At The Zoo: Tune Book 2: Still Life

The second (and hopefully not final) volume of Derek Kirk Kim and Les McClaine's Tune takes its time and really lets the reader marinate in its hero's dilemmas that get crazier and crazier. The first volume introduced art student Andy Go, who quit school anticipating a lucrative career in illustration and instead wound up living with his parents. Kim combined a love story, art school horror stories and spoofing stereotypes about demanding Asian parents while throwing a huge curveball at the readers in the end: the job that Andy gets is as a zoo exhibit in a parallel dimension. Everyone more or less accepts this matter-of-factly, but Andy is frustrated upon learning that his long-time unrequited crush in fact shares her feelings for him but is now apart from her. That's where this volume picks up: watching Andy adjust to life as a zoo exhibit.

This volume is illustrated by McClaine, who seamlessly takes Kim's character designs and makes them just a tad cuter. Otherwise, there's not much of a noticeable change between the two volumes. McClaine's characters are expressive and work well either as simple figures or more naturalistic ones, depending on what Kim calls for. Kim loves to use a lot of exaggeration to express feelings in his characters, and McClaine runs with that nicely, smoothly rendering Andy's frustrations, hopes and dreams. When Kim introduces a premise, he really likes to see just how far he can expound upon it before moving on to the next idea. At the same time, he also slyly lays some hints in what seem to be trivial scenes regarding story concepts that are explained later on. This keeps the reader off-balance in an interesting way. For the first part of this volume Kim explores Andy's solitary existence as a zoo exhibit. He learns to relax and even enjoy the job, thanks to the interdimensional aliens replicating his house exactly and filling it with all his favorite books, music and TV shows.

The first wrinkle thrown at Andy is that he was tricked into signing a contract that wasn't for a year: it was for life. He would never see any of his friends (or more importantly, the girl of his dreams) again. After initially trying to be friendly to the aliens watching him in the zoo, he instead grows angry at them. The next wrinkle is that he learns he can talk to his neighbor, whose advice may well be dubious. The third wrinkle is that he's due to get a female mate. Throw in one of the zookeepers being fascinated by his ability to draw (art is a concept foreign to the aliens), and there are all sorts of plot shenanigans that keep the reader guessing. Every one of those plot twists is earned by Kim's insistence on telling the story slowly, letting the reader get to know Andy warts 'n all. At the same time, some of the ethically dubious things that Andy does (like read his crush's journal to discover that she loves him) wind up getting punished in funny and unexpected ways. The volume ends with Andy and his new roommate plotting an escape and their next-door neighbor making himself known to them in person for mysterious (and probably sleazy) reasons. Whether or not there's a third volume will depend on how well the book sells. Tune was being published as a webcomic (as befits Kim's roots) before being published by First Second (not an uncommon move these days), but Kim is actually paying a real wage to McClaine in order to draw it, which is certainly a refreshing and professional approach in the world of comics. There's been no news that I know of regarding how the first volume did, but I get the sense that Kirk will need a couple of more to finish out this story. I hope he does, considering how adeptly he moves between slice-of-life fiction and science-fiction.

Baited Expectations: The Cute Girl Network

Written by MK Reed & Greg Means and drawn by Joe Flood, The Cute Girl Network (First Second) takes on the notion of what it means to be in a bad relationship. It's about going with one's gut and own two eyes rather than the experiences of others. It's actually remarkably devoid of artificial twists and turns thrown in to give the potential lovers a conflict to battle against. Instead, Jack and Jane both have to battle the titular Network: a group of young, single women in the city of Brookport (a Portland/Brooklyn amalgam) who exchange information on their ex-boyfriends and stage interventions if necessary when they see someone going into a situation lacking what they deem to be crucial knowledge.

Jane is a skater who works in a skate shop, while Jack sells soup at a food court. What's interesting about the thrust of the book is that while neither character is very complicated, it's that very lack of complexity that draws them together. Jane faces rampant sexism at her job and at the skating park, a point hammered home in a sharply-written scene where she chews out a guy who first dismissed her ability to skate and then deigned to hit on her when she proved himself. Jack is lazy, spacy and clumsy. He's also kind, devoted and funny.

