Panel 1 from my 4 panel strip

The “hybrid literary and arts” magazine Carousel just released it’s 28th issue. Among short stories, poetry, illustrations, and interviews, there is a whole section of 4 panel comics by a variety of artists, including Mark Laliberte (who is also the editor), Andrei Molotiu, Ethan Rilly, Michael DeForge, and myself (to name those who might be familiar to readers of this site). There will be a similar section (same artists) in the next issue, too.

My strip is a weird photo/drawing hybrid that is a homage to my grandparents. The image above is one of the panels. Seeing it now I wish I had hand lettered the strip and use thinner borders.

You should be able to order a copy through the magazine’s website.

p.s. It was also written under the influence of Gertrude Stein as I was reading The Making of Americans at the time I wrote the strips.

MadInkBeard No.1
January 2012
28 p., 6.5″ x 10.25″
full color
cardstock cover

First Edition of 50 copies
Each with a unique hand drawn 2 panel comic on the back cover

This is the first issue of what I hope to be a quarterly series of my comics (and, in future issues, writing). This issue is in the classic pamphlet format printed by the fine folks at RA Comics Direct.

Contents:

• 23 pages of comics from my “30 Days of Comics” project from November 2011. All use appropriated text from Thoreau’s Journal.
• 3 pages of “30 Days of Comics” works from Warren Craghead III, Allan Haverholm, and Simon Moreton (one page each).
• A new comic created for the cover out of 4 panels from comics on the inside of the issue.
• Each copy from the first edition will include a unique comic drawn on the back of the issue. I’ll be making these as I go, each using text from Thoreau’s Journal dated the same day as I draw the comic.

$5 plus postage.

Here are a few sample pages:

Not 2011, but damn you should read this, because it was my favorite self-contained comic of the year:

Par Les Sillons by Vincent Fortemps (Fremok, 2009): I’m not sure how I stumbled upon this book, maybe it was just from browsing the publisher’s website and looking at the samples, but I am sure glad I did find it. This is an amazing work, one of my favorite comics ever, let alone, this year. A beautiful, silent narrative told in images that look to be part etching, part monoprint, smeared and scratched with a wonderful gray glow to them (check out the samples at the link above). I’ll write a full post on this, one of these days.

New editions/printings for 2011:

Journal v.1-4 by Fabrice Neaud (Ego Comme X, 1996-2002, new editions/printing (in 3 books) 2011): I don’t think I could overhype this as one of the (the?) best autobiographical comics ever made. Neaud is a superb draughtsmen who can move from near photorealist figures and settings into expressive and metaphorical images that add a powerful depth to the work. As a writer of his own life, he is fairly brutal and incisive. This is not the autobiography of current/historical events (a la Maus/Persepolis), of the miniscule day (American Elf), nor of the “relationship comics” variety (Brown’s trilogy, Blankets). Rather Neaud takes on love, friendship, art, and perhaps most importantly the life of a gay man in a heterosexual society. It’s a depressing sign for comics in English that this still hasn’t been translated/published, but it’s also not totally surprising, as Neaud does not shy away from graphic images of his own sexual activity and fantasy. And while the graphic heterosexuality (focused on women’s bodies, of course) of many previous/contemporary cartoonists is printed and praised, the same attention to homosexual male sexuality seems to be the province of ghettoized comics (including yaoi manga). According to a recent interview with Loic Néhou of Ego Comme X there are some interested publishers for an English edition, but if those deals fail to come to fruition Ego Comme X will do a print-on-demand English version.

Actually New in 2011:

Unspent Love, or Things I Wish I Told You by Shannon Gerard (Conundrum, 2011): This came out late in the year to, so far, little fanfare, but I really enjoyed rereading the pieces collected here (most (all?) of which appeared online at Top Shelf 2.0). Each section in the book is a textual monologue accompanied by images of a figure or two over short stretches of time. The connection between the text and the figures (characters) is often ambiguous, but the interaction of the two makes for some fine comics.

