Some SPX Minis: J. Baylis, A. Stang, R. Ullman

I can never resist reading minis from old favorites right after SPX. Here are some examples...

So Buttons #9, by Jonathan Baylis, et al. Baylis writes with increasing confidence and a Harvey Pekar-like ability to pick the right artists for the right kind of stories. That's not a coincidence, as Pekar is one of his major influences. Baylis and long-time collaborator Noah Van Sciver in "So...Carl" play on the structure of the famous Pekar/R.Crumb story "The Harvey Pekar Name Story", yet the structure actually serves a purpose in discussing his father Carl and his same-named cousin. While Baylis often plays his personal anecdotes for laughs, there's often a deeply personal and even cathartic quality to many of them as well; in this case, it was going to the funeral of his uncle with his sick father and freaking out that "Carl Baylis" was dead.

Two other long-time Baylis collaborators also shine in different ways. The simplicity of T.J. Kirsch is perfect for an anecdote about Baylis' young son talking about how he loved The Flash, his mom...and that's it. Thomas Boatwright returned in a follow-up about Baylis' old ambition of being a horror movie make-up artist, with exaggerated, cartoonish figures and a bright use of color contributing to an upbeat story of meeting one of his heroes and having it go well. Summer Pierre was a perfect choice for a sweet story about Baylis talking to his son about music. A story about getting rare roast beef from the Second Avenue Deli in New York was fittingly done by one of the best in depicting the city in James Romberger. Fred Hembeck continues to illustrate Baylis' time as an intern in comics, which was littered with disastrous stories. This time around, it was at Valiant Comics, where he watched staffer after staffer get fired by despondent publisher Bob Layton. Hembeck's deep knowledge of comics was put to good use in some clever panels, like one where he referenced the famous image of an alcoholic Tony Stark from an issue of Iron Man that Layton co-wrote and inked. I'm not sure if Baylis suggested that connection or if Hembeck came up with it, but it's the sort of thing that happens all the time in Baylis' comics. Baylis has a love of comics and its history that's coupled with an eyes-wide-open understanding of the industry's foibles. Combining that with an intuitive sense of not only what kind of anecdotes from his life make for a good story, but how to tell that story economically, has made him one of my favorite recent memoirists.

The Audra Show #1, by Audra Stang. Everything about this little mini is perfectly designed, from Stang's cheery self-caricature on the cover to the intense use of reds, blues and yellows. It was clear from the beginning that Stang was a talent to watch, and it's interesting to see her stretch out and work so extensively with color. Her biggest strengths remain dialogue and character interaction, as there's a great degree of verisimilitude. This comic begins with a wink to Daniel Clowes' Ghost World in that there are two teenage girls at a diner in 1988 who harass a schlubby, mustachioed waiter named Owen. The story takes place from the point of view of the waiter, who has a crush on a waitress named Bea. When they part after hanging out after work one night, she happens to see him him jump off the dock into the ocean...and when he doesn't come up after several minutes, she gets worried. The ending is a sublime moment of magical realism that nonetheless is a smooth fit with the rest of the story and even resolves the romantic tension between the two characters.

Old-Timey Hockey Tales #3, by Robert Ullman. Ullman's sports comics get more and more confident as he wrings out every bit of story and character to be found in the oft-eccentric National Hockey League. With this third issue, he's close to putting together enough material to assemble a book (around 70 pages so far). Ullman's clear, smooth line is ideally suited for this kind of storytelling, as he varies line weights to emphasize contact and action. The comic picks and chooses between the ridiculous, the beautiful, and the horrifying, as the early NHL had a Wild West feel in terms of its on-ice violence but also featured an intensity that created a deep connection with fans.

This issue featured statistical oddities embodied by players like Ken Doraty, whose career was notable for his overtime heroics and little else. The story of the "Curse of Muldoon", which supposedly prevented the Chicago Black Hawks from finishing in first place, was hilariously revealed to be a newspaper-created hoax. Ullman uses a grey wash to create an old newsreel feel in telling the story of Larry Kwang, the first Chinese-Canadian (and minority of any kind) man to play in the NHL. It's a story that's predictably filled with racist incidents, yet Kwang found different ways to rise above them in his life. In recent years, his story has been more widely told. There's also the story of Ace Bailey, who nearly died in an on-ice fight after taking a blind cheap shot, but later forgave the man who struck him. Ullman crams a lot of stories into 26 pages, and his ability to snappily get at the heart of each story without wasting a line makes this one-man anthology a compelling read.

