The funny thing is that while I think it has his single best story to date, the issue as a whole is uneven. Or rather, the content of the first half is jarring compared to the content in the second half. That's understandable, given that the tonal shift occurred because Baylis' mother died while he was making the comic, and he chose to honor her with a memorable story and reprints of stories that featured her. 

The cover, by MariNaomi, is mixed photography and Shrinky-Dinks. It's an eloquent tribute to his mother, the pages of his comic scattered across the ocean. Baylis tries to frame the nature of the issue by framing it as "Life & Death," but as he points out in the afterword, the first part may as well have been called "Starfucker." Essentially, these are extended, amusing name-dropping stories. It wasn't any one story in particular that was bad, it's just that the whole theme, with this many stories, felt excessive and self-indulgent. 

The first story, drawn by Box Brown, was about his love of the Howard Stern show, and the producer, Gary Dell'Abate, in particular. This ties in with Baylis' stint working for the Topps card company, as he dropped off some Pamela Anderson trading cards. The actual anecdote where he meets Gary is exceedingly brief; this story is more a reflection of how much he liked the whole Stern experience. The whole aesthetic (Brown chose a yellow-orange palette that was vaguely nauseating) was off-putting, but then that's part of the Stern experience. 

The second story, with longtime partner T.J. Kirsch, was about how much he loved Chester Brown and how ironic it was that it was his wife, Ophira, who wound up meeting and interviewing him first. This wound up being a more interesting anecdote, as Baylis spotted him riding his bike to TCAF, and Brown slowed down, walked with him, and bought his comic! Kirsch's washed-out brownish hues were perfect for this story, and the whole point (comics is a small world, you should reach out to your heroes) is well-made. 

"So...Ballistic" is a mirror image of the previous story. Drawn by Sophia Glock, it's about Baylis' relative lack of interest toward the classic comic series Love & Rockets (amusingly, with Glock hectoring him about his lack of critical acumen). It's really just an excuse for the punchline of Baylis seeing Jaime Hernandez, asking him to look at a comic, and then being flustered when Jaime walks away with it. At two pages, it's just the right length. His collaboration with Craig Campbell about James Earl Jones was great when it focused on how Baylis was inspired by Jones overcoming his stutter (especially with Campbell putting on a cartooning clinic with multiple art stories and an impressive use of shading) and less so when it focused on Star Wars references (at this point, more than one is one too many). 

The second half of the issue kicks off with a sweet story drawn by Summer Pierre about Baylis teaching his young son about the concept of the "rally cap." Baylis has a real talent for taking a minor anecdote and turning it into either a solid punchline, a poignant moment, or a powerful memory.  Steven Arnold's cartooning for a story about a beloved former comic dealer who died had its moments (the bit where Baylis is drawn wearing his trademark cap at various ages was cute), but Baylis' text overwhelmed it in a way it doesn't usually do with his collaborators. 

"Take A Penny...Leave A Penny" is the piece Baylis wrote about the death of his mother, and it was drawn by Karl Christian Krumpholz. This was an excellent choice, because Krumpholz's dense and expressive style was a perfect match for this story. In the span of two pages, Baylis connected saving a young girl's life thanks to CPR training with seeing his mother suffering a stroke and dying in a way that felt organic and not overly mawkish. Krumpholz's use of dutch angles and thick lines for the opening segment but then decreasing his line weight for the latter part of the story was a nice way of smoothing out the narrative, and the brief flashbacks to previous stories featuring his mom was wonderfully restrained. Baylis let the moments speak for themselves. 

That's followed by reprints of those stories, which reminded the reader of the tenderness of Baylis' relationship to his mother. The final story, "So...Buttons" reveals to the reader the origin of the series' name, as it was something his mother said to him when he was sassing her about cleaning his room. The artist, Ayoko Nito, follows up on this origin story gag with a back cover joke featuring Baylis crouching on a rooftop like Batman. The back half of the issue was as good as anything as Baylis has ever written. Not just because of the subject matter, but because there was a lot less explaining of backstories and more letting things unfold on their own. 

Minis: E.K. Williams, MariNaomi, Sophia Foster-Dimino

Babybel Wax Bodysuit, by Eric Kostiuk Williams (Retrofit). Williams pulls off a star turn in his first Retrofit comic, using color for maximum effect after publishing his earlier comics in black & white. The conceit of the fluidity of form in the object of the red wax on cheese is remarkably effective, especially in the way that Williams likes to warp and bend reality and physical forms. Williams' comics are a mixture of the cheeky, the philosophical, the intellectual, the sexy and the emotionally intimate, and I love that metaphor of stripping something away to get at the really good stuff. This comic has a number of short stories, the standout being "The Literal Word", which is about teenage Williams becoming friends with an older, Christian, Republican woman on a comics forum. Using his fluid, melting style, Williams transforms himself into his avatar (Daredevil) and transforms his friend into a queen, since she was sort of the group's mother hen. It's a typically thoughtful, visually gripping and expressive story about learning things about others who are very different than you while at the same time finding your own way in life. In his case, it was discovering the gay club scene in college and slowly drifting away from her. Williams has some smart things to say about Facebook and how its algorithms discourage cross-cultural exchange while being nostalgic for his old internet support network.

In addition to a number of visually spectacular one-page strips (some straightforward, others surreal), the other big story was "Britney Jean 2116". You would expect a story about Britney Spears being preserved as a cyborg for Las Vegas shows in the year 2116 would be campy, and one would not be wrong. However, this story is less about camp and more a dystopian sci-fi story about commodification (a running theme of this comic) and loss of identity. It's a story that on the one hand appreciates her silly pop songs at face value, but also questions the corporate structure that pressured her and caused her so much anxiety. It's a fear that Williams worries about on a larger level as an artist, since he's concerned that his honest self-expression might eventually be appropriated and commodified aginst his will, either in his lifetime or beyond. Structuring it in a legitimately exciting sci-fi story makes it all the more fun, especially with an open-ended conclusion where Britney is not yet ready to join a larger revolution. Williams mixes politics, aesthetics, philosophical concept and his own hard-won wisdom in an ambitious stew that is distinctive in terms of its component parts being discernible but also forming something greater and more original than the simple sum of those parts. He does this with a supple line and a skill with both line and color that is already quite formidable.

