Foxing Reprints #19: Max de Radigues

Rough Age, by Max de Radigues. Belgian cartoonist Max de Radigues is one of the more secretly influential cartoonists of the last half decade. As a resident cartoonist at the Center for Cartoon Studies, he often collaborated with Chuck Forsman, the future publisher of Oily Comics. They did a broadsheet anthology called Caboose that set the standard for a now frequently-used format for comics publishing. De Radigues' thin, fragile and expressive line was also a clear influence on Forsman's own nascent cartooning style. Both cartoonists seemed most at home drawing stories about teenagers and their daily struggles that seem so epic in scope. De Radigues also self-published a bunch of eight page minicomics calledL'Age Dur, which translates out to "Rough Age". He repeated that format with another series called Moose (soon to be collected by Conundrum Press), and both of these series had a direct influence on Forsman publishing in much the same way with Oily.

Rough Age's transition from a series of brief but related minis to a single collection is seamless. Stripping away the titles of the original stories, de Radigues nonetheless creates a beautiful storytelling rhythm by varying a six-panel grid with a gridless two-panel stinger that concludes each story. In the original minis, these served as the back cover. De Radigues has an uncanny understanding of teenage romantic politics. A kid declares that if a ball goes in the basket, he'll get a date with his crush. Instead, someone picks a fight with him and he winds up elbowing her in the eye. Another story featuring a detention has what seems to be a magical, shared moment between a nerdy boy and a beautiful girl, until he discovers that it's not his shared moment. A boy gets in hot water when he pretends he has a "Canadian girlfriend", and he's treated with some care by one of his friends to help him out with his lie. Later, lies he made up about two other girls come back to haunt him. In the funniest sequence of the book, two boys seem to be talking about which girl is more likely to put out, until we learn that they're talking about trying to copy physics homework.

Band politics, break-ups, shifting friendships and intrigue between and among the sexes are all fodder for de Radigues' gentle but unsparing sense of humor. There's a great deal of empathy on display for all of these characters, but he certainly doesn't let them get away with anything. The dot eyes on his boys and the big, almond-shaped eyes on his girls perhaps betray a bit of his own lingering sense of mystique about women, but they are certainly drawn and presented as entirely three-dimensional characters.

Bastard #1, by Max de Radigues. This mini, printed on canary-yellow paper, starts with familiar de Radigues details (a young woman getting take-out, a young man recognizing her and inducing an awkward scene) that would seem to be more of the usual kind of story from him, and quickly turns all of that on its head. We quickly learn that the woman has a son, and that since she was recognized, she has to move. Once again, the genre of the story is vague. When he takes out a bag full of money, we finally get the reveal: they're on the run and have done something criminal. From there, de Radigues has a great time balancing road trip tensions with the sweetness of the relationship between mother and son, all while slowly revealing crazy detail after crazy detail. By the end of the issue, when they both bleach their hair blonde, the reader is left with a thousand delicious questions. That said, the real charm of this comic is the way de Radigues introduces levity to break the tension by way of the remarkably nuanced and detailed relationship between mother and son. The fact that the likes of Sacha Goerg and Lewis Trondheim each draw a guest page in the story only adds to the appeal of the comic, and its sense of bigness. Indeed, if de Radigues was a big influence on Forsman, Bastard shows that Forsman had an influence on de Radigues as well, given the road trip and sense of danger.

Life Doesn't Turn Out As Expected: Moose, Rust Belt

This post kicks off five straight days of discussing work from artists who graduated from or had a residency at the Center for Cartoon Studies. 

Moose, #6 and #7, by Max de Radigues. This fine series about a high school boy who is relentlessly bullied but refuses to tell anyone about takes an interesting turn in these two issues. Issue #6 of this humbly-produced yet attractive minicomic (the minimalist cover featuring a few thick lines and a few big dots for a face is augmented by a zip-a-tone pattern and augmented by a wide swath of negative space) sees our protagonist, Joel, outsmarted at every turn by his tormentor Jason. Face to face with the boy who has made his life hell out in the hallway, he even asks why he's doing this without an audience. Chillingly, Jason has simply come to enjoy inflicting cruelty on someone else. Joel gets a reprieve when he's sent to the school nurse, an oasis that is further explored in issue #7. The nurse, Sarah, is the only one who clearly sees that he's being bullied but also understands that Joel doesn't want to discuss it. Partly because of this, but mostly because she's more-or-less presented as the apotheosis of cool, she's the one adult that Joel trusts implicitly.  His crush on her is also quite obvious. As always, de Radigues' wonderfully fragile line and use of angles makes his comics wonderful to simply look at. The fragility of his line is an apt method of illustrating the fragility of a young life.

