Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #53 by Drew Barth
The End of the End of the World
It’s 2020. The end of the world feels like it’s breathing down our necks. Let’s assuage those feelings by talking about a different end of the world: East of West. I’ve talked about the series early last year. Begun in 2013 by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta, East of West was one of those staple Image series. From its impeccable world-building of an America ruled by an apocalypse cult to its characters built so well they could each head their own solo series, East of West was one of the best series Hickman released in the last decade.
How do you talk about the end of a series that has been building toward the end of the world?
In Hickman and Dragotta’s world, the Four Horsemen walk among the people and one of them has a kid. This creates the main driving force at the core of East of West—three of those horsemen will drag the world, kicking and screaming, into the apocalypse while one wishes to prevent it. Ironically, that horseman is Death. And Death is our main focus throughout the series. The close of the story comes with the death of Death and the end of the apocalypse.
What makes Hickman and Dragotta’s apocalypse story so unique is the lack of the apocalypse. Nigh every leader in this America has been chosen by the Message—a series of texts that prophesied the end of the world—to deliver the apocalypse to their world. But in their efforts to do so, these characters only bring about an end to themselves. The Message is like a textual cancer—infecting, spreading, and decimating everything in its path. But the Message is indiscriminate in its destruction as everything dies around it. Until it is stopped. And it is stopped simply by not following it. Veering from the road map to the end times means that end never comes.
An apocalypse built on the backs of hope is what East of West delivers in its final moments. And its hope is not something brought about by some grand power, but by the people who would have to live out the end times if they had truly arrived. As an ending, it feels especially poignant walking into this new decade, but that feels like what we need from the end of the world—hope. Thousands die over the course of East of West and the world is basically teetering on the brink of complete oblivion, but the idea that it can be brought back, that the teetering doesn’t have to tip over the edge, means they didn’t die for the apocalypse. That idea of hope and change and turning the world around through the efforts of people is what is going to make Hickman and Dragotta’s story so poignant well into the future.
Get excited. Stop the end.
Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.
Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #52 by Drew Barth
Tokyo Roommates
The slice-of-life genre has become a staple of manga for decades now. Small stories on the incongruities and oddities of everyday living coupled with a hint of comedic absurdity has turned a genre that focuses on quieter moments into one of the most popular genres being published today. Take Hikaru Nakamura’s Saint Young Menas a staple of the genre. Begun in 2008 and available for the first time in English just this past December, Saint Young Men focuses on two friends leaving their homes to take a gap year in Tokyo. They celebrate Christmas, they struggle to pay rent, they visit amusement parks, and typically live an ordinary life in a small apartment together. And those two friends are Buddha and Jesus Christ.
It isn’t simply the divine cast that has made Saint Young Men such a popular series among fans, but rather the simple humanity of the series as well as Nakamura’s picturesque approach to storytelling and comedy. Many of the stories in this first volume deal with the mundane: having enough rent money after an extravagant purchase, beginning a new hobby, or visiting the local community swimming pool. Nakamura is the kind of artist that is able to dive deep into those simple moments and extract something essentially human about Buddha and Jesus having a small argument over how much money they’ve been spending. More than anything, these are two friends living together—they have their inconsiderate moments and they are able to work through their issues together as well.
Much of the comedy in the series as well stems from the clashing of these friend’s two personalities. Jesus is the impulsive one who will spend most of their money at the end of the month with rent coming due, while Buddha is much more level-headed, but still has his own moments of indignation. As the series progresses, a rapport between Jesus and Buddha develops and we see aspects of their personalities beginning to influence the other. Nakamura continually strikes a wonderful balance in the characters here: they maintain themselves as serialized comedic characters—never lapsing into easy tropes—but still showing aspects of growth throughout. Maintaining these characters over the years has been one of the main reasons why Saint Young Men has persisted as a favorite across the internet despite its limited availability.
Saint Young Men now joins a pantheon of manga that, after over a decade of publication, is finally available for western readers to read legally. Coupled with the recent translations of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, many fan favorite series are finally seeing official releases from publishers like Viz Media and Kodansha USA and this can only be a good thing as the decade continues. There are still dozens of series that have yet to receive official, published releases, but hopefully Saint Young Men is only the beginning to more fantastic manga into eager reader’s hands.
Get excited. Pick up something fun.
Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.
Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #51 by Drew Barth
Another New Year.
It is another new year. Oh god, it is a new decade. And, as always, there’s new comics to get excited about and a new decade of comics to see come into existence. The comics releasing this year are the ones that might establish just how interesting this new comic decade will become. Is all of this positivity about upcoming books a coping mechanism for the rest of the year? Yes.
Umma’s Table by Yeon-sik Hong—The next graphic novel from the author of Uncomfortably, Happily is a meditation on family and food. After moving to the countryside and learning of his parent’s situation—living in a basement apartment, suffering from illness and alcoholism—Madang’s life is split in half. Pulled between his new life and worrying for his parent’s, Madang frequently remembers the meals of his childhood, notably his mother’s kimchi. Told in a black and white, anthropomorphized style, Hong’s newest story is something that promises a story of heartbreak and home that will resonate well into the next decade.
The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud by Kuniko Tsurita—After over fifty years, the short work of Kuniko Tsurita is finally going to be made available in English. As a collection of short works throughout her life, The Sky is Blue is essential reading that spotlights a creator often overlooked in literary manga circles of the time. Showcasing her work chronologically, readers will be able to see the development and shifts of Tsurita’s work throughout her lifetime.
An Embarrassment of Witches by Sophie Goldstein and Jenn Jordan—A fantasy Bildungsroman that feels hauntingly familiar in its examination of the magical and mundane. Centered around two friends, Rory and Angela, as they navigate the rest of their lives. Goldstein and Jordan craft a fantastic world filled to bursting with color and character that parallels the real world in all its everyday annoyances and anxieties. An Embarrassment of Witches looks like it is going to be one of the most fun books of the next year.
Rascal by Jean-Luc Deglin—We can all enjoy an adorable cat and that is what Rascal promises us. A collection of the original Crapule comics in Spirou magazine, Rascal is naps, scratches, and everything a cat promises in-between. Told in a two-tone style, Deglin is able to capture all of the odd frustrations of cat ownership and the love cat owners still extend to their pets even after all of the bites and blood.
November, Vol. II by Matt Fraction and Elsa Charretier—The second volume of Fraction and Charretier’s graphic novel trilogy, this volume promises a continuation of the mysterious crime story we had talked about previously. Anticipation for this particular graphic novel is high as the first volume set the bar so high, so to see what Fraction and Charretier can accomplish here is already getting me excited to get more of their story.
Tartarus by Johnnie Christmas and Jack T. Cole—From the writer of Excellence and the artist of The Unsoundis a new space epic from Image. Centered on Tilde and her framing as a war criminal due to her mother’s warlord past, this new series is one of the most interesting coming out next year. With a fascinating aesthetic and a plot that draws a reader in just from the synopsis alone, Christmas and Cole have created a new series to really look forward to.
Pulp by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips—How much do I have to say here? It’s Brubaker and Phillips! The team returns with a new graphic novel, this time delving deeper into the past after their previous work on The Fade Out, Pulp centers on a pulp writer in the 30s and the stories he has become drawn into. Anticipation is high, but the quality always matches what Brubaker and Phillips bring us.
The Flapper Queens: Women Cartoonists of the Jazz Age edited by Trina Robbins—There is always an era of comics we are missing, artists unknown to us, and stories that we simply don’t see. Thanks to Trina Robbins, the stories told by the women cartoonists of the 20s are finally available in one, full-color volume for readers to enjoy. From Ethel Hays to Nell Brinkley to Eleanor Schorer, this volume is expansive in its scope and complete in its content. As far as historical compilations go, The Flapper Queens already promises to be one of the best of the year already.
Ghost Writer by Rayco Pulido—Available in English for the first time, Pulido’s noir dark comedy already looks like one of the most interesting, and stylish, graphic novels to release this year. Set in 40s Barcelona, the story revolves around Laia, her husband’s disappearance, and the hypnosis she undergoes to deal with her life suddenly shattering. Pulido’s linework is one of the most immediate things to jump out just from looking at the cover, the cross-hatched shadows especially give off a menacing aura, and only heightens the anticipation for this superb graphic novel.
Cowboy by Rikke Villadsen—The best westerns always have that tinge of the surreal to them, and with Rikke Villadsen’s Cowboy, that surreality goes further than ever before. From flight to fading from reality, Villadsen’s western pays tribute to the spaghetti westerns of old while examining the masculinity that has come to define them. Releasing this March from Fantagraphics, it already looks like it is going to be a full-color splendor that will resonate well into the decade.
Get excited. We’re in the future.
Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.
Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #50 by Drew Barth
The Low Horror
The year has come to a close. The weather is sort of growing colder. The holidays are here. So now it’s time for spooks once again. It’s difficult not to want to dive back into the spooks when there’s a new series from Joe Hill’s Hill House imprint at DC. And it’s even more difficult when that new series is from goddamn Carmen Maria Machado. As such, drop whatever you’re reading now and find a copy of issue one of The Low, Low Woods because it is already going to be your favorite series of the next decade.
Centered on two friends, Eldora and Octavia, The Low, Low Woods begins with a mystery. After waking up in a movie theater, the two wonder what had happened to them—why were they just waking up and why were they watching a movie? What happened that they can’t remember and who knows? Their world provides no answers outside of the weird. And their world, Shudder-to-Think, is the kind of town that feels quintessentially American: an old mining town that has seen many, many deaths due to sickness, crushings, or the coal fire that has split the ground open beneath the town so a persistent coal-smoke haze lingers throughout. Recalling Centralia, Pennsylvania, Shudder-to-Think is a town steeped in folklore, history, and death. And monsters in the woods. And birds burning in the sky due to the coal fire heat.
How do people live in Shudder-to-Think? Like Eldora and Octavia, the people are trapped. An old mining town doesn’t have much to offer outside of the mine, and when the town is owned by the Company, the outside world may as well not exist. This is Eldora and Octavia’s world and this is a world suspended in an interesting state: continually unchanged, but some things change under the surface. Even the monster that we see in this first issue—a human-like deer of flesh—is met with horror as well as a desire to keep it secret to waylay any curfew that might come from its discovery. The characters themselves mention how the world feels as though it has shifted after they woke up in the movie theater, and that’s what Shudder-to-Think feels like: the world as we know it, but shifted.
What Machado and Dani have done with the first issue of The Low, Low Woods is create something complete. While it is only the first issue, there is a continual sense of completeness to Eldora and Octavia as characters, Shudder-to-Think as their setting, and the general mood of the story itself. As a first issue, it’s hard to think of anything that’s missing. The Low, Low Woods stands as another series that further cements the idea of DC’s curated lines as one of the most fascinating and innovate areas in monthly comics at the moment. If there has ever been a time to try a new series, this is absolutely it.
Get excited. Get spooky for the holidays.
Drew Barth is the one on the right.
Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.
Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #49 by Drew Barth
Live from Miami Part 3—Kat Verhoeven
From webcomic to brand new book on your shelf, Kat Verhoeven’s Meat and Bone is one of the most recent webcomics to make the leap to published book. From its dialogue to its color palette to its subject matter, there has never been anything on the page as distinct, memorable, and heartbreaking as Meat and Bone.
At this past Miami Book Fair, I had the opportunity to sit down with Kat Verhoeven and dig deep into what makes Meat and Bone such a phenononal work.
Drew Barth: First off, congratulations on Meat and Bone getting from that webcomic to this published work.
Kat Verhoeven: Thank you.
DB: Now you’re part of that pantheon of creators who have made the leap from being strictly webcomic into that physical medium like Meredith Gran and Andrew Hussie. Was there ever a plan for you to have it be a physical book or was it just wanting to get the story out there regardless of physical medium?
KV: There was always a plan. From the very first page, I was trying to consider print formats and how it would reproduce best. I’ve been working on this for so many years that as I was working on it I realized what I thought was good information for how to format things was only actually half-good information, so it still needed a lot of work when I was adapting it to actually be printed, but probably a lot less than if I hadn’t always wanted it to be a book in the first place. I just felt webcomics was a more accessible way of getting the story out when I really didn’t have any sort of reputation or following at that time to get a publisher, at least that’s what I felt.
DB: Yeah, you see that a lot with other webcomic artists where that is the start of building the audience.
KV: Yeah, and I think there’s some downsides to that now where you pretty much have to create a big thing for free and market yourself for possibly years before you can make the leap to published work, which most of the time still does pay better, I think. There’s still some people who are wildly well-paid off Patreon or through their webcomics, but it’s not everybody. Printed books are still, in many ways, the best way to live off of comics.
DB: We’re still in that weird place too where it’s hard to know what good webcomics are out there.
KV: Like the only things that exist are these terribly maintained lists, like the webcomic list is basically just a wild west Craigslist of everything and there’s not a lot of ways to filter it. And then sites like Smackjeeves, which just had some sort of thing happen with it where it’s changing its format or it’s getting rid of domain names, or Webtoons or any of those, they’re unreliable. And they are, especially Webtoons, very algorithm based, so it’s harder to break in there and if you’re starting without a reputation, or without some sort of following, it’s harder to break in and it’s still not easy to make their best-of lists, so it’s still hard to get discovered. I do sometimes think back to the Megatokyo days where, when you looked up webcomics, you were going to get one of five results, basically.
DB: And if you wanted to find more you could go onto their “comics I’m reading” lists.
KV: Yes!
DB: And now you don’t really see a lot of those anymore.
KV: No, and that’s kind of too bad. The friends link thing is a beautiful throwback to the early internet.
DB: I still remember I got most of my recommendations from John Allison’s Scary Go Roundyears and years ago and not knowing what Achewood was and checking that out, and following down the rabbit hole from there.
KV: Yeah, but in its way, that became a lot of the same cartoonists of that level wound up sharing their own links on those sites, so to find anything that was coming a couple years after those cartoonists, it wouldn’t necessarily be shared in the same way. So there’s always going to be a problem, I think, of the systems that are working to discover new talent. You need to find out how to infiltrate them, work around them, or just be clever. It’s always going to change.
DB: And speaking of change too, I also wanted to touch on how Meat and Bone character changes have worked throughout the entire series. This is a very long format piece of comic prose and what was your approach to Anna, Gwen, and Jane and how you were able to develop them throughout all those years. [4.15.74]
KV: When I started working on Meat and Bone I always had this bullet list plan and originally I was trying to do it in the true webcomic fashion where I’m like “I know the points I want to touch on, but it’s going to be serialized and it’ll just go on forever and I’ll write it as I go.” But very early on I was like “oh, I have working like this.” I wound up tightening up that script and creating more controlled narrative beats for the characters and more traditional development arcs. Then I tried to write it all at once and get it done all at once to make it like a story. With the characters, they’re all kind of trying to, without being too moralistic, have a journey that comes to some sort of conclusion, whether that’s a conclusion that’s positive or negative or neutral doesn’t matter as much so long as it shows these important aspects along the way.
DB: And that’s something I really enjoyed too in the comic is that you really play a lot with negative character development where people aren’t necessarily becoming better versions, but they are changing in some way. And I think that’s something that, especially for a lot of LGBT focused comics, everything has to be good or else it’s weird to portray.
KV: I get where that’s coming from because a lot of the older LGBT characters—don’t even talk about LGBT stories because they didn’t exist—the characters were miserable or got killed off or died of AIDS. It’s the trope of the LGBT tragedy. And so now we’re kind of in this moment of trying to take that back and to give queer characters positive stories and to let them be happy and let them have good endings. But I love darkness and I love struggle and I love suffering. I definitely consider myself more in the “drama” than the “comedy” camp and even more into tragedies. I would rather leave a movie feeling harrowed than light-hearted. It was actually very scary in some ways writing queer characters who are complex and not necessarily showing that respectability that “everything is good, everything is okay” side because I thought I was going to get a lot of negative feedback. But so far it hasn’t happened, so fingers crossed that people appreciate it for its complexity.
DB: Yeah, I think that integrating those more negative aspects makes them more well-rounded because not everyone can be perfection all the time.
KV: I think so. And queer people should get to be complicated and messy. Marshall in particular is a queer trans woman who has an eating disorder and is kind of a jerk most of the time. And I don’t see any other characters like that , but if somebody came to me and told me “I have a real issue with this” I’d understand where they were coming from because she is really, really difficult. But I kind of love her for that. And I’m glad I wrote her that way without being scared.
DB: Yeah, and that’s something I wanted to touch on too. How do find that balance between the positive and negative aspects of a character where people can still enjoy this person despite some of the negativity before it becomes too negative and people think it’s too much?
KV: With me, I try to just be honest with what I need the characters to deliver and let that go as deep as it needs to in that character. I’ve been kind of surprised that people seem to care less about how dark and bad a character is, like lots of people tell me they love Marshall even though she’s kind of awful. But I think not a lot of people like Anne too much and I think it’s really because Marshall is unapologetically who she is, where as Anne is absolutely a mess and doesn’t know who she is and is kind of wishy-washy and insecure. And I think people admire the force of Marshall even if it’s bad compared to the complicated mess that is Anne where she doesn’t really act honest to herself most of the time. So I think it’s less about who’s good and bad and more who’s genuine and who’s not as a character.
DB: You said you get that audience feedback as well.
KV: I get a bit.
DB: So how does audience feedback play into—once you put a page out there and you’re a few pages ahead and have already worked on more of the story—how the audience would respond in a specific way? Were you able to integrate that into the upcoming pages you were working on?
KV: I didn’t really have that experience. I didn’t actually get a big readership as a webcomic and by the time I got a bit more traction, I had already written the whole story. So I never actually really took audience feedback and incorporated it. I think the one exception to that is kind of the relationship between Ryan and Daniel, where people seemed to really like the relief of a slightly more straight-forward romance story, so I actually beefed that up for the book, so they have a little bit extra stuff. But mostly it was just me writing with some feedback from my friends and other peers, but not so much from the readers.
DB: It’s also really nice how you have that support network of having your peers there to help with what may not be working so well, which I feel is really important for illustrators and comics being made now.
KV: And I’m spoiled living in Toronto. It’s a really strong queer scene, it’s a really great strong cartoonists scene, I can talk to a lot of people directly about what I’m doing and get feedback from them. I’m really just lucky to live where I live.
DB: Something too I noticed in your comic when reading through is that your dialog is so good, I can’t come up with a better word off the top of my head.
KV: I always wonder “does this sound natural? I’m not sure.”
DB: It does sound really natural and I was wondering how do you approach dialog in this way to make it come out in a way that’s like how people genuinely talk and have it be unique to each character?
KV: I always pray to myself that I hope this is working, because I never feel sure. I put a lot of effort into writing how people talk and maybe it comes off so well because I’m so worried about it being stiff or fake or whatever or too twee, which is something I don’t like in books. But as a reader and just as someone talking with my friends or out in the world, I love banter so, so much. So reading banter that’s well written just makes me so happy. When I’m speaking, I try to use a lot of fun words and quips, and I love turns of phrase, and I don’t care if it makes me basic, but I love Shakespeare.
DB: Another craft things too, I also noticed your color palette throughout the comic is also incredibly strong. Like the use of red in a lot of moment, especially with Marshall’s hair, is this all encompassing thing.
KV: My publisher did not like the cover because Marshall’s hair is blue on the cover, it’s this purple fade to blue and I think with the atmospheric lighting and the way the rest of the cover is lit, you can tell she’s a red head even though red is not there at all. And my publisher was like “you should make her hair red” and I was like “…no. I won’t do it.” And throughout the book, of course, her hair is always red and it’s shades of anything from tangerine to blood to a burgundy wine color and it’s whatever it needs to be. I feel that way about color, it’s that you don’t need to have a natural palette to convey what color is and it’s really where I let loose and let myself have fun. In the drawing and the draftsmanship I try to be gesture-like and lively, but still have a strong, structural underpinning. But with the color, I’m just like “yeah, let loose, do whatever, green skies.”
DB: You wanted to make sure that this work was reality grounded, even if you had some of those more magical aspects integrated in, especially with the depictions of Barbarella, so what was the decision to make sure it was much more grounded and not potentially leaving a fantastical element?
KV: It partially comes from my background being more in fantasy and lore, and then I did this story that’s very serious and urban and serious fiction, and so having a fantastical palette in those scenes, the Barbarella scenes, these dream-to-reality sequences, gave me a bit of an outlet for this deep love of fantasy and genre that I have. I kind of needed that to get through such a serious story. And [Barbarella] is a really good person fro Anne to contrast herself because she’s just impossible, a person like that couldn’t exist and Anne would absolutely choose someone like that as her idol because she’s never reach it. Even if you read Jane Fonda’s biography, her trying to fit into that role was really, really difficult and damaging to her, so even for Jane Fonda, it’s impossible.
DB: The last thing I wanted to ask was do you feel like this is the end of Meat and Bone as a story or do you feel like there could be something else you might want to work with some of the characters like Anne and Marshall and everyone?
KV: I think I could work with the characters more, I don’t think I’d want to soon, if not ever. It is a self-contained story and I don’t really want to go there again. I don’t know if I’ll still feel that way in ten years. I do think there’s lots they could still do and explore about each other and learn. I think Marshall is probably due for a redemption arc, but that’s not the story I’ll work on next.
DB: And that’s all the time we have here today. Thank you so much, Kat.
KV: Thank you for talking.
Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.
Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #48 by Drew Barth
Live from Miami Part 2—David Heatley
David Heatley’s Qualification is easily one of the strongest graphic memoirs to come out in recent memory. This autobiographical story spanning Heatley’s life takes us deep into the world of 12-step programs, addiction, and the people who qualify at every meeting.
Recently at Miami Book Fair, I had a chance to sit down with David Heatley to discuss Qualification, the world that created it, and the nature of graphic memoirs.
Drew Barth: Nice to meet you. Congratulations on Qualification from Pantheon, a graphic memoir in twelve steps.
David Heatley: Thank you, it’s good to be here.
DB: First off, this book is so resonant and devastating in equal measure, at times difficult to read because it is a memoir dealing with fairly heavy subject matter. So what was the impetus of structuring it in that twelve step way? You did have experience with those groups, so why were you going for that specific feel?
DH: I grew up in a twelve-step family and so it was part of my culture, for lack of a better word, growing up and it was always sort of pushed on me in a way and I really rebelled and hated it. But in my thirties I found myself kind of gravitating towards it—as you do later in life you sometimes come around to your parents way of thinking. And so this book chronicles six years of me going through six different programs and kind of losing myself in it. The way I describe it is kind of getting addicted to recovery. And so I’m just trying to tell the story of that and it seemed natural for it to have twelve chapters—it’s not like one chapter corresponds to each step, as you know—but just to have the structure kind of rhyme with the subject matter. And pretty much once I left the program, I immediately thought “I need to do a book about this.” While in the program I never would have thought this was material I could use, but suddenly once I was out of it and no longer following its dictates then it seemed like fair game and it was something I really experienced and even survived. I wanted to tell the world about it.
DB: The weight of the material here—it is heavier subject matter for a great deal of this book—it’s hard to have imagined surviving most of that considering that addiction to recovery like you had said. And this goes into a lot of memoir work, but how did you come to the decisions of “here’s what I want to put in because I feel that this can be put out there” and what sort of stuff felt like “this needs to stay private, this is something that can’t go out there?” How do you come to those kinds of decisions?
DH: With this book, I knew I wanted to work with an editor and I hadn’t before. A lot of cartoonists don’t, they just kind of edit themselves.
DB: It’s kind of a solo act a lot of the time.
