tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13526369451941384712024-03-13T02:28:08.578-07:00YOUR CHICKEN ENEMYSMALL PRESS REVIEWS AND CEREBRATING LIFE'S LITTLE WONDERSDaniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.comBlogger1812125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-72759404479579650162022-07-24T10:44:00.006-07:002022-07-24T10:44:59.146-07:00Playlist<iframe allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="380" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/40X0gtaNfKqEVZzOiQmvED?utm_source=generator&theme=0" style="border-radius: 12px;" width="100%"></iframe>
<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhULoCpO6hrrAPeG6DuslBlDGGsDxo_gY9IrcEf59RzWnOAdoNPNBhnGOK78o9ueijRSQkGKj7xvGlXMXjpmC0n-W915PpmNqm55Y9ufKunK_06DtDJf5893vZGdxHaIldnV4NBemWamZ1MNPzJQltFED2nvR8pJ_gjIBZaPtk5i5eCiDw3HMt8Uv9_Nw/s256/Lou%20Reed%20Dressed%20as%20a%20Mouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" height="495" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhULoCpO6hrrAPeG6DuslBlDGGsDxo_gY9IrcEf59RzWnOAdoNPNBhnGOK78o9ueijRSQkGKj7xvGlXMXjpmC0n-W915PpmNqm55Y9ufKunK_06DtDJf5893vZGdxHaIldnV4NBemWamZ1MNPzJQltFED2nvR8pJ_gjIBZaPtk5i5eCiDw3HMt8Uv9_Nw/w495-h495/Lou%20Reed%20Dressed%20as%20a%20Mouse.jpg" width="495" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjJ_9uCFGnkGO-5qJcrIvnf6lyLWSHfuQted_3a53zAJXpUHfFmFhh4iRU1zSRwH_MLLSuaS80eS77-TzOXPJTpHLK50cRyLN8qvLeutwOjFJKF9wIa5dzoky1-6DCr2x_T1kjXmxuzz5cenb9WYl_kFHQomX3Pgx0NOkbdvRHQK9v30ewTMg1NNCoMQ/s1079/Lindsey%20Lou.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1079" height="327" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjJ_9uCFGnkGO-5qJcrIvnf6lyLWSHfuQted_3a53zAJXpUHfFmFhh4iRU1zSRwH_MLLSuaS80eS77-TzOXPJTpHLK50cRyLN8qvLeutwOjFJKF9wIa5dzoky1-6DCr2x_T1kjXmxuzz5cenb9WYl_kFHQomX3Pgx0NOkbdvRHQK9v30ewTMg1NNCoMQ/w489-h327/Lindsey%20Lou.png" width="489" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lindsey Lou</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div><br /></div>Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-83812643640777372392019-12-02T06:00:00.000-08:002019-12-02T06:00:08.651-08:00A Friend of The Enemy Will Always Be My Friend: A Short Goodbye.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I started this site 3/26/10 with a post about the band </span><a href="https://www.yourchickenenemy.com/2010/03/i-have-decided-that-only-way-on-can.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jesus and The Mary Chain</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, of all things. This was followed closely by a review of my friend Allan Hayslip’s debut album, </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.yourchickenenemy.com/2010/03/review-of-bonedomes-thinktankubator.html">Thinktankubator</a></i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, short pieces celebrating the poets Walt Whitman and Russell Edson, and a review of my friend Chris Howell’s documentary about amateur boxing, </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.yourchickenenemy.com/2010/03/sweet-science-professional-documentary.html">Sweet Science</a></i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My first comics review on this site was of <i><a href="https://www.yourchickenenemy.com/2010/04/review-of-idws-kill-shakespeare.html">Kill Shakespeare</a></i> from IDW. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Things kinda blew up from there. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">YCE became a dumping ground for things that caught my eye or ear -- endless <a href="https://www.yourchickenenemy.com/2013/07/your-chicken-enemy-cibo-matto.html">chicken videos</a>, too many posts about <a href="https://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Lou%20Reed">Lou Reed</a>, Serbian <a href="https://www.yourchickenenemy.com/2014/05/low-voices-of-serbia.html">choral music</a>, <i><a href="https://www.yourchickenenemy.com/2011/10/professor-brothers-fliff-night.html">Fliff Night</a></i> -- things like that. It was an expression of my inner world while being punctuated by the reposting of writing I was doing about comics for other sites such as Pop Culture Zoo, Forces of Geek, Psycho Drive-In, and, most importantly, Comics Bulletin. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was during my tenure writing for Comics Bulletin that I found both my voice and my niche -- small press/self-published comics.</span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uqLbU0AYwTM/XdtbKXp-1WI/AAAAAAAAp1I/k5skaYQ4Zx86HDm1e0nu9ZSc7mrYIm0DQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/JPEG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uqLbU0AYwTM/XdtbKXp-1WI/AAAAAAAAp1I/k5skaYQ4Zx86HDm1e0nu9ZSc7mrYIm0DQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/JPEG.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once Comics Bulletin ran its course, I started to see Your Chicken Enemy as a venue to celebrate the art form that I love so much, and I began to recruit a number of amazing critics to write insightful things about spectacular works. It’s been mostly a self-funded labor of love since then, and, in its entirety, YCE can boast:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Over 1800 posts</b></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>With over 650 reviews of comics</b></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>From 29 amazing contributors</b></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Leading to over 775,000 page views</b></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not bad, all in all.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And the time has come to move on. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This will be the final post on Your Chicken Enemy (though the site will stay up in perpetuity, as there is so much wonderful content to be found here).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As you may or may not know, myself and fellow critics Alex Hoffman, Rob Clough, and Ryan Carey have established and launched a comics-centered non-profit corporation, <b><a href="https://fieldmouse.press/">FIELDMOUSE PRESS</a></b>, to support the comics arts and shine a light on the work of so many talented cartoonists and critics. </span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KU8osKfxLnM/XdtboJd0nVI/AAAAAAAAp1Q/L7ciU7mRvp07WEdBzWV-0OtNmowXIlYNQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/fieldmouse-final.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1314" data-original-width="1600" height="261" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KU8osKfxLnM/XdtboJd0nVI/AAAAAAAAp1Q/L7ciU7mRvp07WEdBzWV-0OtNmowXIlYNQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/fieldmouse-final.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our first venture is a criticism hub called <b><a href="https://solrad.co/">SOLRAD</a></b>, which is scheduled to launch on 01/01/20 (and which is currently seeking funding for its operating costs -- click <b><a href="https://pages.donately.com/fieldmousepress/campaign/help-fieldmouse-press-launch-its-2020-season">here</a></b> to learn about our goals and how you can participate).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ll be taking over the role of Editor-In-Chief of SOLRAD, and you’ll be able to find my writing there in the future, along with many of the voices I’ve been privileged to feature here on YCE.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thank you so much for supporting me and YCE. If you’ve enjoyed Your Chicken Enemy, then you’re going to LOVE SOLRAD. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I hope to see you there. Please feel free to contact me anytime at <a href="mailto:elkin@fieldmouse.press">elkin@fieldmouse.press</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With Great Love and Appreciation,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Daniel Elkin</span><br />
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Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-49486441525760273952019-10-15T06:00:00.000-07:002019-10-15T06:00:16.083-07:00FIELDMOUSE PRESS needs your help<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You may have noticed things have slowed down considerably here at Your Chicken Enemy. This is because our focus has now turned to our next venture, <b><a href="https://fieldmouse.press/">FIELDMOUSE PRESS</a></b>!</span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--Ng_rCWvGdM/XaORFP31R8I/AAAAAAAApJ8/tGhEnw7J6MsU5UkaOTndH17mVxmhqleAgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/fieldmouse-final.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1314" data-original-width="1600" height="327" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--Ng_rCWvGdM/XaORFP31R8I/AAAAAAAApJ8/tGhEnw7J6MsU5UkaOTndH17mVxmhqleAgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/fieldmouse-final.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://fieldmouse.press/"><b>Fieldmouse Press</b></a> is a new nonprofit comics publisher, and we need your help to launch our 2020 publishing season. We're excited about our plans and we are asking for your assistance in making them a reality. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our first major publishing project will launch in January 2020. It's a comics journalism hub called <b>SOLRAD</b> (<a href="http://www.solrad.co/">www.solrad.co</a>). This project will be built on four pillars - comics, criticism, collaboration, and community. Our goal is to create a safe place to explore the comics arts where cartoonists and critics can engage the artform together. As a part of this goal, we plan to publish quality comics criticism, interviews, features, advocacy for the form, and new comics for the web. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Being upfront with our financial plans, costs, and objectives is paramount to us. We will always be transparent and open about our finances. While part of this is due to the requirements of <a href="https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/displayAll.do?dispatchMethod=displayAllInfo&Id=1034595&ein=842045755&country=US&deductibility=all&dispatchMethod=searchAll&isDescending=false&city=&ein1=&postDateFrom=&exemptTypeCode=al&submitName=Search&sortColumn=orgName&totalResults=1&names=fieldmouse+press&resultsPerPage=25&indexOfFirstRow=0&postDateTo=&state=All+States">being a charitable organization in the United States</a>, more than that we want the community to understand how their donations are being used. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fieldmouse Press is running on a minimum required overhead and has reduced nearly all potential costs for managerial responsibilities. For SOLRAD, we have a solid team of volunteers offering their expertise at no cost, allowing the majority of donated dollars (<b>94%!!!</b>) to go directly to artists and authors. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While we are planning for a larger publishing footprint, including print publishing, in the next 2-5 years, funding and operating SOLRAD will be our primary aim in this first full year of operations. Here's a breakdown of our financial goals for the project: </span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JERk9Hrxgfo/XaOR6vABdgI/AAAAAAAApKE/RVLqOoeZI04NzGQ4_syih1KxAxoU27eiACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Fieldmouse-Press-2020-Financial-Needs-1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="754" height="402" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JERk9Hrxgfo/XaOR6vABdgI/AAAAAAAApKE/RVLqOoeZI04NzGQ4_syih1KxAxoU27eiACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Fieldmouse-Press-2020-Financial-Needs-1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While much of the work of the press will be funded with grants, we are also seeking the assistance of institutional & individual donors. We know that our efforts to broaden the critical conversation around the comics arts and shine light on the medium won’t be successful unless we have the support of our community. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We're using <b><a href="https://pages.donately.com/fieldmousepress/campaign/help-fieldmouse-press-launch-its-2020-season">Donate.ly</a></b> to raise funds instead of a Patreon, Kickstarter, or GoFundMe because donations to Fieldmouse Press are tax-deductible. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thank you in advance for your generosity. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Please share this page with friends and colleagues, and please contact us at <a href="mailto:info@fieldmouse.press">info@fieldmouse.press</a> if you have any questions.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="color: red;">*</span><a href="https://pages.donately.com/fieldmousepress/campaign/help-fieldmouse-press-launch-its-2020-season">CLICK HERE TO DONATE NOW</a><span style="color: red;">*</span></span></b></div>
Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-75026801814236495882019-10-14T06:00:00.000-07:002019-10-14T06:00:05.423-07:00Familiar Deformations: Rob Clough reviews O JOSEPHINE! by Jason<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">At this stage in the great Norwegian cartoonist <b>Jason's </b>career, he's not doing much to necessarily surprise the reader. His newest collection of short stories from Fantagraphics, <b><i><a href="http://www.fantagraphics.com/o-josephine/">O Josephine!</a></i></b>, will feel very familiar in its content to long-time readers. A whimsical autobiographical story about walking on a well-known trail? Check! A funny but poignant historical mash-up? Check! A hilarious reimagining of a beloved artist? Check! A mundane but sordid account of relationships gone horribly wrong? Check! He's covered all of this ground elsewhere, but shortening and sharpening these stories for this volume is what makes them interesting. Jason has always been a master of restraint and deadpan humor, as he's allowed readers to make connections in his frequently enigmatic narratives. The visually deadpan quality of his anthropomorphic figures, frequently sitting slumped with poor posture, often allows him to both double-down on the absurd or salacious quality of his stories. In story after story, Jason's greatest skill is in recontextualizing his familiar figures again and again. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>O Josephine!</i> opens with the droll autobiographical short story “The Wicklow Way.” It's a follow-up of sorts to his book On The Camino. That book was a departure, as Jason had never done any autobio before, but the approach was the same as always: restrained in tone with occasional splashes of absurd humor. Both stories are about going on long, historical walking trails, and "The Wicklow Way" is in Ireland. There's nothing in the way of introduction or any explanations as to his motivations. He simply starts walking and takes the reader along with him, making witty comments all the while. Every now and then, he'll see something and his visual imagination will flash the reader through a number of images, like seeing a deer reminds him of the film The Deer Hunter. There are plenty of recurring gags, like singing "I'm Going Down" and finding a half-dozen different ways to refer to Bruce Springsteen. He draws leprechauns, imagines James Joyce and Bono eulogizing him, and pretends to see Jack Nicholson's character from <i>The Shining</i> in a hedge maze. While this is autobiographical, Jason doesn't reveal much about himself. This is a deliberate strategy. This is a finely-crafted set of gags and observations with varied visual backgrounds that provide both reader and artist something new to look at and talk about every few panels.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There are through-lines in <i>O Josephine!</i>, but they are subtle. One of them is Jason's status as a cultural enthusiast. He loves music, films, literature, and poetry. In "L.Cohen: A Life," he expresses this enthusiasm regarding the late singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen by way of a series of absurd anecdotes and "facts." Jason uses a spot yellow to give this fake retrospective of past events an old-time feel, as though one was looking through yellowed newspapers or photographs. He relates Cohen's "encounters" with Federico Garcia Lorca (who taught Cohen the Heimlich maneuver), Allen Ginsberg, Hank Williams, Fidel Castro, and the Beatles. Jason uses a four-panel grid throughout the book, a technique that gives each story the same format and rhythm despite dramatically different subjects. In this story, Jason uses it as a way of landing a series of (literal) punchlines, as Cohen meets someone and inevitably winds up in a fistfight with them. Jason mixes fact and fancy in his narrative, embellishing certain events while confabulating others. All of this is in service to making Cohen a mythological figure whose birth was preordained by Nostradamus, alternating between profundity and silliness. Jason never abandons a through-line, however, and the final panel of this story hooks into the absurd premise established early on. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The first two stories feature real people, but there's a deliberate act of verisimilitude at work here. The first story is autobiographical, but Jason might as well be anyone here. The second story is a fake biography, affectionately spoofing the life of an artist. However, with the third story in </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">O, Josephine!</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, "The Diamonds," Jason uses a genre setting to explore a variety of emotional experiences. This is more in line with his earlier books, which used that ever-present deadpan style and off-kilter genre templates to delve into deep, interpersonal stories. "The Diamonds" is a take on sleazy detective stories, where a couple of guys have been hired to stake someone out and get proof of his bad behavior.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jason often uses a jump-cut narrative approach, leaving narrative gaps for the reader to fill in based on the clues he leaves them. He keeps the reader off-balance, as the mundane practices of the detectives are offset by the heist TV show being watched by the couple they're keeping tabs on. Then Jason cuts to the personal lives of the detectives when they're off-duty, which range from interpersonal family drama to encounters with junkie friends and an actual hostage situation. Jason takes cues from novelist Raymond Carver by way of director Robert Altman here, as there's no single dominant narrative, nor is anyone posited as a morally superior character. They are people living their lives, making bad decisions, and carrying weighty secrets. They love music and TV and spend much of their time together quietly. They hurt each other and themselves through a lack of openness. This is Jason at his best, wringing in a surprising well of emotion through a restrained use of formal techniques over the span of just a few pages.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The title piece, "O Josephine!", is an ahistorical mash-up in the vein of Jason's book The Left Bank Gang. In that book, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, etc. are all cartoonists trying to get published instead of novelists. In "O Josephine!", Napoleon Bonaparte's great romance is with famous dancer & activist Josephine Baker instead of Joséphine de Beauharnais. The most remarkable thing about this story is that beyond the initial chuckles of this time-crossed pairing, Jason plays it entirely straight and transforms it into a bitter romance whose repercussions span generations. "Bo and Jo" are both portrayed as passionate but stubborn people with a profound connection that Napoleon quickly betrays by cheating on Josephine because she wasn't yet ready to sleep with him. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The primary conflict in the story is over a cat sculpture that Josephine gave Napoleon when they were together, but that he refused to yield when they broke up. That conflict lasts for years, as they eventually involve their children in a proxy war with schemes to steal the statue back or defend it against theft. The pride of Napoleon and Josephine blinds them to everything else, including the love of their children who chafe under their tyrannical parenting. When tragedy results from this conflict, there's an understanding of how pride can metastasize into something destructive and all-consuming. It's why, when he finally comes to her at the end and she asks "Why?", he replies "I don't know" and then "Who knows?" His first reply is, at last, an honest declaration of that malignant pride, while the latter distances himself slightly from his actions, as though it weren't up to him. Jason pulls off a neat trick here by using figures with whom the ideal reader is already familiar (so that he doesn't have to spell out their personalities) and then taking that familiarity to craft a complex, heartbreaking story. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is the heart of what has made Jason such a compelling cartoonist over the years. He employs a visual approach that uses iconic, anthropomorphic, funny animal figures. He avoids naturalism because he wants the reader the freedom to interpret the story's events, as well as to give himself the freedom to inject absurd elements without disturbing the story's baseline equilibrium. What's interesting is that even as he uses that anthropomorphic style, he keeps the affect of most of his characters flat instead of going all-out in terms of exaggeration or grotesque stylings. His stylizations are conceptual, built on that cartoony but deadpan visual rock. Given that this formula is only ever altered to add color, it still allows him to tell any kind of story he wants. From gags to observational autobio to tragedy and beyond, Jason's frequently counterintuitive approach often speaks to the most powerful aspects of the human experience. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;"><a href="http://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Rob%20Clough" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Rob Clough</a> has written about comics for Cicada, the Comics Journal, Sequential, <a href="http://tcj.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">tcj.com</a>,</b><b style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;"><a href="http://sequart.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">sequart.com</a>, Savant, Foxing Quarterly, Studygroup Magazine, as well as for his own blog, High-Low (<a href="http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">highlowcomics.blogspot.com</a>).</b> </span> </span>Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-14463787351320827122019-10-06T06:16:00.001-07:002019-10-06T06:16:59.855-07:00Enemies of the State LIVE at SPX -- GIRL TOWN by Casey Nowak<center>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Enemies%20of%20the%20State" target="_blank">Enemies of the State</a></b> is a monthly virtual book club discussion on a recently published comic, featuring a rotating cast of comics critics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><i>This Special Live Episode</i></b> of Enemies of the State occured at SPX 2019 and features commentary on <b>Casey Nowak</b>’s <i>Girl Town</i>, published by Top Shelf in 2018. <i>Girl Town</i> is a collection of previously published comics ("Girl Town", "Radishes", and "Diana's Electric Tongue" and features two new stories from Nowak, "The Big Burning House" and "Please Sleep Over"). As you can see by the Brick in front of Nowak, the book won an Ignatz Award the prior evening.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The cast for this episode includes the following critics:</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">- <a href="https://twitter.com/DanielElkin" target="_blank">Daniel Elkin</a></b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> of </span><a href="https://www.yourchickenenemy.com/" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Your Chicken Enemy</a></div>
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<b style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">- <a href="https://twitter.com/sequentialstate" target="_blank">Alex Hoffman</a></b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> of </span><a href="https://sequentialstate.com/" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Sequential State</a></div>
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<b style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">- <a href="https://twitter.com/likeits1999" target="_blank">Jules Bakes</a></b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, freelance critic</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">- <a href="https://twitter.com/RobCloughHighLo" target="_blank">Rob Clough</a></b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> of </span><a href="http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">High Low</a></div>
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Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-55986906555072514462019-09-09T06:00:00.000-07:002019-09-09T20:54:16.992-07:00Substitute Life: Rob Clough reviews STUNT by Michael DeForge<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Michael DeForge</b>'s new book, <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;"><b><a href="http://koyamapress.com/projects/stunt/">Stunt</a></b></span>,<span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;"> </span>marks the end of an era. A decade ago, Annie Koyama published the first issue of his series <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Lose</span>, which established him as a major young talent. A decade later, this prodigy's career has been notable for its unpredictability and commitment to constantly evolve. <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Stunt </span>is DeForge's final book with Koyama before she shutters Koyama Press in 2021 and it's a book that recapitulates many of his career-long themes in a compact, powerful space. DeForge has always been interested in unusual formats and designs for his work, and, true to form, <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Stunt </span>is printed landscape-style, with dimensions of 8" x 3". It's in black and white with extensive use of blue tones, reflecting that it's<span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> set in the world of movies. Not unlike Dan Clowes' <i>Ghost World</i>, the blue indicates the flickering blue light of TV or movies.</span></div>
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This simple story has all of the typical DeForge hallmarks: body horror and dysmorphia, identity warping, bold sexuality, and grappling with the ideas of public vs. private. Setting all of this in Hollywood amplifies these themes. A nameless stuntman is the narrator of <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Stunt</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">, working on a set with an action blockbuster superstar named Jo Rear. The plot involves the stuntman working with Rear on an action movie shoot, then being flown out to L.A. to act as Rear's full-time body double. The nature of what he does as Rear's replacement gets deeper and weirder as the book proceeds until it concludes in a nihilistic fashion that is entirely consistent with the book's themes. The ways in which their personas shift and warp into each other, focusing more on their bodies than their actual personalities, dominates the visual narrative. The stuntman is very much an unreliable narrator in this regard, understating or ignoring the actual events he is a part of.</span></div>
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DeForge's use of language, though seemingly banal at times, is actually extremely precise. The first line of the book, "<span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">I worked as a stunt man. I kept fit</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">." is notable because it's in the past tense and it refers to his body, first and foremost. In the context of the book, the stuntman has no other identity other than being a body. He is not only just a body but an expandable one at that; he fantasizes about dying in a stunt accident, noting right away that he has tried to commit suicide before but failed. So he remains "open" to accidents, but one dark fantasy of his is that instead of dying in a failed stunt, the actual star of the movie dies instead. He achieves a moment of fame only because everyone blames him, but at least he takes solace in knowing that he was on camera in replacing the star.</span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">The bulk of the book, wherein the stuntman is Jo Rear's body double, is indeed a kind of "stunt": a prank, or a piece of performance art. If the stuntman wants to kill himself, then Rear wants to commit career suicide. In neither instance is it revealed why they want things to end, just that they do. The duo prove to be perfect collaborators, as the stuntman doesn’t have the agency to kill himself, and the actor doesn’t have the courage to end his own career. He is used to having people step in for him and do his dirty work, so why stop now? He is an actor, after all, used to pretending. The stuntman finds the experience freeing and exhilarating, as he is willing to go to extreme lengths to pull off the sort of public stunts that draw outrage.</span></div>
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The themes of duality, obsession, and the idea of two people somehow combining to form one all remind me of the Ingmar Bergman film <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Persona</span>. Some of the plot details are different, but there's a lot that's similar. In some ways, <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Stunt </span>perhaps acknowledges that influence and deliberately moves its tone in a funnier but equally dark direction. <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Persona </span>is a film about the relationship between two women (an actress and her nurse caretaker) who are in isolation together. Childbirth is at the heart of the central conflict, as one woman has a child but doesn’t want him while the other woman desperately wants to have a child. In that isolation, and because of their physical similarity, there is an attraction between them that is narcissistic. It is an obsession with one's own self or falling in love with a slightly warped mirror version of oneself. In both cases, there is a hierarchy in place; <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Persona's </span>actress is famous and has a child, and the nurse is clearly in a servile role. In <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Stunt</span>, Jo Rear is a famous actor, and the stuntman is there because he's been hired to do a job. In both cases, the servants transcend their relationships to some extent in the way that their bosses come to be obsessed with them, or rather obsessed with them because they are obsessed with their own reflections. They are also obsessed with the other person because they see the possibilities of a different life path in them. In <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Stunt</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">, you also have someone who yearns to create in the stuntman vs. someone who rejects being a creative force altogether.</span></div>
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At a certain point in <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Stunt</span>, Jo Rear gets what he wants. His plan of total public degradation almost backfires, as the public grows more interested when they think it is a publicity stunt (and with the antics of actors like Joaquin Phoenix and Charlie Sheen, anything is possible). Eventually, the public loses interest. At that point, all that's left are the actor and the stuntman, and all they have to do together is <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">"work on our bodies." </span>This is one of many clever turns of phrase with multiple meanings from DeForge. The duo does indeed completely abandon the life of the mind and creativity in favor of exercise (an act the stuntman earlier refers to as <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">"beating my body into submission"</span>), but that later sequence features the stuntman's banal, dispassionate narration with ten pages of them having passionate sex. They are "<span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">working on their bodies</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">" in more ways than one, but the question remains as to what it means. Is this a genuine connection, or more an act of masturbation?</span></div>
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In the end, when Jo Rear chooses his final stunt to be his suicide, the stuntman is happy to go along with it. He's not even getting paid but he <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">"was more than happy to work for exposure."</span> I laughed out loud at that line, one of many dark laughs in <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Stunt </span>because DeForge is riffing on the idea of artists working for so-called exposure instead of getting paid. However, all the stuntman craves at that point was exposure; he wants an audience, to be thought of as creative. In the final frame, the stuntman knows that he's been cheated out of everything he wants. It may be his death, but he's been robbed even of that agency since everyone assumes it's Jo's<span class="c1 c3" style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">: "In my last few moments, I pictured the scene: Oh, how I wished it was me! If it could only be me...!"</span></div>
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DeForge's work fuses many genres, but psychological and body horror have always been his main areas of interest. <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Persona </span>was described as a "psychological horror" film, and that's very much the case here, albeit frequently leavened by humor, satire, and DeForge's well-developed sense of the absurd. The twisting, warped character of his line defies the "beautiful people" aspect of Hollywood, but DeForge is careful to capture the visceral, sweaty quality of the bodies of the main characters, sometimes to the point where they are no longer identifiable as actual people, just a mass of <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">"knotted muscle and pools of sweat"</span>, which happened to be the ultimate suicide fantasy for the stuntman. The only imperative that the actor ever gives him is to "<span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">keep fit.</span>" Neither one of them is ever recognized for their inner lives: one is just a face, the other just a body. Neither makes choices to assert themselves otherwise in any kind of positive way, which brings us to the book's most essential theme: the traps in which mental illness can ensnare us. The stuntman is deeply depressed and suicidal, and he is only alive because he doesn’t feel he has the ability to kill himself. The actor is also clearly depressed and feels trapped by his life, but he is also a sociopath. Instead of taking responsibility for his actions, he literally takes the life (in all sense of the term) of another to escape. To where, and to do what? It doesn’t matter. This is another level of the horror of the book: that the actor is a sucking void of nihilistic narcissism and that the stuntman is sucked up into it.</div>
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<span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;"><b><a href="http://koyamapress.com/projects/stunt/">Stunt </a></b></span>is a fitting farewell for DeForge's work with Koyama Press. While it is a visceral, uncomfortable experience to read, DeForge's sense of restraint never sees him overplaying his hand. One can see DeForge's evolution as an artist at work in <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Stunt</span>, because while his early work was powerful, he also tended to let the reader have it with both barrels. Every work since has been subtler and more refined in terms of its themes and execution, even as his art has become more abstract and grotesque. DeForge's work has become increasingly ambiguous, especially with regard to his stories' resolutions. While carefully crafting his narratives to create certain kinds of reactions, DeForge always leaves room for the reader to interpret the work on any number of levels. <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Stunt's </span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">horror is effective precisely because it is unsettling on psychological, existential, and emotional levels.</span></div>
