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Tuesday, November 2, 2010
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Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Hive 3: A Somewhat Quarterly Comic Journal Ed. by J.M. Shiveley
Hive 3: A Somewhat Quarterly Comic Journal
Ed. by J.M. Shiveley
Grimalkin Press
Yes, individual B&N stores have a history of carrying books from small-time publishers, but those titles tend to cover local history and still look like "books." You know, soft- and hard-cover vanity-pressed books.
None of these terms describe Hive 3 which is folded concertina-style and has a double-sided letterpress cover. Hive 3 is certainly a fat 2-in-1 booklet, which is something I thought I'd never see in a big box bookstore. I'm calling that an achievement.
That said, while printing experiments in comics are admirable, there are some clear issues with the publication style of Hive 3. It's eye-catching, sure, but there's just too much going on with the printing of this book that doesn't make sense for the material. I guess if you're going to charge $10 for a self-published hand-made black-and-white anthology, it should really have something distinctive going on, but I'm afraid this issue has crossed the line from unique to gimmicky.
To be fair though, a book shouldn't be judged entirely by its cover, and what Hive 3 presents deep down inside is a high-quality selection of short comics and art.
Hive 3 a is simply outstanding collection of comics. Every story is excellent. It captures a full array of styles and subjects and I enjoyed every minute spent reading and re-reading it. Contributors for this issue include Karl and Matt Kindt, Malachi Ward, John Kinhart, Dax Delap, Hawk Krall, Andrew Drilon, Jon Freihofer, Eamon Espey, Chad R. Woody, Joe Decie, Joshua W. Cotter, Mostyn, J.M. Shiveley, Douglas Wilson and Mark Leicht.
Krall's contribution is a series of "Summer of 7-11″ recollections, in which he describes a summer job as a convenience store clerk. His stories are full of crazy, incomprehensible, foul characters. It's awesome. And his drawing style is perfect for expressing the wild, nasty people he encounters in the store.
Ward tells a science fiction story that takes place partly in a cave and partly in the protagonist's mind. It jumps swiftly from strange to eerie and is rendered in his lovely brushstroke style and with gray accents.
Drilon tells a story that is a sobering mix of memory and mysticism for a man in the Philippines who struggles with his family's response to his first homosexual relationship. He uses interesting stylistic devices to distinguish between past and present. In the present, his drawings are layered and realistic and tonally more grown-up. The adult years are also narrated by type-written text, rather than hand-written text. When he looks back on his past, the illustrations have a clean line and look more playful.
This is a very full anthology and covers monsters, the Civil War, sex, and death. It is also 140 pages long! This could have easily been two issues instead of one. Still, Hive 4 is on its way to the presses and it seems Shiveley has no shortage of willing contributors for future issues, so there was really no reason to space out the material. That's a good kind of problem to have. I am just befuddled by the way Grimalkin Press decided to handle these pages for the publication of Hive 3 which, as I mentioned before, uses a concertina fold.
If you're not familiar with concertina folds, just imagine two mini-comics that share a back cover. Once you finish with one side, you flip over the book to find a second booklet. This can be a very cool way to print something if you have the right reason to do so. 140 pages is admittedly a lot of paper to deal with, and a concertina fold can break that up into manageable parts, but its use in this instance is so entirely uninspired. The book as a whole doesn't share a theme or have a "flip side" perspective — its content is all over the map. There is no logical way to break up the content to begin with, so separating it physically into two parts is just arbitrary compartmentalization that clearly reduces the comics to their page count. It just looks like, because the previous two issues were fold-and-staple, they went that way a third time by default. For a DIY publishing company that aspires to think outside the box, this is a pretty disappointing display of their talents.
There are so many interesting ways that they could have bound flat pages, or worked in signatures, or something even crazier than my mind can conjure. Finding ways to hand-bind 140 pages as a single book is a challenge, and I'm not impressed by the way Grimalkin Press chose to meet this challenge in this instance. Not to mention, the two booklets each need a face trim (a cut that makes the pages flush on the right side and easier to turn). Any self-published book that wants to be taken seriously ought to have a face trim. The technology is simple: cutting board + metal ruler + razor blade = go!
