Sequart Reprints: 10 Great Minis From MoCCA 2005

This article was originally published in 2005 at sequart.com. It was my first-ever column on minicomics.
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Readers only vaguely familiar with the concept of mini-comics will be relieved to know that it's nearly impossible to pin down what is and isn't a mini-comic. Generally, they are small (but not always), usually relatively brief (anywhere between 8 and 80 pages), hand-made, frequently self-published, and often with personal touches like silk-screened covers, hand-stitched bindings, etc. Often, they serve as a sort of proving ground for young and/or inexperienced artists, though there are several accomplished artists who publish nothing but minicomics. The line between minicomics and zines is often blurred, but they often share similar content, a similar aesthetic, and the same sort of autobiographical self-expression.

The ten mini-comics I picked for this list were chosen based on how substantial they were (I skipped over some worthy 8-12 page minis simply because there wasn't enough "there" there), notable aesthetic or narrative qualities (preferably both), and formal elements unique to the world of minicomics. The artists range from absolute newcomers to those who have books from major publishers.

1. VAGABONDS #1.5: OF TWO MINDS, by Josh Neufeld (http://www.JoshComix.com). $2, 16 pages. Neufeld recently won a Xeric grant for A FEW PERFECT HOURS, distributed by Alternative. It's a collection of travel comics he had done over the years in his two-man anthology, KEYHOLE, and various other places. But Neufeld is also well known for doing a number of collaborative works (AMERICAN SPLENDOR the highest profile), and this mini is an exceptional collection of such stories. Neufeld adapts the poetry of several authors to comics, the most notable being "Time of Arrival". This is a single page with a 4x6 panel grid arrangement. The entire grid taken as a whole is an airplane, and Neufeld chops up the words of the poem into individual panels that comprise the plane. It's a clever formal trick and an effective means of getting across the poem's intent. Neufeld also did a story drawn with his non-dominant hand, imagining that such a person existed in his mirror and setting the story from the point of view of that character, and also draws a page using dialogue from an issue of Superman and completely recontextualizes its meaning with his new art. The mini is attractively packaged and extensively notated.

2. SATISFACTORY COMICS #6, by Isaac Cates & Mike Wenthe (isaac.cates@aya.yale.edu). $3, 28 pages plus extras. Full disclosure: Mike Wenthe is a long-time friend of mine. However, the work that he and his partner have produced speaks for itself. The duo has long thrived on experimentation with the form for their attractive minis, with other participants drawing panels for inclusion, providing built-in story constraints or throwing in random elements for the Cates-Wenthe team to work into their stories. As one might expect, jam comics are frequently better in theory than in practice, and some of their stories suffer from a lack of narrative cohesion. However, their output in the last year or so has shown considerable and sustained growth. Their latest effort is so jam-packed with different kinds of stories, ideas and clever geegaws that the result is a sort of miniature version of the comics issue of McSweeney's that Chris Ware edited. This issue features two comics based on a map created by a group of creators; an autobiographical story about online game addiction; a detective story wherein each page must mirror the form of a stanza of a sestina; an adaptation of Job 41, and a minicomic tucked into the front cover and a random shuffle comic paperclipped into the back.

3. NO PUNCHBACKS, by Kelly Denato & Christine Nimocks (http://www.nopunchbacks.com). $5, 28 pages. Amazingly, this is the debut comic for this duo, although initially No Punchbacks Press contained more contributors. Denato is an animator by trade, and it shows in her story, "Nanni-Nanni Boo-Boo". It's a wordless tale about a man who buys a bird and a fish from a pet shop whom are already friends, and how the fish is taken away. Her style resembles CHUNKY RICE-era Craig Thompson and Sara Varon, with a clean, assured line creating a cartoony world. Nimocks is a fine artist whose style and content is radically different than Denato's. She employs a scribbly line and deals with more autobiographical subjects, including internet dating. This is a remarkably accomplished first comic, with attractive packaging and smart storytelling. Interestingly, the duo was inspired by past visits to MoCCA to create their own comic.

4. SEE SAW, by Sara Edward-Corbett (http://www.greenfog.com, http://www.partykausa.com). $8, 35 pages plus extras. The artist is the most impressive member of the Partyka collective, and her strips here are reprinted from the New York Press. She uses a thin, precise line but balances this with heavy blacks and cross-hatching, giving these tales of schoolchildren an extra weight. The strips are about brother & sister Georgie & Olga, psychopathic Chucky and lovesick Meals. Georgie is an ultra-intelligent little nebbish, while his sister is constantly paranoid. Her dreams of being killed by a gangster octopus (complete with mask) are vivid, and while we feel her fear, the whole set-up is still hilarious. The comic is hand-stitched, with a "cootie-catcher" enclosed in the back.

