Immersion: The Comics of Juliacks

Rob profiles emerging young artist Juliacks and does an overview of her comics work to date.

The work of cartoonist Juliacks is a bit hard to pin down. She's part of an emerging trend in comics where the plastic qualities of text and image are equally emphasized as objects of one's aesthetic gaze. Words aren't used simply to impart information, drive a narrative or otherwise act separately from pictures. Instead, the actual letters themselves become part of the imagery, creating a reading environment that immerses the reader in the work in a way that can be exhausting and rewarding. This act of apprehending each page in order to make sense of the narrative is very different from the typical comics page in that in the latter instance it's much easier to compartmentalize one's reading experience, either looking at images and then reading text or vice-versa. Most readers don't consciously consider the choices they make reading such comics pages, and any skilled cartoonist can approximate a synthesis of the two experiences. Juliacks and the other practitioners of the "immersive school" (which includes Austin English, Theo Ellsworth and Olga Volozova) instead seek a true synthesis, where neither word nor image is privileged above the other and other forms of signifiers are used as well.

It can be a bit daunting to engage these sorts of comics; they demand that you accept them on their own terms or not at all. They can be difficult to begin and adjust to as a reader. Of course, once a reader has locked into this style, the stories become impossible to put down. It doesn't hurt that Juliacks has excellent compositional chops as a cartoonist, seamlessly assembling a number of complicated images on each page. Her figure drawing is simple and ranges more toward a primitivist technique, but it's also not unusual to see her go a bit more abstract in the way she represents her characters. Juliacks stuffs every one of her pages with powerful imagery, drowning the reader in drawings intended both as information and decoration (and frequently designed to do both). Trying to process that much information on a page (especially when the eye is not led to value one image over another) can be draining as a reader, and Juliacks often goes over the top in jamming her pages to the brim. Still, one can sense the raw energy and excitement present in her comics, and the level of detail certainly rewards repeated readings.

While Juliacks' narrative structure isn't as straightforward as Volozova's, there is always a fairly simple narrative, centered around one or more characters. She uses comics as one springboard to explore those ideas that she finds interesting: memory, loss, aging, grief, disease and emotional trauma. She slips in and out of first-person and third-person narrative but will present either in a sort of stream-of-consciousness fashion. That's entirely fitting with the immersive style of comics, given that stream-of-consciousness is all about creating structure without intentionality; that is, what appears to be random is in fact subliminally creating a narrative.

While Juliacks' comics are certainly self-contained entities, it's interesting to note that she's very much a multi-media artist. In fact, she often adapts her comics as performance art, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that both comics and performance art are different outlets for the expression of her ideas. The themes are all the same, but the experience of the pieces themselves couldn't be any more different. The live performances are built on a series of explosive moments instead of a more still, immersive experience on the page. If Juliacks' comics are the equivalent of being submerged in her ideas, her performance pieces are like having those themes splashed in one's face. It's fascinating to see a cartoonist reaching out to a live audience in such a way, achieving a sort of immediacy of reaction that is lacking in comics. These performances can be viewed on her website, but I'm guessing those clips fail to capture the viscerality of an actual live performance seen in person. What is obvious is the way Juliacks is able to completely rework her ideas into something that takes advantage of a live performance. The clips of her are kinetic, even frenzied, emphasizing body and movement on the stage as a complement to the way she exaggerates emotion on the page with her figure drawing and decorative flourishes.

It seems clear that Juliacks doesn't privilege one type of aesthetic experience over the other, and it may well be that she finds herself needing to engage in one type to balance out the time and creative energy she spends with the other. That said, it seems that comics may ultimately be a more effective way for her to explore her ideas, because it allows a greater degree of control. At the moment, restraint is not an attribute she seems all that interested in, but I sense that as she evolves as an artist, it will become something she seeks out.



One of her earlier comics (from 2006) is THE TALE OF OLD LADY MERRELL. It's about a woman living in a now-condemned house with the dolls that she's created, pondering what to do after she's learned that she's going to lose her house. This comic shifts visual tones on a page-by-page basis, making it a jarring (if involving) read. There's a density to each page--sometimes black & white, sometimes full color--that pounds at the reader. The line drawings are very typical Juliacks--thick black lines, grotesque figures, quirky decorative touches and text-as-art. However, as long as the reader commits and latches on to the narrative, it's a powerful experience.


The story is about what lies beneath the urge to create. The woman in the story created dolls, or rather, used the physical medium of creating dolls to tell stories. Those dolls were a form of therapy, embuing the essence of a particular event into physical form. It was no surprise that she viewed them as real, because as active agents of memory (and what is reconstructed memory but a kind of story?), they did have their own lives. With each doll, she disassociated a little more, after being separated from her own life for unspecified reasons. After an incident where two neighborhood girls freaked out when Merrell showed them a particular set of dolls, she became an outcast and created a doll that forever put her on the outside. For Merrell, the dolls were all she had left of life; she had long lost the ability to feel and connect to people. It was heartbreaking to see her give away her dolls, until she was only left with her first doll, an avatar of sorts. She left this world not just because her dolls were in danger, but her ability to continue as an artist and see her handiwork was being squelched. The reality is that this urge to create is what kept her alive, when she had no other reason really to live.



