Minis: Madeleine Aguilar

In Luteboy: How About That Weather, Madeleine Aguilar returns with more gently sardonic adventures of her medieval sensitive artist character. Luteboy is a gentle fool; even in his most arrogant moments, he's so ridiculous that his friends are willing to put up with him. In "Luteboy and the Greeting," for example, his friends Timotheus and the Princess remark on the frequency with which he says hi to them every day. What's funny about this is that Luteboy is entirely unaware of his actions. Despite his annoying moments, his friends genuinely love him because of that gentle, generous spirit. He may have no understanding of social cues and personal space, but there's something about his relentless willingness to feel all of his emotions fully all of the time that makes him a sympathetic figure. Aguilar's thin, expressive line and minimalist backgrounds are all in service to the characters and their emotions.

Madeleine by Madeleine contains a series of images of the artist going about her day: reading, skateboarding, drawing, drinking tea, etc. When the comic is unfolded, there is a larger image of Aguilar going through a door. This is a clever little experiment of a mini that serves to open up her world just a bit to the reader while allowing her to engage in formal play.

Minis: Tyler Cohen

Tyler Cohen's comics vary between her surreal, feminist characters in Primazon and her intensely personal observations in Mamapants. There's a powerful tension in her comics that veers between the radical and the traditional, as she approaches all aspects of motherhood, political action, and artistic expression through a lens that defies any kind of conventional definitions. Her short mini, Shelter In Place, is a diary of the first three months of quarantine in her San Francisco home. The drawings range from expressive, spontaneous scribbles to more carefully rendered and colored art. 

Cohen's self-caricature is a delight. The way she draws herself with a square head, huge square glasses, and a big nose is funny and distinctive, reflecting once again a level of self-deprecatory comfort that at the same time eschews societal norms. All of Cohen's art, in fact, tends to wave a big middle finger to so-called conventional behavior, especially with regard to hierarchical divisions. Cohen is also funny; there's a strip with her kid twenty years from now where they're sitting in a rowboat (because of the rising tides from global warming, no doubt), reminiscing about the first pandemic in 2020. It's funny, but it's also part of a group of strips that refer to the contentious but loving relationship Cohen has with her kid, who is currently in full teenage defiance mode. 

At the same time, there is enormous sympathy for them, considering that this is an age where separation and independence should be happening, and instead there are millions of kids stuck at home. Cohen's observations about the odd quarantine custom at the farmer's market, drawings of herself when she was 18 and 20 (based on internet memes), and a lamentation with her partner that it's hard to have sex in a small apartment when their kid is awake at all hours all reflect her sharp comedic sensibility and understanding of how best to express these details.

Toon Books: Kevin McCloskey and Frank Viva

Francoise Mouly's Toon Books line aimed at emerging readers continues to be a remarkable success, as it draws in artists from the world of children's lit and alternative comics to craft comics. In addition to providing a platform for emerging readers to become confident as they combine word and image, Toon Books has added a "Giggle And Learn" line to help teach the basics of science. Toon Books are also smartly using a variety of different price points after years of publishing only more expensive. The beautifully-designed hardcovers are $12.95, while the softcover editions are $6.95. Amazingly enough, that's not much more than the cost of the average comic book these days.

Kevin McCloskey has been the go-to for the "Giggle And Learn" sub-series. He painted each page, and one can actually see the texture of the paint reflected on the page. It's a nice touch, adding to the organic quality of each image. He mostly uses an open page layout, usually with a single image dominating each page. That helps the medicine go down a bit easier, like in The Real Poop On Pigeons. This is a truly bizarre story at its essence, when a guy on a park bench declares that he doesn't like pigeons, only to be accosted by a group of kids in pigeon costumes. They insist on telling him all the things they like about pigeons, like their history carrying mail, Picasso's love for them, the various breeds that exist, and how they generate "crop milk" for their young. As a reader, I'm not sure their case is a convincing one, but they do get across some interesting facts.