Hard-Hitting: Ullman, Keller, Chad

Old-Timey Hockey Tales, Volume Two, by Rob Ullman. The only thing wrong with this loving, polished and consistently funny love letter to Ullman's favorite sport is that it's not in full color. Ullman teased the reader a bit with a few f color pages that add some extra zip to his already sharply paced vignettes from the weird world of hockey's history. The slightly muted nature of his palette happily lends itself to that sense of watching old but surprisingly sharp footage from the past. Published by Wide Awake Press, the production values on this one are first-class all the way, from the use of color to the french flap on the front cover. Ullman's stories work both for the fan and the novice, partly because of the way they break down in a narrative sense.

First, he has an eye for finding the stories of unusual athletes, and he's lucky that hockey has a long history of employing weirdos, maniacs and generally colorful characters. Second, his naturalistic but slightly cartoony style is appealing to the eye. Going too cartoony would turn off sports fans, but going too far in the other direction would render his art lifeless. Above all else, he's able to portray the kinetic punch of hockey, a sport with rapid and often violent movement that's perfectly suited to a sequential art treatment in a way that other sports aren't. Third, his deep understanding and respect for the sport's history means that big-time fans aren't insulted by his treatment of the players. Most importantly, he's able to extract a story hook for non-sports fans. For example, in the story of "Ulcers" McCool, the fact that this goalie suffered from debilitating ulcers that required him to drink quarts of milk before the game and during intermission. Ullman also varies some of his visuals throughout the issue, going with a thin line in one story, greyscaling in another and a thicker, almost rubbery line in yet another. Some stories use a number of panels crammed in a page and others are more leisurely laid out, with two panels to a page. What's hard to believe is that this well-executed and stylish comic hasn't been picked up by a book publisher, because it would be perfect sell in places like Detroit, Montreal, Chicago, Boston, etc.

Force Majeure #1, by Keenan Marshall Keller. Keller's work is very much in the vein of Benjamin Marra, as he both satirizes and displays warm affection for the ultra-violent and sex-drenched cheeseball action movies of the 70s. Unlike Marra, whose work (while absurd) is deliberately vague in its delivery, Keller unapologetically goes all-in on crazy and over-the-top action. His tough cop anti-hero, Chuck Narley, starts the comic by kicking a child rapist/serial killer so hard into a wall that his head pops off. His bad-assery and skirting of the law fully established, Narley is rewarded with a completely superfluous sex scene before the real villains of the comic are introduced. That would be a group of nihilists called Force Majeure, who perform ridiculously brutal killings of innocent children as part of their upcoming "war". The issue ends with battle lines being drawn and little else, essentially, yet Keller packs a remarkable amount of cartoony but bloody violence and gore into just a few pages. He offsets the gore with garish coloring, day-glo lettering that blends right in with the action, and framed shots that are clear send-ups of action movie tropes. One can almost sense Keller chuckling as he drew this comic, because there's a sense of ridiculous glee on every page, as though he couldn't help himself when drawing blood spurting out or heads on pikes in a manner that somehow registers as good, clean fun.

Mezmer 2, by Jon Chad. This is the second big issue of Chad's fascinating and fragmented epic sci-fi series. Ostensibly narrated by the villain, Maxer, the reader is shown tantalizing glimpses of various conflicts between the robot Maxer and the warrior Mumfot, his arch enemy. The reader is shown some back story that adds depth and substance to the characters introduced in the first issue as well as fleshing out some character that were simply name-checked but not introduced in that issue. Chad's strategy of using a non-linear storytelling technique focuses the reader's attention on immediate details in order to create a character-based series of vignettes. Above all else, he wants the reader to luxuriate in the weirdness of Maxer and his minions, as well as the doomed and betrayed Makerrat. Using an ultra-fine line with few blacks adds to the fragility of the narrative, as though the reader was examining a document on the verge of falling apart. Adding in other bits of continuity and character-advancing business with the "great speech" interludes is a clever way of slowly building up a confusing and fascinating world built on technology and spirituality alike.

