diary of a guttersnipe 05/27/2013: bullet points

by Shawn Starr

Me and my brother drove about 12 hours from Boston to Toronto a few weeks back to attend the Toronto Comics Art Festival (or TCAF for short) and hang out with sometimes site writer Rick Vance. Here are some thoughts, observations, and reviews of what I purchased:

The Trip

My brother does not respect the posted speed limits of any state or country. He also does not appreciate Canadian drivers and their general non-asshole driving style.

In Canada you fill your gas tank before you pay for it, this concept confounded me and every non-Canadian i told about it.

The border crossing was fairly painless, except for when we tried to explain what we were doing in Canada. When the guard seemed to confuse a “comic convention” with a convention of comedians i corrected him by saying “no, the funny books, not the funny people” because i am an idiot.

Luckily no one searched our bags at the border because explaining why i had 'The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame' on my persons would have been awkward.

There are no tolls in Ontario. None.

The first joke i heard in Canada was about the Leafs beating the Bruins in Game 5. Proving Canadians do love their hockey. Also good jobs blowing a three goal lead in Game 7 Leafs, i appreciate it.

Rick Vance has free beer at his house. Free. Beer.

TCAF DAY ONE

I went to TCAF with US currency (a.k.a. real money) and just had all the american dealers there (aka 90% of them) give me change in Canadian (a.k.a. fake money) so i did not have to pay to exchange currencies. This system worked well.

The first booth i went to was Koyama Press because i have learned Michael DeForge tends to sell out of whatever mini’s he brings; and most of them are only purchasable from him at shows. I got 'Lose' #5, 'Loose' #3 (his sketchbook), and 'X-Mas Comics', along with Jesse Jacobs 'By This Shall You Know Him'. I’m not 100% sure, but i may have bullied  Jacobs later in the con into buying Josh Simmons 'Flayed Corpse'. I apologize / you’re welcome.

'Loose' #3 is a really interesting mini, it’s just a random collection of pages from his sketchbook, but in between the seven layers of  detailed drawings each page contains, you can see how small ideas of his grow, like a tiny Superman sketch that he later posted a finished version of on Tumblr or the preliminary drawings of the Youth In Decline logo. I think he only printed like 200 of these, so no one who reads this will ever get their hands on one. So jokes on you.

After Koyama Press, I went over to the Dash Shaw signing to pick up the mini’s he’d been selling on his recent tour promoting 'New School'. He had a short one about the Real World cast during 9/11 which was interesting but really only functioned as a series of Dash Shaw portraits, 'New Jobs' and '3 New Stories' though were fantastic. I flipped through 'New School' while he was doing some sketches in each comic and it looked good, i didn't expect it to be so big.

----review interruption----

3 New Stories (Fantagraphics)
by Dash Shaw

'3 New Stories' is a comic which explores the juxtaposition and superimposition of images within the structure of text/drawing based comics (a.k.a. traditional comics) as a means of underlining the thematic nature of it's stories. Similar to Blaise Larmee’s recent work on Tumblr, where Larmee utilizes photo’s of teenage girls as both a coloring element for the art and as an image to haunt the background of his GIF art, Shaw codes the pages of '3 New Stories' with layers of visual subtext that work as an interesting color palette and also through their existence as “images”, create additional layers of meaning to each page and the narrative as a whole.

The first of Shaw’s stories,'Object Lesson', is about a recently out of work criminal investigator (closely resembling Sherlock Holmes) who finds out his High School degree is invalid because his class did not meet the required number of school days to graduate. His lack of a degree makes him unable to find work, forcing him to go back to school to finish out the remainder of his school year, where he finds several of his old classmates in a similar predicament.

The idea of money runs throughout 'Object Lesson', it is a decidedly post-Recession piece, with work, education and monetization becoming the stories central themes. The opening page of 'Object Lesson', in juxtaposition with the first “page” of '3 New Stories' (an advertisement for Fantagraphics new Uncle Scrooge collection) shows the story of a man (Scrooge “The Richest Duck in the World”) jumping into a pile of gold coins next to a starving beggar being handed a few cents while taking up residence on the sidewalk (the sidewalk, while not depicted, is shown through a ghost image of a phone booth in the background). This image becomes even stronger when one looks at the bottom half of the Uncle Scrooge advertisement which shows The Beagle Brothers sitting hungry around an empty table. Both The Beagle Brothers and the beggar take on, in this story, the idea of failing to change to the new model, they are hungry because they did not learn to succeed in the new world order. Robbers, beggars and barons.

In contrast to this failure to change, we have our protagonist attending his first day of school, where he is exposed to it’s new for profit nature, book rentals and meal plans. “Public schools have really improved since our time”  he is informed by a cab driver dropping him off for his first day, a thought often repeated by his former/new classmates. After a few days of attending classes though he starts to wonder “This isn't how i remember High School at all...most of the school work is just filing and office work. It is as if we’re paying them to let us work for them. For no pay.” It is from these sentiments that our detective begins to investigate and unravel the new structure of work and school, the new form of beggars and bank robbers lampooned in the book’s opening pages are shown to be the interns of today. Graduates that upon completing their degree must go back to school to finish out their missing semester performing free office work for massive corporations.

