Jan 15 2011

Summer of Minis 2010 – Part V

(Continuing my look at the minis I’ve been reading from this summer’s comics events. Earlier installment(s): Part I, Part II, part III, part IV)

Well, I guess given that there’s a coating of snow on the ground as I look out my studio window, it’s probably time for me to go ahead and wrap up my Summer of Minis series. So here goes; this is the last of them:

Phase 7 #015 by Alec Longstreth

OK, I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t a little disappointed that this issue of Phase 7 didn’t contain another completed chapter of Alec’s graphic novel in-progress, Basewood. On the other hand, since each page of Basewood looks like it takes about six months to complete, I guess that’s understandable. This issue is a sort of “best of” compilation of pages from Alec’s sketchbook going back a few years. I enjoyed this issue; it made me pine away a bit for the bygone days of the “sketch mini”–the cheap one or two dollar stapled minicomic of a cartoonist’s sketchbook excerpts. These days that format seems to have given way to the giant, copy shop-bound, expensive reproduced sketchbook  that a lot of pros sell at conventions. I also really love the way Phase 7 has totally spurned the “hand silk-screened, silk thread bound, dye cut, etc.” minicomics trend and is keeping it pure and simple, Procellino style: straight-up black and white folded 8.5 x 11 copy paper.

Purchase copies of Phase 7 here.

Courtship of Ms. Smith – Alexis Frederick-Frost

I met Alexis Frederick-Frost during my initial visit to The Center for Cartoon Studies a few years back and I’ve been following his work ever since. If you haven’t checked out his Xeric-winning historical fiction/cycling GN, La Primavera, you should definitely do so. Courtship of Ms. Smith is the story of a spider who seems destined never to find true love… because she continues to ingest all of her suitors. If you know the cartoonist’s work, you’ll be immediately struck by how different his work looks in this mini: he’s converted from the lush brush work on display in work like Adventures in Cartooning to mostly dip pen. It’s great-looking stuff for sure:

You can purchase Courtship of Ms. Smith here.

Life of Vice #1 – Robin Enrico

This is a mini I picked up just because it looked fun and was reasonably-priced; I know nothing about the cartoonist. Life of Vice takes place in a convertible cruising through the Nevada desert while the protagonist conducts an interview with rock-n-rollist/ex-wrestling persona/sex advice columnist/general partaker of debauchery, Becky Vice. There’s some obvious Hunter Thompson homage going on here of course, but not overly-so. Robin Enrico has a fun, visually appealing style and the size (5×5″), shape, and two-color cover of this mini make for a great-looking package. I occasionally got a little lost with the storytelling, but nothing majorly distracting; I’ll pick up more of these for sure next time we cross paths.You can purchase Life of Vice issues here.

Nathan Sorry #1 – Rich Barrett

I wasnt’ really sure whether I should include this in a “Summer of Minis” post or not–not because it’s not a fantastic book, but because I don’t really consider it a minicomic in the strictest sense. I enjoyed reading Nathan Sorry in folded over 8.5×11″ minicomic format, but this is for sure not this story’s final form. The whole time I was reading it, I thought: This (whenever it’s completed) needs to be collected in a big hardback collection a la the Oni Local collection. Anyway, until then, I’m happy to read these as minis. The premise here is great: as far as anyone else knows, the protagonist Nathan Sorry was in one of the Twin Towers when it fell on 9/11.  In fact, he wasn’t. Now “off grid” and officially dead, he flees to middle America. As the story develops, we realize that Nathan was a (somewhat unwitting) small time white collar crook, helping his immediate higher-up with some nefarious financial scheme.  The first issue was a great start. I’m looking forward to seeing where the rest of the story goes.

Nathan Sorry is available in a variety of formats here.

The Trugglemat – Neil Brideau

This is another one I just picked up because it looked interesting. The story here is a bit Edward Gorey-ish in tone: the children in the protagonist’s town are all mysteriously disappearing courtesy of a monster that’s devouring them all and the only person the monster reveals itself to is the little girl narrating the story–yet the monster never eats her. The townspeople of course do not believe her, so she’s left to just wait around as all the other kids are eaten and the adults continue to futilely search for  the culprit. The narration here is first person and on the side of each page’s image–and told in rhyme.

I could not locate The Trugglemat for sale anywhere online.

Kindle #1 – Bridgit Scheide

OK, so this really isn’t a minicomic at all; it is though, a self-published “floppy” that I got this summer and that I wanted to mention. Kindle is a fantasy book, but one whose tone is closer to something like Castle Waiting or even Lud-in-the-Mist than the books that probably come to mind when you think “fantasy.” The book’s main character, Taggart, is a half-goblin half-human who spends his time drinking and working on a novel in a local pub in the town of Seywerth.  There’s also a parallel storyline beginning here that involves one of Seywerth’s clergymen.  I really dig Bridgit’s lovely and strikingly atypical comics art–sample below:

I couldn’t find Kindle for sale online, but here’s here’s the artist’s website/blog.

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Well, that concludes my 5-part (!) review of my summer’s minicomics reading. I’m really looking forward to hitting this year’s upcoming indy-ish comics events–TCAF, HeroesCon and maybe SPX–and picking up another round of minis. Keep those photocopiers busy, folks!

