Delightful Ambiguity: Mome 14

Rob reviews the 14th volume of Fantagraphics' flagship anthology, MOME.


If MOME #13 felt a bit all over the place, #14 went much further with that sense of fragmentation, juxtaposing stories with ambiguous images and endings to create a dizzying and fascinating array of visual styles. The interstitial pieces by Derek Von Gieson add flavor and color throughout the issue, acting as a sort of visual palate cleanser between stories. These are open-ended, one page narratives that vary between first person accounts of post-apocalyptic landscapes or embarrassingly intimate details regarding a busted-up wedding to third-person accounts of a boy and his vicious parasites. What they all have in common is that they thrust the reader into the middle of a narrative with little context and no backstory and deal in quotidian details. That matter-of-factness extends to the weirdest of circumstances, adding to the sense of both enigma and familiarity the reader feels with each snippet. That sense of mystery, dread and resignation pervades much of the entire issue, giving it a thematic cohesion that wasn't always seen in past volumes.


Laura Park's second MOME offering, "Office 32F", felt a bit more substantive than her first contribution. It's a whimsical tale of paranoia and awareness, slipping in and out of autobiography as she writes a journal about her discovery that she was under surveillance by a tiny group of spies. The level of quirky detail she provides (like finding a tiny pair of saltines in her celphone, or finding a tiny pair of mittens in a spider web, bleaching them and then flushing them down the toilet) speaks to the way that she was simultaneously alarmed and comforted by the spies in her life. Her actions took on the bearing of ritual, both in the sense of daily actions that we engage in as a sort of comfortable groove as well as an active ceremony designed to evoke a particular desired outcome. When she learned that she was no longer being watched and may not have been the real subject at any time, there was more than a twinge of disappointment--as well as a wink to the audience. That seemed to indicate her simultaneous unease and excitement of having her work (much of it autobiographical) viewed and judged by an audience, creating an invisible relationship that nonetheless had a significant impact.



Olivier Schwauren's second entry to MOME has the feel of an unearthed artifact, bursting with a crude energy reminiscent of a Golden Age comic. If this story had been published fifty years ago, Dan Nadel would have already reprinted it. The washed-out sepia tones give the story that sense of being of a different era, and the deliberate lack of detail he provides in framing his stories of single-minded obsession further tantalize the reader. It's a room full of men engaged in some activity--is it a parlor? a bar? an mental institution? It's impossible to say. There are power hierarchies here even as some men strive to break out of their tedium. In this instance, one man shows another a crudely-drawn dungeon adventure page that he says is a sort of game and cajoles someone else into trying it. After being mocked, the protagonist loses it and his dragged away, but it's left open as to what kind of impact his game has on his friend. Schwauren's strips have their own loony internal logic that evokes a certain delight when followed. The only cartoonist I can think of that does anything remotely similar in intent is Gerald Jablonski, though both men are so idiosyncratic as cartoonists that their output is completely different.



There are a number of stories here whose appeal is primarily visual, leaving it up to the reader to make connections or draw conclusions. The Ben Jones/Frank Santoro/Jon Vermilyea team-up for a Cold Heat episode was the most striking of these, as aliens observe a rock star being consumed by a swirling demon whose reach apparently threatens the entire world. It's a wordless piece that slides us from image to image, never stopping to explain the hows and whys of the situation, instead forcing the reader to accept the information provided on the page and react to it. Vermilyea also continued his motif of homicidal, anthropomorphic food items with a strip about Kool-Aid Man crashing through a wall to give kids some "special" Kool-Aid...and then gruesomely pick up the pieces. That touch of the grotesque and the absurd was a great find by editor Eric Reynolds and makes for a great contrast with the more austere and inward-looking pieces publishing in MOME. That's also true of Josh Simmons, whose "Funny Pages" is an Ivan Brunetti-esque hijacking of a standard page of comic strips, turning them into something more brutal or coarse.



Stories by Dash Shaw, Sara Edward-Corbett and Conor O'Keefe are also striking in their use of visuals in very different ways. O'Keefe's story is a cross between Winsor McKay (in terms of the quality of his line) and EC Segar (in terms of story content). Like both of those cartoonists, this story has the feel of animation, with exaggerated action as a boat manned by an unusual cry is buffetted by the waves. Edward-Corbett's story is similarly slight and short but stands out because of her beautiful line work and bold use of color in a retelling of the tortoise and the hare. Shaw's use of color in "Scenes from the Abyss" is absolutely stunning. It's a simple story about an ambitious but banal young screenwriter trying to get his project made and impress those around him. Each segment of the story is introduced with a large panel dominated by a circular structure: a lamp, a tank of water containing a stage, a hot tub, a reel of film, etc. There's a sleazy sense of fakeness to this character, who in every stage of the story is finding a different way to distort reality, a practice reflected in the way Shaw blurs and distorts light and color in this strip.


There's plenty of straight-out humor in this issue, some of which is more effective than others. Ray Fenwick continues his funny "Truth Bear" series and the Stick's quest for truth takes an unusual turn when a non-omniscient creator shows up. Fenwick's work is pretty much an examplar of idiosyncratic, valuing both words and drawings equally in terms of their plastic qualities. Hernan Migoya and Juaco Vizuete check in from Spain (keeping up MOME's tradition of introducing American audiences to foreign cartoonists) with a bawdy story about a hard-luck Peruvian who winds up with a job as a gofer for a popular but monstrous popular singer. It's not exactly subtle in the punches it throws, but the cartooning is so weird and elastic that it's compelling. Speaking of a lack of subtlety, Emile Bravo's "Wild West Winging It" is a parable about current American politics down as a Western. While it was interesting to get a Frenchman's perspective on the 2008 election, the hits he lands are all too obvious. The same goes for the second installment of Gilbert Shelton's Not Quite Dead story. I will say that this segment was funnier than the first, thanks to getting much of the ham-handed approach to religion of politics being thrust to the side and a preponderance of funny drawings taking the forefront here.


The centerpiece story in this issue of MOME is Lilli Carre's "Carnival". Carre' in some respects is a perfect replacement for Gabrielle Bell in MOME (though Bell may contribute some more stories in the future, she will be far from a regular). Her line is somewhat similar, though Carre's work is a bit more stylized, especially in her character design. Like Bell, Carre' went through a period of rapid improvement and is not publishing some striking stories. "Carnival" is a blend of magical realism and heartbreaking loneliness played out as a sort of emotional deadening. The Carre' stories I've read tend to be about longing denied or somehow frustrated. This story concerns a man who can't make lasting connections (we're tipped off by his profession of car salesman) who nonetheless feels the void in his life encountering a free-spirited single mother at a carnival. Their potential connection goes awry on both their parts for different reasons and both of them are left with fantasy as their only real outlet.



