Treasure Troves: Bringing Up Father and Happy Hooligan

Rob reviews the NBM "Forever Nuts" series reprints of two classic comic strip series from early in the 20th century: BRINGING UP FATHER, by George McManus; and HAPPY HOOLIGAN, by Frederick Opper.

If this decade is the golden age of comics reprints, it's only fitting that NBM (one of the oldest alt-comics publishers) should launch a series of reprints from the golden age of comic strips. With their Forever Nuts series, NBM is collecting "classic screwball strips", comics that would have a profound and lasting influence on the history of American comedy and pop culture in general. Frederick B. Opper's HAPPY HOOLIGAN was one of the earliest popular comic strips, evolving past 19th ideas of cartooning and creating formal ideas that would quickly become conventions. George McManus' BRINGING UP FATHER, which debuted a decade later, was one of the first modern strips, making a different sort of draftsmanship popular, one that would be the standard for comedic strips for fifty years. The design of both books is simple and unfussy in trying to present the strips in a fairly large format. BRINGING UP FATHER puts two strips on a page, whereas the Sunday-only HAPPY HOOLIGAN has one six-paneled strip per page. BRINGING UP FATHER also has a handy notes section, contextualizing the fashion, news and pop culture references that McManus threw into his strip.


The approaches NBM used for these comics was quite different in the collections. For BRINGING UP FATHER, they reprinted the first two years of the strip in their entirety. On the other hand, NBM printed a sampling of strips from 1902-1913 for HAPPY HOOLIGAN. From a historical standpoint, it's interesting to see the way that McManus slowly honed his craft, refining his storytelling and line over time. From a reader's standpoint, it made this collection a tough read on occasion. In part, that's because the strip had a simple premise that McManus did variations on over and over again: Jiggs was a common laborer who somehow struck it rich, but never wanted to abandon his old friends, food or drinking habits. His wife Maggie and daughter Nora, on the other hand, were inveterate social climbers who were constantly embarassed by his behavior. Jiggs inadvertently behaving badly spurred virtually every gag in the series; in later years, McManus would punch up the strip considerably by having Maggie react violently, throwing plates & rolling pins at him.


In later years, McManus would find ways to add a lot more variety to his settings and set-ups, making something funny happen or get stated in every panel rather than relying on his predictable punchlines. In the early years, McManus frequently recycled gags with little variation. There were also obviously days when deadlines for other strips led to some lazy storytelling decisions: no backgrounds, smudged & hurried lettering, awkward character placement, etc. Still, he could afford the occasional stumble due to the sturdiness of his class-clash premise and his masterful character design. Newspaper comic strips were aimed at the common working man, and so it was no surprise to see a strip mocking the mincing excesses of the upper classes become a huge hit.


When McManus took Jiggs' family on a European vacation, he opened up a new world of possibilities of gags and embarassing situations for him. The language barrier experienced in various countries fueled any number of gags, as did jokes like Jiggs being confused by the canals of Venice, repelled by lederhosen in Germany and baffled by the food in France. McManus was also able to build jokes around boat and train travel, often stretching them out for weeks. It was obvious that this nearly year-long trip abroad reinvigorated him as an artist, because some of his most beautiful and complex drawings came during this portion of the book. When McManus took the time to construct a fully-realized environment for Jiggs to bounce off of, that's when the strip really started to shine.

As the strip went on, McManus became more and more comfortable with his hero, varying his poses and gestures for the greatest comedic impact. The squatness of his character, with his gut thrusting forward and a slight stoop in his back as a result, made him funny-looking to begin with. It also gave the strip a certain propulsive quality, as a Jiggs who always looked like he was tipping forward was funny to watch move from panel to panel, drawing the reader's eye. McManus was a dutiful observer of popular trends in any number of areas, but most especially fashion. His women (including Maggie), were always adorned with the latest styles, giving his strip a certain verisimilitude to the readers of its time even as McManus was mocking fashion. Still, it wasn't until Maggie became a more worthy opponent for Jiggs that the strip truly became great. This volume was about laying out how the artist of one of the longest-running strips of all time got his start and providing a complete document of this process. At some point, I think it would be beneficial for readers to see a single greatest-hits volume of McManus' work, with material drawn from across a few decades.


This was roughly the approach used for HAPPY HOOLIGAN: a smattering of strips across time. As a reader, this approach really worked. Opper very quickly got a reader up to speed on what was happening and what might be coming up next in a story, and the variations on the strip's simple theme that were featured in this volume were quite clever. Simply put, Happy Hooligan was a hobo (wearing an iconic tomato can on his head) who tried to helpfully butt into other people's problems, only to make things much worse and draw punishment from everyone around him (especially the police). He was accompanied by his yellow-clad brother, Gloomy Gus, who first predicted doom and then usually made a point of somehow managing to profit from his brother's woes. Over this decade's worth of strips, Opper introduced their British brother Montmorency (who talked like a duke but dressed like a hobo), their three nephews who were more clones than brothers (and who obviously influenced Donald Duck's nephews), and characters from other Opper strips like Alphonse and Gaston (the ridiculously polite Frenchmen).


The difference between the two books is as much where the cartoonists themselves stood at that point in their careers. McManus was in his late 20s, coming into his own with his first big hit. This volume recorded his growing pains as he tried to keep his concept fresh and found him not always succeeding. On the other hand, Opper was 40 when he created Happy Hooligan and had been an enormously successful, popular and influential cartoonist for twenty years. He was one of the stalwarts of the legendary humor magazine Puck, where he worked in a finely detailed style after his cartooning idol, Thomas Nast. This was a cartoonist at the height of his powers who then embarked on a second act for his career as a newspaper comic strip pioneer. Indeed, Opper deliberately dumbed down his style to appeal to a wider audience, both in terms of the complexity of his line and his subject matter.


Even dumbed down, Opper proved repeatedly that he was a master. There's a fluidity in his strips that was often absent in the more illustrative early strips of the era. The panel-to-panel transitions, the way he drew action and violence, the way he layered gag on top of gag and the way he gave the reader something to look at in every panel was a direct progenitor of both classic animation and artists like Milt Gross, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder and Al Jaffee (for starters). Opper's characters had a touch of the grotesque in their design, with googly eyes, odd postures, and crazily colored clothes. This collection also had the advantage of jumping forward in time and cutting some of the repetitiveness of the premise, as Opper kept adding characters and doing different variations on his theme. One of the funniest was Opper taking months to get his characters on a boat to Europe; they were prevented week after week from even getting on the boat--and it was a big event when they did.

