Thirty Days of CCS #18: Lena Chandhok

Lena Chandhok is one of many CCS cartoonists who are looking for a style and a voice. Her collection of mostly student work, Leftovers Are Good Luck, is filled with a number of charming comics rendered in a variety of different styles. There's the clever design conceit of the cover being a refrigerator and the top portion being the "freezer section" and the bottom portion the "fridge section", with the two sections actually cut separately. That top portion is an hourly comics challenge as well as a nicely drawn Peanuts pastiche, featuring Chandhok looking not unlike Lucy. The hourly comics capture a day in the life of a CCS student, from the interesting lectures given (like being made to watch La Jetee and 12 Monkeys) to how dinner plans can change on a time because of heavy snow. She packs a surprising amount of detail into what are obviously hurried comics.

The rest of the stories range between fantasy to autobio to visual experiments. I especially enjoyed "Robot Baby", a funny and touching story about a couple who give birth to a robot and all of the weird complications that ensue. When Chandhok uses a fantasy trope, it's always in service of a greater metaphor, and that was certainly the case in that story. "Fear" and "A Week of Ups and Downs" are both autobio involving her boyfriend (the cartoonist Paul Swartz, who was entry #1 in this series) in a variety of stressful situations. "It Never Knows In San Papel" sees Chandhok use a thick, chunky line that's less effective than the thinner line weights she eventually chose. "Blue" is about a faceless woman turning invisible like so much plastic packaging in a store; I got the sense that this one was originally in color and it suffers a bit in greyscale here. In short, this is decent student work, but is fragmented in the way that early work inevitably suffers from. Still, there are a number of sparks of inspiration to be found, especially thanks to Chandhok's solid character design and wit.

One can see how all of that paid off in her most recent comic, Pony Tale. Once again, Chandhok uses fantasy tropes to explore identity issues. In this case, it's about a young woman named Callie who is half-centaur in a world where mythological creatures are quite real. Her only problem is that she looks like a normal, bipedal human; her centaur heritage is hidden. It's a clever metaphor for any number of identity issues, from race/culture to sexuality, where one's assumptions regarding another person are based solely on appearances. It's also about the hurt that results when someone trying to identify with a particular group is excluded because of some arbitrary criteria. Using a chunky, cute line and giving her pages a bit more thickness with more greyscaling and spotting blacks, Chandhok avoids bludgeoning the reader with her message by coming up with an amusing, well-designed cast of characters as Callie's circle of friends. The repeating motif of Callie staring into the mirror at various angles before leaving is a clever one, especially as it gives over to greater confidence toward the end of the comic. I'd love for Chandhok to revisit this world, perhaps from the perspective of one of the other characters.

Thirty Days of CCS #17: Jesse Mead, Carl Antonowicz

Carl Antonowicz's The Black Dog & The Hole At The Heart of the World is a magical realist romance story, only the fantasy elements border on the horrific rather than whimsical. It's the story of a first date between Gabi and Caleb and everything that happens after. It's obvious that Antonowicz has thought long and hard about these characters and the ways in which a couple creates a new narrative when they get together. That is, whatever narrative and characters were present in one's life become inextricably linked to the other person's own sense of continuity and "supporting cast", often creating new, branching storylines. Antonowicz writes this concept large when the two characters indeed have crazy things happen to them, and dealing with these things and revealing them to the reader becomes a central point of each issue.

Gabi lives in an apartment with a giant black hole in the wall; her flatmate, Em, simply sits and stares at the hole all day while she provides some minimal level of care for him. Caleb's secret is that every woman he's ever been with winds up dying, though the causes vary and seem unconnected. Except that Caleb sees a magical black dog following him around, working as a kind of silent avatar of death. Antonowicz has quite an ear for dialogue, especially the sort that buzzes around bars. The level of understanding that he has of his characters allows him to spring new facts about them on the reader with a minimum of clumsy artifice; instead, one gets a real sense that both Gabi and Caleb are lonely and a little desperate but see the possibilities down the road for themselves. What I'm less convinced of is Antonowicz's drawing style. It's a naturalistic style that frequently looks striking, but it lacks panel-to-panel consistency. Some of the drawing is downright sloppy in a way that clashes with things in the comic. Some panels and faces are over-rendered while others look hastily sketched, and the way he over-uses shading and grey-scaling is frequently a distraction. It simply seems to be a matter of learning to trust his line and finding ways to simplify things, allowing the more fantastic images (like the creepy black dog) to pop out even more forcefully on the page.

