Asserting Your Own Weirdness: Rob Clough reviews NEARLY MISS by Cristina Portolano

Cristina Portolano's Nearly Miss is an Italian second cousin to D.Boyd's Chicken Rising. Both are autobiographical stories about the pre-adolescence of girls who don’t fit in with the rest of society, particularly with regard to gender roles and expectations. Both feature parents (especially fathers) who don’t understand their daughters very well. Both feature young women with a talent and passion for drawing and limitless imaginations. But of the two, Portolano's book is more directly a first-person narrative that is at turns whimsical, silly, and brutally frank. It's also a story about how growing up in a place with a strong sense of culture creates an indelible mark on a person, for good and ill. 

Portolano is hilariously blunt in documenting her eccentricities as a child, which she clung to despite the ways in which her environment often served to beat her down, including her love-hate relationship with her older brother. He acted as big brothers often do: dismissive of this adoring girl who wanted to be his shadow, but he was also highly influential in terms of comics, music, and brutal truth-telling. Much worse than her brother, though, was her experience in school, both at the hands of other kids and the nuns at her Catholic school. 

On her first day of kindergarten, Portolano made herself a necklace, went out on the playground to make friends, and promptly got her ass kicked by a girl who wanted the necklace. It was a rude introduction to life outside her family bubble, a recurring theme in the book. When she told her brother, he first admonished her and then encouraged her to play a fighting video game to learn how to defend herself — and she won. It's a page of sheer cartooning joy, which speaks to Portolano's skill as a cartoonist. It's a 2 x 3 grid panel layout, only there are no grid lines. This creates an interesting tension because it feels light and airy in terms of layout, but a closer look reveals a tight structure. The color scheme in the book is done entirely in orange, dark green, blue-green and yellow, giving the book a sunny feel no matter what was happening. That lightness of color goes hand-in-hand with the open-page layout in establishing that upbeat, almost innocent tone. Here, the video game set-up dominates the first panel, bleeding over a bit into the rest of the page. This helpfully establishes the action, allowing the other five panels to focus directly on her brother and herself. In this scene, Portolano's expert use of body language and subtle facial expressions gets across the closeness between the siblings in a way that their conversation doesn't. 

In Nearly Miss, Portolano's character has a natural curiosity about sex. There is a brutal early scene where she goes off with a young male classmate to show each other their genitals, only to be caught by a nun who spanks Portolano until she wets herself. Without having to spell it out further, it is incidents like this that sparked Portolano's life-long distrust of religion and authority in general. Like Boyd, it speaks to the way that casual cruelty perpetrated on the young, innocent, and impressionable always winds up having severe repercussions down the line. It can harden or deaden people and lead them to make bad choices. 

Portolano grew up in Naples, and this ancient Italian city was an indelible part of her personality. In many ways, this comic is a love letter to the city, especially when she draws the old buildings and narrow streets that created a complex, enticing maze to navigate. At the same time, her family's own apartment is depicted as small and homey--even cramped. Portolano draws everything with a slightly shabby quality, as though every building is slowly decaying before her eyes. Still, the bright colors in the book counteract any sort of cynicism regarding her surroundings, creating a juxtaposition of an adult's understanding of how a city ages and a child's enthusiasm for seeing all of these things for the first time. 

A running through-line in the book is the way a child gets swept up in the excitement of a local sports team doing well. Just after Portolano was born, the Naples football team won their first league championship, and her family was swept up in the mania. Portolano gets right at the heart of it — supporting the local team means that their success is the city's success and thus everyone's success. There's a funny sequence in Nearly Miss where the whole family is celebrating a goal and her mom accidentally knocks baby Portolano over while she is in her high chair. This leads to my favorite part of the book — Portolano's long, imaginary discussions with the club's superstar, infamous soccer legend Diego Maradona. Here, interestingly, she notes that "people always talked so much about him, I felt like he was part of the family."

These sequences also form key transition points in the book. They also serve as a commentary about whatever trouble Maradona was getting into at the time. Portolano upbraids him for testing positive for drugs one time and then tells him that he needs to behave because she is trying to be better too. As Portolano struggles with her transition into adolescence, Maradona says goodbye but also tells her not to "let anyone have an influence on you. And don't be ashamed, whatever you want to do or be." It's one of many funny, affecting sequences in the book that doubled as marvelously positive self-talk.

As Portolano grew older, she was constantly being told that she had to shape up and be more ladylike, because she was "nearly a miss." That meant that she was almost a teen instead of a girl, and as a result, Portolano was dreading the advent of menarche. Being a miss meant dressing a certain way, acting a certain way, looking a certain way and having a body that changed in a way that brought unwanted attention. By the book's end, Portolano's rebellion against every expectation is fully-formed when menarche finally arrived. She is going to look and act exactly how she wants, but that strength (or as she notes, the strength she was pretending to possess) comes at a price.