It must be noted that neither strip was really meant to be read in collected form, and some of the repetitiveness of the strips was intentional to bring new readers up to speed quickly. As such, I wouldn't recommend reading either one of these volumes straight through. A week's worth of strips at a time is what I would recommend a day in order to keep the reading experience fresh. That said, Opper was more skilled at taking a simple premise and finding endless ways to come up with creative variations, like a blues guitarist working with three chords and still springing forth with memorable creations. For the casual fan of comics history, I might wait for future volumes of BRINGING UP FATHER to see McManus at his best, but every fan of gag cartooning in particular needs to read HAPPY HOOLIGAN.

Sequart #6 Dean Haspiel's Action Autobio

One of the weirdest comics experiences I've ever had was reading Jack Kirby's "Street Code", an autobiographical tale of his past that was reprinted in the intriguing STREETWISE collection a few years ago. Kirby wrote this tale of growing up in a New York slum in much the same way he did any of his comics. Everything was in constant motion; even a sequence in his mother's kitchen moved us from panel to panel rather breathlessly. A scene out in the streets was not unlike some of the crazier sequences he had drawn in the 70's in places like NEW GODS or JIMMY OLSEN. Action was the only language he really understood; even in quieter Kirby scenes, the dialogue he wrote propelled the reader through the story. It would have been interesting to see what Kirby might have wound up with if he had continued with stories in the vein of "Street Code".

In Dean Haspiel, we may have a partial answer. He has an unabashed love of superheroes that is less and less unusual these days in the world of independent comics. What is unusual is that after years of struggle as a cartoonist, in recent years he's gotten more frequent gigs doing work for Marvel & DC. He did the art for the recent (and memorable) THE THING: NIGHT FALLS ON YANCY STREET series that Evan Dorkin wrote, in addition to several other one-offs. However, his biggest recent break was getting the gig of illustrating Harvey Pekar's first graphic novel from Vertigo, THE QUITTER. This has gotten a huge amount of publicity in both the comics world and the book world.

Haspiel's own work intrigues me more than his collaborations, enjoyable as they are. That's because he seems to be in a constant struggle to reconcile his expressionistic, kinetic style with his desire to tell more personal stories. His most prominent creation, Billy Dogma, is "the last romantic anti-hero". While his stories are fictional and contain a number of superhero tropes, it's clear that Haspiel is trying to get across a number of emotional truths through his characters. Conversely, his directly autobiographical stories are written Kirby-style. That is, Haspiel is always concerned with having actual action in the stories, eschewing the talking-heads/navel-gazing approach chosen by many of his peers in the same sort of stories. The result sometimes yields an interesting anecdote, but one in which the main character feels a little more distanced from the reader. Haspiel seems to hold back a little here, and doesn't quite give us the balls-out style autobio of a Denny Eichorn or the introspection of a Harvey Pekar. It's clear that he has lived an interesting life, but doesn't want to give the reader much beyond the facts.

Haspiel got his start as an assistant for Walt Simonson, Howard Chaykin and Bill Sienkiewicz. One can see echoes of each in his style. His figures are stylized and expressive like Simonson, especially in terms of facial expressions. However, he makes heavy use of Chaykinesque thick lines, blacks and shadows. And like Sienkiewicz, he's not afraid to leave reality and anatomy behind when the situation calls for it. Even if most of Dean's stories aren't noir in terms of subject matter, they still have a noir feel. This often serves to create a disjointed reading experience, as the writing and illustration sometimes clash. This clash sometimes works to Haspiel's advantage, and sometimes not.

What is clear is that one can almost feel Haspiel's struggle to reconcile his influences and fully develop his own style. It's always been clear that he was reluctant to lock himself into any particular subject matter, and this showed in his earliest works. Collaborating with long-time friend Josh Neufeld in the two-man anthology KEYHOLE, Dean threw in autobiographical stories, Billy Dogma adventures, and collaborations with other writers. Haspiel and Neufeld made an interesting duo because Dean, no matter the kind of story, always injected drama and action into it. Neufeld's use of a more "clear-line" style made his stories seem quieter and less intense than Haspiel's, even if the subject matter seemed intense. Their differing methods made for an interesting contrast and made their individual goals as artists a bit more transparent.

Let's take a look at Haspiel's most significant solo works to date. DAYDREAM LULLABIES (1999, Top Shelf, $7.95) compiles the early Billy Dogma stories. Haspiel creates a character incapable of engaging in pragmatism, who can't hold down a job but instead quests after ways of creating a world where his love of music, comix, art and especially his "career-driven girlfriend", Jane Legit are all that's important. He can't tolerate the world of consumer culture, and goes into frequent rants against it on the streets, often setting his Berzerk gun to things like "twine" or "marbles". While he does fight against absurd villains like the Human Barcode or the Undercolor Cop (who sort of resembles the Question), the more interesting parts of the series revolve around his relationship with Jane and his friends, especially Jack Flashback. Jack is a not-so-thinly-veiled version of Haspiel himself, and the reader often gets a better sense of what Haspiel is like from these brief appearances than in Haspiel's actual autobiographical stories.

As stylized as the art is in these stories, the dialogue is even crazier. Lines like "It's the furrow of yer brow and the steadiness of yer trigger finger that I must confront with caution! And therein lies the thread of authority that speaks volumes to a punk like me!" show the influence that Stan Lee-style dramatic dialogue had on him as a writer. That said, he twists them completely to his own ends. The main difficulty with these early stories is that Haspiel doesn't quite know when to rein himself in. Every panel, every line of dialogue is so intense and over-the-top that the reader finds oneself battered and exhausted. The earlier BD stories worked better in small chunks, as complements to quieter stories.

His later Billy Dogma installment, BOY IN MY POCKET (2000, Top Shelf, $2.95), showcased the work of a more assured artist. The lead story is about Billy being unable to accept a regular job ("I didn't feel...special", once again putting him through the clash of his own romantic [in every sense of the word, including superheroic and as a lover] notions and that of the mundane world...compare this to Bob Parr and THE INCREDIBLES.) and Jane's day at her job. She fantasizes about Billy in various capacities all day, as window-washer, magical telephone repairman, and chef...and the final panel reveals this may not have been a fantasy after all. In addition to fleshing out the series' lead female character a bit more, Haspiel simply tightens things up in this story. There are fewer tangents and a more direct story that still has all of the characters' charms.

The backup story in this comic, VOLCANO GIRL, is one of his most delightful creations. Simply put, it's the wordless story of a romance between a young girl who lives near a volcano and the lava man who can't touch her without burning her horribly. The sweetness of the story meshes perfectly with his action action action style. The thickness of his line that sometimes detracts from dialogue-heavy stories serves perfectly here.

