Sequart Reprints: Mocca 2007

Introduction: Where Does MOCCA Go Next?

The sixth MoCCA (Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art) Art Festival was held in New York's Puck Building once again on the 23rd and 24th of June. I last attended this event in 2005, the year where it became obvious that the medium was picking up a certain cultural momentum. While no one was going to get rich, more and more young artists found themselves in a position where they could quit their day jobs and make money off comics--without having to work for a mainstream superhero publisher.

I was curious to see what, if anything, had changed after being away from the show for a year. The show is growing, but this year it felt like the organizers had figured out how to keep rooms moving a bit better. While the show apparently smashed old attendance records, I rarely encountered the kind of gridlock that has paralyzed the big rooms in the past. The crowds were steady despite great weather, Pride Weekend, the Mermaid Parade and various other events in the city.

MOCCA started out in 2002 with two big rooms for exhibitors and a smaller room for panels, all on the same floor. That smaller room proved to be unsuitable for panels, with frequent a/v problems, poor acoustics and an air conditioner that struggled mightily but frequently in vain. Two years ago, the panels were moved up to a sun-splashed room on the 7th floor, opening up more tables on the first floor. This year, the demand for tables led to the decision of moving the panels away from the Puck altogether, and turning the 7th floor into another exhibitor room. The panels moved to MOCCA's offices a couple of blocks away.

The panel where the buildings were held were just a five minute walk away but that did seem to cut into the attendance of some of the panels. On the other hand, the venue for discussions was extremely intimate. Wisely, most of them focused on single artists giving presentations rather than large roundtable discussions. While the Kim Deitch, Joe Matt & Alison Bechdel talks were well-attended, there was nothing with quite the buzz that the Dan Clowes/Jonathan Lethem discussion of 2005 had.

Speaking of which, while this is promoted as an Art Festival, its mercantile aspect is still what drives the show. Beyond the standard (but important) programming, it would be valuable to see the "festival" aspect of the show emphasized a bit more. The 7th floor room had huge swaths of space that were underused; this would have been a great area to have displays of original art, workshops, and other more interactive events for the public. There was one panel on applying for grants and scholarships, but I would have liked to have seen more on the creative process and how to get started. I especially would have liked to have seen a comics workshop for children, given the fact that there were plenty of them attending the show. A chalk-talk, though stressful for the artists, is a wonderful way for the public to see how how an artist goes through the creative process.

Of course, organizing these events would have required a larger staff, more funding for space, and ways to navigate the additional logistic difficulties. That said, it's clear that MOCCA has become the most important of the alt-comics shows. SPX and APE both have important roles because of their tradition and the sense of camaraderie that's created thanks to the venues, but MOCCA's location in a huge publishing center gives it an enormous edge. What this means is that MOCCA's potential for further growth is enormous, given the demand for tables, the interest of major book publishers, and even the presence of DC/Vertigo. There's Serious Business to be done at this show, and this fact makes it even more important that the Art Festival portion of the show should receive a greater emphasis.

The central question at the heart of the show is: what does it want to become? It went from simply being SPX-but-in-New York to something that resembles a comics-only version of Book Expo America. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but without a counterbalanced focus on art rather than commerce, MOCCA is in danger of becoming a mere trade show for book publishers. I'm not saying that this is the case right now, but it's certainly one possible future.

At its core, shows like MOCCA and SPX are really about the DIY ethos, minicomics, and other hand-made works of art. This show is a crucible for those who produce such works, because people are either drawn to your work or they aren't--which forces one to either get better or stop creating. For an attendee, it's the pleasant surprises amidst a sea of mediocrity that give the show its charge. I've been amazed over the years to see the development of some artists who were not exactly naturals. Some of the early comics by some key artists in the industry now were just plain bad, but they kept at it and broke through. This is another reason why beefing up the festival aspect of the show seems to be such an intuitively important concept--these young artists need to find ways to interact with the public in a context that is not strictly commercial. Removing the pressure and desperation of trying to sell one's wares can only encourage growth, especially for artists whose work isn't selling. While the experience of not having comics that anyone wants is strong medicine in its own way, it would seem important that giving artists a chance to directly interact and learn from their peers is just as important.

While I think there are compelling reasons for MOCCA to broaden its focus and mission as it continues to grow, it obviously can't be all things to all people. There will be plenty of minicomics specialists who will resent the presence of any big publisher. There will be others who look upon the DIY mini-types as creating a flea market atmosphere. Some look on the Puck Building as too small to properly host the event, while others would bemoan the
loss of this unique venue.


On The Floor: Scattershot Reportings And Observations

The first impression I had of the show is that more than ever, the old divide between alt-comics, the superhero mainstream, and the "legitimate" book industry is thinner than ever. The presence of Vertigo/Minx and Wizard (!) was a pleasant surprise. Wizard actually seems to be making an effort to provide publicity to indy comics while the formula for the new Minx line at DC is to team up alt-cartoonists. Pantheon, Houghton-Mifflin, First Second are some of the big publishers that were present. I wondered two years ago if the contracts being signed by cartoonists for these old-guard publishers would be just another flash in the pan or if there was a chance for sustained growth. At the moment, it's certainly looking like the latter. Part of the reason why is that the big publishers seem to have spent a proper amount of time and research into developing and promoting their lines, and it seems to be paying off. It remains to be seen if this bubble will burst, given the troubles that the bookstore industry faces at the moment.

My second impression was that there are many more comics being published (especially by the major mainstream publishers) aimed at children or teens. Minx is the obvious example, but First Second has pretty aggressively published a number of children's books. Even self-publishers like the Comics Bakery group market their books as all-ages. This is obviously a positive development, especially since these books are mostly marketed for bookstores as opposed to comics stores.

My third impression is that this was an amazing show for minicomics. In particular, the students from the School of Visual Arts and the Center for Cartoon Studies in particular really stepped up to produce some great-looking minis. I spoke to several of the CCS students and found them to be inspiring. Their SUNDAYS anthology was one of the most beautiful-looking books at the show, and they managed to sell them all. The sheer variety of good-looking minis was overwhelming. There seemed to be very few ultra-crude, cheaply-made minis with someone's scrawled art. Everyone present seemed to be aware of and energized by the competitive nature of being at this event. Of course, it doesn't necessarily follow that beautiful form will yield intriguing content, but my reviews will come at another time.

