Pt. 2: Tusen Hjärtan Stark #1, published by Domino Books (2013): feat. Joanna Hellgren, Elizabeth Bethea, Warren Craghead, and Wiley Guillot  

“Roughly translated from Swedish as ‘a thousand strong hearts,’ this anthology attempts to present difficult, challenging work alongside the art of rarely-translated European artists in a package that is cheap and accesible.” - Domino

 Read pt. 1 of this review here.

Hellgren: Joanna Hellgren’s contribution, “Neighbours” looks like a comic that could have been made last decade and I mean that in a loving way. A comic that invokes the feeling of literature by striping away all obstacles to narrative, leaving clues and portals in its wake. Rooms to explore.

Essentially, the story is a tightly sketched character study of a repressed and lonely woman overly concerned with empty spaces, internal life, and absent people (c’mon, you know that sounds like a Chris Ware comic from like 2003!) but that’s really a sad summary. The panels feel like partitions, cutting off rooms and lives and emotions. Every once in a while we get to peer through a little peephole into another space, another life, a story, to poke around a bit. And at the end of the day I think this comic asks the question of like.. what’s the point of this searching? Telling stories. What do we really find in a half-look into someone’s world? Or what are we left with upon leaving? At least these were my thoughts.

Like the best of the “literary” comics (TANGENT: wait, is that like.. finally a recognized movement or time period? I’m thinking.. the majority of alternative cartoonists that came out of the 80s-90s and blossomed into full-book artists in the 00s.. like the work that adopts a semi-formal comics grid and symbolic-cartoony drawings to tell “adult” stories in a bookish form? Has enough time passed? Can we officially say that this “happened” and is not currently happening..? Please. Or admit that it’s slowly receding?) ..um, yeah, like the best of this world, Hellgren expertly constructs a situation for the reader to inhabit. It’s very “well written” and composed. It is systematic visual storytelling with an emphasis on story. And I’m glad that Austin English included Neighbours as the centerpiece of the publication, sort of grounding the entire experience with a solidly built and familiar core, reassuring us that Domino is looking to print work based solely on its quality as opposed to the style or vogue. And there’s a real power in that. There’s a power in forgotten forms btw. Also, in working within a familiar structure and getting it right.

Bethea: Elizabeth Bethea’s work was a true surprise for me and the biggest highlight in this collection. Her pages are a series of self-contained strips that, while not narratively connected, have a spiritual unity. The work is sparse, and varied, and nuanced, and poetic, and unassuming in a way that sucked me in and left me wondering before I could even recognize what was happening or how she pulled it off. Incredible stuff.

The art has a truly crummy charm and is perfectly suited for that blend of comics expression where words and images work together to.. not recreate the reality of a moment but to resurrect the feeling of one. It’s not a representational experience but more like a collage or pastiche that pulls from the past to give a glimpse into a scene or specific viewpoint. The writing, which is the dominant force on the page, meanders like a well-timed journal entry or a revealing blog post or a setup for a street scene. Some panels are filled to the brink with text and others are left beautifully abbreviated.

Many of the strips draw on what seems like a carefully researched source or a deep personal interest, as the writing contains these tidbits of knowledge and slang that simply can’t be conjured. Like, the use of “permanganate of potash” to ward off gonorrhea. Or how Blanche Barrow was arrested, half-blinded, in jodhpurs and riding boots. Or how a prisoner would have his pants “untied” as opposed to being unbuttoned. Little things. And in this sense the work feels extremely serious.. just the thought and emotional investment involved. But also the tone and subject matter consistently point to a kind of.. grand undercurrent of struggle and sadness, or moments of rupture in our very real histories. There’s a tangible melancholy lurking here but it’s far from gloomy. There’s hope too. Life. And Bethea’s not afraid of humor. Many of the moments within these pages are deeply funny and had me quietly laughing to myself. Funny in the midst of an overall sadness or tint of blue.

Yeah, I really can’t say enough about these pages and I’d gladly read an entire book of her comics if such a thing were to exist. Any self-respecting comics fan should go out of their way to check this out. Really.

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You can purchase a copy of Tusen Hjärtan Stark here. And it is currently included free of charge (3/31/13) with the purchase of any other Domino publication.

Joanna Hellgren, Elizabeth Bethea, Warren Craghead, Wiley Guillot, Domino Books

Tusen Hjärtan Stark #1, published by Domino Books (2013): feat. Warren Craghead, Joanna Hellgren, Elizabeth Bethea, and Wiley Guillot  

“Roughly translated from Swedish as ‘a thousand strong hearts,’ this anthology attempts to present difficult, challenging work alongside the art of rarely-translated European artists in a package that is cheap and accesible.” - Domino

Cool. That’s a summary I can get behind. And Austin English, the headman over at Domino, has sincerely made good on his attempt. The design is economical and flawless. The unwieldy newspaper format causes no problems as every entry is perfectly sized for an easy read, and as the above description goes on to explain, each of the three artists are given 8 pages to fully develop and showcase their interests, unlike many anthologies. The cover art by Wiley Guillot is stark and clear and possibly my favorite image in a publication filled with striking stuff. The whole effort is a unique and affordable offering that feels needed somehow in this upcoming world of small press comics.