I Thought YOU Hated ME, by MariNaomi (Retrofit). These are memoir comics at their most intimate, as MariNaomi examines an on-again, off-again friendship with enormous importance over a span of close to forty years. What I liked best about this story was MariNaomi's varied but always assured cartooning style that emphasized facial expression to such a degree that she was often able to excise virtually every other element from the page when the situation called for it. There's also a sharp tale told here about the ways in which personalities can change over time, as eight-year-old Mari was extremely shy, while her best friend's new friend, Mirabai, was a confident and even obnoxious tomboy. They often ganged up on her and made fun of her in a series of strips that were a deliberate homage to Charles Schulz's Peanuts strips: stumpy character design, deliberately simple facial features, etc. Along the way, something interesting happened: Mirabai became a genuine friend.

Another homage to Schulz, the famous "Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown as he's trying to kick it", is done twice here: first, in the same way, and second, where Mirabai actually puts the ball down and lets Mari kick it. That was beautifully symbolic of the closeness of their relationship, one where they shifted roles as Mari became the bad girl and Mirabai was the one who had no interest in smoking, doing drugs or losing her virginity as quickly as possible. Of course, despite her new coolness, Mari was pissed that the guys would fall for Mirabai instead of her, until she became resigned to the idea because Mirabai really was that great. When Mari ran away from home, Mirabai was there to help. When their twenties rolled around, neither understood just how fragile friendships can really be. Both floated in and out of each other's lives, thinking the other no longer wanted to be friends, until their mid-thirties.

What follows after that is a series of wonderful, intimate conversations about relationships, their pasts, their futures, debilitating diseases, professional successes and small moments spent together. The scenes of mutual, genuine affection get highly detailed, realistically drawn close-ups to emphasize not just their intimacy as friends, but an intimacy that's unique to them. Simpler drawings allow for the reader to identify with the characters with greater ease than more naturalistically- rendered drawings, and they also tend to move the action along with greater ease. With a realistic drawing that's a close-up, that's the artist's way of telling the reader to stop and take a long look at this image before moving on. This is ultimately a sweet and simple story that revolves around its story beats, which are as much about what is not said as what is directly expressed.

Vom Night, by Sophia Foster-Dimino. This is an interesting project, published by JMC Aggregate, which features a comic by Foster-Dimino and a download code for a song of the same name as the comic at bandcamp.com by gobbinjr, aka Emma Witmer. The song is dreamy and atmospheric, which fits nicely into SFD's narrative within a narrative. It's about a young woman who goes about her day as a cake decorator at a bakery who in her thoughts is telling someone (herself? an imaginary correspondent? something in-between?) a story about a dream that she's had. The story fills her every waking moment, especially when she's doing automatic activities like brushing her hair or walking to work. SFD's figure work here is incredibly satisfying just to look at, as the unnamed protagonist's slightly chunky body and long, red hair drawn to resemble a labyrinth at times gives each panel a certain presence. Her blank eyes betray the fact that she's not entirely there, even as she tries to be kind and sympathetic toward her co-workers. That's especially true of one co-worker who is concerned about her brother and later learns that he's in the hospital. What the co-worker mistakes for kindness and compassion is simply the protagonist doing her very best from spacing out again so that she can get back to telling herself her story. That said, when told that she's a good listener, she frowns and doesn't have anything to say to that, as it was clear that she was listening out of a sense of social obligation and politeness rather than genuine concern. This was a fascinating take on introversion and how unknowable the mind truly is, and it was the delicate, restrained quality of Foster-Dimino's line that made it so effective.

Foxing Reprints #8: Sophia McMahan, MariNaomi, Liz Valasco

You Were Swell #2, by Sophia McMahan. This comic reflects McMahan's interest in exploring alternative meanings in 1950s-style advertising art and romance comics. In particular, she's interested in the dichotomy between beauty as a social construction and the feelings of self-loathing that undermine one's own self-image. She also takes dead aim at the ways in which men are more frequently exempt from this self-destructive cycle and help perpetuate it, like in strips such as "Lothario From The Black Lagoon". This is a hilarious bit of satire featuring the sea monster from the titular Black Lagoon schmoozing and seducing woman after woman with cheesy pick-up lines like "Do you believe in love at first sight?" "Escape" talks about McMahan's own attempts to distance herself from her need to compare herself to others, in order to avoid plunging into the inevitable depression that this creates. It's accompanied by trippy images of blank-eyed women with a third eye, a four-armed devil woman, and other externalizations of her negative feelings.

Speaking of which, "Good To See You' is a devastating story that initially consists of blandly pleasant-looking people sharing inane conversational pleasantries. ("Wow you look great! It's been so long", "Thank you, how are you?" accompanied by cheerful if slightly blank faces. The last page of the story consists of one of the characters rearranging her face until it distorts into unrecognizable, inchoate flesh. McMahan specializes in this kind of body horror, the sort that gives an image to the sort of silent scream one can never unleash in such situations when one is expected to act in certain ways. 

"Slip Away" and "Please" talk about fears regarding being hurt, being exposed and even fearing the experience of happiness, given that it will inevitably will slip away. It's less a sense of catastrophising one's negative feelings and instead being a realistic barometer of the way things are. Vulnerability is hard, and being rejected is painful. "Please" depicts two boxers sparring with text like "Please don't be mean to me" floating inbetween punches. It's a visceral way of getting at those feelings, both in terms of receiving punishment but also dishing it out because of a fear of being hurt. McMahan then turns around in "Are You Lonesome" and draws cheesecake beauty pin-ups with scales and webbed hands, challenging the male gaze and just what it is we mean when we say that we're lonely. Her subversion of the concept of beauty and what it entails emotionally, her depiction of the difficulty of communicating in a meaningful way, and her own willingness to graphically grapple with her own self-loathing make her comics quite a powerful experience.