Rust Belt Spring 2012, by Sean Knickerbocker. This issue concerns brad, a middle-aged middle-manager at a Wal-Mart type of store. The cover pretty much expresses it all: Brad takes a long look at his life lived in "quiet desperation", wanting to scream all along. Upon meeting a former lover and flashing back to scenes ambiguously describing why they didn't work out, he takes stock of how miserable his daily existence is, living with his disabled mother. Things get worse when he's given the choice of being demoted or fired (with a severance package), swallowing what little is left of his pride and accepting the demotion. Brad is a classic sad sack character in that he's miserable but selfish to the point of near-solipsism. He ignores his wheelchair-bound mother while smoking pot and reading porn, very much like a teenager would. Knickerbocker's cartoony line is perfect for depicting these sorts of sad sacks, with bulbous noses and blank eyes. I've compared his figures to Dik Browne in the past, but there were also flashes of Ron Rege' in the flashback sequences. His use of greyscaling is restrained but effective, adding just enough dreary atmosphere to an oppressively dull environment.

Slice of Life Minis: Knickerbocker, Forsman, De Radigues, Speziani/Latella

This column will address a variety of slice-of-life minis, most of which center around high school and post-college young people.

The End Of The Fucking World Part Two, by Chuck Forsman. This is the second issue of what promises to be one of Forsman's most interesting stories. It's an interesting counterpoint to his friend de Radigues' Moose series in that it's being published serially in minicomics form and being published fairly frequently. The first issue of this series focused on a sociopathic teenage boy who reaches a breaking point and steals his father's car. His girlfriend, whom he views with barely-concealed contempt, is the focus of the second issue. They really living in a teenage version of a post-apocalyptic world as they wind up in a new town, living in a moment-by-moment reality. Her internal monologue is heart-breaking, as she sees herself as the one person who understands and can love the boy. In this twelve-page mini, Forsman really gets at the soul of this girl and how doomed she is, but also gets at the essential youth of her as well. With her hair in her eyes, she's more girl than woman, even as she tries to act tough by calling her waitress a cunt. Forsman's thin line conveys the fragility of their world as well as its grotesque nature.

Moose #5, by Max de Radigues. This mini focuses on a high school kid who is being mercilessly bullied. After a reprieve of a couple of issues, this issue sees the boy, Joe, being forced to return to class to sit right in front of his tormentor. The bully promptly ties a compass to his shoe and jabs Joe in the ass with it, but of course Joe is blamed for disrupting class. It's not unusual for a bullied child to hold his feelings inside but wind up acting out in other ways, and de Radigues gets at the pain of that reality. The Belgian cartoonist definitely carries on in the clear line tradition, with a spare but elegant line that's less fragile than Forsman's but still in the same ball park.

Rust Belt, by Sean Knickerbocker. Knickerbocker is playing in the same sandbox as Forsman and de Radigues, only his world is a little sweeter and more hopeful. Chad, his big-nosed protagonist with hair over his eyes, is a knucklehead in love with a girl who's out of his league but starting to give him the time of day. His best friend is clearly into him, but he doesn't notice. What lifts this story out of cliche' is the way Knickerbocker uses details. When playing a role-playing video game, he makes sure the princess character is named "Ashley", like the girl he's in love with. Chad also faces bullying on a daily basis but manages to fight back--not that this noticeably improves his life. Knickerbocker's use of more cartoony characters (not unlike Harold Gray in terms of the noses and blank eyes) gives the series a more whimsical, wistful feel than the other two series mentioned above.

By The Slice, by Giulie Speziani and Cecilia Latella. This is a modest effort by a couple of relative newcomers that starts off as one thing and makes a couple of surprising turns. Latella employs a conventional, realistic style that nonetheless has a chance to breathe expressively, especially when the main character, Gwen, gets angry. The story concerns Gwen, fresh out of college and without a job. She applies as a cashier at a pizza joint for an owner who seems to possess the sort of earthy wisdom one would expect in a story like this. Instead of turning into a story about the wacky ups and downs of working in a restaurant, Speziana seizes on some seemingly incidental details about the pizza owner (a crack about gender stories, calling one customer a bitch after she walked out) and turns it into a dilemma for Gwen: should she stay in a job where her boss is openly racist and sexist just to make money, or should she walk away? It's a surprisingly meaty read for something that seemed so lightweight at first, and that misdirection was a clever calculation on the part of Speziani.

Brief Comments On Short CCS Minis

Finding Moby Dick, by Laura Terry. This is "a collection of sketches, drawings and comics"; more half-formed ideas than anything coherent. I don't have any interest in critiquing the content, given that the ideas are half-formed. Instead, I wanted to mention that this little sketchbook mini (in full color, no less) is further evidence of just how far Terry has come as an artist. Her figure work is so much more self-assured, for one thing, as is her general command over line and using different line weights. Most impressive, however, is the highly expressive way she uses color. In one story snippet, she shapes the story of a shipwreck using only midnight blue and blacks for spotting. Another image of three skeletons dancing on the ocean is rendered in aqua blue and sea-foam green. Her figure work in general is lively, full of personality and edged with humor. This is an artist who's ready for a leap forward in terms of the scope of ambition in her projects.

