Sequart Reprints: Minicomics Round-Up

This article was originally published in 2006.
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About Yr Future, Plots, Their Condolences, by Eve Englezos & Josh Moutray.. This artist duo  known for putting out the Icecreamlandia minis first caught my eye a few years ago, and I always eagerly await their next bit of weirdness. Each of these minis is cleverly designed, short, and as beautiful to look at as they are hilarious. Their Condolences has the look of an old-time photo album, as we see a drawing of a man who died in the late 19th century. Eschewing their usual clear-line drawing style, Englezos & Moutray instead use heavily-shaded pencils that look uninked. The "condolences" involved may be heartfelt, but they're far from heart-warming, as each family member or servant makes nasty comments about him. The funniest page may be the last, when one of his sons holds a bird in his hands and thinks his father is there in reincarnated form.

Plots is more typical of the duo, with that oh-so-thin line of theirs being put to use in single-page gags. Every page seems to either be a set-up or a climactic point in some other story, many of them funny. The first page has a crying man hugging a friend, telling him that his wife was murdered and their place robbed. His friend replies, "I hate to tell you this, but I've got some more bad news" and then the reader's eye is drawn down to the knife in his hand. The "plots" here also imply someone plotting against someone else, be it a housewife/spy using cooking jargon as her code words, two kids using walkie-talkies to plot against their grandma, or a vulture calling his fellows to war against hyenas.

About Yr Future is the third in a series of small minis about time. This one is all about predictions, foretellings, and fate. Again, their authorial voice is one of bone-dry and bleak humor, mixed with a sense of absurdism. Their line drawings are even more amusing than usual here, considering they're drawing robots and an elderly man whose head has been transplanted onto a cyborg body. Englezos and Moutray are a unique act in comics, and their wonderfully skewed point of view mixed with an impeccably tasteful design sense makes even the shortest of their minis a rewarding experience.

Infandum #2, by Molly Lawless. Lawless is another new favorite artist of mine on the minicomics scene, thanks to her expressive pencils, sharp sense of humor, and obsession with baseball. It's those latter strips that are the most fun to read, and she's slowly on her way to compiling a collection's worth of baseball strips. Lawless strikes the right tone between smartass and historian as she has Bill Buckner "narrate" a story called "The Boner and the Muff: A Tale of Two Freds". Buckner was the first baseman who infamously let a grounder go between his legs in game 6 of the 1986 World Series, a series that his Red Sox would wind up losing. This story is about two baseball players from the deadball era (early 1900's) who had similar blunders that were blamed on their team's eventual collapse. Just like Buckner, neither player was really to blame, but couldn't outrun their notoriety. Even readers who don't like baseball will enjoy Lawless' delicate pencils and decorative touches.

Though this mini is only 8 pages long, it's a much meatier read than one would expect because Lawless jams so many panels and so much detail into each of her pages. Her first story (written by Carlton King), "Rules of Romance: Breakup Jujitsu", packs 15 panels and decorative extras onto one page. Her "Repressed Memory Theatre" is just as dense and is perhaps the funniest story in the comic. It's an autobiographical tale of young, uptight Molly being humiliated by her mother in front of her classmates at school. Lawless transforms a fairly standard reminiscence into something memorable due to her expressive figures, sense of comic timing, self-deprecating wit, and appealing sense of design. The only thing that detracts from my enjoyment of her comics is that her figure drawing suffers from being crammed into tiny panels on mini-sized pages. I'd love to see her expand her page count a bit and let her comics breathe with bigger panels. It's astounding that her comics look as nice as they do, considering that they're hand-made and photocopied. I look forward to her first collection of minis, which would do justice to her attractive art along with her sharp wit.

Just This Side Of Heaven, P.S. Comics #2 & #3, by Melanie "Minty" Lewis. I first became aware of Lewis' work in SPX 2003, and her story stood out for two reasons. First, all of the characters were clear-line anthropomorphic pieces of fruit. Second, her sense of humor regarding human interactions was pitch-black and dry. Lewis writes knowing stories about sad people living in "quiet desperation", but manages to squeeze every ounce of awkward humor out of these situations as possible. I'm a fan of this kind of "squirm humor", where the awkwardness of daily social intercourse is heightened for comic effect. Portraying these people as fruit or dogs (or table condiments) adds an extra layer of distance and absurdity to heighten the humor in the story--but at the same time, it almost gives Lewis license to make the situations all the more painful--especially if the stories seem to be based on autobiographical experiences.

Just This Side Of Heaven is a story featuring her other set of go-to representations: anthropomophric dogs. This one's about a goofy cat who lost her best friend (a dog) and is living with two new hipster cats who constantly argue and exclude him from the conversation. His dog friend appears to him in a dream and gives him good advice on how to live with his new roommates. What makes this comic so appealing is how Lewis has the animals act and live as animals (and more specifically, pets), yet the dynamic is very much of a 20-something group house, with the cat even being in school and using email. This comic was a bit more forgiving and sentimental than some of her other, nastier comics.