In her stories "Invisible Forces" and "Like Lace", we shift back to teen-aged years. The former follows a character over time, while the latter deals with a couple of particularly memorable days in school. "Invisible Forces", purports to be "a prelude to an apprenticeship in a mental home", detailing the "early tremors of Rody Plane". We see Rody's early years as she feels paralyzed by a feeling of smallness in the universe, being overwhelmed by infinity. That paralysis was exacerbated by her abusive mother and absent father and became more debilitating over time. As the comic ends, she's completely frozen, unable to move or think for herself. It's interesting that the cover of this comic resembles the title pages from Volozova's THE AIRY TALES and the splotchy use of color seems familiar in that regard as well. Color didn't really seem to add much to this story; Juliacks' most effective pages tend to be in stark black & white. This tends to highlight the decorative aspect of her pages most effectively.

"Like Lace" follows the torturous thought processes of Lydia, an outcast who is humiliated by her teacher after she bungles an oral book report. In this story, one can see Juliacks' work in a more formative state. While the emotional core of the story is painful and bold, and her figures are fascinatingly grotesque and distorted, she didn''t quite have the skill to create pages that conveyed information in a way that flowed smoothly. The crudeness of her composition clashed with the ambition of her storytelling here, but that ambition on display was certainly admirable. The story also lacked a number of decorative elements that we would see in future works, and it became clear that those non-narrative elements would go on to play a huge role in creating the immersive experience of her comics.

"Antelope Eater" followed a similarly tortured youth but for a different reason. It's about a young boy whose mother is suffering from multiple sclerosis and finds himself drawn further and further into a fantasy world to avoid dealing with the brutal day-to-day existence of watching his mother deteriorate. This story was successful in terms of merging word and image together for a gestalt experience. As a reader, that synthesis really added to the sense of entering a completely different world.


SWELL, however, is Juliacks' most accomplished and ambitious work to date. It's about a woman in her first year of college who is forced to attempt to cope with the sudden death of her older sister. Juliacks worked big here; the two issues to date are both about 12" x 11". The first part of SWELL, "Open-Faced Sandwich" had covers screenprinted on construction paper. What's most striking about these comics is the way in which Juliacks' sense of composition became much more advanced. There's a page where the story's protagonist, Emmeline, recalls an instance where her older sister, Lucy, smashed a bunch of eggs that Emmeline and her friends had decorated. There are decorative touches framing the page in the form of little eggs, and the panels are framed so as to form an egg. Juliacks changes her approach to a page at a frequently breakneck pace--going from a number of tiny panels in a row to huge splash pages.


The second issue introduced us to Emmeline's parents, who were equally at a loss to process Lucy's death. Juliacks drops hints that Lucy had some kind of mental affliction or processing disorder, judging by the awkwardness she felt in social situations and her general neuroses. This first part of this issue finds them all trying to sleep and struggling to do so. They all wind up "dreaming awake". Juliacks introduced each segment with a huge splash page depicting each of the individual characters, with a decorated egg-shape in their mouth that tells us they're dreaming awake. The next page is jam-packed with panels detailing each character's fears, hallucinations and neuroses, switching between an omniscient narrator and first-person stream-of-consciousness narration. It's occasionally a bumpy ride in a narrative sense, but Juliacks had a firm hand and never loses control of the page. When a sleepless Emmeline runs away, that throws her parents even further into panic and paralysis, even as Emmeline feels like she's moving toward some kind of resolution.




This series is one of the best explorations of memory and its connection to emotion that I've ever read. Most intriguing is the way Juliacks connects the emotional to the somatic, in terms of the way that the feeling of grief is bottled up by each of the characters. Of all the emotions, grief seems to be the most connected to physiological processes: wracking sobs, shaking, and wailing acting as a necessary if painful way of finding catharsis. Juliacks zeroes in on Emmeline (her diamond-shaped eyes adding an otherwordly feel to her character, differentiating her from the dumpier Lucy) and her inability to find her voice for that grief. When buried, grief can be an enormously destructive emotion in ways that cannot be understood by the person suffering from it. That stream-of-consciousness style, where Emmeline is constantly dipping into her memories as a way of trying to process Lucy's death, is perfectly meshed with Juliacks' lettering. The entire package depicts emotion in an intuitive manner that a reader can instantly grasp without being hammered on the head. The size of the panels, the size of the lettering, and the greater abstraction of images all are ways Juliacks modulates emotion. Juliacks greatly improved the control she had over her line and figures, adding greater clarity to her work without sacrificing complexity.


Juliacks has become one of the most interesting cartoonists working in mini-comics form and is certainly due for a publisher to pick her up for a long-form work. A handsome collection of SWELL would certainly seem to be just the thing to start with. There's no question that she's prolific and diligent, very much devoted to improving as a cartoonist. Considering that her first published works are barely four years gone, it's amazing to see the way she's improved and advanced as a cartoonist. She's got a unique vision, an excellent sense of design and composition, a powerful narrative voice and distinctive visual flair. At this point, it's all about fine-tuning, refinement, and restraint for Juliacks as she continues to evolve and mature.

