Weekend Alone & Weekend For Two

Noah Van Sciver, Tinto Press, Denver (USA), September 2013 and February 2014, 144 and 104 full color pages, perfect bound, 5,25" x 8,25", $ 15 and $ 14 each, $ 25 both. 

Before I started reading Noah Van Sciver's Weekend Alone and Weekend for Two, I wasn't considering to write a review. It just didn't seem right to me to talk for the first time about the cartoonist from Denver starting from his sketchbooks, publications usually addressed to those who already know the author and his most famous works, as in this case his anthology Blammo and The Hypo, a graphic novel published by Fantagraphics starring the young Abraham Lincoln. But these two little books, published by Tinto Press, have been a pleasant surprise, since they aren't only an authentic reproduction, without mediations or corrections, of the contents of the sketchbooks, but also a stand-alone and funny reading. With a versatility worthy of the best underground cartoonists, Van Sciver alternates sketches, more elaborate drawings, brilliant one-page stories and finished comics. The quality of the illustrations is remarkable and I've especially liked the way in which the color was used in the full-page paintings, spanning a wide variety of subjects, from self-portraits to Popeye, from fake covers of vintage comics such as Secret Origins or House of Mystery to anthropomorphic animals, from female nudes to the star of b-movies Gorgo.

The variety of the drawings recurs in the narrative contents, that line up self-mocking autobiographical experiences, the adaptation of a Dave Eggers' short story, a rabbit with a broken heart (definitely one of my favorites), the cartoon version of a poem by William Knox, Johnny Cash in an existential crisis, Paris in the nineteenth century, mad guys fighting for no reason. In the background, the autobiography remains as the main theme, and if we want to look for a common thread we can find it in the moments of loneliness and emotional distress described here and there. This feeling marks the two books as a sort of journals, in which Van Sciver expresses himself not only as an artist but also as a person, of course always with a taste for irony and paradox that characterizes everything he does.

In conclusion, I have to mention the story that amused me the most, included in Weekend Alone. King of Comic Books sees Van Sciver taking a trip in the past, in the '90s Seattle, when the grunge prevailed in music and the comics scene was ruled by Fantagraphics, a publishing house loved by the author, who dreamed to make a book for them. In the meantime, he reached his ambition with The Hypo, even if here the surprise ending tells a different story...

Wicked Chicken Queen

Sam Alden, Retrofit Comics, Philadelphia (USA), February 2014, 24 pages, black and white, 6,5" x 10,5", $ 5.

It seems difficult to talk about Sam Alden without using the adjectives "young" and "promising", but this time I prefer to describe the twenty-five year old cartoonist, also seen in Italy with two comic books published by Delebile, as an eclectic author. Currently Alden's creative vein alternates stories set in fantasy or rural locations, usually told with a stylized character design that can recall Nate Powell or Craig Thompson, and other works with realistic and everyday topics, that deal with the complexity of interpersonal relationships using a remarkable awareness, graphically characterized by impressionist pencil drawings. However, there aren't clear distinctions between the two trends and everything is left to the immediate inspiration of an author in progress, capable of making comics that are very different from each other. And if you try, for example, to read Haunter and Household (the latter in my opinion is the peak of Alden's production until now), they won't easily seem the work of the same person.

Wicked Chicken Queen, published by Box Brown's Retrofit Comics (here the review of his Number 1), is a new chapter of the cartoonist's artistic path. It's a fairytale told with full-page images that follow the evolution of a strange new world, inhabited by people with a single giant eye stuck in the middle of their faces. The birth of a chicken, coming out of an egg found on the beach, changes the life of the village. The newborn is considered as a daughter by the king and, after the sovereign's death, she becomes the queen of the island, marrying Saskia, the woman who had discovered her egg. But times are changing and from a matriarchal and monarchist society the island will go into a contemporary dimension.

The fable fades and the queen's adventures leave room for the journal of the woman who weaves the threads of the story and for her personal problems. The moment of transition, which is rendered with a greater definition of the art, is well evidenced in particular by two beautiful pages. The first shows the progress of a society now able to build roads, bridges and skyscrapers, the second depicts the narrator in bed while looking out of the window, emphasizing the emergence of an inner and meditative dimension, typical of modernity. Wicked Chicken Queen is a comic that behind an aura of apparent simplicity shows all the talent of its author.

