Comics-as-Poetry: Rothman, DW, Thomas, Bean

Abzernad, by DW (Hic 'n Hoc). DW's first full-length comic is like a cross between Gary Panter, Will Elder, Jim Woodring and psychedelic art (what he calls "psychedoodles"). Each page is its own puzzling mix of psychedelic wave drawings, scratchily-drawn and slightly amorphous characters, found text impositions, and eye-pops hidden in wave after wave of drawing. There is a kind of narrative carry on from page to page, as the main character is featured interacting with both words and images, but the effect is almost like discovering a series of mysterious cave drawings. Some of the text is random, but much of it obliquely comments on the action on the page, especially the many excerpts for a sort of mask to be worn at night to help with one's skin commenting on the waves of destruction on each page. The comic also has a densely visceral quality, as there are many scenes of cartoonish violence, predation, and other ordeals.  At the end, it feels like the main character (and the reader) have survived a harrowing rite of passage that was as much about the psychological makeup of the main character as it was about its physical presence. It's DW's most ambitious work to date, to be sure, and it coheres in a way that's surprising

Dodo Comics #3, by Grant Thomas. This is an all-abstract comics issue, as Thomas carefully uses panel placement and design as a kind of anchor for the abstract images he places into each one. Much like John Hankiewicz, he uses panels and marks to create a kind of visual rhythm, something that's emphasized by titling each piece as a sonnet or "untitled poem". Thomas especially seems to like rising and falling of lines and splotches from panel to panel, "rhyming" them throughout the piece in a complex and intuitive manner. The reading experience is explicitly shaped by the number of panels and tiers he uses on each page. The first "sonnet" has four tiers with 3/2/3/3 panels on each respective tier; the second page goes 3/3/3/3, the third page 4/4/4/4 and the final page has two tiers going 4/2. That rising and falling of each mage allows one to think of the lines as water, wind or anything that flows. That's even more explicit in the other pieces, where a definite sense of motion is implied from panel to panel, even if that motion is ultimately static. I don't get a sense that Thomas is going after provoking an emotional reaction (despite the use of the nomenclature of poetry), but is rather more interested in a more visceral reaction to the way lines on paper react against other lines and the expectation of the reader for a sequential narrative when we see one panel placed after another. These are explicit abstractions, and what they're abstractions of is entirely up to the reader. That's what makes comics like this so interesting to read.

Watching What You Say, by Alexander Rothman. This is a "versequential" book of comics-as-poetry by Rothman, who very carefully tries to balance word and image off of each other in a series of short, snappy works. Rothman spares no expense in this limited run of minis, using full color for every strip. Some of the poems are narratives: I love the phrase "On the last day of the Great Depression"; it reifies an amorphous historical period in a visceral way as a farmer drowns his no longer utilitarian bees. The story/poem "Still, Small" cycles through a group of people sitting in a church pew, "waiting in a field of quiet fires for a glimpse of the flowering fern". The illustrations here are a bit on the nose with relation to the fantastical, metaphorical language of the text, but they nonetheless get across that anxiousness one feels in trying to connect with the divine. On the other hand, the text for "Muses" hilariously acts against the text, introducing the author both as a kind of monkey and someone who draws inspiration from a certain kind of thought. "Praise Poem" uses a nearly static image of a turtle to depict a quick deceleration and a sense of awe as the narrator runs into it. "Processing" takes some sensitive prose and drives it way over the top with the page-stuffing depictions of a chicken getting gutted. It's not that the images themselves were inappropriate, it's that Rothman unnecessarily lays it on a little thick. All told, there's an enormous amount of potential to be had with Rothman's technique. His best works are those where text and image don't repeat each other, but instead reveal different aspects of the same event in interesting ways, like in "Euglossine Bees". In his work, Rothman is trying to reveal something about how we relate to nature, both intentionally and inevitably. That's an ambitious topic to tackle, and this comic is the result of Rothman experimenting with any number of different methods in getting at that elusive relationship. Some succeed more than others, but he's certainly on to something here.

Gorilla Year #1-2, by Cara Bean. This is an amusing stream-of-consciousness series wherein the author gets involved in a series of gorilla-related situations. In the first issue, Bean writes a short auto-bio strip that basically answers the question of "Why Gorillas?" When in art school, she decided to observe gorillas as part of an animal behavior class, an activity she found comforting in the face of anxiety. It wasn't until years later, when she started making comics, that it occurred to her to incorporate these images into a sequential narrative. The results remind me a bit of the surreal storytelling one sees in an Eric Haven comic: there's a slightly sketchy but naturalistic line telling a story where strange events flow into other strange events. The main character watches a movie starring herself turn into a gorilla, which leads that character to witness Mount Rainier erupt and a giant gorilla emerge. Then we see her back in the audience, where her fellow audience members are squirrels, gorillas, cats or dogs. There's a nice fluidity in the story, as Bean's stand-in is always moving forward, leaning at an angle that keeps the reader's eye propelled along the page. She later gets literally swept up by music, boards a bus that says "Finish Art School" and finds herself surrounded by gorillas. I took these images to mean that she surrounded herself with positive and comforting images and events in the face of doubt, fear and even loneliness. Drawing them in a story is almost a way of summoning these comforting feelings and concretizing them in a way that's funny but still very personally meaningful.

The second issue goes into more depth regarding that tumultuous time in a variety of clever ways that still manage to eschew a lot of standard narrative devices. The first story sees Bean walking through an art museum where all the pieces have narrative captions aimed directly at her. Most of the pieces are scenes of nature, but some include drawings of alcohol, food ("secret sadness snacks") and coffee leading the uncomfortable narrative that essentially zeroes in on her every weakness and attempt to mask those weaknesses. The piece segues into her feeling trapped, as though in a cage, which leads back to the narrative of drawing gorillas becoming a therapeutic method of dealing with the tumult in her life and the fact that she is unable to discuss it with anyone. The next story involves gorillas explicating an essay about conceptual art in her fluid but dynamic style, a juxtaposition that I found amusing. The last pieces in the book deal more directly with her art school difficulties, like being forced to live in her school art studio in secret. It's written in a sort of deadpan, matter-of-fact manner in the present tense, even as her being unable to sleep leads her to become unhinged. There's a great scene where Bean shrinks in size at dinner, beds down with a napkin and kisses the fork goodnight as she falls asleep. It's this kind of whimsy and magical realism that makes so many of her stories so memorable.While her comics have more straightforward narrative trappings than the other comics on this list, there's no question that her use of imagery and the way she juxtaposes it against text act to create an entirely different kind of meaning than either one on their own.

Sequart Reprints: Anthology Round-Up

I review a lot of anthologies, usually in great detail. There are a number of anthologies that I've read where I don't have quite as much to say about them, so I thought I'd compile some brief thoughts about each of them in this article.

Whores of Mensa #2. This anthology, named after a classic Woody Allen short story, is presented by Jeremy Dennis, Mardou and Ellen Lindner. The theme of this issue seems to be a sexual exploration of "east meets west", many of them period stories. Lindner is a long-time minicomics favorite of mine, and her wry sense of humor is on display with a send-up of Jane Eyre where Jane winds up marrying into a harem. Mardou has two stories, one an expose on the belly-dancing instruction racket and another sharply humorous variation on the anthology's title, as she is a "literary prostitute" who winds up dealing with a john who's obsessed with children's literature ("a paedo-reader"). Dennis contributes a story about a 19th century man who overcomes his melancholy by traveling to an Arabic country and later posing nude. These are smart, sharp stories, packaged with an attractive cover in an oversized format. Dennis has a scribbly style that nicely complements Lindner's bold, smooth blacks and Mardou's exaggerated naturalism. When reading an anthology, I often think about if I've read this kind of story a million times before, because such stories tend to fade from my memory moments after I've read them. With this comic, I'm happy to say that this isn't the case, and that it even rewards multiple readings.

You Ain't No Dancer, Volume 2.  This anthology, from New Reliable Press, has the theme of "youth". Most of the stories in this pleasant but largely forgettable collection focus on childhood reminiscences, frequently of the "I was such a loser" variety. As a result, there's a kind of numbing sameness from story to story, even though most of the entries are solidly crafted. The only really amateurish entry is a gross-out called "A Filth Hole Adventure" by Fred Grisold and Jamie Dee Gailey which, while crudely drawn and loaded with spelling errors, does at least have a perverse kind of energy. In an anthology filled with blandly sweet memories, cutesy fantasy characters or familiar self-flagellation, that story, while not especially good, at least broke up the monotony.