Our hero, while discovering this system, is unwilling to overthrow it. Instead he finds a job in the school with gold plated lockers teaching World History to forty year olds and living comfortably, because he was able to, like Uncle Scrooge, monetize his education.

The following two entries in '3 New Stories' are shorter pieces, but Shaw continues to manipulate the issues advertisements and his own ghost backgrounds to reinforce his narrative purpose. 'Acting Is Reacting: Girls Gone Wild' follows Shaw’s previous forays into animating and illustrating “reality” shows (The Wheel of Fortune, To Catch A Predator, Blind Date);creating a possible 'The End Of The Fucking World' (previous pages ad) scenario to both the female depicted and her parents. Narratively speaking, this is a straightforward story, a foreign exchange student is “interviewed” by a Girls Gone Wild cameraman as they convince her to disrobe on camera. But by removing any geographic signifiers in the girls speech,  and featuring a shifting map in the background of each page, Shaw takes the idea of the “Foreign” Exchange Student, which one would typically attribute to an individual from outside the US, and turns it into a catch all for any female student residing in the U.S..

The final story, 'Bronx Children’s Prison', is about, as the title suggest, a prison for small children. These children are forced to work in the fields or risk harsh spankings, eventually these punishments reach the point that the prisons population stages an attempted break out, in which all but one is gunned down. Each page is colored by a unique set of dot matrices, from general polka dots to jelly beans to Jawbreakers, these images create an almost pop aesthetic to the the story which makes the harsh treatment of the children even more disturbing. The final page of the story though offers a sliver of hope. In a bit of self promotion, Shaw allows one child to get over the wall, finding freedom “ No friends left, but i’ll find more.” which is followed, on the book's final page, by a full page advertisement for his new book 'New School' which features an illustration of a boat, leaving the reader hoping the child is on board (I guess you’ll have to read 'New School' to find out though).

----interruption over----

The first floor seemed to be where most of the artists / publishers i cared about were housed, the second seemed more regulated to children's books and webcomic artists although i did find some guy from Providence selling Mickey Z comics and Jim Rugg was up there. By mid-Saturday there was a twenty minute line to get into that room so i may just not be with it.

----review interruption----

RAV #8 (Self-published)
by Mickey Zacchilli

I have heard Mickey Z refer to it as a cyclical wandering story, stuff keeps happening but it’s all happened before. That idea really highlights the stories existence as a romance book, which have the tendency to repeat and fall back in on themselves because of the limits of the “will they or won’t they” trope. Anyways, some guy talks to a cat and then some lady rips a person limb from limb. Also, other shit. I like this book.

----interruption over----

After the initial walk around we (me/rick/chris) made the trek to The Beguiling. The store actually inhabits two floors, the first is more of the “book” section, with a collection of just about everything in and out of print  you could ever want. My brother commented that he could drop a $100 there without thinking, and he’s not a big comics guy to start with. The store is also littered with original art that makes you want to cry, i saw a Mazzucchelli Batman sketch just tucked away in a corner like it wasn't hot shit for example.

The Beguiling’s second floor is a completely different store, the first tip off to this would probably be the music, the first floor had “classic rock” playing, while the second was some form of Dubstep that i could never identify the creator of. It was loud and i guess littered with samples of things people find cool. The second floor housed more manga and quality back issues than i could ever look at. Rick found an issue of the 'Negative Burn' anthology in the Paul Pope bin with a Godzilla short by Alan Moore and Art Adams in it, which i hope they use as the basis for the next Godzilla movie just so I can hear Alan Moore denounce it.

After leaving The Beguiling, we went to some random burger joint on the way back to TCAF and flipped through what we had bought so far.

Rick had a 'Heavy Metal' issue with a short story from Guido Crepax in it. I’d never seen Crepax in color before, it was weird.

There is a place near The Beguiling called Honest Ed’s which i guess is a giant outlet store. The alleyway next to it had neon lights dubbing it Honest Ed’s Alley Way and this did not reduce my fears of walking down it.

Rick and Chris ended up going to a panel on Moebius at the Hotel TCAF was using as an off site venue. I used this opportunity to go to the Los. Hernandez signing which was surprisingly empty, i was later told by people that their signing the previous night was stuffed to the gills so i guess that explains the short line on Saturday. I flipped through Jaime originals while he was signing my books which were awe inspiring. I regret not buying one, but i was scared of talking to him because Holy Shit! the Hernandez Brothers! (I had a similar dumbfounded reaction of Clowes/Ware).

After staring at the Hernandez brothers for five minutes i went up to the first floor and finally got the WiFi on my phone to work (The WiFi at the library was really patchy, but a room full of comic fans will do that to any server). I was greeted by 2-3 tweets asking about my whereabouts. My favorite was a concerned DM from Joey Aulisio “Shawn, you alright? people are looking for you” That dude sure does care about me. #Swoon

Before meeting up with the people on twitter concerned about my well being though, i got my copy of 'The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame' signed. The difference between Tagame in person, and what you would picture him being based on his work is staggering. He’s like a big teddy bear. He even drew one in my book, a fucking teddy bear, right next to the picture of a guy having his anus prodded with a finger.