The variety of visual approaches and storytelling styles, along with the international flavor of the anthology, have transformed MOME from a showcase for a handful of young artists to a sort of latter-day RAW. Obviously, it's not the sort of sui generis creation that RAW was, but it's appealing to the same sort of sensibilities. It no longer seems to be aiming to be an entry-level comics anthology for highly literate audiences; instead, it's now assuming that those literate audiences are quite capable of handling any number of styles. MOME might also become a place where work that was going to be printed in comic books that are no longer being published due to industry & economic concerns might now find a home. The balance struck by editors Eric Reynolds and Gary Groth between unpublished, up-and-coming artists, alt-comics legends with short stories to publish and international stars with stellar work that needed translation has been a delicate one, but when everything comes together just so (especially in issues 12 and this issue), then MOME becomes a crucial component in understanding alt-comics as they stand today.

Knots Tying Knots: Dungeon Zenith, Volume 3

Rob reviews the latest collection of translations from the DUNGEON: ZENITH series, BACK IN STYLE (volume 3), by Lewis Trondheim, Joann Sfar and Boulet (NBM).

The third volume of the english translation of DUNGEON has been long-awaited, but I wouldn't recommend reading it until one has reread the first two volumes. The saga becomes increasingly plot-heavy here and immediately follows the events of the last volume. There are some ways in which the fantasy send-up/homage by Lewis Trondheim & Joann Sfar reminds me a bit of Jeff Smith's BONE. Both started their series on extremely lighthearted notes and spent a number of pages carefully establishing character relationships. Once Smith spent a couple of years doing that, it was off to the races with a quest, action scenes, plot twists and the like. He had earned his audience's trust before he simply shipped his characters all off into their wars by carefully but casually dropping mysterious clues as well as seeing them interact in a mundane matter. We knew each character's quirks, desires and loves as well as the ways in which they interacted with each other, which made the conflicts they wound up later all the more involving.

DUNGEON's first volume (with each volume collecting two of the original French albums) introduces us to an anthropomorphic duck named Herbert and a peculiar lizard named Marvin. Herbert's a smartass dungeon flunky and Marvin's a fierce but quirky warrior, and the whims of fate throw them together. Their hijinks manage to simultaneously parody sword 'n sorcery stories while at the same time put together a startlingly intricate, straight-faced fantasy epic. Seemingly trivial or even farcical details from these stories either have complicated backstories (explored in the Early Years stories) or have serious ramifications in later years (as detailed in the Twilight stories). The "main" narrative, or the "Zenith" story, mixes humor with action, making neither seem out of place.

That said, there's a certain grimness to be found in the two stories in BACK IN STYLE where one can begin to see how Herbert and Marvin wind up in such dire circumstances in the future. That's felt in the Keeper being kicked out of his own dungeon at the end of the first story (after a series of cleverly designed action pieces that ramped up the tension and the stakes in succession) and Herbert returning to his home city and finding a deadly welcome in the second. Both stories have a downbeat, uncertain ending--a far cry from the more neatly tied-off story threads in earlier volumes. Despite the intricacies of the plot, building on dozens of story developments from prior volumes, these stories work because of the way Sfar & Trondheim found every aspect of the story on character relationships.

Herbert and Marvin are obviously the foundational relationship of the series, but the interactions between Herbert and his oily nemesis Delacor established a delightful, mutual aggravation. Delacor's general sliminess (hiring a lawyer to seize the dungeon) made him a source of friction for everyone he encountered. The ass-kicking princess, Isis, was another interesting catalyst in the way she prodded Herbert and moved so easily in the company of thieves. The dungeon Keeper himself emerges as a sympathetic character, taking on a paternal quality to his minions when he realized he was about to lose it all. Herbert's parents are introduced in this volume, and their complicated relationship with him adds another layer of intrigue to what was once a seemingly simple parody character. Even seemingly incidental characters like the postman Pollyplume, a sad sack thrust willingly into an exciting new life, add
new perspectives to the saga.

The most startling change to be found in this volume is that Trondheim passed on the art duties to Boulet. For the most part, Boulet stays faithful to the character design that Trondheim established. However, the quality of his line is much slicker and clearer than Trondheim's slightly ramshackle line. The effect is a jarring one; the idiosyncratic nature of Trondheim's art was a perfect fit for the slightly off-kilter nature of a saga that was half serious and half joking. Boulet doesn't really try to make funny drawings; even ridiculous scenes have a slickness to them that takes a while to get used to. I almost would have preferred an artist try a completely different approach (like in the Dungeon: Monstres side-series) than this sort of hybrid approach. That said, Boulet did quickly master drawing a cast of thousands and really is a master at propelling adventure stories forward. The sequence where Herbert and his friends escape from a tavern by taking to the rooftops and eventually flying away was a particular highlight, a spectacular and visceral set of panels that perfectly balance drama and wisecracks.

Despite missing Trondheim's line, the Sfar/Trondheim duo did not disappoint in this latest volume, taking crazy story risks and throwing in plot twists and character reversals at the drop of a hat. DUNGEON remains my favorite genre-related series of all time, and anything that helps new volumes appear more quickly is fine by me. If Boulet is going to be the regular artist for Zenith from now on, it'll be interesting to see how he adjusts his style in future volumes.

Open-Ended: The Airy Tales

Rob reviews the debut comic from Olga Volozova, THE AIRY TALES (Sparkplug Comic Books).



Something I've noticed as a recent trend in comics is a style that somewhat trades in primitivism or outsider art on the surface, but in reality is a sophisticated integration of word and text. The plastic qualities of text are not something separate to be read in the comic, but instead are meant to be looked at as much as the other images on the page. As a result, the way each page is composed and meant to be read is dramatically different from what Westerners are used to in comics. The artists I'm thinking of working this particular corner include Austin English, Juliacks and most recently Olga Volozova. She passed by Dylan Williams' Sparkplug booth at a show, found herself drawn to what was on the table, and then asked if she could submit something to him for publication. Her comics fit neatly into the Sparkplug aesthetic: idiosyncratic, personal and with a touch of the fantastic.



THE AIRY TALES is a series of short stories with deliberately open endings: fairy tales with morals or instructive qualities. Roughly the first half ot the bookis in full color (watercolors, if I'm not mistake) and the back half contains line drawings with a single tone. It takes a moment for the reader to adjust to the way she composes a page. In some of the stories, the text dances around a center image, twisting around it in unusual ways. In other stories, the text is incorporated directly into the image, like part of leaves on a tree or falling raindrops. The small commitment it takes as a reader to full engage Volozova's work is rewarded by the fully realized worlds she creates.



This is especially true starting with the second story in the collection, "Mukamuka Lives In The Rain". It's about a man whose house is made of raindrops, an elusive figure who is able to touch other lives in strange ways. His telling a crying boy to embrace his crying causes his tears to magically produce what he wants. He briefly turned the passengers on a bus into crystal goblets because he wanted to hear the sound of ringing, an experience that brought them closer together. He gave a woman a magic bird that eventually lifted her burdens. This is a perfect example of the range of Volozova's imagination, exploring a character and idea and taking it as far as it would reveal itself to her.