That said, there are some exceptions here. The ever-delightful Hope Larson contributes a two-page "Recipe For Youth", using that brief space to create some evocative images. Colleen MacIsaac's "Indian Princesses" is really well-drawn and has a funny punchline dealing with some ethnic misunderstandings over a Halloween costume. Grant Reynolds has a truly disturbing story in "Litter", using a lot of blacks to depict a litter of puppies and their very short life--and the contentment they feel both in the womb and in a sack going into a river. "Sharp Young Minds" from Phil McAndrew stands out because it's so well-drawn and has such a sharply-delivered punchline. The main problem with this anthology, as with many anthologies, is that some of the stories (especially by some of the bigger names like Jeffrey Brown and Liz Prince) are short to the point of being ephemeral, while many of the other stories tend to blend into each other thanks to the theme.

Pictozine II, edited by Dave Bradbury. In my review of the first volume of this all-New Zealand anthology, I noted that as a whole the project was a noble experiment that didn't quite work. Editor Dave Bradbury clearly stepped up his game in finding contributors for this second volume, because on the whole it's a much stronger collection. There are 36 stories by 37 contributors for a total of 151 pages. While there are once again varying levels of ability and professionalism, about 1/3 of the stories is solid, another 1/3 is excellent, and the last third were either too crude, dull or otherwise unremarkable.

Once again, top Kiwi legends Dylan Horrocks and Roger Langridge contribute strips, and once again they're some of the very best in the book. Langridge's "Shirley Temple Meets Frankenstein" is his philosophical absurdism at its best. His line is so crisp and his use of blacks so commanding that it almost hurts to look at his art. Horrocks' "Siso" is a staggering short story, with an iconic set of characters designed to resemble the sort of characters one would see in a children's book. He evokes war, peace and a sense of dread & calm all at once.

There's more to see here than just Horrocks and Langridge, however. Cover artist Mat Tait also contributed a silent story of birth and death for a Maori tribe. Brent Willis has a funny but disturbing story about growing up with communist parents in the late 1930's who felt they had to make nice with Nazis because of the Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact. Carlos Wedde did an angularly-designed take on Harvey Pekar-style anecdotes, talking about a haircut he got from a couple of guys who turned out to be racists. Robyn Kenealy has a cute one-pager about Roddy McDowall that is the model of what one should expect from a one-page strip. Tim Danko returns with another unusual strip about a ship tossed at sea (set to "Eye of the Tiger"!), with a post-modern commentary on the edges.

Other highlights include a creepy fine-line strip by Heather Buchanan about a sheep and a skeleton that acts as a mother figure; a funny, heavily stippled piece by Jess Johnson spoofing the art world; and a clever 1-page stirp by Sheehanbros that makes great use of negative space to tell a story about a family's sleeping habits. Perhaps my favorite story was by Samuel Killean-Chance. Titled "Cliff Trap", it's a Mat Brinkman-esque story of a couple of bulbous creatures. One is pursued by a sort of tentacled creature and falls off a cliff. The action is simple, but his composition, backgrounds, fluidity in depicting motion and character design draw the reader fully into the story. I love the story's ambiguity and Killean-Chance's willingness to leave the backstory unexplained. This is an artist I hope to see much more from in the future.

All told, this was an interesting, varied read with a number of different approaches. It was an especially impressive effort for what seemed to be an open-submissions anthology (albeit one open to New Zealanders or those associated with New Zealanders in some form). If Bradbury continues to publish these anthologies (and I hope that he does), at some point he's going to need to start to make some difficult choices as an editor and only publish the best stories. This would have been an excellent 100-page anthology; as it stands, it's a very good 150-pager. I'd also like to see longer contributions by some of the artists; some of the 1-pagers felt tossed-off at best. That said, there were some excellent 1-page strips in here. The upswing in quality from the first to second volumes of Pictozine was quite impressive, and I hope to see a similar arc for a potential third volume.


CANDY OR MEDICINE #2, edited by Josh Blair. This modest anthology informs the reader right from the start that it "always seeks contributors of all skill levels for future volumes". With such a focus, it's not surprising that so much of the work in here is so rough. The anthology does lure the reader in with some Matt Feazell (king of stick-figure mini-comics) sketches, and they are indeed nice. The vast majority of the work in here, while containing some enthusiasm and creative spark, is mostly unremarkable. There are some funny ideas that aren't executed well because the artists' ability to render isn't at a level that meets their needs. There are some nicely-drawn comics that are hard to follow--a victim of composition and panel flow. There are some cute one-off strips that were instantly forgettable.

There were exceptions, however. Richard Cabeza's apparent use of a computer to draw a couple of gag strips about snowmen and turtles elicited some chuckles. Writing gag strips that work is extremely difficult, and it's even harder to use visuals to support a joke. Cabeza is clearly pretty clever and is an example of someone who made the best possible use of visuals in support of his ideas. Blair's own "Lunarcy" strip has a small but amusing payoff, nicely using repetition to get his point across. However, the best strip in the book belonged to Liza Miller. Utilizing expressive stick figures, she created an amusing strip about a woman playing around with a scarf, laughing at her own silliness. What I liked about this strip was the strong handle Miller has on gesture, especially with such a stripped-down set of figures. The wobbly-constructed panels added to the sort of rubbery, exaggerated action depicted in each scene. Miller's ambitions may have been most in this strip, but it was the most fully-realized comic in the anthology. I hope that she continues making comics, and that the other artists in the book strive to find out exactly what it is that they want out of making comics and immerse themselves in that process.

Syncopated, Volume Three, edited by Brendan Burford. This is one of my favorite anthologies, due in large part to Burford's strong editorial hand. The general theme of the anthology is reportage and "first-person journalistic essays". As such, the stories here have a firm sense of time and place, yet cover a wide variety of styles. In this volume, some of the themes that appear in the stories include perilous travel, treasures hidden and unappreciated, places whose times have come and gone and in general the way time erodes everything. This is a stylish, well-designed comic that is pleasant to read and look at. Burford and his cartoony line have stories that bookend this volume. One's about the old Fulton Fish Market in New York that's been moved and converted into a mall, and Burford goes on to make points about homogenization. That's a theme that runs throughout the book--the stories celebrate people and places that defy such homogenizaton. The last story is about the origin of the nickname "Gotham"--a phrase that originally was thought to meant a city of fools, but upon further investigation revealed that it's a city of natives who fiercely protect what's theirs, using deception when necessary.

Dave Kiersh has a story about hanging out with a friend of his grandmother's who turned out to be an avant-garde filmmaker in the 1950's. There's an earnest sweetness to this story as Kiersh enthuses over his relationship both with his grandmother and this artist, and while he's sad that both are gone he treasures their memory. Nick Bertozzi's rollicking, harrowing account of "The Voyage of the James Caird" shows that this anthology isn't all solemn meditation--this was a fascinating account of a risky rescue sea voyage. Meathaus collective artist Jim Campbell, along the same lines, contributes "T.R. And the Thieves", a hilarious account of pre-presidential Theodore Roosevelt tracking down some thieves during a harsh winter with his men. Campbell's rubbery style is a perfect fit for the larger-than-life TR. The intrigues as his crew tracks down thieves in the forest reminded me a bit of the gripping Blueberry stories of Charlier & Moebius, only with a slightly more farcical air.

Burford includes some contributions that have a particularly striking visual approach. Tom Devlin's doodles aren't any kind of narrative, but are particular in how they were created--in a coffee shop with other cartoonists. Seeing a man who mostly works as a designer these days unleash his creativity on a page makes me wish he cartooned more these days. Greg Cook contributes an account of his local neighbors who went off to Iraq. Cook reverses positive and negative space in his depiction of figures, so it appears we are only looking at shadows. Paul Hoppe has a series of sketches about gentrification in Brooklyn, while Burford has an essay about the tugboat graveyard in New York and Susie Cagle writes about the history of a particular decaying building in Brooklyn.

All told, the variety of storytelling approaches and cartoonists, the enthusiasm with which each creator tackles their subject, and the particular writers and artists who contributed to this anthology made it one of the best comics of 2007. Anyone interested in the life of cities, exciting accounts of historical voyages, and the possibility of finding hidden treasures on a day-to-day basis should seek this book out. This anthology doesn't seek to revolutionize comics as a form, but rather seeks to examine specific times and events with existing storytelling structures. I hope another volume will be released sooner rather than later, because Syncopated succeeded in its goals and has become an overlooked treasure in itself.

Potlatch Project 5, published by Steven Noppenberger. This anthology was created several years ago from a group of creators whose entries were rejected by the SPX anthology, so they decided to publish their stories and donate the profits to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. This is the fifth iteration of that project, now no longer being done for the CBLDF. It's a mixed bag of superhero, sci-fi, fantasy and slice-of-life comics. A couple of them seem to be excerpts from other series, or episodes from a series. Few of the stories made much of an impression. Even a funny artist like Stan Yan contributed what amounts to a throwaway gag story, while publisher "Noppie" had a nice-looking (with a really beautiful line) but somewhat incoherent episode of a larger fantasy story. The only segment that I really enjoyed was David Recine's "Murky Waters" a funny series of slice-of-life bits with surprising action elements and good punchlines. His line is a bit crude, but functional. One cannot fault the enthusiasm or intentions of the artists involved, but at this point this anthology series might be running out of steam.