The Seeker, by Liz Valasco. This is a delightfully creepy piece about a tween girl who slinks around her neighborhood, looking for a mysterious box and hiding it from a neighborhood boy. It has all the elements of being a cute Halloween story until shit gets real in its climax. What's interesting about this surprising culmination of ritual and belief is that things don't backfire on the protagonist. Indeed, the end of this comic promises more of a quest for truth and meaning than the typical reasons people try rituals, though the girl is not above scaring the boy she encountered earlier. Valasco's think line, cute but naturalistic drawing style and use of a strategically-applied blue wash make this a an intriguing comic to look at as well as read. The page where the contents of the box come out is made all the more effective thanks to the use of dense hatching and cross-hatching, creating a genuinely unsettling atmosphere. 

Great Heights, by MariNaomi (2D Cloud). This small mini came as a reward for those who subscribed to 2D Cloud's yearlong book subscription service or who ordered her book Dragon's Breath.. The window for joining that subscription has now passed, but I wanted to note that this little eight-page comic has an eerie charm. It's about a visit to the World Trade Center that MariNaomi made in 1998, where she and a friend went to the top of Tower 2. She notes that pressing up against the glass made it feel like she was falling, which was a secret fantasy of hers. The final image of the mini is that of a tiny airplane. It goes without saying that this fantasy could not encompass the horror of the events of 9/11, which makes that flashback juxtaposition so interesting, especially as rendered in MariNaomi's minimalist style.

2dcloud: MariNaomi's Turning Japanese

Following up on my recent Minnesota post, let's take a look at one of Minneapolis's finest: 2dcloud. The publisher, Raighne Hogan, is a cartoonist in his own right, but he's made a splash thanks to his willingness to take risks with avant garde, eccentric and boundary-pushing comics. Hogan's put interesting work back in print, printed the work of locals, given homes to more-widely read cartoonists who needed a new publisher, published the work of emerging cartoonists and he's even gone the international route. At the moment, 2dcloud is running a kickstarter in an effort to support publishing some pretty remarkable books. First, here's a review of a recent publication.

MariNaomi's newest memoir, Turning Japanese, is on the one hand a chronological continuation of her first memoir, Kiss and Tell, as it picks up more-or-less right after the final relationship depicted in that book. On the other hand, it also has a good bit in common with her shorter works that were originally published on The Rumpus and later collected as Dragon's Breath And Other Stories. Turning Japanese is all about not just contradictions and opposites, but also about how someone can be and feel two things at once. In a society that privileges binary distinctions (and almost always creates a hierarchy based on those distinctions), MariNaomi's status as someone frequently in-between points out how simply living her life in certain places and spaces created a tension born from social mores being stretched. She's a person, not an accumulation of traits, and as such this book is about the thoughts and feelings that go into creating and presenting one's identity as well as exploring different aspects of one's roots. All of this is done with an absence of pretension and an emphasis on humor, and it's served to the reader in the form of both extended narratives and bite-sized vignettes.

Like Kiss and Tell, this book to a certain degree is the story of a relationship, this time with a man she called Giuseppe. Through him, she meets a friend who works as a hostess in a Japanese bar, a peculiar sort of job that required them to be extremely friendly bartenders, flirting with men and singing karaoke to create a particular kind of experience for their (mostly male) clientele. MariNaomi reveals that she's half-Japanese but can't really speak the language, a point of frustration for her. So she takes the job in the hopes that she'll be able to pick it up in an immersive environment and also finally get to experience Asian culture and people beyond Western stereotypes. In a series of amusing vignettes that reveal the backstories of the other young women working at the bar as well as the bar's owners, MariNaomi is quickly disappointed by the nature of her interactions with her customers, who range from indifferent to flirtatious to engaging in severe sexual harassment. What had begun as a lark and a genuine attempt at cultural outreach quickly became a job that relied on her deference to men and dependence on her looks and charm in order to please customers, which naturally severely rankled her feminist tendencies.

The most fascinating extended story from this part of the book was her description of her "regular" customer, Hitoshi. He took a shine to her and immediately wanted to shower her with money, compliments and even declarations of his love. Being the person she is, she felt guilty for accepting big tips because she felt she was leading him on, yet she couldn't quite manage to tell him she was engaged when she accepted a lunch date from him. That all led up to him offering her $20,000 to pay off he debts, only he wrote the "check" on a napkin. The idea of accepting this amount of money literally led her to experience her first panic attack. That particular page is illustrated quite differently than most of the rest of the book. MariNaomi usually prefers to use a highly stripped-down approach that employs a great deal of negative space, conveying only what is absolutely necessary in each panel for the reader to understand what's going on in a narrative sense as well as to understand what's going on in an emotional sense. MariNaomi will zoom in and out on faces, going from dots for eyes in a long or medium shot to a more detailed facial close-up that fades out almost everything else in the scene. On the panic attack page, virtually every every inch is taken up illustrating the feeling of panic: spiraling fear lines, eyeballs pulsating, her head exploding and her heart flying out of her mouth. It all kind of melts together as panel distinctions fall away. It curtly ends in the final panel which is more typically minimalist in its drawings and carefully defined with panel borders, when she narrates "Somehow I managed to keep it together".

When the outcome of that whole situation with Hitoshi ends with the whole napkin thing being a fake-out, it revealed that her attempts at empathy and human connection as a hostess were remarkably misplaced. It was a scenario where seemingly everyone else was trying to be someone else, and someone as sincere as MariNaomi presented herself was kind of an easy mark for the right sort of person--even as she had her guard up against creeps. When a different guy out-and-out gropes her, she quits but goes through weeks of agony surrounding digestive issues. She would have agonizing stomach cramps every time she ate something, followed by a panic attack. There's a great page where she was walking up Nob Hill in San Francisco and simply couldn't make it: her fiancee had to carry her up. The bottom panel forms a perspective triangle where we see the concerned faces of her parents forming the base of the triangle and the figure of Giuseppe carrying Mari forming the third point. MariNaomi was wise to leave this as a silent panel, letting the panel's composition speak for itself.