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<b style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Rob%20Clough" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Rob Clough</a> has written about comics for Cicada, the Comics Journal, Sequential, <a href="http://tcj.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">tcj.com</a>,</span></b><b style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sequart.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">sequart.com</a>, Savant, Foxing Quarterly, Studygroup Magazine, as well as for his own blog, High-Low (<a href="http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">highlowcomics.blogspot.com</a>).</span></b></div>
Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-42416254120386633872019-09-06T06:00:00.000-07:002019-09-06T06:00:01.147-07:00What if the Ball Never Came Back? Matt Vadnais on the Zen of Bowling in BIG DRINK by Max Huffman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Given that bowling has been pushed to the periphery of the hobby landscape, it’s surprising to tally up the number of texts, including <span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">The Big Lebowski, Kingpin, </span>and Camper Van Beethoven’s absurdist, college-radio hit, “Take the Skinheads Bowling,” that recommends, to various degrees of seriousness, bowling as a metaphor for living. Upon reflection, the pastime <span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">does</span> lend itself to a variety of nihilistic aphorisms about repeated, fruitless tasks done in the name of forgetting other repeated, fruitless tasks. To bowl is to be Sisyphus in serial, rolling the rock again and again in situations that change but remain identical from city to city and year to year. “<span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">Some people say,</span>” the Camper Van Beethoven song goes, “<span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">that bowling alleys all look the same</span>.” That’s not quite true, though: bowling alleys all <span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">smell </span><span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">the same, an alluring and upsetting perfume of wax and oft-borrowed shoes. That sameness is part of its allure. Like smoking or any other self-medication, bowling is a controlled repetition that serves a variety of functions; it can be done to connect to others, to withdraw into the self, to celebrate a promotion at work, or to distract from a job that’s going nowhere.</span></div>
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If bowling is not the central metaphor of <b>Max Huffman</b>'s <span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;"><b><a href="https://www.motiongoods.co/product/big-drink">Big Drink</a></b> – </span>a self-published comic in the same tongue-in-wiseass register as Camper Van Beethoven’s oeuvre – it is definitely its <span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">leitmotif. </span>The bulk of its action is set in a bowling alley where protagonist Gloria mops lanes, sprays shoes, and cleans vomit out of the ball return before encountering a cadre of voluntary trepanists who intentionally drill what amounts to a thumbhole in their skulls. More to the point, Gloria appears to be struggling with something like depression or dissociation where repeated mundane tasks combine to constitute an endless task. She drinks enough meaningless sodas – often spiked with alcohol – that the containers pile in the backseat of the car she occasionally naps in; other than an establishment the reader sees very early on, this pile of cups is as close as we get to a “big drink” in <span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">Big Drink. </span><span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">The drink is one that is consumed over time. </span></div>
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<span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Though depression comes in a variety of shapes and sizes, I am particularly interested in depictions that focus on the particular oppression of tasks that must be undertaken so that they can be repeated. Dishes must be washed so they can be dirtied. The floor must be mopped so it can be dirtied. Pins must be knocked down so they can be set up again. One rolls the ball. The ball is returned.</span></div>
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Huffman leans into this particular kind of dissociative read without making it the explicit subject matter of the comic. <span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">Big Drink’s </span>art borrows heavily, at least in places, from mid-career Picasso, severing, bifurcating, and rearranging faces in a space-defying contortion. Additionally, <span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">Huffman</span> uses a narrative structure that forces readers to connect the dots, weaving together a number of scenes without providing a clear sense of what Gloria wants or what the stakes are, beyond, of course, surviving the repetition of days in which her own sense of meaning and purpose is not abundantly clear. Moments of life her life flash as meta-textual cartoons on the closest-circuit TV possible, the bowling alley scoreboard, where they are watched by a coworker who asks, “<span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">You ever notice they never repeat the cartoons?</span><span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">”</span></div>
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Finally, I am inclined to understand <span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">Big Drink </span><span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">in the context of depression because it is ultimately about trepanning. While I am not entirely familiar with the “uses” of drilling a hole in one’s skull, I do know that purported benefits of doing so include increased blood and brain volume that provides a potential relief for depression. Furthermore, Huffman presents the group that welcomes Gloria with open arms – the third hole of their skulls drawn in the position one might find the third eye – in the visual language of a support group. Whatever exactly they are offering, they all seem to have needed it too.</span></div>
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<span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">In the context of a truly bizarre plot twist – one I won’t give away – that is as triumphant and joyous as it is befuddling, it should also be remembered that voluntarily boring a hole in one’s skull probably qualifies as self-harm. That said, the comic treats trepanning with a light touch and none of the gore one finds in Joyce Carol Oates’s harrowing short story, “A Hole in the Head.”</span></div>
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It is striking that, despite the subject matter and numerous invitations Huffman provides to contemplate weighty issues, <span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="https://www.motiongoods.co/product/big-drink">Big Drink</a> </span>is drawn with a kinetic and stylish playfulness. Likewise, Huffman riffs on a number of comedic set pieces, including a montage of hipster archetypes and an homage to a the <span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">WKRP in Cincinnati</span> episode in which Les Nessman arranges for turkeys to be flung from an airplane – here, of course, it is bowling balls that can’t possibly fly – in a joke that is completed by the visual reminder on the scoreboard that three strikes in a row is a turkey. These elements, though, contribute to Huffman’s treatment of Gloria’s quest for meaning and purpose by landing in such a way that she’s never in on the joke. Despite its mania and energy, <span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">Big Drink</span>’s funniest moments come off – and I mean this as a compliment – like a sitcom laugh track augmenting an otherwise serious production of <span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">Hamlet</span><span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span></div>
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I left the comic unsettled in a way that feels productive; Huffman ends the story with a scene that is ambiguous but not incomplete or unsatisfying, suggesting that, one way or the other, Gloria has found a way to stop thinking about the dishes that always need to be washed and a backseat that always needs to be emptied of the detritus resulting from the constant consumption of small portions of the big drink. <span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Though I finished the comic knowing far more about what she was escaping than where she was escaping to, the final, inscrutable moments of this story are memorable and, in and of themselves, a worthy escape from my own serialized and inescapable mundanity.</span></div>
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<span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace; font-size: 16px;"><a href="http://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Matt%20Vadnais" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Matt Vadnais</a> has taught college literature and creative writing classes for twenty years. He is the author of <i><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/All-I-Can-Truly-Deliver/dp/0974822949&source=gmail&ust=1533256931893000&usg=AFQjCNHg-9uKM6aybe0EOzuehXp6nc27Fg" href="https://www.amazon.com/All-I-Can-Truly-Deliver/dp/0974822949" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">All I Can Truly Deliver</a> </i>and a contributor at <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://covermesongs.com&source=gmail&ust=1533256931893000&usg=AFQjCNE8Z37MDAHNxmhcq3vfos9aL5QCKQ" href="http://covermesongs.com/" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">covermesongs.com</a>. For more comics coverage and the occasional tweet about Shakespeare, follow him <a href="https://twitter.com/DoctorFanboi" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">@DoctorFanboi</a>. For short takes on longboxes, subscribe to his <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQrweEFgi6x318BzRTSWbMQ?view_as%3Dsubscriber&source=gmail&ust=1533256931893000&usg=AFQjCNHh7K08Xl6ztoL4G_9uS4ewgNR_OA" href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQrweEFgi6x318BzRTSWbMQ?view_as=subscriber" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">channel</a> of video essays. </b></span></div>
Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-33629193392076278172019-09-05T06:00:00.000-07:002019-09-05T06:00:04.172-07:00Tears Of A Clown: Rob Clough reviews RAT TIME by Keiler Roberts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There is a subtle tonal shift in <b>Keiler Roberts</b>' latest collection of autobiographical vignettes, <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;"><b><a href="http://koyamapress.com/projects/rat-time/">Rat Time</a></b> </span>(Koyama Press). That tone is slightly lighter than many of her other books, especially with regard to her own life. In previous comics, when Roberts wrote much more about her daughter Xia, those segments usually proved to be comic relief (with some darker overtones), as opposed to the often darker explorations of her own life (with comedic overtones). Now that her daughter's older, she's still an important part of Roberts' supporting cast, but subjects like toileting, bath time, and malapropisms are no longer the focus. Roberts has written extensively about post-partum depression, having bipolar disorder, and her recent diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. One gets the sense that in <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Rat Time</span><span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">, Roberts is almost tired of talking about these topics and prefers instead to unleash her hilariously deadpan sense of humor on page after page.</span></div>
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<span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Opening with a few pages of the sort of minute observations that she does so well, Roberts introduces the reader to the narrative and emotional crux of the book: purchasing pet rats for her daughter Xia. Roberts loves animals, and there are several pages of tender, loving, and sincere depictions of Roberts and Xia playing with and loving on their fuzzy new friends. This allows Roberts to segue into a hilarious sequence of her discussing a supposed TED talk about rats that builds on a reasonable premise and escalates into increasingly silly assertions. The sincere affection she has for her new pets makes this joke all the more effective, as she takes that warmth and redirects it to humor unexpectedly.</span></div>
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After about twenty pages of this rat-based humor, Roberts casually drops this bombshell: <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">"I got the rats because I wanted to stop thinking about MS. They were a kind of alternative medicine--something to love and be optimistic about." </span>This is one of only three times Roberts mentions MS in <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Rat Time,</span> a dramatic contrast from <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Chlorine Gardens</span>' focus on the process of getting her diagnosis. One gets the sense that <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Rat Time</span>, in general, is Roberts' way of not thinking about MS and the ways it affected her life -- especially her ability to create art. While Roberts has always been willing to talk about her medical issues and mental health, it just seems clear that in <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Rat Time</span><span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> she doesn’t want the focus of her work to be her pathologies.</span></div>
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Instead, <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Rat Time </span>is about embarrassment, awkwardness, and humiliation. There's a sequence where a friend talks about thinking about going to clown school and defines a clown as someone who, "<span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">when faced with a problem, goes deeper into it</span>." Problems escalate and compound on each other for humorous, cringe-worthy effect. This speaks to the Yiddish concepts of <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">schlemiel </span>and <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">schlimazel</span>: the clumsy clown who drops things and the unlucky person who constantly has bad things happen to them, respectively. <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Rat Time</span><span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> is all about Roberts' experience being both, especially in a public and performative sense.</span> </div>
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At home, there are sequences where Roberts disastrously tries to make hot chocolate and pancakes, respectively. The latter is especially hilarious, as Roberts compounds a single error (over-oiling the pan) into a series of pratfalls, burned food, smoke alarms, and burns. An attempt at cooking two things at once fails and results in Roberts storming off in a rage. Best of all was Roberts needing just a moment of privacy to change her tampon while three-year-old Xia was banging on the door, resulting in a mess, yelling, and a crying child. Roberts' willingness to portray herself as the "Keiler Monster" (as described by Xia, referring to how much Roberts hates traveling) is bold because she makes no apologies for her behavior on the page. However, this makes her a perfect vehicle for this humor of anxiety, making her a sympathetic figure even as she plays up how badly she behaves. The difference between her and a clown is that the clown at least has makeup, funny shoes, and a silly wig to indicate that we should laugh at them, while <span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Roberts deliberately leaves the audience hanging with tonal ambiguity.</span></div>
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Roberts sharply explores social awkwardness in other ways in <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Rat Time</span>. There's a sequence where she relates being massively underprepared to teach an art class, putting up an image of the <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Pieta`, </span>telling her class<span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;"> "Let's all just look at it for a few minutes." </span>Roberts makes it even more excruciating by noting that there seems to be a single student<span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;"> "rooting for me to pull it together."</span><span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> Roberts digs the knife in a little further when she reveals that the student dropped the class the next day. Roberts sells the scene by making her loose, expressive, and spontaneous line a little more lush and detailed than usual. The key detail is her wearing a blazer to indicate her gravity as an instructor, which makes her lack of preparation seem even worse.</span></div>
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<span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">The loose structure of the book allows Roberts to spring these kinds of stories on the reader while alternating them with more conventional, quotidian anecdotes and even full-page illustrations. A loose set of strips about teaching and being taught goes back and forth from her experiences as a teacher and understanding how embarrassing it can be to draw in public, to recalling times she had been humiliated by teachers in high school. Roberts has an uncanny knack for weaving together multiple emotional and narrative through-lines, blending them into each other and using quick call-backs to reestablish themes.</span></div>
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<span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">For example, there's a strip about her knocking over and breaking a jar of nail polish when she comes out of the shower. Roberts loves depicting being naked as a way to further establish awkwardness in comedic situations. After cleaning up, she writes in a "gratitude journal" how she is grateful for not getting glass on her feet, that she can buy another jar of polish, etc. Then on the next page, she reveals there is no gratitude journal and makes up entries in her head. The final panel is a reference to depression, one of the few in the book, and it segues neatly into the second half of the book.</span></div>
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That begins with a sequence about crying; Roberts has noted that she cries all the time, often for no reason. A group she's with gives her a patch for her pencil case that says "<span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">I cry every day</span>". Ever subverting the narrative, she notes in the strip that she hasn't yet cried that day, to which a friend answers,<span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;"> "There's still time."</span><span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> That's a great gag, but it also points to a real truth with regard to the way she often feels a lack of control of her feelings. Just as Roberts makes her funny stories uncomfortable by adding a tinge of sadness or a reference to illness, so too does she go in the opposite direction and lightens the expected weightiness of the discussion of mental illness in some strips.</span></div>
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<span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">That said, the second half of the book is more downbeat and reflective than the first. The humor is subtler and more time is spent in particular on interactions with her parents and family, as well as reflecting on the importance of certain routines in her life. They're more reminiscent of her earlier strips in this regard, but there's a depth with regard to her relationship with her parents that she didn't quite attempt in her older work. Roberts isn't digging at trauma here, but rather remembering certain silly past events and old habits that she hadn't considered or shared much before.</span></div>
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<span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">It's all a part of the marvelous tensions of her working method. While her art is bolder and more detailed than ever, she still maintains an essential looseness and spontaneity designed to make the reader feel like an invited guest and observer. While the storytelling structure feels freer and more inclined to comedy, Roberts finds ways to tie back into the book's essential themes. While the book seems at first to be less personally revealing, Roberts pulls back the curtain from time to time to reveal that there is a lot under the surface that she’s not discussing openly. Roberts has expressed that, above all else, she doesn't want to bore people with her accounts of having bipolar, and I imagine the same is true for MS. I think another thing at work here is that Roberts doesn't want her medical conditions to hijack her own narratives.</span></div>
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That's something that sets Roberts' work apart from the sort of thing that Ellen Forney does with regard to bipolar disorder or any number of artists who talk about cancer or other serious illnesses. Those books are about the illness more than they are the person. We only get to know the person by way of the disease, and the narrative almost always serves that end.<span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> That said, Roberts still throws in occasional reminders to let the reader know that nothing has changed: Roberts' mental and physical challenges are still there, but she's much more than those challenges. Finding a way to create a sense of hope, warmth, and meaning in her life through the pet rats, seeing her daughter increasingly as a creative force of her own, and passing on kindness to her students is as important as the humor.</span></div>
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First and foremost, Roberts is an entertainer. She wants to make her audience laugh, but she also wants those laughs to sting a little. Like any good clown, she will dive further into her problems until we laugh, even if she has to cry to make it happen. With <span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Rat Time</span><span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">, Keiler Roberts has given herself permission to go all-out in an attempt to be funny, knowing that her commitment to emotional honesty and deep sincerity will keep her and her readers grounded in reality.</span></div>
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<b style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Rob%20Clough" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Rob Clough</a> has written about comics for Cicada, the Comics Journal, Sequential, <a href="http://tcj.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">tcj.com</a>,</span></b><b style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://sequart.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">sequart.com</a>, Savant, Foxing Quarterly, Studygroup Magazine, as well as for his own blog, High-Low (<a href="http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">highlowcomics.blogspot.com</a>).</span></b></div>
Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-90399566892054389182019-09-04T06:00:00.000-07:002019-09-04T06:00:02.203-07:00When the Myth Overtakes the Man: Tom Shapira reviews DREAMERS OF THE DAY by Beth Barnett<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="c2" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Michael Korda’s 2011 biography of Thomas Edward “T.E.” Lawrence is called </span><span class="c1" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: italic;">Hero</span><span class="c2" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. This leaves little doubt about Korda’s opinion of his subject matter. Lawrence, of course, already had all the historical amplifying one could ask for. As the subject of the much-admired film </span><span class="c1" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: italic;">Lawrence of Arabia, </span><span class="c2" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">which indeed painted him as romantic (if often naïve) heroic figure, his place in history is assured. But real people aren’t usually heroes, especially real people making </span><span class="c2" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">tough</span><span class="c5 c2" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;"> decisions on a global scale. War is never clean-cut, and World War I, and the way is shaped modern-day Middle East, is an especially murky affair.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="c8" style="font-weight: 700;">Beth Barnett</span><span class="c2">’</span><span class="c2">s new graphic novel, </span><span class="c7" style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700;"><a class="c6" href="https://bethbarnett.co/buy/" style="text-decoration: inherit;">Dreamers of the Day</a></span><span class="c2">, struggles exactly with this notion. Partly a story of the author’s time in England spending many a-happy-day lost in college libraries, and partly the story of Lawrence himself, Barnett</span><span class="c2">digs</span><span class="c2"> further and further into the facts of Lawrence’s life. By doing so, she finds herself projecting into the man and the emotional distance between student and subject narrows to a thin thread. An early page showcases a flattering portrait of Lawrence superimposed above a desert shot evoking the grandeur of </span><span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Lawrence of Arabia </span><span class="c5 c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;">with several speech bubbles pointing out the man’s many vocations – “archeologist,” “soldier,” “aircraftsman,” “translator,” “book designer” etc. That’s a list of qualification worthy of any polymath.</span></span></div>
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<span class="c5 c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yet the following page immediately sets a contrast with the view of Lawrence as a greater than life figure: eyebrows raised in a questioning manner, mouth slightly downturned, he seems so unsure of himself. By Barnett’s next drawing, the mood has soured completely – Lawrence’s head is turned low, his eyes seemingly about the weep. Here is not a legendary figure of bravery and endurance, but a real-life person, nearly incapacitated by the weight of his past decisions. Barnett’s simple and flowing style, a few lines on the page, no bothering with border panels, allows her to capture the emotion of such scene plainly – the reader can always tell what the characters are going through.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Dreamers of the Day</span><span class="c2"> is far from an exercise in fawning adoration (though Barnett is often very adoring in her depictions) or even a simple study of a fascinating figure. Instead, the graphic novel quickly becomes a study of its own process, asking questions of both the writer and the reader: how do we think of these grand historical figures? What happens when we cross the line from study to panegyric? Is it even possible to avoid projecting onto a subject when your work is their life? Halfway through the book, Barnett touches upon the subject of sexual identity, noting she has her own opinions (based on what she had read) regarding Lawrence’s preferences. Barnett explains that the </span><span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">idea </span><span class="c5 c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;">of him as an asexual person was important to her, that she needed to hear about a person whose lack of desire for sexual intimacy did not diminish him as a person in the public’s perception. Yet, while unpacking that theory, she keeps in mind that just because this notion was important to her does not necessarily make it so. </span></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If there is an underlying theme to Lawrence’s story throughout </span><span class="c1" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: italic;">Dreamers of the Day </span><span class="c5 c2" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">it is the idea that people are complex, and someone like T.E. Lawrence is doubly so. Trying to put him in any one box is bound to fail. Trying to make him into a ‘war hero,’ to view him as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ is diminishing, because it was just one part of a long and varied life. By showing the reader the different (or ignored) aspects of the man’s life, with particular care given to exploring his interest and work in the field of book design, Barnett gives both a fuller image of Lawrence’s life as well as the understanding that no picture could ever be full. You cannot ‘capture’ a life in text, the map is not territory, you can only approach it carefully.</span></div>
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<span class="c5 c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As the book progresses, Barnett becomes freer in her drawings, moving from direct character shots, playing with portraits, maps, scenery, etc. This gives the book a free-flowing feeling that matches its subject well, refusing to limit itself to a single mood of expression. It also gives the reader some wonderful imagery that manages to pack so much into so little. </span></span></div>
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<span class="c5 c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Lawrence’s case is especially fitting for the larger questions Barnett is interested in, not just because he spent the last years of his life in what seems like an effort to remain an enigma, but mostly due to how he came to view the exploits that made him famous. Apparently, they were the cause of much shame later in his life, especially with the way the British abused their Arab allies after they were done using them to defeat the Turks. The violence he meted out during his time in the war, including personally executing a man, seems to weigh heavy on him early on and the weight of it appears the grow the more he is unable to justify the reasons for the war</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="c2">The most fascinating, and challenging, aspect of </span><span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Dreamers of the Day</span><span class="c5 c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> is reserved for the halfway point of the graphic novel: it turns out that later in his life T.E. Lawrence took up a new name, ‘T.E. Shaw,’ which he used for over 12 years until his untimely death. Despite that, he is referred throughout the whole book as ‘Lawrence,’ as the people who buried him did. He was buried as T.E. Lawrence (there’s a straightforward image of his grave that is quite moving in this context), and that remains the name under which he is known.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Da_ZiNmolPE/XWMGp6im8EI/AAAAAAAAoa8/0MeqDp0PoPYgxFMRw8oEk3W4lNstmKq4wCLcBGAs/s1600/Dreamers%2Bof%2Bthe%2BDay%2BBeth%2BBarnett%2B5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1121" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Da_ZiNmolPE/XWMGp6im8EI/AAAAAAAAoa8/0MeqDp0PoPYgxFMRw8oEk3W4lNstmKq4wCLcBGAs/s640/Dreamers%2Bof%2Bthe%2BDay%2BBeth%2BBarnett%2B5.jpg" width="448" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="c2">Barnett makes the valid point that </span><span class="c2">this type of refitting historical people into easy-to-comprehend models </span><span class="c2">is ‘uncaring,’ another way in which mythologizing a person is an act of destruction. Here is a man, a man of multitudes, who ends up trapped against his will in his own myth. The scholar and book lover T.E. Shaw became the war hero and dashing figure ‘T.E. Lawrence’ against his will. Barnett has to do this, despite knowing it’s the ‘wrong’ choice, because no one would know who T.E. Shaw is. This makes </span><span class="c1" style="font-style: italic;">Dreamers of the Day</span><span class="c2 c5" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> like Sisyphus, pushing a rock up the hill of popular history (not because it could be done, but because it needs to be done).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="c2">In </span><span class="c7" style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700;"><a class="c6" href="https://bethbarnett.co/buy/" style="text-decoration: inherit;">Dreamers of the Day</a></span><span class="c5 c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> the reader learns, again and again, that the writing of history must be an act of conscious decision making and of understanding, that we cannot mold people of the past into what we want them to be; we must try and perceive them for what they were – all of it, or none at all. </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FMjh0GNiarQ/XWMGxKoCUUI/AAAAAAAAobA/coAsvqp2-6MIVGy-0IjQINkWE_Nwb5afQCLcBGAs/s1600/Dreamers%2Bof%2Bthe%2BDay%2BBeth%2BBarnett%2B4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1121" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FMjh0GNiarQ/XWMGxKoCUUI/AAAAAAAAobA/coAsvqp2-6MIVGy-0IjQINkWE_Nwb5afQCLcBGAs/s640/Dreamers%2Bof%2Bthe%2BDay%2BBeth%2BBarnett%2B4.jpg" width="448" /></a></div>
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<span class="c5 c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As the book draws to a close with a promise of further T.E. Lawrence (or is it ‘Shaw’?) related material to come, I considered some of the minor flaws (it really does love Lawrence a bit too much, so great were his charms and demeanor); but then I considered all the different illustrations of this one man throughout the book – all the different ways it let me see this figure. And this is what such a study should be, not a singular dominating vision, but an offering of different angles, of the endless varieties of life.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Tom%20Shapira" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Tom Shapira</a> is a freelance critic writing about comics for Haaretz, The Comics Journal, Multiversity, Sequart, and others. He is also the author of <i>Curing the Postmodern Blues: Reading Grant Morrison and Chris Weston's The Filth in the 21st Century </i>(Sequart Press, 2013).</span></b></span></span></span></span></div>
Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-13414108202004078142019-09-03T11:00:00.000-07:002019-09-03T11:00:01.095-07:00Small Press Comics Critics Announce Formation Of Nonprofit Publishing House: FIELDMOUSE PRESS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-G9S56EaO7iw/XWrZeme9R5I/AAAAAAAAock/XaSh5NWapw8JNjrFOKS32xf2JDXOmXDWwCLcBGAs/s1600/fieldmouse-final.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1314" data-original-width="1600" height="327" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-G9S56EaO7iw/XWrZeme9R5I/AAAAAAAAock/XaSh5NWapw8JNjrFOKS32xf2JDXOmXDWwCLcBGAs/s400/fieldmouse-final.png" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today, veteran comics critics <b>Daniel Elkin</b>, <b>Alex Hoffman</b>, <b>Rob Clough</b>, and <b>Ryan Carey</b> announced the formation of a new, non-profit publishing company, <b>Fieldmouse Press</b>, establishing a visionary, ambitious, and dedicated multi-venue publishing initiative within the burgeoning small press comics community. The company’s first publishing project, <b>SOLRAD (<a href="http://www.solrad.co/">www.solrad.co</a>)</b>, will publish comics criticism, essays, interviews, and new comics as a part of a larger effort to serve the public good. SOLRAD will launch at the <b>beginning of January 2020</b>.</span></div>
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<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1c1e29; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Fieldmouse Press will be operated by President Daniel Elkin, long-time publisher and editor at <b>Your Chicken Enemy</b>, with Alex Hoffman, publisher of <b>Sequential State</b> serving as Secretary/Treasurer. Rob Clough of <b>High-Low Comics </b>and Ryan Carey of <b>Four Color Apocalypse</b> round out the company's initial board of directors. The aim of Fieldmouse Press is to emphasize its four pillars of "<b><i>comics, critique, community, and collaboration</i></b>" by presenting challenging, unique, and diverse material to as wide an audience as possible.</span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bdIiRCku4Hs/XWraqJpepGI/AAAAAAAAocs/a3OVQrsj1mAh5WlglPISQYYygHKApMWggCLcBGAs/s1600/just_mouse_500x500.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bdIiRCku4Hs/XWraqJpepGI/AAAAAAAAocs/a3OVQrsj1mAh5WlglPISQYYygHKApMWggCLcBGAs/s320/just_mouse_500x500.png" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1c1e29; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Of the press’ founding, Secretary/Treasurer Alex Hoffman said, “<i>Our goal is to provide a space for readers, artists, and the general public to explore the comic arts in the many forms they come in. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, our goal is to serve this community that we love and do something we think hasn’t been possible before now. And as a nonprofit organization, we can take chances that other publishers haven’t.</i>”</span></div>
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<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1c1e29; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Fieldmouse's first major publishing project will be a new website, SOLRAD (<a href="http://www.solrad.co/">www.solrad.co</a>), which will be a comics journalism hub featuring all-new and original content ranging from comics criticism, original comics, essays, interviews, and the promotion of small-press events and releases. Further publishing projects will be announced in due course, and will likewise share in the company's expansive, inclusive, and innovative vision.</span></div>
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<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1c1e29; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Interested parties are encouraged to contact any of Fieldmouse's founders with questions, comments, and any business-related correspondence at:</span></div>
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<span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Daniel Elkin: elkin@fieldmouse.press </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alex Hoffman: hoffman@fieldmouse.press </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rob Clough: clough@fieldmouse.press</span></div>
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<span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Ryan Carey: carey@fieldmouse.press</span></div>
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Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-68261724213801424982019-09-02T06:00:00.000-07:002019-09-02T06:00:04.146-07:00The Materiality of Comics in the Post-Digital Age: Kim Jooha examines CF’s Receipt Paper Comics and Selected Works by Ginette Lapalme<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Since 2016, <span class="c4" style="font-weight: 700;">CF</span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> has made two sets of receipt comics. Each set has three comics made of a sheet of receipt paper around 40 feet. The materiality of the comics shows us CF’s persistent interest in the ephemerality of comics medium.</span></span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Receipt paper is cheap, disposable, and ephemeral. It is weak in heat and sunlight; it changes color and loses the ink. It is not intended to be archived for a long time. It is not to be re-read several times. Once you read it, it is hard to re-roll it and the re-rolled “zine” differs greatly from the original state.</span></span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As we communicate more on screens and less with the physical paper — books, newspapers, and magazines — receipt paper is the most used kind of paper right now. We could argue that CF’s receipt zines criticize the fall of civilized discourse, which could be symbolized by the physical paper media of books, newspapers, and magazines, as well as the rise of the “fake news” by highlighting the remnant of the physical paper that only matters when money is involved and is fleeting, just as social media is.</span></span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Beginning in the late 90s, as part of Paper Radio (with Ben Jones), CF utilized the low cost of newspaper paper to distribute comics freely. Paper Rodeo, the newspaper anthology CF, Fort Thunder, and Paper Rad (which Ben Jones was part of) participated, was also freely distributed. The newspaper paper shares impermanence and cheapness (both in the price and quality) of receipt paper. They produced these zines secretly at photocopiers not paying for printing. Their confusing names (Paper Radio/Rad /Rodeo) and the fact that Paper Rodeo does not have credits adds to the difficulty of archiving these zines. </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uDBKdLiMcoc/XWLU0t4JNpI/AAAAAAAAoY4/NSYWWXoOpPUcTUhLC6H6HDDBLREpV3YAwCLcBGAs/s1600/CF%2BReciept%2Bzine%2B2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uDBKdLiMcoc/XWLU0t4JNpI/AAAAAAAAoY4/NSYWWXoOpPUcTUhLC6H6HDDBLREpV3YAwCLcBGAs/s400/CF%2BReciept%2Bzine%2B2.jpeg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Not only the distribution and material practice but also CF’s style tells us the artist’s interest in the ephemeral nature of comics. Arguably one of the most influential but under-discussed practices of CF was utilizing a pencil as the main tool. Coinciding with the fast-drawn style that focuses on the fleeting moments and art rather than the structure of the whole narrative, pencil-drawn <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Powr Mastrs</span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> was one of the most influential comics of the last decade in art/alternative comics.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That one of CF’s receipt zines was originally published in <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Volcan</span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> anthology as two-dimensional pages but then re-edited as one-dimensional rolling receipt paper, as well as the fact that the CF receipt zine set contains other artists’ zines like Carlos Gonzales, show that CF’s attention was in the material practice, rather than the contents of the zines.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N9Jbxq98kBw/XWLU7oM4xrI/AAAAAAAAoY8/bXE_8Y-8nfoglqn92Flz86H7ElXqDRhXACLcBGAs/s1600/CF%2BReciept%2Bzine%2B3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N9Jbxq98kBw/XWLU7oM4xrI/AAAAAAAAoY8/bXE_8Y-8nfoglqn92Flz86H7ElXqDRhXACLcBGAs/s400/CF%2BReciept%2Bzine%2B3.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Finally, the receipt zine progresses in a one-dimension contrast to the two-dimensional traditional paper medium including print comics, newspapers, books, and magazines. While perpendicular, it reminds us of the smartphone vertical infinite scrolling interface we use every day. We could connect this aspect with the death of established print media discussed above.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="c4" style="font-weight: 700;">Ginette Lapalme</span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> on Reproduction</span></span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Female-centric cultural practices such as embroidery have been relegated as mere “craft” of ethnographic records as opposed to high art like paintings or sculptures [1]. Another point of contention is originality versus reproduction (copying): craft is something deferential, but the concept of originality comes from a “genius man”. The gendered (sexist) divide also occurs when women are the majority of audience of a cultural product: thrillers or war movies are critically appraised and included in the canon, but “chick flicks” or romantic comedy are not; sex and violence are edgy, but “girly” and “feminine” cuteness is not.</span></span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ginette Lapalme mediates such division of gendered high and low art with cute artworks interrogating the concept of reproduction and originality</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qfepS-DXNpI/XWLVbA_fEGI/AAAAAAAAoZQ/3aYaBV1BVv4KimZ4Uwern0wQohOWXuiMQCLcBGAs/s1600/Ginette%2BLapalme%2B1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1262" data-original-width="1600" height="315" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qfepS-DXNpI/XWLVbA_fEGI/AAAAAAAAoZQ/3aYaBV1BVv4KimZ4Uwern0wQohOWXuiMQCLcBGAs/s400/Ginette%2BLapalme%2B1.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ELVJOpBsjO4/XWLVnK66rPI/AAAAAAAAoZU/jibqLyOhcQIsUgRreU9aG8Tr3HqPNEuPgCLcBGAs/s1600/Ginette%2BLapalme%2B2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1064" data-original-width="1600" height="265" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ELVJOpBsjO4/XWLVnK66rPI/AAAAAAAAoZU/jibqLyOhcQIsUgRreU9aG8Tr3HqPNEuPgCLcBGAs/s400/Ginette%2BLapalme%2B2.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Lapalme’s works come from the process of reproduction. It means two things: first, in a reproduced medium such as zines, comics, and apparel, Lapalme produces each distinct “copy”. One of the most fascinating examples of this is <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Climb-ing Mushroom Fabric Zine</span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> (2018), a silkscreen zine of dyed and bleached fabric (canvas) instead of sheets of paper. Every zine has the same drawings/silkscreens of characters, but each copy “is unique in its coloring and also slightly different in its composition page to page” by varying the size, color, or position of tie-dyed fabric flap or color and size of fabric sheets.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Second, Lapalme’s cute artworks are often made from vernacular ugly/cute mass-produced objects. For example, Lapalme adds her paintings or sculptures to Made-in-China stationeries. In <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">A Little Sampling</span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> (2019), Lapalme juxtaposes her drawings and sketchbook pages with vernacular clipboard images, re-drawn clipboard images, and computer-edited images of both. In a way, all artistic motives are clip-art, appropriated again and again. Lapalme’s incredibly cute beings could be clip art too. They populate Lapalme’s artistic world: sketchbooks, zines, paintings, sculptures, apparel, comics, drawings, pins, earrings, etc.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dO9UfGpdW7Q/XWLV22Hyn6I/AAAAAAAAoZc/bE2Cc2QD_Lgw8VibhF34wwRbc7oo1HYuACLcBGAs/s1600/Ginette%2BLapalme%2B3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="966" data-original-width="1280" height="301" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dO9UfGpdW7Q/XWLV22Hyn6I/AAAAAAAAoZc/bE2Cc2QD_Lgw8VibhF34wwRbc7oo1HYuACLcBGAs/s400/Ginette%2BLapalme%2B3.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EeuKKEoxH_o/XWLV-vUpy-I/AAAAAAAAoZk/70k6gh1Bn1UfmUfPxxgRnNRR6KSjbl2DACLcBGAs/s1600/Ginette%2BLapalme%2B4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="665" data-original-width="1000" height="265" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EeuKKEoxH_o/XWLV-vUpy-I/AAAAAAAAoZk/70k6gh1Bn1UfmUfPxxgRnNRR6KSjbl2DACLcBGAs/s400/Ginette%2BLapalme%2B4.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VKyt4B3L-m8/XWLWFMWt8_I/AAAAAAAAoZo/uSLkbXtxTRo2kB3kXY2BWLa4W-nOdvloQCLcBGAs/s1600/Ginette%2BLapalme%2B5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="741" data-original-width="1000" height="296" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VKyt4B3L-m8/XWLWFMWt8_I/AAAAAAAAoZo/uSLkbXtxTRo2kB3kXY2BWLa4W-nOdvloQCLcBGAs/s400/Ginette%2BLapalme%2B5.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jUMVbmJ8yIM/XWLWO3ecaQI/AAAAAAAAoZs/OU-gpX5OvV0nQK-3P7fbr9-dW6F-Pz4JQCLcBGAs/s1600/Ginette%2BLapalme%2B6.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="813" data-original-width="1000" height="325" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jUMVbmJ8yIM/XWLWO3ecaQI/AAAAAAAAoZs/OU-gpX5OvV0nQK-3P7fbr9-dW6F-Pz4JQCLcBGAs/s400/Ginette%2BLapalme%2B6.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Lapalme produced <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">My Stamps Collection</span> (2019) while carving dozens of stamps into the likeness of her aforementioned cute creatures. She reproduces images from her hand-made stamps to create this zine. Lapalme also produced a poster with these stamps. Compared to <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">A Little Sampling</span>, Lapalme materialized an analog “clip art” database of her artworks as stamps. But there is a twist about <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">My Stamps Collection</span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;">: many of the images are similar, but are in actuality a little bit different from each other, reminding the viewer of comics’ principal dialectic relationship of repetition and difference. Because Lapalme created zines as she was sculpting stamps, she was able to record the trace of transient stamps. We cannot reproduce these images anymore because the source (the transient stamp) is carved away to reproduce slightly different images. The ontology of the image does not exist anymore.</span></span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ginette Lapalme intervenes related dichotomies of high and low art and originality and reproduction. In the digital age where reproduction is extremely easy and universal — copy and paste are implemented as a basic function of a computer — by focusing on physicalities of "crafty" objects such as fabrics and stamps, Lapalme shows the potential of images that have not been appreciated.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">[1] Lucy Lippard. <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women’s Art</span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;">. 1976</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Kim%20Jooha" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Kim Jooha</a> lives in Toronto, Canada. She was Associate Publisher at 2dcloud. You can find her writings at </span></b><a href="https://kimjooha.com/"><b><span style="font-size: large;">kimjooha.com</span></b></a><b><span style="font-size: large;"> and </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/realasianfriend/?hl=en" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">@realasianfriend</a> on Instagram.</span></b></span></div>
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Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-39310057531870918382019-09-01T06:00:00.000-07:002019-09-01T06:00:03.286-07:00“I made things to disquiet readers”: Nicholas Burman Interviews Spanish Comix Artist JORGE PARRAS<div class="c3" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; padding-bottom: 0pt; padding-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">The </span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">Spanish anthology zine </span><span class="c2 c13" style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Argh!</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"> was a riotous mix of gross-out sex and gory humor and hallucinogenic visual trips. I first came across <b><a href="http://jorgeparras.net/">Jorge Parras</a></b>’ </span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">work after picking up a copy of the small press publication at Barcelona’s excellent Fatbottom store. Parras is based in the Catalan capital, where he produces a variety of comix strips, illustrations for articles, loop animations, and flash games.<br /><br />Knowing he was one of the publishers of </span><span class="c2 c13" style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Argh!</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">, and that work of his has been featured in the likes </span><span class="c2 c13" style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Vice</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">, </span><span class="c2 c13" style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">[adult swim]</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"> and national Spanish daily </span><span class="c2 c13" style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">El País</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">, I wanted to find out more about his background and influences in order to gain some insights into the underground Spanish scene. Below is a transcript of a back-and-forth we’ve had via e-mail over the past few weeks on his influences and his work.</span><span class="c2 c10" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">A big thanks to Isabel Palomar for translating answers.</span></div>
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<span class="c6 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700;">Nicholas Burman:<i> Who were you working with on </i></span><span class="c6 c2 c13" style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700;">Argh!</span><span class="c6 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700;">? Was that the first comics project you'd been involved in, and how did you curate the content for the magazine?</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /><b><br /></b></span><br />
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>Jorge Parras</b>: I was one publisher of </span><span class="c2 c13" style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Argh!</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">, alongside my friend Félix Díaz, from 2006. A few years before, he was publishing another zine with Alberto Vázquez called Fanzine Enfermo, for which I was a contributor. That was the beginning of my career as a comic author.<br /><br />At the beginning of </span><span class="c2 c13" style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Argh!</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"> we did some open calls for contributions, but we realized that we were receiving a lot of comics that we felt we had to refuse, so we started to write directly to authors we were interested in. Our preferred content was a mix between gore, violence, sex, and beautiful things. Anyway, a lot of people wrote to us during those years, and some of them become contributors. We were not interested in well-knowns authors, we tried to offer to the reader quality stuff that could not be found in other publications.</span><span class="c6 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700;"><br /></span><br />
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<span class="c6 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700;">NB: <i>What was your background in cartooning, do you have an art school background or are you self-taught?</i></span><span class="c9 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><i> </i></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /><b>JP: </b>I have been drawing since I was a child, but I never went to art school. I tried to register once but there were no places, so I ended up studying photography. I focussed on comics once I had finished that degree...</span><span class="c6 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700;"><br /></span><br />
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<span class="c6 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700;">NB: <i>I'm curious to know the cartoonists or comics that you and Felix were reading which inspired you to become active in comics.</i></span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
<span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>JP: </b>In 2005, we used to order comics together in order to save some money on shipping costs. We used to order stuff from Bodega Distribution, USS Catastrophe, or directly from authors. We we got material by Dan Zettwoch, Marc Bell, Lili Carre, Tom Gauld, Chris Cilla, Eamon Espey, Jordan Crane, Eleanor Davis, James Kochalka, Ted May, and Onsmith. Their zines inspired us to start </span><span class="c2 c13" style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Argh!</span></div>
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<span class="c5 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">NB: <i>I'm interested in the Spanish comics scene as it was and currently is...</i></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /><b>JP: </b>I guess there was not a zine/comic scene like there is today. Of course, there were people doing things, but there was not a connection between them. In their style, zines were just emulating magazines, and the authors were using their zines as a way to jump into magazine work.<br /><br />An economic crisis hit in 2006, and the comics and magazine industry started to collapse, and so authors didn’t have a place to publish their work, or to get well paid if they did. After that, it didn’t make sense for authors to publish in a magazine for no money, or merely for "promotion", when they could self-publish. There weren’t self-publishing festivals like there are today. Inspired by Portugal’s Feira Laica festival, Martín López Lam started Tenderete in Valencia in 2009, and some years later, inspired by Tenderete, there appeared other festivals, such as Gutter Fest, Graf, etc.</span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><span class="c4 c2" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700;">NB: <i>You're a big fan of sex-orientated and gory humor, and your work also features plenty of metamorphoses and personified animals. Are you trying to shock readers, make them laugh, make them uncomfortable, or invoke some other responses? What are your inspirations behind the creatures and figures you include, why is it that you draw these things, and in this particular way?</i></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>JP: </b>My intention when drawing is usually to make people laugh or to communicate a witty idea or concept. I was a bit more grotesque some </span><span class="c2 c11" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;">years ago and made things to disquiet readers, but I guess I have somewhat mellowed </span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">with age. I’m influenced by B movies, punk, underground comics, and these are a</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">ll reflected in what I do</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">. I guess I try to create, within my capabilities, the kind of material I’d like to consume.<br /><br />Smoking weed provides good and bad experiences, so I joke about that too. I try to entertain the reader and make them identify with the joke, and with the experience of smoking cannabis. On the other hand, some jokes that I would include in my "stoner humor" do not deal with cannabis itself, but I guess the result is the kind of comics that I would like to read when I am stoned. I am a regular smoker, and against prohibition, but my goal is just to make something that is fun to read.</span><span class="c6 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700;"><br /></span><br />
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<span class="c6 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700;">NB: <i>What do you think of stoner culture at the current time, as legalizing weed and policies like it are becoming more mainstream?</i></span><span class="c9 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
<span class="c9 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>JP: </b>I'm not an expert on the subject. Maybe in the past it was true that artists involved in stoner culture felt motivated by their ideals. But nowadays, cannabis is becoming normalized and smoking joints is not just for “outsiders”, so I think that contemporary artists dealing with this subject are more interested in producing an aesthetic that appeals to people.</span></div>
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<span class="c2 c4" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">NB:</span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span><i>There are examples of your work that also make ample use of arrows that direct the reader through mazes of collage-like works. These examples really feel like you're challenging the reader to make sense of things which don't necessarily have logical connections; sort of like a person making sense of word associations. Do you have a particular purpose behind these works? Is there always some sort of secret route you hope that the reader will eventually discover? </i></span><span class="c5 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>JP: </b>I use “arrowed balloons” for various purposes. On the one hand, arrows help define strips or sometimes make certain concepts stand out, because in these cases there is only one possible reading direction. I also use it for convenience, I find it easier to plan a page like this instead of dividing it into strips.<br /><br />On the other hand, the arrowed balloon can also be used to create an interactive comic in which the </span><span class="c2 c11" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;">reader can vary the reading direction depending on the options they choose. In these cases, I don’t expect the reader to follow a particular route, but for many, it’s a “choose your own adventure in a doubled page format” kind of thing. The difficulty of this lies in the limited space. You can’t extend these things forever and you have to make sure you close the pathways eventually so that the reading can be coherent. </span><span class="c2 c11" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;">To make something like this, to open and close paths so that everythi</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">ng fits and makes sense and is fun,</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"> but is also pretty tiring</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"> The centerfold in</span><span class="c2 c13" style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Argh!</span><span class="c9 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> #7 is an example of this type of use of arrowed balloons.</span></div>
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<span class="c4 c2" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">NB:</span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span><i>Your recent cover for </i></span><span class="c4 c2 c13" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700;">Babelia </span><span class="c5 c2 c11" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">depicted figures from Spanish counterculture in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s. For those of us disconnected from Spanish pop culture, could you talk us through some of the associated meanings and references you featured in that montage?</span></div>
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<span class="c2 c11" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;"><b style="background-color: transparent;">JP: </b>I was asked not to draw anyone in particular, but in any case I made reference to Ibiza’s hippie movement, flamenco artists Camarón de la Isla and Paco de Lucía, Eloy de la Iglesia’s neo-realist delinquency</span><span class="c2 c11" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;"> cinema, as well as Madrid’s music scene and the likes of Parál</span><span class="c9 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">isis Permanente, and gay comics pioneer Nazario.</span></div>
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<span class="c5 c2 c11" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">NB:</span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span><i>How did you get into animating, and how do you approach your work in that medium? How does it differ from your comics?</i></span></div>
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<span class="c2 c11" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;"><b style="background-color: transparent;">JP: </b>I did my first animations with a program called Deluxe Paint Animation when I was 15 years old. I didn’t keep them, but they were basically </span><span class="c2 c11" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;">short</span><span class="c9 c2 c11" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> “gore gags” only a few seconds long. In my twenties I picked it up again when I discovered Flash and since then I have used it as another way to express myself. Depending on the idea, I can turn it into a comic or an animation, but the latter is usually for something that doesn’t need voices.</span></div>
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<span class="c4 c2" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">NB:</span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span><i>The "loop comics" on your site merge GIFs with comics and animation. How much of an influence has digital culture had on your work? Why did you decide to call them "loop comics" rather than animations?</i></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>JP: </b>I guess I’m quite influenced by <a href="https://rathergood.com/">Rather Good</a>’s </span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">first animations and other interactive content pages made with Flash, like <a href="http://ml.hoogerbrugge.com/">Hooger Brugge</a> </span><span class="c2 c11" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;">and <a href="http://totaljerkface.com/">Total Jerkface</a> </span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">. I called mine “Loop Comics” because they’re read like a comic, you follow the page, but the individual strips are repeated on loop.</span><span class="c6 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="c4 c2" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">NB:</span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span><i>You've also developed mini flash games for your site. In your mind, is there a common thread between your comics, loop comics, and interactive stuff?</i></span><span class="c18 c14 c2 c19" style="color: #3d85c6; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>JP: </b>Depending on its purpose, I make comics, games, or animations. I usually try less common techniques, e</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">specially in games</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">, like pixelation or collage. Ideas also vary depending on the medium they are realised in. In any case, I identify with everything I do and I consider everything suitable for my work.</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">I use several different graphic or narrative registers depending on the medium I use or my intentions, using so many different techniques is characteristic of my work.</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><span class="c6 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="c6 c2" style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700;">NB: <i>What projects are you working on right now? </i></span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span class="c2 c14" style="color: #3d85c6; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>JP: </b>I’m basically expanding <a href="http://jorgeparras.net/">jorgeparras.net</a></span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 12pt;">, programming and creating new tabs. I want to make my website more interactive. I am still doing </span><span class="c2 c13" style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Crime Stories</span><span class="c2 c9" style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> and small comics that come to my mind, some I make for Instagram. This is my most prominent work right now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;"><span style="color: #222222; white-space: normal;"><span style="color: #444444;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Nicholas%20Burman" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Nicholas Burman</a> is currently based in Amsterdam, from where he writes about comics, experimental music, ambient artistic practices, and DIY culture for The Comics Journal, MusicMap, and Amsterdam Alternative, among others. You can find his portfolio at:<a href="https://nicholascburman.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">https://nicholascburman.com/</a></span></b></span></span></span></span></div>