Color Engineering by Yuichi Yokoyama (Picturebox, 2011): This is a wonderful, if occasionally frustrating, read. Way stronger and more visually dynamic book than Yokoyama’s Garden, also released this year (but which I found a little dull). Color Engineering is often closer to an abstract comic than to anything else. It’s one of the few comics I’ve read where almost every page seemed to be part of a two-page spread rather than just its own page.

New parts of ongoing serials… also those artists that make the list almost every year:

“Love Bunglers” by Jaime Hernandez in Love & Rockets: New Stories #4 (Fantagraphics, 2011): Assuming this will be one place where my list will cross-over with a lot of other people’s (and it has, as of this writing, ditto for my next selection). A really powerful entry (one of the best) in Hernandez’s ongoing serial. You probably don’t need me to say anything about this, either you already read it or you don’t care. This one kind of breaks the list’s rule, since I’m really only a fan of the Jaime portion of the volume, but it feels weird to but this in the short story section since it doesn’t really stand alone.

Ganges #4 by Kevin Huizenga (Fantagraphics, 2011): No one does insomnia like Kevin Huizenga. He makes the everyday into a formal adventure of comics, and the way he plays with time is amazing. This is another strong issue of what appears to be the last of the Ignatz line. (Not really a book, but too high-end to be considered a minicomic.)

Not new, but both pretty striking works:

Vent Frais Vent du Matin by Nadia Raviscioni (Atrabile, 2010): This comic is a bit oblique at times, with some repeating motifs that I’m not sure what to make of them, but it is an expressive, non-linear work that is quite unique. I can’t say it better than Matthias Wivel did at TCJ last year (where I heard of the book).

World Trade Angels by Fabrice Colin and Laurent Cilluffo (Denoel, 2006): I heard of this book a long time ago from a Bart Beaty post at The Comics Reporter (sadly all the images appear to have disappeared from that post), and this year I finally tracked down a copy. I can only echo what Beaty said in that post, and marvel that no one has picked this up for English translation.

House of Five Leaves by Natsume Ono (Viz) (5 (of 8) volumes): Ono’s art isn’t as slick as most manga, and there is an occasional awkwardness to some of the drawing, but I really love this low key historical drama about an out-of-work samurai and the kidnapping gang he gets involved with. A lot of what goes on the narrative is left unsaid, and Ono is skilled at revealing the various characters’ histories and personalities as integral parts of the forward movement of the narrative. Especially interesting is the way she seems to completely eschew showing fight scenes, opting, in the rare times when they occur, to show what precedes the action and the result of the action, but not the action itself. It’s almost counterintuitive to the genre (think of the volumes long fight scenes in Lone Wolf and Cub or Vagabond), but it works here, perhaps for that very reason. Ono also has quite the way with harsh cropping of her compositions, which adds to the fractured and subtler parts of the story.

Wandering Son by Shimura Takako (Fantagraphics) (1 (of 11) volumes, ongoing): Much like House of Five Leaves, I like the way this series is subtle and very low key. Like Ono’s work Takako’s is also less slick than most manga, and rather spare in its own way. I’m looking forward to volume 2 (which appears to be out just as the year starts).

Cross Game by Mitsuri Adachi (Viz) (5 (of 8) volumes): I think I’ve written enough about Cross Game already. Certainly the most conventional of anything I’ll list in my favorites from the year.

Lorsque Nous Vivions Ensemble by Kazuo Kamimura (Kana) (3 volumes): One of the French manga translations I’ve read. Kamimura is known, if he’s known at all, in the US for doing the art on the Kazuo Koike written Lady Snowblood (Dark Horse). This is a very different work written and drawn by Kamimura in the early 70′s, apparently after the popular success of Red-Colored Elegy (D&Q). It’s much like that other work in basic plot (a young artistic couple living together as an unmarried couple), but is much more drawn out (these are big volumes) and melodramatic. If you can accept the melodrama, you can be impressed by the way Kamimura tells the story visually. One day I’ll reread this and write at more length on it.