Once again, there didn't seem to a lot of must-have books. AdHouse's PULPHOPE, the new Paul Pope book, was beautiful and sold out. Fantagraphics sold out of Paul Karasik's book about Fletcher Hanks. Top Shelf moved a number of copies of Matt Kindt's SUPER SPY. Fans came to this show looking for new work, and many artists specializing in minis reported selling out of their newest works. There was plenty for every taste here: Picturebox & Buenaventura with a huge assortment of unusual comics; a huge array of European comics from Bries and several Scandinavian artists; Sparkplug Comic Books catching amazing books that fell through the cracks. I've reviewed a number of Sparkplug's books, and I must say that publisher Dylan Williams' instincts seem to be right every time. The latest triumphs are Jason Shiga's BOOKHUNTER (a police procedural--the Library Police, that is) and Austin English's WINDY CORNER. The latter is English at his best--part comics, part essays, part exposing the world to underappreciated artists. Look for more on him in this column very soon.

The Programming
I managed to catch just two panels, but both were thoroughly enjoyable. Lauren Weinstein did a multimedia presentation of her comics, old and new. I especially enjoyed the music that went along with "Horse Camp" and "The Tub". She noted that her art school background didn't do much to teach her how to do comics, but it did have other effects on her work. She noted that a lot of her early comics were comics as such, but rather illustrations with captions and markings that gave them a new (and funny) conceptual meaning, ala Duchamp. She also showed a slide of one of her paintings from college, and it was interesting to see her already wanting to do comics with some of the elements she included. The other interesting thing she discussed was the way the look of her comics matched the emotional tone of both herself and the story. Her early work (found in INSIDE VINEYLAND) has a vibratory quality to it that reflected her nervous energy at the time. GIRL STORIES has a grotesque quality to it that reflects the ugliness of her feelings and actions. GODDESS OF WAR, her new project, will have a far more majestic and even painterly quality to it.

I also saw a panel by AWP, or Artists With Problems. This had less to do with comics as such and more to do with comics culture and creation. AWP is an association of comics artists in the New York area who get together weekly to draw comics and sometimes critique each other's work. It's always a pleasure to hear the very funny Karen Sneider hold court, and she gave a history of the group that she co-created. Above all else, the group is about the camaraderie of creators in an art that by its very nature is solitary and pain-staking. While everyone is there to have fun, Sneider is always careful to make sure that people are actually doing something comics-related. When asked if critiques sometimes affected friendships, they noted that this rarely happened. That's because critiques are only offered when asked for, and that there is value in honest evaluations of one's work--even if you don't agree with what is said. It's also clear that different artists used these meetings for different purposes for their own work. Even if each individual meeting wasn't the place where one could be most productive, the meetings force one to think about and do comics every week. For some, that's the impetus they need to continue to work on their books. Another reason why the group is successful is that they tend to do very different things, so there's less competition for a particular brand of recognition. AWP's table had some of the most impressive minicomics offerings at the entire show.


Bits And Pieces

Some scattered thoughts and conversational fragments:

** I had the enormous pleasure of speaking with Miriam Katin at some length. The author of WE ARE ON OUR OWN hadn't done a lot of comics events, so it was all a bit new to her. She writes about her World War II experiences, hiding from the Nazis with her mother. Katin has spent most of her career as a background illustrator for animation, and only started writing about her past in the MONKEYSUIT anthology. Her delicate and moody pencil style produces a harrowing experience for the reader. She noted that creating these stories didn't purge her of the experiences, but rather gave her a voice to talk about something she previously was unable to express. Katin was happy to report that she was bringing her mother with her to the San Diego Comicon as a sort of culmination of the critical regard she's received in the past year.

** After I asked Miss Lasko-Gross what she was working on next after her excellent debut ESCAPE FROM "SPECIAL", she handed me a book filled with drawings on what looked like regular notebook paper. It dawned on me after a moment that these weren't prints or photocopies but originals. When I asked her if this was so, she said "Yes, and that's why I'd come after you if you walked away from the table with that." It was interesting to see the way she shaded each page and worked on drawing her book as she sat there during a signing. The new book looks remarkable; Lasko-Gross kept all of her quirky stylizations while clearly gaining more confidence in all aspects of her art. The strips involving her younger sister are particularly memorable.

** Paul Hornschemeier looked relieved to have THE THREE PARADOXES in print; this book had been in the works for quite some time. He's finishing up his "Life With Mr Dangerous" strip for MOME and then plans to go back to doing comics in serialized formats. This means a new volume of FORLORN FUNNIES will be his new comics vehicle.

** Dash Shaw had a photocopy of his new graphic novel. He toned down a bit of his more aggressive experimentation in favor of a more straightforward storytelling approach. He couldn't reveal the publisher but seemed hopeful that this would be a big breakthrough for him.

** Lauren Weinstein was extremely enthusiastic about GODDESS OF WAR, a project she's been working on for quite some time. Fans of her more recent work will be surprised to see sci-fi and mythological elements to the story, which involves the titular character deciding to quit the war goddess business. Weinstein noted that she's going back a bit to her art school background with the way the book will look, with Durer noted as one influence. She's also been keenly interested in researching the history of war, in terms of its technology, its inevitability and the stories of those who fought them.

** Going back to the CCS students, I asked them if their experience was akin to attending comics boot camp. One replied that given the isolation of the small Vermont town where the center is located, it's more like attending a comics monastery. The result, however, is one of extraordinary camaraderie and enthusiasm. They all spoke glowingly of the school's curriculum and especially the visiting cartoonists. In addition to doing a lecture, students also got individual time with them for portfolio reviews. It really seems as though James Sturm (founder of the school) struck at exactly the right time and right place with this school, despite the odds being against him. It will be interesting to link the students at this school with the current industry surge and see what they'll go on to accomplish. CCS is not yet fully accredited, a step that will be crucial for their ultimate success. The overall mood at MOCCA was buoyant and enthusiastic, but no single group radiated more excitement about comics than the CCS'ers.