The double-sided letterpress job on the cover is another story. It's very cool that they went letterpress with this issue, but the intent of the letterpress is confusing. The cover stock is so thin that impressions compete with each other and end up creating very little indentation on the page at all. Plus, letterpressing both sides has had given the effect of streaky ink, which you'll notice in the cover photo accompanying this review. Whether or not that effect is desirable comes down to taste.
The title of the book was printed on a proof press with large type. To see the whole title, you'd need lay out the whole cover flat (more or less). The way this effects how text appears on the cover is interesting. The effect of the broken-up subtitle leads to a misrepresentation of the book as a "quarterly comic journal" instead of "a somewhat quarterly comic journal." However, most confusing for me is that it's not even a journal! It's an anthology. I realize that coming from someone at The "Daily" Crosshatch this must sound like the pot calling the kettle black, but as someone who works with real journals all day in a library, I couldn't not notice the cheeky disregard for nomenclature. There is not a single journalistic element to the book, just comics and bios. The editorial selection process of culling talent for publication does not make a book a journal. That's an anthology.
The take away from all this is that when it comes to Hive 3 — just read it. Don't think too much about it. I've thought about it enough already for all of us. Just read those lovely comics and remember that Hive 3 is likely just the third publication that Grimalkin Press has worked on. They're clearly ambitious and have their heart in the right place and will continue to promote amazing artists and work on unique books for many years to come. This particular issue just rubbed me the wrong way.
If you'd like to be rubbed wrong by Hive 3 — it's $10 + shipping through the Grimalkin Press etsy shop.
Hopefully they'll be around producing books for many years to come and dare to push the envelope of self-publishing a little farther and more masterfully with each attempt. I'm sorry that the first time I've discuss their catalog it sounds so negative, but I really do believe if they live up to their creed and gain more experience they're going to be amazing. Watch out for these guys. They could eventually cross a line where all these confused printing mechanics get used in a most incredible and inspiring way.
- Sarah Morean
Friday, December 11, 2009
Getting There/Getting Where by Robyn Jordan
Sent to you by Jack via Google Reader:
Getting There/Getting Where
by Robyn Jordan
Naptime Press
This mini is short and sweet. Just a simple little 16-page collection of stories from a cartoonist who is able to tell pleasantly compact stories and lay out an attractive page of art.
Even if the admittedly mundane subject matter doesn't interest you, I'm certain that Getting There/Getting Where will pique any reader's interest in Jordan's work.
I found this mini very satisfying to read — basically because it just is what it is. Each of the stories stands on its own, says what it means to say and that's that. Jordan doesn't get too lofty or allegoric or stuck in her own head when she writes autobio. She's got a very clear and concise style, and I like that about her work a lot.
Getting There/Getting Where does not appear to be the first in a series, nor the prologue to a tell-all graphic novel. It's just a nice little comic by a very talented cartoonist.
It's nice to read a short autobio comic once in awhile that doesn't have any aspirations to be more than it is or make some broad nauseous statement about specialness of life. Sometimes it's nice to read a comic that sounds just as simple and unpretentious as it would coming through the artist's own mouth — like just another anecdote you might hear once at a party. Not life-changing, but certainly memorable and a good way to pass the time.
Jordan's art is very clear and well-balanced. She does an awful lot of cross-hatching, but it never muddies the page. Her lettering is a wonderful all-caps font that has its own weight, size and space. I love that — rather than bulk up a panel with text or compress the font against its nature — she sometimes lets the text flow from one panel's word bubble to the next, as is the case with the book's first story "Hustle Below." The downside is that this can make the reading experience feel choppy with unnatural breaks, but it really makes the page look so much nicer than it would with any alternative treatment of the lettering.
Getting There/Getting Where is 16-pages long, with black and white art, a cardstock cover, and a list of fake blurbs that really made me chuckle. The book can be purchased for $3 and is available through the artist.