[Check out my list of webcomics and minicomics/short stories for the year.]

“Blast Furnace Funnies” by Frank Santoro (2011): This tabloid-sized comic by Frank is probably the best comic he’s ever done. It’s a very personal work about Pittsburgh and his relation to the city. This isn’t so much a story as a monologue. Almost devoid of figures, the comic is visually focused on the geography, landscapes and buildings of Pittsburgh, printed in two-color yellow and purple. A really lovely comic. You can get it from Picturebox.

King-Cat #72 by John Porcellino (2011): I always love the new King-Cat, but two stories in this issue really put it into the realm of favorites. “Christmas Eve” is one of those almost wordless walking comics that Porcellino does (like my favorite of his: “Psalm”). It’s beautiful. “Under the Stars” is a brief meditative two-pager that just really struck me.

“Black Wall” by Aidan Koch (Kaugummi, 2011): This small 20 page booklet from a small French publisher is a series of single page images showing rooms and some cats. It’s hard to call it a narrative, but it is clearly sequential in nature. Pencilled images mix with ink washes. Images, shapes, and marks repeat in different panels/locations… It is a mysterious little book, but striking in its way.

“Cinéma” #1-3 by Julie Delporte (2011): I really love these tiny 8 page color minis that take three films as a… not really theme, but a point of connection. The images are in colored pencils and are spread across the pages without concern for panel divisions. The text is the primary structural element of the comics with the images acting in supplement. (Not sure if you can still get these.)

“Community” and “Calf” by Chris Day (2010): These are both from last year, but I only got them at MoCCA this year after enjoying Day’s work in the Closed Caption Comics #9 anthology. Both of these minis look like some combination of collage and redrawn appropriation, retaining both a certain photographic realism as well as the quality of a hand at work in the drawing. Again, it’s hard to call these narrative, they are more like loose series of images and text that evoke less a story than a mood (and a kind of creepy one at that). (Not sure if you can still get these.)

“This is a Ghost” by Warren Craghead in Ghost Comics (Bare Bones Press, 2009): This anthology is from 2009 but I only read it this year, so it’s on the list. This is a fabulous 14 page comic by Warren, a beautiful example of comics poetry, with a great use of repetition and pacing. See my comments on the anthology and Warren’s piece further down in this post. Looks like you can read the whole anthology for free as a pdf!

“La réduction” by Sébastien Trahan in Lecture à Vue: La Mauvaise Tête Dessine Alto (Colosse, 2010): A lovely and almost abstract, text-heavy story based/adapted/inspired by a novel. The images almost completely avoid character and action in favor of setting, location, mood. I wrote a bit about the story in this post.

“Folklore” by Tobias Tycho Schalken in Eiland 5 (Fremok, 2010): A mysterious silent narrative beautifully drawn in a loose black line and blue washes. read my post on favorite webcomics from 2011.]

The Americans Andrei Molotiu and Derik Badman introduce abstraction into the pages, dissolving sense and appealing to the contemplation of the readers.

Also, more cryptically, Warren Craghead is mentioned:

Warren Craghead, another American, speaks to calligrams of Apollinaire: your designs “pop” the physical space of the readers.

Anyway, that’s kind of neat. Thanks to thaleslira for pointing it out.

[Edit: This post originally said it was a Brazilian article, turns out it's a Portugese newspaper.]

