Going Underground: Chudolinska, Rice, Kirsch

Last Playlist, by Marta Chudolinska. I'm a sucker for "prepping for the apocalypse" stories, such as the film Last Night. This mini is somewhat along those lines, as it focuses less on the cause of the apocalypse (revealed on the final page) and more on the dynamics of a group of friends. The rendering here is simple and basic, as Chudolinska wisely decides against over-rendering and instead focuses her attention on body language and character interactions in space. The result is an intimate, desperately honest set of decisions among close friends, one whose focus is on the small moments because those are all that are available to the characters in question. There is conflict, there are resolutions in the face of oblivion and there is a sense of warmth and camaraderie felt in the waning moments of the world. This comic is modest in its ambitions yet hits every note, and I'd be curious to see more of Chudolinska's character work.

The Daily Compulsion #5, by Nathan Rice. This is a crude, powerful howl of a personal zine. Rice apologizes up front for the seven year (!) delay between issues, but the jumble of stories, diary strips, jokes, flashbacks and vignettes quickly susses out why: Rice was going through recovery for alcoholism, a process he's still clearly square in the middle of. Rice faces up to every demon imaginable in this comic without flinching, including suicide, the uneasy camaraderie found in rehab clinics, stultifying boredom, a loss of identity, abandoning friends because they were uncomfortable with his drinking and much more. It's all done in a slightly detached, jokey matter, which only serves to heighten the artist's sense of loneliness and isolation. Rice's linework is crude at best, but there's an undeniable power and energy to be found on his pages, especially in terms of how he draws himself. Rice's voice as an artist is distinctive and creates a fascinating tension between dwelling in the moments of his misery and feeling a million miles away from it at the same time.

Teej Comix, by T.J. Kirsch. A frequent collaborator of Jonathan Baylis, Kirsch has developed a cartoony, visceral style of his own. This is a collection of dream strips and other oddities. From the cartoony splatter of cow parts in the full-color "Beefed" to the nightmarish scenarios encountered by his character Slim Johnson, Kirsch's dream comics are full of violent, paranoid and bizarre images that are concretized as animals, outdoor scenes and copious amounts of sweat. My favorite story was "la mort et le sable", which involves a woman in furs in the desert and a cartoony, googly-eyed man bringing her water and attempting to kill a crow. The naturalistically drawn woman juxtaposed against the googly-eyed man is a funny, memorable image, even as it draws in Kirsch's preferred imagery of the mysterious, vaguely malevolent birds. It's an interesting first shot at storytelling and takes advantage of Kirsch's versatility as an artist.

Total Culture: Hip-Hop Family Tree

I've been following Ed Piskor's career for quite some time, and he's managed to turn his obsessions into his art. Nowhere is that clearer than with the first volume of what promises to be a five volume history, Hip-Hop Family Tree (Fantagraphics). In many respects, Piskor's theoretical and historical mouthpiece in the book is Fab Five Freddy, the influential graffiti artist who intuitively understood the connection between rapping, graffiti, fashion and breakdancing as part of a cultural whole and their overall vibrancy. This was not a new idea; Richard Wagner created the term Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art") to reflect the way that he thought operatic productions must fuse with music to expose greater cultural truths. It wasn't even a new idea in African-American culture, but rather a continuation of what writer Leroi Jones calls "assimilation-revitalization syndrome". This is when a marginalized culture, but in particular African-American culture, creates a new form of aesthetic expression. That expression inevitably is initially demonized by the dominant culture before it is accepted, assimilated and made popular, often at the expense of the form's originators. One could see that play out with blues, jazz, R&B, and rock 'n roll. What was initially different about funk music of the late 60s and early 70s was that it was in part a joyful expression of the gains made thanks to the civil rights movement. James Brown's "Say It Loud, I'm Black And I'm Proud" was the harbinger for a new renaissance of music, fashion, dance, art and literature centering around the communal and improvisational nature of funk music. Once again, however, assimilation came in the face of disco, which took the danceability of certain funk records and fused them with the gay, underground club scene in cities like New York. Putting the music in the hands of producers and taking away venues and jobs for live performers essentially destroyed the funk music, and the crippling poverty and economic recession of the late 70s further stalled gains made by African-Americans. When Ronald Reagan came into power in 1980 and quickly gutted a score of social programs that had been crucial to the development and advancement of the urban underclass, we were left with where Piskor began his book.