McCloskey also wrote Ants Don't Wear Pants, which he painted on old paper grocery bags. That kind of paper holds paint nicely, and the conceit of this book was more interesting. A girl shrinks down to examine ants up close and learns all sorts of things about their eating habits and anatomy. Whereas Real Poop felt padded, this book is jam-packed with information and excellent illustrations. Any kid who loves insects will enjoy this book. It's also packed with some solid jokes to go with all of the data.

Frank Viva's first book for Toon, A Trip To The Bottom Of The World With Mouse was one of the very best books in the entire line. My child read and re-read this book constantly, and some of their first attempts to successfully read out loud came with this book. His second book, A Trip To The Top Of The Volcano With Mouse, is just as good. It mirrors the structure of the first, as Mouse goes with the author to climb Mount Etna, but all Mouse wants is pizza. However, as the story goes on, Mouse notices and recites all sorts of observations about what he sees. It's a geography and Earth science book that has an irresistible rhythm to its storytelling. Viva uses every inch of the book to tell the story, including the endpapers and credits pages. Composed in illustrator, Viva takes advantage of this by intentionally flattening everything and simplifying all figures while still accurately describing everything. This approach allows the reader to become fully immersed in the story, which makes the medicine of reading a bunch of facts go down smoothly. I admire Mouly's willingness to try a number of different approaches to see what sticks, especially since these books are so widely used in schools.

Quarantine Comics From Caitlin Cass and Glenn Wilkinson

The global pandemic and its subsequent quarantine has had and continues to have a profound effect on artists all around the world. That was especially true during the period of March and April, where most people were actually obeying the constraints of the quarantine instead of pretending that science doesn't exist. That global sense of isolation moved many artists to dig deep into this feeling.

Caitlin Cass's Notes From Quarantine (Vol 10, #5 of her long-running postal constituency comics series) is something of a departure for her: these are single panel, New Yorker-style gag comics about quarantine life. Cass has actually had several strips published in the New Yorker, but it's clear that these quarantine strips are meant in part to satirize the dry, comedy-of-manners quality that one normally associates with that publication. In other words, COVID-19 and the quarantine have rendered that kind of wry satire irrelevant. Making quips about (relatively privileged) quotidian concerns without referencing the quarantine is like writing fiction.

Cass leans into that, combining the droll punchlines of this genre with brutally cutting observations. In one strip, a woman faces away from an older relative in a wheelchair, saying "Oh no, it's someone I know and love." A nurse walks by an apartment building on the way to work and admonishes its residents for staring at her. A school valedictorian gives her speech on the computer, noting that her generation can't mess up any worse than this one. Using a mix of soft grayscale shading and pastels, Cass delivers sharp barbs in a comforting form. The confidence and steadiness of her line is a great deal sharper than it was earlier in her career, making this kind of pastiche all the more effective as a result.

UK cartoonist Glenn Wilkinson's Quarantine Comics takes a different tack. These are three fantasy/sci-fi tinged short-stories done while in quarantine, but they aren't actually about quarantine. Although there are some thematic similarities. For example, "Once a wizard, now a pleb" is about a father and daughter going down to the market in ancient Rome. The magic that they understand is passing out of the world, and he's at first outraged that she's selling it for Roman currency, until he's made to realize that they are obsolete.

All of the stories are about a sense of loss and mourning with regard to something in society. In the second story, a Dr. Who-like character is outraged that the Daleks were created at the whim of an alien race that mistreated them. He winds up marrying the last Dalek, only his attempt at being a savior goes awry. The third story is about a man trying to fix his brain to keep up to date with current standards of goodness, only "goodness" is revealed to be a brutal accounting of personal hatreds and scores to settle. There's a profound cynicism at work in each of these stories: magic is fading from the world, heroes can't solve problems, and like in a Yeats poem, "the worst are full of passionate intensity." Wilkinson's work is in full color and looks like it's either been painted or made to look like it was painted. The figures are crude but effective. The overall aesthetic works for what he's trying to achieve.   
   