The latest Billy Dogma comic is AIM TO DAZZLE (2003, Alternative Comics, $3.50). It's a mix of BD stories, autobio and "semi-auto-bio", to put it in Haspiel's terms. The first entry showcases Haspiel's ability to depict sensuality, even (and perhaps especially) with his slightly absurd, over-the-top characters. The next couple of entries give Billy's takes on smoking and fashion; both are amusing and suitably short. Dean then checks in with a one-page autobio story with an agonizing ending; it's as raw as anything he's written. The downbeat nature of this comic continues with "Pinata", about an abused kid literally beating the stuffing out of his favorite doll, then looking on with horror at what he's done. There's a plainness and simplicity in this story that one doesn't normally see in Haspiel's works, but the message is clear to the point that it's too obvious.
The last entry is more of an old-school BD story, a crazy take on the Y2K problem that Dean did in 1999. While not as interesting as some of the other recent BD sagas, it does show a more assured art style even as it goes through its weird and convoluted plot, with a typically romantic ending. It's interesting to compare it to the more recent stories, because Haspiel abandoned most of the action tropes of his series and found other ways to get to the heart of his characters. This gets to the core of Billy Dogma: it's where Haspiel expounds on his emotions and his deepest-held beliefs. Billy isn't precisely Dean, but is certainly an aspect of him, in much the same way that Jack Flashback and other characters are other facets. Jane is clearly both an idealized figure and clearly modeled from his own life.

That leads us to his autobiographical collection, OPPOSABLE THUMBS (2001, Alternative Comics, $4.95). The first story, "Proud Flesh", gives us an account of how he received all of his various physical scars. While he gives us the facts regarding his former daredevil lifestyle (he shattered his knee and ankle sliding off the roof of a library), he only alludes to his recent broken heart. "Shit-Fuck-Piss-Karate" is perhaps my favorite Haspiel story to date, dealing in a hilarious yet matter-of-fact manner with his one-month excursion into the world of crack cocaine. The last line sums it up aptly: " I quit smoking crack the very next day, only to discover...bourbon!" This is after a public men's bathroom fight over who would get to eat a piece of fruit that was a homemade crack pipe!

The rest of the book is less about Dean per se, and rather it's about the people he lived with, loved or observed. Watching an AIDS-afflicted fellow tenant fall down stairs twisted a painting he was doing for his girlfriend; he and a roommate tried to one-up the other in being disgusting; his sense of mortality comes to play in dealing with an elderly fellow tenant; he is freaked out at an impromptu sex party.

The stories are interesting, but never draw the reader fully into the story. Comparisons to Eichorn and Pekar (the opposite ends of autobio storytelling styles) are again instructive. Eichorn is not especially introspective in his tales of fights, sex, drugs and rock 'n roll, but he holds back nothing. His straight-ahead style engages the reader immediately, no matter how outrageous his antics. Pekar is all introspection, treating his mundane quotidian existence as something worthy of analysis and preservation. His comics are less about his surroundings and even the people in his life and more about the way he observes the world. Haspiel's most successful autobio story, "Shit-Fuck-Piss-Karate" works because he doesn't hold back and doesn't even pretend to put his actions in any kind of context. He demands that the reader take it or leave it as it is. His difficulties come when he tries to do something more introspective, but doesn't go as far as he needs to in order to get across the truth of his observations. His Billy Dogma stories show that he has a lot to say about the world, but he hasn't yet figured out a way to do it autobiographically.

A reason why this might be lies in his artistic choices as a penciller. Even in his most stylized work, there's a certain slickness in it, the sort of slickness common in superhero work. Even though his style doesn't resemble standard superhero-style art, he still has a tendency to add that layer of polish to his art--and this adds a layer of unreality to his autobio stories.

This observation became crystalized when I saw some sketches that he put up on his website. Despite being rougher-looking than his finished artwork, they had an energy and vitality missing from his autobio work. And to put it in McCloudian terms, it's easier for a reader to engage and identify with a more iconic, sketchier character than a more "realistic"-looking one.

Bringing the discussion full circle, it seems as though Haspiel has brought some of these lessons to bear in THE QUITTER. While Pekar tends to have a lot of input in page layout when collaborating with an artist, Haspiel 's style was a bit different here regardless of Pekar. He relied a lot less on shadow, thinned up his line a bit and in general used a looser set of figures than he usually would. The result was a warmth in storytelling that still employed his skills in depicting action and movement.

What will be interesting to see is how this experience affects his own stories. I think Haspiel has the potential to carve out a unique niche as an autobiographical artist. One story I didn't mention in this article was his submission for the 9/11 anthology, which depicts in straight-ahead fashion the things he experienced that day. The raw, unguarded emotion on the page is almost disturbing to the reader, and has an immediacy lacking in much of his other work. It was a blend of introspection and immediacy, and while it still had a certain slickness, it seemed as though it was drawn quickly, almost frantically. Haspiel has a lot to say in an autobiographical style, and may well be close to finding out the best way in which to say it.

Race, Rage & Fatherhood: Stuffed

Rob reviews the new book written by Glenn Eichler and drawn by Nick Bertozzi, STUFFED (First Second).

STUFFED is an interesting book that suffers from a couple of high concepts that didn't quite mesh. The first involves race: issues of assimilation, guilt and the ways in which we dance around both. The second involves fatherhood: in particular, the disconnect between fathers and their children and the ways in which our parents embarrass us. This book plays both ideas for laughs, dipping into humor of discomfort and humiliation. The reason why the combination of these concepts doesn't work is because Eichler doesn't take them far enough.

The basics of the plot involve a mild-mannered man named Tim estranged from his father who inherits a "museum" from his father upon his death. It's a museum of con-man curiousities, including "The Savage"--a stuffed & mounted African wearing ridiculous "jungle" clothing and holding what might be the shaft of a spear. It's a fully upright reminder of exploitation, colonialism and dehumanization. Tim tries to give it to museums and eventually is pointed to a PhD in anthropology who happens to be an African-American man named Howard, trying his best to assimilate in a mostly white environment. Toting the statue around, trying to get various countries to take the statue and the sheer spectacle of the "savage" are all fodder for any number of sight gags. Things take an extra turn for the wacky when Tim's hippy brother is summoned back to town, who then gets into all sorts of mischief. In the end, the "savage" is repatriated, the brothers come to terms with the awfulness of their father, and Howard learns to stand up for himself a bit more amongst his peers.

The big problem with the book is that it doesn't go far enough in any direction. As a character piece, it's all too shallow, predictable and cliched. The character of the hippy brother is especially eye-rolling as he changes his name from one wacky cliche to the next ("Red wolf", then "Free"), and juxtaposing him against his tight-ass brother brings about expected results. Tim's anger buttons are pushed and he simply snaps. Eichler never lets that anger get out of control or even change relationships fundamentally, giving them all a happy ending that seems as pat as it is predictable. The wise and long-suffering wives of Tim and Howard felt like something out of a screenwriter's go-to cliche' bag than fully-developed characters, especially in the scene when they were drinking together and exchanging bon mots.