Zee Leetle Prince, by Katie Moody. This mini is an interesting exercise in style, as Moody takes the classic story by Antoine de Saint-Exupery "as filtered through Ed Emberley". Moody turns the book into kind of a goof for kids, rendering the characters in illustration teacher Emberley's trademark simple style (everything is basic geometric figures, lines, and squiggles--things almost anyone can draw) and adding a Pepe' LePew style French patois (The first line of the comic is "Zere wonce was a leetle prince"). The only problem with the comic was that there simply weren't enough images, and most of those images were just too small. An Emberley-style book packs a lot of visual punch into each page, even if the figures themselves are tiny, and this was dominated by text. That's not to say that the mini didn't have its charms, especially since Moody never strayed from the silliness of her text, but it didn't succeed in what she set out to do.

Moose #3 and #4, by Max de Radigues. De Radigues' series takes true narrative form in these two issues. The protagonist of the series, a nervous teen named Joe, is exhibiting all sorts of odd behavior, we learn, because of the way he's harassed by a bully. He has the opportunity to talk to a teacher about it in #3, but with his tormentor standing right outside the door, he has to hold it in. This issue is all about setting up the hopelessness of his situation in conventional terms. The fourth issue is about Joe managing to hide from the bully and his crony (whom he keeps in line with threats of physical violence when he's not gung-ho about torturing Joe). There's a sweetness to this issue as Joe doesn't exactly solve his problem, but he does derive some satisfaction from frustrating his nemesis (whose self-esteem seems to derive entirely from tormenting him). As always, de Radigues uses a fragile, simple line that emphasizes angles and negative space. His characters, though simply-rendered, are lively and bursting with emotion. de Radigues' ability to portray body language is remarkably intuitive, and he seems to thrive doing this short episodes that include eye-catching covers and incidental illustrations by guest artists.

Freeloader #1, by Nomi Kane. This is a typically charming and well-drawn set of short strips about being unemployed and living with one's parents after graduating from college. Her thoughts turn from her preferred job (illustration) to slightly less glamorous pursuits (like waitress, delivery person and stripper). Kane's all about the gag in this story (her bit about being unable to jiggle as a stripper was especially amusing), though the gag covers up real stress. This comic is also about the rare opportunity she has to live with her parents for an extended time as an adult, which is both stressful (because of the limbo she finds herself in) and an unexpected delight. Kane's character design and self-caricature are enormously appealing and have always been her major strength as an artist, and this comic is no exception.

Twelve New Drawings, by DW. DW is a CCS student who is clearly heavily influenced by Fort Thunder and the old Highwater Books comics. His drawings have the raw, hypnotic power of Ron Rege and Marc Bell, without the level of craft and sophistication of those two masters. There's not much narrative at work here, but each page is worth close inspection as DW mixes decorative patterns with hidden messages, surprising images and even small narrative snippets. It feels like sketchbook work, a form of graphomania almost, in that the artist is drawing just to draw, to make marks on paper. His bold sense of design is something that will serve him well as he shapes this vision, especially since CCS emphasizes narrative structure in even its most avant-garde students. He's someone to keep an eye on.
Early, by Joseph Lambert. This is a full-color charmer that involves Lambert's typical subjects: quarrellous little kids and the sun and moon as anthropomorphic beings. This eight pager finds a kid getting mad at the sun for melting his ice cream cone and throwing a spider at him. The sun freaks out and sinks early (a lovely metaphor for the way time can pass for a child), only to reemerge later and ask the moon if she's afraid of spiders. What's interesting about this strip is that Lambert cuts way down on his typical level of detail in favor of letting the color tell the story. The back cover has the unexpected bonus of telling the story from the poor spider's point of view.

New CCS Minis: Barrett, De Radigues, Christensen, Forsman, Burger

Time for another round of comics by alumni and former fellows at the Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS).



The Stag #1 and #2, by Andrew James Christensen. Christensen just graduated this past year and this is the first work I've seen from him. These are the first two issues of a three issue series about an old man living in a snowy, post-apocalyptic environment on an island. Christensen uses a strict four-panel grid on a square page so as to alert the reader that every panel should receive equal emphasis when the eye passes over them. The panels are large enough to absorb at a quick rate so as not to linger too long on any one image. Christensen's line is simple, skillfully creating solidly composed panels with a minimum of fuss. The story is equally simple, as the old man negotiates what is clearly a tediously familiar environment until he runs across and accidentally kills a stag with a disturbingly human face. The second issue sees him going about his usual rituals after introducing the delicacy of stag meat, but his actions have repercussions that leave him wondering what's really going on. The most interesting aspect of the comic comes when he mounts the stag's head and begins talking to it as though it were a friend. I'll be very curious to see how the issue concludes and what direction Christensen pursues as an artist. It's clear that he has a great deal of potential.