Delightful Ambiguity: Mome 14

Rob reviews the 14th volume of Fantagraphics' flagship anthology, MOME.


If MOME #13 felt a bit all over the place, #14 went much further with that sense of fragmentation, juxtaposing stories with ambiguous images and endings to create a dizzying and fascinating array of visual styles. The interstitial pieces by Derek Von Gieson add flavor and color throughout the issue, acting as a sort of visual palate cleanser between stories. These are open-ended, one page narratives that vary between first person accounts of post-apocalyptic landscapes or embarrassingly intimate details regarding a busted-up wedding to third-person accounts of a boy and his vicious parasites. What they all have in common is that they thrust the reader into the middle of a narrative with little context and no backstory and deal in quotidian details. That matter-of-factness extends to the weirdest of circumstances, adding to the sense of both enigma and familiarity the reader feels with each snippet. That sense of mystery, dread and resignation pervades much of the entire issue, giving it a thematic cohesion that wasn't always seen in past volumes.


Laura Park's second MOME offering, "Office 32F", felt a bit more substantive than her first contribution. It's a whimsical tale of paranoia and awareness, slipping in and out of autobiography as she writes a journal about her discovery that she was under surveillance by a tiny group of spies. The level of quirky detail she provides (like finding a tiny pair of saltines in her celphone, or finding a tiny pair of mittens in a spider web, bleaching them and then flushing them down the toilet) speaks to the way that she was simultaneously alarmed and comforted by the spies in her life. Her actions took on the bearing of ritual, both in the sense of daily actions that we engage in as a sort of comfortable groove as well as an active ceremony designed to evoke a particular desired outcome. When she learned that she was no longer being watched and may not have been the real subject at any time, there was more than a twinge of disappointment--as well as a wink to the audience. That seemed to indicate her simultaneous unease and excitement of having her work (much of it autobiographical) viewed and judged by an audience, creating an invisible relationship that nonetheless had a significant impact.



Olivier Schwauren's second entry to MOME has the feel of an unearthed artifact, bursting with a crude energy reminiscent of a Golden Age comic. If this story had been published fifty years ago, Dan Nadel would have already reprinted it. The washed-out sepia tones give the story that sense of being of a different era, and the deliberate lack of detail he provides in framing his stories of single-minded obsession further tantalize the reader. It's a room full of men engaged in some activity--is it a parlor? a bar? an mental institution? It's impossible to say. There are power hierarchies here even as some men strive to break out of their tedium. In this instance, one man shows another a crudely-drawn dungeon adventure page that he says is a sort of game and cajoles someone else into trying it. After being mocked, the protagonist loses it and his dragged away, but it's left open as to what kind of impact his game has on his friend. Schwauren's strips have their own loony internal logic that evokes a certain delight when followed. The only cartoonist I can think of that does anything remotely similar in intent is Gerald Jablonski, though both men are so idiosyncratic as cartoonists that their output is completely different.



There are a number of stories here whose appeal is primarily visual, leaving it up to the reader to make connections or draw conclusions. The Ben Jones/Frank Santoro/Jon Vermilyea team-up for a Cold Heat episode was the most striking of these, as aliens observe a rock star being consumed by a swirling demon whose reach apparently threatens the entire world. It's a wordless piece that slides us from image to image, never stopping to explain the hows and whys of the situation, instead forcing the reader to accept the information provided on the page and react to it. Vermilyea also continued his motif of homicidal, anthropomorphic food items with a strip about Kool-Aid Man crashing through a wall to give kids some "special" Kool-Aid...and then gruesomely pick up the pieces. That touch of the grotesque and the absurd was a great find by editor Eric Reynolds and makes for a great contrast with the more austere and inward-looking pieces publishing in MOME. That's also true of Josh Simmons, whose "Funny Pages" is an Ivan Brunetti-esque hijacking of a standard page of comic strips, turning them into something more brutal or coarse.



Stories by Dash Shaw, Sara Edward-Corbett and Conor O'Keefe are also striking in their use of visuals in very different ways. O'Keefe's story is a cross between Winsor McKay (in terms of the quality of his line) and EC Segar (in terms of story content). Like both of those cartoonists, this story has the feel of animation, with exaggerated action as a boat manned by an unusual cry is buffetted by the waves. Edward-Corbett's story is similarly slight and short but stands out because of her beautiful line work and bold use of color in a retelling of the tortoise and the hare. Shaw's use of color in "Scenes from the Abyss" is absolutely stunning. It's a simple story about an ambitious but banal young screenwriter trying to get his project made and impress those around him. Each segment of the story is introduced with a large panel dominated by a circular structure: a lamp, a tank of water containing a stage, a hot tub, a reel of film, etc. There's a sleazy sense of fakeness to this character, who in every stage of the story is finding a different way to distort reality, a practice reflected in the way Shaw blurs and distorts light and color in this strip.


