Mainstream/Underground: Neptune and Sausage Hand

Rob reviews NEPTUNE, by Aron Nels Steinke (Sparkplug Comic Books and Tugboat Press) and SAUSAGE HAND, by Andrew Smith (Sparkplug Comic Books and Teenage Dinosaur).

It's been interesting to see Sparkplug team up with other like-minded publishers for some recent releases. I noted in my last post that the Portland publishers have sort of formed a continuum in terms of tastes and the artists who publish with each. Tim Goodyear's Teenage Dinosaur is the most punk/underground/DIY of the three, both in terms of politics and imagery from the id. Greg Means' Tugboat Press has the cleanest and most "mainstream" comics, concentrating on clear narratives and imagery. Sparkplug is the most innovative of the three publishers and is somewhere inbetween the other two--sympathetic to both storytelling poles but beholden to neither. Dylan Williams publishes as material as experimental as Austin English, Juliacks, Dunka Jankovic, John Hankiewicz, and Olga Volozova, but also publishes wacky work from Jason Shiga & Philip Barrett and more straightforward work from Elijah Brubaker and Trevor Alixopolous. Williams has a nearly unerring eye in identifying new and emerging talent, and his catholic tastes have been a significant factor as to why.

I'm not sure what precipitated co-publishing SAUSAGE HAND and NEPTUNE, though I might guess that it was an effort to pool resources to offset publishing costs. Considering that the three publishers have twice collaborated on their free comic book day releases, I wouldn't be surprised to see this model continue. These two books couldn't be any more different: Aron Nels Steinke's NEPTUNE is an all-ages book, while Andrew Smith's SAUSAGE HAND is a grotesque bit of body horror and exploration of insanity. The covers of each book prepare the reader perfectly for what lies within: NEPTUNE uses a perfectly-manicured but clear line in arranging its principal characters, while SAUSAGE HAND has a stark, black cover--as though something dreadful and pornographic lies under its covers.

Steinke's work here is reminiscent of James Kochalka, Jordan Crane, John Porcellino and Jef Czekaj. He uses a deceptively clear and simple line (like Porcellino) but crams his pages full of decorative detail--especially wider shots. Visually, this is a charming book, even if it does feel derivative of Crane's THE CLOUDS ABOVE. In terms of the story, NEPTUNE has the cloying, self-satisfied nature of a Kochalka comic. I found myself being consistently annoyed by the brother and sister protagonists of the story: the brother was whiny and the sister overbearing. The title dog's story seemed a bit undercooked; I would have preferred a bit more in the magical realism department than what Steinke gave us. Indeed, on the back cover, Steinke promised the reader "amazing things, fantastic things, confusing and contradicting things". The only event that fell into any of those categories was a big flood that magically went away. The story instead focused on the bossy girl's narrative, which was a lot less interesting than a potentially magic dog.

The sense I got was that the reader was supposed to identify and root for the two lead kids, but their weird sense of entitlement (especially with regard to school, where almost everyone was trying to be as nice as possible to them) was actively repulsive. Having read a lot of comics for kids in the past few years, NEPTUNE is as good as any of them in terms of design and visual appeal. I'm just not entirely sure exactly what sort of child it was intended for. This is unfortunate, given Steinke's obvious gifts as a storyteller. I've greatly preferred the autobiographical stories I've seen from Steinke in places like PAPERCUTTER, and I think the tone he strikes in those stories didn't quite translate in NEPTUNE.

SAUSAGE HAND has a hallucinatory quality that grabs the reader from the first page and never relents. There's a bit of Crumb, a bit of Tony Millionaire, and some seeming inspiration from Heinz Edelman. That said, Smith's stark, nightmarish comics also owe more of a psychological debt to Ivan Brunetti's SCHIZO. This is a story about one man's literal battle with his own psyche, delving into mystery and noir along the way. It starts with the title character going to a movie where a villain manipulates one brother into killing another. Sausagehand suffers from extreme social anxiety/misanthropy, wherein the thought of any contact with other people was both repulsive and paralyzing.

From there, Sausagehand passes out due to food poisoning, wherein he meets what appears to be the right hemisphere of his brain, who recommends a particular course of action. That winds up being a bad idea, but Sausagehand ducks into a bookstore wherein he finds a book called "Spoilers", written by God. That sequence summed up the book's appeal: a rubbery line and an equally elastic sense of logic and humor. The climax of the book is funny and confounding on several levels, where we see our hero ending up exactly where he wants to be--which isn't necessarily a great place. What's surprising about the book is how tightly plotted it winds up being, even amidst the weirdness, gore, violence and uncomfortable & claustrophobic angles. That's what sets it apart from other modern underground comics: there's a clarity in the storytelling that feels calculated and carefully planned. That structure keeps the reader moving from page to page, no matter what weirdness Smith throws at them. The result is a fascinating first major work, though I do wonder where the artist will go from here, given how singular his style is.

Minicomics Round-Up: Reklaw, Nelson, Frank, Madness

Rob reviews TEN THOUSAND THINGS TO DO #2-4 by Jesse Reklaw; TYPHOON #1 by Kelli Nelson; NEGRO FRANKENSTEIN by Al Frank; and REAL MADNESS COMIX by Bobby Madness.