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Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-13611975923996408762019-08-28T06:00:00.000-07:002019-08-28T06:00:01.673-07:00The Conflation of Mythology, Fairy Tales, and Busytown: Matt Vadnais on MIMI AND THE WOLVES by Alabaster Pizzo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HLFwtk7-T84/XWF5FQJl-fI/AAAAAAAAoWg/Houy7TIqo94FhC7tzAbpPNiHHGrrJzGqgCLcBGAs/s1600/Alabaster%2BPizzo%2BMimi%2Band%2Bthe%2BWolves%2Bcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="715" data-original-width="495" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HLFwtk7-T84/XWF5FQJl-fI/AAAAAAAAoWg/Houy7TIqo94FhC7tzAbpPNiHHGrrJzGqgCLcBGAs/s640/Alabaster%2BPizzo%2BMimi%2Band%2Bthe%2BWolves%2Bcover.jpg" width="442" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The title of</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><span class="c3" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-weight: 700;">Alabaster Pizzo</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">’s</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><span class="c3 c2 c6" style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700;"><a class="c0" href="https://averyhillpublishing.bigcartel.com/product/mimi-and-the-wolves" style="text-decoration: inherit;">Mimi and the Wolves</a></span><span class="c2" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: italic;"> </span><span class="c1" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">immediately evokes the language of fairy tales, particularly those involving cautionary tales in which lessons about the grown-up world are discovered and embodied by a titular character who is probably about to learn a difficult lesson. Immediately, though, the visual idiom of Pizzo’s work expands to include other traditions that have frequently functioned to educate children about life’s mysteries. In volume one, which collects the first three acts of the story in which Mimi begins to question everything she knows, Pizzo interweaves a story of mythological import, using interstitial scene fragments to create an origin story – perhaps better thought of as a re-creation story – involving the Goddess of Love, a mysterious interloper, a powerful dagger, and the death of at least one wolf.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If one might expect the conflation of mythology and fairy tales, the third obvious influence regarding books designed to provide answers for children is far more surprising: the oeuvre of Richard Scarry and its many stories of the village of Busytown and its denizens of talking animals going about their jobs, sorting mail, picking up trash, and otherwise contributing to a functioning municipality. Nonetheless, in the first volume of <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Mimi and the Wolves, </span>Pizzo evokes, consciously or otherwise, Scarry’s famous, fifty-year-old primer designed to explain the daily grind of a happy, modern city to younger readers. Like <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Busy, Busy Town, </span>Pizzo opens <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Mimi and The Wolves </span><span class="c1" style="vertical-align: baseline;">with a cast of characters and a map of the surrounding locales. Likewise, the art style features a lot of big-headed, expressive animals, busy with the tasks of providing food, running a farm, and making art.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">However, to the extent that such evocation is conscious, Pizzo appears to be using aspects of the visual diction of Scarry in order to draw attention to the ways in which the world of <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Mimi and the Wolves </span>departs fully from the all-is-well consumer capitalism of Busytown. For starters, the anthropomorphic animals of Scarry’s world are defined by the roles they play in the functioning city to the extent that their individual personalities are conflated with their jobs and tasks; in <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Mimi and the Wolves, </span>characters don’t have jobs or vocations so much as they simply do work, making burlap sacks or creating garlands to decorate the woods. In stark contrast to Scarry’s civic dictionary, Pizzo depicts a world in which individual personalities are shaped far less by their tasks than they are by nature; though one of the central questions raised by volume one pertains to the extent that this is true, much is made about the essential nature of wolves and other animals. Nonetheless, like the much more didactic work of Richard Scarry, <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Mimi and the Wolves </span><span class="c1" style="vertical-align: baseline;">does act as a guide to the necessary work of preserving a community, securing food and comfort, and preparing for times of scarcity.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There is a difference, though, between jobs and needs. This part of <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Mimi</span>’<span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;"> and The Wolves’</span> relationship to the Busytown books is relatively easy to unpack: <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Mimi and The Wolves </span>is a story about self-discovery in a world in which the rules of capitalist civility are useless, unimportant, or at least non-binding. The first volume depicts Mimi figuring out who she is after her “mate” leaves her. She takes a concoction prepared by Wormwood, a character who shares a name with a poison, and is led by a lucid dream to befriend a pair of wolves. While her community of friends – depicted thrillingly as a functioning support system that evokes an American sentiment more consistent with the Dust Bowl than a mythologized 1950s – continues to be skeptical about the true nature of wolves, she discovers more and more about “wolf culture” and the creatures who apparently commune with the same deity, Venus, she’s been dreaming about “forever.” The wolves share their lotus hookah with Mimi and, separately, soon grow to love her. As such, Pizzo<span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span class="c1" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> hijacks and repurposes the lexicon of talking animals – itself hijacked from a long history of cautionary fables and fairytales – and creates a kind of user’s guide to the forbidden parts of the forest that one can’t help but realize were meant to be beaten back by the kind of civilization mapped out, quite literally, by Scarry.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">However, thinking about <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Mimi and The Wolves </span>in the context of Busytown reveals a second, far more interesting relationship. Where the work of Scarry and the tradition of fairy tales can be thought of as varying degrees of nudges of gentleness intended to mold children in the image and expectations of adulthood, Pizzo’s story is one in which Mimi’s discoveries and intentions threaten to re-shape the world. Though it is too early in the story’s run to be certain how things add up thematically, the first volume ends with the implication that<span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span class="c1" style="vertical-align: baseline;">Mimi is every bit as dangerous for the wolves and “wolf culture” – or at least part of it, as wolf culture appears to contain civil strife – as they are for her.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In other words, <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Mimi and The Wolves </span><span class="c1" style="vertical-align: baseline;">is not simply another post-modern repurposing of the kinds of stories that have attempted to teach many of us how the world works; its specific magic has to do with how these various elements are combined in such a way that Mimi genuinely feels like the most powerful character in the story, even as she clearly has a long way to go in terms of understanding the world, herself, and the wolves she’s snuggling with. Central to this success is how clearly – if not cleanly – the characters love each other. Where most traditions of moral instruction rely on some kind of dogma about human nature, even one as mundane as what it means to be a postal worker in Busytown, Pizzo depicts a world in which love is far more powerful and binding than laws, rules, or other markers of society. What comes through, loud and clear in this first installment, is that love is as terrifying as it is magical.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ultimately, the first three acts of <span class="c6 c3 c2" style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700;"><a class="c0" href="https://averyhillpublishing.bigcartel.com/product/mimi-and-the-wolves" style="text-decoration: inherit;">Mimi and the Wolves</a></span><span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span class="c1" style="vertical-align: baseline;">cast a powerful spell, infusing a visually disarming story about talking animals with the power of religious iconography. Never diminished by the things she doesn’t know, Mimi is one of the most compelling protagonists I’ve encountered recently, in part because, while modeling care and generosity for all she encounters, she appears to be capable of becoming just about anything.</span></span><br />
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<span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace; font-size: 16px;"><a href="http://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Matt%20Vadnais" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Matt Vadnais</a> has taught college literature and creative writing classes for twenty years. He is the author of <i><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/All-I-Can-Truly-Deliver/dp/0974822949&source=gmail&ust=1533256931893000&usg=AFQjCNHg-9uKM6aybe0EOzuehXp6nc27Fg" href="https://www.amazon.com/All-I-Can-Truly-Deliver/dp/0974822949" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">All I Can Truly Deliver</a> </i>and a contributor at <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://covermesongs.com&source=gmail&ust=1533256931893000&usg=AFQjCNE8Z37MDAHNxmhcq3vfos9aL5QCKQ" href="http://covermesongs.com/" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">covermesongs.com</a>. For more comics coverage and the occasional tweet about Shakespeare, follow him <a href="https://twitter.com/DoctorFanboi" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">@DoctorFanboi</a>. For short takes on longboxes, subscribe to his <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQrweEFgi6x318BzRTSWbMQ?view_as%3Dsubscriber&source=gmail&ust=1533256931893000&usg=AFQjCNHh7K08Xl6ztoL4G_9uS4ewgNR_OA" href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQrweEFgi6x318BzRTSWbMQ?view_as=subscriber" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">channel</a> of video essays. </b></span></div>
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Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-32810565773183124702019-08-26T06:00:00.000-07:002019-08-26T18:25:48.090-07:00Taking Power Over The Self And Its Narrative: Sara L. Jewell reviews ALIENATION by Inés Estrada<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Set in a post-apocalyptic Alaska, year 2054, <span class="c7" style="font-weight: 700;">Inés Estrada</span>’s <span class="c2 c7 c8" style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700;"><a class="c5" href="http://www.fantagraphics.com/alienation/" style="text-decoration: inherit;">Alienation</a></span><span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;">is a transhumanist fever dream of ambitious proportions. Dense with detail, its pencil pages are printed in a muted blue pantone ink, and its settings vacillate between vacant building interiors and lush, boundless virtual spaces populated by both wonders and horrors. Like other transhumanist texts, its protagonists are enmeshed in a technological point of human history that calls into question the very nature of lived reality, personal ownership, and the human condition as it relates to capitalism, colonialism, climate change, and the body.</span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;">Eliza, a virtual sex worker, and her partner Charly, an employee of Shell gasoline, live together in a nearly empty apartment. They spend most of their time, both together and apart, in VR (virtual reality), their bodies lying inert and their eyes blankly turned within. Implanted with biometrics-managing “Googleglands” and subsisting on horrifying fusion cuisine (ex: sushi pizza) composed entirely of Monsanto GMO slime molds, their bodies and experiences are, to an extent, owned and negotiated by familiar megacorporations – when Eliza and Charly log out of VR after watching an eclipse via a Starbucks satellite, the recognizable mermaid logo remains, reflected (embedded?) somewhere deep within their eyes.</span></div>
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However, Estrada’s story resists a straightforward ethical reading of the ubiquitous technology that enables her characters to both destroy and transcend their biological drives and needs, as well as the tangible world. In true transhumanist tradition, Estrada’s book forces the reader to question to what extent human beings are or should be defined by their physical limitations. Through Eliza and Charly, she depicts both the ennui and frustration, as well as the comfort and sublimity, of life that is both profoundly changed and sustained by the integration of biotechnology.</div>
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Despite a dependence on this technology for both survival and fulfillment, Estrada doesn’t let the reader forget that the greedy human misuse of technological progress itself, and the ensuing environmental degradation, necessitates the continued use of increasingly complex technology for the bare minimum of human survival. This large-scale environmental destruction and exploitation is largely fueled by capitalist enterprise and intercontinental violence. Alongside her characters, Estrada’s comic forces readers to question where the line is drawn between fact and fiction. Charly experiences hallucinations as a result of PTSD, which we later find out stems from hyperreal games of <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Call of Duty</span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> that may or may not have eventually hooked the player up to real-life drones killing actual people. Eliza and Charly can’t watch a “real” eclipse or see “real” animals due to extinction or permanent environmental damage. Are they unable to tell the difference between the real world and the virtual one because the virtual one is so convincing, or is because they lack any meaningful points of comparison?</span></div>
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Estrada is not ambiguous when it comes to condemning entitled white men and the violence of colonialism. Central to <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Alienation </span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;">is a horrifying scene where Eliza is raped by an anonymous “hacker”, an insidious virtual force that violates her body and mind. Like a futurist Madonna, her body thus becomes, without her consent or knowledge, the site of “the Singularity,'' a human/AI hybrid child meant to bridge the distance between the virtual and biological realities. This through line in the story is easy to read as a metaphor for the violence of invasive colonial conquest, referenced by both Charly and Eliza’s elders at different points in the story.</span></div>
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Charly’s Mexican grandmother, during a VR conversation in Spanish, reminds him that, contrary to some conceptions, South America is America too, and that the <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">“Damned gringos stole our name because they are imperialistic colonizers!”</span> Their meeting occurs at “Playa Martinez”, Google’s virtual recreation of Charly’s grandmother’s childhood beach. Even so, she reminisces that despite its beauty and fidelity, <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">“That beach of my childhood doesn’t exist anymore.”</span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div>
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The fallout of this schism between the U.S. and South America is a crisis of identity that Charly feels intensely -- that he is not fully “from” either place. <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">“We’re never gonna be from here nor from there…”</span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> (117) he says wistfully.</span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;">In contrast, early on, Eliza has a long phone conversation with her grandfather on the opposite side of Alaska, during which he encourages her to marry an Inuit man, bemoans the loss of the Northern Lights to pollution, and resists the idea of being implanted with a Googlegland.</span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">“I have to draw a line, my dear,”</span> he says to her. <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">“The colonizer has invaded our lives enough already. ..tainting our culture, destroying our language, stealing our land…and now, they want to occupy our bodies with their fake organs, too…White men call us primitive – and it’s them who survive solely through merciless exploitation…How can technology help us when its development is destroying the earth? When it was created just for the profit of white men?”</span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div>
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Like Charly, Eliza feels torn when it comes to her cultural identity. She has a Googlegland, likely believes (or wants to believe) that VR Northern Lights are as good as any, and is in love with someone who is not Inuit. She thus does not necessarily share her grandfather’s wider perspective on the implications of so-called “progress”. But it is difficult not to look at <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Alienation</span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> and see the ways in which Eliza has surrendered what little autonomy she might have had by allowing corporations and their interests to mediate her perceptions and experiences.</span></div>
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Estrada only complicates this further by reminding us that, under capitalism, we have little choice as to what we have to sign up for just to survive. When Eliza initially discovers she has been hacked, Charly urges her to delete her account immediately, but Eliza demurs, <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">“how will I pay rent, then?”</span> Later, following her assault by the malevolent “hacker” when she acknowledges how strange she feels in her own body, Eliza emphasizes both her disconnection from her physical body and her resentment towards the capitalist structures that demand payment before she can access information about her self, thinking <span class="c3 c2" style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">“It’s my body, I should be able to access its info for free! What if I’m dying and I don’t know it?”</span></div>
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When Eliza finally does discover that she is mysteriously pregnant, though she and Charly <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">“haven’t had physical sex in a year,”</span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> we find that even in a transhumanist future where humans can profoundly alter their brains, people’s reproductive rights (in America at least) haven’t much improved: In Alaska, Eliza can’t easily access the abortive nanobots that she needs to terminate her unwanted pregnancy, which takes a toll on her mental health as well.</span></div>
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The body thus operates as one of <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Alienation</span>’s central points of contention; is owning/having a physical body important and worthwhile, or is the body is an inconvenient anchor to an antiquated way of life, bound as it is to the physical world and its concomitant limitations? Eliza voices ambivalence on this subject; <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">“Having a body is so weird…It’s, like, this extension of me that’s feeling things all the time…and I can sort of control it, but never completely…All my experiences will always be limited by what my body can perceive.”</span> She goes on to appreciate that her body helps her make a living and that people pay her to admire it. But, in exactly the same way that environmental devastation <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">requires</span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> that technology be implemented to ensure human survival, it is Eliza’s body’s requirements - for space to occupy, food to eat, air to breathe - that demand she make money within a capitalist system merely to exist. However, much as the AI that populates the book’s virtual spaces appear to covet owning the real estate of the human body in the physical world, Estrada’s human characters don’t find much to redeem the body as the principle site of joy or transcendence in her post-apocalyptic America. The frontier worth exploring lies beyond, in the infinite expanse of the boundless mind.</span></div>
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However, once born, the Singularity - a child with a mortal body but a deathless mind online who “<span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">will never experience tiredness, illness, or hunger</span>” and who has “<span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">absolute control over their bodily functions</span>” - immediately shrugs off the responsibility of conquest, highlighting the irony of the hypothesis that an ideal existence, free of both constraints, can move beyond humanity’s inherent selfishness. Unburdened by the needs of a human body and able to move freely between the physical and virtual worlds, even out in the toxic pollution, when asked to “<span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">dominate the planet</span>” by its AI progenitors, the child rudely tells the voice to “<span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Shut up…I just want to chill</span><span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;">,” and curls up with a polar bear.</span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;">This climax also seems to suggest that only when totally free of the body’s needs and limitations can human beings fully reject the violence inherent in capitalist structures. But, in the same way that Eliza and Charly have no point of reference for distinguishing illusions from reality, the Singularity, like anyone born into unfathomable privilege, has no point of reference for suffering and thus no empathy. The book’s final pages depict Eliza in a deliciously metatextual moment, foreshadowed by her dream of crawling out of the six-panel grid layout Estrada has used for the majority of the comic’s pages. Eliza notices and literally shatters the comic’s fourth wall, implicating the reader as the “hacker” who has been watching her the whole time and voyeuristically exploiting her for entertainment from a similar place of omniscient power.</span></div>
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The reality, the one we all need to be concerned with, as Estrada points out between <span class="c8 c2 c7" style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700;"><a class="c5" href="http://www.fantagraphics.com/alienation/" style="text-decoration: inherit;">Alienation</a></span>’s copyright and ISBN notices, is climate change, which will only exacerbate inequality under capitalism and make the care and keeping of the human body an increasingly untenable prospect on an inhospitable earth. Furthermore, environmental devastation is not the direct result of technological progress, rather it’s the misuse of technology in service of selfish and oppressive corporate powers that have no concern for the human cost in suffering of their profits that is so destructive.<span class="c0" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> Worthwhile technological progress does not seek power through the exploitation of others. Instead, it might allow us to leave behind the body’s limitations and take personal power over the self and its narrative.</span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3HaYXQz2ys0/XWFyQAE_DiI/AAAAAAAAoWU/TOr9xcz-nbot5BWxksyke30rTujllpyBQCLcBGAs/s1600/Alienation%2Bby%2BInes%2BEstrada%2B6.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="137" data-original-width="825" height="66" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3HaYXQz2ys0/XWFyQAE_DiI/AAAAAAAAoWU/TOr9xcz-nbot5BWxksyke30rTujllpyBQCLcBGAs/s400/Alienation%2Bby%2BInes%2BEstrada%2B6.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b style="font-family: "times new roman", times, freeserif, serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Sara%20Jewell" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Sara L. Jewell</a> is a freelance writer, artist, comic creator, and educator based in New Jersey. You can find her at </span></span></b><a href="https://saraljewell.tumblr.com/"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><b>https://saraljewell.tumblr.com/</b></span></a><b style="font-family: "times new roman", times, freeserif, serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> or rambling on twitter <a class="" href="https://twitter.com/1_saraluna" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">@1_saraluna</a>. All email inquiries can be sent to </span></span></b><b style="font-family: "times new roman", times, freeserif, serif; font-size: 16px;"><a href="mailto:saraljewell@gmail.com" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: medium;">saraljewell@gmail.com</span></span></a></b></div>
Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-49658421645713202602019-08-25T06:00:00.000-07:002019-08-25T06:00:01.608-07:00Processing Loss: Daniel Elkin reviews ROCKS by Rozi Hathaway<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L-MTOyw0f4U/XWGSwoHPpoI/AAAAAAAAoXs/zU-1C9-fC6I__l5kdeUd7EZgbbR3Kd3GACLcBGAs/s1600/Rocks%2BRozi%2BHathaway.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="492" data-original-width="723" height="271" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L-MTOyw0f4U/XWGSwoHPpoI/AAAAAAAAoXs/zU-1C9-fC6I__l5kdeUd7EZgbbR3Kd3GACLcBGAs/s400/Rocks%2BRozi%2BHathaway.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="c4" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“</span><span class="c1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>When the dying's finally done and the suffering subsides</i></span></div>
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<span class="c1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>All the suffering gets done by the ones we leave behind</i>.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="c1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">-- <b>Purple Mountains</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="c4" style="color: #222222;">“</span><span class="c1" style="color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>The little waves, with their soft, white hands,</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="c1" style="color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Efface the footprints in the sands,</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="c1" style="color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i> And the tide rises, the tide falls</i>.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="c1" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow</b></span></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Lately, I’ve been processing loss. A friend of mine died the other day. Took his own life. Hung himself.</span></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We were good friends in high school. Teenage hijinx, bonds born of suburban ennui, smart kids among cowboys, surrounded by a plastic city, aglow with punk rock posing. This was supposed to be the new world, all we needed were the necessities (and more).</span></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The years spread us apart and circumstances allowed next times and new circles. We’d come back together frequently through postcards and letters, always promising that we’d meet up on the next round, but time and circumstance conspired against us, always time and circumstance. He went his way, I mine.</span></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Finally, though, we made solid plans to see each other. I was excited to hug my old friend again. On Monday he messaged me: “thank dan. Look fwd to seeing you after / im a wreck as usual” I wrote back, telling him I hope he found some joy along the way.</span></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">On Wednesday, he was dead.</span></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Shock, sadness, anger. I played the whole album again and again. Mutual friends reached out, we talked, remembered, laughed, tried to find process through, tried to find perspective.</span></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tried to understand. Tried to let go.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I took to Distraction. Looking for sources of a different intent. Different reference. Of all things, I picked up a new comic that I got in the mail. I read it. I cried. It was, perhaps, what I needed. Attempting to find clear meaning in seemingly meaningless acts requires a fresh seeing and solid grounding.</span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8i7czNh51cE/XWGTckhC4MI/AAAAAAAAoX0/Hs2PbbKPJHYmTcxwyVRsJOOv1psKzgf9QCLcBGAs/s1600/Rocks%2BRozi%2BHathaway%2BA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1021" data-original-width="1600" height="255" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8i7czNh51cE/XWGTckhC4MI/AAAAAAAAoX0/Hs2PbbKPJHYmTcxwyVRsJOOv1psKzgf9QCLcBGAs/s400/Rocks%2BRozi%2BHathaway%2BA.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="c7 c9" style="color: #1155cc; font-weight: 700;"><a class="c10" href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/725506123/rocks-a5-comic-zine?ref=shop_home_active_1&crt=1" style="text-decoration: inherit;">Rocks</a></span><span class="c7" style="font-weight: 700;">, </span>the new self-published book<span class="c7" style="font-weight: 700;"> </span>by <span class="c7" style="font-weight: 700;">Rozi Hathaway</span><span class="c7">,</span> was that comic. <span class="c3" style="font-style: italic;">Rocks </span><span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;">is a meditation on and celebration of rocks. The rocks that she finds on the beach, especially. The single stone among a myriad of others. Ones that are special. Ones that stand out because of their shape, color, patterns, or edges. You know them when you see them. Sometimes when you are looking for them. Sometimes when you’re not. They come to you at the right time. At that moment, in no other place. They are perfect.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And yet, they are what they are, not what you want them to be. As Hathaway writes in <span class="c3" style="font-style: italic;">Rocks</span>, “<span class="c3" style="font-style: italic;">But, somehow, in picking them up and bringing them home, they lose their magic, their allure.</span>” As with so many things that come through and into our lives, there is a time. There is a spot. It brings the enchantment.<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> An individual out of millions and millions catches your eye. Remove it from its context and sometimes the only thing that keeps it special is the memory you have of its specialness. Sometimes leaving it where it lies is the better choice.</span></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It is, after all, a rock. It’s not a person full of complexities and simplicities, joy and darkness. People change, move on, fall apart. A rock always remains a rock, no matter what we imbue it with.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Still, it is a rock. And it has been a rock for longer than you can even imagine, much less conceive. It has rocked through eons while that which is much less rock-like has come and gone and come and gone again. Much of <span class="c3" style="font-style: italic;">Rocks </span><span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;">is Hathaway providing this perspective, noting the expanse of time at the expense of time each rock has borne witness to without seeing anything at all. Stoic. Silent. A platform from which the business of the world springs over and over again.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And in this, it provides insight into life, into death, into truth, into our endless quest to understand. As Hathaway comments towards the end of <span class="c3" style="font-style: italic;">Rocks</span>, “<span class="c3" style="font-style: italic;">Every argument, … every missed appointment ..., … it doesn’t matter. The world keeps turning.</span>”</span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Certainly, this is not a particularly profound or wholly original idea, but it’s a reminder of perspective, of passage, of what is transitory and what remains. We make our mark in the sand. The tide washes it away. What remains is memories. Then memories fade and those that do the remembering disappear until there is nothing left except the rocks who have no comment, no opinion, no insight, no meaning. Our grief signifies nothing other than the fact that it is our grief.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZZIZpWT_Xhc/XWGTqm1Xj7I/AAAAAAAAoX8/yfZUNxRq8x4KoQ6qpPQ_pPac0DLkMloWgCLcBGAs/s1600/Rocks%2BRozi%2BHathaway%2B2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="941" data-original-width="1600" height="235" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZZIZpWT_Xhc/XWGTqm1Xj7I/AAAAAAAAoX8/yfZUNxRq8x4KoQ6qpPQ_pPac0DLkMloWgCLcBGAs/s400/Rocks%2BRozi%2BHathaway%2B2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If everything is ephemeral, why do we invest so much into objects, experiences, relationships, people? Why hold on to things that eventually will slip away? Is this some flaw in the human gizmo or just a manifestation of our endless capacity for hope? What is the significance of all the strutting and huffing we do in our lives?</span></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Why does loss hurt so much?</span></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Loss means nothing to the rocks.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It is ours only so much as we make it so.</span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Maybe, perhaps. we should just let it all go and see where that takes us. Maybe, perhaps, this is healing. Maybe, perhaps, we should just sit among the rocks.</span></span><br />
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Maybe.</span></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Perhaps.</span></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Perhaps...</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><i>The day returns, but nevermore</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Returns the traveler to the shore,</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i> And the tide rises, the tide falls.</i>”</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AafTJrFRbjQ/W2DAvfSZNsI/AAAAAAAAgd0/mQUctMLSqUs8Bsko8AGasAXnLEc_0xvjACLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_20180718_111120.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; color: #3778cd; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1350" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AafTJrFRbjQ/W2DAvfSZNsI/AAAAAAAAgd0/mQUctMLSqUs8Bsko8AGasAXnLEc_0xvjACLcBGAs/s200/IMG_20180718_111120.jpg" style="background: transparent; border-radius: 0px; border: 1px solid transparent; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" width="168" /></a></div>
<span class="c2" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: 16px; text-indent: 0px;"><b>Daniel Elkin is the EIC of Your Chicken Enemy, the Former Small-Press Comics Editor for <a href="http://comicsbulletin.com/byline/daniel-elkin/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">Comics Bulletin</a>, and has Bylines at<span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.87);"> </span><a href="http://loser-city.com/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: #4285f4; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Loser City</a><span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.87);">, </span><a href="http://psychodrivein.com/author/daniel-elkin/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: #4285f4; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Psycho Drive-In</a><span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.87);">, </span><a href="http://winkbooks.net/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: #4285f4; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Wink</a><span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.87);">, </span><a href="http://factioncomics.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: #4285f4; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Factional</a><span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.87);">, </span><a href="http://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2016/05/25/comics-everyone-say-goodbye-comics-cola/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: #4285f4; text-decoration-line: none;">WWAC</a><span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.87);">,</span>and<span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.87);"> </span><a href="https://gumroad.com/panelxpanel" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: #4285f4; text-decoration-line: none;">PanelXPanel</a><span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.87);">. </span>He's a High School English Teacher in Northern California. He'll talk to you about Sandwiches.</b></span></span></span></div>
Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-2949467874410679642019-08-21T06:00:00.000-07:002019-08-21T06:00:16.423-07:00Rendering the Early Internet Itself: Matt Vadnais on Gnosticism, Demons, and Porn in George Wylesol’s INTERNET CRUSADER<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HEmY6bxC7C4/XVtCSHRrRxI/AAAAAAAAoTs/9e9AtWquNTktgr9y1bqFSf_gEsMPgIAKwCLcBGAs/s1600/George%2BWylesol%2BINTERNET%2BCRUSADER%2Bcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="823" data-original-width="653" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HEmY6bxC7C4/XVtCSHRrRxI/AAAAAAAAoTs/9e9AtWquNTktgr9y1bqFSf_gEsMPgIAKwCLcBGAs/s640/George%2BWylesol%2BINTERNET%2BCRUSADER%2Bcover.jpg" width="506" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">In 1998, Erik Davis published</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic;">Techgnosis, </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">an extended, historically grounded argument that the early internet served a mystical purpose that, like all communication technology, would change the humans who used it. For Davis, the chat-room, virtual reality, and other networked exchanges of information worked according to Gnostic principles intent on escaping the prison of the corporeal body in service of pure</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic;">knowing. </span><span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Beyond pointing out ways in which the internet was ideal for folks seeking to escape the physical confines of their parents’ basements, Davis was particularly interested in the ways the internet mimicked specific Gnostic assertions that the Creator of the universe had long abandoned “His” creation and had secretly been replaced by a Demiurge standing in the way of true enlightenment; as understood by Davis, a Gnostic version of the Biblical Garden of Eden would understand the serpent, whispering temptation about the tree of knowledge, as the actual hero of the story.</span></div>