There's no doubt that Piskor is scrupulously accurate about showing the good, bad and ugly of the world surrounding hip-hop and providing interesting theories as to why rap proliferated the way it did at certain times. For example, a city-wide blackout led to some electronics stores getting looted and dozens of people suddenly getting their hands on the kinds of equipment needed to start spinning records as DJs and rhyming as MCs. I do wish that he had provided a little more historical background regarding hip-hop's cultural and economic roots, especially given that many of his ideas and the ideas of those he discusses in the book are rooted in earlier theories and schools of thought. That said, Piskor manages to juggle an insane amount of information regarding key players, influences, flashes-in-the-pan and backroom players in hip-hop's history. What began as a subculture is now simply culture, fully assimilated and established as the dominant cultural force. Every kid listens to rap, lots of kids use Beats by Dre headphones and wear clothing designed by hip-hop artists. Hip-hop is a dominant form of dance, taught at all levels. The story of hip-hop is the story of culture, post-1980.

If you've read the strips at Boing-Boing, then you still haven't really read the book as Piskor truly intends. Piskor, a design fiend, is using the exact proportions and cover design of the old Marvel Treasury Editions. The lettering, coloring (love those pre-yellowed pages!), character design and overall dynamics of the book are meant to emulate Marvel comics from the late 70s and early 80s. Indeed, parts of the book look like they were drawn by Sal Buscema or Herb Trimpe. The drawings of key early MC Melle Mel often feature the wide-open mouth and saliva lines common to Buscema's figures, for example. This is something that undoubtedly comes naturally for Piskor, who was trained at the Kubert School. That school generally trains artists to become mainstream superhero cartoonists, but Piskor's interest in underground comics combined with his own specific set of obsessions set him on a different thematic path, even as his character design and interest in creating visually exciting pages remained firmly rooted in mainstream comics. That tendency makes a number of the characters have a certain larger-than-life quality, and Piskor doesn't shy away from comparing hip-hop culture to superhero culture in a back-up strip in this volume.

The problem with that approach is that some of his figure work is jarring, with character proportions out of whack, especially when juxtaposing people of different sizes. Piskor also seems to have difficulty drawing children, especially with how they relate in space to each other and adults. There are some pages that simply look wrong as a result of these problems with proportions. For the most part, however, Piskor ingeniously and quickly picks up on each character's distinctive characteristics and plays them up. Rap producer, promoter and manager Russell "Rush" Simmons wore a particular type of hat, had a lazy eye and talked with a pronounced lisp. Piskor mercilessly and often hilariously depicts the ridiculousness of those traits while giving due respect to Simmons' smarts, ambition and sense of timing. The book isn't all about big names and those who would later become big names, though Chuck D of Public Enemy, the future KRS-ONE and Dr Dre all get introduced here, among others, while Russell Simmons' little brother DJ Run is frequently depicted as a background character. Instead, the book focuses on folks like DJ Kool Herc, the first superstar DJ, along with Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash. It discusses how hip-hop shows were initially held on basketball courts, rec rooms and other cheap or free public areas as a way of having fun in a relatively safe environment. The relationship between artist and audience was entirely symbiotic and interactive, as MC's literally came up out of the audience to rap while the DJ was busy doing his thing. B-boys would breakdance while the DJ spun records.

Piskor also gets at hip-hop that was essentially a youth-focused activity, with only a few enterprising older men and women entering the game when they saw that there was money to be made. My favorite character in the first volume is ruthless producer Sylvia Robinson of Sugar Hill Records, the woman who pretty much helped create the first hit rap record out of thin air. Rather than do the legwork to find the best MCs in the New York area, she stumbled upon Big Bank Hank (a minor figure who cribbed rhymes from other, better rappers) and created the Sugar Hill Gang and "Rapper's Delight". The other two members of the group joined simply because they came up to the car where Hank was rapping over the Chic song "Good Times" and had the guts to approach and say they wanted to rap, too. Piskor gets across the importance of the record not as a work of art, but as something that shifted the historical importance from DJs to MCs as recording suddenly became every bit as important as performing.