** A number of artists felt slightly ghettoized by being on the 7th floor and truthfully it seemed to have a lot less foot traffic than the other rooms. The room was anchored by the MOCCA signings, Vertigo, Meathaus, Giant Robot and other attractions, but the logistics of the room (a single elevator leading up) prevented it from getting real traffic. I suspect that for those that didn't intend to make MOCCA the focus of their weekend, this was the room that got ignored.

** At this point, it almost goes without saying that this comics event has the most diverse set of attendees and fans, by a long shot. The gender breakdown is close to 50-50, and there was a wide array of races and even ages represented. Part of this is a result of having the show in New York, but it's also clear that the organizers did a fine job of promoting the show in many different quarters. Once folks were there, it was obvious that there was something for everyone.

Mini-Comics Round-Up: MariNaomi, Gonzalez, Jackson, Moorman, Cardini, Melaina

Rob reviews autobio confessional minis by MariNaomi and Melaina; odd genre takes by William Cardini and Ed Choy Moorman; underground-flavored minis by Jenny Gonzalez; and a lyrical take on water by Martine Workman.



ESTRUS #7, by MariNaomi. The Bay area artist specializes in confessional stories from her love life, but after the rather dramatic account that capped her previous issue, MariNaomi decided to fill this issue up with bits and pieces from various sources. Some are illustrations for various zines and anthologies, the most notable of which was a panel that was reproduced on well-known USA Today writer Whitney Matheson's blog. MariNaomi repurposed one of those assignments to hilarious effect here, adding captions to illustrations designed to make children less afraid of needles. Photos of cheerful children with captions like "I sure hope there aren't any bubbles in that syringe, or you're gonna die!" reveal her dark sense of humor.

While there was a fictional story in this issue, MariNaomi's strength is autobiography. "In Case Of Emergency" saw her ponder the notion of having to save everyone's life on a subway car in case of terrorist attack, and the ways in which she'd fall short. "Not My Celebrity Story" is a funny anecdote about her ex flitting from new crush to new crush and getting burned when his new girl turns out to be a porn star lying about her identity and intentions. The most revealing piece was "Euphemisms = Love", a one-page strip where her lover makes MariNaomi feel better about drinking too much with a well-placed euphemism. What's most interesting about this comic is the number of visual styles she uses, depending on the assignment. some are more naturalistic, others are steeped in the deep blacks that are her usual trademark, others are more spontaneous and cruder, while others still are deliberately cartoony. Her brand of wit seems to do best with a non-naturalistic style; there's something about her authorial voice that seems to "sound" best with a more fluid, cartoony style. There's a fluidity to her narrative style to begin with, so it only makes sense that her line should match it.



DATER'S DOZEN, by Melaina. Melaina lists MariNaomi as her comics mentor, and it showed in this mini about the artist dating different men. The kicker here was that it was a deliberate, chronological pursuit after a difficult break-up, and the dates came from the internet or were blind dates set up by friends. In terms of a visual approach, Melaina's work is very much unlike MariNaomi's in that she doesn't do much in terms of spotting blacks. Instead, she presents a flatter page and relies solely on her minimalist but expressive linework to tell her story.

Overall, this was a charming, breezy read. Melaina is a nurse by profession, and that sort of no-nonsense attitude found in nurses surfaced in the way she approached her dates. At the same time, she found ways of expressing her vulnerability and pain in a manner that was forthright and honest but not whiny or self-pitying. Regarding her art, she displayed a lot of cleverness in solving certain storytelling problems, with her panel composition in particular being fun to look at. In terms of her figure drawing, her self-caricature is distinctive & expressive as well as being a funny drawing. Her biggest weakness as an artist is in how she presents gesture and character interaction. There's a real stiffness there that could be aided by spotting blacks to establish mood, which would force the eye to see how characters are reacting to each other more clearly. What I liked most of all about this mini was that it was a warts 'n all examination of her dates and relationships, one in which she took herself to task as much as she did those men who didn't quite measure up. The power of her comics personification's personality combined with her ability to cleverly lay out a story will no doubt continue to lead her to create some interesting work.



TOO NEGATIVE #9-11, by Jenny Gonzalez. Gonzalez is a long-time mainstay of the minicomics world, working roughly in the tradition of underground comics. Gonzalez employs a cute, cartoony style to depict a "halfway house in hell". These minis seems to be fairly crude reproductions of strips originally printed elsewhere, and the copies don't do her work any favors in the way they chop of border edges and even dialogue at times. That's unfortunate, because her rubbery figures, over-the-top sense of humor and thinly-veiled fictive self all pack a powerful punch. While the series is ostensibly about a group of characters living in hell and either recovering or helping to treat others, it's mostly about the experience of living through mental illness. More to the point, it's about the experience of living through institutional treatment for mental illness.

As such, the Devil Dahlia character is obviously a liberating fictive construct, both for venting on this harrowing set of experiences and also as a powerful id-figure. She's quite matter-of-fact about her grip on reality, never preventing it from living her life freely and to the max. She's in a band, she freely expresses her libido, and she reaches out to others for friendships and connections. Gonzalez freely experiments with formats and story goals in these minis. One issue is nothing but dark four-panel gags. Another issue features an extended story of how Devil Dahlia wound up in an institution. Both of these issue flattered her strengths for the most part. Gonzalez's comics were less compelling when she was venting against crummy bands, whiny hipster cartoonists and other more ephemeral complaints. These tended to feel a bit dull and flat in comparison to those strips that flexed a sharper, darker sense of humor or depicted a nightmarish experience with wit and more than a little detachment. Her comics certainly deserve an extensive repackaging that flatters her expressive line to a much greater extent.