Random news from all over the world

After a beginning of the year in which the big and small publishing houses were still recovering from Christmas, in these last weeks a lot of exciting news about indie comics are coming out, so I decided to summarize briefly the most significant ones I've read on websites and social networks. Let's start with Fantagraphics, who announced the publishing schedule for autumn 2014. Aside from the complete reprint of Zap! (at the "modest" price of 500 dollars!), I'd like to recommend Doctors, a new graphic novel by Dash Shaw that joins the comic-book Cosplayers out in April, In a Glass Grotesquely by Richard Sala, the fifth issue of Uptight by Jordan Crane and the new book by Dylan Horrocks: Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen will collect the comics published until now on the New Zealander cartoonist's website. And in these days Horrocks publishes also the collection of short stories Incomplete Works with Victoria University Press. 

From New Zealand we return to the USA to talk about Sacred Prism and Space Face Books. The two labels are offering the opportunity to subscribe to their publications. The line-up of Sacred Prism includes William Cardini under the guidance of Frank Santoro, Benjamin Marra, Maré Odomo, Ines Estrada, Sarah Horrocks, Derek Ballard, Dongery and Anya Davidson, while the one of Space Face proposes Jason Murphy, John F. Malta, Jordan Speer, Jonny Negron with his new series Loose Joints and other books yet to be defined by authors such as Michael Jordan, Gabriel Corbera, Simon Hanselmann, Michael DeForge. 

The projects of Negative Pleasure, until now known only for Jeans, are instead tied to an Indiegogo fundraising campaign, that has the goal to publish more comics, starting with two anthologies due in April, Felony Comics, in full color and devoted to crime stories (a detail from Benjamin Marra's cover below), and the horror themed Revulsion Comics, in black and white. In the same days, and exactly on the occasion of Mocca in New York, another anthology will be out: Hang Dai Studios Comix will be the flagship of Hang Dai Editions, recently founded in New York by Gregory Benton, Dean Haspiel and Seth Kushner.

At this point we can leave the USA for a tour in the UK to take a look at the new comic-book by Oliver East, Homesick Truant's Cumbrian Yarn, in which the author of Trains are... Mint shows his beautiful landscape comics. East is one of the contributors of the sixteenth issue of š!, released on 4th of March (here's an interesting preview). And on the Latvian magazine's website you can take a look at Inverso, an exhibition dedicated to Berliac, author of mini kuš! #19. Nice pictures of the exhibition are also on the Facebook page of Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art.
Talking about comics I already mentioned in old posts, Youth in Decline from San Francisco has published a couple of weeks ago the third issue of Frontier, realized this time by Sascha Hommer, and the first fiction book of the label, Love Songs for Monsters, a collection of short stories by science fiction writer Anthony Ha, with a cover by Michael DeForge and the title illustrations created ​​by Hannah K. Lee.

Number 1

Box Brown, Retrofit Comics, Philadelphia (USA), February 2014, 48 pages, black and white, 7" x 10", $ 6.

First releases of the new year for Retrofit Comics from Philadelphia, which starts its rich publishing schedule with Number 1 by Box Brown and the long-awaited Wicked Chicken Queen by Sam Alden, that will be followed in the next months by works of Madeleine Flores, Zac Gorman, Josh Bayer, Antoine Cosse, Ben Constantine, Anne Emond, Niv Bavarsky, Jack Teagle and Akino Kondoh. Let's start for the moment with Number 1, while in some days we'll talk about Alden's comic. For those of you who still don't know, Brown is the mastermind behind Retrofit Comics and he has recently realized the one-shot Beach Girls and the series Softcore, he was published in Italy by Lök Zine with the book Inside the Box and will debut in May for First Second Books with the graphic novel Andre the Giant: Life and Legend.