Doing a weekly strip for Boing Boing dictated that Piskor make every page a stand-alone piece. Whether by design or by chance, this structure works beautifully for a comic that jumps from performer to performer yet finds ways to eventually tighten narrative and thematic strings. It also gives the book a propulsive, exciting quality that feels like Piskor is spinning yarns instead of doling out history lessons. He treats the subject with appropriate reverence and gravity but also injects each page with humor, befitting the frequent silliness and lunacy present in hip-hop's early days. For example, the battle between the Sugar Hill Gang and the Furious Five over who would get to use a particular breakbeat came down to them playing a game of football. Pages where we see Grandmaster Flash's reaction to "Rapper's Delight" on the radio are hilarious in and of themselves, as one of the coolest men in the business is agog at this development. Every page depicting rap battles and brutal put-downs is also quite funny and indicative of Piskor's deep research into hip-hop's history and understanding of how important the early bootleg concert tapes were.

Still, the fact that Piskor spends a lot of time with Fab Five Freddy and his connections to "downtown" art culture and figures like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring shows that his main concern is creating that titular family tree. He's fascinated by connections between artists, managers, rappers, djs, egomaniacal and privileged figures like Rick Rubin who turned a love of punk rock and hip hop into a career, and the people outside of hip-hop circles who immediately picked up on its potential and did their best to either further it or exploit (and sometimes both). He's interested in its immediate and multigenerational impact, as the first MCs and DJs had a quick influence on rappers in high school or living with their parents (the stories of Busy Bee Starski's mom pulling him out of clubs were hilarious) but also had an influence on ten year olds as well. This first volume is about creating something beautiful out of nothing, out of creating a tapestry of sound, self-expression and movement with the most limited of tools and equipment. To be sure, there were egos, beefs and exploiters from the very beginning, but there was also the sense of everyone making up rules as they went along. Piskor expertly captures the energy and excitement of the unlimited possibility to be creative in hip-hop's early days, and it's that Marvel-inflected style that gives him a solid set of visual short-cuts that allow him to keep the story moving briskly without losing the reader.

Funding Sparkplug and a La Mano Sale

First, let's hear from the publisher of Sparkplug Comic Books, Virginia Paine. Since the death of Dylan Williams in 2011, Sparkplug has just barely managed to stay afloat, first as a triumvirate with Paine, Emily Nilsson and Tom Neely and now with Paine as the sole proprietor. She's managed to publish a few things but announced below that in order for Sparkplug to continue and publish new work, it will need crowdfunded support. In addition to good news like finishing up Elijah Brubaker's excellent Reich series and (at last!) publishing the second volume of Orchid (adapting G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday), Paine is at last striking out on her own with the new Sparkplug Minis series. See below for more info and what you can do.

 "Hello friends of Sparkplug! We hope you’ve had a good 2013. It’s been another year of big changes for us—the most significant, of course, being my coming into ownership of Sparkplug. This year has been a reflective one; though our publishing output was smaller than past seasons, we have made some great additions to our distro catalog, attended a lot of fantastic shows, and given a lot of thought to the future of Sparkplug.

 As I am writing this in November, however, we are not in good shape financially. I’ve had to stop paying myself, and though I wasn’t paying myself much, that money did make a significant contribution to my income; it’s going to be more difficult to continue as a publisher when I’m relying solely on my minimum wage retail job. But I’ll be fine—I’m more concerned about our publishing schedule for next year.

We have some awesome books planned! We’re going to finish Elijah Brubaker’s Reich series, hopefully by fall 2014. I would like for Orchid 2 to (finally) be released by then as well. In addition to completing two of Dylan’s projects, I am looking forward to starting some projects of my own. In February, we are planning to launch the Sparkplug Minis series, a collection of limited edition short-run minicomics by up-and-coming artists. The first book will be Portland artist Asher Craw’s Hungry Summer, which will finally answer the question of what happens when a bro-dude meets Baba Yoga. Hungry Summer will be ready in time to debut at LA Zine Fest in February. The second book, Ariyana Suvarnasuddhi’s Smoking Spaceships #1, will debut at CAKE in late May. Suvarnasuddhi sent me some preliminary sketches, and let me tell you, they are gorgeous! I have two more issues in this series tentatively planned for summer and fall. Get them while you can, because once they run out, we won’t be reprinting them. If this series does well enough, I will likely add a subscription option in 2015. Finally, if you’ve been following William Cardini’s Vortex series, you’ll be excited to know that we’ll be publishing a collection of all four minis in the summer of 2014. Cardini’s work is great—a weird mash-up of psychedelia and 8-bit sci-fi—and I’m so stoked to be doing this book. So those are our plans, and I hope you’re as excited as I am.