5. APOLLO ASTRO #9: JOURNEY OF GEORGE, by Jack Turnbull. (http://www.jackturnbull.com). $5, 30 pages. Turnbull abandons his anthology-style for his mini and devotes an issue to his Walking George Potato character. The simplicity of the George and Veggie characters are balanced by Turnbull's lavish backgrounds and the Dreaded Bellpepper Storm Toucan, not to mention a gorgeous silkscreened cover It's a simple story, well-told, that owes as much to Dr Seuss as it does to Chris Ware. Turnbull's biggest strength is his ability to draw out every ounce of expression from his characters using just a few lines. He took a chance using characters that had mostly inhabited one-off strips and plugged them into a larger narrative, and it worked well. This issue is part one of a larger story.

6. COUCH TAG #2, by Jesse Reklaw. (http://www.hobocomics.com). $2, 20 pages. Reklaw is the artist of the syndicated dream strip, SLOW WAVE. This mini has a simple premise: it's about the thirteen different cats Reklaw had during his childhood. What makes this such a great read is that this is really an autobiographical account of his family, but telling it through the device of when certain pets were around and making that the focus of the narrative makes the side details all the more intriguing. Little touches like designing different logos for each cat's introduction and skipping long periods of time between pets make this a great read.

7. THESE THINGS THESE THINGS, by Jeffrey Brown. (http://www.theholyconsumption.com). $4, 36 pages. Brown's scratchy art style and his focus on his love life in his major works for Top Shelf have made him a love him or leave him sort of artist. Personally, I can't get enough of his comics and their lack of adornment when dealing with major drama. Beyond his graphic novels, his minis are often just as compelling for very different reasons. Brown lets his sense of humor show more in his minis, and tells different kinds of stories. This mini deals with some of the events in ANY EASY INTIMACY, providing a sort of closure as Brown deals with yet another broken relationship, the quest to find the artist who performed a particular song, and a book tour with some fellow artists.

8. SUMMA CUM LAUDE, by Eve Englezos & Josh Moutray. (http://www.icecreamlandia.com). 10 pages. The comics that this duo creates are unlike anything else out there today. This latest work, a little bridge between issues of the sublimely strange Icecreamlandia, is designed to look like a minature diploma case. As you open it up, the pages fold out accordian-style, revealing a bizarre science fair. For some reason, the adults are all in 18th century aristocratic dress (complete with powdered wigs and corsets). The dialogue follows from this absurd set-up ("Why, yes, it seems pretty obvious to me now that the dinosaurs were in 3-D.") As always, the realistic, clear-line art belies the insanity of the set-up.

9. A CASE IN TOKYO, by Damien Jay. $10, 22 pages. This comic wins the "most beautiful mini" award, hands-down. Printed on a heavy cardstock and hand-assembled, the coloring process used to illustrate this creepy little story makes the whole thing feel like a children's book gone horribly wrong. The story describes a mental patient who in fact may be possessed, and the momentary clarity she displayed in this state. Her clarity was so incisive that everyone couldn't stand to be around her, until the spell faded and "she became a stupid person once again." While a very quick read, the visuals alone make this a worthwhile purchase. Jay gets the most out of the minicomic format, using every hand-crafted trick in the book.

10. ISOLATION CHAMBER #2, by Ed Piskor (wimpyrutherford@hotmail.com). $1.50, 16 pages. Of the comics on this list, this is the only diary strip. Diary strips (much like personal zines or blogs) can get boring quickly if the author simply devotes it to standard quotidian concerns. It's important to establish some sort of angle early on to differentiate it from other kinds of autobiography. Piskor does this through establishing his voice loud and clear in the early going: he's a curmudgeon who knows a lot of strange people, and isn't afraid to dish. He manages to inject sincerity into his description of his relationship with his baby sister without seeming overly sentimental. He struggles with what to put in his journal and what to censor, some interesting interactions with his parents, and a local group of comics creators. There are weird stories about his interactions with junkies, talks with Harvey Pekar and his feelings about becoming semi-famous. At the end, Piskor announces that the cartoon journal took up all of his time and discontinued it--an interesting statement in itself. Piskor is a real talent and has an interesting voice; it'll be interesting to see what he does after he finishes up his work with Harvey Pekar.

Clenching and Unclenching: Reich #9

Reich #9 is the first issue of Elijah Brubaker's long-running series for Sparkplug published after the death of Dylan Williams, thanks in part to a Kickstarter campaign that provided needed funds to keep the publishing concern going. This issue reminds me of the old saw, "Even paranoids have real enemies." Reich was kooky and saw enemies everywhere, but the fact is that the FDA and FBI both came after him for his theories and devices, not to mention the way he was treated by the medical and psychiatric fields. At worst, Reich was an eccentric who had some interesting ideas and observations, even if his conclusions made some huge leaps in logic. However, in 1950s America, being a sex radical was dangerous business, especially if one's handiwork moved beyond theory and into practice, as with Reich's therapeutic orgone boxes. Brubaker is quick to point out the hypocrisy of 1950s America with regard to sex, as the brutish head inspector sexually harasses his secretary in the most blunt manner possible.

