31 Days Of CCS, #5: The Final Dot

The Final Dot is one of the CCS group anthology projects. This one features Dylan Sparks, Ellie Liota, Michael Albrecht, and Anna Passlick. I was excited to get a copy at SPX, because I've never seen one of these outside of the library at CCS. Looks like the take on the assignment was a take on Harvey Comics characters. The artists, who shared tasks like in an old mainstream comic, chose to do a dark parody of Little Dot. The results, which include multiple pages of fake ads, are absolutely unhinged. Little Dot, for those unfamiliar with the concept, really liked dots and things with dots on them. In the first story, she meets an appaloosa (with speckled "dots"), and it kicks her in the face. In a later story, she accidentally puts her friend Little Lotta in the hospital stirring up a beehive, and her parents take away her dots..

This leads Dot to skin her dalmation, show up to visit Lotta, and realizing that the colors in the strip were actually Ben-Day dots. Dot starts absorbing all of the color dots in a bid to be eternal, but Lotta grabs a shotgun from a hilarious Daisy rifle ad and shoots Dot in the chest. The quartet of artists takes the concept absolutely all the way, using metafictional humor in a way that feels earned by diligently building up not just the basic premise but also the presence of the ancillary material. Some of the line art is a little wobbly here and there, but they otherwise just nail the features of your average Harvey comic before turning it into a sci-fi/horror story. I'm curious as to the division of labor here, especially since I know and like the work of Sparks, Liotta, and Albrecht. 

45 Days Of CCS, #29: Michael Albrecht, Ben Adkins

Ben Adkins is a first-year student, and he contributed his two iterations of some time-tested CCS assignments: adapting one of Aesop's fables and doing a comic in the style of Ed Emberley. You can sometimes tell a lot about a cartoonist's future looking at these assignments. In Adkins' case, it's clear that he's a humorist. In The Playful Ass, Adkins introduces the fable with his own characters as narrators, and you know that he had to open with an ass joke of some kind. He has one of his characters condemn the joke as soon as the other introduces it, and this bit of metahumor is effective. Adkins' line is clear and simple, almost deceptively so. He spots blacks very effectively, giving his pages depth and solidity even as his characters are fluid and expressive. In The Tedious Odyssey Of Boring Bob, Adkins uses the Emberley style (all drawings are done with basic squares, triangles, and circles) for another metafictional bit of fun. The story itself is about a boring guy who doesn't look as cool as the other characters (kings with crowns, divers with helmets, etc) he meets. When his boring qualities prove useful, he's made king, which leads him to accidentally trigger a device that reveals that all of the blocky figures are just different versions of himself. It's a fine gag that once again drills into the assignment on a conceptual level. I'm very interested in seeing what Adkins does in his own style.

Michael Albrecht has quickly shown a great deal of promise early in his career, and his most recent minis continue that trend. Rogue is a very funny and surprisingly poignant story about a rogue supercomputer and the security guard who watches it. Nicknamed "Carrot," the guard (unbeknownst to anyone else) secretly boots up the computer to keep her company. Shut down after it murdered its keepers in a bid for world domination, it now sits as a museum piece. The guard, Park, is a hilarious character, as she unreservedly treats Carrot as her friend, including the two roasting each other. There are fascinating twists and turns along with an ambiguous ending that feels like a test of humanity for Carrot. Albrecht's line is wonderfully sketchy, emphasizing gesture for the human character and making the computer feel human. 

Albrecht loves robots, it seems, and Robot Poetry Club goes in a different direction. A computer science student accidentally gives a desktop computer sentience while trying to write a program that counted all the r's in Romeo & Juliet. The computer is very insistent on its own freedom ("Hero's journey and all") and sets out on a rolling cart to seek its destiny. The computer takes the name Jill and a job in an office where they try to figure out the purpose of all of this. They flee, searching for meaning, and come across a "Robot Poetry Club" and a poem read that plunges them into the world of metaphor they had been so desperately seeking. Despite the overall silliness of the comic and its satirical tone, the consistency of the premise leads to a genuinely affecting moment regarding why we make and seek out art. Albrecht's art gets the hell out of the way of the story, enhancing the premise in subtle ways in panel after panel. The inky expressiveness of the final pages, as Jill is finally experiencing real meaning in their life, stands in stark contrast to the functional thin line featured in the rest of the comic. 

45 Days Of CCS, #30: E.B. Sciales and Michael Albrecht

E.B. Sciales draws in a pleasing style, both for gags and a comics cookbook in these entries. Working with Sophie Castner, she drew a number of entries in their The Illustrated Kastner-Mednick Family Cookbook. This is certainly one of the more eclectic approaches to a cookbook I've seen, but Sciales was up to the task of bringing the ingredients and how to use them to vivid life. Kastner added watercolors to further deliver that homespun feel for dishes like latkes, gumbo, and lamb chops. More pertinent to this review is Speed Trap Ahead, where Sciales displays her comedic chops. Done in the style of a Dell or Harvey comic from the 1950s, Sciales sets the stage by informing the reader about her grandfather, Dr. William Sciales, an eccentric practical joker and tale-spinner. 

Sciales' attention to detail adds so much to the story. The slightly faded four-color scheme, the exaggerated use of expressions, over-the-top lettering, and airtight plot are worthy of John Stanley or Warren Kremer. Effects like zip-a-tone shading add to the period feel of this comic, and I could have read another dozen stories about Doc Sciales with great pleasure. The only note I'd add is that some of the more conventional lettering is uneven, especially in terms of the size of the font. At this point, I don't know enough about Sciales as a cartoonist to figure out what their major projects might be, but their wide interesting bode well for some interesting future choices. 

Michael Albrecht is a first-year CCS student (class of 2025) who shows a great deal of promise as a horror and science-fiction cartoonist. Above all else, he's just a sharp writer who has an ear for dialogue who brings grit and authenticity to genre comics. He reminds me a bit of Ivy Allie in terms of the tone of their stories and art as well as the cerebral quality of their storytelling. It's a shame that Albrecht came to CCS after Steve Bissette retired, because Bissette would have appreciated Albrecht's work in You Are Alone, a throwback horror comic. It's in the "I'm camping in the woods, lost my friend, and I am totally fucked" genre of stories ala Blair Witch Project, but it's in the execution of these tropes where Albrecht truly shines. The use of a sickly spot yellow, the attention to detail regarding eyes, and the ominous angles help the truly horrifying ending to land with a great deal of impact. 

Lancelot From Memory is a hilarious recounting of Lancelot: Knight Of The Cart done for the Ed Emberley assignment. That's the one where the cartoonists must draw a story in the hyper-simplified style of Emberley, using just shapes like circles, squares, and triangles. It's such a great exercise for any cartoonist, because it strips away the concept of "drawing ability" and forces them to focus on the true principles of cartooning and storytelling. Even in a story like this Albrecht creates tension and mood with his use of blacks and leaves the reader with an ambiguous but ominous ending after playing much of the comic for laughs. 

These comics were fun exercises for Albrecht. The main event was Deus, an exceptionally well-written and told story about a post-apocalyptic setting wherein a former killer robot has been reprogrammed to act as a childcare aid and friend for a young girl named Beanie. The drawing is so sharp and expressive, especially the way that Albrecht draws the child. Albrecht adds an air of menace when the robot, whose name is Bobby, is revealed to have full awareness of their past, but no connection to it. Albrecht swerves the reader by making this less of a horror sci-fi story and more of an existential inquiry into being.