The punchline of that particular situation is that she eventually got better and finally got tested by a doctor, who revealed that she survived a severe case of salmonella. The panel where she and Giuseppe learn this is hilarious, as their eyes bulge out as though they were in a daily newspaper comic strip. That ends the first part of the book and includes an interlude that talks about her prior visits to Japan as well as visits from Japanese relatives. All of her attempts at connecting to her Japanese side in America had failed miserably, but she and her fiancee decided to visit Japan for three months, leading to the fascinating second half of the book, which is part travelogue, part documentation of an eroding relationship, and part spiritual journey. If the first half skipped forward in time in part to demonstrate the relative sameness of each day, then the second half skipped few details, especially at the beginning of the trip, when even trying to get around town in Tokyo was a harrowing adventure.

MariNaomi really does see Tokyo in an almost magical realist way, as everything from vending machines to pigeons in the park takes on a fantastical quality. The reality of day-to-day living starts to set in, as Mari takes a hostess job and Giuseppe is offered a host job at a strip club that would wind up paying him $20 a night after he took a cab home. Turning it down meant insulting the person who arranged it in the first place, which was a big deal. This was the first sign that a move made in America (turning down a potential job offer) that would have few consequences wound up being deeply offensive in Japan. The book settles down into a series of vignettes once again, but this time around it's not just about life as a hostess; Tokyo itself serves as a secondary character that reminds the couple of how different things are there. It also provokes a sense of dissatisfaction and anxiety, as MariNaomi realizes that learning Japanese from a bunch of drunk businessmen was not necessarily her best idea, and Giuseppe starts to evince resentment toward his fiancee. The one thing that the experience in Tokyo taught her was that the cultural divide, which valued deference to one's parents above all else no matter what, was something she couldn't begin to understand.

The final part of the book featured Mari visiting her grandparents, an occasion that was at once nostalgic and anxiety-ridden. She had wonderful childhood memories of her grandparents but had no idea if they would accept her or even if she would be able to communicate with them. She learned that no matter how much she struggled, she was able to pick up more of the language than she had guessed. The problem with that was she was now placed into the burden of translation for Giuseppe, who resented being left out of conversations. However, having to constantly translate conversations made communication extremely difficult and annoying for her, which allowed her to empathize with her mother a bit, who showed a similar level of annoyance about being forced out of the natural flow of conversation.

In a book about an experience that was supposed to be about transformation and getting closer to one's roots, the only genuine experience MariNaomi had in this regard was in a surprising area: prayer. A staunch atheist, she at first prayed at her grandmother's shrine in an effort not to offend her (silently cursing her own need to "conform"). Later when she went to a temple devoted to the prayers of parents for their sick children, MariNaomi was overwhelmed by the energy she perceived in the place. It didn't make her believe in god, per se, but she did acknowledge that prayer could be a way of releasing energy into the world. Though she doesn't make this connection overt in the book, that overwhelming, visceral feeling that she got from being in that environment was almost the polar opposite of the feeling she had during a panic attack. That's both in the sense of the energy she was receiving as well as sending in both instances as well as the way her body reacted each time.

It was also ironic that while MariNaomi found herself willing to compromise so many aspects of her identity, including her status as a feminist and an atheist, in order to keep the peace in particular social situations, she didn't think twice about not only telling her grandparents that she didn't want children, Not only did she say this, but she said it in a remarkably blunt manner ("Never! I don't like! Children make noise. I like quiet."). She didn't think for a moment that in a country obsessed by family ties, professing out-and-out hostility toward children (something she clearly rarely thought about, considering how rarely it even came up on her radar) might be the most upsetting and disrespectful thing possible. That unexamined hostility also sparked an argument with her fiancee, who wanted children and thought she might change her mind, creating all kinds of doubts in her mind and revealing one of the chief sources of his resentments toward her. While that bluntness had repercussions, it ultimately led to the right decision in terms of her relationship and (as she showed in an epilogue) didn't permanently erode her relationship with her grandparents. In the end, MariNaomi took what was useful from her experiences (empathy for her mom, sympathy for prayer) and rejected what wasn't (polite deference, obeying customs and conventions). MariNaomi's restraint as an artist is perhaps her best quality, both in terms of what she chooses to show on the page as well as the way she uses humor and quotidian anecdotes to act as a palate cleanser for the larger issues she opts to examine.

Minicomics: MariNaomi, Sean T Collins/Julia Gfroerer, Spencer Hicks

Interview With Alison Bechdel and Said While Talking, by MariNaomi. This is a minicomic version of a feature that originally appeared on therumpus.net, and it's part zine, part comic. While MariNaomi conducts the interview in a loose, conversational style that cleverly draws on the similarities between her work and Bechdels as memoirists, I couldn't help but wish the entire thing had been done as a comic. That's partly because she didn't simply make this a talking heads piece on the page, but rather used the illustrations to sometimes show what was being talked about in the course of the conversation. For example, she was able to illustrate how in comics it's not practical or desirable to show every wrinkle and detail of one's face, but that such softening had a "touch-up effect". There were other such opportunities to similarly illustrate interesting aspects of their work later on, but I get the sense that this was a time-crunch assignment that didn't give her the chance to fully illustrate each section. That's unfortunate and a rare opportunity that was lost, but the illustrated and personal bits of the interview that the reader does get to see are funny and revealing both of subject and interviewer.

Said While Talking's short vignettes originally appeared at tapastic.com, and they're meant to be a light and comedic counter to the sort of strips she ran in her column at The Rumpus. She uses an interesting technique in a number of these strips (perhaps as a time-saving method) where she eschews the use of panel borders and full figures, often using either floating heads or head-and-shoulders shots. It's a way of paring down strips to their absolute essentials, focusing on the elements necessary for the eventual gag and nothing else. Reading her more serious and dramatic works like Kiss And Tell or her Rumpus strip (to be collected in a book by 2D Cloud called Dragon's Breath), it's interesting to read short vignettes about dating that are actually funny instead of sad or even tragic. A series of strips regarding Mari dating a hippy are especially amusing, as her minimalist style here still manages to capture the pretension of this guy and the ridiculousness of situations where he doesn't want to go down on her because "It doesn't feel very vegan"! The strips with her husband Gary are also inevitably amusing, especially since they take on a sort of Charlie Brown/Lucy dynamic at times. For example, when Gary suggests that there's a "direct correlation between how pretty something is and what a jerk it is", there's a beat and a perturbed Mari replies "Somehow, I think I ought to be offended by that statement." What makes the punchline perfect and perfectly Schulzian is the slight smile that creeps across Gary's face when she says that. While these strips are played for laughs, they're still revealing in many ways, like the ones in which she discusses her antipathy toward babies. MariNaomi notes that the strips also provide a therapeutic service, taking her away from the more downbeat themes of her other comics; it also allows her to exercise different kinds of cartooning muscles.