To make these books happen, though, we are going to need a lot of support from our fans and friends. As always, you can make a donation directly to us via the Donate button on the right-hand side of our blog (http://sparkplugcomicbooks.blogspot.com/). These donations are so greatly appreciated and go directly toward producing our books. I’m also going to offer preorders for our books, which will be the best way for you to help us and add some great comics to your library simultaneously. Reich #11 preorders start today! Please, just look at that cover and tell me it’s not one of the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen. Visit http://sparkplugcomicbooks.com/shop/comic-books/reich-11-pre-order/ to get your issue and contribute to a good cause."

Second, the great Zak Sally is celebrating 21 years of making comics with a big sale at his La Mano store. Recidivist #3 and Sammy the Mouse are some of my favorite comics of all time, and his Like A Dog collection is also quite good. In addition, the John Porcellino Diary Of A Mosquito Abatement Man is must-reading.

Journeys and Tranformations: Ullman, Dabaie, Newlevant

Diamonds Are A Girl's Worst Enemy, by Rob Ullman. Rob Ullman pays most of his bills through his illustration work these days,which is too bad because his clean and appealing style make him an ideal choice for so many other kinds of comics. His comics about hockey, for example, are impeccably researched, funny, fast-moving and a pleasure to simply look at. Of course, Ullman has the distinction of being skilled at a certain kind of cheesecake art, one that seems more honest and refreshing in the way he renders women than the more "realistic" good-girl artists or what passes for rendering women for most mainstream superhero comics. Indeed, this story is about a superhero named "Double Diamond" who's got all the male superheroes going ga-ga over her because of her skimpy outfit and flirtatious attitude. This infuriates the other women on the team, one of whom has a modest figure and the other who doesn't dressing in a revealing fashion despite having the figure for it. Ullman slyly comments on objectification and celebrity culture when the secret identity of a powerful jewel thief is revealed, critiquing both sexist behavior in men and the ways in which women internalize being objectified and use it as a weapon against other women. There is certainly a level at which Ullman is having his cake in presenting these critiques and eating it too in terms of drawing sexy women, but he doesn't go into the realm of bad taste or titillation in this comic. Indeed, take away the content related to sex in this comic and it's easy to see Ullman drawing a successful all-ages superhero or genre comic, given his understanding of body language and chops.

A Voyage To Panjikant, by Marguerite Dabaie. This is the first dozen or so pages of what will be a longer work for Dabaie. It follows a 7th century merchant family from Sogdiana, a country that's now roughly where Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are today. It's a comic that plays to Dabaie's strengths as a storyteller: an attention to detail, especially in terms of fashion; a vibrant but never garish understanding of how to use color; and a level of research that brings a little-known (to most English-speakers, at least) culture to life without bogging it down in mere detail. She's able to do this because she has a knack for creating a vivid family portrait in just a few storytelling strokes. There's the merchant father, patient but nonetheless frustrated by his goofball son. That son, despite his best efforts, can't help but screw up an important sales trip. There's the clearly intelligent daughter who shares her father's sense of frustration but isn't quite in a position to act on it yet. Dabaie offers hints of life in Sogdiana and how merchants have to have a clear understanding of any number of religions and cultures in order to interact with and build good will with them. I'm hoping that the final product will be bigger, in order to show off the intricate nature of her drawings (especially the designs on clothing, which are remarkable) and the impact of her use of color.

