When’s the last time you looked at some clouds? Or gave your old friend a call? Underrated springtime activities, for sure. Maybe you can do something like that after you read this column. Then you can tell your old friend, “I read this great column today.” A real conversation starter! Have you played pickleball yet? I’ve been playing a lot. I’m getting almost as good at it as I am complaining about comics. I’ll even put myself out there and say that I guarantee I will beat any other comics critic at pickleball. That isn’t a very niche threat, it’s a very niche promise. Serving 0, 0, 2.
Magnet Head #2 by Jasper Krents
I was an offensive lineman for 10 years and banged my head a lot. (Keep the, “Is that why you write about comics?” comments to yourselves!) As I’ve gotten older, my underlying fear about all the concussions I took on during that decade become more and more pronounced. But it’s nothing compared to the all-encompassing and debilitating anxiety surrounding head trauma found in this Jasper Krents comic, something he describes as an “honest life experience.” Krents is another one of those young guns on the scene that I’ve read in an anthology or two and I wanted to try one of his solo ventures. I think your results may vary if you’re coming to this one blind due to the gritty nature of it all — some pages feel overcooked, some feel undercooked, and they’re often in the same spread — but I don’t think that’s a foible on Krents’s part at all. I can’t fault an artist so early in his career, packing handfuls of ambitious ideas and artistic elements into every layout, being wildly confessional, then asking, “Is this page done?”
To the aforementioned artistic elements at play: Krents’s lettering greatly diverges throughout the comic. Sometimes it’s thin-penned handwriting, other times it’s Sharpie-bold. The most interesting technique he uses for lettering is the large black type that appears like it came off a printing press, then collaged on top of the drawings. I don’t know if that’s a digital trick or not, but it does set the look of the pages apart. One of my all-time favorite cartoonist “trademarks” (think Herriman’s circled-X hobo sign or Chester Brown’s chair method) is when E.C. Segar draws a sprawling crowd. He stacks and packs hundreds of faces to form a formidable wave of looky-loos. Krents does something similar with faces here in this comic and it’s the highlight of the book — the effects are ominous. In the story, there are harrowing details of a time when the author was spending too much time inside his own head while being deathly afraid of being touched on said head. That unsteadiness and paranoia is expressed through several huge spreads, one where the leering New York City locals appear to tower over the skyscrapers themselves. The most jarring element Krents displays is in tracing a path over dozens of eyes, connecting them all and making a buzzing street scene into something ugly and dizzying. At times I wish it was clearer to me what was happening on any given page, but when describing recent mental well-being (or lack thereof) that might not always be possible. I was impressed with the whole presentation, but I’m confident Krents has better books in him down the road as he continues to sharpen his blades and self-editing know-how.
There is a certain subset of plucky people who use the term “girlie” non-disparagingly. Comics could sure use more of these types of readers — but that’s just not me and for that reason, I had a hard time connecting with Sara McGrath’s Garage Girls. Dot. Dot. Dot. At first! Because after rereading this 25-pager several times I finally found something to grab hold of.
Sara (a fictionalized version of the author) and Chloe host a public access talk show out of their garage in Los Angeles where they discuss ex-boyfriends and their current dating lives. To get out of a slump Chloe offers to do Sara’s makeup for the night and take her out to a house party in Highland Park. And then comes the downfall of many cartoonists who are doing more dialog-based work: the dozens of panels featuring characters sitting side-by-side in chairs or standing around. Call me crazy, but that’s just not dynamic comic making. At the soiree, Sara meets Tony, who’s a successful gallery painter of butts, and then runs into her old flame and his new ballerina girlfriend. Garage Girls is very “LA funny,” so your patience might be tested depending on how many comedy podcasts you listen to each week. But here’s the good part — McGrath gets progressively better at drawing, at setting up jokes, at really everything as the comic goes on. I love seeing a cartoonist grow and become more comfortable over the course of a graphic novel, but rarely do you see it in one short self-contained story, and to this extent. (Sidenote: Here at “Arrivals and Departures,” we are firmly against artists redrawing old pages. Leave ’em be!) Characters’ eyebrows and lips become much more pronounced and expressive and McGrath gives Sara a dark, round clown-like nose about halfway through that just clicks. And the palm trees! Palm trees go from single black lines with dull plumage on top to coiled springs, providing playful kinetic energy to panel backgrounds. Cartooning choices were made in the second half of this comic — good choices — that fit the tone and make for a better reading experience overall. I couldn’t be less interested in a comic about SoCal social gatherings, but it is exciting to see a cartoonist get ascendingly better before your eyes. I can’t help it — I’m an Incremental-Growth Girlie.
The Irish author Colm Toibin once wrote that a subject of Clarice Lispector’s work was “the self re-created in a form of radical uncertainty”. When reading Owwi Lee’s Cawmet, I kept coming back to that very idea and Lispector herself: here we have an unstable narrative and a look into someone’s brain that feels almost voyeuristic, culminating in a comic that requires surrender from the reader. There will be times you are lost (lord knows I was!) but you have to let it in, and without immediately resenting it. Lee, like Lispector did throughout her career, requires a lot of the reader. All that considered, Cawmet, Lee’s debut offering, can be a real stumper.
That is not to say getting through this comic is a slog by any means. In fact, it’s a brisk 12 pages if you’re counting the front and back covers (which I do, in this case). Some pages are black-and-white with what appears to be straight pen and pencil on paper. A few other pages are completely filled in, primary colors galore, with a different method on each — paint, colored pencil, watercolor. It’s hard extracting everything out of one’s own mind and into a comic, especially in such confounding ways, hoping the readers can hang on for the ride. I think Lee is aware that some people will grip harder and others will be left with road rash. This is the righteous path to travel, the way of the mature artist. Woo-eee!
Let’s get to the drawings and page layouts. There are no panels and at times it feels like you’ve stumbled into a cave of petroglyphs. Little kites festoon the sky and characters and shapes can take on the form of Joan Miro-like spindles. Words spill out in every direction. My personal favorite detail in the comic is where Lee writes “booted off my satelitte” [sic, but who cares] where the lower-case “b” is a falling comet that then swings up and kicks the “ooted”. Lee finds a way to balance the whimsical with poetic heaviness harmoniously.
Now we’ve arrived at the question of the day: But what is this comic about? I wasn’t sure until a thick tubular worm started growing inside of the humanoid figure near the end. The yellow worm has three red circles inside that read, “Be Beautiful,” “Be Critical,” and “Be Free”. This worm grows out from the person’s guts, leaves their body and finds a place next to them, on equal footing. These three orbs inside the worm not only serve as its innards, but reminders about how to make art and how to carry yourself on the daily. What is Cawmet about? It’s about seeing comics (and perhaps reality) differently and finding a friend in your changing, bettering self. The back cover is where it all clicks. The person and worm are hugging and look content, joyful even. This character (and Lee) have embraced a life lived with integrity. A happy ending if there ever was one.
That’s nine month’s of “Arrivals and Departures”, on time and ready to roll. May I never miss a month, and go down as the A.C. Green of The Comics Journal. OK, OK, and I’m done. See you in June, hopefully.
Questions, love letters and submissions to this column can be directed to @rjcaseywrites on Instagram.
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Hello, my name is Jack Sparrow. I'm a 50 year old self-employed Pirate from the Caribbean. 
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