Enemies of the State LIVE at SPX -- GIRL TOWN by Casey Nowak

Enemies of the State is a monthly virtual book club discussion on a recently published comic, featuring a rotating cast of comics critics.

This Special Live Episode of Enemies of the State occured at SPX 2019 and features commentary on Casey Nowak’s Girl Town, published by Top Shelf in 2018. Girl Town 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.

The cast for this episode includes the following critics:

- Daniel Elkin of Your Chicken Enemy

- Alex Hoffman of Sequential State

- Jules Bakes, freelance critic

- Rob Clough of High Low

Books in Bites 20: HALLO SPACEBOY by Beth Barnett, A LONE DEER AT THE END OF THE WORLD by D. Bradford Gambles, and DOG NURSE by Margot Ferrick

Quick Reviews of Some Books I Picked Up at SPX 2018

HALLO SPACEBOY
By Beth Barnett

The earnestness of Beth Barnett’s Hallo Spaceboy is what sets it apart. Part autobio, part ode, this short, self-published comic is a love letter to an idealized David Bowie and his place in Barnett’s life as the “creative parent”. As an exploration of identity, this collection of three short comics points to the importance of influence; how, in the midst of feeling like an outsider, the greatest gift a person can receive is someone with whom they can identify. When Ziggy Stardust cries out “Oh no, love, you’re not alone … Gimme your hands, ‘cause you’re wonderful” there is connection, affirmation, and purpose. This becomes a powerful spur towards self-validation and a boost to the creative impulse. Barnett lays this bare here, and, in doing so, she connects herself to the larger group -- to those of us who found community in the idea of Bowie.

Adding to this, Barnett viscerally captures the experience of January 11. 2016, when so many of us awoke to news of Bowie’s death. Walking through a snow-covered park, Barnett thinks “Why am I taking this so hard?” and the answers she finds are the answers so many of us found on that day. Like Barnett, I, too, “drowned” in Blackstar that day, trying to find that last piece of truth that I felt that I needed from a man I’d never met and yet had played such a pivotal role in my life. Barnett’s cartooning, with its simple lines and compelling use of negative space, carries the poignance of the emotions of this day with fragility and reverence. 

Hallo Spaceboy’s value is in its devotion, its sincerity, and its earnestness. It embraces a shared experience and conveys it unabashedly. And in this, it allows us to remember that we’re not alone, and, even more importantly, we are, indeed, wonderful.

A LONE DEER AT THE END OF THE WORLD
By D. Bradford Gambles
Published by Birdcage Bottom Books

In the midst of a post-apocalyptic winter, a lone deer wanders out of the woods and into an abandoned shopping mall. What happens next is a savage take-down of the hollowness and vanity inherent in consumer culture. Rendered in sumptuous colors and crisp cartooning, A Lone Deer at the End of the World lays bare the contrast between the serenity of the natural world and humanity’s disconnected push to exploit, reshape, and acquire all that nature offers. D. Bradford Gambles drops any pretext of subtlety in the pages of this comic, choosing rather to smack his readers in the face with his message. In this, his polemic gains power.

In Gambles’ hands, this diatribe is a plea to humanity to slow down, reassess, re-prioritize, and embrace that which truly has value. He asks us to recognize the inherent vapidness of the pursuit of things to bring meaning to our lives. He asserts that the hunt for futile significance can only lead to our eventual destruction.

It’s heavy-handed stuff, yet the book never becomes ham-fisted thanks to Gambles’ artistry. Through the use of silence, pacing, and an amazing command of his color palette, his book points dramatically at repercussions, but not into his readers’ faces. Throughout, Gambles acknowledges that his reader already knows the truth he is revealing. His storytelling highlights hopefulness even amidst the wasteland he has created.

DOG NURSE
By Margot Ferrick
Published by Perfectly Acceptable Press

Inscrutable, triumphant, and beautiful, Margot Ferrick’s Dog Nurse seems, like so much of her work, both incredibly personal and yet held at arm’s length. As a narrative, the comic is concerned with the story of Songy, a child that “has a grotesque, dynamic nose and an ailment called mumblemouth that makes her speech difficult to comprehend.” A caretaker named Dog Nurse is hired to take care of her. 