Reich's downfall came in part because he viewed himself as nothing less than a crusader against forces that spread "emotional plague", fortified by the emergence of atomic energy mixing with orgone radiation to create "deadly orgone radiation". It's a quixotic quest at best, in part because even Reich doesn't comprehend the dangers of nuclear energy, as his playing around with radium suggests. It's even more quixotic when one considers just how alone Reich was in his quest and the considerable might and influence of the forces arrayed against him. That's especially true when the government got some of his friends and helpers to betray him; one of them through romantic means. Reich may have been an egomaniac and difficult to get along with on a personal level, but he certainly didn't deserve the storm that came his way. Indeed, even as the rain at the end of the book signaled a triumph for Reich, the rest of the book saw a lot of darker, metaphorical stormclouds building against him.

As always, Brubaker's character design is eccentric and superb, creating people on the page who are somewhere between caricature, naturalism and dynamic naturalism. With furrowed brows, disheveled hair, loutish double chins and blank stares behind glasses, Brubaker quickly gives the reader everything they need to know about a character without them uttering a word. It was also interesting to see Bill Steig make a surprising guest appearance in this issue as a confidante and friend of Reich's; I had no clue that they were connected. I do wish Brubaker was still doing the Chester Brown-style endnotes that were featured in earlier issues, because I would have loved to have learned more about the backstories of several characters introduced in this issue. This issue marks a turning point in the series, and I sense future issues will quickly delve into the fall of Reich and the way he was persecuted. I admire Sparkplug's continuing devotion to the format of the single-issue continuing series, and Brubaker makes sure that each installment is its own unique entity in terms of both content and form.

CCS Anthologies: Wings For Wheels, Stranger Knights, Irene

Stranger Knights #3, edited by Bill Volk.The latest volume in Volk's quirky, genre-oriented and comic pamphlet-formatted anthology is tighter in focus and all the better for it. Volk's own stories revolve around an institutionalized team of super-heroes called the Stranger Knights, who have their own hierarchies and politics to contend with along with threats. In "The Capsule's Promise", Volk turns around the time-worn theme that an alien crash-landing on earth might be friendly by having one of the Knights try to engage it peacefully, only to discover that when it shouts out "Kill Everything!", it means it. "It Grows Among Us" features the dense but simplistic art of Casey Bohn with Volk's story. This is an on-the-road story featuring the Search and Detrucktive going after a food-stealing thief, only to find things aren't what they seem. Bohn's heavy use of blacks and chunky line remind me a bit of the work of John G. Miller, the Scottish cartoonist. Mary Soper's linework in "Incantrix X" is crude and derivative of mainstream manga, but it also has a certain charm and energy, along with an energetic sense of humor. The most polished piece in the book is Bryan Stone's "The Orb of Shalla", a sort of cross between fantasy, sci-fi and high adventure. As a cat woman and a robot hunt for a priceless artifact in the jungle, they are pursued by a creature who actually wants the horned piglet they've picked up as a pet. Stone caps the story with a funny punchline and keeps the reader interested with clever and clear character design. Stranger Knights is lightweight work to be sure, but Volk is slowly but surely figuring out just what he wants this book to look like and feel like. There's certainly a place for smart and funny genre fiction, but it will take time to sand off some of the rougher edges of the anthology. Volk is already adding clever elements like fake ads and a more thoughtfully considered sense of design to the proceedings, as he and his collaborators are clearly dedicated to getting better in public.

Wings For Wheels, edited by Nomi Kane. This is another lightweight but enjoyable anthology with excellent production values. It's a tribute to Bruce Springsteen and his music, and the cardboard cover plus the comic with painted grooves designed to mimic a 45 are both quite clever. Todd McArthur's "A Clarence Clemons Christmas Carol" was the most inessential story in the book in part because of its nonsensical premise (a ghostly Clarence Clemons, the former sax player for the E Street Band, telling the author to spend money in the form of the Dickens story?). Much better was Josh PM Frees' "The Boss Don't Stop", which is about the experience of being carried away by music in the form of a lunatic at a karaoke bar belting out "Born To Run" despite crashing through a table and losing volume on his microphone. Jen Vaughn's "This Town" tries to connect up a younger girl's taste in music with her mother's in the form of Springsteen in a fairly obvious way. Editor Kane's take on the same idea, "Home Is Where The Boss Is", is a better attempt at getting at the idea of a cross-generational appreciation for Springsteen's form of grassroots-inspired Americana and the ways it extends and deepens into adulthood. Pat Barrett's "Growin' Up" takes on this concept from a different angle, trying to justify his own hard-youth bona fides despite growing up in Connecticut by comparing his upbringing to Springsteen's in New Jersey by trying to lump them all together as the tri-state area. This leads to dueling fantasy Springsteens that his friends bring to life, hilariously personifying the ways in which we attach ourselves to our musical heroes. Finally, Jen May's interstitial drawings were a nice touch, especially the final one which details her history with an iconic (and to her troubling) t-shirt image.