I talked with Ryan Sands, he had a mild line so I flipped through 'The Strange Tale of Panorama Island' which he had a display copy of (following its almost immediate sell out) and it looked beautiful, I’m kind of shocked Maruo was able to garner such a luxurious release. Anyways, Ryan Sands is a very nice person, which i guess is why everyone who matters in alt-comics contributes to his various projects.

I saw Box Brown taking hits out of a flask at his booth, the Retrofit booth was across the aisle from Picture Box so i was expecting a Brown/Nadel throw down later that day, but sadly that never occurred. But I did get 'Snake Oil' #7 from Charles Forsman....

----review interruption----

Snake Oil #7 (Retrofit)

by Charles Forsman

My brother said this book needed another page of the main character getting punched in the face, i’m not sure if it’s because he just hated the main character or didn't feel the events following the beating were in keeping with what we were shown. Besides that, he enjoyed it.

----review interruption----

After giving credence to the Charles Forsman rumor that i was a made up person created and maintained by Alec Berry and Joey Aulisio by going unseen for the first few hours of the con, I then went and hung out with him for a while until they kicked everyone out of the library because it was closing. Conversation highlights include:

. Flipping through the proof copy of 'The End Of The Fucking World', which looks very nice. I know someone who has a pull quote on it.

. Talking about our mutual love of Josh Simmons and how his wizard throat rape comic was originally going to be published in a Jeffery Brown edited anthology but they couldn't find a way to make the story publishable.

. Me insulting various comics people and him politely nodding his head.

. The recently re-posted Groth/McFarlane interview on TCJ, i pointed to this particular exchange:

“MCFARLANE: ...My only point was, that out of those 200 kids, eight of those guys are going to turn into Fantagraphics fans someday. But because you insulted them, one of them might not. That’s your audience.
GROTH: I’ll accept the odds, yeah.
MCFARLANE: Whether you want to accept it or not, they, and the guys that are buying 'Spawn' today are your future audience, and you’re going after guys who are actually going to be your allies some day.”

I found this really interesting in the case of Forsman and the current crop of alt-comic artists emerging right now whom Fantagraphics would possibly wish to publish at some point who have some early Image influence. This was followed up by talking about Stephen Platt and Tim Vigil.

DAY ONE - POST SHOW

Sat around waiting for The Doug Wright Awards to start, then for another 40 minutes as a fire alarm went off once the show began seating. Chester Brown and Tom Spurgeon sat in front of me, which creeped me out a bit.

The awards were fine, little long but i assume every awards show is. If the whole fire alarm thing didn't happen it probably would have been quite a briskly paced show. The highlight was, as everyone else said, the David Collier speech which went through about five stages of funny/not funny/ funny again.

After the awards we went to the after-party bar thing. I had a couple beers, talked to Jim Rugg at the bar while he was waiting for his drinks about how hard it is to even get a basic grasp of everything that's at a show until two weeks after when you missed it. We then went home and passed out hard. I don’t walk that much.

TCAF DAY TWO

We showed up late for the second day of TCAF and left early, it was more of a “oh shit i forgot to get this” day. I got a Patrick Kyle book that I've wanted for a while but refused to pay the shipping to import to the US, and Tin Can Forest’s 'Wax Cross'. Those two guys were in this weird side room on the first floor i didn't know existed until i stumbled on it trying to get a WiFi signal on my phone.

----review interruption----

Wax Cross (Koyama)
by Tin Can Forest

Didn't understand it, but it looks pretty.

----interruption over----

We went to the panel about the death of comics blogging which was mostly asinine. Someone gave a speech in the form of a question which made me want to drink, sadly the bar which the panel was housed in didn't seem to be serving at the time. Tom Spurgeon seemed to possess the correct level of disdain for the panel, although i learned he had woken up a few minutes before the panel later. But i’m a fan of contempt for any reason.

In contrast to that panel i really enjoyed the Dash Shaw talk. He has some interesting idea’s about art and his own work.

I think that was it for Sunday at TCAF...yep.

DAY TWO - POST SHOW

Saw a double bill of "Room 237" and "The Shining" at a theater far too nice to be showing them. "Room 237" seemed like a really interesting documentary you’d find playing around on Netflix at 2 am trying to find something to sleep to. It was basically a series of semi-interesting internet essays about "The Shining" that there various authors read over the various scenes they were referring to. Most seemed to extrapolate a lot of stuff based on little inconsistencies which could easily be explained by the hotel being built on a Indian burial site. "The Shining" was very good though.

END

interview 003: ryan sands

by Shawn Starr

I interviewed Ryan Sands months back on my column but for those who are not familiar, he co-edited the erotic comics anthology 'Thickness' and created/writes for the influential manga blog Same Hat. He does other stuff too. In particular Youth In Decline, which is his new publishing company and the focus of our talk.

You have both edited and printed comics and zines before, independent of a publishing house, what made you want to transition to becoming a formal publisher?

I've been making zines the past seven years, and the scope and size of my projects has been changing recently -- from self-published anthologies full of contributors and crazy ideas to monographs and longer releases with a special attention to their printing and production. I'm still planning to continue on that trajectory with the same editorial impulses.

One problem with doing lots of random projects under disparate names is that it becomes hard for folks who like your work to find you or keep track of it all. A main goal for becoming a "formal publisher" is to simply have all these editing/translating/publishing projects under one name, and actually accumulate whatever goodwill or reputation they garner. The general theme for the first year is to do less projects better, by investing a lot of time in the individual creators we publish, as well as in the website and retailer relationships.

What do you hope to accomplish through Youth in Decline? Is there something that you see lacking in comics that you want to fill?

It's a pretty amazing time for comics and art, and there are many fantastic small publishers that I admire and am excited to call peers. My goals for Youth in Decline are to continue to create opportunities for the artists and writers I'm excited about, to tell their stories, to experiment with production and format, and to directly and aggressively compensate artists for their work.

There is a lot of challenging independent work happening now (and much of it outside North America, and on Tumblr) and I'm hoping my weird curiosity and tastes combined with the connections I have made in various scenes like science fiction, European comics, and indie Manga will make for an exciting slate of releases over the next few years.

Youth in Decline is an interesting name for a publisher, I can see it reading a couple of different ways, does it have any greater meaning to you or is it just a cool name?

The best and worst part about undertaking a new venture is coming up with the name!  I have a GoogleDoc full of SO MANY embarrassing ideas I kicked around with friends... puns, non-English words, and some awful ideas that sound like a twee britpop band or the name of a weird hipster barber shop.

The name is mostly just something I think sounds nice, but I did turn 30 in the past year, so perhaps it has a special meaning to me. Really simply, I like that it reminds me of a punk fanzine or Japanese New Wave film title, and that it doesn't have the word "Books" or "Press" in the name.

You have been a big proponent of paying artists for their work, has this idea held through to Youth In Decline or did you shift to a royalty or pay-via-free-books system. Also has your views shifted at all, now that you’re a publisher, about the current models for paying/not paying artists in comics?

The challenging and fun part of becoming a "real" publisher is that it both gives me stronger footing from which to push for fair creator compensation and also forces me to put my money where my mouth is, in a really real way.  I've been paying some form of compensation to creators since 'Electric Ant' #2, but I'm excited to continue experimenting in consultation with creators on page rates and royalties, and other ways to get to fair compensation.

The hardest part of publishing, and this is obvious Publisher 101 stuff to anyone that's done it, is anticipating the possible sales of a book. From that stems everything on the budget -- the unit cost of printing the books, how much you can compensate the creator, prices for wholesalers and retailers. I'm assuming I'll make some major miscalculations along the way, but hope to learn quickly how to budget and forecast in a way that previous projects had not forced upon me yet.

In your and Michael DeForge’s anthology 'Thickness', each artist had between ten and twenty pages to work with, a noticeable increase from the traditional eight page entries in most anthologies, with 'Frontier' you’re now giving the entire issue over to a single contributor. What lead you to this format?  

My tastes have been moving this way for a while -- as much as I love many anthology-style books and zines, I think the total impact you can have from a 1-page / 1-artist book has a ceiling on it. I'm not excited about the possibilities that much (after doing quite a few of those zines myself) and am more interested in the "monograph" approach that folks like SSE Project in South Korea and the 'Solo' series from DC Comics played with in the past.

It also makes it easier to pay closer to a fair rate when you're working with a single creator. I'm extremely excited to collaborate directly with a single artists on a holistic way and design the entire book together as one thematic object.

Uno Moralez has a very specific style and tone, what made you choose him as your debut contributor to 'Frontier'?

I've been obsessed with Uno Moralez's work for a few years now, and he's been at the top of my list of folks I've been dying to publish for a long time. If you've seen his work before online you know how shockingly fresh, mysterious, and 100% contemporary it is -- there's no one quite like him, and his work appeals to all types of comics, art, and video game fans. The impact of sitting with 32 pages of his work all at once is jarring and extremely exciting to me as a publisher.

Like with when Michael and I licensed and published a Gengoroh Tagame story in 'Thickness' #3, I simply don't think the language barriers between the various indie scenes are legitimate walls to keep us from enjoying and reading these works. I have my friend Roman Muradov to thank for facilitating all communication in Russian, so that the process of designing the issue would be dynamic and painless for me and Uno.

How was your experience translating Uno Moralez’s work to print? You mentioned on your site that the printing and look of each issue of 'Frontier' will change to suite the artist involved, which makes Moralez seem like an ambitious first choice.

It was definitely a purposeful choice, a bit of a shot across the bow to stake out new territory for Youth in Decline, and to challenge myself on the layout, printing, and production side of things. Uno's work is a bit of a phantom in the Internet - showing up in strange places and without attribution on Tumblr and Twitter. I had the pleasure of printing a short comic of his in Jonny Negron and Jesse Balmer's 'Chamelon' #2, and his work translated extremely well to the smudgy, ditto printing that the Risograph creates.

