D&Q: Nick Drnaso

Beverly, by Nick Drnaso. Reading a Nick Drnaso story is the comics equivalent of watching a Todd Solondz film. There's an almost crude flatness of design and affect that belie the heart-rending, soul-destroying events. Drnaso's art takes some of its cues from the same influences that Dan Clowes drew from, only he takes that bland aesthetic a step further, making his figures like not unlike the sort of stiff characters one might see in a promotional pamphlet. This is not to say that Drnaso doesn't smartly include a number of clever and pointed storytelling cues; indeed, his skill in that regard is a key in getting across subtle plot points without beating the reader over the head with supporting narrative text. It's just that Drnaso has a way of lulling the reader with a series of repetitive, visually bland images and then suddenly inserting a surprising, disturbing and altogether game-changing image that snaps the reader out of that expected rhythm.

The book is a loosely-connected series of stories that take place over the course of about twenty-five years. For the most part, it focuses on the secret and inner lives of children and teenagers and the disconnect between children and their parents. It's also about social awkwardness, as the first story (originally published as a mini by Oily Comics), "The Grassy Knoll", illustrates. A quite and polite teen named Tim is paired up with Sal on a park-cleaning job, mostly because no one else can deal with Sal's social weirdness. The way Drnaso portrays him as someone missing an understanding of social cues makes him a clear Asperger's case, right down to detailing the minutiae of his interests. For his part, Tim just wants to work, not cause a fuss and hang out with the cute girls he meets on the job. A guileless request to transfer over to be with them is inferred as yet another complaint about Sal, who is then fired. The inscrutably sad and strange expression on his face after he's fired is remarkably subtle, revealing confusion as much as anything. Drnaso early on nails the banal language of teens with regard to surface interactions, especially with regard to peer pressure activities like drinking and partying.

"The Saddest Story Ever Told" is a remarkably masterful and understated story about the mother of one of the girls from the first story (a blond named Cara) who silently sits and watches a screener of a new sitcom's pilot for evaluation purposes. The show is a scathing satire of typical broadcast pabulum, but Cara's mom is excited by it and critiques it, taking notes, because it gives her a sense of purpose. When it becomes obvious by the questions they have to answer afterward that the network is only interested in their reaction to the commercials that were part of the show, Cara's mom, a perfectly-designed character (all blocky and big) sits silently and dejectedly on the coach. Cara doesn't say a word throughout but weeps into her pillow afterwards: is she crying in empathy for her mom or crying because she doesn't want to become her mother?

"The Lil' King" is an excruciating account of a family vacation that centers around Cara's family; her parents are taking the kids to the same place they went for their honeymoon. Once again, the chunky character design is stunningly ideal, and the cheerfulness of the parents contrasted against their sullen and quiet children creates non-stop awkwardness. Drnaso is not content with simply awkwardness, however; when the children are alone, the older Cara asks her ten year old brother Tyler why he's so quiet (ironic, since neither said a word to their parents the whole time) as she goes off with a boy she met at the pool. Drnaso then reveals a moment of sexual obsession in Tyler who is discovered by his sister, pushing the awkwardness level to new levels. One clever thing that Drnaso does in the story is have the reader not hear Tyler's thoughts but instead see things through his eyes: he imagines killing and torturing virtually everyone he sees. A scene at the end where his father is lovingly trying to get through to him is incredibly creepy as Tyler's still in his wish-fulfillment mode, seeing himself as a grown man with an S&M hood over his head.

"Pudding" is about broken friendships and the ways in which abuse and trauma lead people to great lengths in order to seek comfort and fulfillment. After growing up with a girl that she once fooled around with as a child, Tina is invited to her friend's birthday party. The story features the conflicts that arise between three desperate people. Tina brings a friend/sort of romantic interest to the party and then promptly ditches him. Charlotte clearly has no friends and is ashamed of her past with Tina. The guy is sullen and angry, and one questions why he's even around someone as clearly as flaky as Tina. Things get awkward, weird and angry in a hurry in this story, but all of that self-generated angst is quickly chilled when Tina and her friend see a fatal accident on the side of the road. (It's Cara, which is never explicitly stated but it's obvious and a plot point for later in the book.)