Irene, edited by Dakota McFadzean, DW and Andy Warner. This was a strong anthology mostly from recent grads and current students of CCS. That's an interesting editorial board in that each of the artists has radically different approaches to the comics page. McFadzean uses a cartoony style, DW is a mark-maker in the Fort Thunder tradition, and Warner uses a naturalistic approach. McFadzean's "Skeletons" continues his interest in the intersection between small-town life's stresses and the supernatural, especially with regard to children. This story of a friendship fraying because one family is moving away perfectly captures the ways in which kids interact (especially young boys) while creating an unnerving supernatural subtext. Warner's "Come Into My Heart" is the story of an acid trip shared by two teens, culminating in a confession disclosing abuse by the troubled boy. Warner's page and panel design break up the story nicely, but the story gains its real power by his wordless, tight close-ups on the characters at the end. While there's a crisp precision present in his character design, they're also organic enough to allow the story to flow.

DW's collaboration with cute-figure-drawing Rachel Dukes is demented, hilarious and gripping all at once. It's a spy/assassination story drawn in the style of cute, Pokemon-style critters. Levels of denial and disavowal figure into this story of a Daymaker teaming up with a vicious Kid to take down Death Dude, with the price being some baked goods. DW plays it totally straight, building up an intriguing mythology from the ground up while Duke's loose, simple style is perfectly suited for such a story. Jonathan Fine's "Endswell" and Nate Wootters' "Blueberry" bookend the anthology in more ways than one: it's the gritty reality of the boxing ring versus the horrific fantasy of a father forcing a creature on his son, as well as warmth and trust in the face of adversity vs. abject betrayal. Fine's line is clean and naturalistic, while Wootters employs a more cartoony but densely-hatched approach. They're fit nicely into the anthology's overall themes surrounding family, betrayal, and secrets. I hope to see future volumes.

Sequart #62: Elfworld

Elfworld was first conceived of by Jeffrey Brown, best known for his autobiographical comics. Fans of Brown will also know that he's fond of doing skewed takes on genre conventions as well. His Bighead is his version of a superhero character (adapted from stuff he used to do as a kid), and his upcoming Incredible Change-Bots does the same for The Transformers. On the Comics Journal message board back in 2004, he solicited entries for an anthology dealing with sword-and-sorcery type fantasy tales from fellow indy artists, to be called Elfworld. For a variety of reasons, he abandoned the project, but it was taken up by San Francisco artist Francois Vigneault, who started his own publishing concern (Family Style) for this and other projects. Most of the entries in this volume came from that original solicitation by Brown, in a nice-looking package edited by Vigneault and designed by Jonas Madden-Connor.

It's clear that the audience for this book is supposed to be indy-comics fans, and there are a few big names in here, like Brown, Martin Cendreda, Souther Salazar and Ron Rege'. It's unfortunate that their contributions are among the weakest in the book--single or two-page strips that don't really go anywhere. The problem with doing this kind of story is that a straight-up parody is going to be as tedious as one that slavishly adheres to the trappings of the genre. Cendreda does a parody of indy comics with his, with an elf character falling into the same kind of "lonely-boy" loser situations as one might see in some typical autobiographical comics. Even at just four pages, it feels like the joke was beaten to death in the first panel or two. The same went for Ansis Purins' "Gnome Gathering", which tried to meld fantasy with Freak Brothers-style humor. While the final joke about eagles was clever, this was another story that beat the same concept into the ground on page after page.

The stories that work best here are the sort that take after Lewis Trondheim's approach in Dungeon. There, the sword-and-sorcery stories are ridiculous but told with a straight face, and the humor comes out of the situations that arise rather than with easy parodic targets. Walking the line between understanding what makes the genre work and how to transcend its limitations isn't easy, and only a few of the artists in Elfworld got it right to my eyes.

The best stories by far were "Adventures In Mead", by Matt Wiegle, "Basilisk" by Kaz Strzepek, and an untitled story by K. Thor Jensen. Wiegle's story is spaced interstially throughout the story, and involves a drunk fighter with an uncanny knack for killing everything in his path. As we learn as the story proceeds, this ability isn't necessarily helpful. Wiegle's art is beautifully scratchy and cartoony, a nice balance between the strip's violence and its goofiness.

Jensen's story is familiar: a group of adventurers in an underground cavern looking for a fabulous lost city. This tale has a lot going for it. First, Jensen's art style resembles classic Elzie (Popeye) Segar here--a perfect model to emulate in terms of melding humor with adventure. Jensen's secret weapon here is his spot-on dialogue, especially with one member of the party whose constant complaining and skepticism about everything winds up saving them. This was one of the few stories in the book where the characters and situation were interesting enough for me to want to see more of them. Jensen takes the adventure seriously, but his funny art lightens up the action. It's a perfect compromise between the two sensibilities seen so often in this book.

"Basilisk" is a fantastic story about a smart-ass researcher trying to find the legendary basilisk near a small town. The creature is supposedly part-bird and has the power to turn anything it gazes upon into stone. The researcher talks a kobold in a bar to take him to the where his party encountered the creature so he could draw it. The basilisk turns out to be both more and less than what was expected, and the story's ending has a delightful twist. This story has it all--humor, a deep vein of D&D/fantasy references (I especially liked the appearance of a beholder), and a liveliness to its line. It's both funny and exciting, with a great final punchline. I don't think it was a coincidence that Strzepek was able to succeed here because of his comfort with stories that deal with fantastic elements. It was clear which artists were in their element and which weren't in this volume.

There are several other stories that pretty much took on a serious approach to the subject that didn't do enough to entertain as pure genre stories, or else tried to inject a "poignant moment" into fantasy settings. The one other story I did want to note was Erik Nebel & Jesse Reklaw's "The Little People", about a sort of blob-couple. The male is always off on some kind of quest, leaving his mate behind, and never gives her any details. Years later, when she and their son finally leave them, the real reason for his vagueness came out and it's not clear if he's a raving paranoid or had good reason for his actions. It's not quite as accomplished or interesting as the best stories in this book, but it's still clever and visually interesting. The story is quite grim, but it's balanced by the fact that the blobs are funny-looking.

Overall, this book falls prey to some of the traps that indy books tackling genre subjects fall into, but there are several stories that transcend these difficulties. When dealing with the same topic, story after story, there's a certain numbing effect that can take over for the reader. At the same time, the stories that manage to capture the theme in a unique manner are all the more memorable. Writing genre fiction creates a certain set of limitations and expectations for an artist, and it's a testament to an artist's skill if they can create something truly memorable given a reduced palette of storytelling options. There will be a second volume of Elfworld in 2008, and it'll be interesting to see which artists return and what new voices Vigneault brings in. While I appreciate Vigneault's attempt to bring a variety of approaches (serious and otherwise), the next volume may work better as a whole if every artist successfully walks the line between genre fantasy and playfulness. The book was solicited through Diamond and is also available at Family Style's website at http://www.family-style.com

The Quest: Year One

The format Ramsey Beyer chose for her diary comic, Year One, will be familiar to any fan of these sorts of comics. She lists Jeffrey Brown, Liz Prince, Ben Snakepit and others as influences, and one can see her mixing and matching their storytelling styles while in the process of developing her own. Her line is spare and cute, but not as cute as Prince's line. Indeed, the way Beyer draws teeth and open mouths adds a touch of the grotesque to the proceedings, echoing Joey Sayers a bit. What makes her a bit different from some of her autobio/diary comics-making peers is her thoughtfulness and self-reflection. Indeed, the entire project was a deliberate experiment not just to do a weekly autobio comic for a year, but to document her move to a new city (from Chicago to Philadelphia) and examine her feelings regarding the move. Beyer's ability to shift between whimsy, romance, art and the search for connections made this a unique snapshot for a person of a certain age running in certain cultural circles.

Romantic relationships are unsurprisingly a key aspect of this comic, but Beyer's approach is an interesting one. Like the best autobiographical cartoonists, Beyer gives the reader little in the way of background detail regarding her romances and friendships, providing the reader only with information in the moment. Diary comics are about life as it's lived, not one's winding backstory. In the course of the story, we learn that Beyer is seriously dating a couple of different guys long-distance in an open and straightforward fashion. This takes the "drama" out of her romantic life in narrative terms but adds a layer of something that's far more interesting, given the hurdles one must leap when trying to negotiate emotional terms with more than one lover. Beyer admits to being unsure about the concept of marriage but is refreshingly open to any and all ideas and freely admits to being uncertain about her future beyond her twenties.

Most of the comic is about the perilous balance between the naturally antisocial life of a cartoonist and a woman who left Chicago because of her inability to create many meaningful connections. Moving to Philly in part was a way of testing herself to find a way to reach out to others. Those connections are important not just because of her desire to reach out to others, but to actively participate in punk/DIY culture. One can really see the Ben Snakepit influence at work here, because his comics are as much a chronicle of his life in the punk community as it is about his own unusual living situation. For Beyer, going to zine & punk shows is part of her total ethos and aesthetics as a human being, both as participant (for the former) and spectator (for the latter). Beyer balances these weightier matters with "dialogues" she holds with her dog, which serve the purpose of adding a little comic relief while allowing her to put her own thought process in the spotlight.

Beyer is working more in the mold of Brown in the sense that she's not looking to be funny or add punchlines to each of her weekly vignettes. She mercifully dials down the cutesy factor when talking about the men in her life. She's matter-of-fact about her beliefs in interests without being dogmatic about any of them. Working in real time meant that she got noticeably better as the book goes on, making her line thinner but more confident and her figurework more convincing. I often speak of artists needing to get better in public; Year One was Ramsey Beyer's way of trying to get better both as an artist and as an individual. I hope she continues to explore form and formats as she continues her cartooning career.

Kid Lit: Super Grammar, Bird & Squirrel, ChickenHare, Amulet, Cardboard

Here's some more short reviews of recent comics for kids.

Super Grammar, by Tony Preciado & Rhode Montijo.This isn't a comic at all but rather a textbook teaching the basics of grammar through the use of super heroes. It's brightly colored, and its figures are simple and bold. It's definitely a bit of shtick, sweetening the medicine of learning grammar with superhero trappings. For example, every example is something you might see in a superhero comic (or perhaps more pointedly, something you'd see in a superhero movie). I'd be curious to see if this is actually being used in classrooms as a supplement, because it's certainly rock-solid with regard to teaching the basics.

Bird & Squirrel: On The Run!, by James Burks. Burks has a lot of experience as an animator, and it shows in this frenzied story of the two unlikely, titular allies as they seek to escape being eaten by an inexorable, monstrous cat. The character design is reminiscent of the sort of thing one might see on Nickelodeon these days: boxy, exaggerated and simple. Burks is quite skilled as a cartoonist and the chase scenes are well-drawn and fairly funny. Beyond that, there's not much "there" there, to paraphrase Dorothy Parker. The characterization is one-dimensional and predictable. It's a book that's enjoyable but instantly forgettable.

ChickenHare, by Chris Grine. This is an adventure series with comedic overtones in the tradition of Bone. It's not surprising that fellow Scholastic stablemate Jeff Smith blurbed the book. Grine clearly had world-building on his mind when writing what was otherwise a straightforward story about two talking animals with unusual qualities trying to escape from a deranged taxidermist. Grine introduces mysteries and ambiguities about his characters and their world that he deliberately leaves unresolved, with an eye on expanding upon these ideas in future volumes. The titular character is tough and clever but not excessively so, and the design is fantastic, with rabbit ears, feathers on his arms and chicken legs. Grine does a nice job of balancing cute and weird in this comic in equal doses, combining them in unexpected ways. Grine is quite skilled at finding a way to inject life into his turtle sidekick, the monkey-like creature and horned girl they also find in captivity. He even manages to inject pathos into the character of the taxidermist and add some real emotional stakes to the proceedings while never forgetting to keep things moving while generating some laughs along the way. There's plenty here that's original and clever but also familiar enough for any kid to catch on quickly. I certainly wouldn't hesitate handing this to someone who had just finished Bone and wanted to read something in the same vein.

Amulet Volume 5: The Elf Prince, by Kazu Kibuishi.The earlier volumes of Amulet had a lot of padding as various pieces were being shuffled so as to set up betrayals and plot twists. The last volume revealed the true "big bad" of the series in order to set up the action and infodumps of this volume. Kabuishi actually makes those backstory drops the most interesting part of the book, especially when Trellis (the elf prince allied with Emily, the young keeper of a powerful amulet) goes back and discovers horrible things about the amulet. By this point in the series, Kabuishi clearly felt like he had already laid enough pipe earlier in the books and just assumes that his readers will remember the significance of every character and plot device. The problems I have with this series are threefold: 1) the character design of the human characters is dull and flat; they lie on the page like video game characters, 2) the protagonist of the series, Emily, is less a character than a walking plot mover, 3) the effects-heavy use of color on every page lends itself to the cold slickness that I found so offputting about Kibuishi's work in his Flight anthology. Kibiushi is clearly skilled and ambitious, and the book has the production values of a summer blockbuster. There's simply no warmth to be found in his work.

Cardboard, by Doug TenNapel. This was the first time I've ever had the sensation of a comic book yelling at me. Cardboard's high concept is very clever: cardboard with magical properties that comes to life when shaped into specific shapes. It's unfortunate that every other aspect of this book is shrill, manipulative, cliched and unpleasant. I've enjoyed aspects of TenNapel's books before despite their usual heavy-handedness with regard to family-related issues, but the characters in this book are startlingly one-dimensional and unpleasant. Even the art feels over-the-top and borderline grotesque on every page; how many bug-eyed moments did he really need to include on every page? Moments meant to evoke sympathy and sadness feel unearned and forced. The Lessons he aims to impart in this book are insultingly specific and obvious, down to the villain of the piece showing that he's reformed at the end when he gets a haircut. I won't even get into his regressive portrayal of gender. This is one of the worst books I've ever read from a skilled cartoonist.

Sequart Reprints: Milt Gross/Will Elder

This article was originally published at sequart.com in 2006.
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Humor is a particular area of interest for me as a writer, and that's especially true for comics. Indeed, though the medium is capable of addressing any style or genre (as I hope I've showed in this column), the very name of the medium is indebted to its humorous roots. Despite (or perhaps because of) this fact, humorous comics don't often earn a lot of critical attention. I think this is in part because of the subjective nature of humor, but also because most audiences are subjected to the very bland humor found on the daily comics pages. Of course, those strips are handicapped by the tiny space they're given on the page, forcing them all to get by mostly by the force of the verbal nature of their jokes rather than the visuals. These comics are stripped of their energy, of their kinetic power. That energy was later claimed by super-hero comics; at their best, they make the reader fly from panel-to-panel as the story whips the eye through the story.