Jesse Mead is another artist whose comics mix personal and fantasy elements. His art has a shambling, pleasing sketchiness to it, threatening to unspool on the page yet just barely hanging together enough to support his interesting page composition choices and character designs. He also excels at drawing evocative nature scenes using a minimum of lines. The Adventures of Juniper Black is a brief and tantalizing comic that starts with a young girl traveling with a party through a dangerous forest, only to see a beloved companion disappear before her eyes. Mead switches from a blue wash to a dramatic yellow spot color in the second chapter, one dominated by his use of blacks. Here, the hardened, adult version of Juniper is out exploring, when she encounters a blob-like mass that surprises her by speaking. This is smart, dense fantasy storytelling; I could easily see Mead hopping on the Cartozia Tales bandwagon, because his storytelling interests would fit that anthology like a glove.

Mead self-describes Black River as being made solely for his own enjoyment, and it shows. It simply seems full of images that the artist enjoys drawing: forests, monsters, swords, bars, etc. Roughly speaking, it's about a group of friends that somehow winds up in a magical world where "leveling up" in the role playing game/video game sense is a real thing when they kill monsters or do something heroic. Again, the art has a relaxed, ramshackle feel to it as Mead studiously avoids over-rendering and places a clear premium on spontaneity. The story itself is equally as relaxed and even in-jokey at times, as Mead is in no hurry to tell the reader too much of how and why the characters got there, instead preferring to concentrate on character dynamics and an array of clever visual jokes. I normally have a strong aversion to the sort of RPG comics that pollute the web, but this comic feels so personal and the high concept is so clever that it quickly won me over.

Thirty Days of CCS #16: Melanie Gillman, Allie Kleber

Melanie Gillman's webcomic and subsequent minis As The Crow Flies are beautifully rendered stories about the acute and intense feeling of otherness.The protagonist, Charlie, is a queer African-American teen at a summer camp involving a hike to a spot that's special and even sacred to a pioneering group of women. Still, in a series of lush, beautiful and haunting images, Charlie feels like an outsider because of her race and sexual identity, as well as her religion. She is spiritual but not necessarily in a typically christian sense, and her conversations with god about whether or not she should be there are telling. Gillman gets at the heart of a problem related to any group or activity related to empowerment: just because a group of people are enlightened with regard to gender and feminism doesn't mean that they're sensitive or aware of issues related to race or sexual identity. Early on, after Charlie reluctantly agrees to stay in the all-white camp after initially wanting to go home with her parents, her internal alarms go off when she hears language that is inadvertently racist (the phrase "whitening our souls") and when someone makes a comment about something being gay. Of course, someone who is othered has essentially two options: to speak up early and often and risk being labeled a problem, or to be silent and feel unable to voice their opinions about anything. In what is shaping up to be a long storyline, these first two issues establish that inner conflict and Charlie's sense of being entirely alone with girls who don't relate to her and have no interest in trying to understand her. Gillman's use of color is absolutely crucial in the story, as the beauty of the natural environment is key to Charlie's feeling of being connected to the earth and nature but disconnected from other girls. Her character design is simple, direct and expressive, with Charlie herself very carefully crafted. I'm pretty sure Gillman is using colored pencils here, which gives each page a certain gritty texture with regard to color; that texture, though not naturalistic, nonetheless makes each image feel more real than a slicker color approach would have yielded. This will make a great-looking book once the story is complete, and I'm quite curious to see what kind of journey Charlie winds up having.