Uitke and the Lucky Penny, by Jan Martyn Burger. Burger is another recent CCS grad who is also a puppeteer. This comic is a lovely story featuring Burger's gorgeous, feathery pencils and clear but strong line. The story concerns a girl named Uitke who finds a penny that allows its bearer to receive wishes. She discovers that each wish has its price, even those that weren't requested for herself. The wishes she made for her uncles (a thriving bakery and an invention that works) turn out to be disasters, and while the spirit she first meets that understands the nature of the penny tells her that something can't be unwished, Uitke learns that she can still help. The comic has the rhythm of a fairy tale, weaving in and out of its cleverly-rendered and dreamlike images into the mundane and troublesome realities of everyday life. Burger notes that the story evolved from family-spun tales and it's these little details that stand out, like the interaction between the girl's family members, the way the house is designed, the ancient forest and the way the girl's grandfather scolded her for flying in the house. Burger allows for a lot of silent beats in this story, adding a sense of the stillness of nature to the story. That stillness winds up being the dominant aspect of this comic, as one's allegiance to the land and family turns out to be more powerful than any wish. Burger seems like a natural to do a kids' comic for the likes of Toon Books, First Second or Scholastic; the languid nature of his storytelling makes for a nice contrast to the "louder", brighter and more frenetic styles of many comics for children.



Snake Oil #6: The Ground Is Soft, by Chuck Forsman. This is Forsman's best comic to date, and that's saying something considering the impressive output of his young career. Visually, Forsman has evolved out of his Chester Brown/Sammy Harkham stylizations and has found a style that's more fragile and stripped down. There's even a touch of Charles Schulz to be found in this story about a boy named Oliver and his relationships with his mother, father and step-mother. Set in some unspecified medieval civilization, the mini consists of a number of smaller vignettes that are scrambled chronologically, though both beginning and ending are clearly delineated. What I love most about this comic is what is not said or shown. Oliver's father Arthur is a soldier who is rewarded for his service with a second wife by the priesthood. All he hopes for his son is for him to become a priest instead of a soldier, but he is incapable of showing any form of affection. Along the way, Oliver must endure a variety of baffling and humiliating formal (including riding in "the goat boat", which is exactly what it sounds like) and informal (the unwelcome advances of that second wife) rites of passage. Oliver is Forsman's best-conceived character, with his pile of unkempt hair depicted in a few scratchy lines. The nature of the painful, doomed relationship between father and son is rendered all the more tragic given that both parties wanted to please the other but could never figure out how. The time-jumping nature of this story underscores the ways in which old wounds continued to stay fresh.


Moose #1 and #2, by Max De Radigues. This is a new, continuing series from the talented Belgian with the delicate, fragile line. De Radigues specializes in stories about teenagers, and this series focuses in on a young man negotiating the harshness of a cold climate. That harshness extends to nature itself, as he runs away from an unseen threat in the first issue, vaults a fence in a snow-covered environment, only to vomit as he tries to gasp for breath. That purging seems to energize him, even as he's still in the freezing cold. The second issue finds him avoiding taking a school bus and once again braving the snow to take a shortcut. He encounters a moose who looks like he's about to stomp him but instead is spared. Of course, when he gets to school he is not spared by his daily tormentor, who chokes him and draws a dick on his forehead. These are absolutely beautiful little objects and De Radigues' trembling but clear line and angular character design is perfectly matched to the subject matter.



Oak and Linden #3, by Pat Barrett. The rest of the artists in this article are notable for their restraint and spareness of line. Barrett goes in the other direction, using thick brush strokes and lush imagery to tell his stories. In the third issue of his one-man anthology, Barrett opens up with "Hicough & Belch", an extended adventure/argument between two blocky, bulbous creatures. The simple, cartoony gray-scaled creatures form a Mutt & Jeff kind of duo against a naturalistic background, arguing about nothing less than the meaning of life. The loose, elastic nature of his characters, their casual bawdiness and their odd patois give this comic a sort of Pogo/Krazy Kat quality. The other story is the second installment of a serial called "Petrified Girlfriend", about a young woman who gets cold in her boyfriend's bed and literally stops moving. This issue flashes back to the beginning of their relationship and then flashes to the woman waking up in a dense forest. This story is all about sweep and shock, as Barrett slowly rolls back a number of reveals until he unleashes a splash-page stunner that pushes the remainder of the story. If his first story showed off his chops in building a story around a conversation, then this one illustrates how well he can tell a story with visuals alone. I'm still not exactly sure what kind of artist Barrett will eventually choose to become, but he certainly has the skills to do whatever he wants.