TEN THOUSAND THINGS TO DO #2-4, by Jesse Reklaw. This is the print version of Reklaw's one-year journal comic project that's going to wrap up in a couple of weeks. It's no surprise that the artist behind SLOW WAVE has always been interested in formal constraints, and so TTTTD employs a (mostly) rigid 4-panel grid in every strip and tends to follow similar patterns on a day-to-day basis. There's a density to everything that Reklaw draws, a richness found in every panel both in terms of content and drawings. One gets the sense that Reklaw feels an obligation to the reader to entertain them while recording quotidian details like meals and time spent sleeping. What's most interesting about this comic is the way that it seems to be acting as a form of therapy, even if such revelations tend to either be asides or come from out of the blue. Reklaw even comments on doing this, noting that he can say things about pain and depression in his journal that he doesn't feel comfortable talking about with his friends. From both the title of his comic and the frenetic way he goes about his life, Reklaw fills his schedule with projects and an active social life as a distraction of sorts, a way of staving off feelings of failure and depression.

As the strip proceeds, Reklaw opens up a bit and discusses those feelings and how he finds ways to fight them and stay creative. One of the most fascinating running bits in the strip was a daily meter that measured pain in his shoulders, head and back; mood; energy level; and caffeine & alcohol consumption. It highlighted just how much pain he lives with on a daily basis, something that he glosses over in some of his strips. Something that isn't spelled out is the way that Reklaw has assembled a tremendous support system of friends, even if he mostly acts as the life of the party around them. Reklaw actively fights against the sort of isolation that many cartoonists wind up experiencing, both in terms of of his social life and artistic pursuits like playing in a band, organizing gallery shows and the many comics projects he has a hand in.

Reklaw's greatest asset as a cartoonist is his brain. I'm not sure if rendering other people's dreams for years gave him the tools to solve problems on the page in creative ways or if he was drawn to begin SLOW WAVE because it gave him an challenging outlet for his ideas, but in any event, Reklaw thinks through each page and assignment like few other artists. In particular, he has a way of mediating genres through different story filters. For example, in COUCH TAG, Reklaw is working in autobio filtered through accounts of pets and a particular set of activities with friends. BLUEFUZZ is straight-up fantasy filtered through an absurd framework and dialogue. And TTTTD is a diary comic peppered with gags, one-liners, and guest strips, surrounding the grind of committing to such a grueling project. Reklaw seems incapable of half-assing anything (even if he might say otherwise), and one has to admire the level of devotion shown in this comic in terms of drawing and structure. At sixty pages apiece with an immense (but clearly presented) amount of detail on each page, these are not comics that simply fly by. They present rewards for readers that linger on particular panels or pages, and I think that once it's over, TTTTD will be regarded as one of the best of all comics memoir strips.

TYPHOON #1, by Kelli Nelson. Nelson is a long-time favorite of mine whose style is marked by a stark, computer-drawn line. While I usually have a hard time looking at such art, Nelson has made that style her own, creating a harsh aesthetic that matches her acerbic wit. TYPHOON is a venture into fiction, depicting the aftermath of a cataclysmic storm that has flooded the world. This is really a story about trying to keep one's sanity in the face of oblivion, as the two characters we meet have to come to terms with the flood in different ways. The woman keeps her sanity by anthropomorphizing the storm and gaining new strength by trying to find more survivors. The man, stuck on an island, had to deal with his own psychosis at feeling like the last, trapped man on earth. This is an elegant little comic with an intriguing premise and a beautiful design that perfectly suits Nelson's voice.

NEGRO FRANKENSTEIN, by Al Frank. In Portland, the three small press publishers Sparkplug, Tugboat Press & Teenage Dinosaur occupy a continuum of sorts in terms of the kind of comics they publish. Tugboat publishes the most mainstream and straightforward of the three publishers, while Teenage Dinosaur's releases are very much raw, underground comics. (Sparkplug tends to be somewhere inbetween the two extremes). Al Frank's comic is an old-school rant, dwelling on old high school tormentors and acerbic thoughts on race & gender. The two best strips are the autobio "1983" and "1993", two accounts of the perils of being African-American in a mostly white community. In the latter comic, Frank reluctantly goes to a swimming hole, worried about running into rednecks who were going to harass him for having a white girlfriend. When his worries turn out to be well-founded, the fury and helplessness he feels fairly vibrate off the page. The scribbly line he uses here is well-suited to the immediacy of the story. "1983" finds an middle school-aged Frank dealing with a bully and trying to get the attention of a girl, finding no solace or resolution to his desires. Frank employs a stick-figure style that feels a bit like Peanuts gone horribly awry. Frank's at his best when he channels his anger into memoir; his gag strips have a certain mean-spirited edge to them, but are almost entirely dependent on the context of the other stories for their ultimate meaning.

REAL MADNESS COMIX #3, by Bobby Madness. Madness is a regular with Teenage Dinosaur, and he's very much in the underground tradition, albeit with more of a political than sexual emphasis. In that respect, he has more in common with punk/DIY culture than some of the slicker work found in ZAP or HOTWIRE. There's also a great deal of sympathy with Big Daddy Roth's motorcycle comics of the 60s and graffiti artists. Indeed, his drawings of cars and motorcycles are the most lovingly rendered in the book, compared to the way he clearly quickly drew the rest of the comics in the book. This comic is a clearinghouse for his stories, and the effect is rather scattershot. Strips like "Tom Teen" are funny in the underground tradition, as Madness uses a variation of Archie-style drawing in depicting drugs, violence, anarchy and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. There are a lot of great gags in this story and it's rendered in a slightly less sloppy fashion than some of the other strips. Like all of his work, it's bursting with energy but never overcrowded.