Allie Kleber is another artist interested in exploring themes related to gender identity and queer issues. However, she prefers to explore them by way of genre ideas. In Heartburn #0, Kleber takes the reader through a series of high-concept introductions, some of which are more engaging than others. In "Goodness Knows", a trouble-making angel is sent down to earth to act as a background guardian angel for someone. Kleber's angel Lucille is a rock 'n roll angel who sticks out as a result of her rebellious attitude. It's an amusing idea, even if it's entirely predictable so far. Much better are "The Swamp Bride" and "AI Love U", both of which play around with fantasy romance tropes and sci-fi/Frankenstein ideas. The former story finds a female adventurer finding that a dread swamp monster is not only misunderstood, but was taken advantage of by one of her "victims".  In the latter story, a romance between a professor and her student is mediated by their robot creation, one imbued with the personality of the student. Kleber's character design is her best asset as a cartoonist, especially in terms of the way she uses a diverse array of races and ages for her protagonists.

Her more recent story, Asylum, takes some of the best elements of her earlier stories and mashes them up. It's a science-fiction story in the sense that the protagonist is apparently being thrust against her will into a fantasy world. It's a fantasy story in the sense that this world is one in which the characters are living in some kind of retro society built on scavenging and barter. Reality is "soft" here, though, as the protagonist, Ash, sees things that defy her senses (like birds flying through a wall). In this world she's being programmed to experience, she can sense the glitches and knows that something isn't quite right, even as all of the characters within are so strongly realized. Interestingly, it's once again a society dominated by women, which is a running theme throughout Kleber's comics. It's rarely hammered home in an obvious manner; rather, Kleber resets the gender status quo and assumptions without trying to draw attention to it. It's a clever and subversive tact to take, embodying the idea that "the personal is political".

Finally, her comic Tiny Dynamos: Demos is about an all-female punk band, how it got its current lead singer, and life on the road. This one feels a bit rushed and leans more on rock 'n roll cliches, because the reader doesn't have an opportunity to really get to know these characters as characters. One senses that she needs many more pages to get to know these characters herself, as she's just warming up.

Thirty Days of CCS #15: Steve Seck, Pat Barrett, GP Bonesteel

Steve Seck continues to hone his comedic chops in the pages of his one-man anthology, Monday Saddies. This issue features two separate stories: "Ghost Roommate" and "Locker Up!", both of which earn their humor with awful, over-the-top characters behaving badly. Seck adds weight to his pages with a lot of spotted blacks balancing the simple nature of his character design and unvaried line weights. His characters look funny, but most of the humor comes through in the dialogue. Mostly, his characters look weird, with vertical slits for eyes and angular features amid a pleasingly cluttered background. Seck's characters just seem to live in filthy settings, and "Locker Up!" makes particular use of that conceit. It's about a group of anthropomorphic objects that live in a kid's locker at school trying to make sense of their worlds. Most of the objects have devolved into highly juvenile and even senile behavior, like the "elders" that had been sitting in there for far too long. Seeing a rubber band become ecstatic upon being "raptured" by getting stuck to the kid's backpack was hilarious, as was the belligerent and foul-mouthed soda can wanting to watch dirty videos on the kid's phone. "Ghost Roommate" is a funny take-off on the ultimate form of do-nothing, slacker roommate that also mines humor from ghost mythology. Seck has really refined his line, making what could be a sloppy page easy to follow and giving his figures a pleasing, eye-catching quality. That approach in terms freshens up his slacker humor, in part because he's satirizing that kind of culture as much as he is taking advantage of it as the de facto stars of his comics.

Pat Barrett has a lush, dense illustrative style that he uses for stories that are comedic but possess a certain edge.The latest issue of his one-man anthology Oak & Linden (#6) is a micro-mini, measuring 2.25" by 4.25". The stars of the issue are his gross, goblinoid naked characters who are both representative of id-centered, scatological storytelling as well as sources of existential discussion. Of course, that existential discussion (centering around the idea of being remembered for something) winds up in a slapstick, springy fistfight, short-circuited by the object of discussion: their queen ("her flatulence"), who also happens to be the aging mother of everyone. The crudeness of these characters still gets at the heart of Barrett's point: that we are bags of phlegm, blood and shit with a biological imperative to have sex, eat and excrete. How we balance our biological imperatives against our higher selves (or rather, how we fail to do so) is at the heart of Barrett's sense of humor.