Blurred Vision 3. This is an interesting assemblage of comics creators and fine artists working in the comics milieu. There are hyper-realists like Karl Stevens, Woojung Ahn and the enigmatic Toc Fetch. Stevens' "Love" presents frozen moments in time as a couple wordlessly relaxes on a couch as a man strokes her hair. We don't see the whole picture here--just bits and pieces of the woman's face, the man drinking water, and the TV shows they're watching. Ahn's "Adventures of the Right Hand" is a cute but creepy account of how an overworked right hand escapes, finds itself in the harshness of the big city, then gets sewn on to a new arm. Fetch's strips defy easy description. The hyper-realism of his images is contrasted with the weird mythology he alludes to in his text.

There are some familiar alt artists here like Ethan Persoff, Henriette Valium, Dash Shaw and Bishakh Som (from the old Hi-Horse anthology). Valium reworked an old Captain America story into "Captain Angry White", a typically outrageous and extreme entry from him. Persoff had an entry in an ongoing story called "The Dog and the Elephant", using his somewhat still, animation-influenced style to create tension in his stories. Som's "You Make Me Feel So Real" is a visceral story about a dancer who dips into her memories as she practices a rigorous piece. The way Som simultaneously visually depicts movement against that narrative of memory along with the beats of sound effects, culminating in the character recovering from an asthma attack, makes for a powerful reading experience.
Perhaps my three favorite pieces came from artists whose work I'm not familiar with. Henrik Rehr's "Apple" and "Bald Men" utilizes a fractured arrangement of text (almost like snapshots) illustrating a brief, poetic series of thoughts. Koren Shadmi's "Know Thy Self" is a hilarious, revolting story of a young woman who reaches through her navel to pull out various of her organs, anthropomorphized into singing, dancing, smiling creations...until her body collapses. Stem's "Shadowhouse" is a cleverly composed and designed story that makes great use of negative space, about a young child who discovers a parallel, house under his bed and travels there at night. It's both creepy and sweet in its own way. The eccentric choices in this anthology led to an interesting reading experience, where despite a lack of a theme, the different stories complement each other well.

Blab 17, edited by Monte Beauchamp. Blab is a long-running anthology that stepped in when Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly quit editing RAW. This issue features a couple of former RAW artists like Sue Coe and Drew Friedman and in general continues to use a number of items from the RAW playbook. For example, there's a wide diversity of styles and creators from other countries represented here. Under editor Beauchamp, Blab has occasionally veered a little too far away from narratives in favor of flashy imagery. That's mostly not the case here, other than a series of illustrations covering about a 12-page span. Blab is a sort of cousin to Kramer's Ergot, though perhaps not as aggressively experimental; and Hotwire, though not as inspired by underground comics tradition.

There's all sorts of storytelling traditions and genres represented. The silent "Membrane" by Paco Alcazar is a chilling, bizarre horror story. Peter Kuper's "Nine Lives" is an amusing autobiographical short, while Spain relates a story of his turn in factory life. There's absurdity like Mark Landman's "Fetal Sunday Funnies" (starring Fetal Elvis) and Matti Hagelberg's "Christmas In Shacktown" (featuring James Bond villain Blofeld aiding Hansel and Gretel). There's historical reportage like Geoffrey Grahn's "The Dutch Tulip", about the tulip speculation craze, odd archival material like vintage roller skate labels and a tribute to Bazooka Joe, and Playboy cartoon parodies. Esther Pearl Watson (a relative newcomer to comics) contributes a remarkable two-pager about a haunted funeral plot. The change in tone and style from story to story can be almost dizzying at times, but it all seems to fit into the anthology's overall aesthetic. Not everything in here is a hit for me (I thought the attempts at poetry were especially overwrought or grating), but it's all at least interesting to look at. The fact that Beauchamp has kept the anthology going for so long, with so many different talented artists, is a remarkable testament to his commitment to his artistic vision and willingness to continue to mine the worlds of comics and fine art for images that need a publishing home.

Minicomics Round-Up: Aucoin, B.Brown, Meloro, Bird, Fisher

Doublethink #11, by Matt Aucoin. This CCS grad has decided to do a subscription service for his twenty page, two-man anthology featuring fellow CCS grad Kevin Kilgore.Aucoin's video-game influenced line usually doesn't do much for me, but I like the scribbly, tossed-off line he uses for the classic four-panel diary comics in this comic. Kilgore's comics are about his adventures in South Korea teaching English. His line is cartoony but confident and bold, and he lands a number of solid punchlines in these strips that remind me a great deal of Keith Knight's work. The upcoming subscription will serialize a monster story by Kilgore, who hasn't published much in terms of paper publications but is nonetheless talented. I like the way that Aucoin is adapting the Chuck Forsman/Oily Comics model on a much smaller scale, forcing himself to produce work on a regular basis while giving the spotlight to a deserving friend.

Operation Pizza, by Box Brown. This is a rare all-ages comic by Brown, printed on a risograph at the Sequential Artists Workshop in Gainesville, FL. It's a silly story about the captain of a vessel and his first mate who are trying to explore a bizarre island that stands out for its use of red and blue. They saturate the page when the reader is taken underwater and are otherwise used as spot colors. The story itself is a bit of silliness that involves a pizza tattoo, ancient underwater cave paintings of pizza being worshiped, various underwater sea vessels and funny character design. It's more wacky and nonsensical than funny, but I always love the way Brown uses simple and basic shapes to construct his characters and his settings. Combining that with the way he uses bright, primary colors makes the entire package an eye-catching one, even if there's not much "there" there.

Himzal #1, by Anthony Meloro. This is another Fort Thunder-inspired, genre-style comic.Ben Marra is another obvious influence in this story of a man trying to rescue his stripper girlfriend from a slave-trading ring, only to be savagely beaten as a way of getting the attention of the girlfriend's stripper. She happens to be the titular character and a witch to boot. This was quite an enjoyable comic, as Meloro's scratchy line and character design is boxed into a six-panel grid, which in itself is squashed between narrative panels at the top of the page and decorative designs at the bottom. Just when the reader knows what to expect, Meloro busts out splash pages with spot color introducing Himzal, including Michael DeForge-inspired stylized fonts indicating all of the pages she will have to visit. There's a crude enthusiasm about this comic that makes every page worth looking at, lending an added air of strangeness to a story that is otherwise boilerplate in terms of its plot (act of violence, vow of revenge). Meloro has done a lot of fine arts work and it shows in the way he created this comic as an art object, but he still values narrative and the experience of the reader above all else. I'm eager to see more from him.

Bird Brain #2, by Bird. This wordless (save for some pictographs and text on the inside covers) comic is simple in the way it's drawn (likely with a computer), yet it's surprisingly complex in the way it depicts loneliness turning into contentment. It's about one of three roommates bringing home alcohol, only to be rebuffed by the other two, who head out. With a split panel style that simultaneously depicts space and time passing, Bird shows us the man relaxing in his outdoor swimming pool, diving into it from the roof of his house. It's a slightly crazy and reckless series of moments that nonetheless unfold perfectly, as he floats in the water and starts to have dreams of weightlessness. The comic ends with an interruption, pointing to the frustration of wanting to connect but ultimately being alone while knowing that we always have to deal with the problem of other people. This is an artist whose line may be unremarkable, even dull, but his understanding of how to put together a page makes all the difference.

3-D Pete's Star Babe Invasion Comics #4, by Mike Fisher.  This is another loving tribute to female actresses from cheesy sci-fi and fantasy films from a couple of generations ago. Fisher is a skilled cartoonist and designer whose drawings are both tasteful and attractive. The best parts of this zine are always his amusing rundowns of his favorite old-school sci-fi films and the attractive actresses therein. This issue focuses on the actress Caroline Munro, with a story dedicated to the awful Italian Star Wars rip-off titled Starcrash. With a sharp but relatively gentle wit, he makes fun of the film while praising the loonier aspects of its design and dishing out bits of trivia. Fisher also has a special knack for drawing in a naturalistic style that doesn't deaden the vitality of his characters on the page. Even his pin-up pages are full of life, thanks to the slightly cartoony quality he brings to each figure. This comic is extremely silly fun aimed at fellow fans of the genre, executed with great panache and enthusiasm.