"Virgin Mary" ups the creep and sleaze factor in the story, as a young woman is kidnapped from her job at a pizza joint, sexually assaulted and then is found to be pregnant. When she tells the story and says that her attacker was of Arab descent, that only politicizes an already-tense situation in the small town and turns things even uglier. Drnaso keeps the reader off-balance by constantly shifting the point of view in the story, diverting and deflecting attention before throwing in a huge twist. The twist, which revolves around the real identity and motive of the attacker, is revealed over the course of several pages of a chat transcript juxtaposed against the blandly pretty features of their Anywhere, USA suburb. Once again, Drnaso wrings horror from the banal, as the dumb chat transcripts turn chilling and the girl's desperation is palpable.

The final story, "King Me", sees Tyler as an adult, creepily going to an apparently legitimate massage parlor once a week because of his obsession with the woman who works there. It's a story set during winter, so it's chilling to see him wear a mask not unlike the one he imagined himself wearing earlier in the story. As the story unfolds, we learn that virtually everything he says is a lie, concocted either to make himself look good or at least get him out of talking about something awkward like the death of his sister. The twist here is that he meets a woman at a subway stop who turns to him for help because she's dealing with her own stalker. There's genuine anxiety in the story as they try to lose him, and when Tyler finally finishes his good deed and walks her home per her request, he turns to look at her when she goes back in. The next page has a single, tiny panel in the upper left hand corner as he continues to stare at the house; the implication is that this possibly sociopathic person has now found a new target, even if that obsession is entirely one-sided and theoretical.

Tyler represents something fundamentally broken, someone who wants to connect and create meaning but has no idea how. In that sense, he's representative of so many characters in the book who are looking for something resembling authentic experience but instead find themselves mired in prefabricated lives with predictable outcomes. It's no wonder someone like Sal, an aneurotypical outlier, should cause so much distress; his theories may be delusional but they at at least recognize that life has patterns that he doesn't understand or one to relate to. It's no wonder why Tina reached out to Charlotte, in hopes that they could recreate the one relationship in her life that felt pure and right, even if they had both long moved on from the frame of mind that allowed them to share that moment. Beverly is all about the dyspepsia that can result after a lifetime of being force-fed lies and promises about the rewards that hewing to the social order can bring.

Foxing Reprints #18: Oily Comics: Nick Drnaso, Sacha Goerg, Benjamin Urkowitz, Scott Longo

The Grassy Knoll, by Nick Drnaso. This one's in full color and 7 x 8.5". It makes sense, because Drnaso's work looks best in the slightly bland color palette that he selects to create the slightly deadened, inert feeling he goes for on each page. That inertness matches and is in tension with the deadened or heightened emotions of each character he introduces and the sense of social awkwardness he explores in his work. Drnaso excels at writing about outcasts, weirdos and the socially inadept, not so much to laugh at them but instead to investigate the rules that put them on the outside in the first place. 

In this story, we meet Bill, a new employee of a company that cleans up a park. He's assigned to work with Sal and immediately warned not to talk about Sal's father if it comes up. Sal is hyperarticulate in a sort of Asperger's way but clearly lacks an awareness of certain social cues. Bill is just a guy who has a new job and notices that some of his co-workers are attractive young women his own age, and wonders how he met get assigned to hang around them. While Sal does go on about some video game he's just mastered and is mildly annoying, he's mostly harmless. Meanwhile, when Bill gets to hang out with the girls and another male friend of theirs, talk mostly centers around how drunk they were last night: banal, puerile chatter at its shallowest. Of course, Bill's boss misconstrues his interest in hanging out with pretty girls to being yet another person who can't deal with Sal, leading him to fire him. There's a wonderful moment at the end when Sal and Bill lock eyes for a moment, with a slightly sad look of betrayal on Sal's face and a blank but glum look on Bill's, after all of this occurs. Drnaso's suggestion that just because certain social cues are acceptable doesn't make them hard and fast laws is done with restraint, especially since he doesn't show Sal as an entirely sympathetic character. He's annoying, but certainly no better nor worse than the other employees. He's simply not as "normal" as they are, which Drnaso shows isn't the same thing as "admirable". 