Aside from the two final pages entitled The Documentarian, Number 1 is fully occupied by Kayfabe Quarterly, a story based on the concept of kayfabe, typical of wrestling (clearly a passion of the author), used for analyzing the issues of fiction in everyday life and of people hiding behind masks. However, this isn't the only focus of the story, in fact the main merit of Brown is to give up a conventional storytelling to realistically outline the mental processes of the protagonist, inviting the reader to follow not only his personal history but the whims of his psyche as well. Initially Virgil is a young and naive wrestling fan, but after a few pages begins to see more critically his idols, his reference points and in general any authoritative figure.

He founds a magazine that becomes an instant success, takes employees, expands his business, doubts his father, listens with skepticism to the religious speeches of his brother, reaching a conclusion that leaves more questions than answers, as suggested by the headlines from Kayfabe Quarterly's last issue. 

The drawings and the narrative are aseptic and sometimes unsettling, with round heads that recall aesthetically The Peanuts but who are the protagonists of complex and sometimes raw stories. Brown doesn't try to attract immediately and to please the reader, but he conquers him thanks to a personal and well-defined style that is growing comic after comic.

š! #15

Various Authors, Kuš! Komiksi, Riga (Latvia), November 2013, 164 pages, A6, $14 (worldwide shipping included).

Reviews of comics anthologies are quite similar to each other and so this time to talk about š! I decided to slightly change style awarding prizes to the best contributions in this fifteenth issue, dedicated to cats and published at the end of last November. So let's start immediately, because the new š!, this time with the villages as theme, will be out already in these days.

Best Cover - Well, the cover is only one, but I can't go on without mentioning the brilliant idea of editors David Schilter and Sanita Muižniece to commission Latvian illustrator Edgars Folks to design the book. Folks, born in 1951, has little to do with indie comics scene but his contemporary reinterpretation of images from the past is well suited to the general atmosphere. 

Best Folk Song - Talking about "folks", in The Land of No Parydons English illustrator John Broadley reads the lyrics of some popular comedies of the early 20th century in his own way, accompanying them with the adventures of anthropomorphic cats. All done with his style between Central Europe and Victorian London.

Best Essay - Among the artists who decided to write brief illustrated essays about cats and their peculiarities, Mārtiņš Zutis did the best work, with eight original pages about the egalitarian power of "meow". 
Best Pumpkin-Head Cat - The one created by Edie Fake. His Beachball could also be good for a Halloween anthology. 
Best Artwork - As in the previous issues of š!, I loved the work of Latvian artists Dace Sietiņa and Rūta Briede, the first more complex and structured, the second simpler and playful, but I would like to give the prize for the best artwork to "biografiktioner" Paul Paetzel and its colorful Walter, the story of a cat collector full of bright ideas, and to Brazilian Pedro Franz, with a black and white work that mixes abstract and descriptive moments.

Best Commercial - The advertising broadcasted in Lars Sjunnesson's Errol works well. Cats won't quit smoking anymore...

Best Tribute - Definitely that of Weng Pixin to her cat Pica, died in 2013 and here remembered with some pictures as well.

Best Story - I really liked the development of a relationship told by Finnish Emmi Valve, but the best comic in the book is Guncats by Michael DeForge, about a land inhabited by fierce animals who kill tourists with gunshots, armed by local police to discredit environmentalists. But beware, these strange killers could arrive in our country... As usual DeForge manages to tell a complex story in a limited space, in this case only six pages.
Best Poster - The first page of Reinis Pētersons' 7 Deadly Sins for 9 Lives and Beyond! could be a beautiful poster for a movie.

Best Pub for Cats - The Ol Ktteh in Lost & Found by Dāvis Ozols is the ideal place for a feline evening. 
I could go on for a while, but I don't want to bore you too much. Of course in the 164 pages of š! there are also comics I didn't like so much, such as Interface by Léo Quievreux & Fredox and Palace of Cats by Ernests Kļaviņš, which I found out of context compared to other contributions. However the overall quality is always high and the Latvian anthology remains an example for any publication of this kind.

Brinkman, Ratigher, Massagli, Martin e Tawaraya in U.D.W.F.G.