8 STORIES, by Rob Jackson. Rob Jackson is an artist with a pleasingly loopy sense of humor whose art is rapidly starting to catch up with his ambitions. His use of grey and black in depicting a city that fell in love with its own reflection nicely established the story's mood, and the way he both anthropomorphized the city and displayed the collateral damage it inflicted on its people was quite clever. Jackson's cruder stories tended to be more autobiographical, though these stories all had humorous content. "Rob Jackson's Rules of Life #6" was a brief bit of deadpan silliness that subverted its own initial conceit at the end. "Blood and White Water" amusingly told the story of his one and only attempt at white-water rafting, a story that played up his own ineptitude and humiliation to great effect. "Show Me Your Insect Hooves" was about his experience going to see his favorite band, drawn more-or-less on site. While I appreciated the spontaneity of this piece, it was so rough that it either needed to be left in the sketchbook or else redrawn.

My favorite two pieces in this comic couldn't be any more different. "My Nearest Mountain" finds him experimenting with what looks like a brush to tell a more serious story about a particular day trip. His line here is thicker and more expressive and gives the reader a real sense of the terrain. "Math-Ro-Mancer" is the sort of absurd, violent genre comic that Jackson does so well. It begins as a fantasy tale as two children seek out the Math-ro-mancer to help them multiply fractions, and the title character teaches them with the gruesome use of a corpse that induces them to vomit. Pulling back, we see that this is an educational TV show and our hero pensively wishes that he could do math without terrifying children. Jackson takes a ridiculous premise and then subverts it in the weirdest way possible. About the only thing I could have wished for in this story was a line that was either more deadpan or funnier looking. Jackson's line here falls short of the situation he creates. It serves well enough to understand the joke, but what separates Jackson from being a great humorist is that he doesn't yet have a fine enough control over his line to go the extra mile to sell his joke. Given his improvement in composing a page, he will likely soon reach a point where his line catches up to his ambition.



DARK CLOUD COMIN', by Ed Choy Moorman. This mini feels strongly influenced by ED THE HAPPY CLOWN-era Chester Brown in terms of its line, the ambiguity of its narrative and its bleak view of humanity. More specifically in terms of the art, the way Moorman uses oversized heads and straightforwardly engulfs his character in a world of nightmare logic also recalls Brown. There are a number of striking images in this comic: the mute giant who must swallow children to live and in turn (supposedly) protect a value; the way he feels haunted by this proposition and scrawls his tortured confessions on the side of a mountain; the girl/boy child Elona stopping the giant's heart from the inside; the final page where we see the interaction between Elona, a baby tadpole and the wind whistling through a tree's long branches.

This story feels like a splinter from a longer epic, pared down to a few important emotional beats. While the character of Elona and the giant maintain a certain delightful mysteriousness, the other principals are all frustratingly bland: the deceptive priest, the helpful newfound friend, the earnest but impotent mother. It felt like Moorman either gave the reader either too much information or not enough, and I am actually leaning toward the former. Moorman might have been better served removing a few pages of exposition in favor of forcing the reader to work harder to engage the many striking images in this comic. Still, it's obvious that Moorman is bursting with ideas, and each successive comic of his I read is better than the last. He's one of many comics in Minnesota who are making a name for themselves.



FROGHEAD HANGOVER, by William Cardini. Despite this comic's absurd title, it is absolutely an accurate description of its contents. Reminiscent of somewhere between Mat Brinkman and Sam Gaskin, Cardini tells a story of a video-game playing humanoid who wakes up from a bad hangover to find that a large froghead has somehow wound up in his house. It's 12-pages of well-designed silliness and a vibratory line that winds up teaching us not to play Dr. Mario with mysterious shamen, lest one find oneself at the receiving end of a powerful magic spell. Cardini doesn't bother with set-ups, explanations or other extraneous details to get to his eventual punchline; once reached, the story's over. His line is so appealing (yet idiosyncratic) to my eye that every page is a pleasure to look at. Unlike a number of artists influenced by Fort Thunder & Paper Rad, there's a great deal of clarity and confidence in his line. I could easily imagine a collection of a number of stories like this one making an impact in the world of comics.



WATER AND FALL, by Martine Workman. This is a charming series of drawings that loosely work together to form a narrative of sorts about water. Mostly, it's about water spraying people in weird and unexpected ways. At times, it acts as comics-as-poetry, creating a certain rhythm of images on the page to get across the visceral sensation of floating and/or being splashed. I particularly liked the way that Workman diligently stippled drops of water while crafting figures that were small blobs in the face of nature. This comic is a beautiful trifle; it doesn't aspire to deliver a powerful emotional statement but rather simply creates an atmosphere and details a singular and similar set of experiences. It fits quite nice into the overall aesthetic of comics & zines published by Little Otsu.

The Future's So Bright: Science Fiction Classics

Rob reviews the latest volume from the Graphic Classics line: SCIENCE FICTION CLASSICS (Eureka Productions).

Series editor Tom Pomplun is nothing if not ambitious, and each new volume from his GRAPHIC CLASSICS line looks a little better and reads a little better as he and others adapt works of classic and popular literature. Some are well-known stories, while others are obscure. Some of the stories are by authors not necessarily known for working in a specific genre, like E.M. Forster's science-fiction story in this edition. Some authors have proven difficult to adapt to comics form (like HP Lovecraft), while others worked surprisingly well (such as Mark Twain). Pomplun digs deep into the world of professional illustrators and alt-cartoonists to adapt the stories, and the results have sometimes been mixed. That's especially been true in stories that used a lot of deep shadings that looked a bit murky in the final product. Some artists (and stories) also cried out for color, and Pomplun finally published a volume that was full color in SCIENCE FICTION CLASSICS.

The results, pretty much across the board, were spectacular. It's a great looking volume, where every artist thought long and hard about their color choices and used them to change the way the reader thought about the art. Above all else, color was a quick way to establish mood and tone in this volume. The Rich Rainey/Micah Farritor adapation of HG Wells' THE WAR OF THE WORLDS was the longest and best-known piece in the book, and Farritor in particular does a fine job of conveying the harrowing nature of the story. The use of color is muted, adding depth and atmosphere. The story is as much about the way people act and interact when society breaks down as it is about an alien invasion, and Farritor gets at the claustrophobia and sheer panic felt by those experiencing the invasion firsthand. The narrative moves the story along at a nearly frenetic clip and never bogs down while still conveying the protagonist's sheer, human panic.