- Sarah Morean
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Saturday, December 5, 2009
Ochre Ellipse #3 by Jonas Madden-Connor
Ochre Ellipse #3
by Jonas Madden-Connor
Family Style
Childhood is such a primitive, potent time in a person's life; it's no wonder that memories from that time eventually become lore. In the hands of a capable storyteller, otherwise common occurrences like bullying become rich, comedic, thought-provoking tales that offer a "new" perspective on growing up.
But that's not what I mean when I say that Madden-Connor's latest mini-comic offers unique take on youth. What I mean to say is that, while most authors weave wisdom into chaos, they are still showing us a familiar thing that, ultimately, we relate to because those things have happened to us. Most stories operate on the need for audience projection — people seeing themselves in the work, empathizing and liking it — but this is a device that Ochre Ellipse #3 cleverly sidesteps. It finds other interesting ways of making its point about youth, memory and nostalgia.
Ochre Ellipse #3 is set in a world where time travel is commonplace. So much so that, for a fee, you can time travel as an invisible observer to any point in history, and for a higher fee, you can create your own time line. It's a business that operates about as casually as a sandwich shop, so the fact that the protagonist uses the service often isn't really surprising. Time travel as entertainment. At least, that's the idea.
Instead, the main guy continues to travel back to his childhood. Repeatedly. Over and over. He goes back to the same memory, looking for clues that will lead him to where he went wrong in his life. He once was a solitary happy kid, but now he's a solitary unhappy adult. Why? How could he learn to be happy again?
He's only paid for the standard travel package, which merely includes watching and not interacting with the past, but even so, he begins to feel more and more like an integral part of his surroundings the more he visits. Each time he returns, he plays a new part in his boyhood self's imaginary world. He's having fun, and it's the most touching transformation that I have seen in a comic all year.
I've been thinking for a long time about the formula for popular children's movies (underdog rises high and gets the girl) and whether or not kids actually like that stuff. I don't know any kids, but rely on the wisdom of King Mini (father of one) who recently, unintentionally, laid it out for me. Kids need to use their imagination, and that's what most kids movies don't permit. Using your imagination is kind of the antithesis of being shown a formulaic film, or training yourself to behave in a way that will get girls or boys to like you. Having an imagination can be a very isolating experience at times, but that doesn't mean it and happiness are mutually exclusive, as I re-learned in Madden-Connor's book.
Plenty of stories have been written about adults learning to believe again, or whatever the adult version of "play" and "imagination" may be, but those plots are often over-stuffed with hokey love stories and bit roles for funnymen. After awhile, they all look the same. Madden-Connor's book is just so purely about this one thing that it feels remarkably unlike its counterparts in the genre. No matter what your own experience has you read into this book, you're guaranteed to be swept up in its spell. For me at least, the experience was really rare.
Ochre Ellipse #3 is excellent. Hands down one of the best books I'll read all year. Add it to your Holiday Wish List. It's 40 pages long, black and white pages, displays an awesome library sci fi sticker on the cover, and can be purchased for $5 through Global Hobo or $4 through Family Style.
- Sarah Morean
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Britten and Brülightly
Britten and Brülightly
by Hannah Berry
Metropolitan Books
Although it got some press, Britten and Brülightly, which was published in April by Metropolitan Books, seems to have sort of slipped under the radar in the U.S. Probably because it is the debut work by a little-known, 25-year-old woman who lives across the ocean in Brighton, England. But it did garner much attention and praise in the U.K., and having read it, I can safely say it deserves all of that commendation. This is undoubtedly one of the best graphic novels I've read in a while.
The book tells a classic noir story, following private detective Fernández Britten (who prefers the term "researcher") as he investigates a suicide case. He has been hired by the fiancé of the deceased man, who is convinced her husband-to-be didn't kill himself. As Britten unravels the details of the case, the situation becomes increasingly dangerous, violent, and confusing. In the end, the true story involves all the juicy bits of a good noir: blackmail, illegitimate children, more deaths, and a sad, sad truth.
To point out that the plot involves these things is mainly to say that Berry's narrative succeeds as much as that of any well-crafted story of its kind; it's tight and believable (in a complicated-mystery kind of way), albeit slightly confusing near the end when she reveals the truth in a beautifully rhythmic, wordless, two-page montage. What causes Britten and Brülightly to rise above, though, are the distinctive touches she brings to her chosen genre, the ways in which she makes it hers.