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The twenty years that separate 2019 from the publication of <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Techgnosis</span> have largely proven Davis correct, though any Gnostic objectives of purity regarding the <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">knowing</span><span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> it has created should probably be abandoned: the internet’s single biggest “gift” to the modern world has been the rise and ubiquity of conspiracy theories, theories whose principal allure is the suggestion that the dominant version of the truth is actually a false god. Though it’s hard to argue against the suggestion that the internet’s forbidden fruit of self-selected information is inherently Gnostic, Davis may have overestimated the notion that mystical undercurrents would result in a unified experience of Revelation. Though the book certainly is aware of confirmation bias and human tendencies towards solipsism, Davis was perhaps less worried than he should have been about the possibility that Gnostic technology would, first and foremost, serve to undermine notions of truth itself, rendering facts into opinions, and evidence into fake news. Nonetheless, even if Davis was not entirely prescient about what would happen in the following two decades, the book remains a clear-eyed, eerily accurate set of predictions about how and why it would happen.</span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZJM9JcSlnAA/XVtCbpnGhYI/AAAAAAAAoTw/2BvRoJ5xIZEV7gO_3BVgPhSyNZfsimgDwCLcBGAs/s1600/George%2BWylesol%2BINTERNET%2BCRUSADER%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="821" data-original-width="651" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZJM9JcSlnAA/XVtCbpnGhYI/AAAAAAAAoTw/2BvRoJ5xIZEV7gO_3BVgPhSyNZfsimgDwCLcBGAs/s640/George%2BWylesol%2BINTERNET%2BCRUSADER%2B1.jpg" width="506" /></a></div>
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Set in the halcyon days of the early web, <span class="c8" style="font-weight: 700;">George Wylesol</span>’s latest comic from Avery Hill Publishers, <span class="c4 c2" style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none;"><a class="c5" href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://averyhillpublishing.bigcartel.com/product/internet-crusader-by-george-wylesol&sa=D&ust=1566264274201000" style="text-decoration: inherit;">Internet Crusader</a></span>,<span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">features a character known only by his internet name: BSKskater191. While BSKskater191 is not exactly what Erik Davis would have referred to as a Gnostic Infonaut Hell-bent on escaping the limits of the physical for access to pure knowledge, he does begin the book driven by the desire to escape parental constraints – presented very much as those of a demiurge – to view pornography. In doing so, BSKskater191 trips into a game that may or may not threaten to burn the world.</span></div>
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<span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Without, for the sake of spoilers, delving too much into the aspects of the book that is a fairly straightforward meta-adventure about fighting demons in the name of a God-who-may-or-may-not-be-a-false-god, it must be said that the book is engaging and funny throughout. BSKskater191, avatar or not, is compellingly rendered as a disinterested hero whose biggest complaint about his call to heroism is boredom. Wylesol manages to stir empathy for a human being about whom readers know very little, especially since nearly every reference to his actual life is filtered through terrible spelling and internet slang.</span></div>
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Despite a compelling story, George Wylesol’s biggest accomplishments have to do with his rendering of the early internet itself; he brings the pop-up windows, dial-up modems, and weird things that routinely happened to the screen to life in such a way that, reading it, I remembered things about my teenage years that I never imagined I could forget. In doing so, particularly in service of a story about a young man who seeks forbidden images and ends up a pawn in war for the human spirit, Wylesol has created a comic that explores, in much more accessible and comical fashion, many of the ideas that were at the heart of Davis’s <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Techgnosis </span><span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">twenty years ago.</span></div>
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In <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Internet Crusader, </span>every page is essentially a screenshot of our protagonist’s computer; the reader gets references to some “real” people who exist behind usernames and beyond the frame of what is shown, but the world threatened by the stakes of the comic remains entirely filtered through the visual idiom of early attempts at the virtual. On one level, this filtration allows Wylesol to create art that is nostalgic and funny at the same time; on a deeper level, though, Wylesol’s attention to detail unearths ways in which, even if the graphics and interfaces were rudimentary, the early days of the internet were guided by an almost fully formed ethos of disrupting the way we all understood what was real, true, and human. As engaging as BSKskater191’s downloads and exploits are, <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Internet Crusader</span><span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">’s real triumph is reminding us exactly how much the internet has changed, changes that have largely been possible because of ways in which the early internet managed to change all of us.</span></div>
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The story of <span class="c2 c4" style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none;"><a class="c5" href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://averyhillpublishing.bigcartel.com/product/internet-crusader-by-george-wylesol&sa=D&ust=1566264274205000" style="text-decoration: inherit;">Internet Crusader</a></span><span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;"> </span>is a good one, well-paced with genuine stakes and some killer twists; however – fittingly for a comic with even fledgling Gnostic impulses – <span class="c2" style="font-style: italic;">Internet Crusader</span><span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">’s real story is about the future we are living in right now, one in which this reader can’t help feeling like the powers of darkness have very much won.</span></div>
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<span class="c3" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace; font-size: 16px;"><a href="http://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Matt%20Vadnais" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Matt Vadnais</a> has taught college literature and creative writing classes for twenty years. He is the author of <i><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/All-I-Can-Truly-Deliver/dp/0974822949&source=gmail&ust=1533256931893000&usg=AFQjCNHg-9uKM6aybe0EOzuehXp6nc27Fg" href="https://www.amazon.com/All-I-Can-Truly-Deliver/dp/0974822949" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">All I Can Truly Deliver</a> </i>and a contributor at <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://covermesongs.com&source=gmail&ust=1533256931893000&usg=AFQjCNE8Z37MDAHNxmhcq3vfos9aL5QCKQ" href="http://covermesongs.com/" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">covermesongs.com</a>. For more comics coverage and the occasional tweet about Shakespeare, follow him <a href="https://twitter.com/DoctorFanboi" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">@DoctorFanboi</a>. For short takes on longboxes, subscribe to his <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQrweEFgi6x318BzRTSWbMQ?view_as%3Dsubscriber&source=gmail&ust=1533256931893000&usg=AFQjCNHh7K08Xl6ztoL4G_9uS4ewgNR_OA" href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQrweEFgi6x318BzRTSWbMQ?view_as=subscriber" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">channel</a> of video essays. </b></span></div>
Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-89082759982940975762019-08-19T06:00:00.000-07:002019-08-19T06:00:04.561-07:00 Death Is A Stage: Rob Clough reviews THE TENDERNESS OF STONES by Marion Fayolle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rsasdyZ9CuY/XVmQcoSApdI/AAAAAAAAoSI/WmKXMKXhdKgtNqp_8OKkLzbOrGU_VcjrgCEwYBhgL/s1600/THE%2BTENDERNESS%2BOF%2BSTONES%2Bby%2BMarion%2BFayolle%2Bcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1406" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rsasdyZ9CuY/XVmQcoSApdI/AAAAAAAAoSI/WmKXMKXhdKgtNqp_8OKkLzbOrGU_VcjrgCEwYBhgL/s640/THE%2BTENDERNESS%2BOF%2BSTONES%2Bby%2BMarion%2BFayolle%2Bcover.jpg" width="562" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">The editors of the New York Review Comics line have shown exceptional taste in their choices for reprinting obscure and untranslated comics. Some of their choices, like Dominique Goblet's</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span class="c0" style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic;">Pretending Is Lying</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">, are amongst the best comics I've ever read. Likewise,</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span class="c5" style="font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700;">Marion Fayolle</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">'s</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span class="c4 c0" style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none;"><a class="c6" href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-tenderness-of-stones?variant%3D6869153644596&sa=D&ust=1566154062953000" style="text-decoration: inherit;">The Tenderness of Stones</a></span><span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> is every bit as innovative and emotionally devastating as that work, only in a completely different way. In discussing her father's cancer (initially in remission) and his eventual decline and death, Fayolle unleashes a steady stream of lyrical, whimsical, and even absurd visual metaphors that blend into and stack atop each other. Like Goblet's work, this is a comic about coming to terms with a difficult relationship with one's father, only this comic carries a sense of time and circumstance preventing a true understanding. Even in his decline, Fayolle’s distant father is elusive, and the closeness she feels to him is illusory. At the same time, her family (mother, younger brother, and her) becomes a kind of actor's troupe in service to her father, creating a bond out of duty and performance.</span></div>
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<span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">From the very beginning, Fayolle's genius is in transforming medical realities into magical realist imagery. Her father had lung cancer and surgery to remove the diseased organ. The ubiquitous "men in white" had it taken out and told him to bury it. Thus began one of many instances in which she insisted her father was somehow trying to pull a prank on his family, that burying his lung was his way of seeing who would show up to his funeral. Fayolle later claimed that her dad was behaving like a child so he could be taken care of like one; acted as though he were a king in order to receive royal treatment; and was only pretending to be ill as he secretly went pub crawling at night. While these instances of magical thinking were all tongue-in-cheek, there was a deeper truth underlying them. Her father was always closed off to her. She never knew what he was thinking or feeling, and so she used a childlike sense of storytelling logic to make sense of him and his slow decline.</span></div>
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Visually, Fayolle employs a deadpan style reminiscent of Gabrielle Bell. The top-notch production values of NYRC are in evidence with the full album format, good paper, and richness of color. Instead of standard word balloons, the comic is narrated by captions told from Fayolle's point of view, written in cursive script. This is an important detail, because this is very much Fayolle's narrative, not her father's, and cursive makes this feel like a personal diary. Fayolle layers the story with multiple interpretations of events, and sometimes those accounts work in concert and sometimes they are contradictory. Infantilization is a running theme throughout the book, and Fayolle's magical storybook approach reflects her own self-infantilization in response to this ongoing trauma. It's all part of what makes reading <span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">The Tenderness of Stones</span><span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> such an overwhelming experience: it's a diary, it's a fairy tale, it's a family trauma, it's a child trying to make sense of a confusing world, it's an adult coming to terms with the death of her father.</span></div>
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The simplicity of the plot and even the childlike quality of the narration allow Fayolle to use complicated techniques to solve visual storytelling problems. The second chapter, in particular, is one long visual tour-de-force. There is an extended meditation on the idea that Fayolle's father had become a child again, much to her annoyance: <span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">"He had entered a time machine, and he had not taken me with him</span><span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">." Of course, the reality is that her father had deteriorated to the point of being unable to feed himself, dress, or even walk. Fayolle depicts this as though he is an infant, lying in a crib with a mobile above him or being cuddled in a rocking chair. Her formerly icy father now demands a kiss on the forehead before he goes to sleep and needs the door open as he goes to sleep. Throughout this transformation, and throughout the book, Fayolle measures her own identity against his. If she was now older than him, how could he be her father? Who was she now?</span></div>
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<span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Furthermore, this changes her relationship with her mother. She describes her as a big woman whose body always provided security, and she depicts her as bigger than the panel can contain, as she and her adult brother both disappear under her skirts, feeling safe. She suspects that her father had always wanted this kind of mothering, which led him to become a child. However, Fayolle turns it around as an act of kindness on his part, as he did it to distract her mother from noticing that she and her brother were growing up and leaving for new lives. Fayolle depicts herself and her brother with suitcases, floating away from their mother, but the siblings return when they realize their father is too fragile to leave behind.</span></div>
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This is also the moment where Fayolle realizes her new goal: of deciphering the mystery of her father, of wanting to "meet" him at last. She depicts her father as being a silhouette that they<span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> slap up images of him on, desperately trying to figure him out and "see" him and hope that he will let himself be seen. This kicks off an inspired series of pages where she has to act as his mouth--literally taking the lips off of her own face and putting them on his so he can talk to his friends. Then she and her brother have to lend him their hands, their legs, and more, in a brilliant 8 x 8 grid that slowly and painfully gets across the difficulty and frequent ennui involved in this level of caretaking. On another page, also with an 8 x 8 grid featuring a different displaced body part in each panel, Fayolle cartoons herself pushing aside panels and tearing a number of them down in an effort to find her leg. The only instance of word balloons in the comic is the next segment, where she and her family start talking for her father, pasting up word balloons of their own design. She admits to changing some of his words before putting them in the word balloon, making him kinder and more loving than he normally would be. It's an intense push-and-pull, where she feels her own personhood in pieces but perceives that she's also altering his agency. It's an almost self-destructive kind of empathy, as she begins to feel his pains and mimics his movements on the page.</span></div>
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<span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">There are many other inspired sequences, including likening the presence of home health/hospice personnel to that of an invasion of the men in white. Of note, many of the dreaded, judgmental men in white are women, but Fayolle conflates all authority as being male, due in part to the influence of her father as this remote, frightening authority figure. Conversely, her mother is a comforting and nurturing figure, and because the women wearing white are neither, they are all referred to as men. What creates tension in the book is a series of these reactions based on childlike, binary logic. If my father needs care like a child, he must have chosen to become a child. If he demands constant care and needs to be the center of attention, he must consider himself to be a king. If he's still hard to know, it's because he's lying about his illness and is sneaking out at night to drink with the fellow lost souls in the local bar.</span></div>
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One of the most beautiful and heartbreaking sequences is at the beginning of chapter three, where Fayolle discusses how she hopes the illness will erode away her father's rough edges like the sea gently smooths over the rough edges of boulders. She writes, "<span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">My father was a boulder that I longed to cling to without being wounded. That I longed to shelter beneath without feeling threatened</span>." Instead, as she depicts with beautiful simplicity on a series of splash pages, he becomes even more jagged and "<span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">you could still cut your fingers and hurt yourself if you held him too close</span><span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">."</span></div>
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Holding too close and being unable to let go to one's parents in various capacities and with various consequences are also running themes throughout the book. This is finally resolved in the fourth and final chapter, as the men in white decreed that he was dying. The image of invisible, cancerous cells falling from the sky like meteorites herald several pages that all have a single caption: "<span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">Dad is going to die</span>." On each page, Fayolle chooses a different visual metaphor for his exit and his family's assistance with it: closing a curtain, packing a suitcase, making him disappear like a magic trick, and levitating off a bed. Fayolle steps outside the narrative for a moment to reveal that she had been in the middle of drawing this book when she learned he was going to die, which made her feel as though she had caused it somehow by drawing his diseased lung. She resents this ending being imposed on her: "<span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">I could have come up with a much better finale</span><span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">." This is a moment where she reveals just how dark her sense of humor is, playing around with this naive binary. It's clearly her coping mechanism.</span></div>
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<span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">In the end, that humor is abandoned as she depicts her family and herself preparing her dad for one last performance. It's all framed in the language of acting and pumping him and saying he had what it took, that he had been rehearsing for years. The final images are both surreal and exquisitely and painfully beautiful. The spotlight on his last performance remains, with flowers being thrown on stage in celebration of his life — a twist on flowers being sent to the bereft when someone dies. His family is sitting on a bench as they watch the performance, with Fayolle applauding. In a book full of dense backgrounds, this is a page with just a few images and an almost overwhelming use of negative space. The funeral is depicted as a crowd of people smoking cigarettes as his giant body lay outstretched. The smoke looks like stone and also like his diseased lung, which I imagine is no coincidence. The smoke grows thicker and obscures his body. Everyone goes their own way, and the final page sees his body disappear.</span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">The Tenderness Of Stones</span> deals with sickness, end-of-life issues, family bereavement, and caretaking issues with a powerful sense of honesty and authenticity. Too often, narratives about the dead and dying try to smooth over the reality of how we relate to them in real life. Using a clever series of visual metaphors and deliberately making her narrative tone naive allows Fayolle to really "spill some ink" and get at her feelings while still being sensitive to her father's and family's plight. Every page is a marvel of composition. The torrent of visual metaphors brings to mind Tom Hart's <span class="c0" style="font-style: italic;">Rosalie Lightning</span>, which is about the death of his young daughter. It's as though the layer after layer of metaphors is like Fayolle wrapping herself in blankets for comfort or bandages for healing. At the same time, the clarity of storytelling is remarkably sharp, as she stacks metaphors in some instances and elides them in others. <span class="c0 c4" style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none;"><a class="c6" href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-tenderness-of-stones?variant%3D6869153644596&sa=D&ust=1566154062957000" style="text-decoration: inherit;">The Tenderness Of Stones</a></span><span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> is a remarkable achievement whose power in depicting the personal pain of one person and her family resonates for anyone who has ever experienced a loss or been a caretaker.</span></div>
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<b style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Rob%20Clough" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Rob Clough</a> has written about comics for Cicada, the Comics Journal, Sequential, <a href="http://tcj.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">tcj.com</a>,</span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: normal;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://sequart.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">sequart.com</a>, Savant, Foxing Quarterly, Studygroup Magazine, as well as for his own blog, High-Low (<a href="http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">highlowcomics.blogspot.com</a>).</span></b></span></span></div>
Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-83054401636578543102019-08-12T06:00:00.000-07:002019-08-12T06:00:03.881-07:00Everyone Thinks This Is Normal: Kawai Shen reviews BTTM FDRS by Ezra Claytan Daniels and Ben Passmore<div class="c0" style="font-family: arial; line-height: 1.15; padding-bottom: 0pt; padding-top: 0pt;">
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<span class="c1" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><b><i><a href="http://www.fantagraphics.com/bttm-fdrs/" target="_blank">BTTM FDRS</a></i></b> is a horror comic written by <b>Ezra Claytan Daniels </b>and drawn by <b>Ben Passmore</b>. The story centers around Darla, a young black artist who moves into a cheap apartment in Bottomyards, a formerly thriving working-class neighborhood in South Chicago. At first, it seems as though Darla and her white bestie, Cynthia, will overcome their initial reservations about Bottomyards. They quickly warm up to the opportunities presented by the neighborhood and its residents: a thriving cultural scene populated by young artists - and potential buyers drawn to them. However, they are unable to shake their unease about the new apartment and eventually discover that there is much more to fear than they could imagine...</span></div>
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<span class="c1" style="vertical-align: baseline;">True to the horror genre, <i>BTTM FDRS</i> introduces a social anxiety - in this case, gentrification - and quarantines it in tangible, monstrous bodies. The title itself is pretty clever. Bottom Feeders references the residents of Bottomyards but the manner in which it is spelled (all caps, sans vowels) suggests how newcomers see the neighborhood: a fashionable trend. This begs the question: who are the bottom feeders? Long-term residents at the bottom of the American social class? Landlords seeking "artistic" tenants with an eye for property investment? Newer residents and businesses displacing older ones? Anyone extracting whatever cultural capital they can from the next person one rung lower on the social ladder? Or perhaps the answer is not as figurative as it seems.</span></div>
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This critical, but playful and open-ended manner of addressing a social issue is maintained throughout the comic. Views of gentrification are tackled directly, but they are filtered through the characters' personal history with Bottomyards so it’s never didactic. How they speak - and don't speak - about the ways race and class privilege play out in their lives is one of the comic's strengths. Dialogue mercifully sticks to subjective experiences rather than academic theories about gentrifiers. Word bubbles, after all, preclude the kind of preachy monologuing one can find in other mediums like theatre<span class="c1" style="vertical-align: baseline;">. Instead, you have revealing exchanges, from the landlord who calls Darla "Donna" to Cynthia tearing up over how she can't help being born white.</span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4JI0Z32GhVo/XU75X_EYVoI/AAAAAAAAoJY/M5-U_lZUtbQ8DhLdbtOhUaUDENcFSypKQCLcBGAs/s1600/bttm-fdrs-259_custom-57cedcd8f9526a67820e6c1436d77cd1de3515af-s800-c85.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="598" data-original-width="800" height="298" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4JI0Z32GhVo/XU75X_EYVoI/AAAAAAAAoJY/M5-U_lZUtbQ8DhLdbtOhUaUDENcFSypKQCLcBGAs/s400/bttm-fdrs-259_custom-57cedcd8f9526a67820e6c1436d77cd1de3515af-s800-c85.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: arial;">What I appreciated most about <i>BTTM FDRS</i> is how the neighborhood is humanized. So often, "rough" neighborhoods are stereotyped and stigmatized in the media, which in turn stereotypes and stigmatizes residents. <i>BTTM FDRS</i> instead invites us to view the Bottomyards as a place with a rich history - and its older residents as people with full and complex lives, whose identities do not revolve around their displacement. Of particular note is Katherine, a black adjunct history professor who advises Darla, "No matter what you have, no matter how little it is, they're gonna take it from you eventually." Without resorting to spoilers, <i>BTTM FDRS</i> gives you not only the what and the who of this equation, but the how and the where.</span></div>
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The artwork also gives Bottomyards a friendlier treatment. Instead of an industrial palette of rust and concrete, everything is rendered in saturated colors that could have been derived from a handful of Starburst and Skittles candies. Passmore's palettes often draw on complementary color blocking or split schemes for a dynamic and pleasing effect. It jars readers’ expectations of a horror comic as well as underscoring the neighborhood’s new bright and shiny reputation. At times, this choice proves effective and can give a sense of a creeping, lurid, psychedelic nausea. However, at other times, I found this style detracted from any sense of actual fear. It's difficult to feel afraid for your protagonist getting bashed to a pulp when the walls are a sunny yellow and she’s covered in millennial pink goo.</div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">If there's something about<i> BTTM FDRS</i> I find unsettling, it's not the actual horror or threatening action. It's also not a sense that Daniels and Passmore are exploiting the subject matter - unlike a lot of art dealing with "social issues" I never feel the story is being manufactured to profit from a white gaze (in fact, this issue is addressed in the comic itself when Darla criticizes a black musician for profiting from dressing like a pilgrim). For me, I think it's the candy-colored casualness of it all.</span></div>
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There is one image I cannot shake from my mind from when I was living around Chicago, right in the heart of the city on Michigan Avenue, an area that is all but calcified with a concentration of wealth. It was a sunny afternoon. A man was panhandling on the sidewalk. On his upper thigh was an open, festering sore about the size of my hand, fingers spread. He had clearly been wounded for some time without treatment, yet he was sitting mere blocks away from a hospital. The image struck me - still strikes me - with a visceral horror. It wasn’t the wound itself. I used to volunteer in a hospital and I know sick bodies. It was the understanding that here was a man being denied healthcare in an area so monied, I could practically smell the filthy lucre in the air. And what made this all so surreal to me was not how calm the pedestrians walking past him were - it was how calm <span class="c4" style="font-style: italic;">he</span><span class="c1" style="vertical-align: baseline;"> was. This kind of horror is normal here, I realized. Everyone thinks this is normal.</span></div>
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<span class="c1" style="vertical-align: baseline;">Living in Toronto, in the past year alone, one of my close friends began fighting their landlord due to an illegal eviction and another fell homeless for close to a year following a renoviction. This doesn't count friends who have also been evicted or pushed out of the city's core or out of the Greater Toronto Area altogether. And they are not all, as one might imagine, the most marginalized people in this city - some are white people from middle-class backgrounds, employed in full-time jobs requiring a university education. Displacement and illegal evictions are a new normal here: renters living in a free-floating fear that their home will be seized next while luxury condos blister the landscape and units, bought for investment purposes, sit empty. Despite being set in a different city, something about <i>BTTM FDRS</i> felt very familiar and mundane - and not nearly horrific enough to me. And that seems truly frightening.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Kawai%20Shen" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Kawai Shen</a> is a Canadian writer and cartoonist. You can find her at <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://cutejuicecomics.com&source=gmail&ust=1518382626598000&usg=AFQjCNHIATd0eN5qdX8s0_tD4OfJue57KA" href="http://cutejuicecomics.com/" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">cutejuicecomics.com</a> or on Twitter as <a href="https://twitter.com/kawaishen" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">@kawaishen</a>.</span></b></span></div>
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Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-77360190146555624022019-08-09T06:00:00.000-07:002019-08-09T06:00:00.452-07:00Books In Bites 21: Recent Readings -- Elkin Edition <div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1c1e29; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Here are 10 books that I've recently read and enjoyed in the past few months. All text is copied from the individual solicitations for each book.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>30 Miles of Crazy #7 </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">By Karl Christian Krumpholz </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Available <b><a href="http://karlchristiankrumpholz.com/30-miles-of-crazy-issue-7/" target="_blank">HERE</a></b> </span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h866rdqe4_0/XUdA0Td5b1I/AAAAAAAAoEE/UKVmMKnzyqAczhWUnEiU6GXcZzOvALZgACLcBGAs/s1600/30%2BMiles%2Bof%2BCrazy%2B%25237%2BKarl%2BChristian%2BKrumpholz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="677" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h866rdqe4_0/XUdA0Td5b1I/AAAAAAAAoEE/UKVmMKnzyqAczhWUnEiU6GXcZzOvALZgACLcBGAs/s640/30%2BMiles%2Bof%2BCrazy%2B%25237%2BKarl%2BChristian%2BKrumpholz.jpg" width="422" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Slice of life comics and true stories about modern life and living in The City by Karl Christian Krumpholz, 28 pages, Full Color. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Includes the stories: ‘My Mugger‘, ‘A Gesture‘, ‘Walk of Shame‘, ‘Darkness‘, ‘Indifference‘, ‘My Only Stan Lee Story‘, ‘The Show Girl’, ‘Agoraphobia‘, and others.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Written by Mariko Tamaki, Illustrated by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Published by First Second </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Available <b><a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781626722590" target="_blank">HERE</a></b> </span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_LKCLJ-58_I/XUdBupFDaDI/AAAAAAAAoEo/Emmw0YPzuTozaEyk_yzyILir_flP8lx5wCLcBGAs/s1600/Laura%2BDean%2Bkeeps%2Bbreaking%2Bup%2Bwith%2Bme.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="704" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_LKCLJ-58_I/XUdBupFDaDI/AAAAAAAAoEo/Emmw0YPzuTozaEyk_yzyILir_flP8lx5wCLcBGAs/s640/Laura%2BDean%2Bkeeps%2Bbreaking%2Bup%2Bwith%2Bme.jpg" width="450" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Author Mariko Tamaki and illustrator Rosemary Valero-O’Connell bring to life a sweet and spirited tale of young love in <i>Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me</i>, a graphic novel that asks us to consider what happens when we ditch the toxic relationships we crave to embrace the healthy ones we need. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Laura Dean, the most popular girl in high school, was Frederica Riley's dream girl: charming, confident, and SO cute. There's just one problem: Laura Dean is maybe not the greatest girlfriend. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Reeling from her latest break up, Freddy's best friend, Doodle, introduces her to the Seek-Her, a mysterious medium, who leaves Freddy some cryptic parting words: break up with her. But Laura Dean keeps coming back, and as their relationship spirals further out of her control, Freddy has to wonder if it's really Laura Dean that's the problem. Maybe it's Freddy, who is rapidly losing her friends, including Doodle, who needs her now more than ever. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Fortunately for Freddy, there are new friends, and the insight of advice columnists like Anna Vice to help her through being a teenager in love.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Minor Leagues #8 </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">By Simon Moreton </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Available <b><a href="https://smoo.bigcartel.com/product/minor-leagues-8-where-pt-3" target="_blank">HERE</a></b>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“The eight issue of <i>Minor Leagues</i> is entirely given over to part three of 'Where?', a book-length memoir that explores life, death, history, landscape, and nature in the South Shropshire hills. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This installment is a fever dream of remembering childhood; a visual essay of country living through the unreliable eyes of a child; drawings, paintings, comics, found archival text, photos, weird stuff.”