I’ve split the following thoughts into sections, hoping to give each artist a little consideration and space.

Craghead: From what I’ve gathered, Warren Craghead’s pages are a result of remixing various marks and image fragments into a poetic comics-web, a slightly overgrown garden of doodles and drawings. The text comes to us in strings weaving around and through the gaps in the image, meandering, like.. uh, an emerging stream or something.. or a windsong. Actually, the whole narrative seems to be coming from a worm’s-eye perspective, crawling through the underbrush and just existing, surrounded by stalks of grass and gentle hums. After I took the time to fully embrace the rhythm of the strip, the very process of reading came to resemble.. like, how a surfer talks about “riding the tube(?)” or whatever.. just being totally present and in the zone. A peaceful, wonderful feeling. But I guess if I knew anything about Craghead’s work this wouldn’t come as a surprise. Here’s the first line of his artistic statement:

 ”My work explores the absurd idea of how to be everywhere; It insists that art can be accessible, cryptic, and beautiful all at the same time.”

Surfing, flows, streams. Streams were on my mind when I first sat down to write this review. Not specifically talking about water.. but more like the massive currents of media that surround our lives, or maybe just life in general as an ongoing stream. And my initial thoughts were that contemporary streams exist as a resistance to the full scope of memory (encoding, storing, and retrieving). There’s just too much information. But of course memory’s also a stream? Or maybe that streams work in contrast to the goals of.. research.. or a form of knowledge, somehow? It was pretty hazy.. but I couldn’t help but think of Tumblr and Twitter as specific sites where inconceivable amounts of information can pass through our lives, information that is structured in a way to actively discourage reflection. It’s all about refreshing the scroll, right? Do people go back and reminisce over particularly compelling tweets? I dunno, I’m asking. So, when I first read Warren’s thoughts about replicating and transposing the spontaneous, “without thinking” scramble of our reality.. and sending it back into our reality, it just felt like.. almost too appropriate or redundant or something? Like, why repurpose these endlessly mundane streams of life as sketchy doodles and drawings? Aren’t we all (anyone who has the free time to chill out and read comics) doing this all the time?

Well, fortunately, Craghead’s comics show us exactly why this process is interesting and maybe why comics, as a medium, is particularly suited to explore some of the issues concerning time and thought and memory and existence ;) . On some level comics are so accessible and so non-linear. They invite the reader to return and reexamine. How often have you reread or put down or picked up a comic in fits and starts? Casually moving up and down a page or between pages. With a comic, the viewer has the power to navigate the spaces and tempo between thoughts and images. They control the experience. And one of the things Warren does in this work is to replicate the immediate moment, and by extension the imprecise and questioning flows of memory, through the act of reading. His comics are often composed of these delicately reworked scraps of reality transposed as drawings. The fragments are then reassembled to generate anew that first feeling of life as it happens. Or in other works the images merge with a more literal life out in the world somewhere.. like on a post-it or whatever. But in these pages the final compositions resemble a shaky structure, like an old family cabin or some such, that one is encouraged to wander in and out of.. reminiscing, re-remembering. And without going into too much detail, he achieves this by, I mean, I don’t really know, but judging from the bits of social media out there it seems like Craghead is drawing and recording all the time. Thousands of Instagram pictures. Drawing as a way of encoding life (mechanically, “without thinking”) into an archive of discreet symbols that can be recalled or recombined into a narrative or mosaic that is equally evasive and incomplete, and one that invites its own questions.

And I think it is this process of returning and reexamining that’s the main point of interest for me in his work. Our world now is practically overrun by stream-of-conscious narratives and it’s nice to see a space that can replicate the feeling of a fleeting moment, but obviously, in order to do so, it suggests the opposite, a period of complete consideration and care. The attempt to merge the act of drawing with the very basics of lived life is a difficult and admirable task.. maybe some kind of metaphor for cartooning in general? ;P  And I feel like in the end it shows us how truly impossible that task is to achieve.. or more appropriately, how it’s really the attempt in the face of impossibility that matters, the continual process. And in providing this space he gives us free reign, on our terms, to look around and explore, on and off the page, his world and ours. Always a good thing.

Take the advice straight from the Domino site and read this comic slowly and more than once. :)

*Part 2 can be read here.

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You can purchase a copy of Tusen Hjärtan Stark here. And it is currently included free of charge (3/9/13) with the purchase of any other Domino publication.

Warren Craghead, Wiley Guillot, Joanna Hellgren, Elizabeth Bethea, Domino Books

Review: AREA CC (Advanced Real Estate Adventure Coco), by Alex Degen, published by Snakebomb Comix

What can one say about the fabulous Mr. Degen that hasn’t already been expressed elsewhere on the internet? Actually, quite a bit, since no one says anything. 

Look at this master of the silent satire. :O How can an image with so few words suggest so much? Look, I’ll show you. This comic is made in Black and White. Binary, suckers. If you think this cheapens the artifact.. then you are literally quite wrong. Set within a map fragment of the land of Nova Zomia we’re destined to follow a fleeing star. The titular Coco..