Pomplun was devoted to providing a wide arrange of visual approaches in this volume. From Farritor's moody naturalism we veer off into the crudely humorous art of humorist Johnny Ryan adapting a Jules Verne short story. It's an interesting choice and a clever one, given that this is a story predicting things about the far future (a thousand years) that came true fewer than 200 years later. The bright, simple colors add to the tongue-in-cheek presentation of this adaptation. On the other hand, "A Martian Odyssey" is straight-up pulp, and the ultra-slick art of George Sellas, while off-putting at first, did wind up to be a great match. The story itself is nothing special, but Sellas keeps things moving and the red tint to the story really drew the eye in. This story would have been a disaster in black & white. Antonella Caputo & Brad Teare's "The Bureau D'Echange du Maux", an adaptation of a Lord Dunsany story, gave the book a dirtier art style that was appropriate given the more supernatural nature of this entry. The story's idea was clever: a shop where one could exchange one evil for another (the men who traded wisdom for folly was especially clever).

The two standout pieces in the book were "The Disintegration Machine" (originally by Arthur Conan Doyle) and "The Machine Stops" (by Forster). While they were the best-written pieces in the book, they were also superbly illustrated. Choosing the great Roger Langridge to humorously illustrate the Doyle piece was an inspired choice, and writer Rod Lott left Langridge plenty of space to do what he does best: cleanly and smoothly tell a story with charm, humor and a touch of anarchy. Langridge's clear-line works quite well with color, making this story a pleasure to look at and read. Langridge in particular excels at selling the humor of a story through character facial expressions alone.


Ellen Lindner, one of my favorite young artists, teamed with Pomplun to adapt the Forster story. It's interesting that for a distopian story, Lindner chose to go with a lot of soft, bright colors. It gave the underground world run entirely by an all-powerful machine a cheerful but queasy feeling. Linder focuses on facial expressions above all else in her work, and her slightly thick and exaggerated line was an especially nice fit for this story of a mother detached from her son--and reality. Forster seems to be making a none-too-veiled attack on modernity and technocracy with this story, exaggerating its influence on the societyof his time for effect. Of course, the kind of social isolation suggested as a side-effect of the machine's influence is quite relevant in today's world. It's a clever character piece with an intriguing concept, and Lindner's stylish art feels well-matched with the more restrained style of Forster. Overall, this is the most successful of the GRAPHIC CLASSICS books. Color was absolutely necessary to pull this book off, and Pomplun made sure that the stories chosen would really pop out at the reader. That made every story flow organically as something to read and look at simultaneously. This is something that should happen naturally on the comics page but is often an issue when adapting a story to comics.

The Betrayal of Dreams: Yearbooks

Rob reviews the new comic by Nicholas Breutzman, Shaun Feltz and Raighne Hogan, YEARBOOKS (2D Cloud).



Nick Breutzman is an artist I've been vaguely aware of for quite some time. I know he was part of the CRITICAL CITADEL crew and he had the strongest story in the latest issue of up-and-coming anthology GOOD MINNESOTAN. On the basis of that story, I was excited to hear about his first book, YEARBOOKS. Breutzman drew it and co-wrote it (with Shaun Feltz), while Raighne Hogan did the colors. This is more of a novella than "graphic novel", given its length (40 pages) and overall concision in its storytelling. The one word that describes Breutzman's stories best is "dread". He has a way of coming up with an atmosphere of impending doom and pain that is more tense than any actual depiction of horrific deeds.

YEARBOOKS has a look and feel that seems to borrow from a number of sources, yet eventually come up with a perspective that is entirely Breutzman's. The coldness of the narrative reminds me a bit of Dan Clowes. The slightly grotesque and exaggerated depiction of the characters is not unlike Lauren Weinstein, down to the vivid (and deliberately garish) color scheme of Hogan. The dream sequences remind me of the sort of thing Dash Shaw might do. However, Breutzman's view of humanity and the way people interact in high school is far more grim and unsparing than any of those artists; if anything, he has more in common with filmmaker Todd Solondz. There's a similar distrust of the motives of all people, but especially those in authority.



The book begins with a creepy dream sequence featuring a teacher turning into a bat-creature and shooting guano all over them, as the skies outside darkened ominously. We then meet Ryan, a teen near the bottom of the brutal power hierarchy that is high school as he negotiates a particular day. He has an odd but compelling bond with his art teacher, who starts to show him some truly disturbing work from earlier in his career. He had avoided showing them to his acolyte until Ryan started to think he was a poser and started to avoid him. Ryan starts to get a hint as to what his teacher is all about when he sees the merciless eye that created these drawings from life, but it isn't until he sees his teacher with his best friend and starts to put together the nature of their relationship that the full horror of what he saw sinks in. We then cut back to the dream from the beginning, whose portentious tones have given way to all-out disaster as children are drowned in a schoolhouse thanks to actions by the teacher.

One reason why the story was so effective and chilling was that there was no resolution beyond Ryan's newfound understanding of a situation he didn't want to know anything about. Instead, we slip directly back into a nightmare sequence. Part of the horror of what's implied at the end for Ryan is the level of trust he had in this teacher and the way he identified with him. This was someone Ryan wanted to emulate, wanting to know more about his life and career. The teacher was resistant to this form of connection because he knew that he wasn't really a worthy choice as a mentor, but was desperate to create some form of validation for his career (and as a human being)--and recast a younger artist in his own image. It was telling that whenever Ryan started to non-judgementally raise certain moral issues related to the art, the teacher became defensive and even witholding. When the full picture of his teacher started to coalesce, it was as much a judgment on Ryan's own choices as it was on the teacher.