Jack's roommates include a true sexist pig of a bro and a devout feminist, but they all somehow get along because they all share their views openly and enjoy berating each other in a playing the dozens kind of way. I'm not precisely sure what the division of labor was between Reed and Means, but dialogue is Reed's specialty and a big strength of the book is its verisimilitude. It's that sense of being true to life that gives what would otherwise be cardboard thin characters some depth and heft. Still, one can't help but sense the writers of the book pushing back at the sheer shrillness of Network leader Harriet and her dogged insistence that she knows what's best for Jane. Jane is given an intervention by the Network and is taken around to meet several of Jack's ex-girlfriends, all of whom share hilarious horror stories about atrocious birthday presents, forgetting to show back up at an apartment for an anniversary dinner, talking to a girlfriend's mother about their sex life in excruciating (if oblivious) detail. Jack is aware that Jane is being fed this information and is on pins and needles regarding Jane's decision. Will she listen to the Network's (in the face of scold Harriet and her friend who also disastrously dated Jack) urges to dump him, or will she ignore the facts and take a chance?

Before and after images by Joe Flood. Note the level of detail.

The answer is not in the least surprising to anyone who read and saw that Jane consistently enjoyed being with Jack and that he made her feel good. Means and Reed suggest that in a way, the Network wound up subverting their own attempts to steer Jane away from Jack. First, Jane's stubborn and contrary nature made it unlikely for her to do something just because someone told her it was for the best, even someone she was friends with. Second, finding out someone's worst qualities from the very beginning can ground a relationship if there's a real attraction there and squash the fantasy construction we might have. Jane herself suggests that just because Jack wasn't right for these other women didn't mean he wouldn't be right for her, because she had little in common with the people she met. For his part, Jack gives an honest accounting of his many screw-ups but also provides context lacking in the horror stories; more to the point, he seemed motivated to try as hard as possible. Reed and Means give the book a romantic ending, but they also notably stay away from showing an epilogue, updating the state of the relationship in later times.

Another thing that makes the book work is the slightly scratchy and messy style of Joe Flood. Better known for drawing monsters and the like, the bit of grit he adds to the proceedings is not only appropriate to the characters, it helps steer the book away from the smooth, cutesy and more typical First Second house style. It especially helped that the book was in black and white, in part because Flood was more than happy to fill up his panels with the detritus and other details of a city. He didn't need bright, happy colors to fill in gaps. Reed and Means do throw him a bone by having him draw some pages from the Twilight-type series that's mocked relentlessly by the female members of the cast (yet secretly liked). I definitely sensed Reed's hand here, since she created a hit fantasy series for her book Americus.

Despite occasional foul language, I still see this falling squarely in a slightly upper level of young adult reading, like the sort of thing a 16 or 17 year old might enjoy. Ultimately, it's a well-crafted book that's not quite as interesting as Reed's prior book for First Second (Americus), even though it tries its best to provide a new, meta wrinkle on the romance comic. Indeed, many classic romance comics have plot twists that reveal how scummy an exciting bad boy really is, and end with the heroine tearfully intoning "If only I had known!" The Cute Girl Network shows how inside knowledge often reveals things that aren't as important to some as they are to others.

Minicomics: Burkert/Rhodes, Paine, Bongiovanni, R.Jordan, Van Sciver

Too Many Nitrous and 2 Many Nitrous, by Billy Burkert and Samuel Rhodes. These sillly and entertaining comics are very loosely based on the silly and entertaining Fast and the Furious movies. The Vin Diesel character is reimagined as a former fat kid who only takes up bodybuilding and driving as a way of getting revenge on a masked driver who destroyed his favorite fast-food joint. The comic is at its best when making fun of the ridiculous "street" lingo from the films as well as the nonsensical gearhead content relating to cars and add-ons. That latter element appears especially ridiculous as the cars are all drawn with what looks like a primitive drawing program, making the racing scenes ridiculous instead of exciting. The figures are cartoony and exaggerated, with dark, bulbous noses and rubbery faces that mimic the smirks and mugging found in the acting styles of the movies. There are absurd sub-plots (like one friend of protagonist Dom [the Vin Diesel character from the movies] going off to find ghostly racing apparel worn by his father), over-the-top slang ("Streets is up!") and other such nonsense. Fans of the films will likely enjoy the gentle pokes the comics aim in their direction, though others may be utterly baffled.