Liz Valasco's The Seeker

I reviewed an earlier minicomics version of Liz Valasco's The Seeker a while back, and the finished version (from Tinto Press) fulfills the creepy, unsettling vision of those early pages. As alluded to in Aaron Lange's back-cover blurb for the book, the things that are unspoken in this disturbing story are every bit as important as the parts of the narrative that are made crystal-clear. It's a story about innocence, exploitation, and ultimately trauma.

The story follows a pre-teen girl who is never named. She's the titular seeker and also referred to as a necromancer. Omitting her name feels deliberate; she's someone who's been erased and feels alienated. That omission feels even more deliberate given that the rest of the cast, the older teens, are not only named, but frequently call each other by their names. They are signified. Rob, the hero of the story, refers to the younger girl as "weirdo" and "crazy," but never by her actual name.

The story opens with the seeker completing a ritual on Halloween. There are a lot of unanswered questions at work here. She uses a book of incantations with a big X on the cover; where did she get it from? The innocent-seeming shenanigans of retrieving a particular box gives way to bone-chilling horror when the plastic pumpkin she uses as part of her ritual starts talking to her after she finishes the spell. Opening that box sends a bunch of roaches scurrying into the pumpkin, providing the final key for its animation.

The story then turns to Rob and efficiently reveals that his dead grandfather wasn't what he seemed. His "class-ring" is a weird artifact, and the seeker demands it from Rob when she runs into him on the street. Rob is getting up to older-teen activities with his friend Brian, who brings beer to the forest for their rendevous with two girls, Ariel and Lana (Rob's crush). When the seeker finds them, gets the ring, and throws it in the pumpkin, the story takes a horrific turn.

The seeker is clearly being manipulated by forces beyond her control (she wants to scare Rob and his friends, and the creature wants to eat their souls), and Valasco turns this into a tightly-plotted monster story. The horrifying thing is not the fight with the monsters itself, but rather the final fate of the seeker herself, devoured by the very forces that she sought solace in.

The layers in the story unravel a bit when we learn that the seeker's father left for unstated reasons. We never meet her mother, other than knowing that she wasn't at home on Halloween. How often was the seeker simply left alone? Her interest in scaring Rob felt like a tween crush that she couldn't otherwise articulate. She wanted to be seen and validated by Rob and take back some of the power she had ceded him with her crush. She wanted to "scare them all," taking power back against a world that ignored her and left her alone. If she scared them, they had to pay attention to her. One wonders if she got the book from Rob's garage when he wasn't paying attention; it's clear that she was familiar enough to him that perhaps she came by to annoy him.

Meanwhile, Rob is far from a spotless protagonist. He's not evil, but he's a bit uncaring and selfish. He's a typical teen. He's annoyed by the seeker and doesn't treat her kindly, but he doesn't bully her either. He's annoyed by his mom but later tries to do the right thing. He's freaked out by the whole event but none of the teens seem especially interested in mourning the seeker. He has a bit of imperiousness to him that makes him just a bit off as a hero. Everyone in this story has flaws; it's just that some of them have major narrative consequences.

Valasco's drawings sell the story. She draws the seeker with a simplified face, giving her a sense of fragile innocence with her fine line. At times, she almost looks like a Peanuts character. At the same time, Valasco creates mood and atmosphere with dense hatching and cross-hatching, especially of the backgrounds. The wispiness of her line and that constant sense of impending erasure is made manifest in the frequent thinness of her line, especially with regard to characters like Rob's mother. It also gives an initial sense of cuteness to the horror story that unfolds, creating cognitive dissonance for readers and characters alike. This comic is a small triumph, leaving many questions unanswered as it asks the reader to consider the motivations and circumstances of its characters.       

Not Quite Comics: Trungles' Star Spinner Tarot

The tarot card deck became intertwined with hypermasculine, gatekeeping occult knowledge popularized by Aleister Crowley quite a while ago, adding a tinge of danger to what is less a divination tool and more a method of self-discovery. There have been numerous versions of the deck with more inclusive and diverse imagery and interpretation since the first publication of the Rider-Waite deck over a century ago. Many have been published from a feminist point of view, and several have come from cartoonists. Annie Murphy's work with The Collective Tarot and Katie Skelly's Bad Girl Tarot are two prominent examples.