In addressing issues like communication, compassion, self-efficacy, parenting, abuse, and innocence, there is both sadness and hope at its core. Ferrick seems to be both exploring trauma and celebrating the discovery of one’s voice. Ferrick seems to create from the subconscious. She presents a dream-like meditation that verges on the revelatory, which ultimately spins into a more universal sensibility. Pushing away direct identification, Dog Nurse operates on the periphery. The reader looks into a mirror, but is unsure that what is reflected is how they want to be seen. Yet it is hard not to recognize outlines of the self.

Dog Nurse is a difficult book to wrap your head around from an intellectual point-of-view. It demands that you open a part of you that is more attuned to the intuitive and instinctual self. Ferrick asks you to return to a time of inexperience, when much of what happens to you can’t be processed through a practiced past. This is a very young and vulnerable time, full of confusion and learning, where you are dependent upon a guide to give meaning to what happens to and around you. What happens when those guides are incapable of providing a sense of knowledge or orientation? This is where one’s own sense of power and self-esteem develop. And that development is, in large part, based upon the will to survive.

Thanks to the amazing production values of Perfectly Acceptable Press, Dog Nurse is presented as an art book with French Fold interiors, a chipboard cover fastened with black brads, and printed in a single edition of 350 copies. This enhances a kind of preciousness about the book and adds to its weight. The combination of the work’s theme and presentation combine to produce something unique; less a book to place upon a shelf and more something to be read and put out for display. 

Small Press Expo Announces 2018 Ignatz Award Nominees: Press Release

The Small Press Expo (SPX), the preeminent showcase for the exhibition of independent comics, graphic novels and alternative political cartoons, is pleased to announce the 2018 nominees for the annual presentation of the Ignatz Awards, a celebration of outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning. 

The Ignatz, named after George Herriman's brick-wielding mouse from his long-running comic strip Krazy Kat, recognizes exceptional work that challenges popular notions of what comics can achieve, both as an art form and as a means of personal expression. The Ignatz Awards are a festival prize, the first of such in the United States comic book industry.

The nominees for the ballot were determined by a panel of five of the best of today's comic artists, Mita Mahato, Carolyn Nowak, kevin czap, Leila Abdelrazaq, and Taneka Stotts.

Congratulations to all our nominees!, with the votes cast for the awards by the attendees during SPX. The Ignatz Awards will be presented at the gala Ignatz Awards ceremony held on Saturday, September 15, 2018 at 9:30 P.M.

Ignatz image by 2017 Promising New Talent winner Bianca Xunise.

 

Outstanding Artist

• Yvan Alagbé - Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures
• Ivy Atoms - Pinky & Pepper Forever
• Tommi Parrish - The Lie and How We Told It
• Richie Pope -  The Box We Sit On
• Sophie Standing - Anxiety is Really Strange

Outstanding Collection

• Beirut Won’t Cry – Mazen Kerbaj
• Blackbird Days – Manuele Fior
• Language Barrier – Hannah K. Lee
• Sex Fantasy – Sophia Foster-Dimino
• Super Late Bloomer: My Early Days in Transition – Julia Kaye

Outstanding Anthology

• La Raza Anthology: Unidos y Fuertes – ed. by Kat Fajardo & Pablo Castro
• Comics for Choice – ed. by Hazel Newlevant, Whit Taylor and Ø.K. Fox
• Ink Brick #8 – ed. by Alexander Rothmans, Paul K. Tunis, and Alexey Sokolin
• Bottoms Up, Tales of Hitting Rock Bottom – ed. by J.T. Yost
• Lovers Only – ed. by Mickey Zacchilli

Outstanding Graphic Novel

• Why Art? – Eleanor Davis
• Run for It: Stories of Slaves Who Fought for Their Freedom – Marcelo D’Salete
• Uncomfortably Happily – Yeon-sik Hong
• The Lie and How We Told It – Tommi Parrish
• Anti-Gone – Connor Willumsen