There's plenty of straight-out humor in this issue, some of which is more effective than others. Ray Fenwick continues his funny "Truth Bear" series and the Stick's quest for truth takes an unusual turn when a non-omniscient creator shows up. Fenwick's work is pretty much an examplar of idiosyncratic, valuing both words and drawings equally in terms of their plastic qualities. Hernan Migoya and Juaco Vizuete check in from Spain (keeping up MOME's tradition of introducing American audiences to foreign cartoonists) with a bawdy story about a hard-luck Peruvian who winds up with a job as a gofer for a popular but monstrous popular singer. It's not exactly subtle in the punches it throws, but the cartooning is so weird and elastic that it's compelling. Speaking of a lack of subtlety, Emile Bravo's "Wild West Winging It" is a parable about current American politics down as a Western. While it was interesting to get a Frenchman's perspective on the 2008 election, the hits he lands are all too obvious. The same goes for the second installment of Gilbert Shelton's Not Quite Dead story. I will say that this segment was funnier than the first, thanks to getting much of the ham-handed approach to religion of politics being thrust to the side and a preponderance of funny drawings taking the forefront here.


The centerpiece story in this issue of MOME is Lilli Carre's "Carnival". Carre' in some respects is a perfect replacement for Gabrielle Bell in MOME (though Bell may contribute some more stories in the future, she will be far from a regular). Her line is somewhat similar, though Carre's work is a bit more stylized, especially in her character design. Like Bell, Carre' went through a period of rapid improvement and is not publishing some striking stories. "Carnival" is a blend of magical realism and heartbreaking loneliness played out as a sort of emotional deadening. The Carre' stories I've read tend to be about longing denied or somehow frustrated. This story concerns a man who can't make lasting connections (we're tipped off by his profession of car salesman) who nonetheless feels the void in his life encountering a free-spirited single mother at a carnival. Their potential connection goes awry on both their parts for different reasons and both of them are left with fantasy as their only real outlet.



The variety of visual approaches and storytelling styles, along with the international flavor of the anthology, have transformed MOME from a showcase for a handful of young artists to a sort of latter-day RAW. Obviously, it's not the sort of sui generis creation that RAW was, but it's appealing to the same sort of sensibilities. It no longer seems to be aiming to be an entry-level comics anthology for highly literate audiences; instead, it's now assuming that those literate audiences are quite capable of handling any number of styles. MOME might also become a place where work that was going to be printed in comic books that are no longer being published due to industry & economic concerns might now find a home. The balance struck by editors Eric Reynolds and Gary Groth between unpublished, up-and-coming artists, alt-comics legends with short stories to publish and international stars with stellar work that needed translation has been a delicate one, but when everything comes together just so (especially in issues 12 and this issue), then MOME becomes a crucial component in understanding alt-comics as they stand today.

Knots Tying Knots: Dungeon Zenith, Volume 3

Rob reviews the latest collection of translations from the DUNGEON: ZENITH series, BACK IN STYLE (volume 3), by Lewis Trondheim, Joann Sfar and Boulet (NBM).

The third volume of the english translation of DUNGEON has been long-awaited, but I wouldn't recommend reading it until one has reread the first two volumes. The saga becomes increasingly plot-heavy here and immediately follows the events of the last volume. There are some ways in which the fantasy send-up/homage by Lewis Trondheim & Joann Sfar reminds me a bit of Jeff Smith's BONE. Both started their series on extremely lighthearted notes and spent a number of pages carefully establishing character relationships. Once Smith spent a couple of years doing that, it was off to the races with a quest, action scenes, plot twists and the like. He had earned his audience's trust before he simply shipped his characters all off into their wars by carefully but casually dropping mysterious clues as well as seeing them interact in a mundane matter. We knew each character's quirks, desires and loves as well as the ways in which they interacted with each other, which made the conflicts they wound up later all the more involving.

DUNGEON's first volume (with each volume collecting two of the original French albums) introduces us to an anthropomorphic duck named Herbert and a peculiar lizard named Marvin. Herbert's a smartass dungeon flunky and Marvin's a fierce but quirky warrior, and the whims of fate throw them together. Their hijinks manage to simultaneously parody sword 'n sorcery stories while at the same time put together a startlingly intricate, straight-faced fantasy epic. Seemingly trivial or even farcical details from these stories either have complicated backstories (explored in the Early Years stories) or have serious ramifications in later years (as detailed in the Twilight stories). The "main" narrative, or the "Zenith" story, mixes humor with action, making neither seem out of place.

That said, there's a certain grimness to be found in the two stories in BACK IN STYLE where one can begin to see how Herbert and Marvin wind up in such dire circumstances in the future. That's felt in the Keeper being kicked out of his own dungeon at the end of the first story (after a series of cleverly designed action pieces that ramped up the tension and the stakes in succession) and Herbert returning to his home city and finding a deadly welcome in the second. Both stories have a downbeat, uncertain ending--a far cry from the more neatly tied-off story threads in earlier volumes. Despite the intricacies of the plot, building on dozens of story developments from prior volumes, these stories work because of the way Sfar & Trondheim found every aspect of the story on character relationships.