P.S. Comics #2 mixes up styles quite a bit. "Winners" is a hilarious account of an especially miserable high-school anecdote, done with her fruit characters. The story works because Apple is desperate to fit in, one way or another--and every attempt at trying to be cool backfires either in a whimper or in a spectacular public humiliation. "Yorkie Matrimony" is a vicious story using dogs as characters. It's the story of a friendship of two roommates gone sour, thanks to one of them deciding to get married and the other falling apart at the notion of being alone. Not since reading Hate have I enjoyed seeing a story this over-the-top and yet strangely familiar about roommates. Once again, the cuteness of Lewis employing dogs-acting-like-humans just makes the story funnier, even as the events get more pathetic. What's odd is that her use of gesture and expression seems more refined when she's drawing animals or fruit than when she draws people. "Salt & Sugar" is perhaps the most clever story in this issue. A heavily-narrated love story about the romance between a salt shaker and a sugar dispenser, Lewis does a clever parody of typical problem-romance narratives using every joke imaginable about salt and sugar. These are the first two pages of her work that I'd show to anyone to demonstrate her wit.

P.S. Comics #3's best story is "Bitter Fruit", starring her "Fruit Pals". A workplace/relationship melodrama, it once again perfectly captures not only the beats of 20-something relationships but also the inane nature of workplace life. As one female character (Pear) is dealing with being suddenly dumped by a co-worker for another co-worker, she has to fend off both the advances of and grating "advice" of another co-worker. This may be the most accomplished of all her stories, both in terms of design & composition and humorous impact. Finding a style that works for her so early in her comics career is clearly a big boost for Lewis. At this point, she simply needs to continue to further refine it. Her comics look best when they're clear, uncluttered and not overrendered, especially when she's able to add subtle decorative touches. Lewis' wit is already razor-sharp, and I'll be excited to see her continue to explore this milieu as she continues to grow as an artist.

Lucky (Volume 2, #1), by Gabrielle Bell (Drawn & Quarterly). This is the only comic from a publisher on this list, but it certainly counts as a mini. Half of this comic is a story called "My Affliction", which Bell was giving away at SPX last year. I've already reviewed that story on sequart, and it was a hoot--Bell's weird sense of humor was in effect. The other half of this particular comic was a series of diary entries. Much like the minis collected in Lucky, Bell's neuroses are on full display and depicted in her typically wry, over-the-top fashion. We see her dealing with the stress of "performing" her new comic (the aforementioned "My Affliction") and preparing to be on a panel at SPX. Bell uses blacks to good effect in these stories, giving them a certain weight that at times reflects the sense of claustrophobia that her narrative portrays. It should be emphasized that Bell plays her neuroses for laughs in her typically deadpan manner, not in a "woe-is-me" sense. I've written extensively about Bell in the past, so I'll just note that if you appreciate her sense of humor and enjoy her diary comics, then I would enthusiastically recommend the new volume of Lucky.

Routine & Are You Often Impulsive In Your Behavior?, by Will Dinski. Dinski is another favorite of mine, and these two minis are both unusually presented. Routine is actually a comic on a single page of posterboard, in full color. This story is typical of Dinski's strengths as a cartoonist: his sense of panel-to-panel beats and rhythms. In a narrative, he's often fond of using a silent panel, then a narrative caption in a rapid-fire sequence. In this comic, he sets up the boring routine of a businessman in this way. A random bit of near-violence puts his routine out of balance, creating a new, quite warped routine for our hero. As always, Dinksi's page is stylish, spare and puts a bit of distance between reader and story. This is done mostly for comic effect, but there's always something a bit unsettling going on in his stories, and Routine is no exception.

...Behavior is a clever comic, also printed on cardstock. This one is meant to be folded so as to form four pages on one side. It's a story about Dinski taking a test at a Scientologist recruitment center on a whim, and the back of the comic has the results of his test. Once again, Dinski's control of story-beats drives the comic, as he breaks up the narrative with actual questions from the test. He did this to show how the way they were worded was designed to emphasize the test-taker's feelings of paranoia and inferiority. The results made Dinski out to be anxious, paranoid, critical, withdrawn, depressed, withdrawn and hyperactive (?). The punchline was that Dinski was expecting a recruiting pitch, but instead got sent on his way. The use of the test's questions dryly sets up Dinski's own critique of the proceedings in an indirect and amusing way. As always, a Will Dinski comic is smart, off-beat and comics in their purest sense; there's no way I could experience these stories as anything but comics.

Plates Are Cult #3 and Pocket Party, by Damien Jay.  Jay has been making beautiful, silk-screened comics for some time now, though I first became aware of him through cartoonist Ellen Lindner. The comics I'm reviewing here are much looser, torn from his sketchbook or originally done for anthologies. Plates Are Cult #3 is in fact a mini that collects a number of short stories from other places. There's all sorts of delightful weirdness in here, including "The Merpeople of Columbus Ohio" from Mapjam, the grotesque "Frankie Pug-Dog", and the clever "Hello Everybody On The Other Side". In these comics, Jay is working through styles, influences and inspirations, using a slightly tremulous line to create expressive characters. "Hello Everybody..." is the most formally experimental, about a man trying to record voices from the spirit world. On the back of each story page, Jay blends and jams text and image, printing some of it backwards as the line between spirit and material bends and blurs. Another standout story is "Warsaw", a travel story that Jay drew, depicting one man's struggle to fend off attempts of various Polish businessmen trying to get him laid with assorted sex workers. There's a certain bleakness to Jay's art that matches the grey world of the sex trade in Eastern Europe.