Breutzman's visuals tell the story effortlessly. His character design, body language, use of gesture and unusual placement of panels give the reader subtext and a richer understanding of the story's ultimate emotional resolution. Breutzman also raises an interesting issue vis-a-vis the relationship between an artist and their responsibilities as a moral agent in the world. Can art be evil if it's made by predators, or is this entirely in the eye of the beholder? These questions are raised but not explicitly answered, but what is unquestionably true is that the experience brought an end to what was left of Ryan's innocence. It's one thing to survive high school when you have the carrot of college waiting at the end and a new life. It's quite another when you've been told that the person you want to become is a monster--and it may be too late to stop.

Genre Minicomics: Katie Skelly, Rob Jackson, Tyler Stafford

Rob reviews three minicomics that fall very roughly within the realm of genre. Included are NURSE NURSE #4, by Katie Skelly; FOLK #2, by Tyler Stafford; and BOG WIZARDS 2 by Rob Jackson.



NURSE NURSE #4, by Katie Skelly. This was the best issue yet of this odd little psychedelic sci-fi comic. It was a meatier 22 pages, allowing the story to flow a bit more naturally. Beyond that, Skelly's line, design, and ideas have all started to converge, making this the best-looking issue of the series. Skelly simplified her designs across the board at the same time she became a more confident draftsman, and the convergence of these two events is not a coincidence. NURSE NURSE has proven to be a sink-or-swim project for her in this regard, given the crazy visuals she's starting to unleash on readers. The masked space pirate, her panda henchman, the mod pirate doctor with a mysterious hidden eye scratch the surface of the non-stop array of delightful weirdness that Skelly throws at the reader. The way Skelly tosses in throwback psychedelia such as the traditonal black & white pulsating checkerboard design adds to the series' overall style. In a sense, style and substance are pretty much interchangeable in this comic--both directly inform the other. That said, the overall master plot of the series is slowly starting to take shape, as Nurse Gemma arrives on Mars and discovers her overall destiny is a bit more dramatic than what she was expecting. There's really no other comic out there quite like NURSE NURSE, and it's exciting to see the way that Skelly has grown as an artist in the course of making it.



FOLK #2, by Tyler Stafford. This is a wandering through a cluttered environment type strip that might have been published by Highwater Books a few years back. One can identify elements from Brian Ralph, PShaw, Jim Woodring and especially Mat Brinkman here as Stafford tells very simple stories about a hunt gone horribly awry and the way a spaceship refuels after making an emergency landing. Stafford takes the route of Ralph and tells his stories directly and with no pretense; it's a strip meant to be read, not decoded. Stafford's greatest achievement with these stories is creating an incredibly natural environment, one that he's obviously in total command of. His use of gesture in his odd character design sells them as sentient, emotional beings. From the moment we're introduced to these characters and their environments, we want to see what they're going to do. That's the hallmark of an artist comfortable with their own ability as a draftsman. The only thing I found distracting in this issue was Stafford's use of different colored stocks of paper on several of the pages. It didn't add anything to the stories at hand, and felt more like a low-tech way of jazzing up the issue's presentation. Stafford should either keep it simple (which would highlight his character and environment design all the more), or else spring to get these stories printed properly.



BOG WIZARDS 2, by Rob Jackson. I reviewed some of Jackson's earlier efforts back at Sequart a couple of years ago, and it's nice to see that his line and composition have vastly improved but that his warped sense of humor remains entirely intact. This is a fantasy adventure comic in the vein of Trondheim & Sfar's DUNGEON or Jesse Reklaw's BLUEFUZZ--written for comedic effect, yet containing a perfectly strong and straightforward fantasy story as well. Like DUNGEON, there are frequent plot-altering twists and turns that are absurd yet impossible for the characters to ignore. Like BLUEFUZZ, the characters speak with a bluntly modern tone that leads to other comedic situations. The hero of the story is forced to go on a quest by a horrific mountain creature that keeps a psychic rapport with him, and throws rocks in his general direction when he starts to go off course. The hero is funny because he spends very little time thinking about the potential ramifications of his actions, until it serves his purposes because it might get him laid. The character is a bit thick and more than a little brutal, both of which lead to some casual but hilarious scenese of violence. Jackson even threw in a hand-made Bog Wizards game in with his comics, which gives the reader a real sense that he has this particular world firmly set in his mind and can't wait to get it all out. Jackson's line is still very crude, but he makes it work for him with his strikingly simple character design. Fantasy is actually an area he could regularly do quite well in, given the potential for developing all sorts of weird characters and situations with less regard to naturalism.

Pulp, EC and Anti-Nostalgia: Tales Designed to Thrizzle #5

Rob reviews the newest issue of Michael Kupperman's mind-bending humor mag, TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE #5.


Six Reasons Why Michael Kupperman Is A Genius (A bullet-pointed review of THRIZZLE #5):


1. Repetition is the key to humor. The Ben Franklin gag on the back cover, featuring 12 absurd variations on "A penny saved is a penny earned", culminates in "A penny paid to Penny is a tale of two pennies". If you're going to repeat a joke, commit to that repetition. Kupperman's sense of dada always tends to maximize the comedic impact of this technique.



2. Running with a concept. In his "Remember Them" feature, he concocts nonsensical life stories for non-existent celebrities. It's the premise of each that drives the joke, like Gerald St Vincent Mutley's promulgating the "trench lifestyle" after his World War I experiences, or "Professor Anus" removing objects from drunkard's anuses at their insistence and getting a radio show out of it, or Oscar Wilde III threatening to sue anyone who said his famous grandfather was a homosexual. Another example is "Hobo Fashions", giving the reader minute details about a haute coture fashion line that precisely mimics stereotypical hobo dress of 1933.

3. Play it straight. Kupperman very rarely employs funny drawings to emphasize humor; that is, there are no bigfoot figures, eyes popping out, plop takes, etc. Instead, the old-fashioned nature of his illustration lends a certain dryness to his strips, which makes their absurdity all the more effective. As far as the reader is concerned, these really are old pulp stories, and Kupperman's refusal to wink at the reader even as he's feeding them utter nonsense is one of his best qualities as a humorist.