Even more open-ended is "The Tree People", a story about people who lived in a tree that was like a house, or a house that was like a tree (depending on one's perspective). There's a progression in this story as each family or individual on each leaf grew, but was distracted by a man in a yellow sweater who had and seemed to desire nothing--and his leaf drifted ever higher every time the wind blew. This is a story about the inevitability of transformation butting up against the foundations we try to root ourselves to. Like every other story here, it's open-ended but it's strongly implied that this transformation is not to be feared, and clinging to it is illusory.


"The Rooster" is a story about art and spectacle, and whether or not there's a difference between the two. It's the most conventionally drawn piece in the book, with its bright colors giving it a bit more weight than some of the other stories. "The Moon Birds" is a very matter-of-fact description of the birds who live on the moon and control humanity with threads that they manipulate, tying into the first story of the book, "The Golden Thread" by giving a backstory to the phenomemon of a man discovering that everyone is being manipulated from above by strings. "The Moon Birds" is almost like a nature documentary in the way it describes the different kinds of birds, how they interact with human souls, etc. There's not really a standard plot here, but it doesn't matter because once again Volozova thrusts us into the world of her imagination and the reader feels compelled to take a look around.

The last set of vignettes, "The Street Walkers", has an almost Ben Katchor-esque quality. She introduces us to a man made of ice cream who is in danger of being licked to death, a crow and a street pole who meet cute, a man with an artificial smile who has it worn away, a snow hat that no one dared to wear, and a man who lost everything--including his head. Each of these little vignettes is a sheer delight, documenting the lives of people in a city whom the reader really gets to know in a short span of time. Volozova finishes the book with her most direct integration of word and image, "The Shelltales". They're about a scholar who discovers that crying and laughter come from the tip of one's nose, and a country where everyone only begins everything and another where everyone ends everything. Here, Volozova blurs the difference between text and image, with words morphing into illustrations and illustrations acting as part of a sentence. Like any good fairy tale, this is a book aimed at adults that children should be able to enjoy as well. Volozova is already quite ambitious, and I'll be quite interested in seeing how she evolves as a creator as she refines her talent.

Cityscapes and Backyard Adventures: The Latest from Toon Books

Rob reviews the newest releases from Toon Books: LUKE ON THE LOOSE, by Harry Bliss; and BENNY & PENNY in THE BIG NO-NO!, by Geoffrey Hayes.

The Francoise Mouly-edited Toon Books are among the best edited and conceived books in all of comics (regardless of genre). It's hard to think of a better introduction to the art form than these books, which cleverly disguise their pedagogic nature in the form of their stories. At their heart, these books are Comics 101 courses, carefully breaking down and isolating what makes comics successful and how to make this plain to anyone. Take the covers, for example. Great care is taken to indicate that this isn't simply another illustrated picture book, but rather something far more immersive. The word balloon attached to a character on the cover screams "comics!" and makes a new reader pause to try to figure out how word and image are interacting. Above the main illustration on the cover are a couple of panels depicting action, whetting the reader's appetite for the book's content and again letting them know that this is something different from what they're used to.


The latest books are once again from artists not known for sequential storytelling. Geoffrey Hayes, who checks in with his second Benny & Penny book, THE BIG NO-NO!, is best known for illustrating his own children's books. Harry Bliss is an illustrator who also does cartoons for the New Yorker. Both artists are longtime comics fans being given an opportunity to do stories in the style of comics that inspired them.


Hayes once again manages to combine his delicate, feathery line with unusual page & panel composition along with an unerring sense of propulsiveness. The way he obviously manages to tap into his relationship growing up with his brother, deceased underground cartoonist Rory Hayes, gives the story a sense of verisimilitude that any children with siblings will instantly recognize. This story finds the pair going over the fence into the yard of a new neighbor in quest of Benny's missing pail. The sight gags and gentle humor of the story is fueled by the mutual love and mutual sense of aggravation that the brother and sister share for each other. They give each other a hard time one minute and are concerned for their welfare the next. Hayes' lush style will be instantly familiar to any child reading a comic for the first time, especially in the way he draws anthropomorphic animals as his characters. He uses that familiarity to go to town on the page, leading the reader's eye around the page at a near-whiplash pace. He even leads the eye entirely out of panels and into gutters, like the mysterious footprints of their new next-door neighbor.



After I finished reading Bliss' LUKE ON THE LOOSE, I immediately thought "This is an entry-level Will Elder comic". Reading his bio, he notes that he grew up loving Will Elder, so it was no surprise to see all sorts of eye pops and background gags in addition to the manic main storyline. This story is also a love letter to New York city, in all its diverse glory. It's about a little boy named Luke who squirms away from his father in Central Park in order to chase pigeons, and his tireless chase leads him halfway across the city, causing chaos in his wake.



This book is completely different in approach than THE BIG NO-NO!, yet both books have a certain flowing, kinetic quality to them. Bliss's line is much thinner and his use of color much flatter than Hayes, whose comics have a lot of decorative drawings that help draw the reader along the page. Bliss instead packs layers of gags Elder-style on each page, often inserting famous comics characters into his scenes or having animals provide commentary. The way he uses animals in particular is very funny, as when a dog leaps into his owner's arms and hugs him like a person.

While both books have a lot of action, THE BIG NO-NO! is a softer and gentler tale while LUKE ON THE LOOSE ramps up the action and the stakes on each page. I love the way the latter depicts New York as being simultaneously perilous and packed with potential adventure, yet still full of caring individuals. The former book nails sibling interaction and vividly creates a world that any young reader will relish visiting. Both books are remarkable in how well constructed they are, given that neither artist is greatly experienced crafting long-form comics. The design of the books (simple and elegant) and the steady editorial hand of Mouly no doubt made it easy for these artists to adapt to a new form. The long-term effect of Toon Books won't be felt for quite some time, though one hopes it will encourage a new generation to read comics and continue to read comics throughout their lives.

Tapping the Well: Complete Peanuts 71-72

Rob reviews the latest volume of Charles Schulz's THE COMPLETE PEANUTS: 1971-72 (Fantagraphics).


The latest volume of THE COMPLETE PEANUTS finds Charles Schulz still at his peak, having completed the transition of the strip from its 60s heyday. While Charlie Brown, Linus and Lucy were all still major characters and each had their own story arcs, they no longer dominated the strip the way they did in the 60s. What differentiates this volume from 1969-70 is that Snoopy as a fantasy figure also recedes a bit more into the background as well. This volume sees Schulz begin to really explore the possibilities inherent in Peppermint Patty, gives her a foil in Marcie, introduces the last outsider character in the strip in Rerun and gives Sally Brown a star turn.