Alamo Value Plus #1, by Rusty Jordan. This is a new series by Jordan, who seems fascinated by mutating the world of low-value retail into bizarre, improbable adventures. This one features recurring Jordan character Duane and a ridiculous character named Baldemar Pretzeldorf, who recounts a harrowing tale of escaping from the Nazis with his mother while on break. Jordan's rubbery character design employs nice, fat, rounded lines and exaggerated character poses. The effect matches realistic storytelling with highly cartoony figures, not unlike a Skip Williamson drawing. Jordan actually makes the action sequence quite compelling, especially when contrasted with the adult Baldemar's bombastic speaking style ("That's the smell of another wonderful day in variety retail!") and the younger Baldemar's slang that's informed by Arnold Schwarzeneggar-style quips. This issue is packed with crazy events, yet it's really just a set-up issue. Jordan has a way of stopping on a dime and escalating the lunacy of his stories, so I'm curious as to just how demented the second issue will be, when Baldemar is confronted by his old Nazi nemesis.

Selfie, by Anna Bongiovanni. Bongiovanni's comics tend to trade in dark themes and wilderness settings, exposing the raw nerves of emotion and experience. This hilarious mini couldn't be any more different from those comics, even as it pokes at loneliness and awkwardness. The comic features a couple of friends named Riley and Sam; both are lonely and having trouble finding company in different ways. Sam is a straight woman who isn't being helped much by her flatmate Riley, an out 'n proud lesbian who is a self-described "creeper". Rather than being told in Bongiovanni's usual dense, cross-hatched style, this story is instead done in red ink with occasional yellow zip-a-tone effects and drawn in a loose, scribbly style. The only other visual effect is that whenever someone uses a phone to take a picture (like one of the titular "selfies"), an actual b&w photograph is used on the page. Whether or not that's meant to suggest that this story is loosely autobiographical or not is beside the point, because the arc of the story, featuring Riley as someone who's both swaggeringly confident and relentlessly insecure about herself, leads to some sharply-designed comedic sequences. Indeed, Riley takes a picture of a girl she instantly crushes on from afar, then winds up drunkenly running over her with her bicycle. Bongiovanni captures the desperate need for affection along with the genuinely funny tension between friends Sam and Riley, a pair that's gone far beyond the ability to truly offend the other. Bongiovanni is truly on a roll this year, and this mini is proof that she can tell any kind of story.

Kit and Luisa Stories, by Virginia Paine. This mini features three stories about a couple of teens who have a tenuous sexual and romantic relationship. Kit is a taciturn, hoodie-sporting young woman who has a serious crush on Luisa, a religious girl who nonetheless feels compelled to put Kit's affections on a string by sending her mixed messages. Paine seems to have done a lot of thinking about these two characters and knows them inside and out, which allows her to be restrained about what she chooses to show. There's a lot of deep, churning emotions and a powerful but enervating tension between Kit and Luisa, a tension that drives Kit to walk away at the end of the book even as Luisa once again is unable and unwilling to safely navigate the waters between friendship and flirtation. Paine heightens this tension by subtly introducing fantasy elements, like Luisa's ability to control fire and Kit's bizarre job involving a demented potato room. Paine's greatest asset as a drawer is her ability to zoom in and subtly depict emotions; she's on shakier ground when she tries to show dance club scenes and other, wider environments. Still, Paine's clearly hit on something here, and I look forward to seeing this story evolve as a webcomic in the future.

Saint Cole Part One, by Noah Van Sciver. This is a collection of the first 46 pages of Van Sciver's strip on his website, The Expositor. It's a typically bleak, hilarious account of a loser in over his head. In this story, a waiter named Joe has to work crazy shifts as a waiter to barely support his girlfriend and infant son. Like many of Van Sciver's characters, he is slowly undone by his own actions (boozing on the job, fantasizing about screwing a co-worker's 17 year old sister) as well as others (his hilariously shiftless, profane mother-in-law who forces her way into living with them). There's a level of grungy authenticity that's almost poetic in how Van Sciver creates a character who is unlikable yet entirely sympathetic. I can't wait to see where this one goes.