In Pace Requiescat, by Sean T Collins and Julia Gfrörer.  First off, one must read Edgar Allen Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado" for this story to make any sense. The mini picks up where the story left off, adding a new ending that has all sorts of implications. The story itself is about a man named Montresor who vows revenge on a man named Fortunato for a variety of unnamed offenses. That revenge eventually comes when he takes Fortunato deep into the vaults of his family home to sample a Spanish sherry. The dampness of the vaults makes Fortunato cough, and Montresor gets him drunk to ease the cough. Finally, they happen upon a small vault that's a dungeon of some kind and Montresor quickly puts his foe's leg in irons, and soon begins to brick up the alcove he's in, gaining his revenge by eventually starving and dehydrating Fortunato.

Now, the end of the story finds Montresor calling out Fortunato's name a couple of times, only to gain no answer. This was after Fortunato begged and pleaded Montresor to stop, hoping it was a sick joke. However, there's an implication that Fortunato's final refusal to engage was a sort of silent revenge of its own, because Montresor, confessing the act years later in the narrative, feels sick. Either because revenge itself doesn't feel as good as he thought it might, once he puts that final brick in, or because he failed to get the last word. In the comic, Montresor puts in the final brick, then pauses and pushes in a brick at about waist level. From there, Montresor encourages Fortunato to come forward, he reaches in and then there's a six-page blowjob sequence peppered with clever references to the original story. (I especially liked comparing Fortunato's penis to a serpent, given that Montresor's family crest was a foot striking a serpent biting its heel.)

What to make of this new ending? First off, there was no artist more appropriate for this kind of story than Gfrörer. Her scratchy, nervous line evoked the dampness and darkness of the vaults, and no artist depicts sex so viscerally. With a twelve panel grid on each page, the reader is pushed through panel after panel of this horrific but erotically charged scene, creating an uncomfortable reading experience that's also a sort of shaggy dog story. The use of sound effects is also clever, taking full advantage of the fact that in the story Fortunato is wearing a jester's outfit with bells; the "jingle jingle jingle" of the unseen Fortunato being fellated in what amounts to a gloryhole sequence is somehow both disturbing and hilarious. Beyond those qualities, one gets the sense that Montresor gets the last word this time, so to speak, but Collins also opens up the possibility of revealing Fortunato's "crime" against Montresor: rejecting his advances and/or affections. While those shaggy dog qualities are certainly there and shock value is a part of the experience, it's clear that there are other questions that Collins wanted to address, and he made an already complex and ambiguous story even moreso here, ably complemented by the skill of Gfrörer.

Inspiration Point, by Spencer Hicks. This is an unassuming mini drawn in a simple still that favors slightly cartoony, even grotesque character designs. It sees an unnamed protagonist waking up to go for a run on a trail, and the reader is given an uncensored and unedited look at his stream of consciousness. Like the slightly schlubby design of the man himself, that look inside his brain is not especially flattering. He regards his live-in girlfriend with antipathy even as parts of this run are made to impress her in some bizarre way. Indeed, this unseen woman is a central character in some ways, as he thinks to "punish" her by not bringing her coffee, only to find that she's not there when he returns home. The run itself is full of projections, as he wonders if everyone he meets is a creep as a way of dealing with his own creepy thoughts. Sometimes that stream of consciousness goes down amusing paths, like when he wonders about the evolutionary purpose of white tails on rabbits might be. When he's cleaning his glasses in his girlfriend's car and a passerby thinks he's masturbating, his furious attempts at proving otherwise are hilarious. In short, this is a comic about social anxiety without being labeled as such, and its title of course ironically refers to the utter lack of inspiration that he derives at any point in the story. Hicks' reserved style of storytelling is low impact, but it deserves a bit of scrutiny to really get at what's going on with the main character.

Personal Stories: MariNaomi, Rob Kirby, Virginia Paine

What's New Pussycat?, by MariNaomi. With small, spare drawings done on big pages, MariNaomi gives this story time to breathe, build and develop a certain uncomfortable rhythm. It's about her history with a particular dorky guy who awkwardly flirted with her over a period of years as they encountered each other at various work spaces. Each little vignette is separated by raindrops, with the rain getting heavier until the final vignette, when we learn the guy has met a tragic end. There's no real moral here, nor is this an excuse for the author to beat herself up for not seeing how deeply depressed the guy (Herbert) was. It's simply a solemn, respectful and honest appraisal of his behavior (he made her uncomfortable with mildly sexist remarks and actions), her behavior (she felt she overreacted when she finally rebuked him, years later) and the ways in which depression can lead us to dark territories. The images are spare, stark and beautiful, with some of her best-ever drawing. In particular, her figure drawing is simple but highly expressive, capturing MariNaomi's naivete as a younger woman and Herbert's complex mixture of despair, wit and desperation to connect. The author's epilogue provided interesting background information but wasn't really necessary for understanding or relating to the story.