"Uzi Duck" and "Gun Girl" are fairly self-explanatory strips that seemed pretty quickly scribbled out and improvised--violent gags with absurd premises. Madness even makes fun of his characters later in the issue, noting they are the "world's shitty-ist cartoon characters", vowing "we'll never sell out. How? Because we never sell!" There are a number of single-page sets of gags, and the self-deprecating Madness chides himself for ripping off MAD when he's supposed to be an underground artist. That particular panel really spelled out his appeal to me: he's a politically aware gag cartoonist who doesn't take himself too seriously. That said, he's also clearly compelled to write and draw; it's something that seems as important as breathing to him.

Survival & Alienation: A.D.: New Orleans After The Deluge

Rob reviews the updated and revised edition of Josh Neufeld's first-person accounts of Hurricane Katrina: A.D.: NEW ORLEANS AFTER THE DELUGE (Pantheon).

I reviewed the work to-date of Josh Neufeld's A.D. back at sequart.com about a year ago; alas, the links to that site still aren't operable. I noted at the time that this could be Neufeld's masterwork, and after seeing the finished product published by Pantheon, I think this is definitely the case. The attention he's receiving for this project has made him something of a 20-year overnight success, a fact that has made a number of his long-time fans (of which I am one) especially delighted. Neufeld put all of the skills he developed as a storyteller to excellent use in A.D., especially in how he is able to tell someone else's first-person story. Years of being one of Harvey Pekar's go-to illustrators combined with his own instincts as observer and reporter in his own autobiographical stories was a perfect training ground for an enormously complex and ambitious narrative.

Being a freelance illustrator meant that Neufeld could take time to volunteer for the Red Cross in Biloxi after Katrina hit in 2005. He blogged about the experience, drawing comments from locals and others who appreciated hearing his perspective and getting a chance to share theirs. Those blog entries turned into a zine (not a comic), and that zine drew the attention of smithmag.net. Publisher Larry Smith knew that he had found an artist who could help tell the stories of survivors of the storm, and Neufeld diligently went about finding people who wanted to share their experiences.

The best thing about this comic is that Neufeld errs on the side of restraint at all times. His work has always had a certain quietude to it, and that stillness turned out to be a perfect match in depicting a raging storm and the hellish conditions that followed it. He rarely played up horrific images for shock effect, instead forcing the reader to understand that the suffering felt by his subjects was constant and unrelenting--even as they found a way to struggle through it. Neufeld also clearly labored to stay true to the tenor of each person's own narrative. Each person had greatly different experiences and their emotional response in recalling the tragedy also varied as a result.

Neufeld noted that he made sure to select as wide a cross-section of experiences as was possible. There was Kwame, the African-American teenager who evacuated the town and was forced to view its destruction and reconstruction from afar. There was The Doctor, a wealthy white denizen of the French Quarter--an area of the city that was mostly untouched by both the storm and the ensuing flood, but who was a big part of its recovery. There were Abbas and Darnell--a shopowner and his friend, both determined to ride out the storm, who faced the most hellish of life and death experiences. There were Leo and his girlfriend Michelle, two more residents who left the city and who had to cope with the treasured memorabilia of a lifetime destroyed. Finally, there was the book's emotional core: Denise, who felt the sting of abandonment by her government the most acutely when she was stranded at a convention center. The seven people who wanted to tell their stories were a cross-section of race, gender and class, but all of them loved their city.

While some of the narratives are more compelling than others, Neufeld wove them in and around each other so as to provide relief for the heavier stories and context for the lighter ones. For example, the Doctor had been through any number of storms, so he calmly hosted a hurricane party and cleared out storm drains when the eye of the storm passed over. After the storm ended, he went from building to building looking after potential patients and set up an "impromptu clinic" to provide care to all in his neighborhood. A fixture in a town where time usually stands still, his biggest woe was that the shrimp at Galatoire's weren't as good as they used to be. It's obvious that Neufeld was deliberately juxtaposing the experiences of the Doctor against those that suffered life and death consequences, but he carefully restrained himself from making any judgments of his own.

That said, the Doctor received far fewer pages than either Denise or Abbas & Darnell. For the former, she experienced nearly getting killed in her own apartment by the storm and then waiting as buses that were supposed to carry everyone to safety never showed. Thousands of survivors outside the convention center and Superdome were left in unsanitary, harrowing situations as they had to deal with a government that was both corrupt and incompetent. She and her family only managed to escape through luck, but Denise took it upon herself to note that the reports of roving gang violence were not only not true, but that many gang members took it upon themselves to give food, water & medicine to those who needed it the most. Abbas & Darnell had to contend with a flood of noxious waters, mosquitoes, rats in nearby trees swimming after them, and the brutal August sun in their bid to ride out the ordeal and protect Abbas' store. Here, Neufeld used his most dramatic imagery: dark floodwaters pooling ominously, the specter of disease embodied by mosquitoes and rats, and the oppressiveness of the heat & humidity.