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--4AEi67GvNw/XUdCKa140sI/AAAAAAAAoFI/3Aokk2PaHbo1GXxmGf9aTmPHHsPQBS-_wCEwYBhgL/s1600/Minor%2BLeagues%2B%25238%2BSimon%2BMoreton%2B1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--4AEi67GvNw/XUdCKa140sI/AAAAAAAAoFI/3Aokk2PaHbo1GXxmGf9aTmPHHsPQBS-_wCEwYBhgL/s400/Minor%2BLeagues%2B%25238%2BSimon%2BMoreton%2B1.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Gender Queer: A Memoir </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">By Maia Kobabe </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Published by Lion Forge </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Available <b><a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781549304002" target="_blank">HERE</a></b> </span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x80c7rykR-4/XUdC_JFlXDI/AAAAAAAAoFU/uxcNMLIVuFEbHq37G_B7zOKUzTaod7WBgCLcBGAs/s1600/Gender%2BQueer%2BA%2BMemoir%2BMaia%2BKobabe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="594" data-original-width="414" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x80c7rykR-4/XUdC_JFlXDI/AAAAAAAAoFU/uxcNMLIVuFEbHq37G_B7zOKUzTaod7WBgCLcBGAs/s640/Gender%2BQueer%2BA%2BMemoir%2BMaia%2BKobabe.jpg" width="446" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Now, <i>Gender Queer</i> is here. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, <i>Gender Queer </i>is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.” </span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bI-4s_CLHkg/XUdC_HAO68I/AAAAAAAAoFY/eEwiZmnhxMMOaZS6uWZW4Zr0MVFJ1atKQCEwYBhgL/s1600/Gender%2BQueer%2BA%2BMemoir%2BMaia%2BKobabe%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="378" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bI-4s_CLHkg/XUdC_HAO68I/AAAAAAAAoFY/eEwiZmnhxMMOaZS6uWZW4Zr0MVFJ1atKQCEwYBhgL/s640/Gender%2BQueer%2BA%2BMemoir%2BMaia%2BKobabe%2B1.jpg" width="448" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>BTTM FDRS </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Written by Ezra Claytan Daniels, Illustrated by Ben Passmore </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Published by Fantagraphics </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Available <b><a href="http://www.fantagraphics.com/bttm-fdrs/" target="_blank">HERE</a></b> </span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wKC751fLLRk/XUdD0DWVxNI/AAAAAAAAoFk/GP5U4IuPOKEhK-OmaKYar3TXcm7TYJZiQCLcBGAs/s1600/BTTM%2BFDRS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1292" data-original-width="1600" height="322" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wKC751fLLRk/XUdD0DWVxNI/AAAAAAAAoFk/GP5U4IuPOKEhK-OmaKYar3TXcm7TYJZiQCLcBGAs/s400/BTTM%2BFDRS.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“This Afrofuturist graphic novel explores gentrification and cultural appropriation with a clever blend of horror and humor. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Once a thriving working-class neighborhood on Chicago’s south side, the “Bottomyards” is now the definition of urban blight. When an aspiring fashion designer and her image-obsessed BFF descend upon the hood in search of cheap rent, they discover something far more seductive... and deadly. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Gentrification and body horror collide in this brutal satire from the award-winning creators of <i>Upgrade Soul </i>and <i>Your Black Friend</i>.” </span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h2ExciG_sn4/XUdDzbmv4rI/AAAAAAAAoFg/3vMOxJ8kqfYfTNEQ1OQgdZCVbetNg2opACLcBGAs/s1600/BTTM%2BFDRS%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1193" data-original-width="1600" height="297" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h2ExciG_sn4/XUdDzbmv4rI/AAAAAAAAoFg/3vMOxJ8kqfYfTNEQ1OQgdZCVbetNg2opACLcBGAs/s400/BTTM%2BFDRS%2B1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Boogsy </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">By Michelle Kwon </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Published by Shortbox </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Available <b><a href="https://www.shortbox.co.uk/product/boogsy-by-michelle-kwon" target="_blank">HERE</a></b> </span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GZT-aEvtEHU/XUdEQ1FsP8I/AAAAAAAAoFw/Lh_BDVNIcsMsN5Lr7UsMqZuYMhLhLITfgCLcBGAs/s1600/Boogsy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="804" data-original-width="602" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GZT-aEvtEHU/XUdEQ1FsP8I/AAAAAAAAoFw/Lh_BDVNIcsMsN5Lr7UsMqZuYMhLhLITfgCLcBGAs/s640/Boogsy.jpg" width="478" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Does sticky have to be icky? Mac is at one of life's dead-ends: no job, no motivation, no idea about what to do, and living at her twin sister's place while she (sort of) tries to figure it all out. Into this picture arrives Boogsy- a boyfriend made up entirely of her sentient boogers. The two instantly embark on a relationship, and, it seems, down a path of further self-destructive behaviors.” </span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kQC6L6n4FMk/XUdEZR-5tfI/AAAAAAAAoF0/Dq0nHcl1H5MFnMnYUEYWJKRNlsSVx-RcwCLcBGAs/s1600/Boogsy%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="698" data-original-width="510" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kQC6L6n4FMk/XUdEZR-5tfI/AAAAAAAAoF0/Dq0nHcl1H5MFnMnYUEYWJKRNlsSVx-RcwCLcBGAs/s640/Boogsy%2B1.jpg" width="466" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Frontier #18 </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">By Tiffany Ford </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Published by Youth in Decline </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Available <b><a href="http://www.youthindecline.com/product/frontier-18-tiffany-ford" target="_blank">HERE</a></b> </span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5eofqojWmNY/XUdEpcHWFeI/AAAAAAAAoGA/CXuBRtTWtA0wZOhzVLhuJ2zKADDpy4ugQCLcBGAs/s1600/frontier18_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="844" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5eofqojWmNY/XUdEpcHWFeI/AAAAAAAAoGA/CXuBRtTWtA0wZOhzVLhuJ2zKADDpy4ugQCLcBGAs/s640/frontier18_cover.jpg" width="540" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“For the final 2018 issue of <i>Frontier</i>, Animator Tiffany Ford shares with readers a refreshingly immediate and raw side of her work. Tiffany presents sketches, studies, and daily comics pulled from her own diary, kept in a sketchbook on her honeymoon traveling in Japan with her husband Myles.”
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JbE4dl20Biw/XUdEpa7JOqI/AAAAAAAAoF8/iZyIc-fEpQApYvMfJ-INBsM7MDwMaA0PACLcBGAs/s1600/frontier18_cover%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="658" data-original-width="900" height="291" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JbE4dl20Biw/XUdEpa7JOqI/AAAAAAAAoF8/iZyIc-fEpQApYvMfJ-INBsM7MDwMaA0PACLcBGAs/s400/frontier18_cover%2B1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">By Molly Mendoza </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Published by Nobrow Press </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Available <b><a href="https://nobrow.net/shop/skip/" target="_blank">HERE</a></b> </span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eGcr497keeM/XUdFD9GUSVI/AAAAAAAAoGU/iPsOtY5jWF0YOPTV1FS3LB7i6szbCxl8ACLcBGAs/s1600/Skip_Cover-RGB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1192" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eGcr497keeM/XUdFD9GUSVI/AAAAAAAAoGU/iPsOtY5jWF0YOPTV1FS3LB7i6szbCxl8ACLcBGAs/s640/Skip_Cover-RGB.jpg" width="476" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“In this epic tale of friendship, compassion, and growth, Molly Mendoza’s stunning art and gripping storytelling immerse you in alternate worlds filled with mystical creatures and dazzling landscapes.
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When Bloom is thrown from their world, and Gloopy is exiled from their own, the two youngsters find in each other a much-needed kindred spirit. But as they skip through dimensions and encounter weeping giants, alligator islands and topsy-turvy 2D worlds, they find that their greatest challenge will be facing their own fears back home.” </span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xlUuqwmY07o/XUdFDv4TZbI/AAAAAAAAoGQ/MOLxk80XZkYJfWS04wQAKyZsOgVlcuIgwCLcBGAs/s1600/Skip_Cover-RGB%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xlUuqwmY07o/XUdFDv4TZbI/AAAAAAAAoGQ/MOLxk80XZkYJfWS04wQAKyZsOgVlcuIgwCLcBGAs/s400/Skip_Cover-RGB%2B1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Threadbare </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">By Gareth Brookes </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Available <b><a href="http://www.gbrookes.com/" target="_blank">HERE</a></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Zhj7qq4FOqo/XUdFVsM637I/AAAAAAAAoGk/3F1xW-wKp4MRSJb0K4EUDJeTZ0o-YeKSwCLcBGAs/s1600/Threadbare%2BGareth%2BBrookes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1061" data-original-width="750" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Zhj7qq4FOqo/XUdFVsM637I/AAAAAAAAoGk/3F1xW-wKp4MRSJb0K4EUDJeTZ0o-YeKSwCLcBGAs/s640/Threadbare%2BGareth%2BBrookes.jpg" width="452" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A beautifully embroidered comic that captures an overheard candid and moving conversation about love between two elderly ladies on the train</span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M3CZQhhxzMY/XUdFVUnqE_I/AAAAAAAAoGg/x1MhNIFBwQIbBzsHIv3cIRZ-gCrT3OBXQCLcBGAs/s1600/Threadbare%2BGareth%2BBrookes%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="724" data-original-width="1024" height="282" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M3CZQhhxzMY/XUdFVUnqE_I/AAAAAAAAoGg/x1MhNIFBwQIbBzsHIv3cIRZ-gCrT3OBXQCLcBGAs/s400/Threadbare%2BGareth%2BBrookes%2B1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Steve Gerber: Conversations </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Edited by Jason Sacks, Eric Hoffman, and Dominick Grace </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Published by University Press of Mississippi </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Available <a href="http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/2217" target="_blank"><b>HERE</b></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UDOvSeQvtPI/XUdAYBcgajI/AAAAAAAAoD8/fdlSTBb1UUsh1G0q-Yg62Xv8D4S_k0EGACLcBGAs/s1600/Steve%2BGerber%2BConversations.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="333" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UDOvSeQvtPI/XUdAYBcgajI/AAAAAAAAoD8/fdlSTBb1UUsh1G0q-Yg62Xv8D4S_k0EGACLcBGAs/s640/Steve%2BGerber%2BConversations.jpg" width="426" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Steve Gerber (1947-2008) is among the most significant comics writers of the modern era. Best known for his magnum opus <i>Howard the Duck</i>, he also wrote influential series such as <i>Man-Thing, Omega the Unknown, The Phantom Zone,</i> and <i>Hard Time</i>, expressing a combination of intelligence and empathy rare in American comics. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Gerber rose to prominence during the 1970s. His work for Marvel Comics during that era helped revitalize several increasingly clichéd generic conventions of superhero, horror, and funny animal comics by inserting satire, psychological complexity, and existential absurdism. Gerber's scripts were also often socially conscious, confronting, among other things, capitalism, environmentalism, political corruption, and censorship. His critique also extended into the personal sphere, addressing such taboo topics as domestic violence, racism, inequality, and poverty. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This volume follows Gerber's career through a range of interviews, beginning with his height during the 1970s and ending with an interview with Michael Eury just before Gerber's death in 2008. Among the pieces featured is a 1976 interview with Mark Lerer, originally published in the low-circulation fanzine <i>Pittsburgh Fan Forum</i>, where Gerber looks back on his work for Marvel during the early to mid-1970s, his most prolific period. This volume concludes with selections from Gerber's dialogue with his readers and admirers in online forums and a Gerber-based Yahoo Group, wherein he candidly discusses his many projects over the years.” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: 16px;"><b>Daniel Elkin is the EIC of Your Chicken Enemy, the Former Small-Press Comics Editor for <a href="http://comicsbulletin.com/byline/daniel-elkin/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">Comics Bulletin</a>, and has Bylines at<span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.87);"> </span><a href="http://loser-city.com/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: #4285f4; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Loser City</a><span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.87);">, <a href="http://www.tcj.com/reviews/vision-part-1/" target="_blank">The Comics Journal</a>, </span><a href="http://psychodrivein.com/author/daniel-elkin/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: #4285f4; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Psycho Drive-In</a><span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.87);">, </span><a href="http://winkbooks.net/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: #4285f4; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Wink</a><span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.87);">, </span><a href="http://factioncomics.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: #4285f4; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Factional</a><span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.87);">, </span><a href="http://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2016/05/25/comics-everyone-say-goodbye-comics-cola/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: #4285f4; text-decoration-line: none;">WWAC</a><span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.87);">, </span>and<span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.87);"> </span><a href="https://gumroad.com/panelxpanel" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: #4285f4; text-decoration-line: none;">PanelXPanel</a><span style="color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.87);">. He</span>'s a High School English Teacher in Northern California. He'll talk to you about Sandwiches.</b></span>Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-72128556430887204592019-08-07T06:00:00.000-07:002019-08-07T06:00:05.770-07:00A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things: Rob Clough reviews THE SEA by Rikke Villadsen<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1c1e29; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">The vast sea is still a potent go-to metaphor for any number of things: mystery, death, eternity, etc. For <b>Rikke Villadsen</b>, it's also an opportunity to explore toxic masculinity, the erosion of ego, and desire. In </span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><b><a href="http://www.fantagraphics.com/the-sea/" target="_blank">The Sea</a></b></em><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">, Villadsen eschews inks and colors, and, instead, the pages are shot directly from her thick, scribbly pencils. This gives the book a rough and slightly distorted quality that adds to the heightened sense of strangeness throughout. From the very beginning of the book, Villadsen puts "reality" on rocky ground by way of a series of narrative techniques that turn in on themselves halfway through the book. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first few pages are crucial to understanding the rest of the action. Three pages of watching an old salt tie knots on his little fishing dinghy are followed by him suddenly turning toward the reader (or no one in particular) and narrating his story. What story is happening? Who is telling it, and to whom? He is insistent on being called a sailor, not just a fisherman, oddly narrating his story through a series of tattoos, most of which are of naked women. Indeed, he speaks of being unable to choose between "</span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">whores in harbor and spices in cargo</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">," but, in this, he indicates his superficial level of engagement with anyone and his understanding of the world as a series of commodities. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His nemesis at sea is the fog, an apt metaphor for a character who professes that all he has left are his memories. When those are fogged up, he feels that his doom is at hand. Through the first twenty pages of the book, this is still just a story of a fisherman lost at sea, until he pulls in his net and finds a baby and a talking fish. What follows is a hilarious, bizarre series of arguments between the sailor, the fish, and the baby. The fish relentlessly insults the sailor, including scolding him for his use of the word "<i>fuck</i>" instead of something like "<i>chowderhead</i>." Worse, he calls the fisherman an amateur, taunting him that he'll never find shore in order to sell them at auction. The fish mocks him for being afraid of the seagulls as well.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is an insult at an existential level. The fisherman has no identity outside of seeing himself as a sailor. That kind of insult is a total negation of self, and the fisherman undermines himself further by not swearing as a sailor should. The fisherman delays further self-examination by questioning the baby on its origins, which leads to a segue to the sea and then to a woman on an island. After pouring a cup of what appears to be her own menstrual blood in the ocean, she "nurses" the pot she poured it out of and calls it her child. Villadsen then flips this maternal scene on its ear as she starts goofing around with the pot and transitions from silliness to pure desire. The woman strips, and, for lack of a better way to describe it, she fucks the lighthouse on her island. This is an eight-page segment, four panels to a page, and the way Villadsen draws the woman drawing pleasure and fulfilling her desire with her "partner" is not played for laughs at all. This is not to say that it isn't absurd, with the final panel of the top of the lighthouse lighting up, as if it were experiencing an orgasm. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As strange as the whole experience seems, Villadsen grounds it in an almost visceral sense of reality. The woman's body language, her facial expressions, and the way she touches herself and the lighthouse are sensuous in a way that most sex scenes in comics aren't. The nearest comparison I can think of for that kind of in-the-moment rawness is <b>Julia Gfrörer</b>, who also uses the gritty quality of fine pencil work to achieve that stark, unadorned sexuality stripped of fantasy and pretense. This is why that scene has such a charge: it's a fantasy sequence, depicting something impossible, yet in a way that feels authentic and lived-in. There's no deception at work here. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the other hand, the story the fisherman spins about his mother is told with words as well as images. However, the text serves to frequently undermine the pictures, as the fisherman is an unreliable narrator. As his memory falters, the words serve only to obfuscate meaning and memory. He conflates dreams, fantasies, and actual events, unable to remember if the branches he recalled were really scraping the window of his nursery or if his mother's breast was brittle and wooden. He's inadvertently fooling himself as well as the reader. It's all in line with the narrative slowly dismantling his inflated sense of ego.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If the first part of the book is introductions and the second part is origins, then the final section is all about exits. A storm picks up, the fisherman panics and gets seasick as the fish continues to berate him. It's another attack on not only his identity but his masculinity as well. For this character, being a sailor is the same thing as being a man -- being a "fisherman" is nothing if not emasculating. Being a sailor implies bravery, bold narratives, steely nerves, and unshakable courage. Being a fisherman means physical weakness, fragility, literally diminished status (with regard to the size of his boat), and cowardice. When the baby then disappears, and the fisherman questions why, the fish says, "<i>What baby?</i>" Then the fish says maybe he's imagining the baby and that there's a talking fish there. The waves break on his boat, finally removing all illusions of control at last, and he winds up on a shore, face down, being picked at by the gulls that he despised. The last thing to go for the fisherman is his grip on reality itself. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The final image is of the woman from the baby's story, who looks at the fisherman, the bones of the fish, and the pot, and remarks "</span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then the child will come soon and the tale will end</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">." Whose tale is it? Hers? The baby's? Or is the title of the book more than just a setting, and is this a story about the sea itself (or is it herself)? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What we learn is that it's not the fisherman's story, not really. He's only a small part of it, even though his ego demands that he's a great sailor, a master of the sea. The reality is that he's a man in a tiny dinghy, afraid of gulls and prone to seasickness. His identity, wrapped in the masculine ideal of the sailor, is a sham. The sea -- both mother and father -- is the true force here. Respect it, as the woman does, and you will find yourself a part of its great mystery. If you earn its scorn, you will wind up like the fisherman: dead, stripped of identity, and forgotten. </span></div>
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<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">The Sea</em><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">, despite its seemingly simple veneer, is deeply rich in imagery and symbology and can be interpreted as a feminist text, an ecological text, and a detailed account of one man's descent into existential terror. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: normal;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;"><b><a href="http://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Rob%20Clough" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Rob Clough</a> has written about comics for Cicada, the Comics Journal, Sequential, <a href="http://tcj.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">tcj.com</a>,</b></span><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, FreeSerif, serif;" /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;"><b><a href="http://sequart.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">sequart.com</a>, Savant, Foxing Quarterly, Studygroup Magazine, as well as for his own blog, High-Low (<a href="http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">highlowcomics.blogspot.com</a>).</b></span></span></span></div>
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Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-11532374708158512692019-08-05T06:00:00.000-07:002019-08-05T06:00:04.317-07:00Letting the Devil In: Nicholas Burman reviews THE PURITAN’S WIFE by Liam Cobb<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1c1e29; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_fK7g3n-pr0/XUW32xoxHOI/AAAAAAAAoCc/DIH3eKmMGJ4AR40gJfmF_AR89E4KmCCvgCLcBGAs/s1600/The%2BPuritan%2527s%2BWife%2BLiam%2BCobb%2Bcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="786" data-original-width="566" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_fK7g3n-pr0/XUW32xoxHOI/AAAAAAAAoCc/DIH3eKmMGJ4AR40gJfmF_AR89E4KmCCvgCLcBGAs/s640/The%2BPuritan%2527s%2BWife%2BLiam%2BCobb%2Bcover.jpg" width="460" /></a></div>
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<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><b><a href="http://www.ottopress.co.uk/the-puritan-s-wife.html" target="_blank">The Puritan’s Wife</a></b></em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> is something of a thematic and stylistic variation of what one might expect from its author. <b>Liam Cobb</b> is an artist usually associated with pastel shades and surreal modernist settings. In previous works, such as </span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">The Fever Closing</em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> and </span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">The Inspector </em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">(previously <a href="https://www.yourchickenenemy.com/2019/04/check-please-ryan-carey-reviews.html" target="_blank">reviewed on </a></span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.yourchickenenemy.com/2019/04/check-please-ryan-carey-reviews.html" target="_blank">YCE</a></em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> by Ryan Carey), he has taken great pleasure in re-contextualizing recognizable figures such as Bibendum and Mayor McCheese, while taking a sideways glance at contemporary issues. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its title, <i>The Puritan's</i> </span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Wife</em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> is neither warm nor modern. Cobb has put together a tale that encapsulates many of the stereotypes of 17th century New England settlements and settlers, with the obligatory miasma of witchcraft thrown in for good measure.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">The opening page is a clear indication of the tone of the rest of the work. The reader is positioned looking up from six feet under; our view is eventually obscured by earth shoveled on top of us. It’s a claustrophobia-forming introduction. The comic remains silent for nearly six more pages, encouraging the reader to focus their energies on the mourners and the austere commune they live in (itself framed by a forest). While the characters may be physically positioned in the great expanse which is, to them, the New World, that sense of claustrophobia from the first page is echoed with a repetitive and precise six-panel layout which dominates much of the book. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">In </span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">The Puritan’s Wife</em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">, events take place in an isolated community led by John Cotton, the patriarch of this particular flock. The aforementioned funeral was for a child, one of a handful of the God-fearing community’s young who have passed away recently due to illness. From here on in the reader becomes embroiled in a family drama set in the context of a small-minded cult, in which subsequent deaths make members of the commune suspicious that black magic is at play. It all concludes in a suitably dramatic and somewhat biblical manner. Cobb keeps the plot moving along with enough pace and narrative precision to keep you involved, even as you develop pessimistic premonitions of what’s ahead. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">The story itself isn’t wholly original, but that is part of the appeal of such a tale. Puritan Horror is a subgenre with certain conventions and themes. In a review of M. Night Shyamalan 2004’s film </span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/film/somethings-in-the-woods-7381993.html" target="_blank">The Village</a></em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">, critic Will Self wrote that “<i>the US owes its character to [...] schismatics - whether Puritans, Amish or Mormons, heading off into the wilderness so that they can live according to their conception of the good, free from the corrupting influences of the parent society</i>.” The dramatization and exploitation of these historical scenarios lay at the heart of Puritan Horror, and <i>The Puritan's </i></span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Wife</em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> is a great example of the category. Consequently, fans of </span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">The Crucible</em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> or </span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">The VVitch</em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> will find plenty to enjoy here. And thankfully, the ending, as well as further details about the commune itself, is just ambiguous enough to lend the work an identity which doesn’t feel totally copycat. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">A benefit of genre is that spectators are not expecting to be surprised by the plot (in broad terms, we often know what’s coming), but can instead take pleasure in the style and execution of the work. With his more common dayglo environments on pause for this volume, Cobb seems interested in ensuring that the various textures of his tools are on display in this grayscale work. In terms of style, </span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">The Puritan’s Wife</em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> seems to be Cobb returning to his self-published 2016 work </span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Green Graves</em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">. Pencil and crayon marks are left to represent the dust and dirt of the New England landscape. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">As Ellen, a key protagonist and maligned member of the commune, walks into the woods, frenetic oiled chalk marks represent her impressions of the shrubs and underbrush. The sense that the commune’s surrounding ecosystem can be flattened into abstraction reoccurs in the comic’s final moments. These flashes of distortion reinforce the notion that this is a world dictated by subjects whose perspectives sometimes wildly differ from typical representations. These representations of nature are reminiscent of van Gogh’s </span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Tree Roots</em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">, in which personal, psychological troubles collide with obscure, natural patterns; both ended up representing the other.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Background details are sparse. Thanks to the modesty of the lives of the inhabitants, there isn’t much to show. Cobb adopts gradients to create a soft binary between above and below. The use of halftone repeatedly creates a distinction between the dark “up there” and the bright “down here” in many panels. This isn’t only appropriate period detail, as the only source of light is from candles and torches, it also creates an ominous atmosphere befitting the plot.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Aside from one splash page and a handful of oversized panels, the page layouts remain in a two by six formula throughout. Within this regimental structure, small motions and hesitant expressions take center stage. This is a story which mostly occurs at the level of intimate gestures in tight, domestic spaces, and <i>The Puritan's </i></span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Wife</em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> beautifully showcases Cobb’s gift of being able to draw a story that relies on non-verbal, interpersonal actions. While being so minimalist with its deployment of typically “action” set pieces, <i>The Puritan's </i></span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Wife</em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> would be best described as an action book, albeit actions of the minutest type.</span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ECYs66-rDyc/XUW6IKaet-I/AAAAAAAAoC0/kKEY7iYOGUY2r5birWdzqXst24X6mwSCQCLcBGAs/s1600/The%2BPuritan%2527s%2BWife%2BLiam%2BCobb%2B3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="813" data-original-width="1079" height="301" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ECYs66-rDyc/XUW6IKaet-I/AAAAAAAAoC0/kKEY7iYOGUY2r5birWdzqXst24X6mwSCQCLcBGAs/s400/The%2BPuritan%2527s%2BWife%2BLiam%2BCobb%2B3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As many of the face-to-face encounters take place indoors, the characters are often surrounded by bare, wood walls. Rather than ensure through digital processes that the patterns of these backgrounds are coherent for each repeated shot, Cobb has instead allowed his free-flowing hand to imagine these patterns anew each time. This gives the somewhat magical realist impression that the characters’ surroundings are in constant flux and that there is a slippery, psychedelic quality to the commune. This also ties in nicely with the impressionistic flourish to the representation of nature and the forest discussed above. It seems that no matter how much the religious mind attempts to give order to the world, the messiness of nature will, much like the devil, enter the home and bring chaos with it regardless.</span></div>
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<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">The Puritan's Wife </em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">is published by the UK’s <b>Otto Press</b>, a quality outlet for a range of artists and experiments based in London. Imperfections in the booklet, such as the fact that the width of each sheet doesn’t quite match, and that art regularly bleeds into the margins and over gutters, seem purposeful. They’re nice aesthetic touches for a work that thankfully largely avoids overbearing and distracting design quirks such as a “ye olde Englishe” font.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Cobb has made his name by sampling cultural icons and reappropriating classic storylines (his long-form work </span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">The Prince</em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> was a reappraisal of the Frog Prince fairytale). In his imagining of Cotton’s commune, Cobb encapsulates society’s ideas of the isolated and superstitious community, in which the hatred of women is never far from materializing and escape seems impossible, thanks to the mental prison bars as much as any physical barriers. In the exterior scenes, it is clear the characters are never far from the impenetrable silhouette of the trees, and you imagine this acting as an invisible wall. The final sequence suggests that the outside world will swallow you whole, that nature will overwhelm you. The reader is left wondering just how long the community can last before the roots and the whims of the wider world will overcome it, too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="color: #222222; white-space: normal;"><span style="color: #444444;"><b><a href="https://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Nicholas%20Burman" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Nicholas Burman</a> is currently based in Amsterdam, from where he writes about comics, experimental music, ambient artistic practices, and DIY culture for The Comics Journal, MusicMap, and Amsterdam Alternative, among others. You can find his portfolio at: <a href="https://nicholascburman.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">https://nicholascburman.com/</a></b></span></span></span></span></div>