Jan 11 2011

Superhero Pinup: Trapster

Here’s another one of my superhero mini-pinups: Trapster. Unlike some of the other b-list characters I often find myself drawing, I actually have a real fondness for Trapster. Like a lot of comics-reading folk my I age, I grew up reading the John Byrne Fantastic Four and I recall really liking the issue where the Trapster tries to infiltrate the Baxter Building but is eventually (and embarrassingly) defeated by the FF’s robot, H.E.R.B.I.E. (Issue #265, I think). From my digging around on the internet, it looks like his costume has been changed significantly since then, but I’m still partial to the one here from The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.


The original art for this is for sale here.

Jan 08 2011

In Comics: Simplification and Recognition

First, a disclaimer: This is going to be a rambling post with no real “thesis” or conclusion–just some random semi-related thoughts.  That said, read on at your own risk…

Not too long ago, floating all about the internets were a lot of links to cartoonist John Martz’s fantastic pixel art of Star Trek characters.
What’s really interesting about them (besides how nicely-done they are) is that they’re all quite recognizable. Simplification and exaggeration are a cartoonist’s stock and trade and pixel art like this really gets at the simplification part in a major way.  Seeing how far you can pare down something while keeping it recognizable is an interesting experiment that tests both the artist’s skill and the viewer’s familiarity with the subject. Here’s a great example–the cast of The Simpsons in three or fewer pixels (I have no idea who did the image, or I’d give proper credit):

I remember hearing a story (maybe apocryphal) about a New Yorker cartoonist whose editor complained that he was paying him handsomely for an image with so little line-work. The cartoonist’s response was that he should be payed more for pulling off an image with as few lines as possible.  In the modern era, I see this kind of ethos in things like Chris Ware’s newly-manifested “circle people” style:

I’m not positive when this style made its first appearance–maybe the cover Ware did for McSweeny’s?–but it’s become enough of a stylistic fixture for him that it was recently parodied/saluted during Conan O’Brien’s run on The Tonight Show:

I have to admit, I don’t find this style particularly appealing on a purely aesthetic level, but it’s interesting as a sort of “paring down” experiment. Following in similar footsteps is fellow Chicagoan Ivan Brunetti, who over the years has gone from this…

… to this:

Back to the original pixel art: What’s most interesting about it for me is that you can actually recognize who most of those characters are (depending on your familiarity with the show, of course).  Pixel art is a relatively recent phenomenon, being an offshoot of video games, but interest in minimalist recognition is not a new phenomenon.  The most well-known scientific exploration of this is probably the November 1973 issue of Scientific American, which featured this now-iconic cover:

For the record, George Washington there is depicted with 624 pixels. The issue contained Leon D. Harmon’s article, “The Recognition of Faces.”   In June of that same year Harmon and Julesz published a paper called “Masking in visual recognition: effects of two-dimensional filtered noise” in the journal Science. The issue featured a pixelated Abraham Lincoln on the cover.  Harmon and Julesz determined that Lincoln could be easily recognized using only 216 pixels and that the absolute minimum number of squares required to recognize Lincoln was 108.

1973 was apparently a banner year for things-pixelated–and not just in the science world.  It was also the year artist Chuck Close‘s work was first shown at the New York Museum of Modern Art. Close had been using huge “grids” to facilitate his enormous formalist portraits so it’s not surprising that he was taken aback to stumble on that issue of Scientific American with Washington on the cover.  From that point forward (to what extent there’s a direct relationship here is speculative; Close was already on the “road to pixeldom”), Close’s work became more and more pixelated. (It’s worth noting, though, that Close does not, and has never, used a computer for his work.)  Here’s a portrait by Close of Philip Glass from 1977:

Close suffered a spinal artery collapse in 1988 and as a result is largely paralyzed. He continues to paint though, with a brush tied to his wrist. (The amazing Chuck Close: A Portrait in Progress is available streaming online via Netflix.  I recommend it highly.) If anything, his art has become even more fascinating since then as his “pixels” become larger and more abstract.  Here’s a more recent Close portrait, Lucas, along with a detail:

In conclusion (I’m trying here, people), you know what’s really bizarre? Chuck Close has a psychological condition that causes him to…. not recognize faces.

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Notes:

Listen to Chuck Close and Oliver Sacks in a highly fascinating interview about their shared condition, “Face Blindness” on RadioLab.

You can find a wealth of scientific articles about facial recognition (including one incorporating Chuck Close) here.

Jan 07 2011

Sketchbook 1/7

I’m at a point thumb-nailing a new chapter of Oyster War where I need some bad guys, so a few days ago I started drumming up some in my sketchbook.  I think there are maybe two or three “keepers” here–which is a better ratio than I usually achieve when I do one of these nine-panel character generating sketchbook exercises.

Dec 31 2010

Christmas Card 2010

With the year coming to a close and Christmas fading into the past, I guess it’s safe to post our Christmas card from this year.  We actually managed to mail out the physical cards the week before Christmas this year, so anyone that’s been mailed a card has had it in their mitts for a while.

A few years ago (maybe seven) I started doing custom Christmas cards and now I guess I’m committed to doing one every year.  I used to silk-screen them, but with the demise of the Gocco (and me being to lazy to do a “real” silk-screen) I wound up doing color copied cards last year.  This proved to be a bit of a crisitunity though, since I realized that I now no longer  have to confine myself to drawn images.

This year I decided to do a parody of the classic album cover of The Beatles record Meet the Beatles.  Despite not having to hand silk-screen anything, the card was a real challenge for me since I know next to nothing about photography and I had to learn how to work some of the non-point and shoot features of my camera.  Anyway, here’s the final result:

…and the original cover: