Grace Kroll's Tulpa

Grace Kroll's incendiary debut comic, Tulpa, grabs the reader by the throat on the first page and never lets go. A tulpa is a kind of manifestation or doppelganger, and Kroll is tormented by their own tulpa, as the cover itself reveals. Kroll is at war with themselves and their mental health, and the first story sees their tulpa whispering to them that they're damaged and should just die. In a dream, Kroll imagines being at the top of a tall building for a suicide attempt but they don't follow through. Waking brings no solace; indeed, Kroll thinks "If I was dead, I wouldn't have to feel anything." This is all expressed through a series of chiaroscuro drawings mixed with their blank self-caricature.

In a series of short vignettes, Kroll explores their depression, body image, fantasy life, sexual needs, and their own productivity as an artist. While many of the images and stories are disturbing, it's fascinating to see Kroll wrestle with the darkest impulses of their id and work through them. It's not so much therapy as it is an exorcism, exposing what they hate and fear about themself and the world in such a direct and visceral manner. In "Skin," for example, Kroll sits in front of a mirror and compulsively picks at the skin on their face as their tulpa berates them. The images become more and more graphic, including a detailed schematic of the skin's many layers, and Kroll can muster no defense at being referred to as stupid and disgusting.

In "Fantasy" and "Session," Kroll's tulpas seem to have a lot less ammunition. "Fantasy" is about their giving themselves permission to fantasize about whatever they want, no matter how lurid, because it's not hurting anyone. Their tulpa has to admit that it seems to be pretty satisfying. "Session" involves them being consensually tied up and flogged, and how freeing it feels. Their sexual tulpas (including a furry) try to make fun of them for all of this, but they're not having it; being in that submissive space is healing for them. "No Critique" features a wave of distractions and haters preventing them from drawing, but one of them (who redrew a page) actually provides a useful perspective. Who's the tulpa and who's the real Grace? Kroll deliberately blurs that line.

"Body Talk" is perhaps the roughest of all the strips, as this tulpa is so unrelentingly vicious to Kroll during a workout. It makes them push too hard, degrades their body as worthless, and pushes them to purge. The tulpa just wants Kroll's full attention, knowing that purging allows them to "feel a semblance of fucking control over your body." Of course, nothing ever really works, as the sight of their own body is too much for them to bear. Every aspect of this strip is painful and disturbing, and Kroll doesn't spare themselves at all. They are honest in every inch and every panel that overcoming these feelings isn't even on the menu; simply expressing them honestly is a powerful statement.

Kroll's mastery over body language adds to the emotional impact of these comics. A shorter comic, Dancers, is a gag story that uses the flattening, abstract forms of modern dance to tell the story of one lover asking another dancing lover to get them Milano cookies. There's a hilarious bit of dialogue along the way that leads to a funny conclusion, as the one thing that was unwanted occurs. Kroll has remarkable control over the page, whether it's disconcerting and grotesque naturalism or light-hearted cartoony work. This is an exciting debut.

November Garcia's Malarkey #4

At this stage of her career, November Garcia's one-woman anthology Malarkey is mostly comprised of reprints from other venues. Popula, Pen America, and The New Yorker featured some of the stories here, and it speaks to her versatility as a cartoonist in how she tailored each of them for publication while still retaining her essential irreverence. Of course, there are plenty of her own strips in Malakey #4, and they are very much in keeping with past work. For example, there's her obsession with the band FIDLAR, a loud and trashy rock band whose fans tended to be teens. Her obsession and crush on the lead singer are funny, but Garcia also notes that as a middle-aged woman, she's right on track for regressive behavior.

No one does self-deprecation funnier than Garcia. Take her story about being a young cartoonist and submitting a book to Fantagraphics, for example. Convinced of her own genius, she had the chutzpah to send it to her idol Peter Bagge (along with the rejection letter) and asked if the problem was the story or the art. His reply, "It is both," led to her thinking "With that, I officially entered adulthood." Garcia's willingness to deeply mine her memories of embarrassing events is what makes her so funny. A key element of that humor is her subtle mastery of pacing, Even in stories that are mostly dialogue and text captions, Garcia has a way of making them easy to absorb thanks to her understanding of how to use negative space.

"Travel Tips From A Tokyo Trip" was originally published in The New Yorker, and Garcia is much more reserved than usual. It's still a funny strip with a good punchline, but the tightness of the strip and punchline is different from her typical pleasant meanderings. Compare that to the next, wordless story. Garcia drops a nameless drug at the beach, listens to music, and rocks out. "Blind Faith," from Pen America, is about her religious upbringing and Catholic school days. Garcia smartly notes how omnipresent religious practices are when virtually everyone in the same country is brought up Catholic. A Filipina, Garcia shed her beliefs when she moved to America, but what was interesting was how lazy her own parents' practice was. Sure, they had to pray the rosary growing up, but it was ok to wait til after Melrose Place. No issue of Malarkey is complete without a funny story about Garcia's mom, and this issue featured a story about her mom's obsession with beauty regimens, culminating in something horrific called a "blood facial."

"Hole Number One" is a companion piece to "Blind Faith," as Garcia talks about trying to get laid as a teen and finding it hard to get privacy. Garcia talks about using confession as a way of getting rid of her sex-related guilt so this story takes the reader from under her bed to abandoned houses, a park, and finally a golf course. A neatly-trimmed green works every time. The final strip involves Garcia giving advice to her younger self about hard living, being cool, and how she will never lead a conventional life. Garcia's use of color throughout the comic adds a lot to each story; her use of blank space invites conventional, psychedelic, and decorative uses of color. Garcia's increasing confidence and command over her page makes all of this work some of the most entertaining autobio currently being published.

The Top 75 Comics Of The 2010s

Over at Solrad, I compiled my list of the top twenty comics of the 2010s. This was an extremely difficult task, as I had to leave out many worthy entries. Here's my list, ranked 21-75, of the other best comics of the decade.

A few notes:

* I excluded anthologies from the list, with the exception of the Jason Martin-written issue of Papercutter. That's a separate category to consider, in my opinion.
* I excluded most big collections of artists, with the exception of Mark Connery's Rudy, because that work had never been collected before in any format.
* I only allowed one entry per artist. The exception was John Porcellino, in part because the two works I chose are both exceptionally good and are completely different in terms of format and style.
* I stuck to printed matter only, with the exception of Laura Park's piece.
* I am limiting myself to a single line of description for each comic. I've reviewed most of them already.

Here's the list of 20 I published with Solrad:

1. Rusty Brown, by Chris Ware (Pantheon).
2. Rosalie Lightning, by Tom Hart (Macmillan).
3. Pretending Is Lying, by Dominique Goblet (NYRB).
4. You & A Bike & A Road, by Eleanor Davis (Koyama Press).
5. The Love Bunglers, by Jaime Hernandez (Fantagraphics).

6. Soldier's Heart, by Carol Tyler (Fantagraphics).
7. Leaving Richard's Valley, by Michael DeForge (Drawn and Quarterly).
8. The River At Night, by Kevin Huizenga (Drawn and Quarterly).
9. Everything Is Flammable, by Gabrielle Bell (Uncivilized Books).
10. Chlorine Gardens, by Keiler Roberts (Koyama Press).

11. Infomaniacs, by Matthew Thurber (Drawn and Quarterly).
12. Someone Please Have Sex With Me, by Gina Wynbrandt (2D Cloud).
13. Girl Town, by Casey Nowak (Top Shelf).
14. The Heavy Hand, by Chris Cilla (Sparkplug Comic Books).
15. Artichoke Tales, by Megan Kelso (Fantagraphics).

16. All The Answers, by Michael Kupperman (Gallery 13).
17. Blammo #9, by Noah Van Sciver (Kilgore Books).
18. Sir Alfred #3, by Tim Hensley (Buenaventura Press).
19. The Unofficial Cuckoo's Nest Study Companion, by Luke Healy.
20. Book Of Days Daze, by E.A. Bethea (Domino Books).

And here's #21 - 75:

21. King-Cat 75, by John Porcellino (Spit-And-A-Half). This is the tribute to Maisie Kukoc issue, and it's a magnificent, sincere, and loving eulogy for a beloved pet.
22. Recidivist #4, by Zak Sally (La Mano). Haunting, poetic, and complex work--and printed by hand.
23. Hagelbarger And That Midnight Goat, by Renee French (Yam Press). An absurdist piece about the ways in which beauty, kindness, cruelty, humor, and horror can all share the same space.
24. Education, by John Hankiewicz (Fantagraphics). The master of comics-as-poetry once again puts together an extensively immersive and challenging series of images in creating a powerful narrative of sorts.
25. Frontier #17: "Mother's Walk," by Lauren Weinstein (Youth In Decline). No one gets more real than Weinstein, and this account of childbirth and its accompanying stressors and pleasures holds nothing back.

26. I Want You #2, by Lisa Hanawalt. One of the funniest, most stylish, most disgusting, and most bizarre comics I've ever read; this is what I mean when I refer to a reading experience as "the full Hanawalt."
27. Approximate Continuum Comics, by Lewis Trondheim (Fantagraphics). Endlessly witty quotidian observations from one of the world's greatest cartoonists.
28. The Infinite Wait And Other Stories, by Julia Wertz (Koyama Press). This is Wertz at her height, with a fully-realized drawing style and attention to narrative detail that makes her usual hilarious observations all the more poignant.
29. Susceptible, by Genevieve Castree' (Drawn and Quarterly). Brutally honest personal account of how a toxic parent can traumatize a child, and how that child reacts to the experience as they grow up.
30. Bright-Eyed At Midnight, by Leslie Stein (Fantagraphics). An ode to art and beauty as a worthwhile thing to pursue done in a bright, colorful style that is in itself gorgeous.

31. Make Me A Woman, by Vanessa Davis (Drawn and Quarterly). Davis' trenchant observations and her innovative open-page layouts make her one of the best, most singular memoirists.
32. Your Black Friend, by Ben Passmore (Silver Sprocket). A devastating, incisive, personal, and funny statement about race and the ways in which white people unfairly look to people of color for instruction.
33. Our Mother, by Luke Howard (Retrofit). Howard's personal and painfully funny account of his mother's mental illness and its creeping inevitability in his own life.
34. Out Of Hollow Water, by Anna Bongiovanni (2D Cloud). With quiet but powerful restraint, Bongiovanni spins horrible fairy tales that reflect the cruelty of real life, especially with regard to women.
35. Incidents In The Night, by David B (Uncivilized Books). This is a wild bit of autobio, detective story, and magical realist conspiracy theory epic--all done in David B's trademark dense black line.

36. War Of Streets And Houses, by Sophia Yanow (Uncivilized Books). Yanow is an ace at depicting the intersection of personal and political hotpoints, with a shambling line that is irresistible.
37. Raw Power, by Josh Bayer (Retrofit). It's punk as fuck, like all of Bayer's work, matching the expressive energy of the line with a steady narrative framework and a powerful understanding of history.
38. The Hospital Suite, by John Porcellino (Drawn and Quarterly). Still maintains the poetic nature of King-Cat while telling a straightforward narrative about his mental and physical illnesses.
39. Chunk, by Emma Hunsinger. A perfectly and expressively drawn comic about art school that delves deep into each character's emotional narratives.
40. By Monday I'll Be Floating In The Hudson With The Other Garbage, by Laura Lannes (2D Cloud). Autobio doesn't get any rawer than this, as Lannes holds nothing back in talking about her relationships with a line so expressive that it practically jumps off the page.

41. This One Is Mine, by Laura Park. In a single page, Park displays their stunning skill as a cartoonist and their storytelling brilliance in discussing their life with cancer.
42. This Is The Last Day Of The Rest Of Your Life, by Ulli Lust (Fantagraphics). This is a horrifying coming-of-age comic, filled with toxic friends and predators at every corner, told with commanding cartooning skill.
43. Sex Fantasy, by Sophia Foster-Dimino (Koyama Press). This is a funny, weird, and deeply intimate mix of personal and fictional stories--and the line between the two is deliberately blurred.
44. Dragon's Breath And Other Stories, by MariNaomi (2D Cloud). A sensitive, poetic, and deeply personal series of short memoir vignettes, tinged with a deep sense of melancholy and regret.
45. Arsene Schrauwen, by Olivier Schrauwen (Fantagraphics). This outrageous "biography" traverses areas like colonialism, fantasy, weird sex, surrealism and many other categories.

46. Young Frances, by Hartley Lin (AdHouse). This is both an exquisite character study and a knowing, hilarious parody of what it's like to work in a high-powered law firm, drawn by an artist who understands the tiniest nuances of character interaction.
47. New School, by Dash Shaw (Fantagraphics). This may be Shaw's masterpiece: a complex exploration of identity, adventure tropes, and sophisticated use of color for narrative purposes.
48. House Of Women, by Sophie Goldstein (Fantagraphics). A beautiful merging of design, color contrast, exquisite linework, and a complex takedown of colonialism, religion, and capitalism.
49. Exits, by Daryl Seitchik (Koyama Press). This is a beautifully surreal, personal, and angry book about the male gaze and what it means to be seen.
50. The Angriest, Saddest Black Girl In Town, by Robyn-Brooke Smith. With delicate and expressive pencils, Smith expresses her rage and alienation with regard to race, identity, and being the other.

51. Demon, by Jason Shiga (First Second). An outrageous, hilarious, over-the-top series of action sequences as logic problems and ultraviolence presented in context with its ethical & ontological implications.
52. Rookie Moves, by November Garcia. A funny and fresh voice in autobio who manages to express her own enthusiasm for comics and its creators as sharply as she does with regard to her own life.
53. I, Rene Tardi, Prisoner Of War In Stalag IIB, by Jacques Tardi (Fantagraphics). Tardi is a legend, but this is his crowning achievement: telling the story of his father's wartime experiences.
54. Beta Testing The Apocalypse, by Tom Kaczynski (Fantagraphics). This is a smart and frequently chilling satire of culture and philosophy in a market-driven world.
55. Windowpane, by Joe Kessler (Breakdown Press). A trippy look at the twin poles of creation and destruction, filtered through a color scheme that often abstracts the subject matter.

56. Architecture Of An Atom, by Juliacks (2D Cloud). This is the most ambitious project yet by Juliacks, whose immersive style demands total attention and commitment from the reader--and this poetic story about human connection is worth it.
57. Houses Of The Holy, by Caitlin Skaalrud (Uncivilized Books). This is an enigmatic howl, a journey through the darkest recesses of memory told through symbols and language created just for this narrative.
58. Stroppy, by Marc Bell (Drawn and Quarterly). This surreal bit of utter nonsense has its own iron-clad logic and narrative momentum, resulting in a gleefully strange adventure.
59. Rudy, by Mark Connery (2D Cloud). A quarter-century's worth of subversive, Dada, punk humor (with remarkably traditional comedic structures), collected in one overwhelming volume.
60. Spinning, by Tillie Walden (First Second). This is a beautiful, dense memoir about the demands we place on ourselves and how this distracts from many of our real issues.

61. Couch Tag, by Jesse Reklaw (Fantagraphics). It's a fascinating episodic memoir, wherein Reklaw repeatedly uses the idea of writing about one thing as a way of exploring a deeper emotional issue.
62. Sky In Stereo, by Mardou (Revival House). This is a bracing, brave story about a psychedelic experience gone horribly wrong, and the harrowing subsequent stay in a mental institution.
63. Magic Whistle #3.2, by Sam Henderson (Alternative Comics). Henderson remains one of the premier humorists in comics, and he added the editor hat in expanding his series into a humor anthology.
64. Too Dark To See, by Julia Gfrörer. The horror of this brilliant, scratchily-drawn comic is in its deeply cynical attitudes regarding love, sex, and relationships. 
65. Operation Margarine, by Katie Skelly (AdHouse Books). It's a combination of stylish clothes & poses, a kickass adventure, and a deep meditation on trauma.

66. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, by Emil Ferris (Fantagraphics). A sprawling, visually astounding monster mystery book.
67. Papercutter #17 (Tugboat Press). This is the issue where every story was written by Jason Martin, and drawn by an all-star team's worth of cartoonists;
68. The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song, by Frank M. Young and David Lasky (Abrams). The research and verisimilitude for the famous singing family's dialogue is top-notch, but it's Lasky's astonishing cartooning that's the true draw.
69. Invisible Ink, by Bill Griffith (Fantagraphics). A startling family memoir that leaves judgment behind and focuses on empathy instead.
70. Megahex, by Simon Hanselmann (Fantagraphics). Launched Megg, Mogg, and Owl into the public imagination; it's still the ur-young degenerate book of the last decade.

71. Lost Cat, by Jason (Fantagraphics). This Phillip Marlowe pastiche is one of the best of Jason's mash-ups of culture and explorations of loneliness.
72. Plans We Made, by Simon Moreton (Uncivilized Books). An emotionally impressionistic account of youth with a beautiful, spare line.
73. Hilda And The Mountain King, by Luke Pearson (NoBrow). This is the capper to one of the greatest kids' comics series of all time, by an artist at the height of his powers.
74. Forming, by Jesse Moynihan (NoBrow). A hilarious, profane, and hyperviolent account of the gods and aliens that walked the earth.
75. Pornhounds #2, by Sharon Lintz and various artists. A series of stories about working in the porn industry turns into a sensitive and funny account of dealing with breast cancer.

