And we’re back! If you recall last month’s column, I started assessing all the books I brought home from the Short Run Comix & Arts Festival in Seattle. There hasn’t been a big bomb in the bunch… SO FAR! Let’s see what the second half of my haul bears.
Cram #3: Defiant Thoughts for Post-Modern Monks
Do artists burn through their “B” material on anthologies? Maybe until that particular anthology has garnered enough good will, cachet or reputation? Can that be? I mean, I don’t blame people for saving their best stuff for their own books. But has that always been true? The thought isn’t necessarily about this exact title, but I’ve been seeing and reading a boatload of new anthologies lately and I’m “just asking questions.” This is the third flagship compilation from a semi-recent Risograph concern, each featuring a subtitle that would make a mid '00s emo band proud. First things first, the wraparound cover: new Laura Lannes anything is a major cause for celebration here at “Arrivals and Departures.” But let’s get to the meat of things.
The standouts: Audra Stang creates storyboards for a fictional TV show while her characters watch that show. Jack Lloyd makes comics that look like Johnny Hart got really into tagging (it probably would have benefited from an alternative printing method to make it more decipherable). Steve Grove’s “Potboilers” is seriously bonkers and dropped an H-bomb (Hensley, Hankiewicz) right on my ass. More of that, please! The one that really stood out however—in terms of tone, and not only in this anthology, but in art comics in general—was an eight-pager by Sam Sharpe. Having abandoned his angular and clear-lined character design of the past, here Sharpe goes more traditionally “cartoony,” giving several characters big oval mouths and Mort Walker noses. It makes the sudden violence even more startling. The set-up is simple. Two people come into the restaurant our main character is serving at. One of them, already agitated upon entering and having some sort of intellectual or behavioral condition, only gets more aggressive. Should the server step in when things get out of hand? Just like in his Viewotron #2—a comic from 2013 still firmly stuck in my mind more than a decade later—Sharpe is so adept at writing real trauma, real anguish, real people. That’s why he continues to be one the best (and most undervalued) cartoonists in America. As for Cram as a whole, I’m not sure it’s possible to completely abandon second-rate dead weight due to the nature and economy of anthologies, but I hope it pushes through by leaning into the hard-hitters.
Warm Television by Josh Pettinger
I’ve read him in various anthologies and in the excursions into Hanselmann Land, but I have to admit that this is my first solo Josh Pettinger experience. I’ve had several people tell me, “You gotta read these.” My initial response is, “No I don’t.” (This consistent reaction to even the slightest of goading has nothing to do with Josh or his work. It sure gets me far in life.) But I’m here! I came here on my own and I bought Warm Television. And I now regret all the hours I wasted without Tedward in my life. I love the way Pettinger draws his little boots and the teeth sticking out of his mouth.
Not unlike Joe Daly (but way more accessible), Pettinger makes comics that are on their own humor wavelength and there’s a lot to like about that. Coming in with no background of the previous Pettinger stories myself, the main characters are of undetermined age, living in an undetermined era - there are variety shows, lava lamps and telemeters here though. As a profession, Tedward, with his big blond peg head, goes around living rooms and collects the quarters in homeowners’ coin-operated televisions. That’s where he meets his new flame Judy. (Pay-to-watch TVs feels like something the big thinkers in tech will reintroduce soon. “Do you find yourself struggling with productivity?”) The zenith of Television and the part that I read several times over again because it brought me so much joy is when Tedward calls the police on Judy for stealing precious television time. He helps the cop take her down to the cement and then is devastated when she breaks up with him from the back of the cruiser. It’s extremely funny. Warm Television is 32 pages of solid cartooning, solid writing. In this current era of art comics, there’s something to be said (and commended) about the 'no gimmicks' approach.