Sequart Reprints: Periodicals

In this column, I've mostly paid attention to the avalanche of quality graphic novels that have been released of late (I have a huge stack still demanding my attention) as well as the large variety of minicomics that grow ever more intricate. There's a big pile of the latter from SPX that will also get a full hearing soon. But what of that disappearing species, the serial alternative comic? Love and Rockets is still going strong of course, but let's take a look at recent issues of some other series, new and old.

DORK #11 (by Evan Dorkin, Slave Labor Graphics)

Evan Dorkin has always been an interesting touchstone creator of sorts for me. He's one of the rare artists who's liked by fans of even the most abstract alt-comics as well as mainstream fans. In fact, he's one of the most prominent "gateway" creators, someone whose work is accessible to mainstream fans but can lead them in other directions. His old Hectic Planet series may have begun as a sci-fi series, but it evolved into something quite different. It became a book about relationships with a sci-fi setting--both about friends and lovers. Certainly Love and Rockets had to have been a huge influence on him by that point, but it was all filtered through his own point of view. That point of view is one of someone who was raised on pop culture & comics, particularly Marvels. As far away from that sort of thing he is now in certain ways, he can't help but reference them in his humor.

That sense of humor is what makes Dorkin such a popular creator. No matter what he's writing or drawing, there's always a manic feel to every word, every panel. Early in his career, Dorkin compensated for his perceived lack of talent by overstuffing every panel full of Will Elder-esque "chicken fat". Now that he's a much more skilled draftsman, that mania remains, only it's on a well-designed page. Dorkin's relationship with pop culture is one of love-hate: his Eltingville Club stories, depicting the misadventures of four genre-loving nerds, is stinging in its depictions of the pathetic lives of these unpleasant individuals. Yet at the same time, there's an undercurrent of pity present as well--and even a certain degree of empathy. Above all else, Dorkin is concerned about his story, his characters and getting laughs--yet there's always a subtext of anger, frustration, depression and hatred towards the world but especially himself.

The latest issue of Dork distills all of this down to its purest form: 24 pages of nothing but gags. Some of them are single-panel, others are seven 4-panel strips, and there are a few extended sequences thrown in there. The issue began as something that Dorkin thought would be easy, just a bunch of gags strung together. But putting together joke after joke and making each one funny was a monstrous task. Dorkin really let his id wander in a lot of them, as his jokes became more vicious and nastier than usual, almost at an early Ivan Brunetti-level. Whether or not an individual finds them funny will vary, of course, but I did want to speak to the way that Dorkin works.

Reading this issue makes me appreciate the sheer effort Dorkin put forth to sell each joke. Take a one-panel cartoon. We see a furball with a hat and glasses having doggie-style sex with a naked woman. The caption reads, "My favorite porn star was Vixxen St. Clair, whose specialty was taking itt up the ass". The drawing itself is sort of funny, the work behind the pop-culture pun (Cousin Itt from the Addams Family) was admirable, the little detail of coming up with a dead-on porn star name was nice, but what took the joke over the top was the word balloon from It: "BRRPIDIT-BIPIBITIBIF BDRRHRHR-HBDRGT!" Dorkin's ability to really sell a joke, to go the whatever extreme was necessary to make the initial idea funny, is on display throughout the issue.

There are times when Dorkin doesn't care if you don't get the reference, but takes the joke to its logical extreme anyway. "The Prisoner of Second Avenue", featuring #6 asking where he was, and a St Marks Place punker naturally saying "You're in the village". You have to be familiar with The Prisoner and New York to really get enjoy that joke, but that's a case of Dorkin aiming some of his humor at certain audiences and making other gags more universal. "David Byrne Gets Alzheimer's" has the singer of course waking up in bed, saying "This is not my beautiful house", etc.

The violent gags are among the funniest in the book; Dorkin really cuts to the bone on them when he combines a familiar reference with a violent end. For example, "Tintin In Cambodia" is a one-panel gag that sees Tintin and Snowy bound, with their throats slit. "Bad Dad" is a page about an awful, abusive father making demented wisecracks to his son as he does ever-more repulsive and over-the-top things. The latter strip speaks not only to the antipathy he feels toward his own father, but there's also an extra undercurrent of discomfort now that Dorkin himself is a father.

Finally, I also rather enjoy his cultural and comics commentary, like his strip entitled "If Other Media Were As Sad As Comic Books" featuring characters saying things like "Dude! I saw this movie last night and they showed a character in it reading a book!" "Oh, I am in ecstasy!" Then there's the "Save CBGB's" strip, where the characters "forgot what a complete shithole this shithole was!"

This just scratches the surface--there's page after page of jokes. Some work better than others, but that will certainly depend on the audience. Dorkin has always noted that his work is polarizing even with his own fans, with some preferring Eltingville to Milk and Cheese, Fun Strips to the Murder Family, etc. This labor of love, blood, sweat and clearly many tears may be the greatest value for your entertainment dollar you'll see all year.

American Splendor  #3 (Harvey Pekar & various, DC/Vertigo)

Harvey Pekar is a name familiar to virtually every comics fan these days, thanks to the success of the film adaptation of American Splendor. However, Harv had been chugging along for years, first self-publishing his comics and then having them released by Dark Horse. While we did see an issue a year from Dark Horse, they never really gave his work the promotion and attention it deserved. While other major publishers were busy reissuing collections of Harv's early work (which sold like gangbusters), Dark Horse sat on a decade's worth of his comics--many of which were excellent.

Happily, the success of the film and his reprints opened up all sorts of opportunities: three original graphic novels plus a new series from Vertigo. Vertigo is doing a much better job of not only promoting him but getting an interesting variety of artists to illustrate his stories. It's unfortunate that Pekar didn't get these kinds of resources until very late in his career. It's a bit like Gary Payton signing on with Miami late in his career in order to get that elusive first NBA title--he still had moments of brilliance, but he was no longer a trailblazing force.

That's OK, because even an issue of American Splendor that covers familiar ground is still a unique event in the world of comics. Pekar not only is amazingly skilled in his depiction of quotidian life that is paradoxically poetic in its plainness, his cultural-political tangents & digressions on his career are also fascinating to read. I find his short stories are more effective than most of his graphic novels to date, in part because there's not quite enough narrative in most of his stories to sustain a long-form work. I would guess that's why he chose to write about other people in his latest graphic novels, and took a long look at his childhood in The Quitter.

While all three are quite enjoyable in their own way, there's something about a short Pekar story that is immensely satisfying on its own. The way he changes narrative strategies depending on the kind of story he tells and the type of artist he chooses to illustrate that story have a profound effect on the way the reader experiences them. For example, take "The Battle of the Vacant Lot". It's a story about his childhood and a violent event that took place, so it only made sense for his The Quitter collaborator Dean Haspiel to illustrate it. Haspiel's art is dynamic and stark, with lots of bold blacks, dramatic close-ups and tense compositions. That choice perfectly played up the story of Harvey accidentally hurting a friend of his as a child but feeling a weird sense of power after he did it. As with most of his stories, there's no neat conclusion or wrap-up; Pekar deliberately leaves his anecdotes open-ended for further contemplation by the reader.

"Medicating In the A.M." uses unusually loose art from another frequent contributor, Josh Neufeld. The slightly fuzzy line Neufeld employed nicely reflects the way Pekar felt in the morning as he contemplated what medicines he needed to take to combat his physical and mental problems. After using narrative captions in that first story to gain a little distance, the reader has full access to his thoughts via word balloons.

"Regionalism" employs long-time Pekar workhorses Greg Budgett and Gary Dumm. They're pretty much the working definition of "solid but unspectacular", which is what this story about urban sprawl, increased segregation and ways to combat it via a localized governmental model that encourages cooperation rather than competing for resources. Harv softens the didactic and rhetorical aims of the story by making it a dialogue between himself and a friend, and the art switches between Harvey and the scenarios he describes. One of the most interesting aspects of Pekar (one glossed over in the movie) is his status as a working-class intellectual, a renaissance man with extensive interests in politics, history and literature.

My favorite story was the quintessential quotidian Pekar piece, "Morning Route". Illustrated by Ty Templeton (an inspired choice) and looking like it was shot almost directly from his pencils, he adds a certain warmth to the proceedings. The story simply follows Harv around as he gets medication, goes to the post office, researches a story and buys some cookies for his wife. The undertone, as there almost always is in his stories, is how one man struggles to make sense of his world and feel like he's productive. As one reads his stories over the years, one picks up the thread not of a temporal narrative of his life, but an emotional narrative. Even when there's nothing but despair around him, he still plods through his day. After retiring from his government job and beating cancer a second time, he had to fight to stave off tedium and feelings of uselessness. For Pekar, not having a purpose and an outlet for expression is the same thing as death.