31 Days Of CCS: The Master List

Here's the master list of every day of my annual 31 Days of CCS, my month-long look at work from students and alumni of the Center For Cartoon Studies.

1. Mary Shyne
2. Gilmore Girls Fanzine and Doug Catches Up
3. Amelia Onorato and Daryl Seitchik
4. Anna Sellheim
5. Sam Nakahira
6. Natalie Wardlaw
7. Kat Ghastly
8. Cuyler Keating, April Malig, Lillie J. Harris
9. Alexander Washburn
10. Emma Hunsinger, Kazimir Lee
11. Sage Persing, Ben Merrylees, Issy Manley
12. Leise Hook, Ross Wood Studlar, Beth Hetland
13. Nhi Luu, Jess Johnson, Donna Almendrala, Kori Michele Handwerker
14. Advocacy Comics
15. Betsey Swardlick, Ivy Allie
16. Angela Boyle, Cole Closser, Denis St. John
17. Melanie Gillman
18. Reilly Hadden, Andi Santagata
19. Brainworm 3-5
20. Colleen Frakes, Sean Knickerbocker
21. Filipa Estrela
22. Jai Granofsky, DW
23. Kristen Shull
24. Charles Forsman
25. Sandy Steen Bartholomew
26. Aaron Cockle
27. Emil Wilson
28. Liam McTaggart
29. Luke Healy
30. Andy Warner
31. Mike King/Michael Sweater

31 Days Of CCS #31: Mike King/Michael Sweater

Mike King, currently using the pen name Michael Sweater, does what I sometimes refer to as "pop-punk" comics. These are artists who very much live a DIY, punk ethos and do frequently sweet, punk-themed comics, often revolving around a fantasy theme. His collection of comics from 2013, Lion's Teeth, puts all of his influences on display. Graffiti art, tattoo art, manga, fantasy comics, autobio comics, and more all are all there, blended in a confident and stylized line that's the clear result of drawing a lot of pages. The five issues of Lion's Teeth add up to nearly five hundred pages, including some work drawn in 2011. The cumulative effect of all of this is closer to looking at an intensely worked-over sketchbook than a coherent anthology series, but that rawness is part of the appeal.

The best strips are the ones featuring Dave, the wizard school student. Armless due to a curse, he loves magic but claims to hate everything else: the perfect, disaffected protagonist. Of course, that's all a pose, as he has a strong friendship with his anthropomorphic owl friend Argyle and a frenemy relationship with Richard, the snake who lives in the tree in his backyard. King's character design is top-notch, but the barrel-chested Dave is particularly inspired. Dave and friends are just as likely to go on a quest for death-summoning skull as they are to go out and eat the best pizza in the world, and that's part of the charm of the strip. Death himself is just a guy who has to go out and do a job, and it's frequently an annoying one. His adventures run parallel to Dave's until he is finally summoned, and their conversation is a surprisingly poignant one. I'd love to see more of these characters, especially because they provide such an interesting alternative to the all-too-familiar "wizard school" trope.

There are a lot of interstitial pages here devoted to King's graffiti/tattoo art designs. Here, he uses a big, bold line with stark black/white contrasts. It's different from the rattier, looser line of his comics, while also use zip-a-tone and gray-scale effects to fill in negative space in order to add weight to the page. There are also the "Clyde" comics, which are done in big, chunky lines on the back of old priority mail envelopes. There's also his older "Make Me" comics from 2011, which are more random bits of humor. There's one running bit where a human refuses food to an animal or threatens to hurt them, and then a huge boxer shows up to beat the human to a pulp. King's comic timing is sharp, and his use of callbacks like this is smoothly developed. There are also comics featuring little punk kids being schooled in how to be properly punk by adults. The other major comics in these collections are autobiographical, where he draws himself as an anthropomorphic cat and his girlfriend (now wife) Benji as an anthropomorphic mouse. King can actually get pretty raw and real with regard to his mental state in these strips--both in the comics about himself and in the Dave comics in particular. That mix of well-developed craft and a willingness to try anything is a hallmark of his work, which has continued in the books he's done with Silver Sprocket.