Mostly what I end up following are artist’s websites, blogs, tumblrs, or flickr streams to see whatever their latest work is. This is supplemented by a few group sites (like Grandpapier). Because of this fragmentation of webcomics it’s hard to go back now and make a comprehensive “favorites”/”best of” list for 2011, but I tried. Some of these works came immediately to mind, others I recalled after taking a trip through the list of feeds in Google Reader:

from Jason Overby's 2101

1) Top of the list has to be Jason Overby’s recently completed 2101. Pardon the colloquialism, but… holy crap this comic is awesome. How can you even begin to describe it, it is so unlike anything else out there. Over the course of twelve long horizontal scrolls, Jason has created a powerful, rich comic that is created from photographs of collaged, drawn, sculpted, photographed, painted panels. It is a true mixed media work of comics. The images veer between the abstract and the representational, the expressive and symbolic, the narrative and poetic. The narrative content unfurls as a narration by a character who described himself as an “A.I.”, skipping back and forth in time to discuss his life, his wife, and the A.I. they create. At one point “Jason Overby” intervenes in the narration which opens up room to read the comic as metaphorically autobiographical–or perhaps not as “Jason Overby” could himself be a fiction in the comic (as opposed to Jason Overby the artist). I’m finding it hard to say anything useful about this comic, sometimes it’s like that with truly unique works. I highly recommend you take the time to read the whole thing… right now.

Some other highlights from the year in no particular order:

from Warren Craghead's 30 days of comics

2) A few of my #30dayscomics compatriots did some amazing work in November. Especially check out pages by Warren Craghead, Allan Haverholm, and Simon Moreton. (Mine start here.)

3) The curatorial efforts of Blaise Larmee on the Alt Comics tumblr is well worth following/exploring. If nothing else it will force you to question the limits of what is a “comic.”

from Pascal Tessier's 2010 (tout)

4) Pascal Tessier’s work especially the ongoing serialization (almost complete) of “2010 (Tout)” on Grandpapier: The latter is some form of sketchbook/journal that Tessier publishes a year behind (i.e. right now he’s posting the December 2010 pages). Lots of life drawing, quotes, sketches, abstractions all in Tessier’s sharp, thin-lined style. Even if you can’t read the (fairly limited) French text, the drawings are worth it.

from Pages by Jaakko Pallasvuo

5) Pages: Letters between Aidan Koch and Jaakko Pallasvuo: This short lived series of comics letter between two young and visually innovative cartoonists was an interesting experiment and worth browsing through. (I just got Pallasvuo’s new comic from Landfill, but haven’t had a change to read it yet.)

from Julie Delport's journal comic

6) Julie Delporte’s journal comics (English versions of some/all): Delporte is currently one of the fellows at the CCS in Vermont, which is quietly in the background of the recent pages. There’s something about the candid text and colored pencil drawings that I really like. I wrote a bit about some of her comics in my BCGF round-up.

from Liz Suburbia's Sacred Heart

7) Sacred Heart by Liz Suburbia: A serialized story about teens in a small town. Lots of punk rock and what appears to be a delving into fantasy/horror realms, also there are, so far, no parents at all, which I’m guessing is somehow relevant. You can see Suburbia’s drawing skills grow quite a bit over the course of the fourteen chapters.

Astral Talk, edited by Aidan Koch. Publication Studio, 2011. 65p. $20 softcover, $10 DRM-free pdf. Featuring: Clara Bessijelle, Austin English, Dunja Jankovic, Blaise Larmee, Jason Overby, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Ward Zwart, and Aidan Koch

My love/hate affair with comics anthologies continues… I was really excited for this anthology when I first heard about and then wasn’t too impressed the first time I read it. But over time it’s grown on me. It’s not a great anthology (but how many great contemporary anthologies are there?) but it is a good one and, perhaps more importantly, a pretty consistent one.

Artist Aidan Koch edited this collection of comics from Publication Studio, a publisher that has not previously done any comics (which might partially account for how I’ve seen no reviews of this). They are a print-on-demand publisher who also offers their books as DRM-free ebooks (pdfs). Many of their books (including this anthology) were available as free downloads, but that appears to no longer be the case. The “free reading commons” links are there but I get stopped at a login. Perhaps the free pdf model was not working out for them.