Herbert and Marvin are obviously the foundational relationship of the series, but the interactions between Herbert and his oily nemesis Delacor established a delightful, mutual aggravation. Delacor's general sliminess (hiring a lawyer to seize the dungeon) made him a source of friction for everyone he encountered. The ass-kicking princess, Isis, was another interesting catalyst in the way she prodded Herbert and moved so easily in the company of thieves. The dungeon Keeper himself emerges as a sympathetic character, taking on a paternal quality to his minions when he realized he was about to lose it all. Herbert's parents are introduced in this volume, and their complicated relationship with him adds another layer of intrigue to what was once a seemingly simple parody character. Even seemingly incidental characters like the postman Pollyplume, a sad sack thrust willingly into an exciting new life, add
new perspectives to the saga.

The most startling change to be found in this volume is that Trondheim passed on the art duties to Boulet. For the most part, Boulet stays faithful to the character design that Trondheim established. However, the quality of his line is much slicker and clearer than Trondheim's slightly ramshackle line. The effect is a jarring one; the idiosyncratic nature of Trondheim's art was a perfect fit for the slightly off-kilter nature of a saga that was half serious and half joking. Boulet doesn't really try to make funny drawings; even ridiculous scenes have a slickness to them that takes a while to get used to. I almost would have preferred an artist try a completely different approach (like in the Dungeon: Monstres side-series) than this sort of hybrid approach. That said, Boulet did quickly master drawing a cast of thousands and really is a master at propelling adventure stories forward. The sequence where Herbert and his friends escape from a tavern by taking to the rooftops and eventually flying away was a particular highlight, a spectacular and visceral set of panels that perfectly balance drama and wisecracks.

Despite missing Trondheim's line, the Sfar/Trondheim duo did not disappoint in this latest volume, taking crazy story risks and throwing in plot twists and character reversals at the drop of a hat. DUNGEON remains my favorite genre-related series of all time, and anything that helps new volumes appear more quickly is fine by me. If Boulet is going to be the regular artist for Zenith from now on, it'll be interesting to see how he adjusts his style in future volumes.

Open-Ended: The Airy Tales

Rob reviews the debut comic from Olga Volozova, THE AIRY TALES (Sparkplug Comic Books).



Something I've noticed as a recent trend in comics is a style that somewhat trades in primitivism or outsider art on the surface, but in reality is a sophisticated integration of word and text. The plastic qualities of text are not something separate to be read in the comic, but instead are meant to be looked at as much as the other images on the page. As a result, the way each page is composed and meant to be read is dramatically different from what Westerners are used to in comics. The artists I'm thinking of working this particular corner include Austin English, Juliacks and most recently Olga Volozova. She passed by Dylan Williams' Sparkplug booth at a show, found herself drawn to what was on the table, and then asked if she could submit something to him for publication. Her comics fit neatly into the Sparkplug aesthetic: idiosyncratic, personal and with a touch of the fantastic.



THE AIRY TALES is a series of short stories with deliberately open endings: fairy tales with morals or instructive qualities. Roughly the first half ot the bookis in full color (watercolors, if I'm not mistake) and the back half contains line drawings with a single tone. It takes a moment for the reader to adjust to the way she composes a page. In some of the stories, the text dances around a center image, twisting around it in unusual ways. In other stories, the text is incorporated directly into the image, like part of leaves on a tree or falling raindrops. The small commitment it takes as a reader to full engage Volozova's work is rewarded by the fully realized worlds she creates.



This is especially true starting with the second story in the collection, "Mukamuka Lives In The Rain". It's about a man whose house is made of raindrops, an elusive figure who is able to touch other lives in strange ways. His telling a crying boy to embrace his crying causes his tears to magically produce what he wants. He briefly turned the passengers on a bus into crystal goblets because he wanted to hear the sound of ringing, an experience that brought them closer together. He gave a woman a magic bird that eventually lifted her burdens. This is a perfect example of the range of Volozova's imagination, exploring a character and idea and taking it as far as it would reveal itself to her.

Even more open-ended is "The Tree People", a story about people who lived in a tree that was like a house, or a house that was like a tree (depending on one's perspective). There's a progression in this story as each family or individual on each leaf grew, but was distracted by a man in a yellow sweater who had and seemed to desire nothing--and his leaf drifted ever higher every time the wind blew. This is a story about the inevitability of transformation butting up against the foundations we try to root ourselves to. Like every other story here, it's open-ended but it's strongly implied that this transformation is not to be feared, and clinging to it is illusory.


"The Rooster" is a story about art and spectacle, and whether or not there's a difference between the two. It's the most conventionally drawn piece in the book, with its bright colors giving it a bit more weight than some of the other stories. "The Moon Birds" is a very matter-of-fact description of the birds who live on the moon and control humanity with threads that they manipulate, tying into the first story of the book, "The Golden Thread" by giving a backstory to the phenomemon of a man discovering that everyone is being manipulated from above by strings. "The Moon Birds" is almost like a nature documentary in the way it describes the different kinds of birds, how they interact with human souls, etc. There's not really a standard plot here, but it doesn't matter because once again Volozova thrusts us into the world of her imagination and the reader feels compelled to take a look around.