Rob Kirby's Snack Pak #1, by Rob Kirby. Kirby is just a solid cartoonist overall with a light, fanciful touch. This grab-bag comic contains gags, diary strips, drawings and vignettes. Kirby leads a relatively quiet, successful and contented life, with most of his anxiety being directed at his career as a cartoonist. His self-caricature is one of the most charming in comics, complete with a slightly-upturned pickle nose. Kirby enjoys playing up his more embarrassing moments for laughs, like the time he felt sick and fainted on a plane or puked on a Mexican vacation. His daily strips can take on a slightly poetic tone, as he does his best work when commenting on how he interacts with his environment outside and how it makes him feel physically. He also has an ear for an anecdote, especially when he starts talking about the always-reliable comics convention stories. Then there are times when he's just plain funny, like his "Middle Age" strip about having a six-pack, drinking six packs and then having a bun in the oven and "junk in mah trunk" set to a funky beat heard only in his own mind. It's a great bit of exaggerated cartooning and a nice joke at a his own expense. Kirby's the kind of artist who can do just about any type of storytelling, and minis like this are clearly a way for him to stay nimble and loose while he's between longer projects, with results that are delightful for the reader.

MilkyBoots #14, by Virginia Paine. This comic represents a big step forward for Paine as both a writer and cartoonist. Though mostly a series of vignettes, drawings, profiles and other small pieces, it's all surrounding Paine's feelings regarding a rough break-up. What's remarkable about this comic is the way that Paine eschews that path of simple lamentation and instead tries to gain insight into her own emotional and existential points of view. It really looks like Paine put a great deal of effort into both the quality of her drawings and the design of the piece; it seems clear that she did a lot of drawing from life. Many of the vignettes experiment with all sorts of different layouts, with her use of negative space adding a lot of clarity and power to her individual images. Paine also spends time to establish her daily routines and support system in the form of her friends who sit out on the porch with her, all while examining deeper questions about herself: her sexual identity, her identity regarding relationships (polyamorous vs monogamous) and how to handle emotionally needy friends. It's a beautiful, powerful and altogether cohesive mini that's greater than the sum of its parts.

Autobio Minis: MariNaomi, Whitney Taylor, Margo Dabaie

Here's a trio of autobio comics, done in different styles.

The Evil, by MariNaomi. This is a short, punchy comic that sees the artist experimenting with a new approach. Instead of her standard four panel grid, she's now using a single image per page. Some of those images are naturalistic, while others are rendered in her new, ultra-minimalist style. This allows her to pull in and zoom out of extreme emotional states. The story follows a stay in a hotel as she hears a couple arguing very loudly in the room next door. What follows is a mix of the bizzarely comedic and emotionally triggering, as an aged security guard slowly ambles his way into her room and then down the hall, while Mari herself is weeping. She's weeping because she's being chased by the ghosts of boyfriends past, in the sense that she was on the opposite end of this scenario when younger--being threatened by abusive boyfriends. It's a pointed story about what responsibilities we have toward our fellow people weighed against the concerns of privacy, mixed with alternating chords of guilt and anger that no one called the cops on her behalf in the past. It's a typically nuanced, powerful and funny take on a troubling subject by an artist who's really on a roll.

Adult Time, by Whitney Taylor. Taylor is in the unenviable position of desperately wanting to be a full-time cartoonist but finding herself shackled to a completely unrelated career. Now that she's completed grad school and is yoked to that job full time, Taylor seems to have taken on a new commitment to comics, and her work has slowly matured and started to take shape as she finds her own personal style. This comic is devoted to the scary idea of being an adult and suddenly, magically shifting one's focus from the interests of youth to the realities of being a professional. I like the fact that she drew many of these comics at her cubicle; it's where many an inspired idea has been scribbled. Taylor shows off her sense of humor in this mini in strips about going to a wine tasting that include ridiculing the jargon of tasting ("like a garlicky fettucine alfredo with an asphalt mouthfeel") that ends with a surprisingly dirty joke at the end. Her "Field Guide To Adult Time" is an a to z primer that's both heartfelt & funny; it also features some of her best drawing. Taylor's self-deprecatory nature serves her well in strips about going to weddings and accidentally friending her ex-boyfriend's girlfriend on Facebook. Taylor's voice as a storyteller is starting to emerge as an especially sharp and funny one, and her art is starting to better match what she's trying to accomplish on the page. My sense is that 2013 will be a year of important growth for her as an artist.

He Also Has Drills For Hands V2, by Marguerite Dabaie. Dabaie's devotion to drawing a daily strip is such that she managed to do it during graduate school. These strips are a departure from her more intricate, detailed comics, with a sketchy and cartoony line being deployed. Debaie is a good enough draftsman to not worry about getting too fussy with her drawings; instead, she's after a punchline or getting across a basic idea. Dabaie goes from the silly (a dirty joke done on a calculator) to the quotidian (making stew) to the anecdotal (accounts of movies being made in her neighborhood) to the intellectual (pondering differences in languages). There's an easy charm to her work that makes reading these a pleasure, even if it's fairly disposable, breezy work compared to her other projects. Still, it's interesting to see an artist's process in forcing herself to draw and clearly find ways to enjoy that experience.

Minicomics Round-Up: Stanton, Rae-Grant/Winslow-Yost, Kyle, Lee, Five True Fans, Bird

Gnartoons #1, by James T. Stanton.Stanton is great at drawing monsters, robots and monster-robot hybrids. He then accentuates these highly detailed, almost manic drawings with bright, lurid colors that almost overpower the reader before one adjusts. That's certainly true of the lead story in this one-man anthology, "Subterfuge", where a pet robot and its owner are ambushed by a huge network of threatening machines. Stanton can stop on a dime and go back to black & white for a story about an aggrieved classroom pet being accosted by a band of crazed kids, emphasizing the barbaric and grotesque nature of children who are let loose in packs without adult supervision. Stanton then pauses to consider his own obsession with drawing monsters, wondering if it's something he gets out of his head or if that obsession is leading somewhere darker, all on a cleverly-designed page designed to keep the reader off-balance with triangular panels and sickly colors. Stanton really throws the kitchen sink at the reader in this sampler, using highly realistic drawings in one disgusting strip about San Francisco and varying his color schemes in a more poetic strip. Stanton has the potential to be a major talent, and these minicomics offerings are an interesting way for him to warm up in public.