Copykat #1 (MK Reed & Laura Tallardy, Otazine)

Manga is very much outside of my sphere of interest, but I've always enjoyed MK Reed's portrayals of youth and relationships. Her ear for dialogue makes her stories pleasant page-turners. It was a bit odd to see her write for an artist other than herself, and it was even stranger to see the printing/paper quality looking so amateurish. The whole thing felt more like a minicomic than a more professionally produced magazine, although its very crudeness actually made it more enjoyable to look at. Most standard manga (yes, I know there are all sorts of exceptions) is so slick and stylized (especially American attempts at the style) that my eye slides off the page. Quite frequently, I can't hold on to what's on the page. The cruder art, combined with a naturalistically told tale, reduced this difficulty for me.

The story is amusing and given energy by Reed's vivid characterization. Every character is given some sort of depth and is neither entirely likeable nor despicable. The plot is rather familiar: a young woman with a bubbly personality but not much of a grip on practicalities comes to live with her sister in New York, waiting for that big break in the art world. Reality dictated that she had to go find a job, and so she stumbled onto one at the local copy shop. Kat, the title character, is the sort of naive but pushy young woman who is fun to read about in this sort of setting. The reader is drawn to her but also wants to see her take a few lumps in the process of figuring things out.

The one really jarring thing about the art was Tallardy interjecting photographic backgrounds at random throughout the story. I'm not sure if that was a stylistic choice or simply a way to avoid trying to tackle subjects she can't draw. Her art is actually fairly expressive, but it's obvious that she can't do everything she wants on a page yet and there's not much economy to her art. She would do well to perhaps use slightly thinner lines and clean things up a bit in general. I like the way she composes a page, but using thick blacks doesn't really compensate for crude draftsmanship.

Monster Parade #1 (Ben Catmull, Fantagraphics)

It's odd that perhaps the most "mainstream" of the comics I'm reviewing in this column in terms of its trappings is from Fantagraphics, the vanguard publisher of alternative comics. Monster Parade is the new series by former Xeric-grant winner Ben Catmull. His work features a certain ominousness in its atmosphere and setting, lightened by whimsical story elements and absurd situations.

There's a certain interconnectedness in the short stories here, but it's not explicit. Catmull's world is one where monsters are the norm but still inspire wonder. In "Winter Storm", a young boy watches a storm roll in, stoked by a gigantic 4-armed hillbilly who's throwing lightning bolts and stirring up a wind. A huge bird brings the rain, and then the boy comes face to face with a flying whale. As we cut to a train rolling by, the story switches from black and white to the next story's washed-out reds. In "Monster Express", we get a sharply timed comedy of discomfort combined with an off-panel rampaging monster on a train. The story is completely different from anything else in the issue. However, despite the escalating gags from page to page, it still manages to finish on an extremely creepy note.

From there, we segue into the local wildlife doing all sorts of odd things and come upon an image of a creature in a window in a town. The reader is immediately jolted into the next story, "Civilization Illustrated", a faux-academic study of a town surrounded by rivers. This was my favorite story in the book, as Catmull manages to combine comedy, weirdness, and creepiness in one package. There's almost a Lovecraftian feel to some of the images (like the creature in the "deep haunted cellars where no living person should tread"). Then there was the minimalistically depicted war between Louse Land and Mite Ville, two insect cities living underneath a dock. There's not really a narrative here, just a collection of dizzying images that make the reader want to know more about every tidbit offered.

Catmull has always been effective in creating mood, atmosphere and general discomfort for the reader. In the long period of time it took him to publish again, it's clear that he's added a lushness to his work that serves to soften its hard edges and induce a sort of nostalgia for events that never took place and locales that don't exist. That may be the most unsettling part of his art.

Apocalypse Nerd #4 (Peter Bagge, Dark Horse)

Peter Bagge is one of my all-time favorites, and I've enjoyed every series he's released since he ended regular publishing of his classic Hate a few years ago. There's a sense that while he's dabbled with children's comics for DC (Yeah!), a whacked-out Spider-Man story and a book about a comic strip artist & his staff (Sweatshop, also for DC) along with Hate annuals, he's yet to really get back in the groove that made him one of the most important and successful comics artists of the 90's.

Apocalypse Nerd, along with its backup feature Founding Fathers Funnies, is taking him a long way back to that status in my eyes. First of all, he's doing both writing and drawing again for this feature, which wasn't the case for his mainstream work. Second, this material is a return to the sort of freewheeling nihilism that made Hate such a landmark series. Third, the backup feature highlights what he's done best in the past few years: politically-oriented strips for places like Reason and Salon. Applying the cynical, smart-assed Bagge interpretation to sacred cows like the Founding Fathers of the US is instructive both as history and a lesson on how to think about politics today.

The title feature follows two friends in the Pacific Northwest after North Korea nuked Seattle and their wacky hijinx. This issue gives us a bit more information about what's happening in the world at large after civilization more-or-less ceased to function in the area. The protagonists stumbled upon a "nerd camp", as a bunch of academics set up a subsistence farm. That happened to be close to a compound filled with lesbian separatists. A raiding party of native Americans on horseback takes over the men's camp; and Perry, the less macho of our heroes, winds up begging to be taken in by the lesbian compound. They reluctantly allow it after he convinces one less threatening woman to injure him and play upon their sympathies. This sort of flies, as they turn him into a pet, even making him live in a doghouse! The story is typical Bagge over-the-top humor, beginning with a shocking premise and then taking it to its logical extreme. As always, his exaggerated, eyes-popped-out art perfectly matches the story. While his line is perhaps not as precisely rendered as it used to be in the Hate glory days, his unique stylization more than gets the job done.

The real main event of this issue was "Let's Fuck Shit Up!" starring the Beantown Boys--Sam Adams, John Adams, Paul Revere and James Otis. It's a hilarious look at the propaganda, chicanery and crudity of America's revolutionary forefathers. Flipping from year to year, Bagge comically explores attempts made at distorting the facts of the Boston Massacre, the political maneuvering surrounding the Boston Tea Party, Otis' demented public rants, and moneyman John Hancock & Sam Adams fleeing by gilded carriage when the battle of Lexington broke out. Bagge manages to accurately convey historical detail with modern dialogue, producing a highly insolent look at history. Considering the way that the Founding Fathers are mythologized in American school systems, getting a taste of the wackiness that truly surrounded the times is what makes his stories so effective. I can't get enough of these stories, and I love to see a book full of them.

The Vagabonds #2 (Josh Neufeld & Various, Alternative Comics)

I reviewed issue #1.5 of the Vagabonds back in 2005 for my MOCCA article, and much of that material is in the new issue. The "real" issue is even more attractive than the mini; Neufeld's design sense and aesthetics are subtle and refined. This comic is devoted entirely to Neufeld's collaborations and the nature of collaboration itself. Neufeld is so successful as an illustrator because he never fails to bring out the most in a script he's given but does it without overwhelming the text. This makes him an ideal choice for Harvey Pekar, for example, who usually favors simplicity and directness for his naturalistic storytelling choices.

Neufeld separated the issue into four categories: Confessions (biography), Health & Welfare (odd medical tales), Echoes (formal experiments) and Loss (literal and figurative). In the first section, Neufeld illustrates two stories about Donald Ross written by his son. The first sees his rise as a big-time CEO in New York; the second sees him in Barbados after having given up that life. Both stories involve him ambitiously trying to master his environment, only to find that he was in over his head. Neufeld uses a pleasantly cartoony technique for these stories, verging on bigfoot-style comics.

A highlight of the Health section was a strip that Neufeld wrote about breaking his finger and how alienated from it he became. In a tongue-in-cheek turn, he blames the finger for ruining his career and marriage and ends the story holding a cleaver vowing that "there isn't room enough on this hand for the both of us". The most interesting example from Echoes was Neufeld completely redrawing a page of dialogue from an issue of Superman. Neufeld rethinks a scene featuring Superman returning to the Fortress of Solitude into a scene where a man comes home to his apartment in the midst of winter.

My favorite bit from Loss was "Father McKenzie's Sermon", inspired by the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby". Of course, in the song, Father McKenzie writes the words of a sermon that no one will hear; Neufeld interprets this as a sermon for Rigby's funeral. Neufeld's design on the page was quite clever. We see a shot of his feet, then his gesticulating hands and a bible, then a cross around his neck, then the cross on the coffin. We pan back to see a church and its cemetery, and finally her grave. This strip, and the comics he drew that adapated poetry, show Neufeld's great facility with adapting nearly anything into the language of comics.

Though the issue is interesting in its multiple approaches, experiments and types of story, the best Neufeld stories are those written by Neufeld. His travel stories are reminiscient of Pekar's work in that they look at small moments but significant in unfamiliar places and situations. In this issue, Neufeld stretches the bounds of the unfamiliar as an artist and collaborator, and the reader is treated to a one-man anthology more diverse than many multi-creator anthologies.