It wasn't always so. Milt Gross was an early comic strip star, known best for the "Yiddishisms" in his comics. In 1930, he did a book called He Done Her Wrong. At the time, there had been some books published that can only be called the earliest graphic novels. Lynd Ward's God's Man was one of them--a silent, woodcut-looking comic about very Serious Matters. Gross sent up the trend with his own wordless comic book, subtitled "The Great American Novel (With No Words)". Gross uses the book format to burst out of the constraints of the strip. There are full splash pages, images that are free of panels, images that dance around central panels and multiple images on a page when Gross wants to speed up the action. But everything in the story is in motion. The very first page has a still image, of a bar in a small snowy town somewhere, with dozens of footprints leading up to that. The next page sees the action explode, with men and women dancing, drinking and smooching.

Gross is far from a master draftsman. For his purposes, however, that's not important. His sometimes-sketchy, sometimes-rubbery "bigfoot" style is perfect for the tone of the story and the way he leads the reader along. If images seem to bend a bit weirdly as they fly across the page, it's only to create that illusion of movement. His greatest skill as an artist is his awesome compositional sense. The way he arranges every page for dramatic or comedic effect, his use of light and shadow, and how he chooses to speed up or slow down the action is masterful, and is the key to the success of his gags.

The jokes themselves aren't exactly what I'd call sophisticated, but they are clever. He makes use of familiar stereotypes as a shortcut for getting across information quickly and without words. The tall noble hero, the willowy love interest, and the curly-cue moustachioed villain all tip off the reader quickly as to what's-what. There's a later blackface joke that's clever in its execution but that's certainly uncomfortable to read now. There are also later caricatures of native americans and asians that form another clever joke. Overall, I'd say the use of the caricatures is not especially malicious, especially given the more virulent strips of the time, and the fact that Gross made a career of exploring those Yiddishisms. And of course, they're not the root of the humor here; they're as much a shorthand as any of the other familiar images he uses to quickly impart information.

The story is simple: a rugged hunter type in the great white north is lured into operating with a slimy businessman. Said villain manages to trick the singer girlfriend of our hero into thinking her beau is dead, and gets her to come to New York with him. The bulk of the book is concerned with the misadventures of that trio, specifically the Hunter's attempt to reconnect with his girl.

Along the way, Gross packs powerful image after powerful image into his pages. Even visuals not central to the gag are worth looking at. He also imparts drama and pathos into the book. There's an amazing page done almost entirely in black where the singer is waiting for her man to come back. We only see her silhouette in a doorway. At the top left of the page, we see that shadow waiting expectantly; time has passed in the second panel as her posture slumps a bit; in the third panel at the bottom right, we see her arms at her sides and her head down. It's a wonderfully striking page that serves both as emotionally powerful on its own and as a parody of "serious" comics.

A big part of the humor is tied to fighting and action. There's another amazing image of the hunter crashing through a church window, knife in hand, readt to attack his nemesis. The chase scene they have is hilarious, tearing the reader through the city. Another great sequence sees the mighty hunter entering New York. Immediately upon entering the city from a canoe, the triumphant hunter gets a can of paint dumped on him, whacked by a car, stepped on by a horse and kicked by a cop. In a wonderful bit of visual humor, he walks right by his girlfriend, with a big sign advertising a broadway play called "Fate" getting in-between them!
Another great sequence features the singer, abandoned by the villain and destitute in the city. She pleads her case at an office building, begging for a job. The man she pleads to has to plead her case to a higher-up, who repeats the story to another higher-up, who repeats the story to the board of directors, who then call her in to repeat her story to them. After waiting, she gets a yes...to scrubbing floors. Repetition builds the gag up, with him using that technique again of starting at the top left, using a central image, and then concluding in the bottom right hand corner. It makes it easy for the eye to follow and helps the reader tear through the pages, giving the sequence momentum. That momentum is almost musical, as the reader scales down a series of descending notes.

The story continues to build, with a wild climax where the villain literally has the hero tied to a conveyor belt on a sawmill, ready to cut him in half. Goodness prevails, and the villain gets his come-uppance, and everyone lives happily ever after. What's interesting to me about the book is its eventual impact. Gross was not the first "bigfoot" cartoonist, but it's clear that the visual vocabulary he helped to create had a huge impact on others. Jack Cole (creator of Plastic Man) was clearly influenced by a lot of these pages. Kyle Baker's You Are Here is almost a modern update of He Done Her Wrong. His dictum of putting a pretty girl, a chase scene or a fight on nearly every page is exactly the formula that Gross follows, and the use of New York as almost another character mirrors Gross as well.

Of course, the most immediate descendents of this early, manic comic strip humor were the creators of MAD. Harvey Kurtzman's satire was much more sophisticated than anything seen in comics up to that point, but it was up to his collaborators to provide a visual impact for his layouts. The greatest of these collaborators, to my eyes, is Will Elder. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that Elder was one of the greatest cartoonists of the 20th century. Fantagraphics put out a magnificent coffee table book on his career called Will Elder: The Mad Playboy of Art that reprints a bunch of classic strips, but there's a slim companion book that's been released called Chicken Fat, which is also worthy of one's attention. In some ways, Chicken Fat reveals even more of Elder's genius than the big book. It consists of "drawings, sketches, cartoons and doodles". The tossed-off nature of them is remarkable, considering how fully-formed they are.