Journeys and Tranformations: Ullman, Dabaie, Newlevant

Diamonds Are A Girl's Worst Enemy, by Rob Ullman. Rob Ullman pays most of his bills through his illustration work these days,which is too bad because his clean and appealing style make him an ideal choice for so many other kinds of comics. His comics about hockey, for example, are impeccably researched, funny, fast-moving and a pleasure to simply look at. Of course, Ullman has the distinction of being skilled at a certain kind of cheesecake art, one that seems more honest and refreshing in the way he renders women than the more "realistic" good-girl artists or what passes for rendering women for most mainstream superhero comics. Indeed, this story is about a superhero named "Double Diamond" who's got all the male superheroes going ga-ga over her because of her skimpy outfit and flirtatious attitude. This infuriates the other women on the team, one of whom has a modest figure and the other who doesn't dressing in a revealing fashion despite having the figure for it. Ullman slyly comments on objectification and celebrity culture when the secret identity of a powerful jewel thief is revealed, critiquing both sexist behavior in men and the ways in which women internalize being objectified and use it as a weapon against other women. There is certainly a level at which Ullman is having his cake in presenting these critiques and eating it too in terms of drawing sexy women, but he doesn't go into the realm of bad taste or titillation in this comic. Indeed, take away the content related to sex in this comic and it's easy to see Ullman drawing a successful all-ages superhero or genre comic, given his understanding of body language and chops.

A Voyage To Panjikant, by Marguerite Dabaie. This is the first dozen or so pages of what will be a longer work for Dabaie. It follows a 7th century merchant family from Sogdiana, a country that's now roughly where Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are today. It's a comic that plays to Dabaie's strengths as a storyteller: an attention to detail, especially in terms of fashion; a vibrant but never garish understanding of how to use color; and a level of research that brings a little-known (to most English-speakers, at least) culture to life without bogging it down in mere detail. She's able to do this because she has a knack for creating a vivid family portrait in just a few storytelling strokes. There's the merchant father, patient but nonetheless frustrated by his goofball son. That son, despite his best efforts, can't help but screw up an important sales trip. There's the clearly intelligent daughter who shares her father's sense of frustration but isn't quite in a position to act on it yet. Dabaie offers hints of life in Sogdiana and how merchants have to have a clear understanding of any number of religions and cultures in order to interact with and build good will with them. I'm hoping that the final product will be bigger, in order to show off the intricate nature of her drawings (especially the designs on clothing, which are remarkable) and the impact of her use of color.

Curio #2, Mariposa and If This Be Sin, by Hazel Newlevant. Newlevant's comics are frequently about gender fluidity in a variety of forms. If This Be Sin, for example, is about the blues singer and pianist Gladys Bentley, who openly performed in male drag and wrote songs about blurring genders and her attraction to women in the 1930s. Newlevant's character design and page composition are both highly effective here, giving the page a certain fuzzy softness, evoking both buried memories and a time that in some ways was hard to believe was real. Though Bentley later reportedly "cured" herself by taking hormones to "become a woman again", Newlevant hints at a lingering sadness in her story, suggesting that the change was a desperate attempt to fit in and avoid persecution. Mariposa, done in conjunction with Jesse Reklaw, is about the parallel narratives of a scientist discovering a new genus of butterfly with ambiguous genitalia and the polymorphously perverse young woman who lives in his apartment building. The mini evokes both Reklaw and Newlevant's love of clever formal packaging, given its butterfly shape and the way the reader must unfold it to create the full effect. The ambiguous ending implies that the scientist himself goes through a process of frequently uncomfortable metamorphosis in order to become something much more beautiful; it can be taken as a moment of magical realism or a metaphorical transformation that sees the scientist understanding that how she lives her life is not so much random or self-indulgent as it is totally embracing a certain kind of freedom of and from identity.