Barrett's comic How To Make Comics The Whiner's Way is a funny shot across the bow against cartoonists who constantly bitch about being cartoonists, who bemoan the lack of shortcuts, who substitute buying new gadgets for actual hard work, who use autobio comics as a crutch when they don't really have anything to say, who steal their styles wholesale from popular images, who hop on cultural memes and other easy reference points as a way of gaining readers, and who generally try to make their lives out to be worse than those undergoing actual hardship. It's all done in the style of How To Make Comics The Marvel Way, with hilariously arch "how-to" steps that flog those whom he perceives as whining their way through something that should be giving them pleasure, even if it is hard. Barrett makes a compelling case, especially as someone who went to "cartoon boot camp" at CCS, a place where artists were expected to work hard on actually drawing their comics because they loved it. This is a cleverly designed comic that should be a gut-check for every cartoonist, including Barrett himself, I would imagine.

GP Bonesteel's series Jason continues its crystallization in its second issue. Bonesteel's comics have always had a high pop-culture saturation combined with an amusingly cynical and even postmodern take on same. Jason's high-concept is irresistible: the quotidian activities of movie slasher villains. Jason from the Friday the 13th films is the series' protagonist, one that posits him as a sympathetic, lonely character in search of meaning in his life while still being a homicidal killer. Bonesteel creates a weird, heightened sense of reality where these killers all have high-profile advertising profiles that exist in real life, even as they all form a curious sort of insular and exclusive group of friends. Bonesteel plays that emotional chord in an entirely straight-ahead fashion, all while jarring the reader with hilariously over-the-top violence and murderous references. For example, the Big Brother-type program that Jason tries to sign up for is called "Tor-Mentors", designed to have slasher killers teach their trade to young kids in need. In one extended sequence, Ghost Face from the Scream movies and Freddie Krueger from the Nightmare On Elm Street films wind up arguing and have a "smoke-off", wherein each tries to kill three victims as quickly as possible. The entire comic is printed landscape, with each page featuring three panels. The figures are reduced to blank figures, with the only recognizable features being those of the killers. That simple approach works well in allowing the comic to move from comic to violent to poignant--sometimes on the same page. Bonesteel has found his groove as a creator here, though a few pages here and there appear rushed. When this project is complete, Bonesteel will have his best career work to date.

Fundraisers of Note: Autoptic, Sophie Goldstein, Ibrahim Ineke

Let's take a look at some fundraisers of note. First off, the Autoptic festival in Minneapolis (which I helped to program) will return in 2015 as a two-day show. However, the rent for their venue will quadruple (from $1500 to $9000) as a result. Today, they are starting a two week fundraiser with the fairly modest goal as a way of generating money for a deposit. This was a tremendous comics show that was all about spotlighting and celebrating culture as a whole in Minneapolis.

Sophie Goldstein is raising money to do a print version of her popular webcomic, Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell. It's nearly at its goal just a few days into the fundraiser, but there's time to put it over the top, with a number of modestly-priced incentives.

This one isn't a fundraiser; rather it's a subscription offer from the fine Dutch horror artist Ibrahim Ineke. He's offering a six-issue subscription to his Blackbook series for $36 bucks. I've long enjoyed and admired his restrained, cerebral approach to horror, especially in the way he uses light and dark as effects.

Thirty Days of CCS #14: Penina Gal, Betsey Swardlick, Moody

Penina Gal continues to move along her teen fantasy world-building exercise, The Fire Messenger, in slow increments. Chapter 3 was an especially eventful one, as Nik and Aiden have somehow escaped from their world of people with superhuman/magical abilities and come to our Earth. They are seemingly rescued by their old keepers/testers, until firestarter Aiden resents being treated like a lab rat and escapes from the menacing Mr Zacchariah. The aesthetic of this book is part comic book, part young adult novel, and that's heightened by the simple figures and the extensive use of what looks like watercolors to create mood and texture. The series reminds me a little of the His Dark Materials trilogy in the sense that children are being used as lab rats and have powerful abilities, but the general concept is fresh and original. This comic will look especially great when it's collected at a larger size.

