Circling The Drain: Saint Cole

Noah Van Sciver's Saint Cole is a shaggy dog story disguised as one of Van Sciver's more familiar "loser stories". The narrative follows Joe, a hard-working but hard-drinking waiter who's trying to earn money for his girlfriend and their infant son. Beginning with the arrival of his hard-living mother-in-law and his lust for a new 17-year-old hostess at the restaurant at which he's a waiter, Joe has a very bad week, and Van Sciver informs the reader at the very beginning that his life was about to go down the drain. What follows is that loser scenario on steroids, as Joe makes a series of hilariously disastrous and ridiculous decisions that almost seem like a parody of the sort of thing that Van Sciver and many others do in depicting a character whose life is going down the tubes. However, this is all just a distraction for the final image of the book, one that was entirely earned thanks to what seemed to be throwaway clues planted throughout the book.

Indeed, the plotting of this book is airtight. What seem to be atmospheric or even entirely extraneous details and characters set up the near-apocalyptic final image, one that's so huge that it's ridiculous and even hilarious. Building up to that ending is some of Van Sciver's finest character work. It's clear that he worked hard on Joe, creating a slumped body posture for him but also putting him out there less as a loser than as an alpha male who's been beaten down by life. That sense of hubris is what dooms this character. The character of his mother-in-law is another triumph for Van Sciver, as she's a real sleazeball. When she offers Joe some crystal meth to smoke and he reluctantly agrees, the reader knows that absolutely no good was going to come of this. The actual results were even worse than one could have imagined, so disastrous that it takes the sort of deus ex machina ending to extricate Joe from the situation.

Regarding the end, it's amazing how much sense it makes, even if it is kind of crazy. The classic Van Sciver visual flourishes, like dense hatching and cross-hatching and drawing falling rain, all serve a greater purpose here. The standard Van Sciver weirdo characters wind up providing subtle clues, including the real meaning of the enigmatic title. Van Sciver almost gleefully provides these clues, like the fact that the cover and endpapers depict rain falling, or that the characters talk repeatedly about the weather. Again, what appears to be mundane takes on a greater meaning later in the book, so the reader should examine the book carefully as they proceed. While not quite as dense or thoughtful as The Hypo, Saint Cole is a great follow-up in the sense that Van Sciver stayed true to his style without repeating himself.

Catching Up With Noah Van Sciver

Noah Van Sciver is one of the more prolific cartoonists working today. Let's take a look at some of his recent work.

Deep In The Woods (with Nic Breutzman, published by 2D Cloud). Van Sciver's contribution here is titled "The Cow's Head" as he and Breutzman both tried their hand at creepy mythmaking. While this has been Breutzman's specialty, this kind of setting is a relatively new challenge for Van Sciver. The broadsheet format fits the densely drawn and atmospheric story perfectly. It's about a girl who runs away from home after she thinks her father wants to get rid of her. In the wintry forest, she happens upon an abandoned cabin that has a bit of food in it. A floating, decapitated cow's head asks for food and shelter (hilariously, when asked "who's there", it replied "I am Cow's Head. May I come in?"). The story winds up following a familiar formula: the just and righteous wind up being rewarded for sacrificing all they have because it's the right thing to do. Van Sciver successfully blends elements of horror, fairly tales and humor Van Sciver lays on the hatching and blacks throughout the story but is careful to emphasize facial expressions as well. This is crucial because the audience must be able to sympathize with the lead character, and there's a nice simplicity in the way the characters are designed that contrasts starkly with the dark denseness of the backgrounds.

Slow Graffiti. This is a self-published mini that debuted at last year's SPX, consisting of three short stories and other fragments culled from his sketchbook. I especially liked the first story, which was about a young woman visiting her mom's house for Christmas. She's a classic Van Sciver character: a malcontent, a searcher, someone drifting through life who's waiting for something to anchor herself to. What's interesting is that the character of her brother, a loser still living at home who pisses out the window of his bedroom when he's too drunk to stumble toward the bathroom, is the sort who would have been the main character in a lot of stories of this nature. There's also a transcription of part of a Jim Woodring interview where he details his childhood hallucination, as well as Van Sciver's take on the old Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough At Last". In that last story, Van Sciver has to deal with a surly Bob Dylan stuck in a hole after the apocalypse as well as finding a treasure trove of comics he can't read. There's also a bonus mini sewn into the larger comic about a screenwriter's awful werewolf movie that has the feel of a Dan Clowes story.

