The Autoptic Festival is this weekend, August 8 and 9. It’s a convention that focuses on prints, comics, and music, and it’s free to attend. MN Artists has an excellent write-up on some of the big-name artists who will be attending, and they’re all excellent choices. Autoptic is a huge festival, though, and there are five other artists whose books I’m looking forward to buying. In no particular order…
The Suitor by Nicholas Straight
It seems like a lot of Straight’s creative energy has been taken up with a design job, and while it’s always great to see an artist have steady work, I was sad that it seemed to come at the expense of his comics. But I was wrong! The Suitor is debuting at Autoptic, and it looks great.
Straight’s line work is fine and feathery, looking almost like etchings at times. A high level of detail typically contributes to a more static image, but Straight is also great at dropping those lines out when he needs to show movement and action:
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In addition, the book seems like a generally beautiful object to have around. The die-cut cover (possibly done by hand?) over the pink paper is striking, and the full-page panels give it an “art book” feel and make it easy to browse after giving it a thorough read.
Ashen by Chase Van Weerdhuizen
It’s a comic so mysterious, I can’t even find the cover! Ashen looks to be a short black-and-white fantasy comic, and while I seriously overdosed on fantasy movies, shows, and novels around the age of 16, I still find delight in taking short dips into made-up worlds. It’s similar to what Kurt Vonnegut said about science fiction: “‘You know, the problem with science-fiction? It’s much more fun to hear someone tell the story of the book than to read the story itself.’ And it’s true: If you paraphrase a science-fiction story, it comes out as a very elegant joke, and it’s over in a minute or so. It’s a tedious business to read all the surrounding material.”
And based on what Van Weerdhuizen has shown so far, he’s going beyond the Tolkienesque tropes of elves and fellowships. The previews I’ve seen seem to echo Greek or Babylonian design, his monsters are fleshy and strange, and his halftones give a feeling of stark, lonely travel. With minimal narration and short dialogue, Ashen looks to be a slow trip through a strange land without any of the expositional baggage of a fantasy epic.
Fütchi Perf by Kevin Czap
I’d only heard of Czap through his co-distribution of the Ley Lines series (one of which I’ve reviewed here). When I saw this preview of Fütchi Perf, it felt more like being swept into a song than reading a comic. Hair and clothes and eyes loop together across establishing shots. Snippets of conversation are spattered across snapshots of hands and mouths.
And those colors!
It’s almost a neon pastel aesthetic, I guess, and it works perfectly for what Fütchi Perf seems to be—an album of shorts, with colors playing the roll of instruments, recurring through different songs but playing different notes. That’s a clumsy metaphor, especially next to Czap’s graceful lines, but it seems apt.
Phases by Maddi Gonzalez
I got to see the first few pages of Phases at a reading, and I’ve been looking forward to reading the rest. Gonzalez has always been a brave cartoonist, dealing directly with issues of mental health and representation. Phases looks to be light-hearted, but it’s still an important topic: how we define ourselves and how that definition changes over time.
What stands out most is Gonzalez’s excellent page structures. Here’s my favorite page from what I’ve seen so far.
When looking at pages like these, I try to consider what an artist didn’t do. Gonzalez could have used any number of comic “tricks” to show the passage of time: wide blank space, dense grid of panels with incremental differences, or a lone caption. Blank space is very ambiguous, though. A grid of incremental panels is more obvious to a reader, but it destroys the juxtaposition of Fairy Queen Maddi with Goth Pokemon Trainer Maddi. As for a plain block of narration, it’s the equivalent of movie voiceover: it gets the job done, but it doesn’t utilize the visual possibilities that make comics different from other media.
For the rest of preview and the option to buy the book as a PDF, check out this post.
Stroppy by Marc Bell
I initially only knew of Bell as the editor of Rudy by Mark Connery (which was probably my favorite book of 2014). That’s what led me to this conversation between the two about Bell’s new book, Stroppy.
The general aesthetic of the book looks great—a mix between Segar’s Thimble Theatre or Gray’s Little Orphan Annie, manic crosshatching like a ’60s underground, and bright, flat colors that feel like they came out of a Joost Swarte book. Here’s a sample from the publisher.
Bell recently did a reading at Magers & Quinn, but if you weren’t lucky enough to see him, he’s a late addition to the Autoptic bill, joining dozens of talented artists. Who are you going to see?
I’m spending the summer reading books that aren’t by straight white American males. It’s actually really easy! And it’s been fun to consciously steer my brain around and do research on authors. Here’s what I’ve finished so far.