Rhythm & Rhyme: Asthma, The Blot and Comics-As-Poetry

In the early stages of any media, the influence of a preceding art form is readily apparent. Early films were shot without much camera movement, and editing and looked much like staged plays, for example — a self-imposed limitation that was shattered by cinematic visionaries. Similarly, the earliest published American comics in the 19th century on through the popularization of the medium in American comic strips in the 20th century took their cues from the popular media of the time, which was driven by linear narrative rather than experimentation with form: whether a single panel, a comic strip or a comic book, comics presented a clear and usually literal delineation of an idea. Whether that idea was a story, a gag or a political idea, this fusion of word and image has had its own set of self-imposed limitations. As comics evolved and developed their own avant-garde movement, artists such as Tom Neely and John Hankiewicz, have embraced a different form of expression in the comics medium: the use of comics-as-poetry.

First, a word of clarification: There is a difference between what I refer to comics-as-poetry and illustrated poems. There have been some recent works where cartoonists tackle previously published works by poets in an attempt to provide an appropriate visual. In this instance, the poem and the image are separate entities that may comment on each other but do not create a gestalt. There has always been a tension between illustration and cartooning, and this is a perfect example of where the line is drawn between the two forms.

Reading comics-as-poetry
 
Poetry exploits language, abstracting beyond its initial meaning for aesthetic and other purposes, while at the same time remaining more condensed and less straightforward than most prose. As such, poetry requires an active reader who must interact with the text rather than be led along to an inevitable end. The slippery, elusive nature of poetry gives the reader the responsibility to engage every word and the power to wrestle meaning from the text. Meanings can be teased out through initial surface impressions, emotional impressions, phenomenological study and an analysis of the poem’s symbology based on the first three steps.
Just as a reader must employ different reading techniques with poetry and prose, comics-as-poetry must be read the same way, with attention to the visual cues that interact with text or act on their own adding an additional layer of complexity. Poetry provides a narrative as much as any other art form does, and likewise, the comics analyzed below are examples of comics-as-poetry that offer a very rich, complex and mysterious kind of narrative that, like poetry, requires the engagement of the reader.

What separates what I call comics-as-poetry from more conventional comics? That difference is overdetermined in many respects. There is often a denseness in each panel and page that requires unpacking, a higher level of commitment to closely reading each word and image and how specifically they interact. More conventional narratives can of course make use of symbol and metaphor but rarely at the level of abstraction and fluidity that characterizes comics-as-poetry. Unlike a standard comic, there can be an emphasis on the image qua image, as the artist lingers on the plastic qualities of an image and asks that the reader do so as well. In this sense, the imagery in comics-as-poetry simply isn’t a shorthand way of delivering easily digested narrative clues but, at the same time, is not merely decorative or illustrative. Poetic language is often highly symbolic, dense and abstract, taking readers out of their comfort zone. In much the same way, comics-as-poetry not only uses compact, frequently cryptic imagery in order to force the reader to engage it outside of the framework of an expected narrative, it also adds an additional layer of complexity when the reader is also asked to grapple with the tension between word and image.

It is important to note that formalist experimentation for its own sake, à la http://www.tomhart.net/oubapo/, is not what I would consider to be comics-as-poetry. Such experimentation is valuable in understanding the forms, limits and possibilities available in constructing comics, but they don’t relate to the aims of comics-as-poetry. There is no emotional or symbolic meaning to be taken from those comics, and this is something at the heart of comics-as-poetry; an exploration and demarcation of the contents of our inner worlds: be it emotions, ideas, dreams or symbols.

John Hankiewicz and Asthma
 
John Hankiewicz has long created strips with an enigmatic, elusive quality that fully employ the language of comics, with conventional page and panel designs recognizable to any reader of the form. Though on the surface level his iconic imagery seems familiar, his comics do not have a traditional, linear, plot-driven narrative, but rather an emotional and cryptographic one in which meaning is more challenging to tease out. Best known for his depiction of mundane objects, such as chairs, as a sort of visual rhyming device, Hankiewicz’s comics force the reader to immerse himself/herself in the imagery and yield to the emotion generated by the flow of images. He discussed his creative method at a recent gallery talk at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design as well as at SPX 2006, noting that he “rhymes” an image with the one that precedes it. Hankiewicz’s panels depict emotions in the same manner that abstract expressionist paintings were meant to provoke an emotional reaction: without the benefit of recognizable iconographic reference points.

Asthma (Sparkplug Comic Books, 2006), a collection of Hankiewicz’s stories, reveals a number of repeating motifs and variations on themes. His most heavily cross-hatched and realistically rendered strips tend to be the most static of his comics. The more cartoony or iconic figures in his strips tend to have the most movement, both within each panel and in terms of panel-to-panel transitions. Hankiewicz often subverts the reader’s expectations of what is to appear in a comic strip, making full use of familiar tropes of the form to create meaning.

In line with traditional comic-strip form, “Amateur Comics” (above), a series of silent one-page strips, is prefaced by a provocative question – “How Did You Happen to Stop?” — and an almost corny title such as “Balmy Comics” (a clever subversion of the standard purpose of such titles to draw a reader’s eye) to accompany its imagery. Hankiewicz creates a rhythm with the alternating images of a man in the first panel and a chair in the next, sometimes with an object contrasting with images of the man. This repeats three more times, acting as a sort of “verse” for each strip. The common objects that we see (chairs, bowls, bottles, radios) are stripped of their everyday meaning and context here. The man is either stock-still or frantically, almost spasmodically, moving out of a sense of desperation or boredom rather than purpose. In the middle of the story, lightning (a heavily used motif of Hankiewicz’s) pops out of a speaker; it is unclear if this represents sound, electricity, energy or simply movement. The lightning changes the action and rhythm of the strip, providing a variation on the previous “verse,” as the man appears in panels where he’s not “supposed” to be. Perhaps this is how Hankiewicz plays with the idea of reader expectations in terms of continuity of images: in the last strip, with the question “When Might You Actually Learn? (Fresh Comics)”, the man is completely absent, as Hankiewicz draws panels devoid of the man — with the exception of his shoes, which appear in the penultimate panel.

The tension between text and image, especially with regard to the titles of his strips, is as important to experiencing and understanding his strips as the images themselves. The text does not serve to “explain” the image; instead, its purpose in this strip seems to shift from strip to strip. At times, the questions asked and the titles of the strips seem to act as an admonition to the man in the strip, to the readers themselves and perhaps even to the artist. The fact that the word “comics” is in the title of this suite of strips is no accident; this is a deliberate experiment on and with the form, and Hankiewicz demands that the reader keep up. At the same time, Hankiewicz never indulges in mere formalist trickery for its own sake; rather, there is always an emotional content to even the most cryptic of his strips.

“Amateur Comics” illustrates Hankiewicz’s most deliberate use of the rhythms of poetry to create feeling and meaning. The rigid panel set-up and dense rendering make it difficult for the eye to latch on to each panel as if it were a standard narrative comic. One is forced to slow down and give oneself over to the strip’s own rhythms, which become increasingly oppressive as it proceeds. The use of repetition and slight variation immerses the reader in this world, where one wonders why this man is in the house and what he is feeling. We sense boredom, desperation, an urge to connect or create, and a general sense of trying to find his purpose. When he finally breaks the tension and leaves (or disappears?), we get a resolution of sorts, with the text offering a clue that he has moved on and the shoes perhaps indicating that he’s barefoot and hence less constrained. What he has moved on to or moved away from is open to interpretation. One could say that the man has moved away from repetition and paralysis. Another way to view the strip is as a metaphor for the creative process, where the man found a way to break out of routines that inhibited his ability to innovate. Taking that a step further, the strip itself is a means of addressing and breaking out of narrative traps and structures: for the man, for Hankiewicz himself and for the readers who grapple with the piece.
In “Martha Gregory,” Hankiewicz moves in a completely different direction from “Amateur Comics.” This story, using a six-panel grid on every page, is a series of realistically rendered talking heads. Each sub-story is ironically titled; for example, in “Martha Gregory, Intrepid Scholar,” the title character struggles with her own thoughts as she defends her graduate thesis. In each strip, we learn more about Martha, a poet, and her difficulty articulating her desires to the outside world. Halfway through the comic, its perspective flips to an elderly male sculptor while still retaining the title “Martha Gregory.” Both characters wrestle with creation, communication and how these two possibilities interrelate.