"I Don't Hate Your Guts" (published by 2D Cloud). This is one of Van Sciver's periodic daily diary comics. A few things distinguish this from other diary comics: it's in full color, it deals frankly with issues of depression and it also honestly engages the feelings around a blind date that blossoms into a relationship. There's something else interesting about it: it's frequently hilarious. That's especially true with the scenes depicting his job at Panera, where he's surly with his boss and enjoys annoying his coworkers. Whether this is true or exaggerated is beside the point, because reading about Van Sciver telling his coworker about a wave of fire sweeping across the country, burning everything in its way was fantastic. This is also a journal of a working cartoonist, as he describes how difficult it can be to draw after a long day at work. The new romance, with an air of both optimism and nervousness ("This is very important: do you like Bob Dylan?") is wonderfully sweet and a dramatic tonic for Van Sciver's loneliness. There's a relentlessness to Van Sciver's work ethic (as evidenced by his remarkable comics output) that extends to all parts of his life; even when he's depressed and lonely, he keeps going. That's certainly true of this daily comic, which he works hard at coloring to give each page a certain liveliness. He mostly abandons his dense, hatching-heavy style in favor of a more spontaneous style, with his figurework looking more-or-less the same as in his other comics.

The Lizard Laughed (Oily Comics). This fictional story highlights one of the things that Van Sciver is best at: depicting dysfunctional relationships. The kicker here is that it's the story of a non-relationship, as an estranged son calls up his father to tell him he's visiting. There's an almost dull tension in the book as the son arrives, with the father freaking out a bit about it beforehand. Their initial exchanges are almost politely banal, as the father takes the son on a hike. Like some of his other recent comics, there's an interesting contrast between backgrounds and characters; the comic takes place in the insane natural beauty of New Mexico, and Van Sciver does the rock formations justice with his dense but clear renderings--especially since the comic is in black and white. There's what turns out to be a false climax when the son confronts the father about leaving him and his mother so many years ago, an outburst that's rejected by the father. That leads to the real climax, which was certainly a shock in the moment while reading it. Here, the threat and then shrinking from violence is actually more powerful and emotionally devastating than actual violence. It's a restrained and mature storytelling decision that gets at the heart of a lifetime of disappointment.

Weekend For Two. The sequel to his full-color sketchbook collection Weekend Alone, this Tinto Press publication has more short stories, more cover recreations, more sketchbook drawings and more weirdness. In the weirdness category, there's a drawing of the monster Gorgo and a page entitled "Who Loves Ya, Baby?" that depicts a simply-drawn sequence of masturbation. This is another page that feels like an old Dan Clowes bit from Eightball. Then there's "Johnny Cash In A Cave", which is based on a true story about Cash feeling despondent, only it adds in some hilarious commentary from God guiding Cash out of the cave where he intended to die. Body language hasn't always been Van Sciver's strong suit, but he really captures the slumped shoulders and sad overall posture of Cash. "A New Love For An Old" is based on a true story about a man trying to find a lost love in Paris, only to see what looks to be a painting of her in a museum. Turns out this was the daughter of that woman (not his), and they wound up getting married! Van Sciver goes all-out with both cross-hatching and colored pencils in this piece, and it's one of his most visually dazzling. There's a grimly funny story based on a Dave Eggers story, an excellent bit about a stand-up comic getting shorted on his pay and then getting accosted by a belligerent guy at a diner, and a fascinating diary comic about visiting Detroit for a talk. This was interesting because Van Sciver stayed with someone he didn't know, he drove around looking at (and drawing) some of the devastated buildings of Detroit, and because he gave us some insight into his process as a speaker (like getting drunk). Printed on slick enough paper to really absorb his blacks, this is simply a great looking package overall and an interesting document of a young artist's creative process.