Imperial Woman by Pearl S. Buck (John Day, 1956)
This is the kind of book HBO could be making into a show. Imperial Woman is full of sexual politics, invading armies, portentous omens, and moral quandaries. However, it’s also full of female agency, three-dimensional antagonists, and the consequences of violence.
Imperial Woman is based on the life of China’s last Empress, Tsu Hsi. Faced with a dying emperor, a corrupt son, an internal rebellion, and aggressive European and American invaders, she balances carefully between alliances and betrayals in order to keep her empire and their culture intact. Throughout it all, Tsu Hsi remains an admirable (if not always likable) character.
Through it all, a range of femininities are shown: caring mothers, ruthless politicians, gentle lovers, and everything in between. Despite this, Tsu Hsi and those around her constantly worry over her status as a woman. Advisors tell her that she’s too smart to be a woman, and she wonders if her aggression and decisiveness place her somewhere between a man and a woman. As traditions crumble under foreign assault, though, the empress doesn’t retreat to a traditionally feminine role (even if she yearns to). She sticks with the choices she’s made.
Which isn’t to say that Tsu Hsi is a victor or a purely noble protagonist. She fights dirty, she acts on false information, and there are times when she’s purely hurtful. But she carries on, and she reassesses her standards, and at her best, she tries to live for others. Imperial Woman ends up describing a life similar to the ones I see around me.
All That’s Left by Maggie Eighteen (Metropolarity, 2014)
All That’s Left is a collection of short, interconnected fiction that the cover calls a prototype packet. The stories focus on a cast of dystopian cyborgs, skipping through time and across POV characters. Despite the physical dangers implicit in the setting—science gone awry, class warfare, dwindling resources—Eighteen rarely dwells on (or even shows) them. It’s the fallout from these dangers that matter. Characters acknowledge these troubles, but there’s an acute focus on the emotional work the characters do to maintain their identities and relationships. Eighteen’s dialogue comes out like a fencing match or a shootout but with one key difference: all of the characters have been traumatized, and no one wants to “win” these battles. Unlike so much science fiction where physical victory equals moral victory, the characters of All That’s Left only win when consensus is reached.
The prototype packet is a format I’d like to see more of. The stories are acknowledged as works in progress (and they can all be read online), and I think it’s important for writers to have an arena to drift around their ideas and create iterations. There are certainly a few textual tics I’d massage in the next draft—for instance, an abundance of adverbs (“he smiled nervously”) instead of just showing a character is nervous—but the prototyping allows Eighteen to create discussion around All That’s Left and decide which parts of the prose are bugs and which are features.
Videogames for Humans by Merritt Kopas (editor) (Instar Books, 2015)
This is a hefty book full of annotated playthroughs of Twine games. (Twine, for those who don’t know, is a programming language for text-based games.) I can envision a lot of potential layout issues with a project like this, but the book is clear and easy to follow; the games’ texts are reproduced well and clearly set off from the reviewers’ texts.
Kopas draws games from across genres, and the people playing them are likewise from different industries and backgrounds. While readers might come to Videogames for Humans to celebrate games, it also works as a celebration of criticism. The approaches to interacting with the games are manifold. Some are minimal, like watching a movie with a friend—side comments and a short wrap-up at the end.
Other playthroughs are much more detailed and much more structured. In Naomi Clark’s look at Horse Master, she shoves her hands deep in the mechanical workings of the game. It’s never dry, though—in fact, it brilliantly mirrors the unfurling of the setting and story of Horse Master.
In juxtaposing such a range of approaches in interacting with games, Videogames for Humans validates all of them. Different games work better for different approaches, and there could be games out there for everyone—for all the humans.
Do you ever put limits on your pleasure reading? How do you make yourself branch out from what you’re used to?
Sea Urchin by Laura Knetzger (Retrofit Comics & Big Planet Comics, 2015)
Laura Knetzger’s Sea Urchin starts the same way many stories do: with the disruption of a status quo. “I’ve been stuck lately. The bad moods are lasting weeks.” Things aren’t how they were understood to be. What follows, though, is not a typical narrative conflict or escalation of consequences. Nor is it a typical autobiographical hand-wringing and exploration of options. Instead, Sea Urchin comes off as a chronicle of symptoms and a meditation on negative feelings.