Steel Sterling, by Gabriel Winslow-Yost and Michael Rae-Grant. This is the first comic by this writer-artist duo, and it's an impressive debut. Riffing on Charles Biro's Golden Age creation, Steel Sterling is a lab-created hero who goes on a psychedelic spreed of mayhem. There are three different operating levels in this comic. First, there's the constant, kinetic, left-to-right ass-kicking of the protagonist, who wades through ninjas, robots, grid-covered rooms, strange animals, axe-handed mustachioed-men sitting on toilets and other such nonsense, all in lurid, day-glo colors. Second, there's the earnest narrative captions that follow him around, commenting on his fights, offering advice and evaluating the evil of his opponents. Finally, there's the static, languid scenes of arch-foe the Black Knight (done in green as a counterpoint to the preponderance of red found in this comic), who counter-intuitively gets the center grid on every single page. This is counter-intuitive because as Frank Santoro would tell us, the center grid is where the eye goes to first, looking to balance the other figures. By inserting a very slow-moving narrative as the center of our attention on every single page, GWY and MRG subvert both reader expectations and the implied narrative of the story, telling the reader that the hyper-violent adventures of the hero are less important than this green-lined figure eating breakfast. This helps set up the final-page gag while foreshadowing the treadmill nature of Steel Sterling's mission. This is definitely a modern take on Golden Age tropes, as the authors seem to borrow as much from Michael DeForge as they do from Biro or even iconoclasts like Fletcher Hanks. I'd be fascinated to see what this pair of artists comes up with next.

Bird Brain Comix #1, by Bird. The otherwise anonymous Bird's comic is the first I've seen from Tom Hart's Sequential Artists Workshop in Gainesville, Fl. It's the first comic of any kind I've received from my home state, which is not exactly a hotbed for alt-comics talent. In a spectacular explosion of self-deprecation, the artist notes (on the cover, no less) that this comic is "overly designed, inarticulate and poorly drawn". Of course, this issue is none of those things, even if it's obvious that this is an early effort in the artist's career. Instead, this comic owes a lot to long-form improv, with the added advantage that because Bird's not explicitly going for laughs in every strip, certain comics that stand on their own as serious statements are later revisited for both tragic and humorous results. Of course, in this comic, the "jokes" come at the expense of downtrodden characters victimized by unfeeling teenagers out to get wasted and violent. There's a matter-of-factness running through this comic as a robot separated from his body and the roadside assistance of Sasquatch are treated fairly nonchalantly. The one thing that drove me crazy about this comic was Bird's insistence on using a thin line and leaving a lot of white space without spotting a lot of blacks or varying his line thickness.  He also winds up relying too much on effects like zip-a-tone to fill in some of those big white spaces, and the effect is a greyish, unattractive page. Still, there's an interesting mind at work here, one that just needs to get back to the drawing board and continue to experiment.

Them's The Breaks, Kid., by Cassie J. Sneider, MariNaomi, Ric Carrasquillo and Tessa Brunton. This anthology is by the Five True Fans collective, and the theme of this one is essentially misfortune. This is a mix of comics and illustrated essays, most of which are quite personal. The cover is hand-stamped with an image from each story, which is one of those crazy yet endearing things about minicomic-makers insane work ethic. Sneider's "Bad Decisions" is a sound choice for lead-off story, given that it's grim but hilarious. The grim part regards Sneider's life-long near-poverty, meaning she's rarely had access to things like health or dental insurance. There's a bit where she's left to wait in a dentist's office with a painfully bad tooth for hours, until she decided to steal something from the exam room for every ten minutes she was kept waiting. That led her to possess some novacaine, which led her to ingest it into her face because she thought it might arrest an allergic reaction to antibiotics. It's a horrifying but undeniably hilarious image.

MariNaomi kicks in yet another variation on a story she's written about an ex-boyfriend who disappeared years earlier, this time including an epilogue about seeing his best friend as a homeless person and trying to ignore him as he now seemed clearly out of his mind. This set up the tragic end of the man killing himself by throwing himself in front of a subway car. The essence of her section dwells on being haunted by once-powerful connections suddenly disappearing forever, an event that has a powerful effect on one's memories of the original events. Carrasquillo's cartoony line focuses on the ways in which marketing is subverted by children, by how faux-humble introductions to one's heroes masks seething jealousy, and a gag where appealing to the true force behind the water bill is an imposing process. His contributions were well-drawn and cute, but seemed radically out of step with the rest of the artists in the book; if anything, they felt slight compared to them.

My favorite part of the book was by Tessa Brunton, who did a number of crisply-drawn comics about her battle not only with chronic fatigue syndrome, but the emotions and self-hatred that often accompanies a disease whose main symptom involves an inability to summon the energy needed to deal with a standard person's day. There's one powerful strip about her desire to give into her bitterness, her anger, her desperation and her hatred of her own body. Then she owns up to the real reason why she tries to stay positive: because "bitterness is repellent" and "I don't want them [her friends and family] to all go away." That's a powerful statement, but Brunton also notes that simply drawing these feelings and printing them is a kind of emotional therapy, one that certainly draws other people to give her sympathy but mostly makes her understand that others do care. Brunton's lack of relentless cheerfulness about her condition is refreshing and funny, giving her license to make some pretty dark jokes. (When an internet support group scolds her and tells her she can do whatever you put your mind to, she replies "Indeed I can" as she holds a gun to her head.) Between this suite of strips and her comic Passage, Brunton's beautiful and light penciling style and sharply sardonic wit have made her a talent to watch.

Distance Movers #1 and #2, by Patrick Kyle. This is straight-ahead surrealism, as Kyle puts together a comic that for all intents and purposes is a genre science fiction comic, yet doesn't conform to standard fantasy tropes. Instead, Kyle's drawings (all printed in color ink, one color at a time) are rubbery, highly simple but stylized and mostly static on the page. The sort of lumpy surrealism that flows from the Marc Bell tradition in Canada is present in this work, though this story of Mr. Earth visiting a backwoods village and later taking one of its denizens to a hyper-advanced big city zips readers through an increasingly complex plot that's more like Matthew Thurber. There are some wonderfully abstract sequences of pure, non-narrative shapes that represent a sort of virtual art gallery that fit snugly in with the rich and warm visuals in the rest of the comic, as the color printing (done on the highly versatile Risograph) simply grabs the eye and doesn't let go. Kyle combines simplicity and clarity of line with complexity of design and narrative to creative a beautiful new series.