Leo & Michelle and Kwame all left the city, leaving behind all they had. These stories are also comparatively minor beats, with Leo (an avid comic book collector) coming to grips that everything he had was destroyed. Kwame grew accustomed to being away from home as he finished high school in Berkeley, college in Ohio and then spent a semester in London. For both, an eventual return home was essential. Denise embodied the idea that part of the spirit of the city died in the experience as so many were left without lives or homes. She eventually went back despite that despair, but noted that "we're not all home yet" and was in no mood to party in a city known for its laissez-faire attitudes.

In terms of the visuals, Neufeld used a single-tone color field for most of the different sections. This helped highlight different parts of the narrative, but also added a subtle hint of emotion. Most of the colors in the early part of the book are somewhat cheery: sea foam-green, a bright yellow, a light lavender, etc. As the story proceeds, the colors become darker and more sickly, culminating in bruise-purple and jaundice-yellow for the scenes depicting disease and mayhem. In the scenes after the storm, the spotlighted characters are all a different color from everything else in the panel--a notation that they have been marked by this experience and that they are no longer quite as home amidst their surroundings. Neufeld's line is supple--just realistic enough to depict these events, but rubbery enough to make the pages breathe a bit. He takes advantage of the book format with several dramatic two page spreads, the most dramatic of which was the "they brought us here to die" crowd shot.

This book isn't about innovation, but rather the urgent need for people to tell their stories in as direct and open a manner as possible. While Neufeld does weave stories in and out effortlessly so as to move the reader's eyes from page to page easily, there's very little artifice to be found in A.D. Neufeld has always had a way of asking complicated questions in a straightforward manner, and this book is his most ambitious display of his natural curiosity and empathy. It's a story that needs retelling, especially given that we're four years out from the storm and the city is still struggling, especially its poor. The real tragedy of Katrina is not the storm, nor the flood, but the alienation felt by its citizens in the wake of the event. For a city that is a national treasure and one of America's few truly unique cultural outposts, there was frequently a startling lack of empathy for the dispossessed. This was a moment of national shame, a time when everyone knew that the government at all levels failed its people, and Neufeld simply gave a voice and a face to those affected by the experience in a way that anyone could understand. A.D. is really the best kind of political work: one where the author can make a point without bludgeoning the reader and let the reader decide what's right and wrong.

Sequart Reprints: Rob Ullman, Stan Yan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Memory and Form: Windy Corner Magazine #3

Rob reviews the latest issue of Austin English's comics/criticism project, WINDY CORNER MAGAZINE #3 (Sparkplug Comic Books).


What I like best about Austin English's ongoing WINDY CORNER MAGAZINE is that it seeks to clarify the artist's relationship with memory and the narrative that we form from our memories, and how this is different from nostalgia. That theme was particularly evident in this issue, given features like Frank Santoro writing about Gipi's GARAGE BAND, memoirist Vanessa Davis interviewing memoirist Carol Tyler, as was as English's own explorations of his past. Of course, there's a wonderful quirkiness to this magazine that sets it apart from other comics-related publications. That quirkiness is not a pose, but rather an expression of the many hats English wears. He's a cartoonist whose style continues to evolve from issue to issue. He's an editor managing submissions, but also a curator of sorts who looks to add just the right piece to create the desired aesthetic effect. He's a critic who seeks to understand and illuminate what art means to him. Above all else, the mission of WINDY CORNER is to get artists thinking about other works of art and how it affects them, as well as the processes of other artists.


English seems to be shifting his style from crude figurework to a blockier style defined by color patterns more than line. A lot of the art in this issue leaned heavily on decorative touches as opposed to a more stripped-down narrative. That was certainly true of the introductory illustrations by Lilli Carre' and the comics-as-poetry inspired table of contents by Molly O'Connell. Carre's use of tiny blasts of color on a white page, culminating in a single figure talking on the phone with her hair on fire, created the sense of a mind gone haywire. O'Connell worked in purple ink, using the most conservative line in the entire issue for her figures that wrapped around the contents. In English's own "Life Of Francis" series, that heavy use of blocky/blobby images dominates this entry, giving a certain sense of frightening solidity to Francis now becoming an adult and living on her own. I don't think English is doing any favors to this slow-moving story by serializing it; it would likely be a more interesting reading experience taken in one shot.

On the other hand, his ongoing exploration of his earliest memories proved to be a highlight. Done in a very loose line and filled in with crayon, "Drawing" really got at the heart of his struggle with drawing, wishing that he could be like one of his friends, whose "hands always knew which line to draw next". "Bernal Heights" is another exploration of living with his family as a child, remembering odd things about the next-door neighbors as only a child might. Of particular interest was "In The Museum", a black & white piece that employed that blocky/blobby style for a story about a father's recollection of a day out with his daughter. This is an emotionally intense story, one where he's trying to figure how to communicate with her and feels constant frustration. I've always liked the direct way English deals with emotion, and the way he intermingles ambivalence and affection with his characters.