While these stories had their charms, it's Pocket Party that impressed me much more. Combining sketchbook segues with a loose narrative, it's an inspired flight of fancy. Jay starts with an odd-looking man named Leslie in an abandoned town and interjects himself into the proceedings as he sees fit. He insults one of his characters, who runs off and refuses to participate further. From there, former president Gerald Ford pops up and Jay tries to lecture him on what comics are and how he fits into the story. Throughout, Jay pops into his own comic to offer random opinions, critiques of his own art and story, redrawn panels, sea monsters, Leslie being forced to play Match Game and a perilous journey through the city sewers. Jay even chides himself for being so self-referential, promising to stop it (which he eventually does, but not before he moans, "I just don't have...anywhere else to go!). Somehow, this stream-of-consciousness stew works. The looseness of the art gives it a vibrancy, as though the reader just watched it appear off the still-wet pen of the artist. Jay is funny and riffs well on the page; while the comic is admittedly self-indulgent, it's an indulgence that's quite entertaining for a reader. Jay's ability to somehow make drawing exercises (like learning how to draw fins) into amusing interludes only made me want more; given that this was actually listed as issue #1, one would hope that he'll be doing more. All in all, this is one of the most enjoyable minicomics that I've read in the past year.

Monday #1 & #2 and Yip The Wonder Dog, by Andy Hartzel. Hartzell is the creator of Fox Bunny Funny, my favorite mini of 2006. He's following up that work with a new series, based on the Adam & Eve creation myth, along with a hilarious one-shot mini originally published in another publication. The full title of Yip is The Rise and Fall of Yip the Wonder Dog, and it's a funny account of a heroic dog's journey into Hollywood fame and subsequent decadent excess. It's another wordless story from Hartzell, and while his ambitions are certainly far more modest than in Fox Bunny Funny, the payoff is no less rewarding. Hubris is punished and loyalty is rewarded in the end, but it was the sight of a dog doing lines of coke and dancing the night away (along with the other absurd but logical extremes of the narrative) that made this tidy story so much fun.

Monday is a far more ambitious story, with these first two issues being the first of five chapters. The series' central premise is dynamite: we all know what happened on the first seven days of creation--but what happened on the eighth? Adam and Eve argue about the nature of Eden, the serpent starts planting doubts, and God is hard at work at perfecting his greatest creation. After reading a number of wordless comics by Hartzell, it was a pleasure to see him script such clever banter between Adam and Eve, staying fully within their archetypical characters while expanding the creation myth.

In this story, everyone has their own agenda. Adam is desperate to stay faithful to God in spite of the doubts being planted. Eve just wants the garden to be safe, and the serpent feeds her doubts. The serpent is resentful that God punished him for hubris after he criticized his creator. Finally, God is cranky and defensive, blowing up at his creations because of his own frustration with his new creation, who is somehow resisting being born. These first two chapters set up the tensions and conflicts that are sure to come, where everyone involved is all too human--which only makes sense, since man was created in God's image.

Visually, the art doesn't quite have the snap and polish of Fox Bunny Funny. It's looser and sketchier, but no less expressive. There are also more decorative touches, with the garden of Eden holding all sorts of "eye snaps" and visual surprises. Hartzell's figures are blocky and primal, as though they were made of squares. The silkscreened covers are especially beautiful, though I look forward to its eventual overall release on better paper. Hartzell's use of themes and imagery is very different from most artists working today, and the way he incorporates mythic and archetypical imagery in his stories lends them a lot of power, even as he deflates them with humor.

Mapjam and Satisfactory Comics #7, by Isaac Cates & Mike Wenthe. Once again, full disclosure: Mike Wenthe has been a friend of mine for some years now. That said, he and his collaborator Isaac Cates have carved out an interesting niche in the world of freewheeling comics formalism. Satisfactory Comics #6 had been their most ambitious issue, with the most narratively coherent stories to go along with a slew of interesting extras and decorative touches. Issue #7 was done quite differently: it was created in an intense, 30-hour jam session. What makes this issue stand out is that despite each story having its share of pre-set rules, formal gimmicks and other built-in limitations, those boundaries were invisible to the reader. I think the main reason why was the furious pace at which these stories were written and drawn; as a result, spontaneity and looseness were the real rules here.

Given the number of jam comics and comics with specific formal rules (starting with a certain sentence, drawing with one's non-dominant hand, artists switching off panels, artists drawing different characters in the same story, improvising each panel and then switching off, etc.), I've noticed that they tend to work best as short stories. One feels the strain of the rules after more than a few pages, and the stories tend to devolve into silliness. In Sat-Com #7, it's clear that Cates and Wenthe are quite aware of this, and the result is a series of one to two pages stories that feel quite substantive. The stories range from a quiet lament on the apocalypse to an Alaskan astronaut's ruminations to a hilarious series of single-panel take-offs on famous works of literature, and much more. I particularly liked "Sinister City", which was the most formally restrictive story (single-syllable words, except for the seed sentence, written by Cates and drawn in Wenthe's non-dominant hand). The shaky pencils had a marvelous looseness to them, almost a vibratory quality, that neatly fit with the fact that the story was a retelling of a dream.