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Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-69421363847932863162019-07-29T06:00:00.000-07:002019-07-29T06:00:07.755-07:00“Peaking” At The Right Time: Ryan Carey reviews BICYCLE DAY by Brian Blomerth<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pdgSgrmYkuw/XT3hm3EV1kI/AAAAAAAAn_U/YSkAnwD2MVwHp4k4rau9dMT9vopfzHpKgCLcBGAs/s1600/Bicycle%2BDay%2BBrian%2BBlomerth%2Bcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1095" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pdgSgrmYkuw/XT3hm3EV1kI/AAAAAAAAn_U/YSkAnwD2MVwHp4k4rau9dMT9vopfzHpKgCLcBGAs/s640/Bicycle%2BDay%2BBrian%2BBlomerth%2Bcover.jpg" width="438" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With his debut graphic novel, <b><i><a href="https://shop.mexicansummer.com/product/brian-blomerth-bicycle-day/" target="_blank">Bicycle Day</a></i></b>, Brooklyn-based cartoonist and commercial illustrator <b>Brian Blomerth</b> has set for himself a fairly daunting challenge: to not just illustrate, but to <i>visually communicate</i>, a historical "first." And not just any historical "first", but one that involved entering another state of consciousness altogether --- the world's very first acid trip, deliberately undertaken by Swiss chemist/armchair mystic Albert Hofmann on April 19th, 1943, ostensibly as part of his daily research duties for the Sandoz pharmaceutical corporation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first thing he did after "turning on"? Apologies to Freddie Mercury, but --- get on his bike and ride!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, any number of rock album/poster artists (of which Blomerth can number himself) have produced deliberately "trippy" images over the years, but by and large the "target market" for this type of artwork, and the recordings and/or concerts it advertises, is composed of people who have already "turned on" at least a time or two. In this day and age, however, with LSD use having plummeted to a depressing degree as young people have swapped out consciousness-expanding drugs in favor of consciousness-negating drugs such as crystal meth, it's fair to say that a good chunk of Blomerth's prospective readership has never tripped --- and that's all well and good, I suppose, because the protagonist in this handsome Anthology Editions-published book never had when we meet him, either.</span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T83ISIXufNs/XT3h5kdqLoI/AAAAAAAAn_c/JBFmcS0-X_4Si1PYnnRaam9LBDQXucQmACLcBGAs/s1600/Bicycle%2BDay%2BBrian%2BBlomerth%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T83ISIXufNs/XT3h5kdqLoI/AAAAAAAAn_c/JBFmcS0-X_4Si1PYnnRaam9LBDQXucQmACLcBGAs/s400/Bicycle%2BDay%2BBrian%2BBlomerth%2B1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cue, in the early going, what one would expect in terms of kaleidoscopic line art and rich, fluid color, albeit to a far greater degree --- telling his story entirely by means of double-page spreads, Blomerth quite simply never lets up, establishing a tone of unreality early on (Hoffman, and all other "human" characters in the book, being portrayed as anthropomorphic dogs) and then going from there through various ebbs, valleys, highways, and byways of the psychedelic experience in a (to invoke the obvious term) mind-bending succession of arresting, utterly inexplicable imagery that evokes not just the look and feel but, most essentially, the <i>character </i>of the LSD experience for a first-time user. Hell, for <b>THE </b>first-time user.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shapes that aren't shapes move and/or stay perfectly still, sometimes simultaneously, in front of, behind, or even within backgrounds that might be foregrounds which might be real that might be <i>un</i>real that --- honestly, a few pages in (after some cursory introductory "dialogue" composed primarily of yodeling), Blomerth forces the reader to stop attempting to define, demarcate, discern, or even describe what they are seeing, and simply go with the gently inexorable flow, which is about as authentic an approximation of the LSD experience as one is likely to find committed to paper. Unless we're talking about blotter paper.</span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eqgADJOifkg/XT3iS569gaI/AAAAAAAAn_k/IVCumPdZ2LIr6o7TpWXeA_S5IZee5c8pwCLcBGAs/s1600/Bicycle%2BDay%2BBrian%2BBlomerth%2B2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eqgADJOifkg/XT3iS569gaI/AAAAAAAAn_k/IVCumPdZ2LIr6o7TpWXeA_S5IZee5c8pwCLcBGAs/s400/Bicycle%2BDay%2BBrian%2BBlomerth%2B2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's most definitely a progression in the first "act" (I term I use very loosely) here, and a "wind-down" near the end, but, by and large, it's not like Blomerth necessarily commits to "one-upping" himself with each successive spread. Things tone down then ramp back up without warning and without regard to expectation, the ideas of "pacing" and "narrative thrust" are left as far behind in the Day-Glo dust as consensus reality itself, again intuitively mimicking the very nature of every acid trip (at least every one I've ever taken, never having experienced the mythical "bad trip" myself --- which, like the "acid flashback," I've always, and probably accurately, dismissed as just so much "just say no" propaganda), while utilizing Hoffman’s bike ride and the perspective of a true “first-timer” to present it all through fresh eyes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Veterans of the psychedelic experience may be tempted, at the point, to think that there must be something of an "LSD For Beginners" vibe to Blomerth's comic, and that's not entirely inaccurate, but I'd implore such readers to keep an open mind (shouldn't be too tough if you're an experienced "acid head") and think back to their very first trip. Wouldn't it be amazing to feel something like that all over again? That's the effect Blomerth is going for --- and, to his great credit, he manages to pull it off more often than not.</span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nopwku30sLY/XT3id2hApWI/AAAAAAAAn_o/NHbrUuaGiyAmAmfBMhJVGEcyqhbXXfDiACLcBGAs/s1600/Bicycle%2BDay%2BBrian%2BBlomerth%2B3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nopwku30sLY/XT3id2hApWI/AAAAAAAAn_o/NHbrUuaGiyAmAmfBMhJVGEcyqhbXXfDiACLcBGAs/s400/Bicycle%2BDay%2BBrian%2BBlomerth%2B3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a matter of fact, whether such was Blomerth's intention or not (and bonus points to him if it was), this book functions as a very successful piece of "pro-drug" -- specifically pro-<i>psychedelic</i> -- propaganda, portraying the experience as not only something inherently beneficial and expansive, but also as something that's been so from the very start. As such, then, it not only serves as a kind of visual travelogue through altered and heightened states of consciousness, but as a necessary, even long-overdue, counterpoint to the anti-drug hysteria that the American public has been inundated with for decades, resulting in one generation after another of too few people who have “turned on.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Forward written by ethnopharmacologist Dennis McKenna aside (not that it's poorly written, mind you, anything but), the book even has something of a youthful, future-focused quality to it. Blomerth's deliberately Disney-esque characters and his utilization of modern digital coloring techniques are elements that should very much appeal to younger readers out there.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A children's book about LSD? Hey, stranger things have happened --- but you certainly don't <i>need </i>to be a kid to glean a tremendous amount from <i>Bicycle Day</i>. Whether you've tripped hundreds of times, only tried acid a time or two, or have never touched the stuff, Blomerth creates a universal first-time experience to which anyone can relate, and some may even feel compelled to replicate for themselves. If any readers out there have a decent LSD connection, please don't hesitate to hit me up --- I'm middle-aged and every "dealer" I ever knew has moved on to the same straight-laced world of 9-to-5 that I find myself in. Until I can get ahold of another hit of purple microdot (or whatever is out there these days) myself, though, Blomerth's explosion of visual invention is a more than acceptable substitute for, and evocation of, the very best that the psychedelic experience has to offer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Ryan%20Carey" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Ryan Carey</a> lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He writes about comics for <a href="http://dailygrindhouse.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">Daily Grindhouse</a></span>,<span class="js-display-url"></span><span class="invisible" style="line-height: 0; visibility: hidden;"></span><span class="tco-ellipsis"><span class="invisible" style="line-height: 0; visibility: hidden;"></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> <a href="http://graphicpolicy.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">Graphic Policy</a></span>,<span class="js-display-url"></span><span class="invisible" style="line-height: 0; visibility: hidden;"></span><span class="tco-ellipsis"><span class="invisible" style="line-height: 0; visibility: hidden;"></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> and at his own <a href="http://fourcolorapocalypse.wordpress.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">blog</a>.</span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> He also maintains a long-running film review blog, <a href="https://trashfilmguru.wordpress.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">Trash Film Guru</a>.</span></span></b></span></div>
Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-60973422548672007682019-07-22T05:00:00.000-07:002019-07-23T03:51:48.078-07:00“I Haven't Made Any Concessions”: Nicholas Burman in Conversation with MAIA MATCHES, Comix Artist and Amsterdam’s City Illustrator<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"><i>Amsterdam based, Canadian born cartoonist and comics creator <b><a href="https://www.maiamatches.com/" target="_blank">Maia Matches</a></b> is a prominent name in the Dutch capital’s comix scene. Alongside her numerous zines, collaborative newspapers, and long-form sequential works, she also regularly produces posters for concerts and club nights. </i></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Her work can generally be split into two categories. Firstly, the sex satire, inspired by cartoonists such as R. Crumb but told from a staunchly female perspective. Her “The Bitch” character is one such example: a no-nonsense, S&M loving, INCEL-fighting action woman. She also produces journalistic work, often regarding the squatting and autonomous communities that were once a hallmark of Dutch culture, and often also depicts broader social discourses ranging from migrant crises and immigrant rights to sex and gender politics. </i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>It is perhaps because of this interest in the political, combined with a track record of cooperative work and journalistic integrity, which won her the title of <a href="https://www.amsterdam.nl/stadsarchief/organisatie/verwerving-0/stadstekenaar/" target="_blank">Stadstekenaar van Amsterdam</a> (City Illustrator of Amsterdam) for 2019. This position finds her and her work being brought into much more mainstream spaces than most comix creators are used to, but also shows that there is still some interest in the halls of city’s government buildings to promote some of the rebellious spirit that drew Maia to the city in the early 2000s. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #444444;">I caught up with Maia over email, and at her studio in De Pijp, an Amsterdam neighborhood currently succumbing to rapid gentrification, to discuss her work, her role as City Illustrator, and the importance of social spaces for zine culture and artists.</span> </i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Nicholas Burman</b>: Your work is orientated around various feminist topics and is quite focused on sex (and sexual organs). What's your goal with these portrayals, and what are you aiming to bring to the page that you think is missing, or misrepresented, elsewhere? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Maia Matches:</b> The goal is to intensify the representation of the female gaze. At every comics festival I attend, all over the world, I look for "The Other Bitch". I couldn’t believe that I was the only female artist using a big-breasted, overly assertive, and evil woman as a protagonist, and I have found a few examples from other artists. I love the drawings of Heather Benjamin and Chloë Perkins, but I struggle to see the narrative in their work. There are, of course, many more “Bitches” out there. I salute <i>Super Bitch</i>, <i>Planet Bitch</i>, <i>Big Bitch</i> ... but those comix were written by men! Where are the modern fem/non-binary narratives? That’s where my work comes in.</span><br />
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<b style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">NB</b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">: How did you become the Stadstekenaar, and how you have found being a public figure in a broader way than a lot of comix artists are? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>MM</b>: I became the Stadstekenaar somewhat by coincidence. One fine morning I received a phone call from the City Archives of Amsterdam. It was an invitation to present my work to the board (the Commissie van Tekeningen). To my surprise, I had been nominated, along with two other artists, for the position of Stadstekenaar for 2019. The board keeps a long list of emerging artists (mostly students from the city’s art school, the Rietveld Academy, or so I've heard), which is reduced to a short list, and so forth. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I'm not 100% certain why I was chosen, perhaps my general contributions to the city are being awarded? I was once an initiator/editor of the Amsterdam Comic Newspapers (2012-2016), and I contributed artwork for a graphic novel <i><a href="https://www.bol.com/nl/f/de-kraker-de-agent-de-advocaat-en-de-stad/9200000016170411/" target="_blank">de Kraker, de Agent, de Jurist en de Stad</a></i> (unfortunately this book only exists in Dutch). Whatever the case, the city made a bold choice by appointing me to the job. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">At first, I really thought, “seriously!? Is this a bad joke?” I'm a comic artist, I make sexually explicit comix, which have a blatant cynicism towards the patriarchal system. I haven't forgotten what an enormous privilege it is to have this opportunity, to write freely and to a direct and large audience through having strips the spreads in the national daily newspaper <i>Het Parool</i>. I receive an honorarium for the work, but it doesn't cover all my costs, I will have to work abroad this summer to feed my bank account. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As far as being a public figure... well, I haven't been aware of (what I expected would be) more recognition (if that's what you mean). I have to work very hard to promote my work to a new audience while keeping a few loyal fans updated about upcoming publications. It's a juggling act. Plus, I regularly get requests for small commissions, mostly for charity (my loyalty towards subculture often doesn't allow me to say “no” to these jobs). It's been really hard to make ends meet (I need an agent). </span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>NB</b>: What encouraged you to move to Amsterdam in the first place? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>MM</b>: I was born and raised in Toronto by immigrant parents. When my father offered me a Dutch passport at the age of 18 I didn't hesitate to move across the ocean. I don't know what made me do it, I was just a naïve kid looking for adventure abroad. I stayed with a host family (friends of my parents) for the first nine months. They lived in Drunen, a small town in Brabant. I learned to speak Dutch pretty quickly there. Soon, I was accepted into the art school of 's-Hertogenbosch, where I studied sculpture and joined the squatting community. I lived in Den Bosch for eight years before I could finally move to Amsterdam, where I was sure to become a famous comics artist (!). </span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>NB</b>: You speak about that friction between being "underground" and "mainstream". This seems suspiciously close to the position that comics as a medium has, being both populist and also anti-popular, in a sense. How have you negotiated this friction in your own self since becoming the Stadstekenaar, discussing anti-establishment topics in strips for newspapers and public exhibitions? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>MM</b>: I haven't made any concessions regarding the content or style of my comix for the sake of the city. When I asked the archive board what they found offensive/worthy of censorship, the reply was "don't mix sex with religion". So... no Popes getting BJs?! Eventually, I decided to censor myself and quit drawing erect penises in every scene. I have permitted myself to draw boobs and butts. I can't quit the visual power of naked bodies, I use it to express vulnerability and power in my comix. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>NB</b>: For those who don't know the history of the city, could you speak a bit about the "alternative" and counterculture side to Amsterdam, and how this has inspired your work? It's a very clean and commercial city these days, so new arrivals and visitors are unlikely to get a sense of the culture you're part of... </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>MM</b>: Squatting is about creating a community, and it is a political act. Amsterdam has a strong history of squatting, though nowadays squats are likely to be evicted within a few months of being founded, and often quite violently. To give a relatively recent example: ADM was a legendary and autonomous community-based in the far west of the city. It was home to artists and activists, acted as a venue for events, and a flourishing ecosystem grew over the 21 years it was occupied. Following a long and complicated battle with the municipality in court, on 7 January 2019, the hundred-or-so residents were forcibly removed from their self-built town by police and bulldozers, hired by the terrain’s new owners to demolish the various caravans, houses, and installations, which of course simultaneously disrupted the local ecosystem. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Currently, Amsterdam is promoting itself as a living museum and attracts around 18 million tourists per year. Here, you can buy a waffle in every third shop on the Warmoesstraat, while the authentic “brown-cafés” are being replaced by hipster brunch patios. Also, there is a banner campaign to stop tourists drinking/pissing in the street, which warns of a €140 euro fine if you empty your bladder into a canal. It just seems evident to me that the council is predominantly seeking to accommodate the growing number of expats and tourists, and in the process is putting profit before people. I suppose it's just a matter of time before artists like myself are driven out of the city center, and perhaps the city totally. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Back in 2012, a small group of us started a zine library in the basement of the Fort van Sjakoo, an anarchist bookshop on the Jodenbreestraat. We were eight feminists, POC, trans/non-binary comics artists with a love for zines, coffee, and activism. After three years, we were no longer able to use the basement to host Saturday meet-ups, and that's when our original <i><a href="https://zsazsazine.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Zsa Zsa Zine</a></i> project, unfortunately, fell apart. One of the things I love about my job as the Stadstekenaar is reconnecting with those friends, such as Amsterdam city council member Vreer, Transgender Netwerk Nederland’s communications manager Nora, refugee shelter co-ordinator Pablo, IT expert Jiro, and so many others. It's really inspiring to see their activism continue in a constructive way. Few are as lucky as I am, to have met as many heroes as I have over the past thirteen years. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>NB</b>: Given your experiences of Fort van Sjakoo and Lambiek in Amsterdam, have you got any thoughts on comic/books shops as community and social spaces? How that works, or, if it currently isn't, how it could? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>MM:</b> Lambiek is still a social space for the comic artists of Amsterdam. As for Fort, it lasted for a time, until those spaces were no longer able to facilitate us. Lambiek moved to a smaller location, and Fort found other (paying) tenants for their basement. Other comics shops, such as Beeldverhaal, can host exhibitions, although I find that they are not particularly "inclusive" when it comes to showing the diversity of comics and comics makers. The DIY community has proven itself very capable in this department, but it takes a lot of dedication to maintain initiatives without a budget or stable venue (I learned that the hard way). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When Chad Bilyeu (of Chad in Amsterdam ) and I organized the zine fair STRIPCLUB in September 2018, we had a venue called BAUT at our disposal, and a bit of cash to make a run of posters and flyers. Fortunately, Chad has a brain for business and a long history in the local club scene as a producer and event facilitator. Combined with my extensive list of cool Amsterdam comics artists, we had thought of a plausible concept to promote comics to a new audience. In the end, all the table participants made a profit in sales, as they were not required to pay for the venue, tablespace, or their own travel costs. I had hoped that attendance would hit the roof, but when you have to rely on social media and a sporadic poster trail, we expected that a try-out event such as this would not make media headlines. Nonetheless, I would love to see STRIPCLUB make a comeback and become a regular event in Amsterdam. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A great deal can be accomplished with proper funding, including curating an event that hosts comic artists from other countries. Language is not really an issue, I've gotten by OK so far with English as a primary language. Evidently, even hosting an “international” event does not necessarily require funding, as we've seen Italian comics collective Döner Club accomplish recently at another Amsterdam venue, the OT301. For artists willing to improvise on sleeping arrangements and travel, it is possible to find events where you will be welcomed. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>NB</b>: I was struck by the amount of variety in the Amsterdam Comic Newspapers, the contributors delivered a really diverse range of impressions and thoughts on their local environment. Did you give them guidelines, and more generally, how did you curate the content? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>MM</b>: Artists were encouraged to find their own connection to the neighborhood. Of course, I had to be sure that no one subject matter would be repeated by two or more comic artists, so it was imperative that the artists communicated their ideas to me before starting, and that I also had a list of story ideas ready to inspire them. I hosted several group brainstorming sessions to discuss content (there was cake) and I regularly checked in to get progress reports from the artists. Simultaneously, I worked on a layout plan of the newspaper to determine the flow of the various stories and eventually the pages fell into place... (that makes it sound magical, but really, it was damn stressful!) </span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>NB</b>: How would you summarise the current Dutch comix scene? Are there particular cartoonists whose work you think is deserving of greater attention? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>MM</b>: (I find this to be a difficult question...) The Dutch comic scene is small, and perhaps I feel somewhat alienated from it. Over the last decade, I have worked obsessively to promote comics art as a norm for consuming information (such as via the comic newspapers). Now that I'm focussing on putting my own work forward, I find myself wishing there were more opportunities to highlight the diversity of comics. There just aren't enough mainstream platforms publishing comics in this country. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One collaborative project worth mentioning is the graphic journalism website, <a href="https://drawingthetimes.com/" target="_blank">Drawing the Times</a>. They are showcasing comics artists from all over the world, but the initiative was Amsterdam-born, and it is presently run by two women Eva Hilhorst and Merel Barends, who are also comics artists. Thanks to Drawing the Times, I reworked the <i>FOMO </i>series I had made in 2017 by adding statistics, etc, in order for it to have a more journalistic tone. They have a vision, and that is saving the world with comics... what's not to love about that? </span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>NB</b>: How do you distribute your work, do you get it into shops, or is online retail more of a focus for you? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>MM</b>: Actually, I'm working on a new website which will finally include a webshop but, for the moment, I have pages to fill for <i>Het Parool</i> newspaper, and that is, frankly, the best method of distribution for my work that I can think of, in that it will expose my comics to a wide range and number of humans. Maybe they'll give me a column next year so I can continue bashing politicians. </span><br />
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<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: small;"><span style="color: #222222; white-space: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-size: small;"><b><a href="https://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Nicholas%20Burman" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Nicholas Burman</a> is currently based in Amsterdam, from where he writes about comics, experimental music, ambient artistic practices, and DIY culture for The Comics Journal, MusicMap, and Amsterdam Alternative, among others. You can find his portfolio at:<a href="https://nicholascburman.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">https://nicholascburman.com/</a></b></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-23802975981175524202019-07-17T06:00:00.000-07:002019-07-17T06:00:05.685-07:00An Anthropological Examination Of Family Dysfunction: Ryan Carey Reviews MONKS MOUND by Conor Stechschulte<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oblique connections are a recurring theme in <b>Conor Stechschulte</b>'s ongoing <i>Generous Bosom</i> graphic novel series, but the disparate threads that run parallel to each other in that multi-faceted narrative appear to be heading for some sort of convergence as the sure-to-be-big finale approaches. In his latest self-published standalone comic, though, entitled <b><i><a href="http://crepusculararchives.storenvy.com/products/26900874-monks-mound" target="_blank">Monks Mound</a></i></b> (or, if you prefer, "Monk's Mound," as the titular location is referred to in the text of the book itself), the connective tissues linking one of the stories to the other are left entirely in the hands of the reader to either discover or, as is more likely to be the case, intuit for themselves. The end result is a challenging and deliberately disjointed read, part family drama and part history lecture, the overall tone and feel of which is something akin to an ABC After School Special written and directed by David Lynch.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is that me complimenting the work? Most assuredly. But "work" is the key word here, and a reader better come into this beautifully offset-printed (in metallic grey and blue/black inks on suitably atmospheric cream-colored paper) comic prepared to do some.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The focal point here is college student Emily, returning home on a school break to visit her possibly-mentally-deteriorating mother (who's never given a name), and not-really-recovering gambling addict brother, Mikey, who appears to be a few years her senior. One of mom's forgetful spells results in her leaving an envelope full of cash meant to pay a handyman/contractor sitting out in plain sight, and Mikey being the sort of guy he is, well --- you know which way this is headed, I'm sure. Nobody in this country is more than about a 30-minute drive from a casino at this point.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Concurrent with this --- I think, at any rate, although precisely when it's taking place is unclear --- a park ranger gives a guided tour of a Mississippian mound site that may or may not be located somewhere near to where the little tragedy-in-the-making is playing out, not that proximity is really necessary to make this intriguingly experimental "split-screen" structure work. The only hard-and-fast connection between the two? Stechschulte's inventively-delineated "sound of the wind" effect that both blows and flows between panels, occasionally obscuring specific words of dialogue, but always <i>accentuating</i> the actual <i>meaning</i> of what's being said.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Those familiar with Stechschulte's cartooning <i>oeuvre </i>will be well familiar with these sorts of contradictions that are anything but, as well as his frequently dense panel layouts and precise utilization of negative space, but to say he's firing on all cylinders with these Mazzuchellian tropes is an understatement --- there is no doubt, from panel one of page one onward, that the reader is in the hands of a master of visual storytelling operating at the full height of his considerable powers in this comic. It's so literate, in fact, that even the most comics-illiterate reader will have precisely zero difficulties "picking up" what Stechschulte is "laying down."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I did, however, say that the reader would be well served to bring a hardhat and lunch pail with them to this one, and so it is --- as events move toward a conclusion that can best be described as both entirely surprising and anything but (again with the contradictions!), it's up to each reader to decide for themselves whether or not the "twist" Stechschulte deploys either represents the apex of irony, or its complete negation, as well as whether or not the guided tour of the mound is a device meant to amplify or neuter said "twist." By my count, then, that means there are at least <i>four </i>separate obvious readings one can subscribe to when it comes to this book, each no doubt effective, and which one a reader decides is correct likely says as much about them as it does the comic itself. How's <i>that </i>for an open-ended narrative?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which isn't at all to say that events are in any way confusing or unclear here --- anything but, it's all pretty cut-and-dried on the surface. But, like the archaeological site it's named after, once a reader start digging a bit deeper, new discoveries that may upset and overturn their already-established view of things present themselves, and how to assemble them into a new, perhaps more accurate, paradigm is huge part of the challenge --- and dare I say the fun (although, admittedly, I have a weird idea of what "fun" is) --- inherent in this work. A detailed forensic analysis leads to more questions than answers, and while I don't wish to "spoil" anything, the "happy" ending Stechschulte serves up is one tinged with considerable unease given that it leaves a <i>major </i>problem unaddressed simply because it engenders the most temporary of positive outcomes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One more contradiction before all is said and done here, and this one comes about as a <i>result </i>of a considered reading of the book (several of them, truth be told) rather than being contained <i>within </i>it <i>per se</i> --- I could go on and on for some time yet about the wonders, those both hidden and those in plain sight, on offer in these exquisitely-thought-through (and just as exquisitely-presented) pages, but I honestly feel as though I may have said too much already. What I think is one thing --- and I think very highly of <i>Monks Mound</i> indeed, as I'm sure is painfully plain as day --- but this is a comic a reader literally needs to experience, and even more importantly to <i>evaluate</i>, for themselves. Odds are better than good that they’ll find themselves loving it as much as I did --- but frankly, even if they don't, they will at the very least come away from it mightily <i>impressed </i>at the formal skill of Stechschulte's cartooning prowess. I guess there's no such thing as a "social archaeologist," but if there were, Stechschulte would probably be sitting very near the top of the field; as an artist, however, he may just be in a class by himself.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Ryan%20Carey" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Ryan Carey</a> lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He writes about comics for <a href="http://dailygrindhouse.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">Daily Grindhouse</a></span>,<span class="js-display-url"></span><span class="invisible" style="line-height: 0; line-height: 0; visibility: hidden;"></span><span class="tco-ellipsis"><span class="invisible" style="line-height: 0; visibility: hidden;"></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> <a href="http://graphicpolicy.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">Graphic Policy</a></span>,<span class="js-display-url"></span><span class="invisible" style="line-height: 0; line-height: 0; visibility: hidden;"></span><span class="tco-ellipsis"><span class="invisible" style="line-height: 0; visibility: hidden;"></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> and at his own <a href="http://fourcolorapocalypse.wordpress.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">blog</a>.</span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> He also maintains a long-running film review blog, <a href="https://trashfilmguru.wordpress.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">Trash Film Guru</a>.</span></span></b></span></div>
Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1352636945194138471.post-75296697167076201162019-07-15T06:00:00.000-07:002019-07-15T06:00:00.332-07:00"I Print The Work I Want To See Celebrated": Rob Clough interviews CARTA MONIR.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"><b><a href="https://www.cartamonir.com/" target="_blank">Carta Monir</a></b> is a cartoonist, critic, editor, podcaster, and most recently, a publisher. Her <b><a href="https://diskettepress.com/" target="_blank">Diskette Press</a></b>, based out of Ann Arbor, focuses on beautiful-looking minicomics published on her Risograph printer in various color tones. Monir is an incisive critic and challenging cartoonist, and much of her work centers around confronting past trauma and the challenges she faced and faces as a trans woman. She's created a space for other queer and trans artists and has been an essential element of the burgeoning comics scene in Ann Arbor. This interview focuses on the works she's publishing and her thoughts on the comics, the scene, and her various skills and interests with regard to art.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Rob Clough:</b> When you started drawing comics, did you already have ideas like publishing and criticism in mind, or did that develop later?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Carta Monir:</b> I actually started my “professional” career as a critic, doing really clumsy criticism right out of college. I didn’t really know anyone in the community and I pitched to a site that my friend recommended. I wrote some middling criticism there for a couple of years and then got tired of people I admired shouting at me, haha. This was all before I transitioned. I guess I came into the larger comics scene as a combination artist/critic because as I was published around the time that I started recording We Should Be Friends, a now mostly-defunct book club podcast I hosted with a few close friends in Ann Arbor.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: That show was an enormous amount of fun and points to your eclectic interests. What did you find most rewarding about it?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: It was so much fun to hang out with my friends every week-ish! We have great chemistry. Several of us had college radio experience, so we felt pretty comfortable on the microphone from the beginning. And the show really achieved its purpose! We became friends with so many of the cartoonists we talked about. I’m grateful that we were received so positively.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: What intellectual itch does writing criticism satisfy in particular? What is your approach as a critic?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: Mostly just the itch to talk about work I love, and to share things that stick in my brain. I love talking about comics! I always have. It’s nice to have an outlet for that.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: What aspects of your creative self do publishing and criticism satisfy in a way that's different from actually doing comics?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: I don’t generally… maybe ever… want to make comics in response to a comic I just read. I want to talk about it with my friends! Criticism feels more like that kind of conversation. I know there are people who think that comics should be answered with comics or whatever, but that’s tedious. I use comics to tell my stories, nobody wants to read my illustrated opinions on someone else’s book.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: Do you have a particular style or method as a critic? Does this depend on what you're critiquing?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: In the past, my answer would have been “direct” or “mean,” but I’ve been trying to pivot to “celebratory.” There aren’t many comics with enough cultural impact for me to talk shit about if I hate them, you know? If someone makes a bad comic that only maybe a hundred people will read, I don’t need to take the time to get angry about it. I’d rather celebrate and promote the comics that move me, and that makes me excited about the possibilities of the medium.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"><b>RC</b>: What provided the impetus to start Diskette Press?</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: I bought a risograph!! Once I started printing my own comics, it felt like a natural step to start printing other people’s comics also.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: Were you already familiar with how to use a Risograph, or was there a learning curve?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: I had never touched a risograph. I had barely even seen one! I didn’t know if the one I was buying was like a good model… I got very lucky. The first several months of riso ownership were filled with a lot of frustrated tinkering and very little printing. But I did learn, and I got it up and running! And when I eventually was able to hire an employee, Renée Cymry, to act as my print tech, she learned everything too. We’re both the de facto GR3770 experts in this part of the country!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: The comics scene in Ann Arbor seems to be hopping, and you seem to be at the center of it. How much of it is something you've cultivated as a publisher and presence?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: It’s been building! I really like meeting other artists and building community, so as soon as I moved here I started looking for other cartoonists. I was very lucky to find Casey Nowak early on, and several friends (including Emma Jayne) moved to Ann Arbor after we did. We’ve built a scene from the ground up!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: How often do you all get to meet? Do you have jam sessions or critiques? Are there any local zine fests or small press shows?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: We hang out all the time! I live with Casey, and Emma is just across town. All of us are kind of private about what we’re working on, but we frequently invite each other to read a script or look at thumbnails. Emma comes over and draws for hours at a time… she puts my productivity to shame!! There are some local shows, but Casey is the only one who really participates in them. There’s a local show called A2CAF and a zine fair in Grand Rapids, which is only an hour and a bit away.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"><b>RC</b>: How has being a publisher affected your output and method as a cartoonist? </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: It’s definitely shifted my focus a little, but I don’t know if it’s slowed my output too much. I was never a fast cartoonist, and honestly, it’s nice to have something new at every show I go to, even if it’s not my work! I’m so proud of the artists we publish and I like putting in the time to make their work look good.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Diskette Press -- The Books</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><i><a href="https://diskettepress.com/products/dreameater-by-emma-jayne" target="_blank">Dreameater</a> </i></b>by Emma Jayne </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Emma Jayne's bold, clear line combined with her crisp dialogue sets up what appears to be a story about three friends struggling to keep a band together post-high school. That is actually an accurate but vague description of what happens in the book. After several pages of quickly establishing the relationships between Cassi, Seb, and Char, the story takes a sudden left turn into the realm of fantasy. It's a turn that commits to this fully-realized world of magic that runs in families, sinister familiars, and dream-eating monsters. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>When Cassi accidentally summons a Dreameater when trying to wish that her bass was fixed, it sets off a course of action that forces each character to confront hard truths about themselves and their friends. Magic is a part of their world, as familiar as unrequited crushes and finding venues for a young band to play. While the supernatural aspects of the story are entertaining, well-crafted, and genuinely unsettling, the real draw of this book is the raw, uncompromising, and messy quality of the relationships Jayne depicts. Long-simmering tensions erupt and are then not neatly resolved. Indeed, Emma Jayne's refusal to tack on a pat ending adds a level of emotional complexity while still serving its plot. </i> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: Let's start with the most prolific cartoonist from Diskette Press, Emma Jayne. <i>Dreameater </i>caught me completely by surprise. I was expecting something along the lines of her version of Jaime Hernandez's Locas saga, wherein a bunch of post-high school kids are drifting a bit and center their lives around a band. That was all in there, of course, but the extremely detailed and lived-in fantasy/horror milieu that the story is set in was a fantastic swerve. You've mentioned enjoying off-beat horror and fantasy; what about this story made it a project you wanted to publish? It's the first and only novel-length project you've published, which made it quite a commitment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: So full disclosure, <i>Dreameater </i>is a book Diskette is selling, but it’s not technically one that we published. Emma self-published it. It’s 100% her hard work that made her project come to life in such an amazing way. I watched her work on this book tirelessly over several years, and I’m so impressed with how it came together. The reason Diskette didn’t print this book is that it was really long… Risograph printing requires you to make a master [which is like a one-time use print screen] for every two pages in the book. If a book is 200 pages long, that’s going to be 400 masters if it’s printed in a single color. That takes forever and is very easy to mess up at that scale… we also didn’t have a great way to bind a book that large. Emma wisely went with a local print shop that was able to perfect bind her books in a short time, and they turned out really great.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: What do you see as Emma's greatest strengths as an artist?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: She’s relentless. She’s always drawing and always improving. I’ve known her for nearly ten years now, and her output has been consistently amazing. And she’s funny, too. Her storytelling is just getting better and better.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: As a publisher, how closely have you worked with your artists as an editor? Emma's work, in particular, seems so fully-formed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: I’m trying to find a balance between “do what you want” and “let me see what I’m printing, please,” haha! I like artists to feel like they have creative freedom. I do like to keep a close watch on how a project is developing, and I’m very available to give feedback if an artist feels stuck or wants my opinion. But mostly I want to facilitate the creation of new and inventive work, and I don’t want to get in the way of that.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: What are some examples of the kind of feedback an artist has requested, and what sort of feedback or opinions have you given?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: When I was working with Victor Martins, he asked me a lot of questions about pacing and clarity. Other artists, like Elliott G., asked more technical questions about bookbinding and layout. I try to make myself available for any kind of feedback because I want every artist to feel that we’ve done their book justice.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><a href="https://emma-jayne-comics.itch.io/in-an-empty-city" target="_blank">In An Empty City</a></i> by Emma Jayne</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This is a follow-up to Dreameater, featuring Char and Cassi now living in the city, playing in a band as a duo. It doesn't touch on the fantasy elements that much but, instead, focuses on Cassi's loneliness and alienation in her new surroundings. In just twelve pages, Emma Jayne gives the reader a sense of the bond between the two young women, their frustrations, and their quiet joys. The single blue tone from the RIsograph adds some needed contrast for Jayne's fairly thick line weight, especially since she doesn't use cross-hatching or grayscaling. This also helps in bringing gesture and body language into sharper relief and providing greater nuance for the story. This comic feels like a fragment of a larger story, but it adeptly makes the reader understand and care about these characters in short order.</i> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: Emma certainly has a talent for creating vividly realized characters. Her mini In An Empty City picks up from <i>Dreameater</i>, with a focus on the two female leads. I read this before I read <i>Dreameater</i>, and her clarity of storytelling is such that it was easy to follow. Do you see future books coming featuring Char and Cassi? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: I hope so! I know how much Emma loves Jaime Hernandez’s work, and I’d love to see her expand the universes she’s building. Whether or not she continues with Char and Cassi though, I’m confident that she’ll make something great!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><a href="https://diskettepress.com/products/trans-girls-hit-the-town-by-emma-jayne" target="_blank">Trans Girls Hit The Town</a></i> by Emma Jayne </b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This is Emma Jayne's newest comic, and it feels like her most personal work to date. It's about two trans women going out for a night, a proposition that is fraught with anxiety. That's especially true for Cleo, who rarely goes out in public, and who lacks the apparent self-confidence of her friend Winnie. Emma Jayne's dialogue is note-perfect, as the ease of their friendship and their hilarious rapport is instantly winning. It's an evening with some fun moments like video games and drinks, but it also has anxieties about bathrooms, misgendering, and a creepy chaser dude who wigs out Cleo. There are tears at the end of the evening for both women, as Cleo feels alone in her experience and Winnie feels guilty for inadvertently hurting her friend. Emma Jayne hits at something that should be obvious but needed to be said: the experience of every trans woman as they transition is different. Each woman faces different challenges based on any number of factors, including body type and overall dysmorphia. At the same time, as Winnie points out, though we can never truly know what someone else is going through (even, in her case, another trans woman), it's important to note that there are enough similarities to provide support and even advice if wanted. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>There's a magnificent clarity to Emma Jayne's work no matter the genre or subject. Her line is always precise but warm and inviting. Her layouts are clear but varied enough to interest the eye as she leads it across the page. Her figures are dynamic and stand out on the page because of her sophisticated mastery of gesture. Though her style is naturalistic, there is just enough of a cartoony touch to her characters to draw the reader in. Emma Jayne is a good artist but an even better writer, as the verisimilitude of her dialogue is what makes her comics so compelling. These are real people, and she makes the reader care about them.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: Emma Jayne's dialogue is so effective because of its high degree of verisimilitude. <i>Trans Girls Hit The Town</i> in particular works because as a reader, Winnie and Cleo feel real. That makes Cleo's struggles, in particular, all the more affecting because the reader is already on her side. That said, these are stories that are not necessarily widely-told in the wider culture, much less comics. How important has it been to you as a publisher to provide a spotlight for these kinds of stories?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: It’s my highest priority. I want to publish stories that aren’t being told elsewhere. I’m especially interested in messy stories without clean resolutions… there’s so much saccharine queer media designed to reassure cishet audiences. I’m not particularly interested in adding to that pool of work.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: Do you see a lot of those kinds of saccharine stories in comics? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: I think straight, cis editors really like them. You see them a lot in more corporate books; stories where a character calmly explains statistics to the audience, as if they’re giving a powerpoint with a rainbow flag background. There’s a space for these stories, but I get very frustrated when they’re the only queer narratives that are allowed to exist.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: Every artist you publish has a radically different style. Do you have a personal aesthetic as a publisher that emerges in the artists that you choose to publish? Or do you have broad tastes that are reflected in artists that haven't received opportunities elsewhere, much the same way Annie Koyama (and Dylan Williams before her) operates?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: Annie is my primary inspiration. I’ve looked up to her since I was in college. I guess my method of recruiting artists is currently kind of informal… I find a (usually trans) artist whose work I admire and I ask them to make something for Diskette. It’s not much more complicated than that!! The only challenge is pacing myself.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: So it seems clear that you have a wide variety of aesthetic interests with regard to comics. Are there any particular genres or styles that you tend to avoid or actively dislike?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: Not really! If someone comes to me with an interesting premise or unusual art, I’m eager to see more. I don’t want to limit myself by saying “I’d never publish superheroes” or whatever because as soon as I said that I’m sure I’d be pitched a really amazing superhero book, you know?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><a href="https://diskettepress.com/products/ebb-tide" target="_blank">Ebb Tide</a></i> by Elliott G</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This is a beautiful, poetic comic about trauma and recovery. The fragmented layout is reflective of the memory fragments it contains in this "love letter to myself." It's a testament of strength and power in the face of trauma and abuse. The purple and orange color scheme gives the comic a cool and even calm feeling in the face of horror, as each trauma is confronted in turn on the page through a visual representation of the Notepad application. The open-page layouts stack smaller images and those Notepad text boxes atop other images. Some of those are concrete, like beach scenes, while others are more metaphorical and even abstract. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The stories are about trying to please horrible and abusive men. Even when Elliott G broke free, the feelings of worthlessness and aimlessness remained. There is a powerful sequence recounting that his abusers faced no consequences and are free to live successful lives. That rising anger is addressed and processed so as to let his own self-healing begin. In many ways, this is not so much a love letter as it is an incantation. It's a prayer or a summoning. By professing that he is loved, bright, and strong, he creates his own capacity for love, brightness, and strength. The connection to the earth and the ocean that acts as a running motif in the book is the key to all of this, as that natural connection supersedes the actions of abusers. This is a bracing, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful journey through a frankly-named series of abuses that acknowledges and transcends them.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: <i>Ebb Tide</i>, by Elliott G., for example, is a comic that is tonally as different from Emma Jayne's stuff as possible in some ways. Yet, it's in the same emotional continuum with regard to dealing with and overcoming trauma and learning to love oneself. Do you enjoy comics-as-poetry in general? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: Oh absolutely. I love making them and I love reading them. <i>Ebb Tide </i>is one of my favorite books of all time and I’m so honored to have been a part of bringing it to life.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: The use of the two tones on the Risograph made this comic in particular look beautiful. How much of that was your guidance, and how much of the color process was Elliott's plan?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: Elliott knew what colors we could print with, and adapted his story to work with our palette. The credit for those beautifully printed tones is also Renée’s. She’s a genius at getting our printer to do what it should. <i>Ebb Tide</i> is her baby too, and I’m amazed at what she was able to do with it.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: Like much of the work you publish, this is an intense and emotionally challenging comic that nonetheless speaks to self-expression and self-love. Do people bring their work to you first for publishing consideration, or do you tell the artists you work with to simply do something and you'll publish it? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: Both! We’ve printed work that was already finished (like <i>Yllw Yllw Yllw</i>) and we’ve commissioned new work! I might figure out a more formalized process in the future, but for now, I’m printing things that I get excited about.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><a href="https://diskettepress.com/products/yllw-yllw-yllw-by-mar-julia" target="_blank">Yllw Yllw Yllw</a></i> by Mar Julia</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This is a perfectly designed queer romance comic that mixes a beautifully fluid clear line with marvelously loopy and expressive spot colors. It is a story of a burgeoning romance between Sol and Basil, with the latter flaking out each time their level of sexual activity grows hotter. What is interesting is that Basil's emotions, lust, and passion literally bubble out of them in the form of a light-rose series of squiggles, ribbons, stars, and other shapes. It is the other side of the coin from another Diskette book, Erika Price's </i>Disorder 1/3<i>. In both books, one's feelings are made manifest. For Price, it's a dark and nightmarish scenario. For Mar Julia, it's but in a dreamier and more ethereal manner. In Yllw Yllw Yllw, the colors are in the form of discernible patterns as I noted, but the linework here uses no black at all. It takes a moment to even register what's going on, adding to the confusion of poor Sol.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>While the frankness of the depiction of sex is refreshing in its relaxed and casual manner, Mar Julia's depiction of friendships and young people hanging out is every bit as powerful. It's important to the narrative as well, as it establishes this community of close, intimate friends who aren't afraid to show each other affection. The use of body language and gesture are also key elements in expressing this intimacy, with the smallest of body movements conveying a great deal of information. The character design is also appealing, with a variety of body types on display. The final conversation between Sol and Basil is cathartic, as each discusses their own difficulties with their emotions. For Basil, their emotions literally bubble over to the surface and thus make them too easy to read. For Sol, she describes herself as "emotionally opaque," making it difficult to read her. Both come to an understanding of their issues in a final splash page image that's warm and expansive. This comic is a burst of warmth that pleasantly ambles along while it picks up emotional steam.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: Mar Julia's <i>Yllw Yllw Yllw</i> is another example of the color gradations of the Risograph playing a key role in simply parsing the comic. It's also an example of a comic that's similar in terms of subject matter to others you've published, but with a dramatically different aesthetic approach. Mar Julia's line and use of shading are radically different from Emma Jayne, even if both write about relationships. Color plays a role in the narrative here, literally becoming an expression of emotions made visible. As a publisher and as an artist, how important is formal experimentation to you, especially when it's integral to the narrative?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: Mar approached me about printing <i>Yllw Yllw Yllw </i>for TCAF, and was originally inquiring about just getting it printed through us. As soon as I saw it, though, I thought it was so amazing! I asked if we could publish the work instead of just printing it. Again, Renée should get a lot of credit for making it work so beautifully on the printed page. She’s as interested in pushing the technical limits of the Riso as I am.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><a href="https://diskettepress.com/products/my-issues-of-being-transgender-by-sorren-matarneh" target="_blank">My Issues Of Being Transgender</a></i> by Sorren Matarneh </b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This is the roughest-looking of the otherwise-polished Diskette entries, However, Matarneh's storytelling and enthusiasm elevate the quality of this comic. There's no poetic license or metaphors at work here, as Matarneh bluntly and matter-of-factly discusses every problem he can think of with regard to being trans. He makes his scribbly style work as part of various creative flourishes, as it's highly expressive and fun to look at. Indeed, despite the many difficulties enumerated in this comic, there's still a sense of joy to be found once you've figured out your sexuality. In the end, after talking about problems with clothes, misgendering, and dysphoria, there's a wistful couple of drawings depicting how the artist hopes they'll look like in a few years' time. There is power in these drawings, and though Matarneh lacks the skill of other artists, his expressiveness, humor, and bluntness come through on every page. </i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: <i>My Issues Of Being Transgender</i> by Sorren Matarneh is a visual departure for Diskette in that it's much rougher in terms of line. However, it's tonally right in line with the other comics that you publish. Is this a case of you encouraging a young artist to publish, or did you find Sorren bursting to express himself? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: Both! I’ve known Sorren for several years. He’s seventeen right now, and this is his first-ever published work. I’ve been excited about his comics since I met him when he was twelve. I think it’s really exciting to show off a young artist with a lot of potential!</span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DyF0y3h_ZF4/XSOuoC9ZBRI/AAAAAAAAnoQ/IAdebkSZHoIXfDwE_nlllkAgB1twQUm0QCLcBGAs/s1600/2019-07-DiskettePress%2BDisorder%2BErkia%2BPrince%2B-033.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1301" data-original-width="857" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DyF0y3h_ZF4/XSOuoC9ZBRI/AAAAAAAAnoQ/IAdebkSZHoIXfDwE_nlllkAgB1twQUm0QCLcBGAs/s640/2019-07-DiskettePress%2BDisorder%2BErkia%2BPrince%2B-033.png" width="420" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><i><a href="https://diskettepress.com/products/disorder-1-3-by-erika-price" target="_blank">Disorder 1/3</a></i> by Erika Price</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This is a horror comic that focuses on body horror in particular as a manifestation of dysmorphia. Price's line weight is exceedingly fine, allowing her to create a level of detail so dense that it's almost suffocating. This is the desired effect, as this is the story of a monster seeking to destroy itself. In page after page of visceral, heart-rending detail, the spiked monster rends its own flesh, stabs itself with its own spiky protuberances, and otherwise revolts against its very embodiment. It is the manifestation of psychological pain made physical. The final segment switches from heavy spotted blacks to a white background with the densest drawings of an already dense comic. It is the image of a destroyer spurning simple entropy, carrying with it one thought: "To destroy. To rebuild." It's the one kernel of hope in an otherwise bleak howl of a comic. There is still pain and ugliness, but there is the possibility of something new arising out of it. These final pages in particular feature masterful page layouts, as Price stuffs individual panels full of lined details but also creates a gestalt of an image that merges each panel together. </i>Disorder 1/3<i> is lyrical in its despair as it confronts the reader with Price's pain on a number of different levels.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: Dysmorphia is a recurring theme in the comics you publish, expressed in radically different ways. For Sorren, it's refreshingly and endearingly blunt: "Here's one problem with being trans. Here's another problem, etc." Erika Price's <i>Disorder 1/3</i>, on the other hand, is a horror comic where a self-destructive monster is a metaphor for dysphoria. Given your love of horror, how much did <i>Disorder </i>affect you on a visceral level the first time you saw it?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: Oh yeah! Erika is amazing and <i>Disorder </i>is so unlike any other comics I’ve ever seen. It’s horror and it’s also just a very raw autobio comic about living with chronic illness and dysphoria. It really speaks to me. It was also a real technical challenge to print! Riso has trouble with large color fills, and it took a lot of tinkering to make this very inky book look right! Again, huge kudos to Renée.</span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PCGJ7J9SrPw/XSOvTMuod0I/AAAAAAAAnoY/Fl17aYrvq2wxaaW6aDFN8uH-RRRwCvGnQCLcBGAs/s1600/2019-07-DiskettePress%2B%253D%2BSee%2BMe%2BE%2BJackson-001.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1383" data-original-width="891" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PCGJ7J9SrPw/XSOvTMuod0I/AAAAAAAAnoY/Fl17aYrvq2wxaaW6aDFN8uH-RRRwCvGnQCLcBGAs/s640/2019-07-DiskettePress%2B%253D%2BSee%2BMe%2BE%2BJackson-001.png" width="412" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><a href="https://diskettepress.com/products/see-me-by-e-jackson" target="_blank">See Me</a></i> by E.Jackson</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This single-toned Risographed minicomic addresses the thorny topic of body dysmorphia by way of exploring sex and sexuality. The character of Arsene is a self-described "trans boy" who navigates fantasies about his best friend and his relationship with his self-identified asexuality. Above all else, he grapples with the idea of being seen, in all senses of the word. Primarily, it's embracing the idea of being seen as a sexual being by others, as well as allowing himself to open up emotionally. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">See Me<i>'s layout is fluid, reflecting both the narrative and the character. The second page, for example, is technically a four-panel grid. However, the upper two panels are merged into a single image with no panel borders (it's of Arsene and his best friend), and that image bleeds into the bottom two panels, which are close-ups of fantasized groping. When Arsene snaps out of that fantasy, the next page has three horizontal panels. Notably, the second page has white negative space, giving the sense of the image bursting out of the page; and the third page has dark negative space, giving the sense of the page closing in on the image. Later pages with sexual fantasies abandon the grid altogether, with images smashing into each other featuring overlapping touching arms and legs and genitalia. Once again, the page is filled with white negative space as those fantasies are rushing from Arsene's imagination. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>There are other clever formal tricks, where screens act as bordered panels. For example, Arsene watching porn on his phone features a panel of the images on the phone. The same goes for Arsene's brief fling with Tinder, the hook-up dating application. Layout is everything in this comic, especially since Jackson uses stripped-down and scribbly character designs in order to further facilitate the immediacy of the images. </i>See Me<i> is about Arsene's being uncomfortable with being seen, yet Jackson's storytelling creates an intimate environment that's all about being seen.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><a href="https://diskettepress.com/products/pretty-girl-gameboy-zine-3" target="_blank">Pretty Girl</a></i> by Carta Monir</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This is a tiny mini by the publisher that's a series of selfies and photos with commentary. Control of one's own image is a crucial aspect of change for a trans person, after years of feeling alienated from their self-representations. Monir challenges this notion head on, wanting to take pictures of herself for herself but also wanting to be seen and found to be pretty. I found the last statement to be simultaneously sincere and ironic, as Monir undoubtedly couldn't care less about the gaze of others but at the same time recognizes the cultural standards of what it looks like to be a woman. This is a comic about still feeling not at home in one's body and the way it looks but sharing that vulnerability with the world. </i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: One thing you've talked about in comics is a more frank depiction of sex and sexuality. In many regards, E.Jackson's <i>See Me</i> is a perfect encapsulation of this idea. The slightly disembodied depictions of the narrator's body engaging in sexual acts, the shots of porn and the quick-cut quality of the storytelling are all an ideal vehicle for engaging in fantasy while still navigating your friendships. Above all else, it's all about being seen, which is also expressed in your mini <i>Pretty Girl</i>. That seems to be the essence of Diskette Press: giving visibility to people who have not had it. What would you say is the guiding ethos of Diskette?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: Hmmmmm…. probably just “print the work I want to see celebrated.” I want to uplift and promote interesting creators and I want to help them make some money from their work. That’s pretty much all I want!!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: Speaking of money, are the people you publish paid a flat fee up front, or do they get royalties from sales? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: I try to be very generous with royalties. When I started out I only got 10% of the proceeds of my book, which meant 80 cents on an $8.00 book. I can’t afford to pay artists an advance at the present time, but I do make sure that they keep 50-60% of all proceeds from any book I publish for them. I’m covering my own expenses and labor, but my profits don’t come at the expense of my artists. I want them to feel like we’re collaborating, not like I’m taking advantage of their hard work.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>RC</b>: What are your future goals as a publisher?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>CM</b>: I want to publish a lot more straightforward queer pornography like Leyland did with titles like <i>Meatmen</i>. There’s really nothing happening in North American porn comics that interests me right now, and I want to change that. I think we have the potential to make some really interesting and provocative work.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;"><b><a href="http://www.yourchickenenemy.com/search/label/Rob%20Clough" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Rob Clough</a> has written about comics for Cicada, the Comics Journal, Sequential, <a href="http://tcj.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">tcj.com</a>,</b></span><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, FreeSerif, serif;" /><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;"><b><a href="http://sequart.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">sequart.com</a>, Savant, Foxing Quarterly, Studygroup Magazine, as well as for his own blog, High-Low (<a href="http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/" style="color: #4d469c; text-decoration-line: none;">highlowcomics.blogspot.com</a>).</b></span></span></span>Daniel Elkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17011594638075567440noreply@blogger.com0