The other comics in this issue varied wildly in approach. Sakura Maku's "You Turn My Lights Into Rays" is an intense assault of color, mixed media and calligraphic effect. The way that Maku slips between painting and cartooning and song is dizzying yet exhilarating, reminiscent a bit of Souther Salazar's work. Jason Miles' interpretation of a letter received by Windy Corner uses tiny panels, blotchy art and splotchy colors in an effort to get across the sense of cartoon fellowship the letter-writer felt with English. Both comics are meant to be looked at as much as read, a reflection of the more painterly nature of the magazine. Indeed, the back cover is a painting by Joseph Hart, an assembled piece with different color and textural elements juxtaposed against each other in a way that's hard to take one's eye off of it.

As much as I'm interested in WINDY CORNER's comics, it's the analysis and interviews that engaged me the most. English once again used his intuitive, personal critical style to look at the work of children's book illustrator Garth Williams. This is the most personal essay I've read to date from English, noting that Williams' drawings had enormous power despite their simplicity. Not only in terms of what looking at them meant to him, but in terms of possibilities in terms of making marks. He singles out Williams as the biggest earliest influenced he had in becoming an artist and loving art.

Deceptive simplicity was a running theme throughout the issue's analyses, as Frank Santoro turned his brand of from-the-hip commentary on the pauses and rests of Gipi's GARAGE BAND. Santoro is very much a critic/reader who demands that Something Happen in a narrative framework, yet he found much to love in a story that was entirely driven by character beats both overt and subtle. In particular, he talked about "the synthesis of drawing, color, narrative and symbolism" and how each element informed the other in turn. The color of the skies reflected emotion and possibility, while the elements drawn in each panel reflected the theme of family, both biological and acquired. I loved the way Santoro went chapter by chapter and not only broke down what he saw, but related how they affected him emotionally.

That running theme of how a work affected an artist echoed through Vanessa Davis' interview with Carol Tyler. Davis' free-flowing approach to creating memoir comics owes much to Tyler, and it's clear that the interview touched on a number of Davis' own concerns as an artist: the appearance of productivity, the use of a painterly (as opposed to clear-line) style in comics, the responsibility of the artist when writing about others, and whether or not autobio in general is a worthwhile pursuit. There's an intimacy to this interview that made it feel as more like an intriguing conversation that interested readers would want to eavesdrop in on than a formal discussion. At the same time, Davis managed to zero in on the heart of Tyler's work in terms of both art and artist that I hadn't seen in other interviews. The only problem I have with the interviews in WINDY CORNER is that they seem too short. While the their airm is not a career-spanning blow-by-blow, I wish I could hear a bit more of these conversations.

Even the sloppier elements of WINDY CORNER (smudges, smears, spelling errors, odd fonts, a lack of page numbers) are somehow endearing and sum up what English is all about. Translating what he sees in his mind onto the page has obviously been a career-long struggle for him, yet he continues to push forward and find ways around this problem through sheer effort and love of the form. He's sort of a younger version of Art Spiegelman in that respect--an artist with a deep love and understanding of the history of comics whose brain and eye are far more developed than his hands. Despite that difficulty, both artists soldier on. English may not be at a juncture in comics history when he can dazzle with formal inventions (ala BREAKDOWNS), but he does somehow manage to be two steps ahead of other observers when it comes to sniffing out new talent and movements in comics. English looks to the past like Spiegelman, but seeks out a different set of inspirations--and from sources even more unusual. Poetry, painting and certain kinds of film provide a framework for English's goals as much as comics do, and the observer can see the presence of each discipline start to slowly shape his work. English has a long way to go before he reaches his mature stage as an artist, but his curiosity and determination to push himself and comics in general mark him as an artist to follow.

Minicomics Round-Up: Gfrorer, Neely, Huizenga, Jackson, Jay, Platt, Beyer, Wiedeman

Rob reviews another selection of minicomics from old pros and newcomers alike. Reviewed are ARIADNE AUF NAXOS V. 1 & 2, by Julia Gfrorer; SELF-INDULGENCE, by Tom Neely; GREAT DEEDS AGAINST THE DEAD, by Rob Jackson; RUMBLING Chapter 2, by Kevin Huizenga; MY EXPLODING HEAD, by John R. Platt; THE NATURAL WORLD #2, by Damien Jay; CASUAL SEX and CITY UNDER SAND, by David Beyer, Jr.; and THE DEFORMITORY, by Sophia Wiedeman.


ARIADNE AUF NAXOS, volume 1&2, by Julia Gfrorer. These fall into the category of what I call "ramble comics"--minis where the artist takes the reader on a rambling journey that usually features themselves or a stand-in as a character and where the action and scenery is fluid to the point of surreality. I'd throw Jonas Madden-Connor and Damien Jay (especially in POCKET PARTY) in this category as well. The title of the comic refers to a Richard Strauss opera that originally followed a long play that was about a commedia dell'arte being thrust into the middle of a serious work. In much the same way, Gfrorer thrusts herself into the middle of other storylines, fed by pop culture concerns. The results are hilarious, with her thin and spontaneous line feeding her twin concerns of absurdity and sheer horror.


The first issue, themed around the idea of time, features Julia encountering James Bond in his different incarnations, then getting bored and drawing Gilgamesh meeting Simon Templar (The Saint)--with herself as a character in that meetup. That duo starts making out, leaving Julia to comfort Gilgamesh's now-left out pal Enkidu. Julia goes on to meet up with Doctor Who (leading to a comedy routine the two), St Francis of Assisi (whom she horrifies by chomping on a live rabbit) and Lancelot, whom she contacts with her mind. This is a playful comic where horrible & inexplicable things can happen at the drop of a hat. It has the feel of total spontaneity on each page, but really seems to conform more to the principles of long-form improv. That is, while each individual page and panel might be improvised, there's an underlying structure that is referred to from time to time and that pops up in surprising ways.