4. Subvert the expected. In "Legs To Die For", Kupperman actually does use a funny drawing to drive the joke, but subverts our understanding of the image. An EC-style drawing of a man in a suit with sexy women's legs is indeed funny. An intergalactic conspiracy to create this image, complete with an Old Hag narrator at the end (who actually is in charge of the complaints section at a department store) is even funnier. Kupperman's ultimate subversion is of the standard EC horror twist ending; the payoff drawing is one of his best gags ever, melding that funny drawing (sexy women's legs in unexpected places) with subverting reader expectations.



5. Twain and Einstein. This is his new go-to pair driving his stories, replacing the more limited Snake 'n Bacon. The main joke driving their pairing is that they are drawn to look exactly alike, but Kupperman takes that minor premise and drives it to some weird places. Twain and Einstein are a pair of Archies-style scamps; they're grizzled detectives; they're sexy reporters; they're hard-luck inventors; they're superheroes. Sometimes they're several of these things in the same story. Exchange of the issue: Einstein: "I won't give up being a superhero, even if it means my marriage!" Twain: "Good thing you're neither married nor a superhero!"

6. Tales of the Intestinal Submarine. This is the single best dada gag in the book. Drawn as a 50s-style comic, the self-explanatory premise is sold with a guy eating a bowl of soup and the submarine's crew saying "Well, here we go--again!!" Even though THRIZZLE is becoming increasingly text-heavy (to great comic effect, as in "Albert Einstein's Flashback Scheme"), Kupperman's facility as a one-panel gagsmith is still his go-to skill as a humorist.

More From CCS: Dan Archer, Colleen Frakes, Jose-Luis Olivares, Jeremiah Piersol

Rob reviews some recent releases from some CCS grads and alumni. Included are WOMAN KING by Colleen Frakes, ARCHCOMIX #1 by Dan Archer, END OF EROS & POLITE FICTION #1 by Jose-Luis Olivares and THE MARVYNS: PROPER DECEPTION, by Jeremiah Piersol.

Let's look at some recent work by some graduating students and an alumnus of the Center For Cartoon Studies (CCS). The four projects reviewed couldn't be any more different from each other. Dan Archer's comic continues along the lines of the sort of polemics one might see in WORLD WAR 3 ILLUSTRATED. Jose-Luis Olivares' comics fall very much into the "mark-making" school of comics, with thick blotchy lines carrying the narrative almost exclusively. Colleen Frakes continues with her modern myth-making rooted in sex & identity, while Jeremiah Piersol pens a wild tale that owes a great deal to Gilbert Hernandez in its willingness to break boundaries as well as some of its visual flourishes.




WOMAN KING, by Colleen Frakes. Frakes' work reminds me a bit of Eleanor Davis in the way she works in myth and allegory, putting a modern spin on it. WOMAN KING is the final product of a story that's appeared in various stages in anthologies and minis, about a very young girl who is named "king" of the bears, who take up arms against their human enemies. Like Davis, there's a sensitivity in her line that borders on fragility, informing the actions and gestures of her characters. Earlier versions of the story felt overrendered, but the final output has a simplicity and delicacy to its line that put total trust in her own character designs and their ability to convey emotional information.

The delicacy of Frakes' line is usually juxtaposed against a certain savagery of subject matter. In a Frakes comic, someone is usually going to get killed or maimed, and I've always admired the rather matter-of-fact way this is delivered. Old fairy tales were rife with all sorts of mayhem (and sometimes even for instructive purposes), and Frakes recreates that feeling in her comic. The structure of this comic is one of its strengths, as we follow the girl from age 3 to 5 to 7 to 9 and so on, up to age 18. The most distinctive contrast in the book is the innocence of the girl with the ferocity of the bears, who are seeking bloody vengeance on all humans for taking their land. The book brings up questions of the difference between justice and revenge. The child is quietly miraculous, bringing down sheep from her dreams, only to look on horrified as the starving bears feast on them.



At a certain point, the bears' vengeance turns bloodier and bloodier, eclipsing the girls' ability to understand her role. For the bear leader, she's a sort of symbol or token, a way to weaken their enemies in a talismanic fashion. When the leader finally tires of war and plans to marry the girl off to a human king, he's not cognizant of the metamorphosis the girl has made: for all intents and purposes, she considers herself a bear, one of "us" and not "them". This transformation became complete after the girl met a human boy and was then inadvertently betrayed by him, completing the circuit of a cycle of violence. Frakes deliberately quotes back key dialogue and symbolic actions toward the end of the book, emphasizing the cyclical nature of revenge and how it feeds on itself, exploiting the innocent. Frakes is careful not to be heavy-handed in delivering this message, allowing the reader to tease it out (with the exception of the last image in the book, which spells it out just a bit). Frakes' work is all about how we perceive and react to the Other, set against a pleasant line that invites the reader to deeply and fully immerse themselves in the story.

ARCHCOMIX #1, by Dan Archer. With a silkscreened cover image of Richard Nixon, one could instantly tell that this was going to be an attack comic. I've always been made somewhat uneasy by comics that were both directly political and prescriptive, since it's easy for such work to fall into propaganda. Art falls by the wayside in such efforts, serving only to advance a particular rhetorical position. Such comics also tend to stop trying to tell a story and fall into lecture bullet points. I thought this was true at times in Archer's WHAT A WHOPPER, which is what made this collection of short stories such a welcome departure.

Certainly, Archer's political edge is still in full force. "Lunch On K Street" is a lecture about how lobbying is done disguised as a human interest story, and that disguise works quite nicely. "Global Meltdown" is a bit of a fantasy revenge story, but it's also a bluntly accurate comparison of Wall Street predators as deer caught in the headlights. One reason why this comic works well is that Archer varies his tone, writing glowingly positive accounts of a woman who works on a cruelty-free farm and a group of amusing gay marriage protesters. His best short strips are those where a story is laid out but the reader is given more leeway to make their own judgments. "Take Me Out To The Gun Show" is an incisive but playful bit of reportage that allows its targets to hang themselves, while "Beggars" is a memorable anecdote about how a micro-trend of beggars on a bridge (one with horrible gangrene) hints at larger problems.

