For the last year and half I’ve prided myself in covering as many different artists as I could in these hallowed halls of “Arrivals and Departures.” But not this month! This month I stow away that pride and do a little double-dipping. Yes, I’m going to review artists that I’ve already written about. Will they live up to the hype I’ve potentially burdened them with or will they put out some real sophomore stinkers? It’s time to take another scrutinizing look during Always-Right RJ Casey’s Second Shot Showdown! (*Applause sign* *Applause sign*)
Kill for You by Elias Gonzalez
What I Said Last Time: “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?”
Gonzalez was one of the lead editors of last year’s Linework anthology, which lit a real fire under my ass. Without quite remembering his story from the collection, I still trusted his taste-making and storytelling prowess coming into this 9-page minicomic. Well, I was wrong. What’s the opposite of lighting a fire under my ass? Sticking my taint in the tundra?
Kill for You is an autobiographical, four-panels-per-page account of the artist’s relationship with his ill dog. Right off the bat, if you want a comic to strike an emotional chord, if you want a little rawness, a digital font should be avoided at all costs. The lettering in this story takes me immediately out of it and I find it impossible to tap into the warmth Gonzalez is trying throughout to convey. If you’re going for Porcellino or Kevin Budnik vibes, then a digital font should be a nonstarter. Gonzalez wants to tell a moving tale, but he’s going to have to dig deep for some grit and realness and squash the center-aligned captions. I think Kill for You was an art school homework assignment and it very much feels that way.
The first section is about the author bringing his dog back home after surgery and trying to provide as much comfort as possible. The second section is about Gonzalez having a tough day and his dog providing acceptance and love when he needs it most. In between these anecdotes are two-page professional wrestling power fantasies where they save each other from heels with muscle-bound grabs and thwacks. These flights of fancy are printed on bright green and pink paper. It’s an interesting idea, but ultimately cut short by the scantness of the narrative. I hope Gonzalez keeps working on getting a handle on what he’s trying to accomplish, but the only nice thing I can say about this comic is that it has slightly intriguing pagination.
What I Said Last Time: “Although I’d like to see Ortega lean into his cartooning a bit more and let his lines breathe, comic book writing doesn’t get much smarter than this.”
Ortega is back with his 8-panel grid and frantic pacing as we follow a musical stage producer in the sweet spot between previews and premiere. He’s being shuttled around while rewriting songs, checking up on set designs, dealing with various “historical advisors” and “cultural consultants.” As a series Hacienda is unsurpassed in capturing characters who are always swamped. Ortega can really convey stress and elevated emotions on the page because he puts so much thought into his character’s faces — jaw drops, side eyes, half frowns, and raised eyebrows galore. The musical on stage somehow makes for dynamic comic pages and the story is clipping along and then, on page 13, we’re introduced to the character “Dave Ortega,” whose graphic novel the musical is based on. Before you can wrap your mind around that, the intrigue and drama come to a screeching halt with a “cut!” This whole time, we’ve been watching a TV show adaptation of a play about the playwright. And not only that, but there’s a documentary being made about the TV show where the real people — not the ones we’ve been with on the previous pages, they are just actors — give interviews and talk to the reader. There’s a lot of bells and whistles.
The first story segues into the next with a cute use of credits streaming by. The second story is about a treasure hunting reality show where the recently fired crew are trying to beat the host at his own game. There’s familial tension, a cliffhanger ending, and Ortega flexes on some nice nature drawings, but it doesn’t have the juice when compared to the first part of Hacienda. Your mileage may vary on how much you want to be cerebrally tugged around as a reader, but one thing’s for certain — Ortega is some kind of narrative virtuoso.
What I Said Last Time: “The best and funniest sequences by far were silent. A little less dialogue would have made it more timeless and shielded Collier from his biggest weakness. Collier does pull off linework that is both charming and commanding.”
Being a relative newcomer to the scene with his first book, I gave Collier the benefit of the doubt. I thought — and still do — that his drawings always rate pleasant to excellent, but there’s not a lot of there there. Ballpark not only continues that trend, but accelerates it. This collection of short stories is like taking the best art from the undergrounds but eliminating any and all bite. The dialogue continues to be full of cheeky quips and non-sequiturs and the plots stream-of-consciousness themselves into fruitless puffs of air. I’ve read Ballpark a handful of times now and I’ve come to the conclusion that my initial instincts were correct: Collier just might be a one-dimensional cartoonist. “They are who we thought they were.”