The second issue's theme is death, and it mostly sees Julia wandering around as a sort of ghost zombie after the king of the witches kills her. There's an obsession with nomenclature and language that pervades this comic, especially the ways in which focusing in on picayune details obscures real meaning. Grforer expresses this idea with deadpan wackiness, with dialogue a bit reminiscent of Mat Brinkman's MULTI-FORCE: slang and curses spoken by supernatural characters. Doctor Who pops up again, this time dancing around the theme of regeneration. This comic is as much about the creation of the comic as it is a narrative, as Grforer never lets the reader forget that the comic is being drawn and that she is drawing it, even as strange things happen to her. The drawings have the crackling energy of sketchbook spontaneity but with a wit that provides a solid support structure.


SELF-INDULGENCE, by Tom Neely. This little mini is a wordless bit of body comedy/horror from an artist who combination of bigfoot drawing and naturalism creates an unsettling atmosphere. The concept is simple: a pair of naked twins faces each other and one starts eating the other whole. As he's doing this, his twin is excreted out the other side, until the original image is duplicated as the book's final panel. With Neely, the fun is in the visceral, inky details and exaggerated body language. The way he elongates arms and legs while drawing pubic hair in exacting detail is the sort of thing that creates the old/new tension in his comics, a visual signature of sorts. I believe he customizes the cover for this comic when purchased at conventions (he did a drawing of the wolf from THE BLOT on mine), which is just a bonus for this beautiful comic.


GREAT DEEDS AGAINST THE DEAD, by Rob Jackson. This is another off-kilter genre comic from the prolific Jackson, in the tradition of Lewis Trondheim & Joann Sfar. This time around, Jackson takes on the occult, in this story about a haunted house manipulating a widower. Jackson manages to hit every note and cliche' while still telling a straight-ahead story, including occult investigators, paintings coming to life, being forced to sleep in a haunted house overnight and deadly cemetery statues. At the same time, Jackson's characters often drift off on amusing tangents, like the musings of a literary agent and the matter-of-fact rantings of the demonic house. Jackson's crude but earnest line tackles occult conventions with gusto, and that simplicity subverts the usual visual cliches one associates with the genre. Jackson backs up that feature with what looks to be some drawings from life that form a rough narrative of a day out. The main critique I might make of Jackson's work is to further simplify his line. There are times when he overrenders a bit in an effort to provide atmosphere, and it's distracting. Taking a further cue from the simple but clear style that Trondheim employs would go a long way to making his genre explorations all the more effective.


RUMBLING, Chapter 2, by Kevin Huizenga. With the cancellation of his D&Q series OR ELSE, Huizenga announced that he'd be continuing his "Rumbling" story in minicomics form. The second issue adds a bit of context and backstory to the vague sense of dread regarding an exile trying to evade the ramifications of a religious war. What's fascinating about this adaptation of a story by Giorgio Mangenelli is how Huizenga works in his visual and verbal interests into a previously existing narrative structure. There are the wide shots of countrysides and night skies, this time imbued with a feeling of doom instead of the usual sense of awe. There are the diagrams and philosophical asides that now represent life and death instead of merely playful exploration. It even features his signature everyman character Glenn Ganges, whose intellectual curiosity is subsumed in favor of survival and desire for human contact is warped into hermitage. The most fascinating thing about this story is the way Huizenga presents iconography as something that has lethal real-life consequences--both in a predictable way (religious wars) and unexpected (science wars). Glenn eschews all conflict and dips into his true love of ancient history, a pastime derided as heretical by all. Huizenga jumps around chronologically, going from quiet reflection to moments of danger along the way in rapid succession. It's a rich and potent stew from one of the most interesting cartoonists working today.


MY EXPLODING HEAD, by John R. Platt. Platt noted that this was his first mini-comic, and he was wise to play to his strengths as an artist. This is an 8-page collection of gags and observational humor that reminds me a bit of the sort of thing that Shannon Smith does. Platt employs a simple line that eschews extraneous details and overrendering and displays a knack for character design. His best strips actually feature jokes about monsters (like "Mummy Dearest" holding a wire hanger) and especially Bigfoot. Platt also did a micro-mini comic called "My Beard In Alternate Dimensions", which featured a number of funny Don Martin-style drawings of reimagined facial hair. There are downbeat undertones to his gags, as Platt also refers to his ongoing battles with depression, and it's interesting to see him deflect this particular show of emotion with jokes. It feels like Platt is slowly trying to figure out what he does best as a cartoonist and humorist, and I think that will be an interesting process.