Nu #1, by Sacha Goerg. This is another Oily comic that's longer and printed at a larger size than the norm. Goerg is a Swiss-Belgian cartoonist with the kind of slightly ratty and expressive line that's similar to Forsman and Max De Radigues. Goerg treads on some familiar ground here in a story about an art school student who develops a huge crush on a model, to the point where he follows her home and surreptitiously draws her. When her dog finds him and grabs his sketchbook, she's able to turn the tables on him. Goerg excels at drawing loose and sloppy lines that zip the story along and perfectly capture emotion. There's one panel where Ielena, the object of the protagonist's obsession, is sneering at the mere concept of her voyeur. Goerg throws a funny twist at the reader at the end of the story, as the protagonist manages to get off scot-free while one of his friends accidentally gets caught. This is a funny and slightly demented take on obsessions, secrets and desires that is perfectly suited for this format. 

"Duh Studge" In Real Rap #1-3, by Benjamin Urkowitz. Urkowitz is an artist I discovered through Oily and has proven to be a delightful revelation. These comics are what I would call "stupid-smart", as the initial trappings of the slightly idiotic Caucasian rapper Stu  "Da Studge" slowly reveal a series of complex and funny character interactions, especially with his friend Nicky. She's an amazing character: an androgynous singer who's clearly smitten with Stu on some level, but uses a hyper-aggro approach with everyone else. Stu is trying to bring the "real" back to rap with absolutely no sense of fakeness or irony whatsoever, which is what makes him such a great character. He's a Candide in New York City, as one strip where a woman takes him home in hopes of a three-way with her husband reveals; pure Stu is absolutely mystified at all of this. At the same time, he is the least judgmental person around, as his friendship with Nikki reveals. Urkowitz's weird, curvy line reminds me a little of Skip Williamson at some points, and his page design is remarkably eye-catching. This is one of my favorite continuing series in all of comics at the moment.

The Virgin, by Scott Longo. This is a stream of consciousness project done in a variety of fonts to differentiate the deepest, darkest and weirdest thoughts of the unnamed character who is traveling on an airplane. The thoughts cut between the basest of desires to the hopes of selling books at a show. The figures veer from cartoony to naturalistic to simple doodles,  all reflecting various states of consciousness, experience and perception.

Chicago Week: Linework

11/11/2017: Please note that references to Andy Burkholder have been redacted due to multiple reports of him being connected to sexual assault.

Linework is a student & alumni anthology from Columbia College in Chicago. As befits a student anthology from one of the cartooning capitals of the world and with a great cartoonist like Ivan Brunetti as a faculty advisor, Linework is unusually strong and coherent for student work, and each issue has grown bigger and more ambitious. The magazine boasts strong contributions from its alumni, including the likes of Onsmith and Lilli Carre', along with recent grads like Nick Drnaso, Kevin Budnik and [redacted]. Let's go issue by issue and highlight the most interesting work in each one.

Linework #1, edited by Onsmith, Madalyn Merkey and [redacted].

[Redacted], Onsmith and Budnik are three of the anthology's cornerstones, though Drnaso would contribute remarkable work in the next three anthologies. He hadn't yet developed his mature style in his submission here, and it shows in the way it's a bit of a muddle. Budnik's self-flagellating strip is more in-your-face than his later, gentler style, echoing the work of David Heatley. Onsmith's strip about two kids finding a dead cat is brutal and then turns a magnifying glass on that brutality. He has a way of getting at the white trash living experience and its shocking and casual embrace of violence but is also empathetic enough to delve into the minds of these characters.

There are a number of fine stories by artists with whom I was not already familiar. Kyle Harter's "After These Messages" features a man who can only relate to others in so far as they remind him of television; the cartoony line and the use of TV sets as panels is clever. Rachel Duggan's reminiscence about her father telling her about his rough childhood was fascinating; her rough line and use of colored pencil gives the drawings a child-like quality, even as the stories she was told were entirely inappropriate for children. Kiyomi Negi-Tran's piece comparing the way she relates to her mother to the way she relates to her boyfriend is bracingly honest and heart-rending. She makes great use of color in splitting up her story and uses the cute super-deformed style of character design to powerful effect.