The centerpiece of the issue is the first part of "The First 9/11", about the US government's direct hand in an infamous military coup in Chile in 1970. Being of Chilean descent, I was already well aware of many of the facts of this incident, yet Archer created a compelling and chilling narrative about the hows and whys of the coup. The source documents he used to spin this story were equally fascinating. What is hinted at but not fleshed out in this part of the story was the way Chile wound up as a lab for the laissez-faire economic theories of Milton Friedman, and how this eventually nearly ruined the nation.

As an artist, Archer needs to play to his strengths, which sometimes contrasts with his storytelling aims. He's not a very strong naturalistic artist, leading to some stiff figures and clumsily-designed characters. When he relaxes and allows himself to work in a slightly cartoonier style, his pages come alive. I'm not saying he needs to marry his political interests with a bigfoot style, but rather ensure that his visuals aren't working against his story. A little exaggeration and a little playfulness with his character design will relax a reader, allowing them to more fully absorb what the artist is trying to say. That's another reason his Chile strip was so effective: he quickly abandoned trying to recreate realistic renditions of Nixon and Henry Kissinger and instead created simpler caricatures that readers could easily identify and move on from. As he continues to loosen up his line, his political comics will only have a much greater impact. I hope that he continues to develop the Chile story, expand it, and redraw certain sections; it could be a potentially fascinating, explosive statement.



END OF EROS and POLITE FICTION #1, by Jose-Luis Olivares. While Olivares is certainly interested in narrative, he's also interested in the visceral qualities of each panel he's drawing. The texture of line, the visual effect of tools like zip-a-tone and the way blacks are spotted are as much on his mind as the story he's telling. This gives his stories a certain raw power and influences his subject matter. In particular, he's fascinated with the way eschatology converges into creation myth. In END OF EROS, a couple engaging in sex literally become physically merged at the same time this happens to millions of others. Taking this to its logical outcome, you have a race of huge, misshapen creates with diffuse and now-primitive wills lumbering about the world. Olivares goes crazy with his monstrous character designs, gleefully approaching this sort of Gnostic idea with a smudgy line and dialogue that devolves into primitive symbology. This is a sort of shaggy dog of a comic, as he stretches and stretches the idea out for a number of pages, but the climax is still reasonably satisfying.



POLITE FICTION starts with "Creation Myth", a story that begins with what we think is a retelling of Adam & Eve but is really about how vowels were created. It's a bit of a visual lark, cleverly designed. The more interesting stories were "Buh", a series of strips about a primitive man engaging in silent adventures and discovering things like art and magic; and "Munster", another wordless tale about a creature kept in a basement who gets out. The former is Olivares' best cartooning: cleverly designed characters, clarity in line despite its chunkiness, and funny punchlines (and sometimes not-quite-punchlines). I don't think he quite had the chops to pull off the desired effect in the latter story, as the creature emerged into a huge, ornate church and was then ordered back downstairs by the hand of god. There's enough information given to have the joke make sense, but with perhaps a lesser level of impact if we had seen something a bit more naturalistically rendered. That said, Olivares is certainly an artist who will benefit from being highly prolific. There's no question that he's imaginative and has an interesting point of view; the rest will start to coalesce as he keeps writing. He's actually only finished his first year at CCS, so we'll see what he builds up to next year.


THE MARVYNS: PROPER DECEPTION, by Jeremiah Piersol. This comic felt like a weird, alternate-world version of Gilbert Hernandez's LOVE & ROCKETS X. Set in Los Angeles, that comic was the intersection of racial tension, punk rock, the sex lives of teens, the status of being a foreigner in the US and much more. It had a huge, sprawling cast and was filled with ambiguity. THE MARVYNS takes a number of cues from Beto. First, the cast is similarly huge and quirkily memorable. Second, it concerns itself with what lies beneath the surface of polite society. Third, Piersol owes a lot to Beto's character design and rubbery line. Piersol's line is not graceful or flowing, but has a sort of fascinating ugliness to it, much like the characters in Hernandez's world. In THE MARYVNS, even the good-looking characters are ugly.

The main difference between the artists is that Piersol is less interested in contocting a balanced stew of fleshed-out characters than he is in cooking up an over-the-top social satire. This is a story in the tradition of Roger Corman: sex as a form of power relation and exploitation, freely mixed in with violence, degradation, social humiliation and every other soap opera trope in the book. When one of the main characters in the vast ensemble explains away being late to work by making up a story about her daughter trying to kill herself, one gets the sense that there are no limits here. Piersol introduces each character vignette with a fake ad that promises total transformation by way of material consumption (like a clothing ad whose tagline reads "Let's start a revolution").

Another influence here is the story (and later film) Short Cuts, one where a number of characters live out there lives and cross over briefly (and sometimes significantly) with other characters. But in THE MARVYNS, every character's story is an operatic one. So we are introduced to a man who was rejected for a loan at a bank one of the characters worked at, promising to blow himself and the bank up with dynamite strapped to his body. We meet a woman who not only has a crush on the woman from earlier in the story, we find out she's a practicing witch casting a spell to capture her heart.

It's a larger-than-life comic, and this 64-page promo version was even printed big: 9" x 12". Every vignette has a crazy twist or weird development that covers as many aspects of the seedy underside of polite society as possible. Subtle is not what Piersol's going for here, but he makes going big and loud work for him. At the moment, he doesn't quite have the chops to create as many varied character designs as he'd like; there's a certain sameness to some of the characters in the book. While his characters have great facial expressions, their body language is sometimes a bit awkward and stiff. This book really needs to flow from story to story to create that sweeping, soap opera feel, and the stiffness of some characters hinders that flow (that's especially true of the male characters in the book). One can forgive this because of the level of his ambition and cleverness, but I do wonder if the finished version of this story will be published as is or if any pages will be redrawn. Piersol is another one of those CCS grads who are utterly devoted to comics and have just finished an intense experience that has made them better cartoonists because it afforded them the time and opportunity to do nothing but draw and write. As long as he continues to refine his style and loosen up just a bit, he has the potential to do some very eye-catching and provocative stories.