Thin characterization could have been forgiven if Eichler had gone the Ishmael Reed route and pushed the envelope on the discussion of race. Books like JAPANESE BY SPRING or MUMBO JUMBO are how-to guides on provocation, exposing our cultural guilt, self-hatred and fear and turning it into the most uncomfortable but hilarious of scenarios. The image of the "savage" in Harlem and the discomfort that evoked was one of the funnier scenes from this book, but it seemed as though Eichler didn't want to be too confrontational. He wanted us to like all of the protagonists despite their flaws (though he had no problem playing up the negative aspects of the characters we weren't supposed to like to the hilt), and that watered down the more dangerous aspects of the book that focused on race. The only character who pushed any kind of racial buttons was the hippy, someone clearly depicted as naive and buffoonish. So we're left with humor without enough bite attached to characters who didn't have enough depth.

Through it all, Nick Bertozzi did his best to bring the story to life. He expertly carried the few scenes that depended on social discomfort for their punchlines and was especially adept at making the characters expressive. The way he drew Tim in particular was quite clever, superimposing his father's face on him when he finally blew his top. There were other flourishes, like an exterior shot of the roof of the house coming off when his daughter screamed upon seeing the stuffed man.

There were some funny images and ideas in this book, but they felt watered down and padded in a book-length story. Eichler is a writer known for developing the cartoon DARIA and writing for the Colbert Report, and this book felt like trying to develop a topic discussed in THE W0RD into a full-length story. It also felt like a screenplay try-out, given the plot structure, easily pigeonholed characters and feel-good ending. As genre fiction, it felt flat. As satire, the points it made were all too obvious. It made have made a nice short story or sketch, especially if they focused on the more challenging aspects of the story. Any charm or bite the story had seemed to come more from Bertozzi's pencil than Eichler's word processor.

Classics Remixed: Masterpiece Comics

Rob reviews the long-awaited collection of R.Sikoryak lit/comics mash-ups, MASTERPIECE COMICS (Drawn & Quarterly).

R.Sikoryak has long been a highlight of the many anthologies he's appeared in over the years, from RAW to DRAWN & QUARTERLY to HOTWIRE to MONKEYSUIT. He's perhaps the most notable chameleon in comics, a master mimic who can draw in any style or genre. His longtime interest has been comics' periodic attempts at adapting classic literature. Most of those attempts have been fascinatingly horrible, as anyone who's ever read most issues of CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED (or anyone who's ever attended one of Sikoryak's slide-show lectures) can tell you. Sikoryak's shtick is to adapt works of literature mashed up with classic comics. What's most interesting about the choices he makes is that he strives to match up themes from both worlds of art, often in surprising ways. It's a stunning collision of so-called "high" and "low" art, done with an affectionate nod and wink to both.

The results are both hilarious on their very face and deadly serious in how devoted Sikoryak is in depicting details. He strives to match not only the lines of the artists he's parodying, but the way they were inked, colored and lettered. The book is designed as though it was a collection of issues of CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED, down to the covers, cheesy ads ("Draw Homer", "Lit" [instead of Grit], etc) . It's separated into five sections--two sections of short stories and three longer stories. Probably the crown jewel of this collection is "Dostoyevsky Comics", a mash-up of "Batman" and "Crime and Punishment". Sikoryak draws a clear line between Batman as loner vigilante and Raskol as a man above the law, meting out justice to someone who richly deserves it. Rethinking Raskol as Bruce Wayne, having his chest symbol as the head of an axe instead of a bat, drawing the pawnbroker as the Joker, the inspector as Commissioner Gordon, etc. inspires both laughs as to the cleverness of his design and a real sense of connection between the two works. Sikoryak's aping of Dick Sprang-era Batman gives it a remarkable silver age feel. Genre comics have extremely simple structures and are mostly designed for children, which means that they have to have a clear set of themes and character types that immediately resonate. These characters aren't built for deeper story ideas, however, which is why using them as a framework for richer stories is such an incredibly clever idea.

In some instances, laying down a work of literature into a comics template made the original work more palatable. I've always thought that the "The Scarlet Letter" was a glorified bit of soap opera, albeit one designed to expose hypocrisy. The purple of that prose was made much more palatable in "Little Pearl", a mash-up of that book and Little Lulu. Reimagining Pearl, the product of adultery, as the scamp Little Lulu and Tubby as the meddling Roger ("a short, ugly husband") was another stroke of genius. Like in the other entries, Sikoryak makes sure to emphasize the story elements that translated best to comics action, playing up the most delightfully sordid elements of the story. Sikoryak's mastery of the fluid, cartoony John Stanley line may have been his single best imitation in the entire book. He manages to keep the action of the story consistent with a Little Lulu adventure as best as he can, down to Tubby/Roger being foiled at the end.


In "The Crypt Of Bronte", Sikoryak illustrates the ways in which Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" used a number of the same stock shock twists as 1950s EC horror comics, with characters meeting horrible ends in ironic ways. Beyond the inspired decision to conflate the housekeeper as the Crypt-Keeper as a narrative device, Sikoryak cleverly managed to highlight the most lurid (and scandalous, for the time) elements of the story: fights, overwrought emoting, forbidden romance, long-sought revenge and unexpected reversals of fortune. What better way to tell such an overcooked story than in the style of Jack Davis, one of the most expressive of the EC stable of artists? This story does tend to get a bit bogged down in the sheer Gothic density of detail from Bronte (and at 15 pages, it's the longest story in the book) and at a certain point the uncanny evocation of EC comics is no longer enough to prevent a bit of tediousness from creeping in. It was no easy task boiling down the story to its essential elements, and Sikoryak actually seemed to score more direct hits with the shorter stories.


In the "Classics On Parade" section, "Blonde Eve" is one of the funnier entries in the book, combining Blondie and the story of Adam & Eve from the Bible. The connections are numerous: the blonde temptress, the obsession with food (seeing the apples piled up on Dagwood/Adam's arms was especially amusing), the wrath of god/Mr Dithers, etc. "Inferno Joe", which brings together the Bazooka Joe strips and Dante's "Inferno", boils down that book's essence and turns
it into a series of bubblegum wrapper gags. Each strip features Joe visiting another circle of hell, but Sikoryak manages to tie the gags into the moral lesson regarding the sinners therein. "Mephistofield" is a hilarious pastiche of Marlowe's "Dr Faustus" and Garfield, with the title cat playing the seemingly-subservient but ever acidic demon with aplomb. Casting Jon, the loser who can never really get over, as the doomed Faustus was yet another pitch-perfect choice on Sikoryak's part.