If the Body Keeps the Score Does That Mean I’m Winning?? by Arantza Peña Popo
Brace yourselves for this one. There’s a ton happening in this comic and a lot to take in: quinceañera traditions, nightclub rituals, handwriting practice. In this zine, Peña Popo writes about race and memory and the consequences of vulnerability while profoundly intertwining autobiography with more universal concerns. After being spun around like dancers, we eventually get to the point near the end when a friend says to the narrator, “One more tally for the body count!” which brings the title—and the hash marks decorating the French flaps—into keener focus. (On a not-totally-unrelated sidenote, what’s with this current infatuation with “body count?” You can’t go on social media without seeing some little guy with a flat affect and a tiny mic asking girls about their “body count” on the street.)
Bringing it back to the beginning, the comic starts with a moment of dissociation at a party and the Riso haze fits that warm, tipsy feeling perfectly. There are pages of bright pinks and blues and then more toned down blacks and grays. Throughout the story, Peña Popo alternates between layouts with more traditional panels, one-pagers that could be sold as art prints, and sprawling two-page spreads. This inconsistency in pace and form fits here because Keeps the Score reads like a snowball of big ideas picking up momentum (and then picking up us, the readers) as it rolls down an iced-up hillside. Inside the front cover, Peña Popo dedicates the comic to “all the shitty boys at frat parties - I fucking won.” Well, I was a frat boy! I only bring this slightly embarrassing self-acknowledgement up because this book is matter-of-factly not made for me. For that reason, it was a challenge for me to fathom it out at times, but it was a good challenge, a rewarding one. I spent a long time with this book - it deserves to get into the right hands and I’m confident it will.
Milk Maid by Jasper Jubenvill
Whenever there was a lull in my conversations with Tom Spurgeon, he would always fill it with one line: “I’m worried about you, Casey.” It would absolutely annoy me to no end. As I’ve gotten a little older and replayed those talks over and over in my head, I’ve started to come around, to get it. Comics right now has several leaders of the new school, with Jubenvill high on that list, and I feel the same way about all of them. I worry they’ll work too hard, burn themselves out, become disillusioned. But let’s live in the moment if we can. And the moment is Milk Maid, a straight-to-paper, fast-and-loose comic jammed with small panels featuring Jubenvill’s Dynamite Diva cast drawn in gel pen (believe it not).
Here we have a comic where lines like, “Well, I must head off to the semen plant” are commonplace. This plant is used to create supersoldiers who only feed on breast milk, so an authoritative recruitment process is in place to obtain it for the boys fighting overseas. That’s how eye-patched Dynamite Diva and her cohorts end up getting in a jam or two. There’s an impressive series of boss fights in a diner in the middle of this comic that’s almost worth the price of admission. Jubenvill draws action sequences where you know where everyone is and who’s fighting who. You’d think that would be a given, but go down to your local comic book shoppe and pick up anything published by Image and see for yourself. Chester Gould has been and will likely always be talked about when discussing Jubenvill’s id-guides but I also catch whiffs of Gilbert Shelton’s more intrepid stuff like Wonder Wart-Hog and Spain’s Big Bitch (obviously) and his strip “Manning.” In the introduction to this minicomic, Jubenvill writes that he’s still attempting to satirize exploitation films and pulp comics and I’m concerned (you’re allowed to roll your eyes at my concerns) about how far you can go down that road until there’s no exit ramp. But maybe my worries are all for naught because Jasper Jubenvill has the ability to fit in at any time—past or future—in all of comics history, and that’s what makes him such a singular talent.
To Mak Patar by Kevin Reilly
The inside front cover of this book has a make-'em-up map and states, “This episode takes place on Mak Patar, the holy mountain of the Talasian people, who live in the valley above.” It’s at that point where I’m already thinking about what I’m going to be making for dinner. I’m not a fantasy guy. I find fabricated topography tedious. And, at this point in my life, I’d be lying if I said this was a defect of mine. Mainly, I don’t trust a “world-builder.” What are they hiding behind all that grandeur?
