Arrivals and Departures — October 2024

(To the tune of “We Bring the Boom!” By Big AJ and Big Justice aka “The Costco Guys”)

I bring REVIEWWWWS! That’s what I do.

I bring REVIEWWWWS! I bring reviews to you.

I’m back at The Comics Journal dot com and ready to play my favorite game. Don’t blink because it’s time for “Arrivals and Depatures” BOOM! or DOOM!

Cultural Reset #1 by Teo Suzuki

As someone who has advocated for the return of Critters not only once, but twice, it’s finally time to put my money where my mouth is and review a real deal furry comic. In the near future, scientists work to develop a “reset” serum to improve bodily senses (not explained why that’s necessary), but the pesky side effect becomes turning into an anthropomorphic wolf. Awoooo! The idea of tapping into your animal brain becomes popular among some and the serum is rushed into production. Now, a couple of years later, this experimental medicine is mostly used by people with something to hide and criminals on the lam (lamb?). The overarching theme and plot here raises the questions of pharmaceutical distribution and what body of government gets to decide who gets to migrate back and forth between the bridge that (a little too simply) separates the woods from the city. Suzuki unloads a ton of ambition into Cultural Reset but it suffers from that thing that a lot of younger cartoonists — genre ones, especially — fall prey to where every panel has dialogue and/or fully packed caption boxes. Let it breathe! And cut all the Frank Miller/Brian Bendis/Whoever Does That Shit Now “hardboiled” detective talk.

Jasmine is a human (for now!) and works in some capacity for the local municipality, stamping “approved” or “denied” on the passports of wolvies trying to cross the bridge. She, along with every other human in this comic, has a perfectly round head, big eyes and no nose. It’s all very DeviantArt-core. Jasmine gets mixed up with a lupine gang whose morals are undetermined. They help people escape abusive homes, and also plant bombs under cars. What’s a girl to do? Become a getaway driver in a bank heist as a way to escape an unfilling relationship, of course! There are a promised six issues of this series and I’m not sure I have the fursuited fortitude to make it all the way to the end. The pages of this comic read very “digital” to me — there’s not a lot of warmth in the art. With that being said however, the smooth transitions between timelines and character POVs and Suzuki’s overall aim make this a neat bit of science fiction.

It gets a lower-case, bewhiskered “boom.”

No, Thanks! by Susan Hoppner

Hoppner makes a rock-solid case for Rookie of the Year in what appears to be her first English-language offering here. From panel one, every single object on every single page is so obviously thought over and uniquely stylized. And I mean everything — from the arms of a desk chair, cashier conveyor belts, coins in a wallet. Even the lettering itself, with the Os having a tight curlycue at the top. Astonishingly (and Hoppner’s cartooning is just that — astonishing), time would be well spent studying the page numbers at the bottom of the book, each drawn as tiny risible gags themselves. The comic delves into an exhausting few hours of S, a mosquito-looking woman wearing all black, as she clocks out at her job and squish-squashes her way through a grocery store. It’s hard (and unfair) to make comparables, but the two artists that came to mind as I enthusiastically waded through No, Thanks! were Kayla E. and Jeff MacNelly. I’ve said for years that the more art comics we have that resemble Shoe, the better!

I disagree with many people (just artists?) who consider introversion a virtue. But it is something S holds near and dear as she shushes people and hides down the bread aisle to avoid acquaintances. At one point, in a bout of aggressive agoraphobia, she vomits on the train, unable to get away from other people loudly conversing. Two of S’s coworkers tell her of a murderer on the loose in their neighborhood and offer to walk her home and stick together for safety, but S eschews their warning. As she leaves the store she starts coming apart and coming across items she bought mere minutes ago lying on the ground. She’s so distant and paranoid that she doesn’t realize she has a hole in her shopping bag and that they are hers. Or are they? S finally comes upon her own body on the sidewalk, a victim of the killer or — what I consider more likely — some sort of anti-social psychosis. No Thanks! should be on the radar of anyone interested in artists pushing the boundaries of style. Hoppner’s art is clean and deliberate and snazzy and hilarious. I hope these 24 pages get her into all the premier anthologies until she’s got something hefty of her own. Then I’ll be first in line for that one.

A big revelatory “BOOM!!!”

Dypso Magazine by Dan Welch

Sometimes you wanna go

Where everybody knows your name

And they rolled their eyes when you came

You wanna be where they can see

You draw the gross faces that look the same

You wanna be where everyone you sketch knows no shame.