I think the collected work in 'Frontier' #1 plays really well in the printed form, shifting from large full-bleed spreads to frame-by-frame GIF pages, as well as two longer-form narrative comics. In addition to the book, Youth in Decline is also publishing a limited-edition set of "animated prints" using lenticular printing - that type of thing you'd see on some schlocky DVD covers or in 70's pinup postcards, where the image shifts as you move it from left to right.  It presents a really creepy and beautiful way to bring GIF art into the physical world, and I'm extremely excited for folks to see those together with the monograph zine.

In addition to debuting 'Frontier' #1 at TCAF, you’re also going to have advance copies of Suehiro Maruo’s 'The Strange Tale of Panorama Island' which you translated, you’ve worked on scanlations of his work before, what do you see in Maruo’s work that keeps you coming back to it?

It's a happy coincidence that the debut of 'The Strange Tale of Panorama Island' is lining up with TCAF -- it really feels like my formal debut into the high society of comics!  It's extremely gratifying to see just how lush and nicely the book came out -- it's a 270 page hardcover over-sized book, with gold foil printing on the cover. Suehiro Mauro has been a favorite of mine since I first encountered his work in Comics Underground Japan back in the 90's, and I'm happy to been able to work with Last Gasp and Evan Hayden, who handled all the lettering and book design. It's nice to be part of the team to get him back in print for English audiences for the first time in nearly 15 years.

The book is a bit of a departure from some of the more shocking short stories that have circulated in the scanlation scenes for years. Panorama Island is an adaptation of a noir-ish detective fiction novella by Edogawa Rampo from the early 20th century; the grotesque and beautiful style of that era is a perfect match for Mauro's artwork. It's one of the most beautiful comics I've ever seen, and I can't wait for folks to dig into it. I'll have a few dozen advance copies at the Youth in Decline booth at TCAF, and it will be available from Last Gasp in the coming week or so.

You can purchase 'Frontier' #1 here

diary of a guttersnipe 01/28/2013: books published in 2012 that i enjoyed, part one

by Shawn Starr

I float between hating and respecting the idea of "best of" lists.

They can, on the individual level, evoke a certain connection to the writer, their reading tendencies, their taste, but then again they can become lengthy posts on the same comics that everyone else has (masturbatory PR material and stuff of that ilk).

And then there's mass survey lists which seem to only succeed at ruining the point of these lists in the first place and only exist to give publishers nifty quotes for their next issue or collected edition (Named as one of CBR’s Top 100 Comics of 2012, etc.).

Anyways, here are some comics that i would define as my favorites of 2012, in no particular order, which i hope will imbue you with some sense of what i find important in comics, and if not, then just ignore me, I'll fuck off eventually.

the list

Thickness #3 (Self-published)
by Lamar Abrams, Jimmy Beaulieu, Edie Fake, Julia Gfrorer, William Cardini, Sean T. Collins, Gengoroh Tagame, Andy Burkholder, HamletMachine
edited by Ryan Sands, Michael DeForge

The final issue of 'Thickness' may not be the greatest in the series (that honor is left for 'Thickness' #2), but in its final iteration the series strips away any semblance of pretense and delivers one of the most beautiful, funny, and disturbing anthologies in many years. In 'Thickness', Ryan Sands and Michael DeForge produced their first definitive work, in what i hope (and expect) to be a continuing series of definitive works by this partnership.

It's the new alt-comics heavy-weights drawing smut.

Step aside America's Best Comics, you anthology of obviousness! I gots me some full penetration to view.

An expanded upon excerpt from my original review of 'Thickness' #3:
"I remember going to see "Hostel" as a sophomore in high school and being scared to death, the TV spots advertised it as one of the goriest films ever made, and then all i remember is just sitting there and feeling nothing besides disgust at how terrible of a movie i was watching. Gengoroh Tagame's 'Standing Ovations' though, a little less than a decade later, is what my fourteen year old self thought he was going to see. And it scared me to death.

Tagame produces a work here that i don't think the word torture porn can even be applied to, because, while it’s exactly what that phrase purports to capture, it’s so beyond everything else in the genre (besides maybe "A Serbian Film" ?), that it does not feel like it applies anymore. It transcended the genre.

'Standing Ovations' is one of the few things that has ever lingered with me months after putting them away, it won’t be forgotten. It’s a Bret Easton Ellis torture scene from 'American Psycho' that just keeps on going and makes you question whether the author is a little to into it. Tagame outfits his story with more BDSM, more fetishism, and...more...torture and...god help me more lingering. It’s fucked up.

And the very real thing about this comics is that there's no point, there is no grand political statement, there is just torture, and depravity, and that's what makes it even more scary. This could just happen, without cause, because that's how life works. You're an out of your prime fighter who's more valuable to someone getting nails driven through your dick and having your urine soaked underwear jammed down your throat so a million people online can pay to cum, than as a simple living human.

I'm genuinely afraid to read his book from PictureBox later this year, but i have to read it. The feeling lingers. Like in all good horror. It needs to be experienced. Again."