Introducing the Durham Indy Comics Expo (DICE)

I'm pleased to announce that I'm part of a team that's creating a new comics festival here in Durham, NC. Durham is a city that's reinventing itself as an arts and culture friendly space, drawing in visual artists, musicians, illustrators, animators, fashion designers and chefs. Durham also has a burgeoning comics scene, supported by local libraries. Working with Duke art professor and printmaker Bill Fick and Xeric-winning cartoonist Eric Knisley, we have created the Durham Indie Comics Expo, or DICE. The show is free for both exhibitors and attendees.

The show kicks off on Friday, November 8th, 2013. It will take place at Supergraphic, Fick's huge studio space at 601 Ramseur Street in Durham. From 7 to 9 pm, there will be an opening gallery show featuring the "long books" of Knisley (10 feet by 10 inches) and a presentation, as well as work by other participating artists.

On Saturday, November 9th, the show itself will take place from 11 am to 7 pm. The show will follow a festival model, emphasizing gallery work, panels and workshops. We will also have comics and prints available for sale, of course, but we want to give both exhibitors and attendees a chance to seek out programming and build relationships. DICE will have an excellent array of local cartoonists as well as some out-of-town guests; please see the website for a list of guests and panels.

As I mentioned earlier, the show is free for all. We will have some expenses to cover, including materials, refreshments, equipment and travel costs for some of the out-of-town guests. As such, we have a small indiegogo fundraiser in place to raise these funds. Please consider contributing to help give indy comics in the Durham area a boost. All funds raised will be invested back into the show.

Fairy Tale Comics

Following up the success of Nursery Rhyme Comics, First Second is aiming another book at younger readers. The formula, once again was to include a mixture of cartoonists and illustrators to adapt classic fairy tales. The results were mixed, and I found that the less successful comics were by the illustrators or cartoonists with whom I was not familiar. While the possibility of being previously biased toward cartoonists whose work I admire is certainly in play, I like to read anthologies precisely because it gives me an opportunity to discover new artists.

Editor Chris Duffy was quite smart about choosing the alt-comics cartoonists for this volume. Nearly all of them had at least some experience with doing all-ages stuff. Both Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez had experienced doing this, especially Gilbert, and it shows in their stories here. Beto's "Hansel and Gretel" is appropriately grisly and weird for a cartoonist who's currently exploring pulp/exploitation comics. Jaime's "Snow White" is appropriate because he's so good at drawing women, though it does inadvertently point out the problem that this story has an astoundingly passive heroine. Stuff just happens to her and she happens to get lucky in the end.

Vanessa Davis' "Puss In Boots" was one of the best stories in the whole book. Her painterly style combined with her strong cartooning fundamentals makes this a perfect hybrid piece for children, as it combines elements of comics and traditional children's illustration.  I can't imagine an artist more suited to do an original Toon Book than Davis, and I hope she gets a crack at that in the future. Luke Pearson's "The Boy Who Drew Cats" is done very much in his Hilda style, down to the muted color palette, thin lines and simple but solid character design. It's a story that's at once cute, funny and frightening. "Rabbit Will Not Help" (based on "Bre'r Rabbit") by Joe Lambert is another story perfectly suited for the artist, as he's great at drawing anthropomorphic animals. Using pages packed with as many fifteen panels on them in rows of three, Lambert crams a lot of detail into a small space, establishing a particular kind of rhythm as the story sets up and repeats a certain kind of gag again and again. Breaking that rhythm and establishing the final punchline (slightly altered from the original story but still the same basic idea of saying, "Oh no, please don't make me do something I really want you to do!") allows Lambert to unpack his panels just a bit.

Other highlights include Graham Annable's "Goldilocks", which is told without words and with a deadpan character that heightens its humor, as well as Jillian Tamaki's "Baba Yaga", which eschews the grid entirely to create an open page with two or three images slowly transitioning into each other. Craig Thompson's story about a young king demanding constant storytelling plays to his strengths as an artist who loves to add a lot of detail and decorative elements to his comics. David Mazzucchelli's story about a boy who couldn't shudder was clever but looked a bit on the dull and flat side. Raina Telgemeier's "Rapunzel" was solid as per usual but lacked the distinctive energy and pacing of her own comics. Most of the other stories didn't really make much of an impact on me as a reader one way or another, but Gigi D.G.'s version of "Little Red Riding Hood" was the only story that I thought went out of its way to look twee, like it was trying too hard to look like a story for children. Overall, I thought giving the cartoonists space to really flesh stories out made for a lot of successful results, and even most of the more uneven or forgettable stories were at the very least pleasant. I'll be curious to see if First Second tries to continue to market books to younger readers in the same vein.