DH: Yeah, and that’s always what I had sort of revered was these people who could do it themselves. But for this one I just knew I needed some perspective on it that I didn’t have. And so I was assigned Anna Kaufman and Tim O’Connell at Pantheon and they were like my team. This was almost a collaboration with them, they were so wonderful and such good sounding boards. I was even sending drafts of this when it was just typed up prose before I had drawn anything to Tim and he was really helping me see like the tone was really angry or accusatory or like humorless and he was like “let’s lighten this up” or “let’s style this back” so that was really helpful. My wife too, my wife Rebecca certainly weighed in and helped shape how she appears in the book. And I do have my own artistic instinct which is like: I usually start with the things that have stayed with me so much that I don’t even have to look up any reference for that time, it’s just still eating away at me. We usually start with a certain character or a setting or an anecdote that has the emotional resonance to me and then I kind of work it through and write it until I feel it’s come to a place of forgiveness or starting with someone I hate, finding a way to love them by the end of it. It’s this intuitive process of trying to work out for myself what I want to say about this thing. I don’t always know going into it what that’s going to be.
DB: Yeah, because it’s kind of hard to work with that in a memoir setting that’s like “can you trust your memory?” kind of thing as well. And that even goes into what I was thinking as well in terms of the art style. It is very stark, black and white, and a big departure from My Brain is Hanging Upside Downwhere that had all these colors and its own individual structure like short story pieces, and this being this much longer narrative. And with that starkness, how did you come to that decision to do that pure black and white and let it show itself?
DH: I’m really glad you picked up on that and I think that’s the right interpretation of it. When I was going to these meetings, like Alcoholics Anonymous for instance, first off, the word “qualification” in these programs is when a member tells their story in front of a group of people. So they’re qualifying their membership by telling their story and saying what their addiction was like, what had happened to them, and what are things like now that they go to the program. And so I was following that same structure for telling this story. I’m going to qualify about my time in the program. And the thing that always impressed me about these AA qualifications was just how stark, stripped down, and almost artless they were. And they went right from the person telling it right into my heart and I just had no defense against it, it was just so sincere and overpowering and moving. And I kind of was following that too—I didn’t want anything getting in the way of just this clear, clear direct message of what this story is, to pretty it up, or make it super colorful, or dial up certain parts over others just felt really false.
DB: I think it reminds me of what Scott McCloud talks about too with the simplicity of it makes the message stick so much harder, where a beautiful painting makes you miss what the word bubble says. And for something like this, a lot of the words and images stick with me weeks and weeks later after I finished reading it, especially those moments with your father, I’m still thinking of them now. It’s horrifying, but it’s so resonant in that way and I think that’s why the black and white works so well.
DH: I sometimes told people I felt like I had kind of opened a vein and was inking this thing in my own blood, like that’s how intense it was.
DB: And you definitely can feel the blood splatter here. And speaking of just how you’re presenting some of the characters, especially for some of these dependency groups you had gone to, how were you able to find that balance between presenting them in an almost journalistic sort of way where it’s not backsliding into parody of “look at how absurd these people are” but “look at these people who are human, who have these issues” but these program don’t always draw out the best things. So how were you able to convey that without going into making fun of them?
DH: With some characters that I remembered well, it was easier than with others. I had nothing but love for them even after leaving the program, some people I had resented and some people I did find ridiculous in the moment. Tim as my editor was a good gauge on that and he even shared it with someone internally at Pantheon who was a current member of AA and that was a good gauge of “are you being sympathetic?” and I was trying to be. I definitely didn’t want to like hurl a bomb at the twelve step world. And it’s been heartening because several people in AA have approached me and said “I know you’ve made a different conclusion, but I do think of you as a fellow traveler and I think you’ve nailed a lot of this world.” And I mean we’re all kind of ridiculous figures, so like as long as I’m not elevating myself at someone else’s expense—in some ways I think I’m the most ridiculous character in that book, I’m in this quixotic mission to heal myself forever and I just keep stumbling and messing up. And so that’s really where my focus was and these incidental characters just sort of add color along the way.
DB: Speaking of the art style as well, I have seen a really interesting balance between using a lot of interesting visual metaphors, especially with the halo post-meeting and that slowly diminishing or that image too of you as the volcano. And how were you able to balance that as well—the visual metaphor and reality of everything? Figuring out “here’s where I want to make it more grounded, but here’s where I want to show off the actual feelings that I can’t convey in words themselves.”
DH: That’s tricky to articulate. In some ways, the art was secondary to this book. I mean I spent four years writing a manuscript to this before even drawing it all and when I did do the first pass of thumbnails, I did it very quickly, I just kind of said “okay, this panel goes here.” And a lot of what I ended up doing with the final art was very close to those thumbnails. So I think the fact that I wasn’t thinking too much did let those metaphors come quickly and have them be based more on the feeling than trying to be clever and show off any drawing style. It’s a funny thing, though, there’s a trade-off because there’s almost this disappointment once a book goes from just being in your head to being on the page because you’re like “well, that didn’t really capture how I felt.” You have to kind of say “well, okay, that was a very crude approximation and maybe someone else can fill in their own head what that might have felt like.” You kind of just have to accept that this is the drawn cartoon version of that feeling, which is never going to be in 3D Technicolor, it’s happening in this imaginary space in your head. I was sort of at peace with that. I was like “okay, now this is on the page, it just has its own life and its own version on the page and let’s just move on to the next one now.”
DB: With what you said earlier about how this started out as prose before it even became the final product of the actual graphic novel, is that much more different from how you would approach other works as well?
DH: It’s much different. I’ve done a lot of dream comics and I would say that was a similar approach, like I would have these journal entries that I would then type up and treat as a script to be broken down into panels, so that was a similar process. But that was a series of small stories that I wrote and drew simultaneously. And it’s funny because when I started this book I was going through a period of not wanting to draw at all. I hadn’t drawn in year, I literally just stopped drawing and I even thought “maybe I’ll just write a text only book.” So when I was first typing it up, I wasn’t even thinking of pictures and it wasn’t until a couple years in I was like “this actually does need to be a graphic memoir.”
DB: I think one of the main things that really sticks out in this book is that road to personal clarity, like you have that revelation at the end and I really liked how at the end you also had that denouement sort of thing of “here’s what’s been happening since I finished writing the original script.” Was that something you had actually come up with by the time you had finished, because you said it took four years, so there’s that massive amount of time where you were in that post-recovery phase. And so was that something where you were consciously like “no, I should have this end on this better note than maybe something that may have been more sour?”