I loved the imagination of "The Xylem Cipher", about a liquid that enabled a woman to hear the speech of plants, who then discovered that this was not exactly the most exciting power in the world. This strip showed off their gag-making abilities, as they fired off every single good joke possible from this premise, and ended it on an even better joke. The range of emotional tones and genres makes the reader wonder what could possibly be next when they turn the page, and I found that this issue rewarded multiple readings. I also found their notes on the issue to be revealing as always, as they delved into their creative process.

Cates and Wenthe invited a number of others along for the ride on their ambitious Mapjam project. A wacky take on fantasy world-building stories, they had several artists contribute three bits to a fantasy world-map, split the map into nine quadrants, then handed out assignments to write a story based on that portion of the map. The results ranged from fairly standard fantasy stories to some truly ludicrous scenarios. The quality of the stories in a jam tends to depend on how much time each cartoonist puts into it. A number of the stories (especially in the first round) felt rushed and uninspired. On the other hand, those artists who were more obviously committed to the project created strips that were quite amusing. The best strip in the book came from Tom K., a contributor to Mome. In just four pages, he picked up the threads of an earlier story and took them to some unusual places. His art was stark and bold, especially a page set in a dark cave. Wenthe and Cates contributed tales of perverted minstrels, miniature questers, seasonal gods and other weirdness. Another standout contributor here was Damien Jay, whose loose style and sense of the absurd fit right into the proceedings. This was a case where the experiment and collaboration itself was more interesting at times than some of the results, but one would hope that for the next round, they'll be able to recruit cartoonists as devoted as Tom K. to pick up the baton. It'll also be interesting to see how the "exquisite corpse" nature of the experiment plays out. While not as focused or engaging as their Satisfactory Comics, Mapjam certainly has me eager to see where the stories go next.

Heart and Brain and Love Charades, by Fay Ryu.  I love these wordless, colorful romantic pantomimes by Ryu. Heart and Brain features an anthropomorphic heart engaged in an unrequited relationship with an anthropomorphic brain (ambulating via its spinal cord!). The graphics are simple, reliant on Ryu's understanding of gesture and expression, and heightened by her bright colors. The only narration here are the chapter titles: "At First Sight", "Second Sight", "Third Sight", "Out Of Sight", "Hind Sight" and "In Sight". The Heart character keeps encountering Brain, but is never able to screw up the courage to talk to the object of its affection. This comic is about loneliness and how it both makes one feel like one's traversing a desert alone (an image used here more than once) and insulates us against fear of rejection. There's safety in this fear, even as Heart grows more agitated and wistful as the story proceeds. It's a beautiful, simple little story whose ambitions don't outstrip its limitations. As a result, one can see hidden depths in the familiar imagery.

Love Charades is a sort of companion piece, labled a "heart and brain exercise". It's a series of vignettes starring the aforemention characters, this time clearly as companions. The charm of this piece is the way Ryu breathes life and excitement into quotidian activities; there's a sense that these everyday experiences take on added meaning simply because they're being done by lovers. Ryu is a clear, clever storyteller who is quite adept at wringing out emotional truths with just a few strokes of a pen. I look forward to getting my hands on more of her work.

Elsewhere #3, by Gary Sullivan. The first two issues of Sullivan's travel comics used some unusual techniques in combining word and image. This issue is a collection of single-page strips called "The New Life" that appeared in a poetry/fiction journal called Rain Taxi. The strip is all over the place in a pleasing sort of way. It starts as a narrative, as a Dante-like poet meets his Beatrice in Brooklyn and they explore poetry together. Sullivan junked that narrative when he fell in love with a poet who lived in Japan named Nada Gordon, and set several of his poems to comics--in much the same way a musician would attempt to translate poetry to music.

That decision made his visual storytelling approach fairly conventional, as he used his comics either to directly illustrate his text or else comment ironically on it. The images themselves were a supplement to the words and not a form of poetry unto themselves the way they were in the first two issues of Elsewhere or for cartoonists like John Hankiewicz. In "The New Life", Sullivan doesn't seek to redefine the visual language of comics as a different kind of poetry, but rather uses it to as a tool for historical, humorous and biographical purposes.

The most successful strips in this collection were Sullivan's pieces focused on specific poets. Combining commentary, direct quoting, ironic juxtaposition of word and image, and at times genuine warmth for subject and material, these strips were perfect introductions for poetry neophytes like myself and an amusingly different perspective on these pieces for afficianados. His parodies of old Marvel and romance comics as a means of illustrating certain trends or histories in the world of poetry were funny, but he doesn't quite have the chops to pull off the style mimicry required for the full impact he was going for. Still, he comes close enough that the audience will know what he was going for.