Curio #2 is a collection of one-page strips, sketchbook drawings and other experiments, many of them done in collaboration with others. Newlevant experiments with going small, going big, using a sketchy & loose style, and using a more naturalistic line. Some of the strips are gags and goofs, while others zero in on personal and autobiographical details, like "3 Years of Open Relationships". The latter is a brutally honest self-appraisal of polyamory and the ways in which it can be an emotional rollercoaster. The page design is clever, with some panels turning out to be thought-balloon flashbacks and others acting as mirrors or callbacks to earlier parts of the emotional narrative. "Maidenhood" is a hilarious, weird story that is similarly clever to look at; it has the qualities of a dream comic and an extended period of time thinking about vaginal skin and the mechanics and implications of the decision to have sex or not have sex. Other strips feel more disposable, like "The Royal Matchmaker", which has the cute idea of matching up an alien with someone on earth in what turns out to be a pet relationship; there's a lot of effort to get to a mildly amusing punchline. What's obvious is that Newlevant is very much feeling her way around comics, trying on different styles and working relationships as she attempts to figure out what kind of artist she wants to be. There's a certain restless adventurousness at work in her comics, and it will be interesting to see how she harnesses that ambition.

Minicomics Round-Up: Spina, Robinson, Solomon, Kirby, Ullman/Brown

This batch of minicomics is a true grab-bag and is hard to pin down to any one particular genre:



Fight, by Sam Spina. This comic won a Xeric grant for Spina and is not unlike a slightly gentler version of Johnny Ryan's Prison Pit. While Spina's diary strip may be prosaic at times, his fiction has always been extra-crazy in response. He comes up with wacky premises, carries them through to their logical extremes, and then bombards the reader with uncomfortable gags along the way. Fight features a world where certain creatures have been bioengineered for specific tasks. This comic focuses on humanoid creatures bred only to fight for entertainment. The plot follows a creature called Fight, his downfall and eventual triumph over the female Super Fight that defeats him via trickery, her psychopathic offspring that forms as a result of their brief coupling, and lots of battles along the way. Spina loves gross-out gags, like when Super Fight gives birth to a bounding creature or the truly revolting Boobstadon, a sort of walking set of teats with a brain that is forcibly milked. The scene where an overeager farmer fondles it lasciviously is hilariously uncomfortable, but Spina tops it with Super Fight's child unexpectedly ripping it (and everything else in its path) to shreds. Spina's line is simple and energetic, and the mini-sized format helps add a density and urgency to each page. It's definitely an interesting step for an artist still developing his voice as a humorist.


Box Office Poison #78, by Alex Robinson. This minicomic represents Robinson's failed attempt to revive his first comics series, as he was looking for a new direction after some false starts. He has said that he thought it might be easy and fun to see what his characters were up to a few years after the conclusion of the series (which of course was collected by Top Shelf in one massive tome), but he abandoned this path as well. This mini represents a few pages from that attempt, packaged as though Robinson had never stopped doing the series as minicomics. It's clever and a delightful little gift for fans of the series. All of the BOP trademarks are there: interstitial stories focusing on one character, character surveys, a guest pin-up, a letters page, and a page from another abandoned Robinson project, a sequel to Lower Regions. Seeing some of Robinson's tricks like temporarily abandoning a realistic style for cartoony anger or filling up pages with thought balloons was also quite welcome. That said, I can understand why he abandoned the project: he wasn't saying anything new. He had a fairly definitive ending for BOP, and while it might have been tempting to see if protagonist Sherman Davies could be rescued from a hellish existence with his girlfriend Dorothy and find a healthy relationship, I thought that originally downbeat ending was a more appropriate way to leave the character. It was still nice to see the sprawl of characters even in this short minicomic; this is where Robinson has always excelled as a writer. That's why I prefer BOP and especially Tricked! over Too Cool To Be Forgotten; being able to explore a number of different emotional states and personae seems to be precisely the kind of challenge that pushes Robinson to evolve.