Take Britten's partner, for example. From the start—a gray-blue and white page that shows Britten getting out of bed, already dressed and weary at 8 a.m.—Berry posits this half of the pair as the focus of the book, his first-person narration helping to carry the story. On the third page, he mentions his partner, Stewart Brülightly, and two pages later we meet the elusive man when Britten produces and starts conversing with a small white square. Is Brülightly a piece of paper? A photograph? It's only on page seven that Berry spells out the situation for us: "Don't be lecherous," Britten says to Brülightly, "you're a teabag." "I'm a teabag with needs, Fern," the latter replies.
This is definitely weird and punny ("brew lightly") territory, but it's interesting, too, especially as the book goes on. Britten, it becomes clear, is an extremely depressed man searching desperately for one case that will allow him to bring a little hope and positivity into the world. The fact that his partner is a teabag raises an important question about his mental stability: Are we to suspend our disbelief and assume the feasibility of a talking teabag in this fictive world? Or is Brülightly's existence a sign of Britten's mental instability as he finds it harder to live with himself and the nickname and reputation he has earned, "The Heartbreaker"? It is to the author's credit that she can make what initially seems an absurdity into a valid point of discussion.
The book's stunning artwork also deserves credit. Berry, who cites French comics, which are often fully painted, as her precedent, saying they have "incredible visual depth," hand painted the entire book, frame by frame, page by page. The hard work paid off: the resulting palette feels charged and brooding despite its muted tones. The scenes look washed, as though we are constantly seeing them through a veil of rain or the fog of memory (it does rain a lot—this is England), which contributes to an overarching feeling that, like it does to Britten, the truth holds us at bay; we can only inch closer one thought or discovery at a time.
Panels painted from above or below eye level and full-page spreads that linger long enough on a scene to hint at voyeurism reinforce this sense that as readers, we are standing outside looking in, following the movements of the characters from behind a lens. And the lens analogy seems appropriate, as the book feels quite cinematic at times. It may come with the territory—most of the best noirs are films. But Berry proves quite ably that they don't have to be.
–Jillian Steinhauer
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The Fart Party Vol. 2 by Julia Wertz
The Fart Party Volume 2
By Julia Wertz
Atomic Books
Unfortunately, this created two problems for me when reading the second volume, published this summer by Atomic Books. The first is that my expectations were too high. The Fart Party: Volume 2 is still incredibly amusing and a lot of fun, but sometimes it just feels like more of the same. Wertz tackles the everyday in a way that is often hilarious, occasionally profound, and always honest and weird. She can turn working a shitty waitressing job or sharing a high-five with a hobo into an engaging comic strip, a talent much more difficult and rare than some people might realize. And yet at times, the punch lines here feel slightly stale, or perhaps repetitious. I couldn't help but wonder if I had read them before in the first Fart Party. I wanted the book to have an infusion of something new and different.
In fact, the plot is different—markedly so, as Wertz and her boyfriend Oliver go long distance at the end of the first volume and break up in this one. So she becomes single, and then she travels around the country and decides to move to Portland. At the very last minute Portland becomes Brooklyn, and that is where we're left at the end of the book: saying goodbye to San Francisco and nervously anticipating Brooklyn.
One feels that this should be difference enough, but it isn't quite. What does provide some welcome variety is a handful of strips where Wertz lets her more contemplative side show. Though this sort of thing wouldn't work on a constant basis, the occasional action-less comic about, for instance, how fog sometimes makes her picture herself meeting a dinosaur and handing him half a sandwich is refreshing. A few contributions by and collaborations with cartoonist Laura Park also spice things up nicely, in part due to the contrast between Wertz's and Park's drawing styles. And, as with the first volume, this book's Fart Party Fun Pages are very aptly named. They also provide a chance to read other types of comics Wertz has created, which in turn gives one a greater appreciation of her talents.