THE NATURAL WORLD #2, by Damien Jay. One of my favorite minicomics artists returns with another chapter in what's shaping up to be a grimy fantasy epic. I'm reminded a bit of Terry Gilliam's film JABBERWOCKY, a medieval epic that paid special attention to the mud, manure and sheer unpleasantness of the life of a serf. Jay's greatest skill as an artist is his character design. The way he draws eyes (especially the bulging eyes of the forest hermit who falls in love with a female villager), facial expressions and gesture makes each page a pleasure to simply look at. While the pages look fine in greyscale, I must admit that I'd be very curious to see him unleash his vivid color sense on this story. There's an ease of pace to this story featuring all sorts of character bits, but I was surprised at the way Jay managed to pick up seemingly disparate plot threads and connect them. My favorite sequence in the comic featured a woman trying to hit on the village blacksmith, who was utterly immune and oblivious to her advances. The way she subtly removed her head scarf and tried to stand seductively, only to never even get the slightest glance from her intended, made what was essentially an extended conversation into something that drew the eye to the page. I'm guessing that this story will be Jay's longest sustained narrative to date.

CASUAL SEX and CITY UNDER SAND, by David Beyer, Jr. These are two sharp but very different looking minis. CITY UNDER SAND began as a 24-hour comic but turned into a comic mostly done on the subway--and given that the bulk of the narrative concerns a subway ride gone horribly awry, it's fitting. The story reminds a bit of Yuichi Yokoyama's TRAVEL in that it's a wordless comic that follows a particular traveler through a weird environment but doesn't seek to explain what he's doing or why. Beyer uses an expressive, scribbly style that's fleshed out with what looks like magic marker, adding atmosphere. I liked the way Beyer shifted the focus of the journey from what seemed like a long, arduous desert journey to a subway ride instead.

While CITY UNDER SAND was all about mood, CASUAL SEX was all about a clever device setting up a punchline. Beyer employs a naturalistic pencil style here in his depiction of a young man who wakes up with just one thought: "sex". That thought carries over throughout the day, culminating in a trip to the bar where he says things like "obnoxious sexual advance!" only to get slapped or drinks poured on him. The punchline of the strip, where the person he goes home with has more in store for him than he expected, was a perfect comeuppance for this walking pile of hormones. I get the sense that Beyer is very much still trying to figure out exactly what he wants to do as an artist in terms of the sorts of stories he wants to tell. It also seems as though he's trying to settle on a visual style. It's clear that his chops are already first-rate, with the confidence to create more spontaneous comics without overrendering like CITY UNDER SAND but the skill to pull off something trickier in CASUAL SEX. Beyer has the potential for a very


THE DEFORMITORY, by Sophia Wiedeman. This is a Xeric grant-winning book that's a collection of related short stories about the denizens of a sort of asylum for freaks. Wiedeman uses an intensive black & white pencil style with lots of hatching and cross-hatching but simple figures and faces. Her figures actually remind me a bit of Gabrielle Bell, but even more cartoony. Wiedeman's pages are cramped and claustrophobic, which I think is an intentional effect to heighten the occasional two-page spreads. These are cramped and claustrophobic stories about desperate people who have put themselves in tough situations.

The book is framed by the story of a young boy who sees a unicorn in a forest and is frozen by the memory, building himself a tower in hopes of one day seeing it again. Then we meet Dolores, a woman whose hands warped and deformed but one day turned into sentient crab-like appendages who became her friends. They pointed her to the Deformitory, a place where she would be accepted. It becomes evident that her hands have their own agenda as they point out the Heart Monster as something to be feared, when it seems that this may not be the case. That subsequent Heart Monster strip is a sort of pivot point for the book that takes it in a darker direction; the style she uses here is even more cartoony, even as the Heart Monster meets a bitter end.

From there, Wiedeman introduces us to a mermaid with tentacles who can't make friends and whines incessantly about it. When a slug-girl offers to hang out, the mermaid recoils in disgust, revealing her own shallow nature. We're then returned to a now happy Dolores, who makes the mistake of getting a date, sending her hands into a jealous fury. They attack her date, belittle her for crying, slowly torment her over time and then try to kill her. She drowns them in a bucket but immediately regrets it, given that they're all she had. The book's final pages find the man from earlier in the book finally meeting his unicorn again, bringing it within sight of a forlorn Dolores, offering a glimpse of hope for all.

Dolores' hands are a potent metaphor for any sort of self-destructive behavior or addiction. Even when they were trying to kill her, she desperately wanted them back. Wiedeman manages to sidestep hammering this idea home with the visceral nature of her storytelling. The panels where Dolores is drowning her hands are larger than most in the book, and her line is much more detailed; so as to force the reader to feel the impact of the event. There's also a lot of unexpected humor in the book (especially in the mermaid chapter) that leavens out the more melodramatic elements of the story. The best thing about the book is its elegant structure; its formal elements provide a solid framework for its flights of fancy. Like most young cartoonists, Wiedeman simply needs to refine her linework. Some of her use of cross-hatching seems overly fussy, detracting from her character work. Her use of gesture also seemed a bit awkward at times, especially when characters interacted with each other. Still, this was an enormously ambitious early work for the cartoonist, one worthy of wide attention.

Sequart Reprints: Henry Chamberlain & Jesse Moynihan

It's a bit difficult to give a proper critique of Henry Chamberlain's Alice In New York. The author informs us from the start that it's the beginning of a graphic novel. As such, it feels like a work in progress, in more ways than one. It's clear that there are some overarching themes and subplots being planted early on, but it also seems that the artist is learning on the job. Indeed, Chamberlain alters a number of his artistic techniques from the first issue to the second, and it's conceivable that the eventual finished project will be completely reworked.