Our Fantastic Universe, by Lizzee Solomon. This odd little comic is the black & white version of a story that's going to be published in a collection dedicated to extraterrestrial sex. This version puts the emphasis on Solomon's grotesque linework, balanced against the amusingly sedate and even detached narration of the "host" of this "series" about alien sexuality. The story details the mating habits of cactus-like creatures called Milchigs and tiny, airborne creatures called Fleart, as the two species have a synergistic relationship. In pulsating, undulating and throbbing detail, Solomon shows us both the typical, nature-show style side of their sexuality as well as some unexpected aspects of their lives. The Fleart, once ingested by the Milchigs, engage in frottage. The Milchigs, once engorged by having ingested Fleart, engage in an extreme form of S&M that not all of them survive. The effect is a variation on body horror, where instead of physical transformation being a source of fear or dread, it's a source for pleasure. For the reader, it's no less strange an experience to read and just as unsettling.


King For A Day, by Rob Kirby. This comic is an interesting departure for comics veteran Kirby, best known for his slice-of-life relationship comics as well as for helming the queer-themed anthology Three. This is a silent comic about a man who is literally shat upon who then finds a crown. That suddenly inspires instant worship and admiration from everyone he happens to come upon. Of course, this sad sack character can't quite end up with a happy ending, even in his own dreams, and Kirby takes great delight in piling on a series of catastrophes, humiliations and general physical comedy. His art is simple and classically cartoony, with rubbery character design that expands into full-out exaggeration during certain scenes. The way he varies line thickness is a big key to the success of the comic; a thicker line usually indicates something significant happening, but that slight variation also makes the lines comprising his characters pop out on the page. The result is a delightfully charming comic that makes the most of a thin premise thanks to funny drawings on nearly every page.


Old-Timey Hockey Tales, by Rob Ullman & Jeffrey Brown. This is a comics rarity: a straightforward series of stories about sports. It helps that cartoonists Brown & Ullman chose to write about the most visceral of major sports, ice hockey and that its early participants were kind of crazy. The design of this mini is typically handsome, thanks to Ullman's eye for detail. Ullman selected items that were more anecdotes than narratives, like a strip about Maurice "Rocket" Richard being banned from the NHL and the ensuing series of riots, or a tight-fisted owner resisting the league mandate to put the names of players on the back of jerseys and protesting with names that were the same color as the uniforms themselves. Brown favored more sustained narratives, like when how the Detroit Red Wings wound up playing a group of prisoners; how one player got revenge on a coach who tried to trade him; and why anyone who messed with Gordie Howe was an idiot. Ullman's story about the great goalie Terry Sawchuk (originally published years ago in an SPX anthology) is still one of his best, documenting Sawchuk's skill as a player and how awful he was as a person. At 28 pages, this mini left me wanting more, especially because the two cartoonists have art styles and approaches to narrative that are so different. I'd love to see an all-sports comics anthology; Dan Zettwoch has done interesting work about basketball & baseball (if I had a million dollars, I'd commission Zettwoch to create an illustrated version of the book Loose Balls, an oral history of the ABA), while Dennis Eichorn has written a number of stories about football. This would be truly "mainstream" work, given America's love of sports.

Sequart #159: Heroes Con, Minis

Heroes Con is coming up this weekend, so I thought I'd reprint this report from Indy Island back in 2008. It was originally published at sequart.com.
***
I was only able to hit Heroes Con 2008 for a single day this year, the first time I've attended since 2001. Tom Spurgeon refers to it as the "last great American con". It's unusual today because it's locally owned and operated, and it focuses solely on comics despite being a mainstream event. There's no focus on TV, movies and nude models like at San Diego or the assorted Wizard events. It doesn't share the stage with science-fiction or fantasy, like many cons. There are no gaming tables. It's just row after row of comics retailers selling rarities or offering huge deals; and the artists themselves, selling art, sketching and signing autographs. In the last couple of years, Heroes Con has done something interesting. Convention director Shelton Drum has allowed Dustin Harbin to create "Indy Island" at Heroes. There's obviously a real dedication to featuring alt/indy/underground/etc. comics at this show, because the con gave them free tables and hotel rooms.

As a result, comics fans in the Southeast were exposed to publishers like PictureBox, Sparkplug, Buenaventura Press and Bodega for the first time. Comics fans got to see panels with the likes of Dan Nadel, Jaime Hernandez, Sammy Harkham, Kevin Huizenga and more. Several grads from the Center for Cartoon Studies had a booth, selling the new SUNDAYS 2. Many new participants at Indy Island reported slow sales and an audience that didn't quite know what to make of them, but others who were veterans of the show noted that they saw fans who sought them out because they had been there before. We'll see who decides to give it another go next year.