Marc Filerman's "Sasha" is strongly derived from Chris Ware's design style but does have a funny punchline. Jonathan Wilcox's narrative about a man buying increasingly fancy clothes and accoutrements and then getting mugged works because of the small panels, the rhythm of the grid and the simplicity of his character design. Regina Rotondo's "Family Gossip" strip, on the other hand, works because of the idiosyncratic way she draws characters and settings, though this was a story whose impact was blunted a bit by its use of color. Joyce Rice's strip about the hell of working in a convenience store and the desperate need to get out is aided by its mostly steel-blue monochrome approach, which helped to sell monotony. Finally, David Alvarado's strip about a brain on a desert island is whimsical and well-drawn.

Linework #2, edited by Kevin Budnik, Nick Drnaso and Max Morris.

Alvarado switched styles and this time around went for larger panels and figures and brighter colors, though his characters maintained a primitive quality that dovetailed nicely with the weird, gross-out gag about hallucinagenic chicken nuggets. His other strip, about a man who dies on a camping trip, is even better, as it screws around with time and narrative using a beautifully clean line. Budnik eschews dialogue entirely in a detailed strip about exploring an abandoned, wrecked house that nonetheless carries emotional weight and strong connections between its two characters. Joyce Rice contributes a strip where the main character's brother has just died, and she uses a surprisingly bright color palette to get at the weird and conflicting emotions surrounding the event. Drnaso's strip about a depressed clown is staggering; the first page is depressing because of the clown's attempting to buy into corporate while discouraging his son (after it's too late); and the second is just a total meltdown in front of kids. Drnaso has mastered his clear-line style and uses a cheerful palette that belies the darkness of his work. Betty Heredia's strip about her compulsive needs to get and peel away scabs is not only compelling and disturbing in equal measure, it's even philosophical, as she asks what she's doing is self-mutilation if it gives her pleasure. The stark and simple black and white and the small panels move the reader from image to image quickly, as she's less interesting in dwelling on specific images of torn flesh than she is in exploring how she gets there.

Filerman's strip about eating cat food as a child and vomiting is funny and weird, especially as he ties it into the anxiety of being punished by his father. Rachel Duggan's sketchbook drawings are excellent, reminiscent of Eleanor Davis' work. Claire McCarthy's "Robert" is a cleverly-design series of small anecdotes about a local homeless man that's surprising in some parts and sadly predictable in others. Angela Caggiano's "House on Lombard" is designed to look like a photo album in her tribute to her grandfather; the character design and overall presentation reminds me a bit of Carol Tyler. Michelle West's "The Receiving End" is crudely drawn but sharply conceived, as she relates an amazing roommate horror story that's also hilarious. Liz Gollner's smoothly-rendered story about a pilot crash-landing and losing his memory makes skillful use of greys and a restrained, fragile line in its tiny panels. It's in many ways a more traditional comics story than most in this anthology, but it's artfully done.

Linework #3, edited by Kevin Budnik & Nick Drnaso.

This is probably the best all-around issue of Linework, thanks in part to contributions by Brunetti and Carre'. Still, the students and other alum acquit themselves quite well here. Both of Drnaso's features are strong. The cover features four cheerleaders, and the flaps tell their life stories, with selected images from their lives charted to a graph that measures "happy" or "sad" over time. It's an ingenious idea that's well-executed. "Chatter" is a far more low-key effort, as Drnaso transcribed an interview with someone who placed a "Missed Connections" ad and drawing it as though the two of them were sitting across from each other. The level of awkwardness he achieves with body language belying speech is remarkable. Alvarado hit on his preferred style in this issue: flat color with Ben Day dot effects. That style allowed him to get really weird, as one strip features a kid making an impromptu sex doll whose face he accidentally tears before completion, and the other strip features two weird kidnappers and their obsessions while navigating the fate of their captive. Both strips offer strange and brief glimpses into their characters with a unique and powerful visual presentation.