As funny as this book is, its creation was an act of mourning. Portolano says that she mourned not being a kid anymore at the very end of the book, and this book feels like a way of coming to terms with that grief. Portolano depicts her personality in this book as sweet and whimsical, but the only person who didn't have expectations of what she should be was her brother. He was often brusque and dismissive, but he also clearly loved her and wanted to make her life better. He didn't want her to be hurt, so he played the fighting game with her. He wanted her to have more freedom, so he taught her how to ride a bicycle. There are loving drawings of the two of them posed together in various Halloween costumes over the years that silently acknowledge the depth of their bond and how their conflicts made that bond stronger. Her brother didn't care about her being a good "miss"; he just wanted her to be the best version of who she was. He wanted her to know the truth about things (like her pet duck being taken to the butcher) instead of letting his parents keep her in the dark — even if it was hurtful. That strength and support helped Portolano find her own strength, and when he started to pull away from the family, she listened to his records and read his comics and was educated anew. 

Nearly Miss is ultimately a book about finding ways to bear inevitable burdens while mapping out one's own identity and destiny. It maps out scenes of joy and discovery as well as pain and cruelty. It's about understanding that grief extends not just to sad events, but also to happy memories of a time that is no longer available or memorable. It's drawn in a manner that emphasizes the sunny, vivid quality of childhood memories that overlap with moments of pain. It's a book that balances an expressive use of line and color with rock-solid storytelling fundamentals. It's a powerful debut for a highly skilled cartoonist whose quirky sense of humor and understanding of her own inner weirdness is on full display. 

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Rob Clough has written about comics for Cicada, the Comics Journal, Sequential, tcj.com,
sequart.com, Savant, Foxing Quarterly, Studygroup Magazine, as well as for his own blog, High-Low (highlowcomics.blogspot.com).

Top 10 Comics (I reviewed) of 2015

Click on the titles to read the full reviews.

10. DHARMA PUNKS by Ant Sang. Published by Earth's End Publishing.

While Sang is working deep within a philosophical construct, at its heart Dharma Punks is a character driven story. Sang uses all sorts of temporal tricks to not only tell his story, but also to unfold motivations and emotional ballast in each one of his characters. It pulls you in as it smacks of the way we actually learn about the people in our lives. Traditional “Origin Stories” are lazy, simplistic, and false – we get to know people through layers of time, we understand them in pieces and through that, formulate the whole. Sang breathes this sort of life into Dharma Punks and thus engages his audience on a level more true to experience than narrative convenience.

9. HOUSES OF THE HOLY by Caitlin Skaalrud. Published by Uncivilized Books.

Houses of the Holy is a beautiful, horrible, unyielding, noble, and ferocious diary of self-introspection in which the narrator journeys through her pain, the damage at the heart of her psyche. Everything is alluded to in page after page of art installation metaphors laid inky thick in panels, in splashes, forcing the reader to piece together fragments into wholes that never fully gel because outside in the periphery there are still moments to be confronted.

8. VACANCY by Jen Lee. Published by NoBrow Press.

The experience of Vacancy is one that fills the gap and suffuses the emptiness that its title suggests. It peers through the hole in our fence and fills our minds with the possibilities of what might be on the other side.

7. FEDOR by Pat Kelley. Published by Hic + Hoc Publications

This is a book about connecting as much as it is a book about outsiders. It touches on questions of identity and appearances, but also sacrifices and longing. Kelley’s beautiful and light cartooning adds a distance to its heavy subject matter, and the brown watercolor washes that cover every page augments both its historical conceit and its sense of grounding in the real world.

6. PLANS WE MADE by Simon Moreton. Published by Uncivilized Books.

Longing is a human construct that is saturated with hope. It is the wellspring from which arises disappointment as much as it slakes desire. Within all discontent comes the impetus for change. Morton takes this all apart in Plans We Made through narrative, through pace, but mostly through his simple lines and layouts. In Morton’s pages, forms are dissolved into naked shapes through which the reader makes meaning, attempts closure, overlays the self. Here, what is less becomes more; the silence echoes reflections like a placid lake seen from above. Each moment is about that which is unsaid and undrawn; it leads to the cacophony of silence and an emotional center that holds tight insomuch as it becomes universal.

5. CASANOVA: ACEDIA by Matt Fraction and Fabio Moon. Published by Image Comics.

Sure Casanova Quinn is all mid-70’s Mick Jagger swagger, but at its heart, Casanova: Acedia grooves with the strum und drang of Ziggy Stardust’s impossible mission realized, to become a rock and roll star by just being a rock and roll star. You show up in a stretch limo, gonked to the nines on rails of cocaine — you step out in your fashion with a guitar in your hand and people start taking notice, people start taking pictures. Suddenly you climb up on stage and everybody wants to sing along with your songs, everybody wants to be you, and they feed and they feed on your dream until there is nothing left to do but escape to the Eastern Block wearing Jimmy’s pants, crank up the electronica mood inducers, and start howling into the microphone all that is left of your soul.