I like the fact that Sullivan is hard to pin down. He seems interested in being several different kinds of artist and writer simultaneously. He obviously loves comics, likes the free-flowing weirdness of Flarf (the sub-genre of poetry he developed), loves history, is engaged with the world in a political and material sense, and has a sense of humor about both himself and his art. He's a bit all over the map, and it's that very lack of focus that draws me in to what he does.

Eye of the Majestic Creature #2, by Leslie Stein. Stein first came to my attention with her painstaking and unusual comic Yeah It Is!, a Xeric-winner that looked to be assembled as much as drawn, given the way she composed each page with paper cut-outs along with drawings. It was an interesting experiment to say the least, and the fact that the story itself was equally appealing to my sensibilities (about a loudmouth loner trying to relate to the rest of the world) certainly made her one to watch.

The style she uses in her minis is completely different--a very fine line, detailed pencils and even stippling for effect. Her stories are the product of an unhinged imagination, yet there is a coherent narrative to be found. Indeed, one senses that much of the story is directly autobiographical, if adorned with all sorts of weirdness. The story is about a young woman named Larry who has moved out to the country after living in the city made her too anxious. She lives alone in a house with her anthropomorphic guitar (named Marshy) and ponders misanthropy and the desperate need to connect, two contradictory impulses that nonetheless drive her.

I found myself completely drawn into the world that Stein created. Her ability to create intricate fine-line drawings whose simplicity leads the eye around the page with ease is matched only by her many decorative touches. Larry has huge, button eyes and a picklish nose to go along with her lithe frame. Stein adds a touch of the trippy and even grotesque in her drawings, with hints of Vaughn Bode popping up here and there. There are many hilarious sequences in the book, like Larry playing with a baby by bopping a doll on its head until she knocks it over and responding by quietly propping the baby back up.

This comic is mostly about the stink of alienation and loneliness. Larry can smell it on others (like a shop owner desperate for company) and is none-too-pleased to detect it in herself. Larry later house-sits for another loner-type obsessed with odd but beautiful details in life. He's a social misfit who seems content with his obsessions, like country music and barbecue.  Larry is not so different from him, and draws happiness from some of the most absurd places. It's safe to say that the absurd, the cheap, and the guilelessly delightful things in life give Larry joy in a world devoid of meaning or real connection. This point of view resonates with me as a reader, and it's for this reason, along with her superior chops as an artist and imaginative composition & design that this was my favorite mini-comic to date of 2007.

Sequart Reprints: Slice of Life Minis from MK Reed, Minty Lewis and Liz Baillie

This article was originally published at sequart.com in 2007.
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Liz Baillie, MK Reed and Minty Lewis are three of my favorite minicomics artists, and the sort of stories they tell all tend to focus on relationships, daily struggles and personal dramas. However, each artist explores these slice-of-life stories in radically different ways. They differ not just in terms of storytelling choices and styles, but the kind of characters they seem most interested.

Lewis draws anthropomorphic fruit, dogs and cats. There's a deadpan tone to her stories that's aided by her amusing visual storytelling style. The inherent weirdness of animals (and they are animals, eating cat food and using kitty litter) doing absurd things like attending "Craftstivals" (an obvious take-off on comics fests) is muted by the low-key tone Lewis employs. PS Comics 4, like many of her comics, is about codependent and occasionally emotionally abusive relationships. In this issue, a self-absorbed dog who is obsessed with selling his cheese cozies at a "Craftstival" alternately ignores and berates his friend a cat, who is intensely loyal to him. The way Lewis plays up the fussiness and hubris of the dog (who is a huge failure at the festival) is balanced by the fact that the cat is indeed kind of dense. The end of the story redeems both characters in a series of delicately portrayed moments, including an almost-apology from the dog. Secret Acres will be publishing a collection of Lewis' quirky, appealing work next year. Her quiet wit and the way she meshes it so well with her stylistic choices reminds me a bit of Jason, though their themes and interests are otherwise very different.

MK Reed is one of my favorite writers in comics, but I'm also impressed by the way her art is becoming more expressive. In the second issue of her mini-comic series Cross Country, Reed turns in what may be the single best story of her career. The story follows Ben and Greg as they travel the country as part of a promotional tour for the Wal-Mart style stores that Greg's family owns. Ben hates Greg's overgrown frat boy-ways but tolerates it (while hating himself) because of the money, the experience and to some degree, his own natural self-loathing. This issue focuses on Ben visiting a college ex named Julia, and it's obvious that their break-up traumatized him. The way Reed captures the awkwardness and tension of their reunion through gesture and small talk is painfully evocative. Ben's own flashbacks and creepy dream sequences (embracing Julia while encircling snakes start biting him) add to the issue's emotional resonance.

Reed's ability to capture a particular time and place for young people is on further display in her collection of one-panel strips, I Will Feast On Your Whore Heart.. The actual strip, with each panel based on a single, pre-selected theme can be read in its entirety on the web. It details little moments from a relationship of "two hipsters from Brooklyn", eventually forming an emotional narrative of sorts. Like Cross Country, the characters have unfulfilled ambitions as artists and writers and behave in self-destructive ways. However, there's an undercurrent of pervasive hope and energy here as well, even as the boyfriend has to deal with his girlfriend's heavy drinking and thin-skin about her writing. As always, the highlight of Reed's comics is her snappy and witty dialogue.