Sea Urchin’s pages seem to have more white space than other books. For instance, Knetzger’s lines are thin and consistent, and spot blacks and halftones are rare. Also, panel borders are scarce, and even when they’re present, they’re often broken by characters or design elements leaking from one panel to another. Lastly, the book is made up of a number of discrete vignettes, but there are no chapter heads or stanza breaks between them, so it can be difficult to tell where one ends and another begins. These effects combine to create a sense of slow wandering and exploration; reading the book feels a bit like wandering through a garden (a pretty sadness garden).
The things growing in the garden are surprising and occasionally dangerous. Knetzger gives her feelings imposing physical forms: black sea urchins pushing through her head, fractured faces dripping across her face, and raging anime villains. Characters grow and shrink in relation to each other and their emotional interactions. In prose (or in many autobio comics), narrators struggle to explain their negative feelings to the reader or to friends. In Sea Urchin, these feelings are more than metaphor. Knetzger’s depression isn’t like a sea urchin in her brain—it is an urchin.
People with mental illnesses (or other “invisible” illnesses) often have to bear the burden of proof that something is affecting them, as though there’s a subjective element to what they’re going through. Knetzger’s stories challenge that, portraying her feelings as object facts and inviting others to walk through her life.
In Real Life by Cory Doctorow & Jen Wang (First Second, 2014)
In Real Life follows the decisions made by Anda, a teenager in Flagstaff, Arizona, as she tumbles through life both online and off, navigating the gray economics of earning real-world money for in-game actions.
Written for a YA audience, the scripting is clear and naturalistic. The plot, which finds Anda trying to help a Chinese gold farmer who works long hours playing online games, is almost preachy. However, a few more subtle developments save it: Anda inadvertently causes Raymond, the gold farmer, to lose his job; she’s called out for trying to dictate morals to a culture that isn’t her own; and Raymond ends up fixing his own life without help from a white savior. It’s an effective story that doesn’t let a moral lesson get in the way of honest character interaction.
The true treat of In Real Life is Jen Wang’s art. Her character designs are varied and realistic, and each one has a separate and believable posture and style. Their body language and facial expressions have a beautiful rhythm that propels the characters through situations without any need for written dialogue.
The quiet, real-life moments are punctuated by Wang’s madcap descent into the world of Coarsegold, the fictional online game that Anda plays. Her action sequences are fluid, and her use of in-game interfaces (health bars, inventory menus, log-off icons) works as an almost musical counterpoint to the more representational visuals, adding tension or slowing things down as needed.
And the colors in this book are just fantastic! Anda’s everyday life is filled with browns and yellows, while the game world is vibrant and bright. The tension between the bland and the vivid illustrates why Anda might be more drawn to the online world than her school and family life, and when she dies her hair a bright red, it’s a symbol of how her confidence in Coarsegold is bleeding into the passions she’s discovering as an organizer and activist.
Heaven’s Dream Town! by Wren McDonald (self-published, 2015)
Where IRL is long, full color, and clearly moral, Heaven’s Dream Town! is short, monochromatic, and much fuzzier. It follows an unnamed protagonist as he alternates his factory life with trips into an online VR world. Throughout the book, the protagonist is confronted with three moral decisions. First, in Heaven’s Dream Town, a new player asks him for help but actually tricks him into losing all of his inventory. Next, the factory he works in catches fire, and he attempts to save a fellow worker. On failing due to an explosion, he runs to safety. Finally, another player helps to win back his inventory, but she’s killed while the protagonist’s avatar stands silently, the final page showing that he’s fallen asleep in real life.
It’s a much more pessimistic view of life than what is presented in IRL: those that try to do good are fleeced, fail, or get too tired. But it’s not as bad as it seems—at least he tried, and with no incentive for himself. So if we can’t be Anda, at least we can be a nameless protagonist.
McDonald’s page structures are smart and clear. Real life and online life never “live” on the same pages. The pages taking place in Heaven’s Dream Town have black gutters and rounded, square panels reminiscent of screens (where each panel could be a screenshot), while the pages of his everyday life have hectic panel placement with repeated imagery.
The game mechanics of Heaven’s Dream Town as represented on the page feel less “true” than the similar elements in In Real Life. Characters’ levels are based on their inventory, so when the protagonist loses all his items, he’s bumped back to a beginner’s power. In most games, a character’s level and power is based on how long they’ve played, and it’s generally not possible to lose those levels. McDonald’s imagined system is subtly capitalistic, and it’s much scarier than traditional scaling. The one with the most toys literally wins, but those toys can be taken away. It’s just one more way that Heaven’s Dream Town! shows a world that is painfully like ours, while In Real Life, with its closure and personal power and self-evident power, might represent the world we’d like to see.