Lincoln Washington Free Man #1 (Traditional)
by Benjamin Marra

2012 was a big year for Ben Marra, his adaptation of 'American Psycho' via Raymond Pettibon splash pages finally saw print as an over sized newspaper, which perfectly reflected Patrick Bateman's crumbling reality and fragile ego. 'Ripper and Jack' was a burn the world to the ground satire of Crumb's 'Fritz the Cat', a revision of the film star as a Saturday morning cartoon, and then there was 'Lincoln Washington Free Man'.

Lincoln Washington subverts Kirby's six panel grid of pure action to tell the story of a freed slave who simply wants to have his forty acres and a mule,and live his life. The problem he finds out (as in all classic Westerns) is that the world won’t let him, as a band of Reconstruction Era Southerners attempt to put him back in the shackles he’d broken away from years earlier.

It's a violent and race centered story that has garnered Marra his first major exposure via a lengthy Comics Journal interview, but also produced the first backlash against his work. He ain't Spike Lee so i guess he isn't allowed to make "Do The Right Thing".

An excerpt from a discussion i participated in on this book, this entry pertains to the books inking style:
"He certainly has a lot more spot blacks in Lincoln Washington, a contrast from his last work ('Gangsta Rap Posse' #2) which was all line work. I’m not sure if it’s a reversion, though. His early inking style is quite heavy handed, while Lincoln Washington’s inking seems like more of a continuation from 'Gangsta Rap Posse' than a reversion. His inking here is more restrained than his previous works, and utilized with greater purpose, something that I would not generally identify with Marra. By doing away with all the excess inking, Marra seems to have figured out when and where it’s absolutely necessary to the story and leave it out in any other instance.

In 'Gangsta Rap Posse' #2, Marra choose not to distinguish the black cast from the white with any additional shading or color, that probably stems from  trying to keep the colors (black & white) in balance on the page, along with streamlining the process. It works on that project, and there’s a definite improvement in the art between issues #1 and #2, but here it needed the blacks to distinguish the character from his surroundings.

Lincoln Washington is the only black character in the book (except for his wife, who appears for a total of three pages), and he’s entering an “alien” and hostile place (Post-Civil War South), so his color has to be at the forefront, requiring a heavy shading/color process to separate him from the white residence. What could be ignored in 'Gangsta Rap Posse' really can’t in 'Lincoln Washington Free Man'. Race is a far more prominent detail.

If you look at the first page of Lincoln Washington, the only two objects that are completely black are Lincoln Washington and the title “O’ Sins of Men, What Demon Fathered You” which both distinguishes Lincoln from his surroundings and connects him with the title explicitly, the title both works as a comment on the sins of racism (America’s original sin) and Lincoln Washington, who is a man empowered by the souls of slaves to avenge the wrong doings perpetrated by white slaveholders. The colors are used as a way of separating and defining Lincoln as a character."

Lose #4 (Koyama Press)
by Michael DeForge

(along with every other DeForge comic that came out this year, but mostly 'Lose' #4.)

What's really left to say about DeForge, every comic he puts out is a breath of fresh air in a market of conservatism and stagnation. DeForge drops an issue of 'Eightball' level quality every month it seems, he maintains a level of quality that is daunting. It's almost unfair to everyone else. DeForge will be spoken of in a few years in a reverence that's only reserved for the legends. He's that good. And he's only getting better!

Anyways, 'Lose' #4 was a masterpiece, just like 'Lose' #3 and 'Lose' #2 (I haven't read 'Lose' #1 so i can't comment, although if anyone has an issue of it, i have a wallet the desperately needs to lose some weight). Its the fashion issue, and while the first story on bondage didn't leave me blown away, DeForge's fake documentary (Ala 'Spotting Deer') on the Canadian Family was one of the most engrossing things i'd ever read.

This year also featured a new issue of 'Kid Mafia', which although difficult to track down (i don't know of anyone who has copies of it besides DeForge himself) is well worth the effort. 'Kid Mafia' is an amazing take on teenage wish fulfillment, a what if scenario with you and your friends cast in the role of Tony Soprano, only that your main source of travel is still a skateboard and you don't really know how to talk to girls yet. Additionally, DeForge dropped 'First Year Healthy', which is just...wow. That guy's got talent.

2013 Looks to be an even bigger year for DeForge with an omnibus of sorts collecting his mini-comics, another issue of 'Lose', and a Drawn and Quarterly collection of his serialized webcomic 'Ant Comic'.

Negron (Picturebox)
by Jonny Negron

'Negron' is not the first book to reprint material readily available on the internet, those have floated around for the past ten years in various formats and collections, but what is different about 'Negron' is that it's the first book to successfully reprint the experience of reading the internet, 'Tumblr Comics' if you will. Where every other collection of the 'net' goes wrong is their need to contextualize the material within the confines of print, that's how you get a Kate Beaton collection that looks like every archival strip collection ever put out, and not a book reflecting her immediate interests, and the role of community surrounding the work itself.