This seems especially important as a way of balancing out the stick figure travel diaries, which are what they sound like: stick-figure comics that Wertz sketched during her journeys around the U.S. While I understand they were drawn in transit, and while some of them are pretty funny, after a while, they grated on my nerves. Wertz may be giving us a glimpse into her artistic process, but that doesn't necessarily work in the context of a larger, polished book. Could she have redrawn some of them? Included fewer? I don't know.
Then again, maybe I'm just being overly critical because I feel so attached to The Fart Party—which leads me to that second problem I mentioned. Once you fall in love with a book, a comic, an artwork, etc., you begin to feel a certain possessiveness for it. This gets even trickier when the object of your affection is done in the first person; then you begin to feel close to—and ownership of—not just the story but the characters. Wertz has created a comic so awesome, so relatable, so damn first-person, that if you fall for it, as I and countless others have, you'll start to feel like it's yours. You'll hold it to your own set of standards. But that isn't actually Wertz's problem, it's ours. Because she will always be herself, her own character, and she can do what she wants. We're just along for the ride.
–Jillian Steinhauer
Friday, October 2, 2009
Guest Strip: John Balash
Earlier this year, he completed a graphic memoir titled Worker Be, and is currently looking for a publisher for this project. Worker Be is a slice of life story about what it means to be a worker in America, set against the backdrop of retail banality.
More of his work and musings can be found on his blog: www.johnblathers.blogspot.com
Here's Balash on the history of today's guest strip: "The Adventures of Walkman was inspired by an old Walkman that my dad bought at a tag sale. I hope you enjoy it!"
- Sarah Morean
Milky Way Shuffle by Chris Eliopoulos
Milky Way Shuffle
by Chris Eliopoulos
Self-published
"But how?" ask eager, trembling nerds worldwide. "How can I get me some ladies?"
Perhaps it's Berwyn's snazzy dance moves. His cool, appraising stare. His spray on deodorant. His heroism. Whatever the formula, Berwyn totally transforms from fool to cool in this absolutely adorable book from illustrator and Yo Gabba Gabba! director Elio.
The book's plot is simple and sweet. Berwyn is invited to his first "cool kid" party as payment for doing the homework of some rich bitch. He's too naive to realize how unwelcome he is on the dance floor, where he's all arms and enthusiasm, until he gets stuffed in a closet. While Berwyn waits for what he assumes is his 7 minutes in heaven, an even less popular guest arrives — a spaceship full of aliens! The aliens want to party too, so they steal all the girls from the cool kid party to ride around on their ship! The burly cool dudes don't know what to do. Figuring sci-fi stuff is for geeks anyway, they force Berwyn to rescue their chicks…alone.
Does he succeed? Is the anticipation too much? Does it even matter? Not to me. Because I have seen this gorgeous book, and I'll tell you that if it was full of nothing but drawings strung together by even a minimal plot, let alone this quirky sweet story, I'd still give Elio's book a thumbs up. The art is jerky and abstract and cartoony. I'm delirious with joy just thinking about it.
The interior pages are black and white with gray fills. It works, but I really wish the color palette on the cover could have been applied inside. It's too much to hope for considering the high cost of full-color for a self-published book, but you editors take note and be sure to throw your hidden cash piles at him and his next project. For real. It'll be worth every penny.
Keep an eye on this guy, he's on the move. Elio is definitely too good for the rank of fold-and-staple, which is another reason this book is so surprising and appreciated.
Milky Way Shuffle is available on Elio's website for $4 + shipping.
- Sarah Morean
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Subway Stories # 6: Joe Decie
We sort of guessed at the former, given that what images of Decie are available online don't seem easily mistaken for those of a bald elderly man. The location, too, should be familiar to those who have spent any time in Brooklyn or the Bronx.
As for Decie himself, you can find more of his work over at Top Shelf 2.0, as well as some insight into his favorite brand of whiskey—an important bit of information, if you're looking to make friends with a cartoonist.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Guest Strip: Nathan Gelgud
For a sample of his diary strips and baseball portraits, check out his art blog called Take the Soda Free and Jet. You can also find issues 1-2 of his series Simon's Soup at Desert Island in Brooklyn, NY, or buy them online through his etsy shop.
- Sarah Morean