A few things become quickly evident after examining the book: Elder can draw absolutely anything, in any style, with enormous skill. And he has been doing so for 70+ years, with little diminishment in either his ability or inspiration. It's like he's been hooked up to some cosmic art tap that comes bursting relentlessly out of his pencil and brush. The compulsion to draw is what made Elder so good so soon, along with a grasp of anatomy that's second to none. Not only can Elder draw anything from life, he can mimic any style of artist. A hilarious Norman Rockwell parody in Mad Playboy may be the single funniest image I've ever seen: There's a mind-boggling drawing of Popeye & Olive Oyl getting married (complete with the whole supporting cast) that looks like Elzie Segar rose from the dead to draw it. He also draws carcicatures every bit as lively and clever as a master like Al Hirschfeld. The fact that Elder can draw with so much technical skill is what allowed him to break the rules when he needed to--things still "looked" right no matter how exaggerated his drawings got.

Elder's own style is very much influenced by Gross. It's frenetic and in constant motion. And in the pages of MAD, Elder couldn't help but throw in little background drawings and jokes in addition to advancing the story as Kurtzman saw it. Those marginalia came to be called "chicken fat" by Elder. As Elder says, "Chicken fat is the part of the soup that's bad for you, yet gives the soup its delicious flavor". That marginalia was not central to the story, but it's a big reason why Elder stood out even among amazing artists like Wally Wood in the early issues of MAD.

Chicken Fat was compiled by his son-in-law, Gary VandenBergh. The book reads very much like a love letter to his father-in-law and a family affair in general. One can sense that there is no differentation between Elder the comic artist and Elder the person--he's always funny, always warm, and always a jokester. While sharply witty, his work doesn't have the viciousness or bitterness that marks a number of jokesters. The book features some early drawings (his mechanical drawings particularly stand out since that was a skill he rarely used in his stories), rejected gags from various magazines, sketch sheets and comic strip ideas that didn't quite make it.

My favorite bit was a strip called "Adverse Anthony" that he pitched to the Saturday Evening Post. While brilliant, it was way too demented for a conservative publication like that, which is a shame. Every one of the gags he had in the book for this feature were fantastic, and I'd happily read a whole volume of them. The title character was a killjoy dressed all in black, standing out against the lighter linework of the other characters--all of whom are not shaded. That draws the eye straight to A.A. and whatever grim or weird thing he happens to be doing. My favorite gag was an image of a ticker-tape parade. We see A.A. dumping paper from his office window to the parade below. Then we notice that it's from "Anthony Shoe Co.", his own business. Then we see that he's dumping paper from the suggestion box!

Fans of Elder will find a lot of wonderful surprises. There's a 1950 sketch sheet done at the height of his prowess as an artist, featuring a number of familiar-looking EC characeters. A proposed comic strip called "The Inspector" borrows a lot from Gross, especially in terms of its Yiddishisms. There's a series of lurid pulp-cover parodies in various states of readiness, the most striking being "Fearsome Future Fiction", with a naked girl under glass about to be devoured by giant crustaceans at a dinner table, wearing bibs! Seeing him work out problems of anatomy for a strip show what a tireless worker he is; while he may have a ton of talent, it's his relentless work ethic that made him great. Even Elder's recent, tossed-off doodles are wonderful to look at--gags in search of a venue.

There's plenty in this book for those not familiar with Elder, but I'd steer those readers to Mad Playboy first. A lot of the strips here feature some dated humor, especially those submitted for magazines like Playboy. This book is a behind-the-scenes look at Elder and his creative process and as such doesn't always feature his best material. That said, even Elder's most dated or flattest gags are still worth examining just for the sheer proficiency of their design and execution.

Looking at the half-finished drawings is not quite the same thing as a fully-realized Elder strip, because there's a weight that's accrued as you read one. Between the foreground gag and the numerous background gags, the amount of humor that Elder piles on has a cumulative effect on the reader. Any one gag may not be brilliant on its own, but that rapid-fire technique (used by Mel Brooks and the Zucker Brothers in films) allows the reader to retain the gags that they find funniest while forgetting the others. The trick is that Elder was able to do this while still making his pages a smooth reading experience. You could safely ignore all of the background jokes if you wanted to and just read the story, or you could read the background gags by themselves, or you could integrate the panel as a reader and do both--and it was easy to do any of these things. Like Gross, Elder is a master of composition and how the eye tracks across a page. There's no confusion for the reader in following the action on a page, which is crucial for a story that's trying to be funny. This style has been widely imitated, with modern cartoonists like Evan Dorkin being a prime example but with plenty of lesser artists trying it as well. Not everyone does it as well as Elder, and fewer still could produce at a rate like Elder did in his prime. If I was an aspiring cartoonist, Elder's work (in MAD, Playboy, and other Kurtzman collaborations like Goodman Beaver) would be my textbook, a model of how to translate one's personal comedic muse onto the page. The lessons are all there: draw from life, be versatile, be clear, force the reader into reacting how you want them to without them knowing it, and above all else: keep drawing.