'Negron' on the other hand moves past these dated approaches and attempts to recreate that Tumblr approach by showing it's artists obsessions in a continuous line. It may be edited, but its edited and curated to express Jonny Negron's singular impulses at each moment. For example, there is 5 pages of illustrations of woman eating phallic food, because that's what Johnny Negron was into at that moment in time. Narrative is overrated anyway, obsession is where it's at.

The End Of The Fucking World (Oily)
by Charles Forsman

It's difficult to read this book's title and not read it as a critique of the comic publishing landscape at the moment, at least from a small press stance. Small Press Publishing has been on the wain ever since 'Love and Rockets' jumped to the yearly book format (probably even earlier) and everyone else just abandoned ship. That all seemed to turn around in 2012 though where the scene reinvigorated the idea of serialized monthly alt-comics, and 'TEOTFW' lead the way in both its regularity (every month, eight pages, no matter what), a price point that could not be matched, and in quality. Oily and Retrofit and whoever else is out there prove that the world is not actually fucking ending, it just needed to find a new approach.

OK, enough context and bullshit. 'TEOTFW' did not make my list because of that, it’s just icing on the cake of greatness.

'TEOTFW' is the story of two teenage lovers running away from home, and while that is not the most original idea (nor is having them be murderers), what separates 'TEOTFW' from a dozen other instances of this story is the care Forsman takes in crafting the story such as the way each issue reads with the near perfect pacing, the trading off of narrator between James and Alyssa, how their individual perceptions shade the books events, James' cold calculated voice-over making the threat of violence at any moment, all the more real, while Alyssa’s voice always has a sliver of hope and love underlining her every word (she may not be innocent, but she didn't choose to love a sociopath, she just does). With eight pages there's little room to spare, and while Forsman's line-work is sparse, it's not unlike Jaime Hernandez or Charles Schultz' work in how it's whittled down to the essentials. Forsman understands that you can convey just as much, if not more emotional weight and information in one single line than a billion little ones.

(Also that scene where James and Alyssa dance, that scene is perfection)

come back next week for PART TWO...

diary of a guttersnipe 12/10/2012: this is cul-de-sac + plenty cognac + major pain

by Shawn Starr

This week instead of the usual jibber-jabber and repetitive pictorials of renowned actor Nicolas Cage, i talk with one half of the creative force behind my favorite anthology 'Thickness'.

An interview with Ryan Sands, Co-Publisher of 'Thickness'

Shawn Starr: I think the first, and most obvious question, is how did you go from 'Electric Ant' and 'Same Hat' to publishing the decades preeminent porn anthologies?

Ryan Sands: With the first two issues of 'Electric Ant', I had an excuse to get to meet and publish comics by a lot of my favorite cartoonists. One was Michael DeForge, and we quickly became friends over email and then later hanging in person at Toronto Comics & Art Festival. In early 2010 the video for "Telephone" by Lady Gaga debuted, and the two of us were tossing messages back and forth about the visuals and how rad it would be to make a 90's riot grrl-esque fanzine about Gaga. It went from a throw-away idea to a full-fledged book in about 7 weeks, and we debuted 'Prison For Bitches' at TCAF that May. Collaborating with Michael is a blast and his design impulses are always spot-on; We would always email about random YouTube hip-hop or weird manga, and over the course of that year he became one of my closest buddies.

We knew we wanted to collaborate on another project after the Gaga zine, and had been talking a lot about Porn/Erotic/Romance comics as a genre that wasn't being explored at all, while genres like cyberpunk or Swords & Sorcery were being explored and pastiched by indie cartoonists. Michael and I both felt like it would be fun to get some of our favorite cartoonists to do slightly longer "short comics" and see what happened when those works were linked together thematically around "eroticism". We went into the series with a pretty clear idea of what sort of issues we wanted to create, and we couldn't be happier with the comics our awesome contributors came up with for 'Thickness'.

'Thickness' seems like it was designed specifically for the risograph, what is it about the risograph that attracts you?

Yes definitely, self-publishing and self-printing the book on risograph was our plan from the start. We both were really impressed by the feel of comics that Mickey Zacchilli and Saicoink were printing on risograph in 2009 and 2010, and I love how cheaply it can create beautiful but messy, multi-color books. I had seen similar printing when I was a high school exchange student in Japan, and the inky tactile experience of reading a risograph-printed book dovetails nicely with the semi-seedy nature of "erotic comics". In the run-up to publishing the first issue, I was able to put together a rudimentary risograph print shop here in San Francisco, and have been printing books for friends like Hannah K. Lee and David Murray.

The cost-effectiveness of the printing has led to a bit of a boom in risograph within the indie comics scene lately, and there's even a risograph mailing list where printers and cartoonists using them share ideas and tips.

The production of 'Thickness' became more and more elaborate with each issue; the page count grows, you added fold out posters, issue three sports both a dust jacket and companion mini comic. Did you feel the need to outdo yourself with each issue?