Over twenty years into the strip, Schulz remarkably recycled very few of his jokes (there's one about Lucy and bugs that seems a bit familiar) and instead seemed to try to find new ways to amuse himself. The result was that his strip felt like several different overlapping strips in one, depending on the day. When he wanted to go with laugh-out-loud gags, Sally was his new go-to character. Her combination of naivete, obliviousness and blind rage made her perfect as a mouthpiece of malapropisms. While Lucy's rage was always a constant of the strip, Sally's anger was more unfocused and harmless, even if she was earnest in presenting her views. Strips where she panicked about missing Easter vacation in January, vowing that her teachers would "never get me to tell all I know" about oceans and misunderstanding that this wasn't a threat, writes a theme about the 4th of July because she's "a victim of programming", calls a dinosaur a "bronchitis" and erroneously comes up with a backstory for "forest strangers" point out her earnest cluelessness. Her real star turn came in a strip where she was forced to go on a field trip to an art museum, and warns a fellow student to "try not to have a good time...this is supposed to be educational". Schulz even went so far as to vary his visual approach just a bit with her, bugging out her eyes in one strip or making thicker black dots to indicate her being stunned.


Schulz was not satisfied to just crank out gags like this. He spent much of the volume exploring one-on-one relationships between many of the characters: Snoopy/Woodstock, Charlie Brown/Lucy (a perennial favorite), Charlie Brown/Peppermint Patty, and Patty/Marcie. Schulz dropped a surprising number of pop culture references in other strips, though never seemed comfortable enough to spend much time with them other than as one-offs. The strip where Linus is depressed because Bob Dylan was about to turn thirty was especially strange. There are also some extended fantasy sequences with Snoopy, unveiling his "Joe Cool" persona, but this doesn't dominate the strip during this period as much as the prior volume.


Peppermint Patty still felt like a character crossing over from a completely different strip whenever she appeared, but Schulz had managed to find ways to wrap her life up into virtually every other character in the strip. She still talked and dressed differently than everyone else (sounding way more modern than the others), but while she was every bit as aggressive as Lucy, she lacked her relentless narcissism. The extended stories with her and the clueless Charlie Brown make up the heartbreaking center of this book. She made up her mind that he had a crush on her (a clear displacement of her own feelings), while C.B. was still so hung up on the little red-haired girl that he couldn't figure out what was going on with Peppermint Patty. This played out when the two of them went to a carnival together and he inadvertently hurts her feelings, when Patty brutally dismisses him to Marcie when she wasn't aware that he was listening, and during one of the brilliant summer camp sequences when Peppermint Patty meets the little red-haired girl and realizes that she can't compete. Unlike the obnoxious Lucy, we really feel for Peppermint Patty when she suffers, because she really puts herself out there more than any other character.

Introducing Marcie as her Linus-figure was a stroke of genius and a cementing of Peppermint Patty's status as one of the major characters in the strip. Marcie acted as friend, adviser, catalyst and tormentor (always calling her "sir" certainly touched on P.P.'s issues with her own femininity, later played out in a memorable run of strips where she challenges the school dress code). It was interesting that Schulz was able to introduce such vivid characters about halfway through his run on the strip, characters whose quirks made them very different from the bland Shermy, Violet and Patty. At the same time, Marcie and Peppermint Patty weren't one-note jokes like Frieda or 5. One wonders how much potential he saw in these characters from the very beginning, or if his process of integrating them into the strip was more serendipitous.

Snoopy's antics seemed a bit tame here compared to prior volumes. Joe Cool was Schulz' interpretation of the modern college student and was more mildly amusing than really funny. There's lots of interplay between Snoopy and Woodstock (who is now Snoopy's secretary, bringing up a whole new world of jokes), including a couple of walkabouts. There's a bizarre sequence where Snoopy has to go off and aid a beagle named Thompson, who meets his end at the hands of a pack of rabbits. The funniest Snoopy bits involve his fascination with the "Six Bunny-Wunnies" books and their author, Helen Sweetstory. Snoopy becomes obsessed with the author, is crushed when he finds out she's a cat lover, travels to find her home and later writes an unauthorized biography of her. Schulz tosses in a few sly pop-culture references here in the titles of their books, like "The Six Bunny-Wunnies Join An Encounter Group" and "The Six Bunny-Wunnies Freak Out", the latter book getting banned by Charlie Brown's school.

There are still plenty of familiar strips featuring the old reliable characters. Linus' arc featuring him trying (and briefly succeeding) to give up his blanket addiction through Snoopy is a particular highlight. Lucy managing to get a promised kiss out of Schroeder if she hits a home run, only to turn it down when she does as a victory for women's lib, was both hilarious and topical. Lucy and Charlie Brown have plenty of great "psychiatric help" gags (though the booth increased in price to 7 cents in some strips). Charlie Brown's adventures at camp were now dependable yearly highlights, with Schulz understanding that repetition is the key through humor with Charlie Brown's tentmate saying nothing but "Shut up, and leave me alone!" The balance Schulz struck in this volume is as perfect as it would get: a perfect blend of fantasy, whimsy, jokes, heartbreak, topical references and sturdy characterization.

Three Views of Escapism: The Eternal Smile

Rob reviews THE ETERNAL SMILE, a collection of three short stories written by Gene Luen Yang and drawn by Derek Kirk Kim (First Second).


With THE ETERNAL SMILE, Gene Yang cements his place as a sort of O. Henry of comics. He has a knack for setting up quickly identifiable characters and situations, then turns them on their head with a clever twist. AMERICAN BORN CHINESE had three apparently unconnected short stories that dealt with identity, shame and trying to fit into a foreign world that linked together in unexpected and touching ways. There were times in which the story's elements felt a bit too on the nose, a bit too heavy-handed in pushing its themes, yet there was no denying Yang's skill as a storyteller. THE ETERNAL SMILE has a number of the same virtues and problems, as it presents three stories with vivid characters, wholly unexpected plot twists (reality twists, really) and sometimes pat handling of the notion of escape and escapism. Yang is aided by the stunning visuals of Derek Kirk Kim, who draws each story in a style so dramatically different that it's hard to believe that it was the same artist all along.


The first story, "Duncan's Kingdom", was originally published a decade ago by Image. The concept is as strong and clever as ever: a young knight is sent to avenge the death of the king, hoping to win the hand of the beloved princess in marriage. All is not as it seems, as young Duncan wins a bit too easily and is faced with the bizarre specter of a bottle of something called Snappy Cola. Aided by the mysterious, masked Brother Patchwork, he starts to question his world and finds it crashing down around him. The story is undone at the end, without revealing its twist, by an unearned and treacly sentimentalism. The character details dumped on the reader toward the end just felt cliched, as Yang stacked the deck in creating the reasons behind the escapist scenario.