Fleeing. Actually, can we talk about Nova Zomia for a sec? Let’s think about the title. Zomia is a realish Earth place. No joke, google it. And from what I can tell there seems to be a debate around the stateless region of Zomia as to whether the position is an advantage or a kind of forced retreat for the nationless people. And you remember what Nova means, right? Like a supernova: Expansion of a star that returns to its original state. My phone dictionary says, “a star that suddenly increases its light output tremendously and then fades away to its former obscurity in a few months or years.” Brutal. I’m thinking like, revolution gone wrong and we still chill in the mall. The setting for AREA CC feels like a twilight suburbia that, at all costs, has devolved into a playground for the rich and evil. Too familiar?

In an interview once, as a young man, Art Spiegelman said that in order for him understand a new comic it had to present an initial sense of structure. That structure was the gateway for him to even begin to read the work. Sure, sounds good. Luckily, AD seems attuned to this gateway business so Spieg can casually enjoy his new experience. Seriously, I mean the book defines its own sense of structure and narrative so clearly that I can’t help but view it as some kind of parody of an advertising venture or a pitch for a really enjoyable and addicting video game. It’s almost too easy to read. It’s like watching a movie. As the most superficial example, the book is divided into seven poetic pauses or “Areas” and a single dropping of the white flag. 8 real chapters. The cover is a death and an empty face. Are you suprised that the book starts with a non-being? Noova. What do I mean by non-being? Look at that line pattern on the cover. The only other place I see those lines are in the assembley “Showroom” section (aka Chapter 6), suggesting to me that Coco is some kind of freaky aborted clone or something, meant to be packaged up and shipped off as a product or tool, but she escaped. Or did she? Remember, there are many ways one can be fictionally used.

Wait wait, honestly, I don’t know if I can finish this review. I could go on and on about the details and tiny suprises of this book but that just doesn’t seem.. appropriate. Instead, here are some fragments of thought from an abandoned review, emails and notes written almost a year ago. I think they will fill in enough gaps and add closure to my life and hopefully a spark of interest for the curious:

AD works in the realm of satire and surreliasm. I just read a review by Ursula K Le Guin where she talks about a Bolaño book where his surrealist devices seem old-fashioned and overly cinematic but the depth of the political story overwhelms anything extravagent about the storytelling. I think that applies here.

AREA CC is built around binaries and acronyms. The gap between an acronym and knowledge. Good vs evil. Black vs white. But subverts that. AREA CC compares patterns. Is Coco good? Or evil? Or neither? Coco seems very neutral. Open close/open close. OCOC. She cancels herself out. Exists inside the system as a non-entity. The people who pose the most threat to a system are the one who live inside its border but are not recognized as citizens of that state. Moving through, that’s all Coco can do. yahoo!

AREA CC as a comic about making comics and there’s no question storytelling is one of its major concerns. Appropriating the language of comics and TV and game cultures, like the best of all satire. It’s really learned in its ways. Is this natural or unquestioned? It feels so casual but the whole book is setup to encourage questioning. It’s too easy. To question the power dynamics inherent in certain forms of storytelling. Considering the book is so rigorously constructed I’d assume there’s a grand intent but you never know and that’s even better. Leaving it up in the air, like a cypher. (I know now).

The video game logic of starting a new level. How cinematic action panels add to the reader’s feeling of coasting. Canted angels. How the wires affect all these people’s lives. They’re ‘living’ in a cellblock but it’s more like they’re being preserved. Is Coco really escaping death? Or has she just returned to an unrecognized state, unchained in a careless land. 

I keep repeating the phrase “ornate vs symbol” when I think about Alex’s work. Well, his name is a whole ‘nother thing that works on that level… same with the title. A. Degen. Alex Degen. AD. AREA CC. Advance Real Estate Coco. Redundancy. The gap between acronym and content… in various ways. But like, ornate vs symbol as an understood burden of the comics landscape.. basically like, how so often “time and detail” somehow equate to “value” in most people’s understanding of comics. “I put so much work into this page”. But it almost seems like Alex is avoiding or subverting these tropes… like Coco. Escaping.. or being funneled down a manufacturing tube, and ultimately using that whole process against itself. The pages and panels aren’t endlessly worked over but very considered and precise despite the wobbily line. Patterns not textures. A true beauty of a cartoon language. “Stuffing the bad guy in the wallpaper”, y’know? I’m sure you know.

Notes:

The gun starts blowing itself up.
A man paints a hologram of a tree.

She finds the exit quickly
but Death dies and Not me.

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AREA CC is currently SOLD OUT. (2/23/13) Start your quest. But consider supporting the artist and publisher by other unsolicited means:

AD’s tumblr

Snakebomb Comix

“Standout pieces in this frighteningly strong and aesthetically enigmatic book include Koch’s pages ringing with sadness, duck sauce from the weird world of Dane Martin and Blaise Larmee’s brutal skewering of the state of the arts. Sensitive frequencies are these.” - Edie Fake

Haha. Just checking in on Quimby’s consignment stuffs and saw Edie’s review. Way good. :)