If you look at the list of contributors above, you’ll probably already have a certain idea of what this anthology will be like. If you are familiar with these artists you won’t be surprised by their work here. It would be tempting to try to group these artists together under some kind of label: many of them are friends/acquaintances (in her brief introduction Koch states as much) and have appeared in anthologies together before, many (most?) of them live or have lived in the Portland, Oregon area. More importantly though, is what they share artistically. Most of these artists (and specifically the comics in this anthology) are working on the margins of comics. A number of the pieces make use of collage as well as abstraction in one form or another (though none are completely abstract comics). Most of these comics are also not traditional narrative work. They are more like flash fiction or poetry than short stories. But that is all generalization on some level.

The anthology starts out with a short story by Ward Zwart, the one artist in the book I’m not at all familiar with. I think he’s a Belgian (?) artist (based on some searches online). His piece is probably the most traditional in the book. In fairly realistic pencil drawing, he tells a brief first person narrated anecdote about a girl and a squirrel. It’s kind of funny in a quirky way, but it really made little impression on me.

This is followed by Jaakko Pallasvuo’s “New Sincerity” which reads like a illustrated letter, a first person narrator (autobiographical, I assume) addressing a reader. I’ve read a couple comics by Pallasvuo, including the short-lived series of comics letters between he and Koch, and I really love his fragmented geometric page layouts and the way he combines the representational with the abstract in a kind of shifting spectrum of juxtaposed images. The last page includes the text “Possible Artist’s Statements” which aptly summarizing the comic as a whole. That last page (above) itself is worth the whole comic.

From Pallasvuo’s drawings the book moves to Dunja Jankovic’s collage story “New Waves.” The discordant imagery mixed with texts about extrasensory practices makes it read like a comic made by the Surrealists. My collage preferences tend towards a more consistent imagery (which goes against conventional collage I guess), so I don’t find the imagery particularly attractive. But I do like seeing this kind of experimentation with media going on. Jankovic has a collage piece in the new Küs! anthology that is, in my opinion, more visually successful. (Both stories also appear be reprinted in her new self-published collection Circles Cycles Circuits.)

Jason Overby’s “Wabi Sabi of the Hell’s Angels” feels more restrained than a lot of Overby’s previous works, a strict 9 panel grid of image/text combinations, but also considerably more abstract than his earlier narrative works. This is the most poetic of the anthology’s comics. There is, to my mind, no single reading to be made. The text is grouped into 2 pages (first and last) containing 9 single words and 2 pages with a sentence spread across the nine panels, a nice formal arrangement that allows the more coherent sentences to play off the fragmented words that precede and follow. The images—comprised of abstract marks or shapes, collage, and even text (where the text works more as an image than the text that sits under the panel)—offer less an illustration of the words than an oblique accompaniment that is both frustratingly difficult to comprehend and pleasantly open to interpretation. Over the course of the 4 pages, Overby also uses 4 variations on the primary black/white colors of the panels and gutters.

This is followed up by the more narratively direct (though still visually abstracted) “Here I am” by Austin English. As I noted in my BCGF round-up, this story is printed with four images per page that reduces them if not to incomprehensibility, then at least to a level that makes the contents harder to parse than in a slightly larger format. If Austin’s story is more straightforwardly narrative than many of the comics in this anthology it is also, in its narrative, rather mysterious. Austin’s story more and more seem to eschew any explanation, they are sequence of events, people interacting, often in their living spaces, that have little of the psychological introspection that one might expect from such a plot. Austin’s visual abstraction varies from that of Overby, who is often non-representational as whole. Instead the images here are transformations of narrative content into something chaotic, expressive, and, in its own way, decorative. Unlike Pallasvuo’s juxtaposition of abstract and representational, Austin’s usage is much more integrated.