In some ways, Sikoryak seems most at home distilling modern works of literature. "Little Dori In Pictureland" is one of the most technically dazzling achievements in the book, nailing the classic Winsor McKay style while retelling Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray". Sikoryak draws the obvious connection between Dorian Gray's living a fantasy life and Little Nemo's dream life, with both reflecting a certain turn-of-the-20th-century aesthetic. "Good Ol' Gregor Brown" draws another clear line between the eternal loser Charlie Brown and Kafka's doomed Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of "The Metamorphosis". What's especially trenchant about this strip is seeing Snoopy as a maid at the end, seeing the dead coackroach and cheerily noting "Happiness is a pest-free home". It's one thing to connect the misery of the two characters; it's another to use the occasional sentimentality of Peanuts to highlight just how grim Kafka's story was. "Action Camus" cleverly told the story of "The Stranger" through a series of old Action Comics covers from the 1950s. The Stranger and Superman are characters are both above morality in certain respects and men of action--though the choices each made certainly put them in different camps.

MASTERPIECE COMICS is a series of parodies that strives for something more than just surface recognition on the part of the reader. Those surface qualities still make up the bulk of the jokes and the appeal of these comics, as the reader will marvel at Sikoryak's ability to mimic any style successfully. However, every aspect of the pastiche has obviously been carefully thought through, even if it's just one or two elements (like Beavis and Butthead as the stars of "Waiting To Go", or Ziggy the innocent in a tumultuous world playing Candide) that are emphasized. This series of sight gags actually helps crystalize the central themes of these works of art, even as Sikoryak by design strips away dialogue and cuts away huge swaths of story. Still, Sikoryak surpasses old-school attempts at adapting classic literature into comics by recontextualizing it in the form of parody while still getting across the most salient details of the stories. It's a comic to marvel at and delight in as both a technical and thematic achievement, even if that enjoyment at times is more of craft than art.

Tremors: Talking Lines

Rob reviews the collection of short works by R.O. Blechman, TALKING LINES (Drawn & Quarterly).

R.O. Blechman is a perfect example of the ways in which a cartoonist with a great eye and something to say can succeed without being a great draftsman. As long as an artist is aware of their own limitations and understands how to work within them, there's nothing they can't express. Blechman has been cartooning and providing illustrations for over fifty years, and he's made his scratchy, trembling, minimalist line his trademark. The way he leaves gaps in his lines gives his drawings a vibratory quality, which isn't surprising given his background in animation. That feeling as though the lines on the page are moving is quite compelling, and fuels his often acidic satire. Blechman's social commentary reminds me a bit of a slightly more removed and restrained Jules Feiffer, another scratchy-line social/political cartoonist.. He's no less direct or unsparing in his opinions, but Blechman's subject matter is more eclectic and slightly less tied to a particular time or place. He's also a remarkable wit with an impeccable sense of timing and rhythm. That rhythm proves to be the real underpinning of his strips. His line simply falls into place around the whirring motion of his panel-to-panel and page-to-page transitions, like the orbit of electrons around a nucleus forming an atom. Comparing him again to Feiffer, the latter's work tended to focus in on several primary concerns, like relationships as power struggles. Unlike Feiffer, who for decades did a weekly strip for the Village Voice, Blechman's cartooning work has been far more sporadic.



TALKING LINES not only collects a number of his shorter works, it also features commentary on each piece by the artist himself. There are strips from his HUMBUG days which are slightly more labored than his later work, both in terms of line and punchline. 1964's "Contamination" is a vicious Cold War-era comic about a scientist who accidentally discovers a formula for the ultimate weapon and has a nervous breakdown while everyone else treats him like a hero. Blechman is adept at piling on layer after sardonic layer in his stories, like "The Emperor's New Armor", wherein hucksters convince the emperor that his new, heavy armor that they sold him was very light--which makes him armor up everything, until he accidentally kills his son. Blechman noted that this story was inspired by the build-up in Viet Nam in the 60s, alluding to the "domino theory" regarding communist countries.


"The Last Stand" is another example of Blechman piling on, as an elderly woman is killed when a corporation demolished her building with her in it, only to find her haunting them. The tone is acidic yet playful, as Blechman repeatedly makes his point but still manages to use restraint while doing so. Even Blechman's attempt at a regular comic strip, Magicat, immediately turns into the titular character cynically going for a money grab at the expense of his cockroach sidekick when he learns the roach is the key for turning things into gold. The debate the two of them have, with the cat becoming ever more amoral, is both hilarious and unsettling, since the cat's logic becomes increasingly difficult to argue even as it becomes more monstrous. This was an especially lively and playful strip as Blechman seemed to relish drawing these particular characters and their exaggerated attributes.


So many of these strips feature characters having perfectly reasonable debates about horrible subjects. "Three Cheers For the Red, White and Blue (But 1350 For The Yellow)" features a couple of yellow ribbon salesman getting a once-in-a-lifetime order for the ribbons supporting the troops. They can't find anyone who has that much yellow ribbon, and after briefly trying to pass off orange ribbon for yellow, they call a place in Iraq for the order...but it's been bombed to smithereens.

Blechman's foursome of stories meditating on famous figures were some of the best in the collection. "Ars Brevis" imagines a world where Shakespeare took a job as a copywriter to pay the bills instead of sticking to his art, a lifetime of inspiration going unvented. "Shakespeare's Sister" picks up an idea from Virginia Woolf of an imaginary female sibling for the Bard, who was denied the schooling and opportunities her brother received. She decides to leave her husband and children to join her brother in becoming a playwright, reconsiders, and kills herself (drowning, just like Woolf) to "quench the fire"...an act that naturally inspires her brother. Both of these stories are meditations on the fragility of art as a profession, how making a choice out of convenience or need can permanently shut doors. In both stories, the need to create is always present, bubbling under like lava about to spew from a volcano.


"Changes" finds 74-year old Goethe despairing over seeing an old man in the mirror only to realize it was himself (an idea that Blechman would later reuse on himself) and goes to a spa for "a change". He falls in love with a 17-year-old girl and proposes marriage, but even though her family says "no", the mere reawakening of his sexual appetite inspired a great poem...not that he would admit it to himself. Finally, "Sacrifice" was a heart-rendering piece about Virginia Woolf's husband Leonard. He lived a life of serving others and not meeting his own emotional needs, up to and including nurturing his brilliant but emotionally fragile wife, with her output as an artist giving him the satisfaction that he could never receive physically from their relationship. What goes unmentioned is that despite his constant care, she still took her own life, though it clearly pained her to hurt her husband. The latter story focused not on the tragedy of Woolf's eventual death, but rather the triumph of her having the chance to create art at all. This story in some respects recapitulates this entire collection of strips; Blechman may not have always been creating, but he had the opportunity to do so.