My main order of business was picking up comics for review, and there was an astonishing assortment there. I only wish I had had more time to get more minis by authors with whom I was unfamiliar. This column will examine the first set of minis I received; upcoming columns will look at recent books from Sparkplug, Bodega, PictureBox and minis from the likes of Laura Park, Liz Baillie, MK Reed, Papercutter and more.

FRED THE CLOWN # 5 1/2, by Roger Langridge. Langridge is one of the greatest humorists working today, in a class with cartoonists like Michael Kupperman, Sam Henderson, John Kerschbaum, Evan Dorkin, Ivan Brunetti, Lauren Weinstein and others. Langridge's line is bold, and no one uses effects like spotting blacks or zip-a-tone to any greater effect than him. This Fred mini is his first work with this character in some time, and Langridge reveals at the end that he had decided to abandon the character (and short-form gag cartooning) altogether in favor of long-form work that he felt he was "supposed" to do. Then he slowly realized that maybe long-form comics weren't what he did best, that in fact, these Fred comics were the best format for him to unleash his insane imagination. Turns out, he's right--I never wanted him to stop putting out issues of Fred in the first place. What's remarkable about them is the remarkable range of emotions and stories he's able to get across on the page.

Fred the Clown can be a tragic figure, a heroic figure (if an inept one), a scatological character, a source of pure absurdity, a tool for parody, and a pathetic scapegoat for the most vicious exploiters in life. Langridge has the ability to simultaneously evoke the feeling of classic 1920's comics and silent movies while using a crisply modern style. This 30-page minicomic doesn't have a single clunker in it, but for some reason his Western strips starring Fred (a classic, Bozo-haired clown) were especially funny. "Lonesome Cowboy Fred", which turns the high-noon showdown cliche on its head when the villain winds up kissing Fred, is classically set up with a perfect punchline. While that strip was silent (where Langridge especially excels due to his ability to depict gesture and expression), "A Hatful of Dullard" sees Langridge use rhyming verse to ridicule Fred, before it ends in a non sequitur punchline. I hope that this mini spurs Langridge to continue to work in short-form gags, and for smart publishers to collect these strips when he's built up enough.


IS IT BACON? and UNDERPANTING, by Matt Wiegle. Wiegle is an enormously clever cartoonist whose work I've admired for some time. A member of the Partyka collective, Wiegle gets my current tag of "artist deserving more widespread recognition". UNDERPANTING is a hilarious string of gags about a pair of demonic underpants and their reign of destruction through history. One gag finds a man in a Salvation Army and finds that the "boxers are whispering outlandish and unrealistic promises to me." IS IT BACON? teaches us to identify bacon, and not to be fooled by things with bacon's distinctive striped pattern, like hair, tree's bark, etc., noting that "history is strewn with the bodies of those who took for bacon that which was not". These minis work because Wiegle goes to great lengths to sell his gags, and he tells them with a straight face. His ability to sell a gag by drawing an incredibly detailed pirate ship or skeleton gnawing on a tree because it thought it was bacon brings to mind the skill that Michael Kupperman brings to his humor. I haven't seen much longer-form work out of him recently, but I hope this trend is reversed soon.


PHASE 7 #13 and PHASE 7 FUNNIES, by Alec Longstreth. Longstreth is pretty much the most enthusiastic artist that I know of--not just of his own work (which he tirelessly promotes), but the medium in general. One can sense his burning devotion and need to create comics, a devotion that extends to even the most monotonous aspects of creation. At this point of his career, I actually think his real talent rests not in his autobiographical or observational comics, but in clever, intensely heartfelt fantasy/adventure comics like his ongoing "Basewood" story. Still, there's something enjoyable about reading his comics essay on "Depictions of Everyday Life Throughout Art History". The effect is not unlike Scott McCloud in UNDERSTANDING COMICS (a clear influence), as his talking head narrator shifts forms depending on what era and type of art he's discussing. The page where he shifts from impressionism to abstract expressionism is particularly amusing. In PHASE 7 FUNNIES, a collection of strips from a variety of magazine gigs, his single-panel gag strips fall pretty flat. However, in stories like "Emma The Emo Emu" and "Audible Alphabet", Longstreth's gentle, goofy wit shines. The latter story in particular cleverly uses sound effects and a propulsive story to go through A to Z, one panel at a time. While not every comic Longstreth publishes is a home run, I'm always interested to see what he'll do next.