If "Duncan's Kingdom"'s main thrust is the way escapism can literally imprison someone, then "Gran'pa Greenbax and the Eternal Smile" is about how a dream can ultimately push you beyond the limitations of your life. This story starts as an affectionate tribute to the Scrooge McDuck stories of Carl Barks and then starts to uncomfortably twist the greed of his stand-in (an anthropomorphic frog named Gran'pa Greenbax) until the story careens to a halt after a shocking acts of violence. Kim's skill really carries the story at this point, simultaneously making the violence both cartoony (and hence funny) and visceral (and thus shocking). The story is successful because it subverts the familiar elements of Barks ("profitable adventures", over-the-top set-ups, cute sidekicks and most especially a pool full of cash), taking them to their logical extremes. That level of attention to detail extends to the way the story's colored (evoking 4-color comics) and even the "cover", mimicking old Gold Key Disney comics. The real twist of the story (beyond the obvious deus ex machina halfway through) is that it's a scathing parody of religion-as-corporation and corporation-as-religion (specifically, Disney). Gran'pa Greenbax's burning desire to swim in a pile of cash winds up masking another, more primal desire--one achieved to the great surprise of the story's antagonist.



The most successful story overall was "Urgent Request", a story about a meek programmer named Janet who is pretty much made to feel utterly insignificant by everyone around her. Kim's visuals once again really stand out here, using a cartoony, blobby character design and a violet wash that gives the story a certain solemnity until the story turns and we are smacked in the face by vivid color. The story's about Janet falling for the old "Nigerian prince" internet hoax and plunging a bunch of money to a grateful "prince" in Africa. Feeling special for the first time in her life, even though deep down she knew it was all a lie, Janet goes all-out in her identification with Africa and imagines a romance with "Prince Henry". Yang walks a careful line with Janet, making her a sad sack that we can't help rooting for because she's trying so hard, but avoids making her completely pathetic. Even in the moment of what should have been her greatest humiliation, the good will that Yang built up for Janet allows him to instead make this a moment of transformation.


This story spells out Yang's view on escapism, that it's less an abandoment of how things really are and instead a different way of looking at the world, a shifting of perspective. Sometimes, this shifting of perspective blinds one to what's really going on, while at other times this shift is the only way one can extricate oneself from misery. Sometimes taking oneself out of character (and the story one's created) is the only way to achieve the happiness we seek, and sometimes creating a new story is what's needed. Yang implies that it's how active one is in applying this perspective is how positive it winds up becoming. Duncan's story was one of passivity, something that he had to shed. Gran'pa Greenbax was spinning his wheels in pursuit of happiness and had to think laterally and take a leap of faith to extricate himself from his life. Janet Oh created a reality around a hoax presented to her and made it become a sort of incubator for the person she wanted to become. For Yang, it all boiled down to faith in something beyond our immediate narratives and selves: escape as an activity, not a soporific.

Anthology Round-Up

(This article was originally published in Savant back in late 2002.)


The anthology comic has a long and storied tradition in alt/underground comics. From the early days of the Zap Comix collective (Crumb, Spain, Rob't Williams, et al) in the late 60's and early 70's to the recent outstanding Drawn & Quarterlies, a number of the most important comics of the last 30 years first saw light in an anthology. Art Spiegelman's MAUS ran in RAW, the seminal 80's anthology that he co-edited with Francoise Mouly, along with many other cutting-edge comics. Contrasting its formalistic precision was Robert Crumb's WEIRDO, a grab-bag of expressionistic outbursts of id that Peter Bagge later edited. Kim Thompson of Fantagraphics took up the banner in the 90's with ZERO ZERO, an extremely eclectic book that featured long serials by Kim Deitch and some outstanding short pieces by Joe Sacco, among others. The aforementioned DRAWN & QUARTERLY is no longer quarterly, but its beauty as an art object combined with its exposure of European artists recalls RAW. The hippest and most beautiful might be Jordan Crane's NON. Finally, one can't forget groundbreaking all-women's anthologies like WIMMEN'S COMICS.

The anthology series is an extremely difficult sell these days, so most anthologies that are published tend to be yearly affairs or self-published labors of love. In the last six months, there have been an astonishing number of interesting collections released. They range from polished, bookstore-ready collections of well-known talent to self-published, hand-crafted creations consisting of up-and-coming artists. The fact that most stories in anthologies tend to be short and self-contained is both a strength and a weakness. If you don't like a story, just wait a few pages and you get another one. But sometimes one can feel cheated by just getting a few pages of an appealing artist. There are ways around this, however. For example, some anthologies feature extended stories by some artists (like the "Monsieur Jean" stories in D&Q) with shorter features by others. Another way is giving anthologies a theme. Much like a rock 'n roller having to find an interesting way to use three chords, limiting an artist's subject palette can lead to interesting results if you pick the right theme. The editor becomes crucial here, since they not only have to pick the right combination of artists, they must arrange the stories in an order that makes sense. In looking at the following works, how well the anthologies hang together as a whole will be considered, as well as a few standout stories (good and bad).


Beginning at the handmade, art object end of the spectrum, we have issue #5 of TYPEWRITER. The comic itself is 4x4, with a cardboard cover that is hand-fastened with clips. When you pull out a tab, the thing opens up to reveal a series of sections, each one folding up like a map. You pull out a section to read a complete comic, and then flip it over to read the next section. The content varies wildly, though in general most of the stories are dominated by images rather than strict narrative. The art tends towards the primitive, spearheaded by "cute-brut" enthusiast Ron Rege', Jr. A wildly imaginative designer, his style can be an acquired taste. At the other end of the spectrum is the Carrie Golus-Patrick Welch team. They did a straightforward history of an old theatre's history, with each image depicting a different year and state of either glory or decay. Golus' eye for describing detail always is good for a fascinating read. There's also a bit of slice-of-life, Jessica Abel-style, with Johnathan Russell's "Abercrombie Type". The centerpiece is David Youngblood's "Baby Grumpus" strip, a wacky retelling (of sorts) of the Moses myth of a baby being sent down the river that gets merged with bizarre creatures, tribal masks out of Picasso and other assorted weirdness. A lot of the stories seemed to lack much substance, just being quick one-offs; the page from the Shiver Bones Group is an example. Everything in here is at least worth looking if not exactly compelling, but the disparate nature of the stories and lack of stylistic cohesion make this kind of a jarring read. Interesting, but not essential reading.