The longest entry in the book is "Georgie", a shattering story that combines his effortless and snappy dialogue, glib hucksters trying to con honest people, and a deeply personal sense of tragedy. It's about an older couple with a dog named Georgie who miraculously have a child who becomes the light of their life. When the child dies (perhaps due to a dirty safety pin, which is what the mother thinks), the mother deliberately exposes herself to the elements and dies of pneumonia. The father takes refuge in his dog (amusingly teaching him how to sit and eat at the table like a person), until his brother (thinking him crazy) gets the dog taken away. The final scene, of a surprising reunion, mutes much of the heartache from earlier in the story but doesn't remove it entirely. The scene where the mother dances in the rain because it feels like "nice icy liquid pins" is devastating because it's obvious that she's already checked out. Even Blechman's most sardonic strips have a human core, usually an honest and forthright person being victimized by "progress", corporations in the form of shameless and exploitative salesmen, or the government. There's a very plain and upright indignancy to be found in Blechman's work in that basic, humane principles are so very often trampled with rationalizations, a situation that the artist simply can't ignore. He may not have motivated himself to do as much cartooning as he might have liked in his career, but when he did set pen to page, the results were never anything less than entertaining and were quite frequently profound.

Sequart #18: Other Media

A few years back, the Comics Journal published a list of the top 100 english-language comics of the 20th century. That list produced a lot of controversy because a number of the works included didn't exactly conform to what the average person thought of as comics. That meant material like editorial cartoons, sketchbooks, caricatures, woodcut books, and single-panel magazine cartoons. Attempts at analyzing and narrowing comics' scope like in Scott McCloud's UNDERSTANDING COMICS often have the side effect of unnecessarily restricting what the art form can be. For example, McCloud insists that comics must have more than one panel because by his definition, comics show the passage of time. Comics writer RC Harvey insists that its core lies in the the combination of words and images; if it doesn't have both, it's not comics. One of my favorite cartoonists, Kurt Wolfgang, wrote a send-up of this notion in a story called "What The Fuck Is A Mini-Comic?" Playing a McCloud-type character, he tries to narrow down exactly what makes up a mini, only to be shouted down by his audience, poking holes in his theory. He winds up with this definition: "You know 'em when you see 'em!"

I think this point can be made about comics in general. One can tell the difference between a comic of some kind, versus say, an illustrated book or a painting that mixes words and pictures. One can just understand it intuitively, even when it's not clearly a narrative (like Al Hirschfeld's caricatures). There are certainly works that blur the line between comics and painting, or comics and illustration, or comics and books. But why not make the tent broad? That more open approach allows for idiosyncratic works to be considered as comics, which only enriches our understanding of the art. Furthermore, the tradition of comics being a part of other media is a long one, and it's intriguing to see how this tradition has evolved.

I've recently received three completely different publications. One is an aggressively eclectic magazine called MSTRMND which both contains comics and is clearly influenced by a comics aesthetic. Another is a free magazine by a new publisher called COMICS COMICS, which celebrates and critiques comics both past and present. The last is an issue of BIG ORBIT COMICS, focusing on the author's career as an animator. The strips and jokes therein are unapologetically specific to his trade, which gives them an odd charm for an outsider. The aesthetics particular to each of the three publications is not necessarily mine, but they're so earnest and relentless in presenting their own point of view that they're compelling reads (in differing degrees) in their own ways.

Let's look at the first two issues of mstrmnd edited by Kevin McLeod and published out of New York. It doesn't take long to figure out that this magazine is about design that pushes the envelope. While the content is meaty and thought-provoking, it's clear that the magazine's look is its most important aspect. My favorite piece was a subway map that cleverly combined subway lines from several major world cities into one map that was both beautiful to look at and made a weird kind of sense. What I find particularly compelling about MSTRMND is that it's as concerned with dissecting the past as it is in talking about the future. You might find an article about a proposed Museum of American Slavery on the national mall in Washington, DC after a detailed exegesis of the Matrix trilogy; or an excerpt from an old HM Stanley book deconstructed by a modern writer after a report on waste tornadoes of the Pacific. The magazine is concerned with politics, ecology, role playing, philosophy and beauty.

While it's unpredictable in terms of content, certain patterns do emerge. The second issue is less linear than the first, with more of a visual than textual focus. That new/old tension is still in evidence, with a photo essay on the 1936 Berlin Olympics and another photo essay about a Halloween party in Detroit. Really, the primary common thread between the two issues is a continuing comic strip called "Wooden Mirror". Written by the editor, the story is a weird mix of genre styles, as a young caucasian boy, aggressive asian young woman, and older African-American man are on a sort of quest to find and use a wooden mirror. There's no exposition, just characters dropped in the middle of a violent situation. Fake ads that begin the episodes (including one for Hanso swords) add to the sense that the stories are a recapitulation and remix of action genres in general. What's disappointing about the stories is that the visuals are pedestrian and conservative, compared to both the ideas in the story and the magazine in general. In MSTRMND, the visuals are bold and imaginative, which makes the comic look almost quaint, like the visuals from the Stanley stories he reprints. I'm not sure if this is a deliberate approach, but the look of the comics doesn't fit in with the rest of the publication. Regardless, the fact that you can't pin the publication down makes it especially compelling to re-read, and I find something new that catches my eye each time.

It'll be interesting to see how this serial evolves as the magazine continues to mutate in other directions. "Conservative" is certainly something you can't accuse COMICS COMICS of being. It's spearheaded by Picturebox's publisher Dan Nadel, also known as the force behind the art/comics publication the Ganzfeld. Picturebox has published a book called BJ AND DA DOGS by Paper Rad, as well as ART OUT OF TIME: UNKNOWN VISIONARY CARTOONISTS. Nadel is interested in work on the margins of comics, often of the outsider artist variety. Paper Rad (consisting of Jessica Ciocci and the infinitely strange work of Ben Jones) is a perfect example of this aesthetic. Their work leaves few on the fence: some consider it brilliant, hilarious and totally original, while others are baffled at its appeal. While I tend to be in the latter camp, I have respect for the total commitment to their own individual vision and aesthetic that Paper Rad evinces. COMICS COMICS is a beautiful display of Nadel's other interest: discussing these sort of comics. Paper Rad starts things off with an essay written in the style of a George W Bush speech that winds up declaring Scott McCloud and Matt Madden as enemies of true comics experimentation. Legendary cartoonist Mark Newgarden kicks in a few comics of his own, and there are profiles of Ciocci, Matthew Thurber and Wally Wood.