For something completely different, Blaise Larmee’s “Atrium” consists of three double-page spreads that take the juxtaposition of comics panels and transform it into a layering of time/motion. The second and third spreads add layers of content onto the first spread, building up the the collage-y elements in the background and adding repetitions of two foreground figures (those girls that Blaise uses so often) in different stages of movement. There’s an element of playful meta-commentary in the far right side of the images showing a screenshot of the Photoshop “layers” panel over a tiny book icon (whose page is seen turning from one image to the next). Like a lot of Blaise’s recent work, it’s a kind of purely visual comic, neither narrative story nor in the poetic register, and in that regards it is quite successful.

Editor Koch’s “Melancholy Heartbreak”, despite it’s rather melodramatic title, is a subtle narrative piece. Each page seems to narratively exist in its location with a different character and setting. Together they build up the image of remembering someone lost to the past, a kind of wistful wondering. Like much of Koch’s work it doesn’t overstate the case too much. The page layouts take on an appearance like slanted roofs on structures (see above). The last page falls into geometric abstraction with a mostly erased block of text. Another successful piece.

The anthology ends with Clara Bessijelle’s “X Ray”, a short narrative drawn in pencil (more caricatural than Zwart’s) each page as a full-size image. I just don’t know what to make of this one, it feels incomplete. It seems to be telling a story: a scientist with an x-ray of a spine goes out to lunch with another scientist. Another man disturbs them… the whole time the first man is holding up the x-ray. I’m not clear what Bessijelle is attempting to do here.

All in all, this is an anthology that offers some directions comics can go beyond what has become the mainstream of alternative/art comics (for instance, relying on pulp genres). If they are not all completely successful works, they are at least the works of artists attempting to stretch themselves and the form. What most holds these works together aesthetically is the way that each work requires the reader to engage on more than a simple reading of text and comprehension of representational imagery, more than just connecting the action in one panel to the action in the next panel. Each works with omission and subtlety in various ways, some more successfully than others. My biggest qualm in recommending this anthology is the $20 price tag on a 65 page black and white softcover. That seems a high even for a print-on-demand book. Maybe you’ll want to try the pdf for $10.

The only program I attended at the show was the “Gestural Aesthetic” panel with Frank Santoro, Dunja Jankovic, and Austin English. I think the panel was a little too scattered and perhaps spent too much time on introducing the three artists’ work. Frank, as he readily admits, tends to “riff” on the same subjects, so I’ve heard most of his comments before (though it was interesting to hear he seems to coming around more to coloring with computers if I understood him correctly). Austin is an interesting talker, but I think I’ve also heard most of what he said before (some in my interview with him from earlier in the year). I’m not super familiar with Jankovic’s work. I didn’t think much of Department of Art when I got a review copy, but she is doing interesting work with collage on some of her shorter works (including in the new issue of Küs!). So the panel at least enouraged me to keep an eye on her future output (this “cover” of a Fantastic Four page is pretty fabulous). I would have liked to stick around for some of the later panels (C.F and Brian Ralph, the literary one with John Porcellino), but as it was my return trip got me home pretty late in the evening (the voyage takes car, train, subway, and walking).

Here’s a round-up of some of the work I got at the show (not all of it, sorry if you gave me something and I didn’t end up writing about it I didn’t have the energy/time to be real thorough). When I got home and unpacked everything I realized I hadn’t purchased anything that was even close to a perfect bound “graphic novel”: everything is either newspaper, minicomic, pamphlet, or something unique. That was really surprising to me. I guess part of it was that I’m already caught up with books from the “big” publishers (Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, etc.) and I’d already pre-ordered from Picturebox (before I knew they were going to have it at the show) assumed book-of-the-show Kramer’s Ergot #8.