Temple, by Jun K. Lee. This is a quiet, poetic story about a man finding god in another man's ear and a sort of phenomenology of what this experience is like. Lee's sparse, thin line reminds me a bit of Souther Salazar's delicate, almost fragile images, and Lee's equally delicate lettering has a strong visual impact as well. The lettering is just a little scrawled--it's entirely legible, but it's small and requires a bit of concentration to parse it. That actually folds in nicely with the increasingly strange images we're presented with in this 8-page comic, as the narrator focuses his attention on a small dot that provides a direct line between him and god. The end of the comic raises the issue of who is entitled to see god and for how long, especially since the narrator steals the ear to keep for himself. This brief story doesn't wear out its welcome and is remarkably clear and coherent, given the strange places it goes to.

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.

Three Flavors of Autobio: McNinch, Mari Naomi, Fawkes

This column looks at three different sets of autobiographical comics. One addresses being in relationships, one addresses being alone, and one addresses being part of a family.

Sleep-Deprived, Not-so-butch, and Sister Spit Tour 2011 Diary, by MariNaomi. Self-described "oversharer" Mari Naomi has made a career of talking about the history of her sex life in terms both moving and witty, and the first two minis here are further examples of the sort of stories found in her book Kiss and Tell. The latter mini is an account of the artist going cross-country with poet Michelle Tea's group of artists, poets, and writers to read and perform excerpts from their work. Being a first-time published author made the experience nerve-wracking but exciting, and her diary of the event was funny in that the trip was entirely sex-free, which is a bit funny considering that sex and sexuality are the dominant concerns in that book. As one might expect from a scribbled road diary, the images here are small, cartoony and frequently sketchy. Mari Naomi makes up for that by adding flourishes like a pair of birds hanging out at the bottom of each page cracking jokes and commenting on the proceedings, as well as other decorative elements. It's an interesting account of the ways that community can form in a short span of time given cramped quarters and intense activity.

Not-so-butch is less a comic than it is a sparsely-illustrated zine, but it's a wonderfully attractive package that is highlighted by MariNaomi's self-deprecating wit. She's a fine raconteur who has a way of framing specific anecdotes in a way that allows for a smooth narrative flow. This zine is about her first couple of attempts at finding a girlfriend after yet another man had broken her heart, and the disastrous results that ensued. The artist describes herself as sexually aggressive with men but shy with women, and the power struggles that resulted were both amusing and predictable. Sleep Deprived is one of her longer "Kiss and Tell" comics, but it's as much about her battles with bedbugs as it is a troublesome relationship. To put a finer point on it, the parasitic insects (literally sucking her blood away) were not unlike the emotionally parasitic man she wound up with. Naturally, when she finally fully committed herself to the relationship, he grew distant and eventually broke up with him. This was obviously an unsettling experience and the result is an unsettling zine, as she relates the lack of sleep from fearing bug bites is what eventually drove her batty.

You Don't Get There From Here #21, by Carrie McNinch. McNinch has been doing autobiographical zines and comics for something like two decades now, and the current incarnation of her autobio takes the form of daily, three to four panel strips. With no context, he plops the reader straight into her life and daily rituals. Like Jesse Reklaw's Ten Thousand Things To Do, the act of writing a cartoon diary becomes a kind of therapeutic release where one can discuss one's problems in public without immediate fear of judgment or shame. Such discussion is always in the context of walking a dog, eating Indian food, going for a run in the desert and finding ways to enjoy the small, poetic moments in life. McNinch alludes to a former drinking problem and how it continues to tug at her even now that she doesn't drink; an injury to her shoulder that's been a cause of frustration; her feelings of being depressed, both generalized and because of the change in season. I love her loose, cartoony line and delightful self-caricature, as they are perfect matches for her bracing honesty and unflagging sense of optimism.

Oh No! Children!, Dust and The Terrible Story of Kinyras and Myrrha, by Glynnis Fawkes. Fawkes, among other things, is an archeological illustrator who has spent time at ruins, drawing layers of strata. Her comics are largely autobiographical reflections on being a mother, an artist, a wife and a professional, and how she balances (or doesn't balance) her various demands. Her line is loose and sketchy, emphasizing the hint of line rather than the fullness of line. In that way, she's quite adept at depicting bodies in relation to one another--especially with regard to her and her children. That's especially important because this approach de-emphasizes the cuteness factor of depicting children and instead focuses on actual closeness. With two children at home that she's in charge of, it's clear that she learned the brutal lesson that a second child is not twice as much work, but ten times as much work with fewer respites. Oh No! Children! is funny and knowing, and certainly doesn't spare her children her frequently annoyed stance on their behavior. Her son in particular is a giant handful, constantly looking to push buttons and expand boundaries. He's also hilarious and sweet, even when he's annoying and provoking conflict with his younger sister.

Dust is a series of short stories that focuses on Fawkes' adventures overseas and how important that time is to her, the incredible amount of difficulty she has in finding time to get comics work done, her feelings about her actual work and whether it's worth it, and ruminations she has while cleaning. I admire Fawkes' honesty regarding the direction her life has taken as a mother, and how it's satisfying in some ways and limiting in others. It's obvious that Fawkes is happiest in ancient cities filled with ruins, yet even those cities are less than ideal in many ways, apart from being separated from her family. That restlessness pervades all of her work, and she's not willing to provide easy answers for her readers. Finally, Kinyras and Myrrha is an adaption of a story by Ovid that is especially lurid. Ostensibly a myth about how the myrrh tree was created, it's about a young girl who is only attracted to her father, despite the consequences that forbidden love entails. When she manages to bed him (unbeknownst to him), she demands punishment from the gods, and so she gets turned into a tree as she gives birth to Adonis. Fawkes manages to keep tongue firmly in cheek while relating this story, even as its subject matter is especially salacious and scandalous.