Outstanding Series

• Ley Lines – Czap Books
• Nori – Rumi Hara
• Bug Boys – Laura Knetzger
• Gumballs – Erin Nations
• Frontier – Youth in Decline

Outstanding Minicomic

• Dog Nurse – Margot Ferrick
• Greenhouse – Debbie Fong
• Common Blessings & Common Curses – Maritsa Patrinos
• Mothball 88 – Kevin Reilly
• Say It With Noodles: On Learning to Speak the Language of Food – Shing Yin Khor

Outstanding Comic

• Recollection – Alyssa Berg
• How to Be Alive – Tara Booth
• Hot Summer Nights – Freddy Carrasco
• Whatsa Paintoonist – Jerry Moriarty
• Baopu – Yao Xiao

Outstanding Online Comic

• Woman World – Aminder Dhaliwal
• The Wolves Outside – Jesse England
• A Fire Story – Brian Files
• Lara Croft Was My Family – Carta Monir
• A Part of Me is Still Unknown – Meg O’Shea

Promising New Talent

• Yasmin Omar Ata – Mis(h)adra
• Tara Booth – How to Be Alive
• Xia Gordon – The Fashion of 2004, Harvest
• Rumi Hara – Nori and The Rabbits of the Moon
• Tommi Parrish – The Lie and How We Told It

Outstanding Story

• Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures – Yvan Alabge
• Why Art? – Eleanor Davis
• Rhode Island Me – Michael DeForge
• How the Best Hunter in the Village Met Her Death – Molly Ostertag
• The Lie and How We Told It – Tommi Parrish

STILL Writing Reviews of Books from this Year's SPX

While Ray Sonne and Joe Schmidt write about some great books, I take the time to consider the artistry and implications of ESCAPE ROUTE by Daniel Zender

WHICH YOU CAN READ HERE

"Zender’s thick black and white art is reminiscent of old Brad Neely cartoons: static, yet awash in potential energy. Each panel verges on unfolding, yet its kineticism seems restrained; the act of placing them next to each other somehow makes the entire page vibrate. There’s an undeniable intent here.  You can’t help but trust that Zender is in command of what he is laying down in this book. He has provided you the details to an ever expanding complexity of storytelling, and he trusts you to let your brain do its magic. It’s hard not to love an artist who loves you back."

Writing Thoughts on SPX

So the Comics Bulletin Team sent a crack group of critics (and me) to this year's Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD.

Ray Sonne, Alison Baker, Christian Hoffer, J.A. Micheline, Joe Schmidt, and I all contributed to a little write up about our experience. Therein I make the assertion that 

COMICS CAN BE SPECTACULAR.

READ THE WHOLE THING HERE!

I ended up with a lot of new books

Picking Ignatz Winners For This Year’s Small Press Expo

Yesterday, on Comics Bulletin, I made some picks for this year's SPX Ignatz Awards.

CHECK IT OUT!

This Is Me

Eleanor Davis accepts the Outstanding Anthology or Collection Ignatz for, "How To Be Happy." Award presented by Whitney Leopard.

The Joy of the (Next) Moment: SPX 2015 -- A Convention Report

So Keith Silva, Chase Magnett, and I went to the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD this past weekend and the three of us were suitably impressed by all that went on there. We wrote about it for Comics Bulletin.

READ OUR ENTIRE REPORT HERE

Right after the Ignatz awards, SPX Exhibitors Coordinator Sam Marx said to me something to the effect of how walking around the floor on Saturday made him wonder how anyone could possibly still be talking about the lack of diversity in the medium. He said something like, “If you are complaining about representation in comics, you’re reading the wrong books.” I couldn’t agree with him more. It makes me wonder why anyone still even bothers reading books from Marvel or DC looking for characters and situations that reflect our modern world. Those are books that have been telling the same story over and over again for over half a century. The world has changed significantly in that time, yet that song remains the same. At SPX, though, you grab hold of the zeitgeist, the now. There you have creativity unfettered, voices singing the song of ourselves, pure and loud and strong. Ensconced in that conference hall there in Bethesda were all the stories still to be told about everyone and all of us and people you have only yet to meet.