The last set of vignettes, "The Street Walkers", has an almost Ben Katchor-esque quality. She introduces us to a man made of ice cream who is in danger of being licked to death, a crow and a street pole who meet cute, a man with an artificial smile who has it worn away, a snow hat that no one dared to wear, and a man who lost everything--including his head. Each of these little vignettes is a sheer delight, documenting the lives of people in a city whom the reader really gets to know in a short span of time. Volozova finishes the book with her most direct integration of word and image, "The Shelltales". They're about a scholar who discovers that crying and laughter come from the tip of one's nose, and a country where everyone only begins everything and another where everyone ends everything. Here, Volozova blurs the difference between text and image, with words morphing into illustrations and illustrations acting as part of a sentence. Like any good fairy tale, this is a book aimed at adults that children should be able to enjoy as well. Volozova is already quite ambitious, and I'll be quite interested in seeing how she evolves as a creator as she refines her talent.

Cityscapes and Backyard Adventures: The Latest from Toon Books

Rob reviews the newest releases from Toon Books: LUKE ON THE LOOSE, by Harry Bliss; and BENNY & PENNY in THE BIG NO-NO!, by Geoffrey Hayes.

The Francoise Mouly-edited Toon Books are among the best edited and conceived books in all of comics (regardless of genre). It's hard to think of a better introduction to the art form than these books, which cleverly disguise their pedagogic nature in the form of their stories. At their heart, these books are Comics 101 courses, carefully breaking down and isolating what makes comics successful and how to make this plain to anyone. Take the covers, for example. Great care is taken to indicate that this isn't simply another illustrated picture book, but rather something far more immersive. The word balloon attached to a character on the cover screams "comics!" and makes a new reader pause to try to figure out how word and image are interacting. Above the main illustration on the cover are a couple of panels depicting action, whetting the reader's appetite for the book's content and again letting them know that this is something different from what they're used to.


The latest books are once again from artists not known for sequential storytelling. Geoffrey Hayes, who checks in with his second Benny & Penny book, THE BIG NO-NO!, is best known for illustrating his own children's books. Harry Bliss is an illustrator who also does cartoons for the New Yorker. Both artists are longtime comics fans being given an opportunity to do stories in the style of comics that inspired them.


Hayes once again manages to combine his delicate, feathery line with unusual page & panel composition along with an unerring sense of propulsiveness. The way he obviously manages to tap into his relationship growing up with his brother, deceased underground cartoonist Rory Hayes, gives the story a sense of verisimilitude that any children with siblings will instantly recognize. This story finds the pair going over the fence into the yard of a new neighbor in quest of Benny's missing pail. The sight gags and gentle humor of the story is fueled by the mutual love and mutual sense of aggravation that the brother and sister share for each other. They give each other a hard time one minute and are concerned for their welfare the next. Hayes' lush style will be instantly familiar to any child reading a comic for the first time, especially in the way he draws anthropomorphic animals as his characters. He uses that familiarity to go to town on the page, leading the reader's eye around the page at a near-whiplash pace. He even leads the eye entirely out of panels and into gutters, like the mysterious footprints of their new next-door neighbor.



After I finished reading Bliss' LUKE ON THE LOOSE, I immediately thought "This is an entry-level Will Elder comic". Reading his bio, he notes that he grew up loving Will Elder, so it was no surprise to see all sorts of eye pops and background gags in addition to the manic main storyline. This story is also a love letter to New York city, in all its diverse glory. It's about a little boy named Luke who squirms away from his father in Central Park in order to chase pigeons, and his tireless chase leads him halfway across the city, causing chaos in his wake.



This book is completely different in approach than THE BIG NO-NO!, yet both books have a certain flowing, kinetic quality to them. Bliss's line is much thinner and his use of color much flatter than Hayes, whose comics have a lot of decorative drawings that help draw the reader along the page. Bliss instead packs layers of gags Elder-style on each page, often inserting famous comics characters into his scenes or having animals provide commentary. The way he uses animals in particular is very funny, as when a dog leaps into his owner's arms and hugs him like a person.

While both books have a lot of action, THE BIG NO-NO! is a softer and gentler tale while LUKE ON THE LOOSE ramps up the action and the stakes on each page. I love the way the latter depicts New York as being simultaneously perilous and packed with potential adventure, yet still full of caring individuals. The former book nails sibling interaction and vividly creates a world that any young reader will relish visiting. Both books are remarkable in how well constructed they are, given that neither artist is greatly experienced crafting long-form comics. The design of the books (simple and elegant) and the steady editorial hand of Mouly no doubt made it easy for these artists to adapt to a new form. The long-term effect of Toon Books won't be felt for quite some time, though one hopes it will encourage a new generation to read comics and continue to read comics throughout their lives.

Tapping the Well: Complete Peanuts 71-72

Rob reviews the latest volume of Charles Schulz's THE COMPLETE PEANUTS: 1971-72 (Fantagraphics).