CRUSTACEAN FRUSTRATION and ATOM BOMB BIKINI #5, by Robert Ullman. Ullman's mostly an illustrator these days (out of necessity), so it's always nice to see an actual comic from him. CRUSTACEAN FRUSTRATION is a nice silent mini about a chef who hits the skids after a lobster escapes from him. Ullman's combines his lush line with a simple visual style to create a delightful story with a funny punchline. While Ullman is known as the king of indy comics cheesecake art, it occurs to me that he'd be great at creating comics for children. There's an inherent cuteness to his design that gives even his nude drawings a winsome quality, making them sexy without being sleazy. That's certainly on display in ATOM BOMB BIKINI #5, his latest collection of illustrations culled from his professional work (he illustrates Dan Savage's Savage Love column for a few alt-weeklies), commissions and other odds and ends. Any fan of classic pin-up art should check out Ullman's work, because he excels in that tradition. I understand that he's been working on a long-form work on the side for quite some time, and I hope that he's able to complete this soon, because I miss the easygoing slice-of-life comics he used to do in his mini FROM THE CURVE. I'll be very curious as to what he has to say in his new work.


MONSTER TREASURE DIGEST 0.5, by Maria Sputnik. I picked up this mini from Dylan Williams' Sparkplug table on a whim, and it's 24 pages of inspired lunacy. Sputnik describes herself as a former zinester, and there's certainly that DIY zine feel to this mini. There's a sort of loopy dream logic to her stories. "Until I See You Next" is about a young woman whose boyfriend is lost in the perilous Big Nose national park, narrated by a talking chicken. "Four Legs" sees Maria trying to choose a horse, winding up with the Worst Horse, who is tiny and smokes cigarettes. That story is continued as Maria realizes that she's been hexed (a gynohex, to be precise) and has to negotiate a complex bureaucracy in order to combat it. There's a delightful feeling of not knowing what's going to come along next, a sense of mystery and discovery on every exuberant page. The art is rough, but Sputnik's sense of composition carries her stories, along with her fervent imagination. It reminds me a little of Dame Darcy's early work in terms of its singular and devoted vision. Contact the artist at monstertreasure@gmail.com.

Sequart Reprints: Rob Ullman, Stan Yan

This week's reviews are of material a bit lighter in tone than I've been reading recently. There's satire in the Harvey Kurtzman tradition with Stan Yan's THE WANG: WHO'S YOUR DADDY?  Also, I examine the breezy minicomics of Rob Ullman, which includes the sketchbook compilation TEENY BIKINI and the wordless romantic superhero comic THAT'S JUST SUPER (www.lurid.com).

Let's start with Stan Yan. This edition of THE WANG is the second graphic novel in a series, and so as a reader I was a bit in the dark regarding a number of the characters. Thankfully, a quick recap on the inside front flap along with the basic premise being easy to grasp made reading this fun. The introduction compares our hero (Eugene Wang) to Candide, which brought to mind a more modern version of the classic hapless innocent: Kurtzman & Will Elder's Goodman Beaver. Like Goodman Beaver, Eugene has only the best of intentions but not much spine and few wits, and he tends to wind up in situations that escalate in terms of his own humiliation and personal suffering. Yan's particular story interests revolve around humiliation in bed and in the workplace.

The story starts off with some heavy-handed attacks on business, the government, etc by one of Eugene's friends. Not knowing the character, it was difficult at first to tell what Yan was trying to accomplish here. Happily, the scene quickly changes to Eugene's ex-girlfriend (who dated his mom after they broke up!) fantasizing about a three-way with Eugene and his mom that disturbs even her. It was quite a jarring shift in tone and content, but that's what made the scene funny. From there, Eugene is derailed in his soul-draining job as a cold-call stockbroker despite his best attempts, attends a vapid sales motivational seminar, runs into fellow sales hustler Sue Ann Potts (who is even more clueless and helpless than he is) and tries to find out if his father (whom he's never met) was murdered. My favorite part of the book came when Eugene's ex-girlfriend (Kristin, aka "Chief") gives him a key to her apartment. This was done for one reason: if she's ever in an accident, he must come to her apartment and remove her vibrator before her parents come in and discover it.