Anyway, some brief comments, in no particular order:

Smoke Signal 11 edited by Gabe Fowler (Desert Island): The latest from this free tabloid anthology starts with a long DeForge/Marra team-up which is a sure way to get a lot of people super-excited and me bored. I don’t think I’ve seen a Smoke Signal issue for awhile but I get the impression that editor Gabe Fowler’s taste and mine are very different. Was pleased to see a spread with one page from Porcellino and a one page from Julie Delporte (though they spelled it “Delaporte” on the table of contents (but… bonus points to them for having a table of contents at all)). Otherwise… Kupperman, Kaz, Negron, Henderson, etc. it’s a lot of goofiness, genre-pastiche, and grossness, which all seem to be too prevalent modes in comics these days. Which is to say, you, the average art comic fan, would probably love this (though maybe that’s not the people reading my site), but I, not so much.

Study Group Magazine 1 edited by Zack Soto and Milo George: This is a really nice production, printed all in two-tone yellow and purple that adds a unity to all the parts (comics, illustrations, articles). A lot of comics (stands-out from Aidan Koch, David King, Trevor Alixopulos, and even the first Jonny Negron comic I’ve liked), two interviews (a short one with Eleanor Davis and an excessively TCJ-esque one with Craig Thompson), and even a short review essay by Greice Schneider on The Wrong Place. I hope they can keep it up for future issues. It’d be nice to see more short essays and less of the ginormous feature interview. We get that from TCJ and lord knows we don’t need more epic interviews in the comics press.

King-Cat #72 by John Porcellino: If you’ve seen King-Cat this will be what you would expect, another wonderful issue. One oddity is a series of 6 strips entitled “South Beloit Journal” that are quick and rough 4 panel diary strips. It’s interesting to see less planned out work from Porcellino. This has two short comics “Christmas Eve” and “Under the Stars” that are easily on my list of favorite King-Cat pages. Both are short and meditative, visually poetic. Worth it for those few pages alone. I was really happy to finally get to a show and meet Porcellino, but then didn’t know what to say to him when I got to his table. I at least worked in that I’m a big fan of his and give him a copy of one of my comics. (I gave out a bunch of comics during the show, some people got “Untitled [Aug 2011]” and some people got “No Way Constant” (maybe some got both), so many that I ran out (wished I had brought more).)

“Sorbet” by Blaise Larmee (self-published): It was nice to meet and talk with Blaise after following his work for so long. This item was one of a number of unique books he was selling. All were 8.5″ x 11″ and of varying pages (mine is a bit more than 100 pages by a quick count). This one is a series of screen printed shapes that basically look like the gutters of a six-panel grid (or the dividers between panes of a window, see above). The pages are mostly a kind of peach color (with smudges of blue and white) that briefly turns to red and pale green (which I believe are what mixed to form the peach). The pages vary in print quality from a very complete “grid” to ones that are almost non-existent. It’s oddly fascinating in it’s own way. He had a few others there made with a mirror and a photocopy machine, and at least one (if I recall correctly) that was kind of the opposite of mine (it was just the squares without the gutters. I think the title was created on the spur of the moment, but it fits as the color is reminiscent of sorbet. This is definitely one of those places at the show where the “art” overtook the “comics” in “art comics.”

Cartoon Dialectics Vol. 2 by Tom Kaczynski (Uncivilized): A bunch of shorts by Kaczynski, including a reprint of an earlier mini that he bound inside this book as its own smaller book, which was a fun surprise to stumble upon. One thing I really like about his work is how much the text becomes the driving factor in the work rather than the images. These are often more about ideas and concepts and less stories. Kaczynski mentioned he has a book coming out from Fantagraphics in the future that will collect his Mome stories. Looking forward to that.

San Diego Diary by Gabrielle Bell (Uncivilized): The latest of Bell’s small diary comics, this one about her trip to ComicCon in San Diego. I enjoy these for some reason despite my general recalcitrance about this type of autobiographical comic that is a little too much about the artist as an artist. Partially it’s that these are not presented with a lot of pomp and circumstance, a humble but nice design in a small size. I also like the excerpts of the sketch/draft versions of some of the content which shows a bit how Bell edits out/in parts of the story. The way Bell spots her blacks is also really attractive with tight curved lines that overlap into these little swaths of darkness throughout the panels.