DH: Certainly some things happened after I started writing it that then got included. I’d say that both episodes with my parents, really kind of forgiving them, happened way after I started drawing this and I didn’t think that was even going to be in the book. And the section with my mom, really, the conversation where I felt the most forgiveness I’ve ever had with her came after talking to her about this book. So it was close to being done and I told her everything in it. I said “actually, I don’t really want you to read this, you can if you want, I don’t really want to talk it once it’s published. But just so you know, this is what’s in it.” And she really heard me and she really listened and it was a great discussion for both of us and I just knew I had to add two pages to the end of this book just to include that because that’s where it needs to end, with my mom.
DB: The beginning and ending kind of have that full circle and working with your parents adds that, not necessarily “good ending” but it gives it that feeling of completeness, which is one of the reasons this book is still so resonant.
DH: It did feel important to tie things up, at least a little bit. Because I’m in a very different place than when I was in that world. I think it’s important to offer readers hope, I do. I think it’s a fairly adolescent thing to just kick and scream and tell people how bad everything is and at a certain point when you grow up it’s like, well, I’m actually building the world, especially if you have kids, I’m building the world around them. So I want to positively contribute and it was important for me to have this book have some hope in it.
Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.
Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #47 by Drew Barth
Live from Miami, Part 1–Patrick McDonnell
Every day for as long as I can remember, it has been difficult to go through a newspaper every morning and not see Earl or Mooch looking back from the three-panel joy of Mutts. Beginning twenty-five years ago, Mutts is the daily comic strip from Patrick McDonnell that we have all come to know and love each morning. But comic strips themselves aren’t enough to do McDonnell’s art full justice. From his more experimental works to his picture books to his work with animal shelters across the country, to encompass McDonnell’s expansive work, there needed to be more than comic strips. Enter The Art of Nothing: 25 Years of Mutts and the Art of Patrick McDonnell. The Art of Nothing is a marvelous work of both compilation and celebration—from the beginning phases of a strip of Muttsall the way to some of McDonnell’s latest work with the Jane Goodall institute—everything is here to showcase some of the best illustrative work of the century.
Recently at Miami Book Fair, I had a chance to sit down and talk with Patrick McDonnell about The Art of Nothing as well as the quiet wonder of Mutts.
Drew Barth: First off, congratulations on this: The Art of Nothing: 25 Years of Mutts and the Art of Patrick McDonnell. This is honestly one of the cooler books I’ve ever seen in terms of a retrospective of a newspaper strip comic. I have some Peanutsbooks at home, but I don’t remember them going as in-depth as this one does.
Patrick McDonnell: Thanks, that was something I was shooting for. I wanted it to be more of an artbook than just a comic strip collection.
DB: So how did the concept for this first come out because it’s the 25thanniversary of Muttsand it could have just been a greatest hits of strips, but this goes into a full retrospective of everything: the picture books, the work with Jane Goodall, all of that. So how did this concept come about?
PM: This is with Abrams Books and I did a book with them on the art of Muttsin 1982. And Charlie Kochman, the editor at Abrams, approached me and thought maybe we should do a twenty-fifth anniversary edition of that 2004 book. And we were thinking originally that we would just add thirty more pages to that book. And since that book there were so many things that happened with Muttsincluding the picture books that the thirty pages became more and more and so we thought “let’s just make a new book.” The twenty-fifth anniversary became its own art book.
DB: It became its own art book with a ton of content, especially with some of your original sketches and a lot of the work-in-progress pieces.
PM: I really wanted to show the process, you know. I mean, twenty-five years of doing a strip, I really wanted that to be part of the book, so we included a lot of my sketchbooks and even the dummies I did for the picture books. I’m totally mesmerized by artists’ sketches, I always like the immediate, you know, right from the heart to the hand, I love looking at that. I thought it might be fun to include my stuff.
DB: I always love looking at that for any kind of nice artbook. Like where did it begin? We have this wonderful finished piece, but what were the sketches and the bare bones that you’re working with. And the fact that they’re here just shows off that nice beginning to end point in your process. And I was reading through the book and you mentioned that when you were selecting different strips that this was almost like going through a family phot album. Was it difficult to figure out which pieces to include?
PM: Twenty-five years is a lot of strips, that’s a lot of ink under the bridge. You have your favorites and they are like children almost to you. Even though it’s a large book with two hundred something pages, with twenty-five years there’s a lot to choose from, so it really was trying to select. I mean when it came down to me was just intuitively which ones put a smile on my face, or I felt were important to the different themes I used. It was a combination of trying to show all the different characters, but then, like I said, different themes too. The shelter story strips I do, the more spiritual strips, the more arty strips where I enjoyed playing with the medium of comic strips. I included a lot of the strips that talk about comics.
DB: To me, those were some of the stand out ones. Especially the ones where there’s stark black panels with the little interlays of light or Mooch peaking the head in, that’s still one of my favorites. I think I remember reading that when I was much younger and then years later reading Krazy Kat and thinking “man, I can’t believe Mutts has been going on this long.”
PM: I can’t either. The daily comics strips is a strange artform. I mean, people live with it every day. When I think of Peanutsand strips I grew up with and love, they become a part of your family. It’s like a family conversation first thing in the morning. You meet your old friends and you spend some time with them.
DB: It’s that comfort level—like a nice, warm hug with the newspaper every morning.
PM: Like family and friends.
DB: For me every morning it was Mutts, Peanuts, and Foxtrot.
PM: I call that the business section of the newspaper, for me.
DB: You mentioned themes before and we do see those variations on different themes throughout the years and how certain strips have that certain repetition, like the shelter strips or those similar stylistic choices of the vase. There’s also that need to experiment we see with those stark contrast strips. So what drove you to keep wanting to experiment and break out of the typical Sunday strip of three-panel funnies?