31 Days Of CCS #30: Andy Warner

Andy Warner, along with Josh Kramer, Eleri Mai Harris, Dan Nott, Dan Archer, and a few others, make up a group of CCS grads whose primary interest is in comics journalism. Unsurprisingly, Warner has been a longtime mainstay of The Nib, and he's one of their best contributors. His minicomic, Eruption, is a good example of his Nib work. It's meticulously-researched, thought-provoking, and provides a human angle on everything. This is about the eruption of Mt. Kilauea in Hawai'i a few years back. In his clear, rich detailed drawing style, he gives the reader a sense of what it was like when the volcano erupted, but he also provides information as to the implications and repercussions of the event, both geologically and economically.

On the other hand, Spring Rain, his memoir of being in Beirut in 2005 when a revolution was breaking out, is sprawling, self-indulgent, messy, and raw. As he discusses in the book, he's told a lot of stories about Beirut in the course of his comics career, but he always left out all of the significant personal details. This book integrates a significant mental breakdown he experienced, the fraught relationships he was dealing with, and the extremely tenuous political situation that exploded around him. All at the age of 21.

Writing this kind of book was an all or nothing proposition. After years of holding back, Warner had to discuss everything, no matter how embarrassing or painful it was. It's clear that he was as honest as he possibly could be in telling this story, because he does not make himself a sympathetic character. Indeed, his time in Beirut could be described as a continuous series of bad decisions, starting with breaking up with his girlfriend in America prior to the trip, for no reason other than being apart. He regretted it immediately and talked to her via email when he could, but it was obvious that he had unfinished business there and it gave him a baseline level of misery.

That was balanced against Warner making a number of remarkable friends. Some were natives of Lebanon, while others were from the US like he was. Living abroad, it wasn't surprising that the isolation of this experience would lead to him making such fast friends, and it was clear that they knew that he needed them. They encouraged him to go out instead of stewing alone in his depression. A major subplot of his story was that many of these friends were gay men, which puzzled a few since Warner was ostensibly straight.

That in itself was a key element of the book: Warner coming to terms with his own sexuality and how that related to trauma. An incident from high school where a guy he wanted to be friends with grabbed Warner's crotch against his will confused and traumatized him. That led him to stop trying in a class, and one day the teacher punished him by laying him down on the floor and telling him to hump it. Shame, rage, humiliation--all bottled up. On top of all that, Warner's family had a history of mental illness. All of that subsumed trauma combined with genetic tendencies made Warner a ticking time bomb.

Throw all of that on top of a genuine political uprising that alternated moments of hope and solidarity for the Lebanese with cynical machinations by Syria, the PLO, and America, and you had an almost absurd outward manifestation of the roiling paranoia and despair that Warner felt. Indeed, almost every one of his friends had their own inner struggles. One gay friend took a bunch of pills to kill himself because he knew his parents would never approve of him. As the world became more uncertain, Warner's relationships with his friends grew closer but also more unstable. His next-door neighbor and close friend came on to him despite him having a boyfriend, but Warner agreed to hook up with him several times. He had sex a few times with one of his female friends and both tried to pretend it didn't mean anything until it did. When he tried to get her to hook up with someone else at a party, it was an act that demeaned and hurt her. Of course, the group throwing drugs into the equation did little to calm things down. All that did was accelerate the madness, matching the madness around them.

Warner's own depiction of his breakdown and near-suicide attempt is harrowing. It was unsparing and used the full range of his considerable skill as a draftsman. For weeks, he had heard voices. He had seen threatening faces. The whispers grew louder on that night, and then eventually they passed. It is no coincidence that he had decided to do a story about his high school experience, releasing that trauma a little. The importance of art in Warner's life is one of the big emphases in this book; he never comes out and says it, but it's obvious that art saved his life. It's also clear that writing this book is something he had to do. Everything that happened was too big to wrap his mind around, but he couldn't help but try to do it anyway. Warner tries to give the reader a sense of Beirut and its history, what its people are like, and what it's like to be a student abroad. Then he tries to do this as a completely unreliable narrator in a volatile political situation while on drugs. It never quite coheres, but neither did his experiences. A bunch of horrible and beautiful stuff happened to Warner. He made a number of bad decisions and hurt some people's feelings as a result. He made it through as best as he could, and came clean with regard to trauma and mental illness through his art. If nothing else, he paid a debt to himself and others by being open about what happened to him in Beirut, bridging the gap between journalism and memoir in a graphic, compelling, and expansive manner.