The Fellow Travelers of Hang Dai Studios

Studios have long been a tradition in the world of comics, from the early sweatshops to more recent space-sharing from mainstream artists. Only in the last decade or so have alt-cartoonists decided to rent work space together as a way of becoming more productive, of getting out of the house and of being with like-minded individuals. Brooklyn's Hang Dai Studios consists of alt-comics veterans like Dean Haspiel and Josh Neufeld as well as a host of newcomers.

Dean Haspiel's Psychotronic Comix. This is a great sampler of Haspiel's work. He's always been a comics "tweener" in that he's had one foot in the mainstream comics world and one foot firmly in the alt-comics world. That was the case even when mainstream comics wasn't all that interested in his work; he just has a sensibility that's greatly influenced by Jack Kirby as well his mentors, Walt Simonson and Howard Chaykin. The comic starts off with a tribute to his collaborator Harvey Pekar, who illustrated one of Pekar's few long-form works in The Quitter. Then there's a Gene Colan-style street level superhero comic featuring an origin story for The Red Hook (which is also a section of Brooklyn). It's stylish and features great character designs.

Then we get an emo-superhero tale in "Tommy Rocket", followed by some superhero silliness with his team A-OK Cool struggling with breakfast as well as fighting on other worlds. This sort of loosely-assembled and plotted work is Haspiel at his best, especially when he introduces color into the equation. It's not unlike the sort of thing that Jim Rugg likes to do, only Rugg is more of a style chameleon than Haspiel, whose trademark exaggerated facial expressions and thickly inked lines always put a stamp on his work.

Haspiel then shifts to autobio, with a strip about an old bar that would come to mean a lot to him, and eventually it was too much for him. Haspiel has a talent for spinning yarns about places that has great significance to him, and this story is told with great economy. There are funny stories about his misadventures with marijuana, a hellish experience with a neighbor who may have been a robot (shot straight from his pencils, giving it a nice sketchy effect) and a story about founding Hang Dai. The quick-hitters work best for Haspiel, especially given his tendency for noirish narrative captions and stylized dialogue. Giving the reader just a hint of where his mind is wandering and then moving on to something else made this a rich reading experience.

The Giant Effect, by C.Cassano. This little fable about a cruel sheep-devouring giant and his eventual downfall is viscerally told, with the giant-flesh-hungry expressions on the sheep being especially effective. The sepia wash and Cassano's thin line add to that mythological feel of the story, while the lettering varies according to the story's needs. This is a clever and effective comic.

The Vagabonds #3, by Josh Neufeld. It's an interesting transition of sorts for Neufeld, who started his career writing stories about his travels around the world and his observations. He's still travelling and observing, but he's doing so in the context of being a comics journalist now. His specialty is on-site interviews that obtain personal experiences from major events. For example, "Superstorm Stories: A Red Hook Family" is all about one family's experience in cleaning up from the storm, focusing on the loss of a lifetime's worth of reading materials. Neufeld uses single-tones for his panels and switches them up as a means of identify time in a story with a hopeful ending.

Neufeld isn't afraid of more nuanced and complicated stories, as "Bahrain: Lines In Ink, Lines In The Sand" indicates. This is one of his best-ever stories, as it details the stories of two friends he made while spending time in the Middle East country as a representative of the U.S. state department. Through their stories, Neufeld details an uprising in that country and how widely opinions varied on who was a terrorist, who was a traitor and who was an activist. There were no easy answers to be had and Neufeld doesn't pretend to have any, preferring to allow each story to make its own case. There are more lighthearted pieces as well, like a page about Turkish tea, another couple of pages detailing his involvement as a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan  (this had his most lively, colorful cartooning in the book), and reimagining public education. Neufeld's cartooning has always been more functional than exciting, which befits his tendency to view stories as problems to be solved in order to get across a particular experience. He doesn't have the chops of some other comics journalists, but he gets around that by using a number of different approaches. He might use color in a non-intuitive fashion, might use a minimalist line, might invoke parody or satire in his character designs or might play it totally straight and do naturalistic art and colors. Especially with regard to his journalistic comics, clarity is more important than any other quality, but Neufeld's instincts are always to push the reader just a little bit so as to get across information in a way that will make them remember it. It's good to see him back in comic book form once again, both as a home for a number of comics that originally appeared on the web as well as having an opportunity to do other kinds of short-form experiments.