The transition from female to male character may be an implication that Martha disappears into a fantasy of this male sculptor, possibly as a poetic narrative. We never learn the man’s name, for example, and the fact that each episode still bears her name supports this possibility — especially since the structure and nature of his struggle is very similar to Martha’s. The main difference is that in some respects he is an idealized version: a romantic who has a love affair by mail, an accomplished artist, and a man who has confronted death and overcome it. Martha notes in her last strip that she would like to simply disappear. Once again, the reader is forced to grapple with the huge amount of emotional information provided by way of text this time, with the images only giving context and a sense of rhythm.

A running sub-theme in Hankiewicz’s work is the possibility of creation and communication. In “Martha Gregory,” the emotions running through the story are conveyed by the stream-of-consciousness thought balloons. The six-panel grid grounds her thoughts temporally, adding story beats to her mental wanderings. Through the realistic depiction of the figures, Hankiewicz discourages easy reader identification with the characters. Instead, the reader is immediately thrust into the “otherness” of Martha, forced to grapple with her thoughts, fears and hopes. Martha’s feelings are often contradictory, balancing the hopeful energy of creation with the desperation inherent in her inability to fruitfully communicate her desires. It is that tension that perhaps triggers the change midway through the story, where the male artist has a somatic cause for his initial inability to communicate and yet overcomes it to spark a personal and creative set of connections.

Hankiewicz’s most enigmatic use of symbology comes in “Jazz,” a series of four-panel strips that are perhaps the most fully realized of his comics and a fine example of comics-as-poetry. These strips are about opposites and are expressed using the full range of the comics language. This range of visual approaches inherent in comics gives each strip its power, meaning and ability to express the tension between opposites. Some of the strips are titled “Asthma,” implying constriction and desperation. Some are titled “Jazz,” implying free-flowing, unrestricted and improvisational movement. Various other titles (“Soup,” “Nap,” “Prayer,” “Laundry”) depict varying levels of stasis and motion, energy and entropy. His visual approach, informed by George Herriman’s Krazy Kat and other classic strips, veers into strictly realistic depiction of a man and woman. ”Jazz” also embodies a frequent motif in Hankiewicz’s work, the sudden transformation of realistically depicted hands into cartoon hands. That transformation has a price, as that hand is shown as being injured by a flash of the lightning so often seen in his strips. At the same time, this transformation of hands can be likened to the kind of word-play seen in poetry. ”Jazz” is a symbolic narrative, an exploration of active and passive states of transformation, and an exploration of the relationship between word and image that is intrinsic to poetry.

In his work, Hankiewicz explores ways in which the mundane becomes alien and threatening, how communication can be a form of aggression, the madness that isolation can induce, and the possibility that we are essentially doomed to be isolated from both the world and each other. At the same time, this quest for connection is our only chance at creating meaning and purpose, impossible as it may seem. Hankiewicz’s comics are the most compelling of those that attempt to illustrate the complexity and frustration that this process can elicit. Indeed, for the reader seeking to explore comics-as-poetry, the work of Hankiewicz is essential because it so effectively subverts reader expectations and challenges them to wrestle with the form and meaning of his comics, effectively providing a bracing crash course.

Tom Neely and The Blot
 
Like Hankiewicz, Tom Neely’s The Blot (self-published) uses familiar, old-time cartoon imagery and then subverts its use in a visceral, violent manner. Informed and influenced by Floyd Gottfredson’s old Mickey Mouse comics, among other artists of the era, Neely introduces the reader to the sort of rubbery, cartoony figure that is aesthetically conventional in such a story. When the nameless protagonist is confronted with an apparently ravenous blot of ink that often fills up an entire page, it becomes the ultimate apocalypse for a cartoon character: the obliteration of identity and form on the page.

However, the blot is composed of ink, the raw stuff of cartoon creation, full of possibility. As the protagonist proceeds, the blot alternatively (and sometimes simultaneously) represents creation, destruction, seduction, sexuality, brutality, oblivion and, above all else, knowledge. When the protagonist is spotted by a woman in a cafe who instantly understands his dilemma, she awakens this knowledge of his potential as master of his own fate and world. It is not unlike Eve offering Adam the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The blot acts as the stuff of being and identity.

The protagonist’s immediate reaction to his newfound power over his reality is to immediately recreate a conventional existence for the woman with whom he is now in love. However, it is clear that she is attracted to possibility, power and motion above all else. She despises the static life that the protagonist offers her, so she betrays him for a monstrous, all-black wolf-creature. It is not a coincidence that she is attracted to a creature consisting entirely of ink, the stuff of creation, a creature that fully embraces the possibilities of its power and the potential for violence that this entails. Confronting the protagonist, she compels him to commit horrific acts of violence upon himself. The violence is brutal and visceral but simultaneously cartoonish and uncomfortably realistic, as though Mickey Mouse had been savagely battered, beaten and splintered. She then tenderly kisses the protagonist and tells him everything is going to be all right, and he is then healed by the blot, having had an epiphany.

Neely’s use of vibrant color on the last few pages of the story indicates, perhaps, that the protagonist has a more full understanding of his potential. Formally, The Blot is a manifestation of the creative urge. The artist is creator and destroyer of his character’s lives and narratives, and Neely here imbues his hero with the same power. That power is both liberating and frightening, and Neely expresses it with images that are both familiar and mysterious. He takes advantage of the reader’s comfort and knowledge of cartoon images and then re-imagines them, instilling in them the possibilities of life, death, sex and purpose.

The Blot functions as comics-as-poetry in the way that it subverts a reader’s familiarity with its imagery, turning it on its head. The reader must grapple with Neely’s use of abstract (but still formally contextualized) ink blots as a device designed to elicit emotion. While Neely provides various visual and textual cues that offer hints as to what feelings he’s trying to portray, it’s up to the reader to interpret them. Neely’s use of nostalgic cartoon imagery for his figure work is quite deliberate and jarring, forcing the reader to understand these seemingly familiar characters in a new emotional context. The use of cartoon masks to “cover up” emotion, the oppressiveness of a seemingly endless sea of blank-faced characters trying to smother the protagonist, and the way that lines appear and disappear (literally rewriting reality for the characters) are examples of how typical comics tropes are subverted and repurposed to elicit terror and wonder for both the characters and the readers.

That meta-awareness of the reader being constantly reminded by Neely that he is working with ink on paper serves as both a narrative abstraction and emotional intensification for the reader, who is drawn into the lives of the characters through the simplicity of their iconic representation. While there is a narrative of sorts in The Blot, it is a narrative of ideas and emotions more than a conventional one. Neely achieves a level of immediacy on each page, creating a powerful emotional shorthand designed to get across the intensity of feeling, be it dread, joy, fear, desperation or longing. His iconic imagery acts as dense bundles of emotional information that, when unpacked by the reader, provide a powerful experience and insight into the creative process.

Conclusion
 
Both John Hankiewicz in Asthma and Tom Neely in The Blot are interested in the possibility of communication and purpose beyond the traditional narrative in comics art. Neely’s approach is more direct and visceral, but no less capable of absorbing multiple interpretations. As a reader and critic, one must be capable of addressing these works differently than most comics. A conventional analysis of plot and character simply does not apply here, nor do standard analyses of the use of visuals. Only a close examination of how words and images actually interact and the ability to let them wash over one to feel their impact can tease out meaning or meanings. Like all the best poetry, what a reader gets out of comics-as-poetry is entirely dependent on how willing they are to truly engage the material and articulate the feelings it evokes.

(This article was originally published at tcj.com in 2009.)

Deepening The Field: Drawing Comics and Mastering Comics

One of the biggest changes in comics in the last decade is the increasing commitment to providing a pedagogical foundation for both serious students and enthusiastic amateurs alike. Lynda Barry's texts are more about writing and drawing in general than about the specifics of how to make a comic, but they are still invaluable works for any creative person. Ivan Brunetti's Cartooning is still the most valuable single text out there in terms of really getting to the heart of what it is to make comics. Scott McCloud's texts seem to be fading a bit in importance as more authors who have actual experience teaching comics have entered the publishing picture, but Understanding Comics remains an interesting philosophical entry point for a newcomer.

The gold standard for comics pedagogy, however, is Jessica Abel & Matt Madden's Drawing Words and Writing Pictures, as discussed in my reprint column from yesterday. When writing that text, the authors had to cut out a lot of material. So much so, in fact, that they had another book's worth of material to publish. So their Mastering Comics should be seen less as a sequel than a continuation and fleshing out of DWWP, while recapitulating certain points in a different way. It should be noted upfront that this is a textbook and is written as such: units, homework assignments, diagrams, tons of examples, etc. It's not a book that one reads, it's a book that one uses. One could easily jump right into this textbook without having used the first one, especially if one is looking more for tips and less for the basics.