This fascination with the margins of not just today's comics but of the whole of comics' history is what makes this such a stimulating read. The Wood essay discusses the specifics of his aesthetic (which Nadel dubs the Frozen Moments School of Comics) and compares it to his contemporary, Ogden Whitney. While both are critiqued, often harshly, the evaluation is fair and Nadel's observations are incisive and lead to new revelations about these artists. The rest of this issue is taken up with reviews. The most interesting is by the co-editor of COMICS COMICS, Timothy Hodler. He reviews THE DICK AYERS STORY, a 3-volume comics autobiography of an artist active since the Golden Age. I read these when they came out last year and was fascinated by them. Ayers was known for being able to draw just about anything but was never a writer, and it showed in this attempt to write about himself. But he holds little back in his narrative (even if it doesn't make sense at times or repeats stories), and Hodler picks up on what made it such a unique work. Moreover, he correctly notes that few people reviewed or even noticed it. The fact that COMICS COMICS exists to fill this gap is welcome indeed.

The other reviews range from new comics to Golden Age reprints. It's mostly concerned with books the authors find personally compelling (while taking occasional shots at others, like PERSEPOLIS' Marjane Satrapi). While I didn't necessarily agree with much of what was written in this publication, there's nothing else like it out there. It's a wonderful projection of the force of will of its participants and their sheer love of comics. That can only be a good thing, and I can't wait to see what happens next.

One thing that interests me are comics artists with other creative dayjobs. In particular, there seems to be a big wave at the moment of animators who also draw comics. Mike Fisher is one such artist. While the general concerns in his animation revolve around science-fiction tropes, BIG ORBIT COMICS #8 is about animation itself. Through his 3-D Pete character, he talks about trying to find time to do his own independent animation, dealing with criticism, struggling with computer manuals, making deadlines for animation festivals, using the newest tricks and techniques (sometimes at the expense of his narratives) in animation, showing his cartoons in front of near-empty rooms, etc. It reminds me a bit of Justin Green's SIGN GAME strips: it's aimed at a sympathetic and knowledgable audience and has enough wit and verve to make it amusing for a general audience. While I must admit that I don't have much interest in his actual animation, this little humorous behind-the-scenes look at his life and career (filtered carefully through a fictional character) was a pleasant read. Like in the other works discussed above, the sheer enthusiasm Fisher has for his craft burst through the pages and forces attention from the reader.

As a writer and critic who usually selects the material I choose to write about, it was a welcome and interesting challenge to immerse myself in the different points of view from each of these works. In particular, it was exciting to see works that differed not just in subject matter but in form from what I usually discuss. Independent comics cover a lot of territory, and that territory just continues to expand.

Minicomics Round-Up: Smith, Cagle, Mitchell, Stafford, Pasty Anthology, Volk, Candy Or Medicine, McAndrew

Time to take a look at the latest batch of minicomics that have come to my attention. Included are minis by Bill Volk, Phil McAndrew, Susie Cagle, Brian John Mitchell, Ryan Cecil Smith and Tyler Stafford, as well as anthologies Candy or Medicine and the Pasty Anthology.

TWO EYES OF THE BEAUTIFUL and UN PETIT CARNET DE VOYAGE II, by Ryan Cecil Smith. Smith is the first of the Closed Caption Comics group that I've had a chance to read, and I was impressed by both of these minis. TWO EYES OF THE BEAUTIFUL is an adaptation of Umezuo Kazuo's "Blood Baptism", billed as "a grotesque horror manga". It's an over-the-top, jam-packed story about an actress with a disfiguring facial disease and a mysterious doctor who compels her to do all sorts of horrible things for a potential cure. Smith throws the kitchen sink at the reader visually, with zip-a-tone, photorealist panels, and heavily rounded Tezuka-like figures. The highlight for me was a witty four-page sequence where the actress is trying to tie up an innocent girl for hideous purposes--with nothing but zip-a-tone and sound effects representing the dark room. Smith cleverly captures the crazed nature of J-horror, mixing warped humor and genuinely disturbing images.

UN PETIT CARNET DE VOYAGE is a travelogue in the tradition of French comics, showing off Smith's lush brushwork. He is currently teaching english in Japan, and so made the trip from Osaka to Hiroshima, ostensibly for a sake festival. He notes with some delight that he feels like he's learning to draw trees, and they are indeed some of the most striking images in this minicomic. It's interesting seeing him mix Japanese imagery (especially with regards to trees and buildings) with a more French style of line with regard to his figures. This is one of the most beautiful minicomic sketchbooks I've ever seen, and I only wish it was printed bigger. It's obvious that Smith has tremendous tools as an artist, and I'll be eager to see how his time in Japan continues to influence his work.



THIS AND THAT #3, ARE YOU MAN ENOUGH?, THE SECRET THOUGHTS OF HAROLD LAWRENCE WINDCRAMPE, and PEARLY WHITES, by Phil McAndrew. McAndrew is all about character and caricature in these comics. SECRET THOUGHTS... is a Jules Feifferesque mini about an ineffectual guy who whines about not having a girlfriend and then spies a perfect candidate...only to lose her to an alpha male. It's nicely drawn but with a predictable ending, though he did get off a great joke in the middle ("Lola is too picky" after rattling off a capricious list of reasons why all the girls he knew weren't good enough for him). THIS AND THAT sees the artist collecting a variety of sketches, gags, and short stories in a variety of styles. He seems most comfortable drawing slightly grotesque caricatures with lots of angles, bushy eyebrows, stubbly facial hair and bulbous noses.

Speaking of facial hair, ARE YOU MAN ENOUGH? was the funniest of these entries. He combined his scratchy line, pointy noses and exaggerated character design with an excellent gag: a wimpy suitor impressing his girl's hyper-masculine father with an "awesome drum solo" so powerful that the father's moustache flies off of his lip and on to the suitor. He rides away with his lover with a motorcycle summoned by his moustache. PEARLY WHITES features another grotesque, scribbly, hyperemotional figure who regrets a lost love. McAndrew backs up a good final gag involving a creature sending him back in time in exchange for his teeth with a series of funny drawings. McAndrew is leaning heavily on his chops at the moment and still seems to be finding his way with regard to story structure. Of course, his control over his line is pretty remarkable at this stage. With his skills, it's likely that he will improve from story to story, as he continues to develop and refine his style and story interests.



O WOE! and DOMESDAY by Bill Volk. The first effort I read from this Center for Cartoon Studies student was a 24-hour comic (THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM IS DECADENT AND DEPRAVED). While that mini was rough in presentation, one could see a witty voice emerging. O WOE! is an account of the creation myth and apocalypse of a civilization that rose out of the remains of a giant space sperm. It's a clever idea with some funny and even disturbing bits (like a society that fell because of "doubling", wherein the rich made duplicates of all their possessions, up to and including cities--only to leave them unused), but Volk's chops weren't quite up to making their society as vivid as it needed to be. I'd love to see Volk redraw this comic at some point.