“Seeking the Spirit” and “Skin, Deep” by L. Nichols (self-published, not sure where you can get these): L is really moving in an interesting direction working with mixed-media/collage/layers. Both are these pieces are non/semi-narrative, more (personal) essay than story with a real focus on figures. Great figure drawing in both, kind of cartoony schematics in “Skin Deep” and gestural life drawings in “Seeking the Spirit.”

“Monica et les fourmis”, “Prudence, Balthazar”, “Sous l’influence des mots”, “You will always be my cat” by Julie Delporte (self-published, not sure if you can order these from anywhere): I’ve had a growing appreciation of Delporte’s work since I first saw it (a not terribly successful piece in the Colosse anthology Lecture à Vue). Her work is becoming more skilled and interesting over time. The first three minis are all 8 4.25″ x 5.5″ pages in color (see above) playing off films (they are numbered “Cinema” 1-3 on the inside), mixing what I assume is autobiography (most of Delporte’s work reads as autobiography) with content from the films. These are beautiful little minis, some of my favorite work I picked up at the show, that I’ve reread a few times already. The last of the bunch is an English language mini done for the show, basically a single 11″x17″ page folded twice. It has a four page comic and then unfolds to display a large one page comic (the same as in Smoke Signal 11). The large page works in a lot of collage (which seems to be trending in comics lately). Both, I think, would look a lot better in color, Delporte’s work really needs those colors. She draws directly in color, so seeing the work in black and white really loses an integral part of the aesthetic.

“Here I Am” by Austin English (Domino Books): An 32 page minicomic version of a story that originally appeared in the Astral Talk anthology (on which more in the near future). In the anthology it was printed shrunk down so four images appeared on each page, but in this version each image is it’s own page much to the comics betterment. This is another of Austin’s comics about close living quarters kind of like Disgusting Room but this mini is less rich visually (it’s all grey tones in pencil/crayon/charcoal). I finally got to officially meet Austin at the show and I enjoyed chatting with him a bit. He’s got a lot of things going on with Domino Books so keep an eye out for their upcoming books.

“John Blaze” by Leslie Weibeler (self-published): Got this mini from Blaise’s Gaze Books table. It’s a of couple short comics. I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about this one. I’m not even sure how I feel about it (I like it, but I’m not sure how much). I am intrigued, and I’ll be following Leslie’s flickr stream to see what else she does. Here’s a one page comic that’s in the mini to give you an idea of the style.

“Real People: Through Discipline Power” by Anya Davidson: Not sure that’s the title (I have something else by Davidson called “Real People” too). Got this from the Picturebox table. Davidson was there signing Kramer’s Ergot 8 (really looking forward to see what her contribution is like). This is an 8.5″ x 11″ black and white comic (see above) with silkscreened covers. Davidson doesn’t seem to make a lot of comics, but her work is really fascinating. It’s narrative but often really discordant as if there were a whole bunch of narratives interspersed. And I’m pretty sure at least some of the content is appropriated. Again, something I’m not ready to write about in detail, but an artist you should keep your eye out for (this might make it on to the Picturebox site).

I’ll add that if you were there and lucky, you grabbed a copy of Frank Santoro’s Blast Furnace Funnies from the Picturebox table. I know he had copies (Matt Seneca had one when I met him), but by the time I got to actually browse the table there didn’t seem to be any left. I got a copy in the mail a few weeks back and it is the best comic Frank has done, a really great comic (I hope to post on it soon).

I’ve not looked at a ton of other reports from the show yet, and when I talked with most of the other critics/bloggers they had all just arrived at the show, so I’m curious to see what people thought were the highlights of the show (besides Kramer’s). A lot of people seemed to be excited by the work that doesn’t interest me Deforge, Marra, and No Brow in particular. In the end, there didn’t seem to be a lot of surprises.