The latest volume of THE COMPLETE PEANUTS finds Charles Schulz still at his peak, having completed the transition of the strip from its 60s heyday. While Charlie Brown, Linus and Lucy were all still major characters and each had their own story arcs, they no longer dominated the strip the way they did in the 60s. What differentiates this volume from 1969-70 is that Snoopy as a fantasy figure also recedes a bit more into the background as well. This volume sees Schulz begin to really explore the possibilities inherent in Peppermint Patty, gives her a foil in Marcie, introduces the last outsider character in the strip in Rerun and gives Sally Brown a star turn.

Over twenty years into the strip, Schulz remarkably recycled very few of his jokes (there's one about Lucy and bugs that seems a bit familiar) and instead seemed to try to find new ways to amuse himself. The result was that his strip felt like several different overlapping strips in one, depending on the day. When he wanted to go with laugh-out-loud gags, Sally was his new go-to character. Her combination of naivete, obliviousness and blind rage made her perfect as a mouthpiece of malapropisms. While Lucy's rage was always a constant of the strip, Sally's anger was more unfocused and harmless, even if she was earnest in presenting her views. Strips where she panicked about missing Easter vacation in January, vowing that her teachers would "never get me to tell all I know" about oceans and misunderstanding that this wasn't a threat, writes a theme about the 4th of July because she's "a victim of programming", calls a dinosaur a "bronchitis" and erroneously comes up with a backstory for "forest strangers" point out her earnest cluelessness. Her real star turn came in a strip where she was forced to go on a field trip to an art museum, and warns a fellow student to "try not to have a good time...this is supposed to be educational". Schulz even went so far as to vary his visual approach just a bit with her, bugging out her eyes in one strip or making thicker black dots to indicate her being stunned.


Schulz was not satisfied to just crank out gags like this. He spent much of the volume exploring one-on-one relationships between many of the characters: Snoopy/Woodstock, Charlie Brown/Lucy (a perennial favorite), Charlie Brown/Peppermint Patty, and Patty/Marcie. Schulz dropped a surprising number of pop culture references in other strips, though never seemed comfortable enough to spend much time with them other than as one-offs. The strip where Linus is depressed because Bob Dylan was about to turn thirty was especially strange. There are also some extended fantasy sequences with Snoopy, unveiling his "Joe Cool" persona, but this doesn't dominate the strip during this period as much as the prior volume.


Peppermint Patty still felt like a character crossing over from a completely different strip whenever she appeared, but Schulz had managed to find ways to wrap her life up into virtually every other character in the strip. She still talked and dressed differently than everyone else (sounding way more modern than the others), but while she was every bit as aggressive as Lucy, she lacked her relentless narcissism. The extended stories with her and the clueless Charlie Brown make up the heartbreaking center of this book. She made up her mind that he had a crush on her (a clear displacement of her own feelings), while C.B. was still so hung up on the little red-haired girl that he couldn't figure out what was going on with Peppermint Patty. This played out when the two of them went to a carnival together and he inadvertently hurts her feelings, when Patty brutally dismisses him to Marcie when she wasn't aware that he was listening, and during one of the brilliant summer camp sequences when Peppermint Patty meets the little red-haired girl and realizes that she can't compete. Unlike the obnoxious Lucy, we really feel for Peppermint Patty when she suffers, because she really puts herself out there more than any other character.

Introducing Marcie as her Linus-figure was a stroke of genius and a cementing of Peppermint Patty's status as one of the major characters in the strip. Marcie acted as friend, adviser, catalyst and tormentor (always calling her "sir" certainly touched on P.P.'s issues with her own femininity, later played out in a memorable run of strips where she challenges the school dress code). It was interesting that Schulz was able to introduce such vivid characters about halfway through his run on the strip, characters whose quirks made them very different from the bland Shermy, Violet and Patty. At the same time, Marcie and Peppermint Patty weren't one-note jokes like Frieda or 5. One wonders how much potential he saw in these characters from the very beginning, or if his process of integrating them into the strip was more serendipitous.

Snoopy's antics seemed a bit tame here compared to prior volumes. Joe Cool was Schulz' interpretation of the modern college student and was more mildly amusing than really funny. There's lots of interplay between Snoopy and Woodstock (who is now Snoopy's secretary, bringing up a whole new world of jokes), including a couple of walkabouts. There's a bizarre sequence where Snoopy has to go off and aid a beagle named Thompson, who meets his end at the hands of a pack of rabbits. The funniest Snoopy bits involve his fascination with the "Six Bunny-Wunnies" books and their author, Helen Sweetstory. Snoopy becomes obsessed with the author, is crushed when he finds out she's a cat lover, travels to find her home and later writes an unauthorized biography of her. Schulz tosses in a few sly pop-culture references here in the titles of their books, like "The Six Bunny-Wunnies Join An Encounter Group" and "The Six Bunny-Wunnies Freak Out", the latter book getting banned by Charlie Brown's school.