Liz Baillie excels at depicting a certain kind of urban youth culture in her My Brain Hurts series. Issues 8 and 9 did a lot to advance the story's plot, as Joey (a gay teen who just got out of the hospital) finally learns exactly who savagely beat him and has a blow-out with his father, running away from home. His best friend Kate reaches a sort of understanding with the ex-skinhead who was present at Joey's beating, and he's clearly trying to do penance in the form of community service at a gay & lesbian rights center. What I like most about these comics is the way Baillie steers her characters into and out of trouble. Just when the characters seem to have miraculously turned a corner, their own self-destructive tendencies and teenaged short-sightedness leads them to disastrously bad decisions. Baillie's art grows more expressive with every issue, and I was especially impressed with her use of body language during the intense showdown between Joey and his father. Baillie captures the hopes, fears and dreams of a particular youth subset (queer/punk/outsiders in New York) with a great deal of verisimilitude, making every character sympathetic in their own way. Everyone in this comic is broken in one way or another, and Baillie lovingly depicts them all without judgment. Her work reminds me a bit of Terry LaBan's early Unsupervised Existence comics, both in terms of themes and the paces she puts her characters through.

Baillie's 8-page mini Layover was done in her sketchbook during an insanely long layover on her way to her brother's wedding. It's the rare autobiographical comic from her, and I loved the manic energy she poured into each panel. The personal details were touching but wisely only hinted at, like why this wedding was such an unusual event for her brother and the playful relationship she has with her husband. Baillie would excel in the daily diary strip format if she ever chose to do that for any extended length of time.

New Post! Webcomics of Interest by Dylan Horrocks, MK Reed, Chris Adams, Terry LaBan and Devil's Lake

For the first time in over a year, here's a brand-new column on High-Low's home base. I thought I'd start by discussing a topic I rarely address: webcomics. That's a universe I don't generally explore because I either don't have the patience to follow them or because the subject matter of the vast majority of them (video games, jokes about video games and fanboy culture in general, fantasy) is of little interest to me. That said, I do take note of webcomics here and there that draw my interest. Here are a few words about each.

Dylan Horrocks: The American Dream and Sam Zabel & The Magic Pen Horrocks' Hicksville is my favorite comic of all time, but he's gone through long fallow periods in comics this past decade. That's why it's so delightful to see him putting out work bit by bit on his website. The American Dream speaks to his interest in politics that's not present in Hicksville but has been a major part of his other work throughout his career. Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen is a pure delight, one that any fan of Hicksville will find intriguing. The former strip has had just a few updates, and I gather from some of the artist's comments that it's been a tricky one to write. The premise is a dream of the author's where there is no America; he flies there only to find that it's been a trick of some kind. Horrocks will have a fine line to walk in crafting a story that makes a point without descending too heavily into polemics.

He's several chapters into Sam Zabel, however, and it's a perfect mix of autobiography and fantasy. The title character is a stand-in of sorts for Horrocks, a struggling New Zealand cartoonist with a self-published series called Pickle, much like Horrocks himself. Zabel is a starting point of sorts for Horrocks to work out his ideas and emotions but is never a strictly autobiographical figure. The more personal elements of the story relate to Horrocks taking on mainstream comics writing jobs after the success of Hicksville and then finding himself unable to enjoy anything, including reading, writing or drawing comics. That inability to enjoy anything is called anhedonia, and Horrocks cleverly turns that into less a feeling than a place, drawing a map where Sam steps into that perilous country. At the end of his rope, Sam falls into an old comic about adventures on Mars and finds himself a character--and as a cartoonist, he is worshiped as a god. I'm always fascinated by stories of cartoonists who are crippled by depression and find themselves unable to draw. The thought of being unable to have emotional access to an experience that used to bring pure pleasure, even as a child--the act of making marks on paper-- is an unimaginably cruel fate. How one recovers from it varies, but there's something that Sam discovers in the strip--a web site dedicated to 19th century academy portrait painting--that gives him great comfort. The bright richness of those colors and their decorative qualities offer relief from the tyranny of narrative. For Horrocks, I will guess that this web site had a similar soothing quality, one that he worked out in the form of unleashing a beautiful but subtle color palette in this story. Once the reader reached the fantasy section of this story, Horrocks dips into a lurid, EC comics-inspired four-color palette that practically carries the narrative on its own. If that web site metaphorically brought Horrocks back to a love of creating images (at least in part), it seems as though this experience was literally lived out with Sam and his bemused adventures on Mars. (I'd say there's also a tip of the pencil to Jaime Hernandez in terms of the design of the female hero we meet briefly.) Horrocks is steaming right along on this story, and its mix of restraint and enthusiasm adds an interesting tension. This story has the potential to be a companion piece to Hicksville that will at once be exhilarating and sobering.