Curio #2, Mariposa and If This Be Sin, by Hazel Newlevant. Newlevant's comics are frequently about gender fluidity in a variety of forms. If This Be Sin, for example, is about the blues singer and pianist Gladys Bentley, who openly performed in male drag and wrote songs about blurring genders and her attraction to women in the 1930s. Newlevant's character design and page composition are both highly effective here, giving the page a certain fuzzy softness, evoking both buried memories and a time that in some ways was hard to believe was real. Though Bentley later reportedly "cured" herself by taking hormones to "become a woman again", Newlevant hints at a lingering sadness in her story, suggesting that the change was a desperate attempt to fit in and avoid persecution. Mariposa, done in conjunction with Jesse Reklaw, is about the parallel narratives of a scientist discovering a new genus of butterfly with ambiguous genitalia and the polymorphously perverse young woman who lives in his apartment building. The mini evokes both Reklaw and Newlevant's love of clever formal packaging, given its butterfly shape and the way the reader must unfold it to create the full effect. The ambiguous ending implies that the scientist himself goes through a process of frequently uncomfortable metamorphosis in order to become something much more beautiful; it can be taken as a moment of magical realism or a metaphorical transformation that sees the scientist understanding that how she lives her life is not so much random or self-indulgent as it is totally embracing a certain kind of freedom of and from identity.

Curio #2 is a collection of one-page strips, sketchbook drawings and other experiments, many of them done in collaboration with others. Newlevant experiments with going small, going big, using a sketchy & loose style, and using a more naturalistic line. Some of the strips are gags and goofs, while others zero in on personal and autobiographical details, like "3 Years of Open Relationships". The latter is a brutally honest self-appraisal of polyamory and the ways in which it can be an emotional rollercoaster. The page design is clever, with some panels turning out to be thought-balloon flashbacks and others acting as mirrors or callbacks to earlier parts of the emotional narrative. "Maidenhood" is a hilarious, weird story that is similarly clever to look at; it has the qualities of a dream comic and an extended period of time thinking about vaginal skin and the mechanics and implications of the decision to have sex or not have sex. Other strips feel more disposable, like "The Royal Matchmaker", which has the cute idea of matching up an alien with someone on earth in what turns out to be a pet relationship; there's a lot of effort to get to a mildly amusing punchline. What's obvious is that Newlevant is very much feeling her way around comics, trying on different styles and working relationships as she attempts to figure out what kind of artist she wants to be. There's a certain restless adventurousness at work in her comics, and it will be interesting to see how she harnesses that ambition.

Another Vein Extracted: Mineshaft #29

Mineshaft continues to roll on with another issue filled with unexpected treasures. This issue is comics and photography-heavy, with no poetry or short stories in the mix. I imagine editors Everett Rand and Gioia Palmieiri take what they can get as far as that goes, but it's interesting to see how they build those contributions into a coherent whole. As I noted in my presentation about Mineshaft at DICE in November, Rand and Palmieri really are in a position where they are bringing up esoteric, buried and hidden treasures into sharper view. That's especially true of artists who want an outlet for short stories or pieces that don't necessarily fit into the rest of what they do. For other artists, they contribute to support Mineshaft's mission and keep their own visibility intact.

For example, the issue starts with a typically amiable and sharp strip by David Collier about the end of the use of film in movie theaters. It's a warm and witty take that's very much a personal one, and he even skewers himself and his obsession with film in the final panel. That's followed by six single-panel political cartoons from Mary Fleener, who's been reprinting her work off and on in Mineshaft for quite some time. She included some of her best cartoons here, some of which have nothing to directly do with politics at all. The relative sobriety of those features is broken up by one of Aaron Lange's hilarious, profane and slickly-drawn comics that incorporates the same kind of flat, advertising art/romance comic art-related imagery that influenced folks like Dan Clowes.

Different styles of short comics keep coming at the reader, including an interesting digression from Aleksandar Zograf (on Eastern Europe's upcoming role in bridging the gap between Europe and Asia), Christoph Mueller (in an astounding strip that's sort of a cross between Chris Ware and Robert Crumb) and a sketchbook from the late Spain Rodriguez, which he sent to Mineshaft shortly before he died. This was extensively cleaned up by Pat Moriarty, and there are some truly remarkable drawings here, especially the crowd scenes which seemed partly sketched from life and partly as a satirical pastiche.  The rest of the issue is filled up with more of Crumb's dream diaries, which are both amusing and vaguely disturbing, as one would expect, as well as a photo essay on blues artists from the 1960s. These were taken during the folk explosion that dug up countless bluesmen, many of whom had had to take other jobs in the intervening years. The photos of legends like Son House are especially powerful, capturing, his elegance and wry sense of humor. That said, the spread is considerably less esoteric than the average Mineshaft photo feature, even if the photos themselves are artfully composed. The issue concludes, in a more typical Mineshaft fashion, with a Charles Bukowski poem illustrated by Moriarty and inked by Collier. That kind of collaboration and the platform that Mineshaft provides for it sums up the zine's mission and is also the reason why it receives so much support from the alt and underground comics communities.