Matt Novak's hilariously awkward story about mangling sex-related language as a youngster is another highlight, especially thanks to the crudeness of his line. Brunetti's autobiographical story about coming to terms with diabetes is typically excellent, as he manages a remarkable level of detail in a strip that's supposed to be stripped down. Equally good is his profile of designer/artist Alvin Lustig, a restless fellow who succumbed to diabetes. Budnik's story about crushes is more in line with his current, confessional style, and the use of black & white and a more restrained line allows him to inject more emotional power into his drawings. Carre's panel-less story about forgetting someone's face is fascinating, as she shows a drawing slowly mutating into something recognizable after twenty iterations. It ends by talking about how only the present moment is at all recognizable. Onsmith similarly contributes a strip about the mutation of form in the face of comfortable tedium, employing those sharp and askew angles that disorient the reader.

There are many different visual styles at work in this issue. Michelle West keeps it simple with another horrifying encounter with a neighbor in "G String Man"; she really has a way of working up disgust and contempt in her strips. Max Morris' "Tsar Bomba" is a color-soaked account of the microseconds that go by in a nuclear blast and what happens to skin, buildings and bones in the process. Heredia's dream about a freeway that becomes a rollercoaster is sharply angular and claustrophobic, and it winds up being about finding out how to let go. Filerman's gender-bending space opera is over the top from the word go, using his simple character design, bright colors and a rhythm that doesn't let the reader ask too many questions to push it along.

Linework #4, edited by Marieke McClendon, Erik Lundquist and Pete Clodfelter.

The fourth issue switched to an entirely new editorial team and got even bigger. Alvarado's strip about a couple running over a man in a furry suit is hilarious and unsettling. He has a way of starting strips and throwing a monkey wrench into a very particular and defined set of social interactions and expectations. Budnik's strip about the "Mayan apocalypse" is typically thoughtful and smart, as it addresses his obsessive need for ritual. Ryan Duggan's gag about tattoos, "Permanent Solutions For Temporary Problems" is well-drawn and hilarious. Joyce Rice's "Hoosier Valley" finds the artist in peak form in this slice-of-life teen comic that cuts close to the bone with regard to the way relationships and friendships can suddenly shift and implode. Her use of color enriches the reading experience, especially at the end when one of the characters takes a long look at the night sky in awe and wonder.

Brunetti's strip about fearing he might have oral cancer is neurotic, self-obsessed Brunetti at his best; the panel where his head swells to dwarf his body is especially funny. Sam McMorris' strip, "The Adventures of the Oblivious Sexual Conqueror" is hilarious in its depiction of awkwardness around the opposite sex; the verisimilitude of the dialogue is especially painful, while the cartoony style allows him to warp faces and still keep the strip recognizable. Onsmith's bizarre strip about a man made out of paper who has a phone inside of him that is used to call a help desk is both funny and unsettling, primarily because of his angular drawings and the slightly sickening color palette he used. Matt Novak's tremulous line gives his strip about being dumped, finding a slightly unstable person for a rebound relationship and learning that he had a brain aneurysm both a humorous and emotional sense of resonance.

Drnaso is once again the biggest stand-out. His "Play Pen" is a masterfully created, subtle and unsettling story about a police officer who deciphered a seemingly innocent toy catalog and realized that it was peddling children for sex. There's a level of detail that's almost mundane, reflecting the nature of the investigation, but there's also a level of nausea in this strip that's palpable. Other strong strips in the issue include Betty (credited here as Beatriz) Heredia's strip about encountering an old man, a crow and a chair that caught her foot when she went inside. Her brush really went wild in this strip even as she continued to use small, cramped panels to maximize that sense of being trapped, even when outside.  Chris Dazzo's strip about an awful roommate is cleverly constructed ala Chris Ware, where the drawing is meant to be looked at panel-by-panel as well as a single gestalt. Pete Clodfelter's manic, detailed drawings and sense of the grotesque are enabled by the sickly orange-yellow color scheme he employs. Max Morris' Gary Panter-stylings and musing on punk get at the heart of the "now" nature of the music and scene and how quickly disposable it is. Sanya Glisic wavers between sharp angles and grotesquely melting flesh in a story about escape, confrontation and change.