Unreality: Karl Stevens' Failure

Karl Stevens is known for his photorealist comics, using a dense amount of cross-hatching, shading and color to bring his drawings to life. However, his latest (and last) collection of comics from his gig at the Boston Phoenix shows off a wide range of styles and approaches. There's one thing that's consistent in all of them: Stevens is very funny. Indeed, his comic timing has only sharpened as he wandered from standard autobio tropes to reality-bending imagery and events. At heart, Stevens has a real ear for funny anecdotes and how to relate them. Some of them are provoked by his own weirdness or silliness, but others are simple sharply observed and rendered so as to provide the funniest outcome.

For example, in the strip above, it's presumably Stevens who's rambling on about living in a dystopia. The woman in the strip is watching TV (made clear by the light flashing on her face) and barely tolerating his nonsense until she finally tells him to shut up because her show has come back on. The humor in the strip is derived not so much from Stevens' out-of-context and possibly drunken babble, but from the way her eyes move back and forth at Stevens and the way her lips wrinkle up. Stevens employs that realistic style but pays close attention to panel-to-panel transitions and small movements, and that's what gives life to his drawings. That's what sets him apart from other photorealist cartoonists or cartoonists who fully paint their comics: he may be working from poses, but he transforms them into fully active, breathing comic strips.

Stevens seems to have a particularly good time drawing the adventures of his "descendant", Karl VIII, in the year 2312. It's a hilarious lampoon of privileged white frat boy culture, as the bored and dissolute Karl is unimpressed by an array of wonders and miracles. Riding giant bunny rabbits, visiting the mermaid planet and having a tree cat that can teleport him anywhere is dull, especially if anyone he encounters is slow to accommodate him or entertain him. It's also an excuse for Stevens to draw crazy stuff. He's not afraid to deviate from his usual formula from strip to strip, as when he starts to draw a Garfield-style strip like Jim Davis, There are other pages where he features what looks like a quick preliminary sketch as a final product, pages where his figures have far less detail, and other pages featuring realistic drawings of fanciful creatures, like Pope Cat.

Throughout it all, Stevens displays a restlessness that borders on the existential. He isn't interested in providing context or backstories regarding the people who appear in his stories but instead is more interested in capturing singular moments in time. That includes the awkward and funny interactions he has with his nude models, as his attempts to crack jokes or introduce weird topics of conversation with them frequently falls painfully flat. Stevens slips between black & white and color images as though to tell the reader that they're all just pictures, "realistic" as some might seem. That extends to reproducing precisely the same image as a black and white and then as a color painting. The other thing that sets Stevens apart as a cartoonist, as opposed to an illustrator, is that his understanding of gesture and the way bodies relate to each other in time and space is nuanced and sensitive. This all allows him to depict spaces inbetween, the moments between Big Moments in our lives, and the cracks between meaningful events. While the strips are not directly related, they nonetheless gain a sort of forward momentum, detailing a narrative that's not story based or even emotion-based, but rather one based on one man's imagination. It's as though the reader is made privy to Stevens' stream-of-consciousness ideas about what's catching his attention at any given moment, and Stevens captures that snapshot with that mixture of fidelity and strangeness that's a part of all our daydreams.

A Couple of Worthy Fundraisers

I wanted to make mention of a couple of worthy fundraisers. First is funding several months' worth of comics from Yeti Press. This will include a new comic from Kevin Budnik, an artist whose work I enjoy quite a bit. Sam Sharpe, another talented cartoonist, will also have a book. This kickstarter is close to being funded, but I'd still take a look at it.

 I also want to heartily endorse the travel/research fundraiser for T.Edward Bak. He's touring in support of volume one of his Wild Man series, Island of Memory. This tour will fund Bak's appearances, including one I'm trying to put together here at Duke.