A recent, exquisitely designed version is the Star Spinner Tarot (Chronicle Books) by the cartoonist and illustrator Trungles (aka Trung Le Nguyen). He sets out to create imagery for his deck that avoids Orientalism and the exoticization of African cultures in favor of one that delves into more familiar but still poignant imagery that still draws from a storytelling milieu. As such, the water-bearing chalices draw from mermaid imagery. There is abundant faerie imagery. There are many allusions to mythology. There is a diversity and balance to the images in terms of masculine and feminine, as well as racial diversity without exploitation or exoticization. The design is absolutely flawless, from the rich colors to the box itself, which self-seals with a magnetic strip.

Trungles' line is beautifully precise and fluid; with the pastel color pattern at work, it has almost a lyrical quality. His instincts as a storyteller are at work not only within each image but also within each of the minor arcana. There's a story told through the chalices, wands, swords, and coins. That said, these story images are fragments, meant to be evocative rather than directly. They are notes that are played in each individual reading, creating a special kind of music between the cards and the reader.

In terms of its functionality as a tool for self-reflection, Trungles adds a few interesting wrinkles. For example, he has four variations on the Lovers card, where the person receiving the reader chooses the one they are most comfortable with. Those variations include different configurations of men, women, and non-binary figures. Even Trungles' description of how each card can be interpreted is gentler and more thoughtful than traditional decks. Disastrous cards like the Tower and the Ten of Swords, as Trungles describes them, portend woe but also an opportunity to move in a new direction. Many of the reversed cards describe a person who is unwilling to let go of difficult emotions. One can easily see how working with this deck on a regular basis might produce a meditative, fruitful set of personal revelations. 

Laura Knetzger's Before & After

Much of Laura Knetzger's work is about healing. Even her Bug Boys series is about gently exploring the difficulties of the world and how friends navigate it and their own differences. Before & After is a surprisingly emotionally affecting story about what is essentially a thought experiment. What if there was a version of you who existed who was you in every fundamental way, only the lifetime of trauma that you've acquired had somehow been scrubbed out?

That's the premise of this cleverly unfolding story about a very damaged genius neuroscientist whose clone knocks on his door one morning. The bemused scientist is surprised and not especially pleased to see his clone. His clone is there wanting...something. Answers? Connection? Closure? For someone without a lot of long-term memories, he wasn't completely sure what he wanted. It takes most of the comic for the scientist to regard the clone as an actual person, instead of as a feverish wish to have some aspect of him not be broken emotionally.

This comic is also an interesting little lesson in neuroscience, with regard to implicit and explicit memories; the former is regard to things like learning a language or important life skills, and the latter connects specific bodily memories to specific events. That's what makes this such a fascinating exercise, because it's more than the old Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind memory-erasing treatment; it's a full-on physical alteration of one's nervous system like a Fate cutting out a string. 

Visually, Knetzger contrasts the clone and the primary person through their dress and hair. The original is a mess; attempting to go through therapy has been so debilitating that he's taken a sabbatical and just lounges around in his bathrobe, his wild hair totally unkempt. The clone has a shorter haircut, looks relatively dapper, and his general mien is just less twitchy than the original. Even if the original tries to deny the personhood of the clone, cutting him off from even the idea of family, there's a hidden level of joy in him, knowing that his plan worked. His clone was healthy, even if facing a life without memories and roots was creating a new kind of trauma of its own. The question is if the original tells the clone it's not a good idea to know him for the clone's own good or because he's selfish and heartless. It's open for debate, though the ending has just enough ambiguity to imply that it won't be the last time they meet. All told, this is a perfectly-realized nugget of a story, where Knetzger vividly makes both of the characters flawed and human in their own right, and not just cyphers to move along a plot.