Shades of Autobio: Baylis, Martin, Runkle

So Buttons #6, by Jonathan Baylis and various artists. This is yet another solid issue of bite-sized anecdotes related by Baylis and rendered by an increasingly-impressive group of collaborators. Fred Hembeck continues to be an ideal artist for Baylis' stories about his time as an intern at Marvel Comics, and printing this story in full color adds to its effectiveness. Baylis has a front-line view of exactly how Marvel treated its most talented creators, and the anecdote here where he chose to give Joe Simon a couple of Golden Age comics that Simon himself did not possess instead of just getting them autographed shows how a fan treated the creators with more compassion than Marvel itself. Baylis made an interesting choice by also running the superb Josh Bayer story "Trimpe Survives", originally printed in black & white in the Rub The Blood anthology broadsheet. Printed in color and on a smaller scale, this story that interpolates a fantasy sequence with Trimpe's real struggle to get work from Marvel in the 90s is in turns profane, poignant and hilarious. It also dovetailed nicely with the first story. "So Begrudgingly" and "So This Is Where I Got It From" (drawn by Sam Spina and T.J. Kirsch, respectively), are the sort of short, gag-oriented strips that Baylis does well. Spina in particular adds exaggerated body language and flopsweat to a story about living well being the best revenge (but tweeting about it not hurting things).

The centerpiece of the issue is "So Basquiat". One of my early criticisms of Baylis' writing, especially with regard to longer, more serious pieces, is that he tended to overwrite. Too much narrative caption text and too little room for the artist to do more other than functionally describe that text was a frequent problem, though not a surprising one for a writer trying to figure out how to write a comic. As Baylis has evolved, he's come to trust his artists more and more; in turn, the artists he's working with are more adept at taking what he's written and transforming it into something visually striking. This suite of three stories works so well because it begins with Baylis' own personal experiences discovering Jean Michel Basquiat, the famous graffiti artist/painter who emerged in the 1980s. Baylis discovered his work through the biopic about his life, which tied into his own unsatisfying experience at NYU film school and that the downtown art scene was not what he had hoped. That segues into a sequence drawn by Becky Hawkins (jammed full of eye-pops) that saw a naive but enthusiastic Baylis take the money he got after being downsized by Topps to go to the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain. The cartoony nature of Hawkins' line and the soft use of color was a perfect match for the delightful weirdness of the museum's design, and Baylis let the art do the talking as much as possible while still adding in key expository points that talked more about his emotions than actual events. Victor Kerlow did the first and third segments, and his comparatively, scratchy & dirty line further communicated how much seeing the museum and Basquiat's pieces there affected him as a person, creating a sense of not necessarily relating to him but getting a sense of what they had in common. This story is a true breakthrough for Baylis, and when you tack on the cover by Jay Lynch (combining Topps' imagery with Basquiat's likeness) and a back cover portrait by Noah Van Sciver, you have his strongest issue to date.

Runx Tales #3, by Matt Runkle. Runkle is a fine general-interest storyteller who moves seamlessly from talking about a beloved drug store that closed to weird spots in San Jose to an interview with a beloved author to a series of anecdotes about a couple of ex-lovers. There's something pleasingly crude and beautifully ugly about the way he draws people: bug-eyes, stubble, skewed mouths and slouched, often amorphously drawn bodies. I think the best way to categorize him as a visual essayist, as he eloquently and colorfully spins yarns about things that interest him. His extended essay about seeing Prince on the day that fringe Christian Harold Camping claimed the world would end was jam-packed with interesting bits of trivia that went off on fascinating tangents. It was like reading a personal, emotional version of Ripley's Believe It Or Not!, stripped of its hyperbolic qualities. That was especially true when he segued into discussing the famous Winchester House. The story goes that Mary Winchester, the heir to the Winchester rifle fortune, kept on adding to the house in order to appease the ghosts of those killed by the rifles. Runkle goes deeper, discussing Winchester's roots in theosophy and spiritualism but also making note of her innovative architectural concepts.