An anthology with a similar feel but a radically different look is STUDYGROUP 12 #2. The cover is a beautiful silkscreened design from Zack Soto with jagged edges. The contributors are a grab-bag of artists from Highwater, Hi-Horse, Kramer's Ergot and other minicomics circles. There are a lot of things in here that aren't even really comics per se, such as Souther Salazars primitivist collage/poetry pieces, or sketchbook drawings from David Lasky & Marc Bell. Soto did a nice job arranging the stories in the book, alternating longer narratives with bizarre interstitial pieces by Salazar. The narratives all have a taste of the absurd mixed with a certain creepiness. Mat Tait contributes a tale of a teen trying to retrieve a certain object from an apparently dangerous blind woman--and what he has to do in order to get it. The story is very understated yet horrific, with an unspoken sense of menace surrounding it. The most clever story is "Wakaru", where artist Peter Conrad provides a meditation on language and its meanings. A man gets into a car with a man speaking French; the translations into English are then seen on things like t-shirts, road signs and cigarette packs. The most absurd piece is from Andrice Arp, a tale of a giant cat that has the moon clinging to its head. Wordless pieces from Sammy Harkham and Soto are the other main highlights. As a whole, it's more coherent than TYPEWRITER, but the sketchbook material and some of the cruder works detract from the more interesting long narratives. One gets the sense that it might have been a stronger work if it was 10-15 pages shorter than its 80.



HI-HORSE is perhaps the quirkiest selection in this group. Unlike everything else I'm reviewing, it's a standard-sized pamphlet, published roughly twice a year. The contributors have been pretty much the same from issue to issue--it's really more of a collective than a standard anthology. The four artists who usually contribute include Andrice Arp, Howard Arey, Joan Reilly and Bishakh Som, though #4 also has a story by Olivia Kate Schanzer. What I like most about this series is that while the styles of each artist contrast sharply, each artist shares a common sensibility. The stories all have a smart, ironic and often absurdist slant. The standout of the group is Arp, the best draftsman of the group. Her "Turnip's Progress" serial is a bizarre parody (of sorts) of Pilgrim's Progress, complete with Old English font and a 19th century-style illustrative style. My favorite writer of the group is Reilly, whose "Catharta" uses super-hero tropes to tell of a young woman who has the power to hear and solve other people's emotional problems in her role as a bartender. Som contributes a moody coming-of-age story with a sci-fi backdrop, while Schanzer tosses in a hilarious account of grade schoolers being taught by a Black Panther who encourages them to commit "insurrectionary acts." This book is a pleasure to look at and read and is created by skilled hands.



MEATHAUS #6 is another example of an anthology with many different styles but a common sensibility. Begun as a way for students at New York's School of Visual Arts to stay in touch after graduation, it's blossomed into one of the most graphically interesting collections around. Many of the contributors who started the anthology actually did not have an extensive comics background, instead having studied animation or illustration. It showed in the early issues, because there simply wasn't much narrative hung around the pretty pictures. The original members have gotten much more adept at making interesting stories and have recruited a number of new members. There's no surprise that Tomer Hanuka and Dash Shaw both have strong entries here. Shaw has a series of interstitial parodies of Bazooka Joe comics that are hilarious. Hanuka tells a charming little tale of a circus freak with a loving family and stable home life. There are a lot of surprises here, like a virtuostic piece from Tom Herpich, weaving in a brutal fairy tale about captured sprites and jackass-headed men with the pathetic mother imagining it. His sparse pencilling style captures the fear and lust in every panel and makes them palpable. Becky Cloonan contributes a nice-looking piece about being away from loved ones that is interesting for the way she uses shadow and contrast. Mu Dufaka turns in several hilarious stories done in a scratchy & scribbly style that reflects the mad energy and ideas therein. There are few clunkers in this volume and it reflects a group of artists who are serious about their work. It's also nice to see an almost completely fresh set of names in this book; in the alt-comics world, there tend to be a lot of the same people in anthologies. Editors Chris McDonnell and Stephen Q Stardog really have taken this book to another level.



Turning to a somewhat more lighthearted approach is BOGUS DEAD, a themed anthology with an impressive list of contributors culled from minicomics, Highwater and the usscatastrophe.com crowd. The theme is simple: zombies are roaming the earth and mankind is doomed. Draw the human reaction to this. Based loosely around George Romero's DEAD series of films (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD being the first), the results range from silly to ponderous. Standouts include Graham Annable's tale of a murdered zombie rising up, buying an airplane ticket, flying to a remote location, finding his killer and killing him with the same weapon, flying back, and crawling back into his grave. All very matter-of-fact and deadpan. Gabrielle Bell has a hilarious account of zombies in a hip San Francisco bar and beating them off with art installation objects and a copy of McSweeney's. K Thor Jensen has an amusing tale of a grad student turned zombie who finds himself alone and realizes that he can bring about peace in our time between humans and zombies--if he gets the chance. Megan Kelso continues her hot streak with a quickie about Alexander Hamilton rising from the grave and eating a Wall Street fat cat. Three of the creepier pieces are from Robyn Chapman, Kevin Huizenga & Ted May and Jenny Zervakis. Chapman tells a story of a woman whose sister-in-law rises from the grave--with her brother wanting to know why his wife killed herself and their baby. Huizenga & May retell the story of Red Riding Hood, this time with zombies. Zervakis stays close to the spirit of the film in a story where she winds up in a survivalist bunker and gets bitten--but this winds up saving her from an attempted rape. There's a lot of forgettable material in this anthology, but the theme prevents contributors from taking things too seriously or too lightly. The craftsmanship is very strong here and the common theme allows the different styles to mesh well. Perhaps not for all tastes, but it's interesting to see genre fodder mutated into something very unusual.


The most lighthearted of all these anthologies is GARLIC, whose content is so frothy at times that it threatens to float away. Fortunately, the list of contributors is the cream of the minicomics scene, dominated by the usscatastrophe.com gang. Despite the fact that most of the stories were one-offs and played for laughs, I couldn't help liking it. The theme had something to do with it: it's a comic entirely about garlic. Each story had to involve garlic, one way or another; the issue is the first in a series of anthologies about food. Beyond the inspired silliness of things like Dave Kiersh's "Vampire Silliness" and Souther Salazar's out-there song-comic "Radical Garlic", there were a number of quieter pieces. John Porcellino proves once again that he's the king of reflective, emotionally powerful stories that somehow aren't overly sentimental. Jenny Zervakis plays it completely straight, simply describing how much garlic means to her Greek relatives and even offers a recipe. The weirdest piece is John Hankiewicz's "Garlic Soup", a story about a man's personal odyssey after eating a bowl of especially powerful soup, where the images and text often seem unrelated. While most of the contributors are quite talented,most of the pieces here aren't necessarily the best example of their work, and some look practically ripped out of a sketchbook.



If GARLIC suffered from a certain sloppiness and silliness (even if that was part of its appeal) while sporting a stellar lineup, ORCHID doesn't make any of these mistakes. There are seven stories here, adapted from Victorian short stories or poems. The subject is horror, and the artists create a frightening atmosphere throughout. ORCHID opens with a bang with "The Story of the Demonaic Pacheco", adapted by Lark Pien and Jesse Reklaw. The story concerns a man who awakens under a gibbet and who hears a tale of terror from a man who is damned by sleeping with his stepmother and daughter, and is told with a wild, expressionistic flourish that matches the melodramatic tone of the tale. Gabrielle Bell, whose line has a Jason Lutes-like clarity to it, adapts a story called "Tobermory", about a cat who learns how to talk. He talks a bit too much, exposing the foibles of a Victorian household. Ben Catmull turns in a brief, spooky tale abouta haunting.