On the other hand, DOMESDAY is a comic that plays to Volk's strengths as an artist: character design, gesture and exaggeration. The story's about William the Conqueror's rule over England, and follows a young man following the king's decree of counting the possessions of every man in the country. The young man, of Norman descent, is terrified of the savage English, and Volk gets a lot of mileage out of the young man fearing for his life and begging god for mercy. The superdeformed looking character design is clever, giving this historical account a certain playfulness. Historical fiction, especially of an obscure nature, may well be Volk's forte, and I'll be interested in seeing how he continues to develop.



FOLK #3 by Tyler Stafford. This is a 24-hour comic by this intriguing cartoonist who works in the Brian Ralph/Mat Brinkman tradition. The best thing about the comic, other than a surprisingly well-defined plot, is the delightfully loony character design. The story follows an escaped prisoner on an alien world who is captured after breaking out and returned to his cell. Stafford then takes the story in a weird direction, as the jewel on the alien's head pops out and it magically rescues them all...with some unforseen complications at the very end. The way Stafford manipulates the shapes of his characters is what appeals to me the most: the oval-headed heroes, villains with bullet heads and creatures with heads that look like light switches, the weird Vaughn Bode-like helmet of the female leader and the toy-like proportions of the spaceship. This is a goof of a comic that does what Stafford does best: put funny-looking characters in motion.



NINE GALLONS by Susie Cagle. Cagle cleverly mixes the personal, the political and a keen eye for caricature in this account of her time with Food Not Bombs. This mini was the first part of a longer work related to this subject, and is unusual for a story with a strong political point of view in that it's not a polemic. Instead, it's a warts 'n all love letter to the various people she met when she was helping feed the homeless of San Francisco. Cagle takes aim at herself as much as anyone as she encounters, depicting herself as hemming and hawing and having trouble asserting herself. The story she relates is equal parts ambivalence and affection, given the friable and flaky people she encountered in the organization, like the group leader who always passes on cooking duties and urges her to go faster when she's chopping potatoes. Her most affectionate portraits are reserved for the people she helped feed--even the ones who screamed at her. There's a freshness to Cagle's point of view and a lot of verve to her line, making her an artist to seek out for those interested in political cartooning and comics journalism.



JUST A MAN, WORMS #4, XO #5 and LOST KISSES #9 & #10, by Brian John Mitchell, et al. These are tiny micro-mini comics, measuring about 2x2", and range from 16-40 pages each. Mitchell is the writer for all of them and is also the (stick-figure) artist of LOST KISSES. Most of these are parts of a series, all of which are easy to pick up on as Mitchell hops from genre to genre. JUST A MAN, drawn by Andrew White, is a sort of hard-bitten western, stripped of glory. A farmer sees his house burned down, his infant son killed and his wife disappear. He's pretty sure he knows who did it, and hunts them down, one by one. I liked the voice Mitchell used for the character, but he overwrote this story. That's not unusual for a writer collaborating with an artist, but the story would have had a bit more power if the first-person narrative had been sparer and he let the visuals carry the story.

WORMS and XO fall into the realms of sci-fi/horror and crime noir, respectively. WORMS had a zippy pace to it and appealingly minimalist art by Kimberlee Traub that fit the story nicely, one that featured a young woman who witnessed the death of her father and was the subject of an experiment in a lab. This issue found her gaining power through some strange worms, subduing her tormentor, and escaping. The single panel per page format fit with Traub's striking and hallucinatory imagery. XO had a similarly snappy pace to it but was let down by Melissa Spence Gardners art. It was competent, but it didn't fit the story's mood or add anything to Mitchell's narrative, which needed a moodier style.

The stand-outs in this set were Mitchell's issues of LOST KISSES. These stick-figure comics were first-person, meandering observations about human behavior and the narrator's own misanthropy. What's clever about these strips is precisely the same thing that hamstrung JUST A MAN: there's a narrative caption working against the image and dialogue on each page (it's a panel per page for all of these comics). However, in this comic, there's a comedic tension that arises as a result of that juxtaposition. Issue #10 was especially amusing, as it was a takedown of the concept of love and those who insist on expressing it, with the author worrying about falling for that fallacy himself. I love how unassuming and direct these comics are; there are no frills or pretensions here--just a writer and artists who are experimenting with a variety of means of expression.

CANDY OR MEDICINE 4-7 and LUNARCY, edited by Josh Blair. Blair's modest little anthology continues to roll on. Each issue is 16 pages long (including covers) and is just a dollar. The focus is on up-and-coming creators, though virtually issue has work by at least one reasonably well-published cartoonist. The highlights of #4 are a great gag strip by Blair and Ray N (punning on "Love Is Blind" in clever fashion) and Kevin Richardson's strip about a loveline DJ who gets his heart broken in a bar. His character design and use of gesture carry the strip.

Issue five has a couple of Shannon Smith strips later reprinted in his own minis, a "missed connections" strip by Ed Moorman that had a certain sweet wistfulness to it, and a cleverly-designed strip about a sleepwalker meeting a series of horrible fates. The sixth issue's highlights center around gags, featuring up-and-coming cartoonist Lydia Conklin with a couple of surprisingly silly punchlines, Jason Viola contributing a typically cartoony strip about a playground lawyer, and Patrick Morgan selling a character named Blobby for all that he's worth ("Do you dance?" "I shimmy..."). The latest issue's best story was from Tyler Stafford, who contributed a typically quirky tale of a tiny space creature that winds up popping a hole in a giant space whale.

LUNARCY is a comic filled with silent-beat gags involving the moon hanging in the sky, eventually making absurd or witty declarations. Blair is a crude draftsman but I admire the level of devotion he has to his gags as well as his sense of timing. In general, CANDY OR MEDICINE is an interesting if uneven sampler of new voices in comics from across the world, from an editor who is clearly devoted to creating a showcase for these voices. Many of the comics in this anthology aren't very polished, but I admire the diversity of styles and aesthetic choices featured here.


THE PASTY ANTHOLOGY, edited by Rob Jackson. This is anthology devoted to the glories of the British baked goods known as pasties, a quirky and geographically specific theme that was somehow delightfully conveyed. The stories range from Steve Butler's cautionary tale of why being a health nut (and denying oneself a tasty pasty) can be hazardous to one's health to Dave Hughes' pasty-obsessed character studies to Jackson's absurd history of the importance of pasties throughout history.

What I found surprising about this anthology was how much witty cartooning there was to be found. Jim Medway's calendar comic featuring anthropomorphic animals buying food at a pastry shop was a clever talking head strip with surprisingly expressive characters. Francesa Cassavetti's account of being scared as a girl because she swallowed chewing gum (leading to her ignoring pain that would turn out to be an appendectomy) was my favorite strip in the book, thanks to her loose character design and appealingly sketchy line. Even the text pieces in the book fit into the uncompromisingly provincial nature of the anthology. Jackson's hand as an editor is quite evident here, given each artist's total commitment to absurd ideas and seeing them through as seriously as possible.