Arrivals and Departures- August 2024

Howdy and welcome to the art comics jamboree! This month’s column is a traveling roadshow because I, my family, and — most importantly — all my books are moving halfway across the country. But no, that will not stop me from picking up new comics and taking a big whiff of their grand bouquet. Have any of you cartoonists considered making a Zillow-based horror story? Where do even your ideas come from anyways? These diesel fumes might be getting to me. 

 

Rusalka: Whispers of The Forest by Kamila Krol

Rusalka is a much prettier, slicker comic than I usually partake in. With its seafoam and navy color scheme, its characters with constantly flowing hair, there’s a social-media-friendly, Euro-tinged lushness to it all. Makes sense because Krol is a Polish artist living in the UK and drawing a story based on Slavic folktales. (The publisher, Strangers, is a bit hit-or-miss for me, but you’ve got to appreciate their global scope.) Here we immediately enter a world full of wood sprites and nymphs and various other little weirdos. They all seem delighted, even nefariously obligated, to trick or exact revenge on any human who roams into their woods. Rusalka is a beautiful siren of the lake, luring wanderers into the water to drown, pushed to do so by the manipulative, overbearing parent that is the forest itself. But she wants more. She wants answers. She wants to be where the people are. In her restless, personal quest Rusalka comes across Vodnik, a shapeshifting trickster who would fit right in with today’s rodent men trend. It got me thinking that every single humanoid character in this comic is conventionally attractive. We’re talking about fairytale creatures here — tree-dwellers and mushroom-hoarders — and they’re all hot? I understand the urge as a cartoonist to make everyone in your own drama appear like a Hollywood actor or actress. But I think that urge — that default — should be pushed against as much as possible.

 

 

Throughout the book, Krol does something interesting with a few select panels. When Rusalka starts to stray from her role in the forest and regain some fuzzy memories of her past self, Krol starts playing with the “tracking” of those individual sections of the page. They have strange horizontal glitches and color errors. It’s hard to explain, but as someone who has worked in publishing it immediately made my stomach drop (“Did corrupted files make it to the printer?”). But as it happens more frequently it is evident that it becomes a unique storytelling technique on Krol’s part. One more thing I noticed as I trekked my way through — and I’ve been noticing this in a ton of comics lately — is the lone ellipses in a word balloon. Krol does it frequently here when Rusalka is waiting or thinking or reacting. Why not just focus on the facial reactions and body language to express feelings like impatience or boredom? Does this dot-dot-dot proliferation originate with the iphone and texting? From manga? Come to “Arrivals and Departures” to stay up to date on all the comics trends! Anyway, Rusalka, after dipping low behind the backs of the overseeing trees, convinces herself that she can handle the truth, which is that she used to be a human woman who was assaulted by a boyfriend and dumped into a well. She was able to sift through her past and took the lead on healing her own trauma. And just like that she’s out of the woods. It’s an altogether adequate reading experience. 

 

ORBS by Harrison Wyrick

Now we go from Rusalka’s grandeur to some oddball minimalism. The conceit in ORBS is that there are glowing, hazy risographed splotches of pink, orange, yellow and green wreaking havoc. It’s unclear why or how they are causing panic and mayhem, but a detective is stepping up to put an end to it. This detective has an octagonal head, extended arms made of circles and three buttons on his chest like a child’s sketch of a snowman. Harrison Wyrick’s drawing style has a lineage in Heta-Uma and comparisons to someone like Carlos Gonzalez and other Rhode-Island-adjacent cartoonists wouldn’t be out of the question. But Wyrick has found the abrupt end of that genealogical line and made it completely vapid. In fact, tracing those influences to ORBS feels like the Road Runner has painted the tunnel and us readers are all coyotes running headfirst into the brick wall. It seems like early-2000s twee “that’s so random”ness has morphed into Brooklyn cool with vacuous aesthetics. How did this happen? How did we let this happen?

 

There’s not much of a story, but here it is: The detective burns some ants with a magnifying glass. An orb impersonates his wife. He violently interrogates an orb. He meets the inventor of homework and kills him with a rocket launcher. He learns he is going to turn into an orb. And. Every. Single. One of these scenes transitions into the next by having a character pass out and come to or wake up from a dream. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? Other than on the front and inside covers, Wyrick does nothing particularly intriguing with the risograph capabilities and has made a book to elicit cheap laughs from adults who think scribbling something like “shitass” on a bathroom stall deserves the Mark Twain Prize. I haven’t been impressed with some of Frog Farm’s output in the past and I think going forward they may have to decide whether they want to double down on either being publishers or party planners. But I am optimistic (look at me!) because they’re putting out an impressive Jas Hice comic later this year that will give them some much-needed heavyweight legitimacy. In regards to ORBS though, it’s easy to say that I’m old and out of touch, but I’m confident that time will tell.

The Sammy Hernandez Saga Part 1 by Ashton Carless

I’ve learned through experience this year that whenever I was feeling down-and-out about comics I could grab one of the handful of anthologies he’s appeared in and read an Ashton Carless story. It’s a cure-all, I’ll tell ya! With Carless’s curious angle choices and distinctive coloring, each story is equally pleasing and puzzling. And after this column’s previously reviewed comic: Help me Ashton Carless — you’re my only hope. Luckily he is distributing a mylar bag of 4 variously sized comics, a print and a baseball card altogether entitled The Sammy Hernandez Saga part 1. It’s like a budget-sized Building Stories (and one you’ll actually read a second time). Carless put out this unusual collection through his own Bootleg Books operation and, speaking of lucky, add Bootleg to the growing number of small press distributors popping off right now. We’ve got Domino, Spit and a Half, Radiator, Comics Blogger, Wig Shop and Noel Freibert’s mighty Toy Box Coffin Playplace. Come on! With all of these distributors it’s never been simpler to get your hands on avant-garde art and I don’t see any downside in that other than an empty wallet. But I digress, because Carless is not just Distribution Jones over here, he also diligently churns out earnest, impressive pages like a human comics-making machine.

 

 

The question is who is Sammy Hernandez? We’ve got clues that he was a washed-up minor leaguer, a missing person and someone who was inexplicably surveilled by detectives and secret councils. The Saga is a slow burn, each of the comics in this pack peeling back just one more layer of the onion. Carless makes comics that have an aura to them. His self-assurance as an artist lets things play out in full — nothing is rushed and everything is well-written. There are several scenes in the Saga that capture the din of city living and the constant chatter on a playing field. Carless’s panel compositions simultaneously bring some levity to the story as well as boost the drama. Sammy’s face is seen partly covered throughout, whether it be under the bill of hat, behind a mitt or cut off by a panel border. It adds to the mystery of who he is for the reader while also being a harbinger for his mysterious disappearance on public transportation. In a lot of ways — and I don’t say this lightly — Carless seems to me like the heir to the Jerry Moriarty throne. And that includes his color work here because that’s where the real action’s at. He adds an element to his pastel hues (each book has a different color scheme) by using risograph printing to its full effect. It creates a smeary, foggy texture to each book which is ideal for a narrative where the reader is required to swim in someone’s else’s memories, looking for clues and anomalies. With the unhurried nature of part 1 it feels to me like we’re still early on in the count. Hopefully Carless has much more coming down the pike.

Writing reviews while driving all of your earthly belongings across state lines… and they said it couldn’t be done! That’s all for this installment of “Arrivals and Departures” because I’ve got to hop back into the cab. My six-year-old’s been driving this U-Haul for a couple hours now. See you next month, I hope.

Questions, love letters and submissions to this column can be directed to @rjcaseywrites on Instagram.

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