Under Dark Weird Fantasy Grounds is a new Italian biannual magazine published by Michele Nitri’s Hollow Press. The guest contributor of the first issue, out in March, will be Mat Brinkman, a founding member of Fort Thunder group, best known for his book Multiforce and recently seen in the latest issue of Monster anthology (here my review). In addition to Brinkman, author of the image above, the 96 pages of the magazine will host the Italian artists Paolo Massagli and Ratigher, Miguel Angel Martin from Spain and the Japanese Tetsunori Tawaraya (picture below).

All this for 18 euros, in English and in a limited edition of 700 copies. The comics, all self-contained, are fantasy but in a dark and underground way, so the mood will be violent and cynical, more disturbing than fascinating. The founding of the project is very original, since Nitri has already bought the original drawings directly from the cartoonists and he will subsequently sell them on the web. For further details, you can take a look at a preview published a few days ago on the Italian website Fumettologica, at Hollow Press page on Facebook and obviously at the website of the project, where the magazine will be sold. Come back here in a few weeks for the review of U.D.W.F.G.

mini kuš! #18-21

Various Authors, Kuš! Komiksi, Riga (Latvia), November 2013, 28 pages and $6 (worldwide shipping included) each.

I've already written about kuš! and its spin-offs in an article on the Italian website Fumettologica and in the review of š! #13-14, so I'm going to skip the introduction to start this two-part overwiev about the latest books from Latvia, beginning with the four mini kuš! published at the end of November. 
The eighteenth of the series is the work of Michael Jordan, a German artist, cartoonist and illustration and comics teacher, born in 1972 and best known for his collaborations with the Austrian collective Tonto Comics. This No Place to Stay is fascinating from the cover, in which the unreal colors and the use of Ben-Day dots enhance Jordan's classic drawings. The interiors confirm the Fifties atmosphere but update the Ec Comics-style of the author blending the narrative features for the iconic ones. The bearded protagonist undertakes a trip full of symbolic connections through desolated landscapes, a café hidden in the stone and an hospital similar to a prison. Here he meets a nurse with stigmata, graphically associated with his amnesia and with the curtain that allows him to escape from the nightmare he's living.

The use of symbols is an excellent trick to narrate a meaningful story in only 24 pages and Berliac, the Argentinian author of the mini kuš! #19, is perfectly aware of this. The man with a jaguar tattoed on his heart, portrayed on the cover, is the metaphor of what happens in Inverso. A biologist leave for the Amazonian rainforest searching for the "negative jaguar", a particular species characterized by black skin and white spots. But the departure displeases his girlfriend, provoking a break-up which will indeed leave a permanent mark on the main character's heart. It's outstanding how Berliac manages, in only 24 pages, to describe emotions in a very authentic way. The depiction of the Amazonian rainforest and its natives is also beautiful, with changing graphic techniques that alternate red, black, and green tones, elevating the work of an author to absolutely keep an eye on. 

Crater Lake by Jean de Wet, the mini kuš! #20, is a book without words and made of thin blue lines on a white background. The figures and the objects are empty but improved with the constant use of lines and points, as the author's style was a monochromatic pointillisme, characterized by the fascination for details rather than for the colors. The images tell the reaction of a little lacustrine village located in a volcanic crater after a cosmic event, probably a meteorite rain, while a strange unidentified object flies in the sky. The space-time references are rather ambiguous, but this isn't important, since de Wet guides the reader in a different world, giving him the sensation of the smallness of man against nature, as painters, poets and philosophers have done in the past. Absolutely charming.

The mini kuš! #21, Jungle Night, is also set in a little community, in this case near a jungle. The Polish Renata Gąsiorowska uses a fairy-like tone and her gracious drawings are associated with the diary of Lili, the animal girl who, during a night in the jungle with her schoolmates, walks away leaving no trace. Lili watches her "friends" playing and having fun but she can't do the same. She tries to drink but alcohol doesn't have the desired effect. So she thinks no one will ever notice her absence and for this reason, perhaps, it's better to disappear. Jungle Night is the story of every troubled teenager and has the merit of using lightness and simplicity to describe existential angst. The visual representation of the jungle is also remarkable, with a series of splash pages in which green is the dominant color.
Well, it's all for now but you can come back here in a few days for š! #15 review... Stay tuned!