PM: I’m a big fan of the classic comics, I love Krazy Kat and Peanutsand I compare doing a comic strip a lot to being a jazz saxophone player. I mean you play the same songs every night, which would be the themes, but then you get to solo and every night the solo is different. So with the comic strip I have certain themes—the little pink sock, the shelter stories—it’s a dog and cat strip so I do a lot about the weather, autumn when the leaves change, and then it’s like riffing on those themes in the way a saxophone player would riff on a melody.
DB: And I love your riffs too with those large Sunday panels where it’s showing off the artists that you love as well.
PM: Yeah, those are called the title panels. They’re also called the throwaway panels because most newspapers don’t show them because they don’t have space for them. But way back, almost from the very beginning, I though it would be fun to do little homages to different artists and illustrators that I like. It was a dangerous thing to do because they take a lot of time and time is of the essence when you draw a daily comic script.
DB: I still think my favorite one in the book was the Big Brother and Holding Company Robert Crumb tribute. The structure was amazing especially for the more narrow space than the twelve inch record.
PM: Crumb was a big inspiration for me. He came out when I was a teenager and I always wanted to be a cartoonist since I was a little kid and then when I was a teenager I though maybe being a cartoonist isn’t that hip. But then Bob Crumb came out and maybe cartooning can be hip. And the fact that he did that old style that I just love. So he was a big inspiration, so being able to do the Big Brother and Holding Company as a MuttsSunday page was fun to do.
DB: You mentioned that it’s almost like being a jazz saxophonist where you do the themes, but then you get that chance to solo, so when I see things like the picture books and the collaborative poetry it’s like that need to do those solos.
PM: Yeah, to expand. I was doing Mutts for about ten years and I loved comics as a kid, but obviously I loved picture books too, I’m a big fan of Denslowand Winnie the Pooh, so I always wanted to do that too and I finally found a little time. I was getting a little faster with Mutts after ten years so I did The Gift of Nothingwhich was my first picture book. And I loved doing the picture books. It’s mainly to solo but in a different space. The comic strip, to a certain extent, is a routine, I mean it’s the same size, always the same medium, three panels most of the time. It becomes kind of standard, but with the picture books, I could do watercolors, oil painting, I could do anything I want, any size, I get thirty-two pages. I really get to flex the art muscle with those things.
DB: Getting to break out of the mold, especially with those bamboo brush drawings.
PM: I had gone to a great show at the New York Public Library of Japanese art books and that just inspired me to try to draw with those brushes and that ink. And the books I thought would be a good place to play with that.
DB: There’s this constant theme of compassion throughout The Art of Nothingthroughout the entire work, with animals and people and how they treat their animals, especially the Guard Dog chained up all the time. And those were some of the most beautiful panels that I had seen. And you mentioned how one of your biggest influences was Charles Schulz and I always think of Peanuts as a very compassionate comic. Do you feel that Mutts was a continuation of that?
PM:Peanuts and Charles Schulz was the reason I became a cartoonist. I got so much joy and comfort from those Peanuts books as a kid that with MuttsI was just trying to give back some of that comfort and joy. Underneath all of that, Peanuts was just this kindness, and the way he drew it there was just so much love in the way he drew. So with Muttsthat was kind of the main goal. And the other thing with Mutts was that, when I started it, I really wanted the dog and cat to stay—even though they talk—I wanted to keep them as animal-like as possible because anyone who has a dog and cat know how much fun they are and how much personality they have. Most animal strips, they’re animals but mostly they’re people in animal costumes, so I really wanted them to stay that way. So my goal was to try to see through the eyes of the animals and when I started seeing how tough it is for so many animals on this planet, compassion and empathy became a big part of the strip. To talk about dogs and cats in shelters waiting for homes, it kept on growing and then I started talking about farm animals and endangered species, so compassion and empathy is a main focus of what I do.
DB: I think one of the most powerful moments I saw in The Art of Nothingwas that strip of all the animals on the savanna just slowly fading away and there’s an impact there that hits really hard, especially when you couple it with the shelter scripts as well. So what was the main impetus to push you to start integrating that deeper animal compassion?
PM: The more I learned about animals and really trying to see through their eyes, the more empathetic I’ve gotten. And also, the planet’s in a dangerous place. Things are getting tougher. We really can’t avoid that truth anymore, I don’t think. Again, what’s nice about a comic strip, because people do see them as family—those are pretty big, strong issues—but I think with Muttsand comics I think you can kind of slip those in and people have their guard down. And like I said, because they feel like they’re family—and I try to do it entertaining, I don’t want to be too preachy with them—but I think I can reach some people.
DB: Reading through those shelter strips did make me tear up, it was one of the more heart-wrenching things. But seeing your work and trying to raise that awareness I think is one of the best things in a daily newspaper comic.
PM: Nothing makes me happier than when I get a letter or an email from someone saying that they were inspired to get a new best friend. And also I’m very optimistic. When I started Muttstwenty-five years ago, shelters back then were seen as scary places, people didn’t really want to go to them and that’s totally changed in twenty-five years. Now people are proud to talk about their shelter pet and there’s been a lot of progress. I’m a vegan and that’s getting so much easier all the time. The world is changing. So hopefully we all end up in the right direction.
DB: With this book, you have the Mutts website, you have all the different picture books, collaborative work, working with Jane Goodall, where are you seeing Mutts in the future right now?
PM: There’s still the daily strip, which, amazingly even though it’s been twenty-five years, sometimes I feel like I just started and there’s plenty more to do. I’m still going to be doing picture books. There might be, there sounds like there’s a good chance, I’ve been working on a Mutts movie for a long time. I was originally with Fox Animation and then things kind of got on hold for a year because Disney bought Fox, so now Disney has Muttsand it looks like there’s a good chance they’re going to do something with that. So I’ll keep you posted, but I might be busy with a Mutts animation. And also there’s a chance, there’s a wonderful animation company called Cartoon Saloon and they’re going to try to sell Me, Janeas a TV show, the Jane Goodall collaboration I did. Hopefully it’s going to happen soon. They’re the perfect company to work on Jane Goodall. They have the sensibilities down, they really respect Jane and they love nature, so I think it’s really going to show in the cartoon.
DB: Patrick, thank you so much for your time.
PM: Thank you so much.
Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.
Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #46 by Drew Barth
Furthest Star
In the pantheon of DC heroes, Green Lantern has maintained as one of the most iconic characters for the past eighty years. From the white gloves to the lantern battery to the green rings around their fingers, Green Lanterns are one of the most distinct characters in a typical Justice League line-up. And this area of iconography is where Young Anima, DC’s Gerard Way-run imprint, has flourished over the past few years. Green Lantern in particular is one of the newest characters to get the Young Animal treatment with the recent release of Far Sector by N.J. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell, and this new take is one of the most interesting the character has gone through.
When thinking of Green Lantern, most readers think of one of the original Earth lanterns: Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, or Kyle Rayner. And from there, readers know the iconography mentioned above coupled with the idea of the intergalactic space cop Green Lanterns represent. But this is where Jemisin and Campbell disrupt the canon. We are introduced to a new Lantern, Sojourner “Jo” Mullein, on assignment in the off-world metropolis, the City Enduring. The City Enduring is as ideal a city as can be conceived: no murders in the last 500 years, a beautiful cityscape, and the hub of a three-civilization empire. The only caveat is that no one in the city can feel any emotions. And this makes the first murder in 500 years the most shocking thing to ever happen in the city.
As a first issue, Far Sector excels. The murder is introduced as a police procedural, and the mystery and world-building presented here should be used as a masterclass in story craft if only for establishing our three main alien species in the City Enduring within a couple pages. Couple that with the consistency of Campbell’s art that helps to maintain our immersion within the city and this new branch of the universe, and we have a first issue that brings readers right from the familiarity of past Green Lanterns into the present with Jo and her new ring that is still veiled in mystery.
Creating new characters and stories from the established DC canon is what has been making Young Animal such a refreshing imprint. At times, it feels like the pre-Vertigo work being done in The Sandman, Doom Patrol, and Shade, the Changing Manas. Every creator here seems revved up, and Far Sector is absolutely continuing the trend of these refreshing books coming from Young Animal.
Get excited. Explore new stars.
Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.
Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #45 by Drew Barth
Devil’s Night
I love, and always will love, short works. Blasts of story and character that know the precise moment to end with the biggest impact possible. Warren Ellis in his newsletter years ago ruminated on the idea of a graphic novella that would fill this purpose: short bursts of story that can be picked up and read by anyone in a single sitting. Some works like Crécy, Frankenstein’s Womb, and Aetheric Mechanics had shown this basic idea of graphic novellas at work. Some ten years later, we now have the beginning of another graphic novella idea from Matt Fraction and Elsa Charretier in their new work, November.
November is a story in three parts that focuses on three different women over the course of a single night—the night before Halloween, or Devil’s Night. And this Devil’s Night is on the cusp of massive disaster. All three women are somehow connected to the disaster. One through a shady deal in a greasy diner, another through being a 9-1-1 dispatcher as the city burns, and another through the a serendipitous gun in a puddle. Each strand of story twists and ties together under the machinations of someone known only as Mister Mann.
What makes November so interesting in the scope of new graphic novels out this year is the collaboration between Fraction and Charretier. Fraction’s previous work on Hawkeye, Sex Criminals, and Casanova establishes November among his pantheon of wonderfully executed crime stories with interesting characters who can’t seem to stop fucking up. When tsuch storytelling is combined with the incredible art of Elsa Charretier—strengthened further by Matt Hollingsworth on colors—the hard noir feeling of November flourishes. And that noir feeling is hard to miss with a story so masterfully paneled and paced. Shadows abound for the dramatic shrouding of corrupt cops, but showing panels slowly crush characters as the city around them begins to violently erupt only bolsters that feeling of tension.
November is only the first part of a three-part graphic novella series. Fraction and Charretier are working toward what Warren Ellis had been theorizing about graphic novellas, but also working in the same vein as the Vertigo crime graphic novels from a decade ago. When thinking of ways to get more readers into comic shops and into comics in general as this is another good example of a new series being both fantastic in its storytelling and presentation as well as being something new for readers to look at on store shelves. November is another shot in the arm for comics,
Get excited. Comics evolve.
Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.
Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #44 by Drew Barth
Slipping Through the Cracks
Throughout the year, hundreds of comics are released. Dozens of new series begin. Sometimes those new series escape the eye of even eager readers. This happens to me every few months—a series just doesn’t appear on the new release calendar or I simply don’t hear any talk of it from the comic crowd I follow. And that almost happened this last month with the release of issue two of Strange Skies Over East Berlin by Jeff Loveness, Lisandro Estherren, and Patricio Delpeche.
But the strange irony of Strange Skies Over Berlin almost slipping through the cracks is how its story deals with the lies and spies that slipped in and out of East and West Germany in the early 70s. As a story, it is diving deep into the idea of things that are unseen even in a meticulously watched area. When we meet our main character, Herring, we see him trying to slip people through the Berlin Wall as he masquerades as a Stasi operative. The story is so ingrained in the tensions of the era that it’s no wonder the story would shift from the streets of East Berlin to an underground bunker by the end of the first issue.
And then the twist.
During that escape attempt, a massive stream of light flashes above Berlin, landing somewhere on the eastern side. All anyone knows of the strange light is that no one knows what it could be or how it came to fly over Berlin. And of course, with the extreme secrecy of the time, anyone who would know anything about the strange light is maintaining silence.
Until the mystery of the strange light begins to reveal itself to Herring as he is sealed into that underground bunker. The light itself infects people—takes over their minds and bodies until they split open in a blaze of electric light. And for now, that’s all we as the audience know.
Strange Skies Over East Berlin is one of the only series I can think of that sits in the space of sci-fi/historical fiction/political thriller/noir, and I’m still amazed that I only happened upon it on the rack of my local comic shop. Strange Skies fills that hyper-particular niche that isn’t seen all that often but feels necessary when many other series stick to only one or two genres. To experiment with genre is always what comics need to do as a medium. A series like Strange Skies lives and dies on the word-of-mouth around it—even if it comes from a larger publisher like Boom!—and I don’t want to see something so fantastically crafted by Loveness and Estherren to disappear before anyone gets the chance to read it.
Get excited. Try something new.
Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.