Each page in this 56-page comic has no more than three panels - most pages just have one. There’s a lot of negative space, and what isn’t left white on the page is various shades of graphite. Even though I could not sink my teeth into this one, there’s no doubt that Reilly can very clearly draw—the pages with sea-sunk cathedral ruins stand out for the attention paid to architecture and murky, mirror-like reflections—and he's self-assured in pacing. The plot: we first meet Corinne Jitan and her funky traffic cone hat as she’s ascending a staircase with a small box. When she finds a body of water, we discover that the box holds a stabby pin plug and an egg. When the egg is pierced, it creates a chandelier of roots inside a bubble. She sails around in the bubble a bit until a mean old bare-assed bird man grabs her in his talons. Corinne (or the egg?) fight back by growing flimsy party streamer tentacles and she’s dropped back into the water. The end. Patar was published by Dan Nott & Daryl Seitchik of Parsifal Press, two gifted artists themselves who seem to have good heads on their shoulders (which comics could always use more of), and they had the wherewithal to include “An Excerpt” on the cover. That note made it so I wasn’t totally disappointed, but I definitely don’t have the endurance to climb this mountain for more.
Quality Pictures #1
*The Alan Parsons Project’s “Sirius” starts playing through fuzzed-out speakers*
And now… the starting lineup for your Quality Pictures!
At forward, from earlier in this column, Josh Pett — inger!
The forward from Philadelphia, Nnnnnnnate Garcia!
The man in the middle, from Tasmania, Siiiiiimon Hanselmann!
The guard from Seattle, Alex Grrrraham!
*The crowd erupts*
From your spellbinding nightmares, at guard, Charrrrrles Burrrrns!
My first thought after reading this free anthology (a giveaway to Short Run attendees, later xeroxed and mailed out to Bubbles zine subscribers): what a lineup! My second thought: fantastic drawings of hair throughout! Charles Burns is already so clearly a first ballot hair-drawing hall of famer. Hanselmann displays a neat technique of winding Megg’s hair strands up and around a mushroom tripping sequence. Anna Haifisch’s flanneled bird has a stringy neckbeard. Sammy Harkham uses little ink whisps to show a thinning scalp. Garcia somehow produces near photorealistic windswept locks in one of his most impressive short stories to date (and that’s saying a lot). J. Webster Sharp renders some pointillism pubes.
Speaking of, I’m such a Sharp mark. I get a shot of adrenaline and looking-over-your-shoulders nervous energy before even opening the cover to her comics. Then I have to immediately reread them to hunt for any mysterious narratives, but usually we’re rolling with sexually haunted vibes only. I’m first in line for anything new she puts out. Some more musings on Pictures: After a few Very Serious outings, it’s fun to see Noah Van Sciver go short and silly again. Roman Muradov’s contribution is a sort of sister story to his burgeoning “Foghorn” series. It’s absurd and mean, and we all know the best Muradov is a mean Muradov. No one is better at sketching detritus than Italian cartoonist Vitt Moretta. It’s not chicken fat - it’s trash, and it’s everywhere. Her strange dialogue cadence is intriguing and we need some more of her work translated to English ASAP. The only real fault-finding mission I can go into when it comes to Quality Pictures is that several story endings seem off - I assume because they’ll be part of something bigger published at a later date. I’m not sure the editors—Pettinger & Hanselmann—seem especially motivated to do so, but, with their prowess and connections, Quality Pictures could fill the vacuum left by our dearly departed Kramers. But even if this is their last dance, it was a more than worthwhile endeavor.
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Short Run recap is completed! See you in March for more reviews from the madcap world of indie comics, I hope.
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Questions, love letters and submissions to this column can be directed to @rjcaseywrites on Instagram.
The post Arrivals and Departures – February 2024 appeared first on The Comics Journal.
Hello, my name is Jack Sparrow. I'm a 50 year old self-employed Pirate from the Caribbean.
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