Let’s get down to business. Dypso consists of dozens and dozens of bald men with droopy-dog faces, all drawn by Dan Welch at a bar after he gets out of work every day. More pertinently, it also consists of a series of introspective beer-soaked squabbles for the artist. The first being what makes Welch compulsively do this? Why the same ugly mugs spouting one-liners and nonsense day after day? (“Yeah I hit the gym like three times a day. And by ‘hit’ I mean punch the wall outside really hard.” “They put me in the pen for illegally downloading Lana Del Rey.”) All the faces have sunken eyes and elongated, rubbery necks directly contending with gravity. They are wet with sweat and drool. But that is it, just an enormous collection of heads. There’s no real story or background on these men, no real look into their interior worlds, just negative-space fillers to pass the time while Welch drinks. That brings us to our second squabble. What’s more important to Welch here: character design or substance?

In Dypso, two-page spreads are printed together on long white paper then stapled one on top of the other. This makes it so for most of the magazine you aren’t reading two consecutive pages in a row. There’s something to be said about the disoriented feeling this decision provides, but it also gives me that little annoying tingle that there’s a problem here that needs to be solved — that I have to locate the corresponding pages somewhere in there. Here’s another beer-soaked contemplation for Welch. What’s more important: readability or disposability? Dypso is interesting as a whole because it’s evidence of an artist searching for something — inspiration, relief, the bottom of a glass — but it’s not much of a comic. Welch is in a peculiar position right now and that brings us to the final artistic squabble. Is he happy making zines like these and being the two-page palette-cleansing comic relief in various East Coast anthologies or does he desire something a little more?

It makes me want to throw back some Malört, but it’s ultimately a “doom.”

Linework #0 edited by Chloe Blair, Declan Gatenby, Elias Gonzalez and Hink

And now for something much more wholesome: a student anthology. I have a long history with Linework and recall the previous issues fondly. They included past and present pupils of Columbia College in Chicago and featured heavy hitters like early Nick Drnaso and some personal favs coming into their own like David Alvarado and Zelda Galewsky. This new issue reboots the series that hasn’t seen print in six years and includes work from over 40 artists, none of which I have heard of before. All the stories are self-contained (so it automatically gets anthology bonus points from me) and many of them are “nice.” We’ve got two entries that feature flowers talking to each other, there’s a rabbit befriending a deer, and a young girl spending her monthly allowance on Beanie Babies. Chloe DeVries makes the best of her two pages about houseplants, displaying poised draftsmanship. Only one story (only one!) made me confront my anthology pet peeve — a cartoonist wasting panels about how they’re struggling to make a comic for said anthology. If you ever get the urge to do this, I will tell you that your editors would sincerely thank you for leaving your own pages on the cutting room floor before you submit them. One of the most fascinating aspects of Linework is seeing some of these cartoonists ripping from influences who I consider still very young cartoonists themselves. But that’s probably the nature of it all. Probably how it should be.

Speaking of influences, the cult of Jhonen Vasquez seems alive and well. Hink delivers eight pages of mucusy purples and pinks titled “The Only Way Out is Through” about a timid imp making its way through a monster’s digestive tract. The bold graffiti-like angles and Hink’s lack of panel borders really sets this one apart formally. The best story by far is “Personal Assistant” by Nick Merlock Jackson about his time working as an in-home health aid for a wheelchair-bound man. Jackson has a great sense of pacing and includes only what’s important. I wish this story was longer and I’ll be keeping my eye out for this artist in the future. Co-editor Chloe Blair also has a strong showing at the very end of this collection. Blair has a clean, thin line and still manages to trap in a lot of warmth. I can’t wait until Blair starts stripping their line down even more (like on the cover) and finds that real sweet spot, but I realize that process takes time and a lot of grizzled confidence. Mac McGuire seems to sum up the entire anthology in her story when she writes, “I want to put to paper how it was to be so full as a reminder that the feeling doesn’t have to be lost.” Many of these stories in Linework, like McGuire’s and Blair’s, are attempting to capture the feeling that everything’s going to be OK. Maybe not tomorrow, next year or even in the far future, but right now, this minute. Many of these stories are about finding those moments, however fleeting. Let’s get it straight though. Linework #0 isn’t a collection of toxic positivity missives, but many hints of genuine optimism. And that’s what you want out of a student anthology, isn’t it? I hope the best for all these young artists and when someone gives them the tired old line, “Comics will break your heart,” they tell them to fuck off.