Gal also engaged in a bit of silliness with a couple of collaborative comics done with fellow CCS grad Betsey Swardlick. Swardlick's comics mix humor, genre imagery and pointed political commentary in a manner that's snappy and light-hearted, and her fast, sketchy style reflects the nature of her writing. Glamera #1, as one might imagine, is two artists taking the pun of its title as far as it will go and beyond. A cross between a gender-bending David Bowie and the giant turtle creature of monster-movie fame, the titular character is a friend to all children but may well kill you when you grow up. When Glamera happens upon a bar filled with unfabulous sailors, the mission becomes one of glamming it up, until a match is met with a particularly fashionable sailor. That battle ends with the sailor being turned into a disco ball and an ensuing dance party. This is a comic that is quite aware of its own ridiculousness, one that revels in its gender-bending and queer-oriented humor. With this concept, it's pretty much impossible to take seriously, and the exaggerated artwork reflects this sensibility on the part of its artists.

Also on the silly scale is Thank You Professor Thorkelson, a Monkees tribute zine. Incorporating jams between Gal and Swardlick as well as clip art, they get to the essence of why they get so obsessed with the Monkees' TV show and music: its unapologetic stupidity. There's a great page where they write "Dear x, I love your stupid face" and then draw a strip where the Monkees are performing "I'm A Believer" (one of their many insanely catchy songs). Replacing Peter Tork on keyboards with a cat is one of many inspired, bizarre approaches in this comic. Another strip about how frequently the Monkees wound up in drag was hilarious, especially when Mike Nesmith lords it over everyone else as to just how pretty he looks. I could have read many, many more pages about this subject, as the Gal-Swardlick duo's comedic chops are top notch, especially with regard to caricature, body language and character interaction. Like Glamera, this is a deceptively silly comic; it's one where the artists obviously thought for a long time just how they were going to pull off their dumb jokes.

Speaking of silly, Katie Moody (alias Miz Moody or just Moody) has a variety of good-looking and light comics to her name after graduating from CCS. The four minis reviewed here are either all larks or obviously student work, as this former Dark Horse is clearly trying to find her voice. First up is Zee Leetle Prince, an affectionate send-up of the Antoine Saint-Exupery classic by way of using the simplified symbol set of illustrator Ed Emberley. Moody tacks on an exaggerated French "accent" to the story that's a bit much after twelve straight pages, but her mastery of Emberley's style is aces and it matches up quite well to the actual story. AAAAARGH #1 is an eight-page mini-comic about Moody's frustration regarding making an eight-page mini-comic. That meta level of a story about an artist who's stuck is a hoary one at this point, but this one isn't about not having any ideas. Indeed, it's about being too ambitious while having too little time. Moody's self-caricature here is my favorite part of the comic, as she switches from naturalistic to cartoony in short order.

For Your Consideration was her version of the famous CCS application, which requires the artist to do a story involving themselves, a robot, a snowman and a piece of fruit. Moody went all-out in this story, mixing in naturalistic drawing and classic cartooning styles from Herriman and Schulz to tell a story about how the lifestyle of being an adult stuck in an adult job was no longer working for her, how she felt trapped, lost and broken. That eventually led toward crawling in the dark toward the goal of becoming an artist and regaining her childhood appreciation of what is beautiful. This is an excellent comic, one that reflects her obsessiveness with regard to design and composition. The Mouse, The Bird and the Sausage is Moody's version of the lesser-known story by the Brothers Grimm. Printed in green ink, it's an interesting looking comic that hews closely to the original narrative, which seems to be about division of labor, predestination and being grateful for one's place in a closed system. The titular characters go about their roles every day; some of their jobs are easy, while others are more difficult. All three jobs contribute to the characters staying fed and happy, but when the Bird is told by another bird that it was being taken advantage of, it naturally leads to jealousy and a shifting of roles. Disturbing the equilibrium of their arrangement leads to doom and disaster for all. Moody concentrates on the visceral and kinetic aspects of the story without dwelling too long on its moral implications, as the characters are drawn in a particularly angular manner that accents their traits.  Everything I've seen from Moody so far indicates a cartoonist still in the warm-up phase of her career. It's clear that she's as talented as any of the CCS grads in terms of her inventiveness, drawing skill and other fundamentals. Right now, she still seems to be chasing the right kind of story to truly invest her time in.