Three out of the 7 stories feature Kitty, an anthropomorphic blue cat with bandages over one eye and a bloody knife penetrating his back. He ambles through a cityscape talking to himself or anyone else that will listen. Releasing the bubbles from the washing machines in a laundromat because Kitty was told he couldn’t smoke his bubble pipe inside is a funny bit. Kitty meets up with a friend in a junkyard. Kitty finds a sandwich on the ground. Kitty plays a trumpet then discards it. There’s no real point to any of these other than to marvel at some of the renderings. Collier is firmly atop the upper echelon of car and bike drawers. He can sure design a character and make an attractive comic, but how far can pure illustrational talent take you when you don’t have much to say? The part of Ballpark I found most interesting is an autobiographical two-pager near the end about some time spent with the great Kim Deitch. Now there’s an artist Collier can hopefully take tips from — the way he uses funny animals and infuses little plot points and callbacks with extreme importance. Even in his short stories, Deitch weaves readers through narrative trails that end with finality and gratification, not feeble thuds or little half-hearted hyucks like in Ballpark.
Smoke Signal #43, edited by Gabe Fowler
What I Said Last Time: “ [...] this edition of Smoke Signal [is an example] of this massive output of work being made in art comics right now, much of it awe-inspiring and unbridled.”
I’m trying not to go full doomer about comics this month (I’m trying, I swear!), but this is my column and I have one more thing to get off my chest. Newsprint; I’m over it. Muddy ink, bleeding colors, the rank smell of nostalgia — all of this is becoming normalized. It is nearly impossible to read the new Chris Ware page here because light shines through the paper. In my copy, the bottom of the Sammy Harkham page looks completely scrambled. As a reader, I’ll gladly pay the extra buck or two for white printer paper or whatever it takes to provide a decent reading experience without gritty shit all over my hands. After 43 issues, Smoke Signal is a New York institution and is grandfathered past a small, small portion of my complaining — I’m sure it makes sense in terms of comp copies and is associated with an actual location where people can pick them up. But this is also a big trend any reader of this column is witness to. I’m not dumb enough to take the economic factor for granted (I have no idea what those numbers look like), but there’s also a keeping-up-with-the-joneses aspect in search of coolness clout. Newsprint comics is the only place where having the pages rumpled, still uncut and portions illegible is not a bug but a feature. I’ve seen enough.
In regards to the actual comics, you might as well call this issue a mountainside because it’s chock full of GOATs. Each artist, and we’re talking the heaviest of hitters here (Spiegelman, Doucet, Deforge, Darcy, just to name a few), each have a single page. I think two pages is a sweet spot and one-panel gags can contain an entire universe, but one pagers are hard! They were completed with various degrees of success. In the spirit of brevity, I’ll give you some brief bursts of thought:
What a gift it is seeing a Beagle Boy drawn by Gary Panter.
Angela Fanche, through majestic page layouts and spidery web red lines, can somehow make me care about some else’s dreams.
No matter how expendable they may be, Anna Haifisch draws her characters like she has complete adoration for them.
As a kid, Bill Griffith’s Zippy made me feel deeply uncomfortable. It still does.
The best two-artist spread in Smoke Signal (kudos to Fowler to putting them together) was done by Marc Bell and Matthew Thurber. Bell’s page is told in stilted jargon where everyone calls each other “goof” and tells each other to “fuck off.” The author’s turtlenecked stand-in gets trapped outside a Tim Horton’s in a car he’s not supposed to be in. Thurber’s proffering is a pink fatherhood fever dream involving the pig movie Babe, public shootings, and otherthinking every encounter you have on the playground. These comics are about existence and finding the bits of absurd joy among the utter depravity of everyday life. This is the content I crave!
Interesting to see a few younger artists I’ve taken a shine to since I started this column become more opaque in their writing and explore style diversions, not always for the better.
The end.
That’s it for March. Comics can change your life if you take them seriously (and even if you don’t). See you next month, I hope.
Questions, love letters and submissions to this column can be directed to @rjcaseywrites on Instagram.
The post Arrivals and Departures — March 2025 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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