Of course, this leads to the two of them getting into a car accident, and a gravely injured Kristin reminding Eugene of his oath. In the book's best sequence, Eugene (with a broken ankle and a bleeding tongue) walks across town, oath firmly planted in his head. Dragging his one foot and slurring his words, he scares a crowd who just got out of seeing "Dawn Of the Dead". The set-up, the timing and the ultimate (and multiple) payoffs of this sequence are fantastic. Not every gag clicks in this book, but this chapter builds on prior jokes and brings them to a head. The denoument of the book, where Eugene suspects that his mother may have killed his father, has its own share of pleasures and some genuine emotion.

The book is somewhere between gag book and and slice-of-life story. It reminds me a bit of what Terry Laban used to do in books like CUD and UNSUPERVISED EXISTENCE, and Yan's art even reminds me a bit of early Laban. The exaggerated characters and stylization remind me a bit of Bob Fingerman's MINIMUM WAGE stories, though Yan is not quite as accomplished an artist. At this point, I think Yan is a better writer than artist. I actually quite like his exaggerated caricatures: Eugene's absurdly long and out-of-place lock of hair, Kristin's grimness, his mother's gruesomeness. The problem is that his line is just too heavy at times. The comedy in some scenes is undercut by over-rendering and too much use of black. Some of the panel composition can be a bit cluttered, confusing some of the narrative at times. Fortunately, Yan's comic timing is unimpeded by these difficulties, and I'm quite curious to see how his style evolves. There aren't many artists employing Yan's brand of humor these days, and it's a welcome sight indeed.

Rob "Chappy" Ullman has long been one of my favorite artists in the minicomics scene. He's done autobiographical vignettes, stories about hockey players, slice of life comedy, and provocative sketchbooks. His clean line, expressive figures and solid storytelling skills make his work a pleasure to read. While not especially innovative either as an artist or a writer, Ullman can be depended upon for an enjoyable story that flows nicely and looks great.

Ullman is best known for his depiction of the female form. He manages to render a figure that's both realistic (unlike the vast majority of "good-girl" type artists) and appealling. He's sort of the king of minicomics pinups, and TEENY BIKINI is a great example. Straight out of his sketchbook, Ullman presents a variety of renderings of the female form. Some are finished and inked, and others are just pencils, but they're all expressive.

THAT'S JUST SUPER is equal parts superhero story and romance. That sort of story is a lot more common these days than they used to be, but Ullman really plays up the "romance" side of things here. What makes it clever is that it's a silent narrative, relying on Ullman's compositional skills to keep things flowing from panel to panel. The story is a simple one: a superheroine is at work when a monster attacks the city. A superhero that she has a crush on engages the monster, and she quickly changes to join him. The superhero ignores her and gets his ass kicked, but her ingenuity saves the day. However, the hero takes credit for her actions and rebuffs her totally. Crushed, she goes to a bar and gets drunk, and beats up some guys who see her as her alter ego on TV and make inappropriate comments. There's a cute finale that one can see coming, but it's still satisfying.

What makes it a fun read are the details. The action moves quickly and snappily, but my favorite panel is the aftermath of her bar fight. She gets kicked out with a wicked grin on her face, with one guy smashed into a TV and another with a pool cue shoved up his ass. My second favorite panel is when she gets home and regrets no longer being drunk; Ullman depicts this with her thinking of a bee flying out a window (the buzz is gone!). Every panel is loose and expressive, perfectly matching the subject matter.

Sometimes one likes to be challenged by a work, to engage it on its own terms and form an interpretation based on the text. Other times, one enjoys a work that allows a free and easy read. I think Ullman's greatest skill is creating compelling character portraits. Even in a wordless story, we get a nice sense of who the main character is. Ullman's only done one long-form work (GRAND GESTURES, from Alternative), but I'd like to see him do a more complex narrative that combines his expressiveness, use of character and impeccable design sense.