Every detail is considered carefully in the anthology. Even details like endpapers (a clever visual call and response between Drnaso and Budnik) are given maximum effort. Not every entry is of interest, but it's been interesting to observe the evolution and improvement from issue to issue, because every artist is obviously trying to pitch their "A" material as much as possible. I think by this time the tradition of the anthology has created a culture of excellence and pride surrounding it, with every new editorial team trying to outdo the next.

Chicago Week: Kevin Budnik, Nick Drnaso

Kevin Budnik's first book, Our Ever Improving Living Room, one of the earliest releases from young publishing company Yeti Press. It recorded what is a rite of passage for many young cartoonists: doing a daily comics diary for a year. While wobbly at points, it retained a remarkably strong comic voice (Budnik was committed to turning anecdotes into gags with recognizable beats and rhythms), but it also hinted at deeper issues. Those deeper issues are explored in full in the floppy-sized series Dust Motes (two issues to date), also published by Yeti.

Budnik's strips deal with his incipient and worsening depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder and eating disorder. An early Halloween strip where he declares that "I still can't let go of childhood" as a 23-year-old man is a telling one, as he seeks comfort in old patterns and rituals with his family. Many of these strips are painful and uncomfortable to read, especially since Budnik simply lays them out cold without any other sort of context. He'll go from a contemplative strip to a funny strip to a strip where the relationship between him and his long-time roommate starts to show strain because of Budnik's increasing OCD behavior and anxiety. The way he starts withdrawing from his friends is evident when he reluctantly goes out after gleefully planning a night of solo TV watching. His initial rage when his family shows concern about his eating habits melts away when he can see his heart beating through his now-skeletal chest.

Budnik also delivers snippets of the path to recovery. There's a remarkable four panel strip that alternates between his physician and his therapist, as they deliver a crucial speech regarding understanding how eating disorders provide a means of control for people who feel they have no other form of control over their life. The therapist talks about anxiety-driven thoughts, the pathways they create in the brain, and how to reroute them. Budnik has to go through rejecting his difficulties being "bullshit problems" and accepting them as both something that can be overcome (not the end of the world) but also something that is troubling him in particular. The recovery is slow and painful, though Budnik starts to emerge a bit from the haze of depression to want to create again. More of the strips regain a sense of whimsy deep into the second issue, like a strip about whistling (either to show happiness or one's skill at whistling--no other reasons!). There are difficulties with friends (including a series of brutal texts at the end of an argument from a friend, and another friend weeping when she sees "how not OK you really are), problems with his family and urges to worry about calorie counting. On the whole, he's able to appreciate friends, work and art  again and understand both the struggle that he came through and how much work maintaining those gains is. All through, his cartooning is excellent; a simple and slightly cartoony line influenced in equal parts by Charles Schulz and Ivan Brunetti (his mentor). He adds a delightful sense of detail and clutter to his panels that neither of those cartoonists employed, and by not varying line weights, he creates an atmosphere where both character and background have equal importance for the reader. That comes in especially handy when he draws scenes outside.

Budnik has co-edited the Columbia College anthology, Linework, with fellow alum Nick Drnaso for a few years. Drnaso is a remarkable young talent in his own right. His Oily comic, Young, Dumb & Full of Cum is one of the most hilariously downbeat bits of autobio that I've ever read. Drnaso uses a clear-line style that is given a sense of weight and dread by his unsparing spotting of blacks. "How To Dress Up As Me On Halloween" is a vicious bit of self-critique regarding his cynicism, negativity and self-pity, all while delivering the darkest of punchlines. Other strips, like "The Wonder Years" offer devastating critiques of high school and its essential sexism, all with the driest of wits. Dnraso's wit is not unlike Brunetti's, but his formal techniques (he loves the grid) echo those of Chris Ware. In another Oily comic, Tell God To Blow The Wind From The West, Drnaso uses a 911 call taken on 9/11/11 to create a grim, terrifying comic. It's made all the more effective because throughout the comic and its unyielding four-panel grid, we never see people; instead, we only see rooms and buildings. The cold, almost sterile quality of the drawings belies the desperation mixed with mundane problem-solving of the transcript.