4. BORB by Jason Little. Published by Uncivilized Books.

Borb is infinitely accessible and incredibly hard to swallow. It confronts the idea of homelessness full on, relentlessly, and, although presented in humor comic format, it doesn’t candy-coat. In fact, the choice of exploring an issue of such gravity in the style of something that evokes a light-hearted expectation is what gives Borb so much of its power.

3. GENEROUS BOSOM #1 by Conor Stechschulte. Published by Breakdown Press.

See, there’s a thickness to every aspect of this book, as if gravity itself is exerting some different type of influence on these pages. There’s a disturbing weight to it, as if it were a singularity unto itself, composed, metaphorically, of an infinite density.

2. SAINT COLE by Noah Van Sciver. Published by Fantagraphics.

Because Saint Cole is part of the long tradition of the balladry of brutality. It sings the song of the sink hole caused by a life lived in response to expectations it could never fulfill. It's the chant you hear in the places people gather to drown out their sorrows, it echoes in the alley behind the neighbor's house whom you've never met, it rings in your own head from time to time, that is, if you are sensitive to it.

1. ANN BY THE BED (FRONTIER #6) by Emily Carroll. Published by Youth in Decline.

In this book, Carroll manipulates conventional narrative with a surgeon's scalpel cutting through cause and effect, bouncing her reader through time and space, disconcerting as she disconnects, adding a layer of displacement to the tone of its entirety. Then there's her apt choices of art style and color use, each of which adds another emotional hue. As well, she varies the thickness of her inking to contract and expand, and her lettering changes to resonate with the mood she is working with. In Ann by the Bed, Carroll uses all the evocative tools that comics offer in order to concentrate the tenor and the feel of the reading experience.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

HOLLOW IN THE HOLLOWS by Dakota McFadzean. Published by One Percent Press

PERPLEXING STORIES by Jonathan King. Published by Eel Noir.

BIG PUSSY by Gina Wynbrandt. Published by 2D Cloud.

SUPERCAKES by Kat Leyh. Published by Yeti Press.

ABSTRACT KIRBY 1 and 2 by Mark Badger.

BOOKS I LOVED BUT HAVE YET TO REVIEW

UNDERSTANDING MONSTER #3 by Theo Ellsworth.

SHADOW HILLS by Sean Ford

Shelley, The Moon, Artemis, and You – A Review of Dakota McFadzean's HOLLOW IN THE HOLLOWS

While smacking of pretension, it is important that I quote a little Shelley before I begin writing about Dakota McFadzean's new book from One Percent Press, Hollow In The Hollows. I know. I know... but bear with me, it will all make sense in a moment.

To The Moon

Art thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,

Wandering companionless

Among the stars that have a different birth,

And ever changing, like a joyless eye

That finds no worth object worth its constancy?

Okay, that wasn't so painful, was it? As odd of a character that Shelley guy was, he sure could write him some poetry.

In “To the Moon” Shelley addresses the moon about its paleness, and, while doing so, imbues the moon with his own longings and sense of entitlement which then, of course, elevates himself to cosmic proportions. Such was the kind of guy Shelley was. Still, let's separate the art from the artist.

Ahem...

As he was a neo-classicist as much as a Romantic, surely Shelley couldn't help but look at the moon and think of the myth of Artemis, which is where I finally get to start actually talking about Hollow in the Hollows (this may be called burying the lede, but fuck it, who the hell is even reading this at this point).

When I first read Hollow in the Hollows, I kept expecting more to happen. The whole book throbs and pushes towards something vaguely ominous but never pays off in that direction. Its ending rings hollow, as it were. Reading McFadzean here became off-putting in this regard, especially for someone expecting some sort of denouement, no matter how sullied or obscure.

But something about it lingered.

Hollow in the Hollows became an itch that demanded scratching. There was obviously more that was undulating below its narrative surface. It was upon reading Shelly's poetry and thinking about the moon that, BOOM, this book bloomed before me like a Dragon Fruit flower.

All the symbolism is there. The moon, the deer, the forest – it all led to Artemis, goddess of the hunt and goddess of virginity and, yes, protector of young girls.

Once access of this sort is granted, the heretofore tight box becomes a open field. Hollow in the Hollows dances in the coming-of-age trope in a way that both celebrates and forewarns. Not quite a cautionary tale, it resonates with the fear a burgeoning sexuality engenders, the confusion inherent in it, and the almost mystical aspect of change itself. Like I said, there's an ominous tone running as an undercurrent throughout the book which never flowers, but given the context it is the perfect choice for what McFadzean wants his audience to walk away with.