There are still plenty of familiar strips featuring the old reliable characters. Linus' arc featuring him trying (and briefly succeeding) to give up his blanket addiction through Snoopy is a particular highlight. Lucy managing to get a promised kiss out of Schroeder if she hits a home run, only to turn it down when she does as a victory for women's lib, was both hilarious and topical. Lucy and Charlie Brown have plenty of great "psychiatric help" gags (though the booth increased in price to 7 cents in some strips). Charlie Brown's adventures at camp were now dependable yearly highlights, with Schulz understanding that repetition is the key through humor with Charlie Brown's tentmate saying nothing but "Shut up, and leave me alone!" The balance Schulz struck in this volume is as perfect as it would get: a perfect blend of fantasy, whimsy, jokes, heartbreak, topical references and sturdy characterization.

Three Views of Escapism: The Eternal Smile

Rob reviews THE ETERNAL SMILE, a collection of three short stories written by Gene Luen Yang and drawn by Derek Kirk Kim (First Second).


With THE ETERNAL SMILE, Gene Yang cements his place as a sort of O. Henry of comics. He has a knack for setting up quickly identifiable characters and situations, then turns them on their head with a clever twist. AMERICAN BORN CHINESE had three apparently unconnected short stories that dealt with identity, shame and trying to fit into a foreign world that linked together in unexpected and touching ways. There were times in which the story's elements felt a bit too on the nose, a bit too heavy-handed in pushing its themes, yet there was no denying Yang's skill as a storyteller. THE ETERNAL SMILE has a number of the same virtues and problems, as it presents three stories with vivid characters, wholly unexpected plot twists (reality twists, really) and sometimes pat handling of the notion of escape and escapism. Yang is aided by the stunning visuals of Derek Kirk Kim, who draws each story in a style so dramatically different that it's hard to believe that it was the same artist all along.


The first story, "Duncan's Kingdom", was originally published a decade ago by Image. The concept is as strong and clever as ever: a young knight is sent to avenge the death of the king, hoping to win the hand of the beloved princess in marriage. All is not as it seems, as young Duncan wins a bit too easily and is faced with the bizarre specter of a bottle of something called Snappy Cola. Aided by the mysterious, masked Brother Patchwork, he starts to question his world and finds it crashing down around him. The story is undone at the end, without revealing its twist, by an unearned and treacly sentimentalism. The character details dumped on the reader toward the end just felt cliched, as Yang stacked the deck in creating the reasons behind the escapist scenario.


If "Duncan's Kingdom"'s main thrust is the way escapism can literally imprison someone, then "Gran'pa Greenbax and the Eternal Smile" is about how a dream can ultimately push you beyond the limitations of your life. This story starts as an affectionate tribute to the Scrooge McDuck stories of Carl Barks and then starts to uncomfortably twist the greed of his stand-in (an anthropomorphic frog named Gran'pa Greenbax) until the story careens to a halt after a shocking acts of violence. Kim's skill really carries the story at this point, simultaneously making the violence both cartoony (and hence funny) and visceral (and thus shocking). The story is successful because it subverts the familiar elements of Barks ("profitable adventures", over-the-top set-ups, cute sidekicks and most especially a pool full of cash), taking them to their logical extremes. That level of attention to detail extends to the way the story's colored (evoking 4-color comics) and even the "cover", mimicking old Gold Key Disney comics. The real twist of the story (beyond the obvious deus ex machina halfway through) is that it's a scathing parody of religion-as-corporation and corporation-as-religion (specifically, Disney). Gran'pa Greenbax's burning desire to swim in a pile of cash winds up masking another, more primal desire--one achieved to the great surprise of the story's antagonist.



The most successful story overall was "Urgent Request", a story about a meek programmer named Janet who is pretty much made to feel utterly insignificant by everyone around her. Kim's visuals once again really stand out here, using a cartoony, blobby character design and a violet wash that gives the story a certain solemnity until the story turns and we are smacked in the face by vivid color. The story's about Janet falling for the old "Nigerian prince" internet hoax and plunging a bunch of money to a grateful "prince" in Africa. Feeling special for the first time in her life, even though deep down she knew it was all a lie, Janet goes all-out in her identification with Africa and imagines a romance with "Prince Henry". Yang walks a careful line with Janet, making her a sad sack that we can't help rooting for because she's trying so hard, but avoids making her completely pathetic. Even in the moment of what should have been her greatest humiliation, the good will that Yang built up for Janet allows him to instead make this a moment of transformation.


This story spells out Yang's view on escapism, that it's less an abandoment of how things really are and instead a different way of looking at the world, a shifting of perspective. Sometimes, this shifting of perspective blinds one to what's really going on, while at other times this shift is the only way one can extricate oneself from misery. Sometimes taking oneself out of character (and the story one's created) is the only way to achieve the happiness we seek, and sometimes creating a new story is what's needed. Yang implies that it's how active one is in applying this perspective is how positive it winds up becoming. Duncan's story was one of passivity, something that he had to shed. Gran'pa Greenbax was spinning his wheels in pursuit of happiness and had to think laterally and take a leap of faith to extricate himself from his life. Janet Oh created a reality around a hoax presented to her and made it become a sort of incubator for the person she wanted to become. For Yang, it all boiled down to faith in something beyond our immediate narratives and selves: escape as an activity, not a soporific.