31 Days Of CCS #29: Luke Healy

Luke Healy emerged from CCS as a fully-formed cartoonist. All of his early minis are excellent and well-designed, and he's been remarkably productive since then, with three books under his belt. His most recent book, Americana, is probably the most straightforward of his books, in that it's a travel memoir that mixes text and comics. At the same time, there's something that's deeper than a simple account of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. This is a story about displacement of identity at a deep level. Healy is a native of Ireland who spent a lifetime obsessing over the USA: its culture, its expansiveness, and its possibilities. He loved America, but he wasn't able to stay here for any appreciable length of time. His visa expired after a year at CCS, and he wasn't able to return until halfway through his second year. He couldn't find any jobs that would allow him to stay.

All of that led him to fixate on walking the Pacific Crest Trail--over 2,500 miles through desert, mountains, and forests. He had no experience hiking or camping at all. His "practice" was the occasional long walk on level land in Ireland. Over the course of over 300 pages, Healy details his struggles (physical and emotional) on the trail and meeting his eventual goal at the Canadian border. The way Healy writes about America and his life, in general, is a pervasive sense of something being missing--something that he could see that was just beyond his grasp. He's uncomfortable in his own skin, and that seems to have little to do with the fact that he's gay. There's a basic sense of total discomfort that's palpable in his other work by way of his characters and author persona, and a little more subdued here. After all, this version of Luke is as much an invention as in his other books, but it's the one based most closely on real events in his life.

It's also subdued because the audience is presented with all-Luke, all the time. He doesn't go out of his way to make himself likable, but he also tones down on some of the negative self-talk. Part of that is through the genuine focus on the experience of hiking the PCT. It was grueling, and he even seriously thought about quitting when he got near Los Angeles. A friend picked up him and he rested for several days, but he decided to go back to the trail again. A sticking factor halfway through was the ill health and eventual death of his grandfather; each time he thought about going home, his family encouraged him to keep hiking. He even managed to talk to his grandfather a few times, who was perfectly delighted that his grandson was hiking in America.

This book, by its very nature, is sprawling and self-indulgent. Healy has no pretensions regarding special insights into hiking, nature, America, or even himself. This is not to say that he doesn't think about and discuss all of these things, and he records it to the best of his ability. He gets across each of the bizarre environments he hikes through, from the Mojave Desert to the High Sierras, and he relays just how poorly prepared he was for all of this. He could barely set up his tent and made poor time at the beginning of the hike. The camaraderie of the trip was an interesting subplot, because it was something that he both cultivated and avoided. He usually preferred to be alone, but there were times that he wanted to share some of his experiences. That became especially true about halfway through the hike, when a mountain lion came sniffing around his tent at night. That motivated Healy to hike much faster and talk his way into camping with other folks at night.

Healy's line is simple, expressive, and surprisingly kinetic. The characters in the book are almost always moving, albeit slowly, and Healy showed a knack for depicting this movement while also providing a real sense of the environment. The pinks and blues he used as single-tone fills added just the right amount of atmosphere.

Ultimately, this is a book about emptying one's self. When one's only concern is surviving on the trail on a day-to-day basis, other things fall away. Healy was twitchy, restless, overstuffed and anxious; he implies that he was drawn to the PCT because it would beat these things out of him. The trail made him lose weight at a rapid pace, his fat reserves consumed by the relentless energy needed for the trail. There was the sort of camaraderie that comes about when people are thrown into a strenuous, isolating situation. By the end of the trail, he had not only become a proficient hiker, but the hike itself became everything. At the end, he felt mostly relief and weariness. He could finally stop. The cumulative effect was like any strenuous, meditative activity: helping Healy empty his mind and quiet it.

I don't think this book had much to do with America per se, other than simply being the setting for this trek. The quote he had at the beginning alludes to this a bit: "I'm driven by my hunger for the American experience. But also by the hope that if I gorge myself on it, I'll become sick of the taste." His PCT trek had nothing to do with the Hollywood or cultural image of America that he was so drawn to. Instead, he took on America as a beautiful, sprawling, and dangerous geographic entity. It was unsentimental, unwelcoming, and yet almost painfully beautiful at times. He let America drain his body of strength, batter him, wear him down, and finally focus. Confronting America in this way is what finally allowed him to release his fixation. It's about having no choice but to let go.