The first three chapters actually touch on Barry-style writing and drawing exercises to help generate ideas and keep up a love of making marks on paper. The fourth chapter goes into hardcore instruction on how to use perspective on the comics page. The fifth chapter begins to address a major items missing from the first book: how and when to do webcomics. This chapter talks a little behind the possibilities and theory behind webcomics. The sixthis all about style; it's a dazzling chapter that provides example after example of how cartoonists break rules to create their own style. The seventh, eighth and ninth chapters go into inking, lettering and greyscale effects. They talk about digital and hand-crafted effects for both, once again going into painstaking detail. This is the good stuff for those looking for specific craft tips with little formal training. The tenth and eleventh chapters go into detail about another deficit from the first volume: color. Chapter ten mostly talks about color principles and digital coloring, while eleven is mostly about hand-coloring. The last chapters are mostly about publishing and hand-making comics. It's unfortunate that both of the minicomics distros referenced in the book are both defunct, but that's the nature of the game. The authors frequently reference the book's blog,which continues and expands upon what's taught in the text. I imagine there will be comics texts that teach certain aspects of the craft better than Abel and Madden, and there are already better books about the creative process. However, I can't imagine better, more thorough yet approachable texts than DWWP and Mastering Comics.

Robyn Chapman's Drawing Comics Lab is a distillation of the Abel/Madden textbooks, something she cops to right upfront. It's two pages per exercise, zipping the aspiring artist through character building, creativity exercises, panel and page design, pacing, "camera" placement, storytelling tips and tricks, jam comics and other creative exercises, storytelling choices, materials (including ink, paper, pens, and pencils), minicomics publishing, screenprinting and other related aspects of making a comic. Chapman's book is heavily illustrated and is designed to get the artist's pen moving right away and get them to make a minicomic. The book is as much a distillation of Brunetti and Barry as it is Abel & Madden, but it's a much breezier and simpler read than those other texts. Its exercises are absolutely perfect for short comics-making courses (like one or two hour workshops) or drink 'n draw events. The chapters on materials are a perfect crash course for an aspiring artist. She seeks out the advice of dozens of other cartoonists for many of the labs; Tom Hart's character exercise is a great example. Her descriptions of the many different ways one can fold paper to produce a minicomic are more thorough than any text I've ever seen; Chapman is a veteran mini-maker and has seen a lot of people try different methods during her time working at the Center for Cartoon Studies. Overall, Drawing Comics Lab creates a unique balance between theory, practice and readability. There's enough attention to detail to impart real and useful information to aspiring cartoonists, but it keeps moving along quickly enough to encourage its students to keep going no matter what. What I like about all of these texts is that Abel, Madden and Chapman worked very hard to become the artists they are today. None of them are the sort of whiz-kid drawers who dazzled everyone from a very young age. The lessons in these books were hard-earned through trial and error and battle-tested by these veteran cartoonists and perfected through years of teaching their students.

Sequart Reprints: Cartooning, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures

For years, there was a dearth of educational resources available for those who wanted to learn how to create comics. Sure, there were piecemeal options available: textbooks on drawing anatomy, life-drawing courses, creative writing workshops, etc. But when one of the few books that actually addressed comics creation for many years was "How To Draw Comics the Marvel Way", it was obvious that this badly needed to be addressed. In the past few years, there's been a greater demand for comics-related pedagogy and the result has been the creation of schools like the Center for Cartoon Studies and expanded programs at the Savannah College of Art & Design, the School for Visual Arts (SVA), etc.

Many professional cartoonists find themselves winding up as teachers either at places like SVA or at other colleges trying to teach the medium. For Ivan Brunetti, he created a comics course from trial and error, but the result was that he developed a syllabus and curriculum that worked for him. He codified these results in a brisk 80-page booklet titled Cartooning: Philosophy And Practice, and it was included along with Comic Art #8. Brunetti is one of the great thinking cartoonists, and it's obvious that the teaching methods he employed were as much about his own ways of getting around his own writer's block and fear of the page as they were to teach others how to do so. In that respect, it's very much a worthy companion to Linda Barry's astonishing What It Is. The emphasis is on the pure pleasure of cartooning, with no other specific end in mind.

Brunetti's Cartooning is less a detailed textbook and more an annotated, detailed course syllabus or guide. It's sparsely illustrated and has an informal, conversational style in its instruction. It reminds me a bit of Aristotle's writings, which were designed as notes for lectures, conversational in tone. The genius of this book is the way Brunetti builds from week to week. In a fifteen-week course, Brunetti moves from the sort of spontaneous drawing (doodling) that anyone can understand and works his way up to single-panel cartoons, four-panel strips, using different grid styles, learning to use different tools and onward to creating a four-page story. Brunetti is a demanding teacher and accepts no shortcuts, but he also has remarkable patience for beginners. The assignments and exercises he hands out are incredibly clever and cut through potential writer's block in ingenious ways.

While I would have preferred more figures and examples, the illustrations he does employ add a high degree of clarity to this book. It should be noted that Brunetti makes a careful distinction that this book is not designed to instruct one on how to draw, but rather on how to cartoon. He teaches principles based on intuitive ideas about how to look at an image and doesn't spend much time indexing a lot of formal terminology regarding panel-to-panel transitions, for example. This is a manual for a lab-only course, in a sense; he's teaching principles but immediately instructs the student to work out these principles on a page. He also spends a little time discussing some of the tools and equipment needed for comics but doesn't dwell on it. His driving point is cartooning fundamentals, and he emphasizes that this can be taught using a standard sketchbook and a pencil. That said, he later does give some practical advice and exercises related to the use of tools, becoming comfortable with them and mastering them. Brunetti's voice speaks loudly in this book, and he doesn't hide his many strongly-held opinions and theories on cartooning. That idiosyncratic approach is one of Cartooning's greatest strengths.

Jessica Abel and Matt Madden, in their text Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, seemed to pick and choose from a number of different sources in their approach. Both instructors at SVA (and of course, veteran cartoonists in their own right), they set out to create a definitive, step-by-step, heavily-illustrated book that covered virtually every aspect of comics creation. There's a lot of Scott McCloud in this book in terms of the way they used categories and labels to explain concepts like representation and transitions, but they were careful to avoid McCloud's more dogmatic, essentialist positions on how to define comics. The structure of this book is much like Brunetti's, down to the 15-week, college-semester length of the course to building up from crude images to more complex structures. The book very much has a "big-tent" approach, encouraging its use for artists interested in a variety of styles, from super-heroes to manga to art comics. That's certainly a matter of practicality as much as anything, given the nature of the student body at SVA.

There's a lot to like about this book. Like Brunetti, they quickly cut to the chase and have their students drawing. They also find ways to make distinctions between students in the classroom, independent drawing clubs, and individual artists, letting them know how they should approach the assignments. Given the scope of their nearly 300-page textbook, Abel & Madden spend a lot of time defining and illustrating a number of concepts, terms and tools used in creating comics, going into a lot of detail. They spend two different chapters on inking techniques, talk about lettering for a chapter (including how to use an Ames guide), and discuss reproduction techniques in another.

For any assignments that involve new techniques, it's laid out in a step-by-step, illustrated series of diagrams. Abel and Madden spend time on approaches to panel composition, tricky bits of anatomy like heads and hands, story structure, 24-hour comics and how to make a mini-comic. The chapter on story structure felt like something right out of a screenwriter's manual, given its emphasis on conflict, protagonists, story sparks, etc. As noted earlier, Abel & Madden pick and choose from a number of sources to throw as much information as possible at the aspiring cartoonist, within reason. They actually don't get into fine-art concepts like perspective as much as one would think, for example.

The book is at its best when Abel and Madden use panels, strips and pages from other cartoonists. The way they break down structure, design and composition of classic strips or illustrate the way artists use certain tools are used is positively illuminating. That was especially true in their chapters on inking and the effects one can achieve with it. One thing I was very surprised not to see in this book was a chapter on color and coloring. I was also a bit surprised that they didn't devote at least an appendix to webcomics and what one needs to vary when putting one's work online. That said, I did appreciate that like Brunetti, they found it important to emphasize the handcrafted origins of cartooning. Before one fools around with a computer, they need to understand the fundamentals.

While both books share a lot in common philosophically, the main difference between the two lies in focus. Brunetti's book is about teaching cartooning for its own sake, while Abel & Madden aim their work at artists aspiring to publish. It's an important distinction. Brunetti tries to encourage non-cartoonists to relax on the page and enjoy the physical, visceral experience of drawing, all while teaching them discipline and fundamentals. Abel and Madden aim to slow down aspiring cartoonists from plotting out their epics or graphic novels and get them to focus that enthusiasm on the fundamentals. If their approach is a bit more prosaic and process-oriented, it's because the book is aimed at artists who want tips and helpful hints as much or more than theory. If I was designing a comics class, I'd assign both books, using Brunetti's as a template but referring constantly to Abel & Madden's for specific examples and solutions to problems.