Hang Dai Studios Comix. This is an anthology from some of the artists who share space in Hang Dai. As such, it's not especially cohesive, given the wide disparity of styles. It's more instructive to read it as a sampler rather than a cohesive statement or expression of an editor's vision, a sampler that reflects a certain point in time for these artists. Christa Cassano's smudgy line and sepia tones really seem to be her trademark at this point, and she's as at ease doing a story about an outcast in the city as she was in drawing a giant being devoured by sheep in her mini. Seth Kushner & Nick Bertozzi's "Schmuck: Raising The Bar" is one of Kushner's semi-autobio comics about meeting up with a past fantasy girl in a bar and the rather ridiculous circumstances that result. Bertozzi's figurework elevates the material, which was appropriately amusing but didn't quite go far enough in either the direction of raunch or laughs. Shiraj Ganguly's "Savior" is a nicely-drawn, silent story about the downside of being a super-champion.

The two real highlights of the comic were quite different. Jess Ruliffson's "Haditha/Katrina" is another one of her interview comics with veterans of recent conflicts. She has a tremendous knack at breathing life into transcripts by way of her sketchy and expressive line and a sense of how to visualize both big and small moments. Gregory Benton's "Teratoma" is a bizarre and colorful story about a creature willing itself into life and encountering a woman who turns its existence around. Kushner, best known as a talented photographer, then provides an account of the studio's evolution and the various artists who ply their trade there. It's a great snapshot of this current studio-related movement in indy comics.

Looking Out, Looking In: Photobooth: A Biography

Meags Fitzgerald's Photobooth: A Biography is an interesting collision of an obscure aesthetic subculture, a technological subculture and a historical subculture. It's both a history of photobooth machines around the world and how her growing obsession with them shaped her as an artist and even a person. The book folds in Fitzgerald's journeys in working with, thinking about and talking to others about photobooths. On that level, the book is what it is: a lively history of a mostly forgotten technology whose initial appeal was bringing a new technology to the masses at an affordable price. Her naturalistic style and obvious hours of research shine in this regard, bringing to life the many different models, styles and technological advances in each machine, as well as the historical context that made each change necessary. Fitzgerald's line reminds me a lot of Jessica Abel, especially when she worked on her Radio project.

While photo booths still exist today, they are digital photo booths, which give a different quality of photo than the old analog booths. Of course, this does lead her to question her devotion to analog booths and wanting to save them and raise attention to their unique qualities, because the chemicals that make them work are highly carcinogenic. In general, Fitzgerald shows a healthy skepticism toward her own obsession, though she feels obligated to see it through to the end with a certain sense of self-deprecatory humor. She knows what she's doing is slightly deranged but can't quite help herself. Along those lines, I loved the scene where she flew to a convention and met her "tribe" for the first time: other big-time enthusiasts, experts, and mechanics, many of whom knew far more than she did. For a fan, meeting someone who speaks their language can be an overwhelming experience, and that was certainly the case with Fitzgerald.

One thing that Fitzgerald didn't touch on was the inherent and obvious narcissism of her self-photo obsession with the analog machines, as she kept a record of thousands of shots over the years of herself. It's no wonder than an Italian photographer thought that he could seduce her by flattering her with an offer of a photo shoot, but she shot him down because narcissism is not the same thing as vanity. She wasn't vain at all, just obsessed with image and of aligning her identity with a particular, disappearing method of capturing this image. Even with all of her misgivings, the compulsive nature of her activities (especially with regard to spending money she didn't quite have) points to someone not quite in control of their actions, even as they're aware of it.