The book's real tour-de-force is Kevin Huizenga's "Green Tea", a nightmarish and sweat-inducing tale of his alter ego, Glenn Ganges. Ganges recounts a time in college when he was working feverishly and drinking green tea, when he suddenly started seeing hallucinations of a dog that he knew was going to harm him. He then comes across an account of a reverend who had a similar experience, with a demonic monkey that followed him around and eventually started speaking to him. Huizenga's deceptively simple style is at its peak here, playing with light and narrative in a masterful fashion. There's not a better story in this bunch.

The rest of the book does not impress as much as the earlier stories, but there's still a lot to look at. T. Edward Bak contributes a beautifully-drawn adaptation of a rather hackneyed vampire tale. David Lasky's adaptation of Poe's "The Raven" is Lasky at his most conceptual--there are panels with narration--but no actual drawings in the panels! The aggressive formalist later gives us an image of a raven cut across panel to panel. This is a unique approach to such a familiar work of literature. The book winds up with Dylan Williams doing a story about a doomed marriage called "The Man With The Nose." While he's a good storyteller (as anyone who reads his REPORTER series knows), his slightly ragged line felt out of place here. Overall, ORCHID is a superb example of artists both appreciating and transcending genre. Williams and Catmull both clearly have a firm hand as editors, with the book's feel being consistent even as the style and tone changing from story to story. The order of the stories was absolutely perfect, and everything is worth reading.



Mainstream publisher Dark Horse has been putting out single-issue anthologies under their creator-owned Maverick line, and they went for a real full-sized anthology this time around. HAPPY ENDINGS is a themed anthology revolving around that very idea. There will be a few names familiar to mainstream readers here, like Sam Kieth, Brian Bendis & Mike Oeming and Mike Mignola. Kieth and Mignola contributed some pleasant fluff, while Bendis shows that his intentionally funny comics are much better than his crime or superhero comics. MEATHAUS contributor Farel Dalrymple contributes a beautiful-looking, whimsical story about a boy and a blimp, while Craig Thompson's intense story will surprise those only familiar with his GOODBYE, CHUNKY RICE. The highlights are two pages of grimness from Harvey Pekar & Joe Sacco and the best work I've seen from Frank Miller in a long time. Miller does panel after panel of endings, most of them not exactly happy. His piece is playful but also raw with anger, creating some amusing and disturbing images. Overall, this is a worthy anthology though a bit like drinking lite beer--frothy, but not substantial.



Fantagraphics has returned to doing an anthology comic, sort of, with their first two SPECIAL EDITIONS of THE COMICS JOURNAL. The line-up is mind-boggling, with virtually every artist on their roster contributing something in one or both of the volumes published so far. The comics are just part of the issue, with the rest of it containing the usual sorts of interviews and features that TCJ normally runs. The bonus is that the comics are mostly in color, which is quite a treat in some cases. The problem here, as it is in many of the bigger anthologies, is that even though you might have big names contributing to your anthology, it doesn't mean that they're going to do their best work. Some artists simply aren't very good at providing interesting 1-3 pages stories. This volume's theme was "Cartoonists On Music" and it did produce a more interesting response than volume I, which was the very meta "Cartoonists On Cartooning". Many of the artists either weren't interested in grappling with the issue, spent the space whining about the comics industry, or babbled on about aesthetics in ways that weren't very interesting (Linda Medley's strip still gives me nightmares).

Writing about music gave the artists a chance to express themselves a bit differently. The book reads better if you're familiar with each cartoonist and what they normally do, because otherwise the strip to strip variation can be a bit jarring. (Of course, any transition to or from a scatological Johnny Ryan or Rick Altergott strip is automatically jarring.) There were a few biographical pieces, most of which were quite well done. Chris Ware contributed a beautiful, sad piece about an African-American singer named George Johnson who earned money singing an offensive "race record", and who fell on hard times when new recording techniques made him superfluous. Ware's design and the way he carefully couched the narration in dialogue, leading up to the strip's ultimate point was effective and heartbreaking. Ivan Brunetti used his more stripped-down style to relate the sad tale of chanteuse Francoise Hardy, while Craig Russell pulled out all the stops and pyrotechnics in discussing composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Both were quite effective in their own way.

Some played it for laughs, like Roger Langridge's clever punchline to a frustrated artist gaining inspiration through music or John Kerschbaum's demented rhyme about a man who can't get an annoying tune out of his head. Sam Henderson found a way to bring it all back to comics in his strip where music enjoyed the status in American culture that comics do today. Arnold Roth contributed a couple of pages of music-related gags and Peter Blegvad's ingenious "Anatomy Of A Hit" drawing uses multiple layers of meaning for an array of puns and visual gags. Others talked about music inspiring them, like Mary Fleener's encounter with Joey Ramone; or Carol Lay nearly getting into a fight with Slash. The best stories used music as both backdrop and focus for deeper feelings. That includes Phoebe Gloeckner's exquisite tribute to Janis Joplin with her own character, Minnie; and Megan Kelso's eloquent and understated ode to the waltz.
A lot of the pieces simply didn't resonate with me, even by artists whose work I normally admire. The pieces turned in by the Hernandez Bros. Seemed slight and rather rushed, while Michael Kupperman's strip was only mildly amusing. Robert Crumb turned in a nice-looking but silly strip about a dirty song his daughter once taught him. A lot of the artists here frankly didn't have much to say about the subject, which is a problem with all-star anthologies: the stars are more important than the work provided. That was the case here to some extent, and I think trimming a lot of the published strips would have created a stronger work overall.



SPX 2002 practically deserves a column all its own due to its size and scope. This is the first time that the anthology created to support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund as part of the Small Press Expo has been restricted to a theme. In this case, the theme is biography. Editor Tom Devlin did a superb job of mixing wildly different styles about a truly odd group of subjects. Generally, the stories about lesser-known figures turned out to be the most interesting. Some of the stories had an unfortunate tendency to lapse into "high school book report mode", making the book somewhat text-heavy. If you're looking for a flashy, innovative design, this isn't really the place to get it. On the other hand, SPX 2002 has an impressive array of familiar artists as well as a host of lesser-knowns and newcomers, with very few true clunkers in the bunch.

Josh Simmons contributed a text-heavy but fascinating piece about Ernest Bellocq, the photographer who created some famous shots of prostitutes in the Storyville section of New Orleans. Simmons cut through a lot of legends but even he didn't have all of the information about his subject. This led to an interesting discussion of what pornography is and how the way the subject is presented changes the context of the photo. His illustrations range from realistic to cartoony, with an excellent eye for design. Another fine piece was turned in by the team of Jim Ottaviani and Rachel Hartman. The tale of the mathematician Bourbaki, who influenced cryptography, was told in the usual chummy Ottaviani style, using a clever framing device and coming up with a great ending. Hartman's whimsical art is perfect for the piece. The great R.Sikoryak told three tales of Rasputin in the style of early 20th century newspaper strips; these pages were just jaw-dropping in their level of detail.