Thirty Days of CCS #13: Cole Closser

Cole Closser designs strips such that they're not just pastiches or homages to classic comic strips, but rather as a strip that could be transplanted back into the past with the authenticity, skill and authority of one of the masters. Little Tommy Lost is not a parody; while it has jokes, it's very much a straightforward adventure strip. It's designed to look like Annie Koyama had somehow found a drawer full of original tear sheets from a 1930s comic strip and shot a book directly from those old, slightly yellowed and even stained originals. While Harold Gray and his Little Orphan Annie is an obvious inspiration for the book, there are also nods to Winsor McCay and Frank King in terms of the way Closser designed the color Sunday comics to act as an explosively clever, dream-oriented strip separate from the daily continuity. Gray's white-pupils are in effect here as far as character design goes, but there are also bits of Chester Gould to be found in terms of the grotesques who pop up. I'm no scholar of comic strip art, so I'm sure there any number of other allusions to be found here, down to the way Closser signs his name on each strip, emulating Ernie Bushmiller's handwriting.

That said, the strip owes as much to the serialized writing of Charles Dickens as it does Gray. Tommy is separated from his parents in the big city and soon winds up homeless and on the streets. A corrupt cop takes him to work at a children's slave labor factory, where he makes friends with some of the boys but winds up making enemies out of several huge and scary older boys. Tommy is no victim, though; he's a tough kid who's good in a fight, eventually winning over the brutish Clarence Pigg to his side. He also schemes to find a way to escape and gets involved in the mysterious plans of the factory's owner. The poor lost boy who's at the mercy of unscrupulous adults is a Dickens staple, and Closser brings that story to life.

Closser has the rhythms of a daily strip down cold, keeping things moving while re-emphasizing certain key plot points. Indeed, Little Tommy Lost unfortunately reproduces one of the more annoying aspects of daily adventure strips: a day-to-day repetitiveness originally designed to help keep casual readers up to speed. The result is that it sometimes takes three or four strips to propel the story when it could have been done in one or two strips. Information is repeated every few strips as Closser goes to great lengths to spell out what's going on, just as strip cartoonists had to make everything plain to keep the attention of their readers. Reading all of the strips at once, it makes processing some of the strips a grind to get through. Still, Closser's art is a genuine pleasure to stare at, with his confident cross-hatching and memorable character design. Characters like Pigg and Oliver "Skullface" Duggery are frightening to behold, and factory owner Mr Greaves' hunchbacked posture and balding head make him a figure of genuine menace. Closser's dialogue is street-tough rough but is always crystal-clear in meaning; it adds a great deal of texture to the book.

Ultimately, the first volume of Little Tommy Lost is somewhere between an astounding achievement in terms of the skill and care devoted to creating this kind of object and a storytelling curiosity. While the first volume had its moments, the storytelling padding reduced its overall impact. I liked that Closser had his strip adhere to the seasons he depicted with his daily, arbitrary dating that he created, but I wish we had gotten to the high seas adventure promised in volume two much earlier. The daily grind of the strip sometimes allowed Closser to delve into the pathos of his characters, but again that repetitiveness made even that attempt at storytelling depth feel like going to the same well a few too many times. To make this more than a simple triumph of conceptual design, Closser needs to up the narrative ante while still staying true to the comic strip roots that are so important to him. Breaking the rules wouldn't be such a bad thing, as so many classic strips became classics precisely because they broke the established rules of the day.