The interview with author Jincy Willett is also tremendous, combining quotes from her novels, quotes from the interview, a variety of cleverly-composed illustrations and some solid literary criticism. The feature on the bizarre variety store SuperLongs was a bit tougher to swallow because of how esoteric its subject was and how text-heavy the feature turned out to be, but it did give Runkle a chance to draw the interesting objects one could find in there. Finally, "My Two Daddies" finds Runkle literally cutting a horizontal line in the middle of the page to create dual flip-books about two life-changing relationships when he was a "failed rent boy". It's a fascinating look at Runkle coming to terms with a stereotype, dealing with the racial implications of his relationships (he's white, but both of those sugar daddies were African-American), and how injecting money into personal and sexual relationships made things more complicated, not less so. It's a beautiful, haunting and bracingly honest account of his past and just the sort of story that makes him such a sharp writer.

Driftwood City, by Jason Martin. This is a 100-page collection of Martin's Laterborn minicomics series. Martin's comics are all about capturing small, powerful and poignant motions. Above all else, they are about trying to capture particular strong feelings. "Lily, or Save Your Pity" is about being a teen and meeting a girl with whom he had an intense phone-and-letter relationship with for a couple of months. It eventually fizzled out, but Martin really gets at that feeling of going through an experience that has an indelible impact on one's experiences and memories. It's a personality-forming experience. In the first section of the book, "Home", the stories inevitably turn to either brief, funny anecdotes or life-changing experiences or individuals. The strip about his class reciting the lyrics to "The Humpty Dance" to a teacher who inadvertently says the first line of the song is hilarious. "Who Are You" is about a teacher who inspired him to be a better human being, one more empathetic, caring and courageous. Martin himself would downplay this, as some of the strips in the book depict a breakdown of his own moral courage, but there's no question that there's a sense of being more evolved than the average high schooler.

"The College Years" gets at the heart of Martin's stories, which is the relationship between him and his friends. He had the fortune of meeting and cultivating a group of friends that had a nourishing and sustaining effect on his life, and he likewise for them. The strips here are about small moments, shared moments of beauty, funny stories, and the ways in which emotions from grief to joy are felt. It's clear that Martin is powerfully affected by what the philosopher Kant refers to as the "sublime" experience, which is a moment where one is overwhelmed by beauty. The moment can be talked about and around, but the moment itself is beyond descriptive language. Sharing these moments through the poetic language of comics, in a manner similar to John Porcellino, is one of the best ways of attempting to communicate the experience.

Martin's line is crude but functional. He's allowed himself to try to draw less and less in terms of detail and lines, which has made his actual comics look better. Some of his more labored drawings get in the way of understanding the feelings and experiences he's trying to relate, but for the most part his sense of restraint as both writer and illustrator meshes well enough to get across his meaning. That's true in some clever strips, like "The San Joaquin Route" and "Nocturnal Waltz", where his drawings and page design have qualities that affect the narrative. The third section of the book, "Drifting/Nocturnal Waltz" was my favorite because it wasn't tethered to a particular chronological era in his life, but instead allowed him to jump from anecdote to anecdote about traveling, especially traveling with others. The book concludes with Martin once again expressing his devotion to his friends, old and new, and the ways in which they obviously drive and affect his art. This is a deceptively simple and beautifully sincere book with many moments of wry humor and more moments of how wonderful and difficult it is to be alive and interact with others.

Assorted Fundraisers and Sales: SAW, PictureBox, Hic & Hoc, Shalom Kenneth, Sophie Yanow

Let me mention a few worthy fundraisers and sales: The Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW), overseen by Tom Hart, is doing their annual fundraiser to expand their mission and make their classes more affordable. What Hart is doing in Gainesville with limited funds is remarkable and worthy of your support.

Visionary publisher PictureBox is shutting down operations, but not before offering many of their finest titles at a price designed to move: 50% off. I particularly recommend Matthew Thurber's 1-800-MICE (one of my favorite comics of all time) and his new Infomaniacs (a short-lister for book of the year).

Excellent, emerging publisher Hic & Hoc is also having a sale. I particularly recommend the books by Alabaster, dw, Philippa Rice and Dina Kelberman.

The excellent and innovative autobio cartoonist just had her laptop stolen, so please consider buying something from her shop (I recommend In Situ) to help make up for that loss.

Finally, the young Canadian cartoonist Shalom Kenneth is trying to raise funds for his book through kickstarter.