The funny thing is that we actually had some even-sillier ideas for issues 2 and 3 that we backed away from. I had wanted to do a lenticular-animated cover and even temporary tattoos at one point, but Michael correctly talked me out of them. That said, I think the issues grew with complexity as our ambition for the books grew. The original plan was to have a pin-up in Issue #1 as well, but was cut because we couldn't get the artists we wanted in time.We didn't plan out each issue being bigger than the last, but we were very specific about how the contributors to each book played off each other tonally. Michael and I knew the third issue would be our last, so it definitely was packed to the gills with everyone we could manage to fit in.

You have a lot of artists I wouldn't associate with pornography, Angie Wang's piece is stunning for example, but I would never have expected that based on her previous work. Was it difficult to get everyone to embrace the genre and were you surprised by any one contribution?

We went after each artist in the book specifically, but we actually didn't have much trouble "convincing" folks to be a part of the book. I guess that means they all secretly wanted to draw erotic comics, or perhaps felt they could, *ahem* "rise to the challenge"? I personally was extremely impressed with all the work we were lucky enough to publish, and still feel that some of the stories (like Michael's "College Girl by Night" or Jonny Negron's "Grandaddy Purple, Erotic Gameshow" or Mickey Zacchilli's "Slime Worm") are some of the most vibrant and interesting short comics by those creators so far.

Aside from labeling them "pornography" or whatever, I thought it was really interesting to see what folks created when given an outlet to create a short story with some weight to it (rather than simply a page or two like many anthologies usually ask for). It feels like 10-20 pages is a good length for an experiment in style, or deviation of sorts. Everyone that we invited to 'Thickness' is one of our favorite contemporary cartoonists, and each brought a really interesting perspective to the loose theme.

The final issue of 'Thickness' had a decidedly harsher tone than the previous two, was that a conscious decision?

That's interesting to hear you say. I agree the book is a bit more direct... or perhaps the most unapologetic? But it also has some of the funniest panels in the entire series, in Lamar Abrams' "30XX". The series in its entirety hopefully is able to push nearly every reader's buttons in some way, and we definitely had strong ideas for what was missing from the first two issues. The lineup in the third issue reflects the creators Michael and I were most interested in hearing from, though we didn't dictate content or themes to any contributor. I love the third issue on its own, and I also think it works well as a final installment in the series as a whole.

The use of color in 'Thickness' is interesting, the Horror/Fetish stories tend to have these really dark tones while the Humor/Real Life use a bright almost neon palette. You also link several thematically similar stories through color, the Johnny Negron and Gengoroh Tagame entries for example are both a deep purple. How much did you work with each contributor to get the colors that way?

We worked with each contributor to decide which colors would work best for their comic, and talked over a few long email threads with the group as a whole to ensure there weren't any unintended overlaps. Some of the colors were last minute decisions or went through some trial and error; we'd initially test-printed Michael's comic in issue two in blue and purple inks, and while it looked pretty nice, I felt like that comic specifically flew in uncharted territory thematically and bullied him into using the gold ink for the first time in the series (laughter). Other cartoonists like Brandon Graham had very clear ideas about which colors they wanted (red and black, in his case, to connect his story to the original 'Dirty Pair' comics), so we incorporated that into the issue.

Without sounding too lame, I think having limitations force you to make these weird and instinctual choices, and the truth is that I only had 8 or 9 different colors available for printing with my risograph. It took forever to print the way we did, but the shifting colors throughout the book hopefully have a weird and fucked-up effect on the reading experience that works for people.

It's difficult to imagine anyone putting down 'Thickness' #3 and not have Gengoroh Tagame's contribution stick with them for a couple days. He's both the most commercial and non-commercial artist featured in the book. What led you to including him, and that story in particular, in 'Thickness' ?

Oh snap, I'm glad you are still haunted by his S&M tale (laughter). Gengoroh Tagame was a creator we dreamed of being able to include from early on in our planning, but never thought we'd be able to get him. Through the good graces of my friend Anne Ishii, we were able to talk and work directly with Tagame and he was more than happy to have his work seen by English-readers. It was an exciting experiment for us to actually license and translate a manga directly from the creator, and Tagame gave us a few stories to choose from for reprinting in 'Thickness'. That story is definitely very intense and steps into some difficult territory, and we felt it brought something challenging and new to the series. It definitely ends that final issue on a pretty singular and pointed note, and that felt really right for 'Thickness'.

Whats the next project you're working on? I remember hearing something about a collected 'Thickness' on your Inkstuds interview, any word on that?

We are very interested in a collected 'Thickness' book, and Michael and I are considering options for making that happen in the future. All of the contributors are excited about our initial plans, and we may have some sequel/additional comics to wrap up into a cool compendium for readers. We don't have any more details than that yet, but we do plan to present the works in a new way.

I'm working on a few new zines for early next spring, including a zine about my day hanging out with Kazuo Umezu, a zine about my grandparents, and another issue of 'Electric Ant'. I'm also hoping to continue printing and/or publishing more small books by artists on my risograph in the coming year. I'm extremely excited about the current trajectory of indie comics and zines for 2013.

Michael is pretty much (in my opinion) the most exciting cartoonist working today, and he's currently in the midst of more issues of his 'Kid Mafia', as well as 'Lose' #5 and his web series 'Ant Comic'.