The Complete Clough On Comics at Cicada

I just wrapped up a year's worth of reviews over at Cicada, the literary magazine for teens (and cousin of the more famous Cricket). Here are links to every one of my columns:

1. May/June 2014: Margerite Dabaie, Ed Piskor, Gilbert Hernandez
2. July/August 2014: Nicole Georges, Rutu Modan
3. September/October 2014: Max Badger, Isaac Cates
4. November/December 2014: Liz Prince
5. January/February 2014: Farel Dalrymple
6. March/April 2014: Renee French

The Kitchen Sink: Fearful Hunter

Sometimes, the best way to break through a creative block is to write and/or draw a story that has elements one simply enjoys playing around with. In creating Fearful Hunter, Jon Macy decided to draw and write about things that he liked and figure out how they connected later. In his case, that was punk rock, boys, druids, werewolves and trees. The result was a much looser, freer and more expressive work than what I've seen from Macy.. This is hindered in part by the ridiculous, fantasy bodies that speak to the sillier end of wish-fulfillment: six-pack abs and asses so curvy they would put Milo Manera to shame. Still, unlike his previous book Teleny & Camille (in which he added a ridiculous, tacked-on happy ending), Macy here is able to unite his "star-crossed lovers" themes in a way that was organic, exciting and entirely related to the plot.

In brief, the story is about a young, emerging druid who falls in love with a werewolf, and the jealous master that seeks to have the werewolf for himself. Along the way, there's an epic conspiracy designed to make a particular druid all-powerful over their gods, a werewolf caravan, various friendly animals and sex scenes that not only aren't jarring to the reader, they are integral to the story. The more mundane aspects of the story, like the daily lives of werewolves and the sexual and platonic friendships of the book, help balance out some of the nonsensical fantasy/magic-speak.

Every character has solid motivations and the fantasy elements of the story are well thought-out, fascinating and manage to avoid familiar cliches while still trumpeting "the power of love". Indeed, the book is one long exploration of sex as a function of love vs. sex as a function of power. This plays out in how the druids interact with their "allies" (the elder gods), including an excellent plot twist at the end that saves the day. At its core, this is a simple "outside forces conspire to break up an ideal couple" story, but Macy's storytelling instincts make these obstacles interesting to read about and far from arbitrary. By placing part of the conflict as one as professional duties vs romance, Macy hit on a point that will resonate with many readers. There is joy on every page of this book, as Macy's enthusiasm for his favorite subjects sings on every page. If Teleny and Camille felt clinical and slick, this book is personal and delightfully sloppy.

Thirty Days of CCS: The Index

I've been quietly updating the Thirty Days of CCS feature that got off-track during my hiatus for the last few weeks. Now that it's done, here's an index of every day and the comics reviewed. In all, I looked at the work of 48 cartoonists and read three anthologies. The last CCS review for this period will appear soon at TCJ.com.  Regular reviews will resume at both tcj.com and High-Low shortly.

1. Beth Hetland
2. Laurel Lynn Leake, Alexis Frederick-Frost, Laura Terry
3. Eleri Mai Harris, Josh Kramer, Bryn Adams
4. Penina Gal and Melanie Gillman
5. Stephanie Zuppo
6. Sean Ford, Amelia Onorato, Andrew Christensen
7. Colleen Frakes, Sarah "Chu" Wilson
8. Chuck Forsman
9. Sean Knickerbocker and April Malig
10. JP Coovert, Melissa Mendes, Rachel Dukes

11 .Reilly Hadden
12. Carl Antonowicz, Matthew New
13. Applied Cartooning Manifesto
14. Laurel Holden
15. Wade Simpson
16. Andy Warner
17. Max Mose and Dakota Mcfadzean
18. Romey Bensen
19. Sophie Goldstein
20. Ben Horak, Alex Kim, Jeff Lok

21. Dan Rinylo
22. Sasha Steinberg
23. Rebecca Roher, Jonathan Rotzstain, Peter Audry
24. Kevin Uehlein, Red House
25. Luke Healy, Simon Reinhardt
26. Annie Murphy, Adam Whittier, Jon Chad, Sean Ford, Rachel Dukes
27. Dog City 3
28. Aaron Cockle
29. Irene 4,5
30. Iris Yan