MK Reed: About A Bull MK Reed's first official debut (Americus) will be out this fall from First Second. However, the ambitious Reed has been doing all sorts of minicomics projects for quite some time. She's taken on an even crazier project in About A Bull, an adaptation of the Irish folk epic Tain Bo Cuailnge. This is a convoluted story to be sure, but she's done a remarkable job of not only simplifying the narrative but also of modernizing the dialogue. This is a story about a king and queen who quarrel about whose possessions are worth more. It so happens that the king is in the superior position, thanks to him possessing a mighty bull. The queen connives to acquire an even better bull to win the argument. After a series of misunderstandings, a deal to get the ball falls apart and war is declared to obtain it. Along the way, Reed turns to Caroline Kelsey to illustrate a portion of her story, one where we see the clever origin story of the two bulls done in a "stained glass" style of cartooning. As always, Reed's draftsmanship is rough but serviceable, and her sharp eye for color helps carry the story a bit. That rough style doesn't hurt the story, which is told with her usual sharp wit, and I'm eager to see how the twists and turns of the legends play out in the story itself. The part of Reed's art that needs the most improvement is her lettering. I think she'd benefit by using a font instead of hand lettering this story, especially when one compares her work to that of the other cartoonists involved. Terry LaBan: Muktuk Wolfsbreath: Hard-Boiled Shaman LaBan is one of my favorite alt-cartoonists of the 80s and 90s, with memorable titles like Tales of Unsupervised Experience, Eno & Plum and Cud. He later did some projects with DC Comics, including an adaptation of Muktuk Wolfsbreath by Steve Parkhouse, a more naturalistic artist. This project didn't wind up meeting with much success, but he did later stake out a career as a syndicated cartoonist with his still-running Edge City, a strip he does with his wife. As a project to earn a master's degree in Interactive Design, he decided to revive his old character. LaBan hasn't lost a beat with his folk-noir hero Muktuk. LaBan has the instincts of an old-school underground cartoonist in terms of the explicitness of his material, yet his actual cartooning is far more playful. He eventually seemed to become reconciled to this notion when he simplified his approach even further and took more direct cues from Archie comics master Dan DeCarlo. LaBan's mature style combines this simple, highly direct and emotionally charged style of storytelling with whatever weird idea he has in mind. Quite honestly, LaBan's discouragement with comics as a career seemed to lead to a bit of floundering right before he quit doing alt-comics. This is not to say that the material was bad; in fact, his willingness to fully commit to humor led to some hilarious work. It's just that he seemed to be trying every approach in an attempt to find something that stuck. One of these approaches was the "hard-boiled shaman", Muktuk Wolfsbreath. He joined up Raymond Chandler-style noir-storytelling with elements of Siberian shamanic folk tales. It's a particularly delightful kind of fusion, one far more effective than the Vertigo version of this, simply because its combination of three contrasting styles (noir, folk tale, Archie comics) seems to work better in providing dynamic tension for the reader. The lighter visual elements are a perfect counterpoint for the heaviness of the story's thematic elements. They also serve to subvert the cliched oppressiveness of noir storytelling without derailing it altogether, thanks to the fantasy element linking the two together. In the opening segments of "Boo", LaBan gently leads new readers through the character's premise while revealing new information about Muktuk to long-time readers, all in the context of a noir-detective case that's easy for anyone to understand. Hopefully LaBan will be able to keep this going past the end of his thesis. Christopher Adams: Strong Eye Contact Christopher Adams is a young cartoonist with an interesting approach. I took a look at a silent series of strips he did titled Strong Eye Contact that employ an elliptical narrative approach. The panel-to-panel narrative is frequently fractured, with one sequence slipping in and out of another. At its essence, these strips are about performance, as its balding protagonist not only has to find ways to deal with connecting to an audience at a comedy club, but in connecting with the world at large. The title of the strip almost seems to be an unspoken mantra of sorts, as the character muddles through as best he can by faking his way through his act and life. There's a vividness to each image that speaks to Adams' background as a painter. The way that he "rhymes" images back and forth speaks to his background as a musician; each strip very much feels like the verse of a song, or perhaps a separate song in a longer cycle. A blog is unfortunately not the proper place to really examine these drawings. Hopefully, Adams will be able to publish these strips in a format that flatters his work a bit more. I also get the sense that like Jerry Moriarty's Jack Survives strips, Strong Eye Contact takes on even more force when one reads a number of them in sequence. At the moment, Adams has published just eleven of them. Devil's Lake: Minty Lewis & Melissa Mendes Devil's Lake is an online publication connected to the University of Wisconsin-Madison; its comics content is edited by cartoonist Lydia Conklin. This issue features an excerpt from Minty Lewis' minicomic Salad Days; here's my original review of the entire issue. It's a typically awkward, uncomfortable Lewis workplace story featuring anthropomorphic fruit that squeezes out wince-inducing jokes with impeccable timing. Conklin contrasts the spare line and restraint of Lewis with the expressiveness of Melissa Mendes' "The Bird". Whereas "Salad Days" employs a typical comics grid, "The Bird" takes advantage of its format to create a one-image, one-click story that pushes the reader through a day in the life of a young girl. Like in many of Mendes' stories, the girl is a latchkey kid who fends off loneliness with a rugged self-determinism. When she and her father discover a bird who stunned itself flying into the house, a clear line could be made between the girl and the bird: both alone, both vulnerable (as a bicycle accident earlier in the story attests) but both ultimately aided by someone else. Mendes is becoming a remarkably confident storyteller, working in a style that mixes the best of children's illustration with comics. Conklin is developing a sharp eye as an editor, and I only hope she becomes more ambitious in future issues by publishing a greater number of contributors.