Other standouts include Paul Hornschmeier's time-fractured take on St Francis of Assisi as suffering from dementia; Martin Cendreda's minimalist take on turntable artists Invisible Scratch Piklz; Laurenn McCubbin's tale of an escort named "Jane"; Jamie Tanner's superb rendering of vignettes from artist Egon Schiele's life; Rob Ullman's visceral account of unstable hockey goalie Terry Sawchuk; Jon Bennett's clever rendering of Don Leslie, inventor of the Leslie Speaker; and Alison Taylor's evocative story about "Carolyn Keene", who wrote the Nancy Drew Mystery series.

The theme of the anthology turned off a lot of creators and some readers, though the sheer variety of subjects should prevent boredom. Interesting choices of mediums, like Chris Pitzer using cut-and-paste clip art to discuss a designer and Tod Parkhill using Space Invaders-type graphics to tell the story of an Atari programmer keep the book from falling into a rut. The stories may not be the best example of the works of the artists featured, but I was fascinated at the ways they approached the theme and had to find ways to solve the problems that it raised.



The last book in this survey is ROSETTA, which in many ways is by far the most ambitious anthology on this list. Comics Journal critic Ng Suat Tong put together an impressive lineup of both new material and reprints. The result is something is a cross between Jordan Crane's anthology NON and DRAWN & QUARTERLY. In particular, there are a number of European artists featured here, and not just from France, either. The quality of the contributors is unquestionable (with the exception of perhaps one or two artists), but the fact that the anthology is unthemed and has so many excerpts from larger works makes it a somewhat jarring read. It also doesn't help that two of the longer pieces had been printed before elsewhere. I also wasn't particular thrilled by smaller details like the intrusive interstitial introductions and the lack of page numbers. I'm harping on the details a bit simply because ROSETTA has a chance to be one of the best anthologies ever--the overall level of talent is that impressive.

Miriam Katin's piece about her memories of drinking condensed milk and facing anti-semitism ring with a sweetness and sincerity lacking in many such memoirs. Nick Bertozzi's own take on the many views of Mt Fuji, incorporated into a city story about a missing child was a showcase for his formal cleverness. Michael Kupperman's two strips were both absolutely hilarious, a perfect tonic to some of the more serious strips in the book. Renee French had an ingenious strip displaying different body parts, types of food eaten and mail received and other clues that let us identify a particular sort of stranger. The big discovery for me was Malaysian artist Lat, whose autobiographical account of his school days absolutely sucked me in and left me wanting much more. This was both a strength and weakness of the book: there were simply too few complete stories in here. Some of the excerpts did little more than tantalize me. If these were serials, that would be one thing, but it bugged me that I was only getting a taste of some of these artists.
Some of the better reprints here included a Megan Kelso story that first appeared as minicomic Artichoke Tales #2, a Dave Choe story about Palestine that was first published in his own Bruised Fruit, and a very clever Matt Madden strip called "Tinubu Square" that plays with narrative in an amusing fashion. Really, the only absolute clunker in the book was Swiss artist MS Bastian's strip "Bazooka Joe", a nightmarish, headache-inducing comic that was virtually impossible to follow.

ROSETTA was not the most satisfying read, even if it did have some of the best material. Hopefully the next volume will need to rely a little less on reprints. Despite my reservations, this book is a must if you want to become acquainted with talent outside of the United States, or if you're not very familiar with alt-comics at all. In fact, it's almost an alt-comics primer of sorts, with the visual inventivenesss of David Lasky providing an impressive show of formal techniques. Unlike the TCJ SPECIAL, ROSETTA is a good indicator of what kind of material these artists create, and for that reason I would recommend it above all of the others on this list for novice fans. In that sense, the anthology truly lives up to its name, providing a key to a segment of comics that many aren't even aware of.

A last note: there are many other anthologies that have come out within the last year that I didn't get to touch on. Kurt Wolfgang's LOW-JINX anthology deserves a column of its own, especially with its fourth issue out (featuring the work of alt-comics artists from when they were children). The Monkeysuit gang produces an engaging and accessible book about once a year. KRAMER'S ERGOT is an anthology along the lines of STUDYGROUP 12. If you're interested in learning more about alt-comics, anthologies are an excellent place to begin.

How To Find These Comics:

TYPEWRITER #5 is $5, available from Popzero Productions. Email editor David Youngblood at popzero@hotmail.com.

STUDYGROUP 12 #2 is available from editor Zack Soto while supplies last. Email him at zack@studygroup12.com .

HI-HORSE #4 is $3. Check out their website at www.hi-horse.com, which will give you further instructions, or send them mail at comics@hi-horse.com.

MEATHAUS #6 is $7 and available from Meat Haus Press. You can buy it straight from their website, www.meathaus.com, or send money to 184 Kent Ave Apt 322 Brooklyn, NY 11211. Contact them at meathauspress@hotmail.com.

BOGUS DEAD is the brainchild of Jerome Gaynor and is currently being distributed by Alternative Comics. Go to www.jeromanempire.com for the skinny; the book is 10 bucks and its ISBN is 1-891867-19-9.

GARLIC can be had from editor Sean Duncan if you email him at foodcomic@yahoo.com. Check out wiseanduncanny.com/food to get a good look at some of the stories in the anthology.

ORCHID is a bargain at twice the price for just 8 bucks. Happily, it is being distributed by Diamond. Go to www.sparkplugcomicbooks.com to learn more, including previews of every story. Contact publisher/co-editor Dylan Williams at dylan@sparkplugcomicbooks.com or write to him at PO Box 10952 Portland, OR 97296-0952.

HAPPY ENDINGS is published by Dark Horse Comics (part of their Maverick division) and thus should be available in those comic shop thingies. It's $9.95, and more information can be found at www.darkhorse.com. The book's ISBN is 1-56971-820-2.

THE COMICS JOURNAL SPECIAL EDITION Volume 2 is of course published byFantagraphics and should be available at fine comic shops everywhere. If it isn't, you can order it from Diamond or go to FBI's website at www.fantagraphics.com. For those interested, its ISBN is 1-56097-473-7.

SPX 2002 is a charity book published by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. At $9.95 for over 300 pages, it's quite a bargain. It can be purchased at Mars Import but should also be in any good comic shop. That Mars Import link is http://www.marsimport.com/display_comic.php?ID=3911&affiliateID=4

ROSETTA is a hefty $19.95 and is available from Alternative Comics. This just came out at fine comics shops everywhere a little while ago. You can order it online here: http://www.indyworld.com/rosetta/index.html. For the curious, the ISBN is 1-891867-22-9.