Chamberlain uses a very loose and sketchy but expressive style. At times, his line is so loose as to look like something popped out of a sketchbook, but there's an energy and immediacy to his style that's appealling. It's possible that he understood just how loose things were and he at times used some tricks to balance this out. Some of his techniques are quite appealling: when the lead character shows someone a page from his sketchbook, the sketches we see simulate a heavy charcoal drawing. Other techniques are just distracting, like the heavy use of zip-a-tone and other "special effects". Rather than balance a panel, they are just distracting (and sometimes employeed seemingly at random). Happily, Chamberlain abandons their use in his second issue, and utilizes a bolder line.

Thus far I haven't said much about the story. What we're shown is fairly intriguing: a young man comes to New York City in 1989, looking for a purpose. The woman he's staying with (apparently at a B&B) takes an interest in him, and a number of serendipitous events fall in line for him. The young man (named Henry) is an artist who immediately falls in love with the city, looking for (and finding) some kind of magic around every corner. It's a feeling I can certainly relate to, having had those sort of experiences every time I visit New York.

At the same time, we get flashes of an underlying story. Alice, (yes, THAT Alice, of Wonderland fame) apparently is now some kind of magical overseer of New York. The White Rabbit tracks her down in a taxi to tell her that Henry has arrived. Henry has a conversation with a drug dealer in Washington Square Park that's straight out of Lewis Carroll (he even puts on a Cheshire Cat head!). Where exactly all of this is going is unclear, but it is fascinating.

Indeed, it's the small touches that interest me the most. Chamberlain gives us glimpses into the characters we meet, but no more. His host once was in Paris, posing nude for an artist she was involved with. Henry meets a young woman who takes an interest in him. Henry visits museums and is overwhelmed by the sheer visceral experience of the city. The "less is more" approach keeps the reader wanting more.

The first two issues are a little all over the place as Chamberlain the artist is trying to find his way as much as Henry the character is. But the energy in both his line and his story is palpable, and I'll be interested to see if he can retain that energy while refining his style. It'll also be interesting to see how he merges the slice-of-life elements with the magical realist elements. It's certainly an intriguing start for a comics newcomer.

The Backwards Folding Mirror is another 2 issue series that's a demo of sorts for a larger graphic novel. Its creator is Jesse Moynihan (check out http://www.nonlocalbooks.com), an artist who is totally committed to his vision and his own visual language. The best way to describe this book is as surreal, in the original sense of the term. Surrealism was a movement dedicated to unlocking the secrets of the unconscious through the use of stream-of-consciousness in both word and image. Eventually, some branches of it become more codified, where certain repeated images took on fixed meanings.

What I believe Moynihan is doing is telling stories that are quite clearly autobiographical, but coding them in images that blur reality and force the reader to really engage the page. We are introduced to a young man wearing a conical hat, the world he lives in and the people he associates with. There are no narrative boxes to guide the reader: we are simply thrown straight into a bizarre situation from the first. The young man is making out with his girlfriend in a forest when a bizarre animal runs past them to a tree whose very existence seems to invoke horror. The young man wanders off with his friend (a naked devil), goes underground, magically winds up in his living room and is stabbed in the temple by a doppelganger.

The work demands multiple readings simply to get used to what's happening, but it certainly rewards the reader. Once one becomes accustomed to its visual language, a reader can get at the meat of what's going on here. Moynihan's approach takes the reader out of their comfort zone of what is expected in an autobiographical story and instead tries to depict the emotions and thoughts surrounding real-life, with an absurdist (and often hilarious) touch. There's one scene where the young man is having a conversation with a snail. The snail is decrying its existence ("I'm just a lowly turd of a snail...I'm bird food. Why should I have kids?") and the young man replies "We all play a part, man." The snail spits out "Fuck my part. Seriously."

The themes Moynihan is grappling with are complex. There's the divide between indoors and outdoors, of course. Scenes set in the forest always have an element of terror in them, like something bad is about to happen. In the first story, the young man's girlfriend has to look away from a tree that Moynihan depicts as terrifying. It's a very existential moment (almost straight out of Sartre's Nausea) where the very is-ness of the tree was something intimidating.

Sex, reproduction and different forms of death are also repeated themes, all often in the form of dreams and dream logic. Reality is very fluid here, with characters waking up from dreams only to confront elements from their dreams in waking life. Despite the weirdness and ominous tone, the overall feeling of these comics is not bleak. Indeed, the young man is continuously grappling with his world and not submitting to the frequent despair of his friend the devil or the snail. The young man is often angry, not despondent; he's connected to his world, not detached. He's trying to figure things out but sometimes gets in the way of his own exploration.
Death and violence are often shown as modes of transformation. After just two issues, it was difficult to see where the overall narrative arc (such as it is) was going for our hero, but there did seem to be subtle transformations from story to story within each issue. Moynihan's line becomes much more assured in the second issue, creating scenes that had a stark and raw beauty. The result is a comic where the visuals were much more in the forefront than in the first issue, which relied on its narrative and visceral power to get its points across. I think the more refined his style becomes, the more precise control he'll have over the narrative and the emotions he's trying to depict. It's definitely refreshing to see authors to approach autobiography from different directions, making the specific universal.