The Art of Awkwardness: PS Comics

Rob reviews Minty Lewis' collection of stories, PS COMICS (Secret Acres).

Minty Lewis first came to my attention with a funny story in an SPX anthology (the travel-themed edition) about featuring anthropomorphic fruit as her characters. Her PS COMICS minis have alternated between the travails of various fruit-oriented characters and the lives of anthropomorphic terriers. The cuteness of her character design boldly contrasts with the bitter awkwardness of her slice-of-life stories. Lewis mines the humor of cruelty for her characters, especially the office-life set-up for the fruit character stories. It reminds me a bit of the UK version of The Office, in that there are a number of characters who are desperately lonely and unhappy but don't know how to reach out without inflicting pain on others. In Lewis' stories, it's the most pitiable characters who often wind up saying and doing the most awful things. The clarity of her line and the sharpness of her dialogue make this a compelling read. The juxtaposition of her cute drawings (which grab the reader's eye and are just funny drawings) and the nastiness of tone both more effective. A naturalistic style of art would have made these comics feel somewhat leaden, but the simplicity and flow of Lewis' pages help the reader fly across these pages, soaking up the dialogue.

There are a number of highlights here. "'Me' Time" features the simultaneously abrasive and lonely Apple rejecting his obnoxious workmates because he was inspired by a character from a TV show who did the same thing. In a creepy but hilarious sequence, Apple has a running commentary with this character (Lemon), pretending that she was actually with him as though she were her soul mate. When Apple stayed home the next day from work (at the "urging" of Lemon), he was stunned to see a TV interview where she described the character as a loser and used method acting to inhabit the role. Chastened, Apple sought out his coworkers for after-work recreation, even if he still hated them.

"Bitter Fruit" was a stunning account of workplace romances gone horribly wrong, as Pear is rather casually dumped by Banana in favor of Kumquat. Apple stepped in, rather clumsily, in an effort to offer comfort to the bitter Pear (who said things to Kumquat like "Check it out, Apple! The monkey learned to shave its face!"), first insulting her and then trying to advise Pear to start writing. Apple, who felt like someone somewhere on the Asperger's spectrum, tried to get Pear to come over to his place to hear him read his script. Faced with that and the possibility of having to hang out with Banana & Kumquat at an after-work get-together, she chose the latter. There were some hilarious images in this story, like the (literally) pear-shaped Pear being thrown out of her ex-boyfriend's apartment wearing sweat pants.

"Out of Season" featured Apple trying to hit on the new temp, Strawberry, only to discover the she was even more unbalanced than he was. She turned out to be the sort of borderline personality disorder person we've all met from time to time, rigidly defining everyone she came into contact with as either friends or enemies. Apple, with his rigid ideas on how to advise others, naturally managed to alienate her even as he was trying to hit on her. The highlight of the story came when the office went to see Pear at an open mic poetry night, which included lines like "And my vagina remembers/what you used to feel like/every morning...there is cereal/but every night...there's just slices". In each story, Apple makes a ridiculous protagonist, someone who is acutely aware that he's at the bottom of the social power structure and hates it, but will press any small advantage he can find. He wants to be "understood", but is such a narcissist that he can't understand other points of view and experiences. He wants to be considered compassionate and understanding, but is completely devoid of empathy. In short, everything he does makes everything worse, and provides a lot of bitter laughs.

I wasn't quite as drawn to Lewis' stories that star Yorkshire Terriers, with the exception of "Yorkie Matrimony". The humor in the other stories isn't quite as biting and the drawing felt a bit more stiff, especially with regard to character interaction. "Yorkie Matrimony" was so over the top yet true to life that it felt agonizingly real. The story involved a pair of female apartment mates, one of whom gets engaged. The other roommate feels betrayed and abandoned, worried that she won't be able to take care of herself. That started a series of passive-aggressive moves on both of their parts, culminating in a bridal shower game of Scrabble that featured insults to the groom.

Lewis has a knack for relating the power struggles at the heart of many relationships and how we choose to engage them. That sense of push-and-pull, where we need intimacy but also have the urge to dominate and control our partners and friends, powers the tension of her stories. The ways in which humans interact with each other, trading in self-deception, is absurd on its face, which makes Lewis' storytelling choices all the more resonant. Humans are ridiculous, so why not portray them as fruit or dogs or salt shakers? It's a way of softening the blow while playing up the humor inherent to the pain of human interaction. This collection, by playing up the connections between stories and characters in subtle ways, actually strengthened the original source material and gave it a surprising coherency for material collected from so many sources. Secret Acres once again provided a public service by getting stories that were once part of minis out to a wider audience.