Anticipation & Convergences

I have finished eleven reviews over the last three months.  I write these reviews because I like the books and I want to let everyone know how to find and support them.  The thing is once I publish a review I continue to get updates from and about artists.  As I move on to the next artist I am getting all these awesome little tidbits that I haven't been sharing.  I asked Geoff Vasile for permission to use images from his books.  He said sure.  He also said that he was moving most of his web-presence to The Geoff Vasile Show! on tumblr.   I bit the bullet and set up a tumblr account.  I found out that about half of the artists who had stopped updating their web pages are now posting on tumblr.  On a side note, Vasile posted this new slick silk screened cover for issue four of Trackrabbit.

Robinson's take on Fin & Jake

Now on tumblr, I have started to see Andy Hirsch promoting this Adventure Time book that Liz Prince had been mentioning.   Not having Kids or cable I really had no idea what Adventure Time is.  Everyone else seems to already have been keyed into Adventure Time.  The young woman running the register at Austin Books all but rolled her eyes at me when I asked if all the issues of Adventure Time had back-up stories by indie artist.  Turns out I had been seeing a lot of Adventure Time fan art floating around the intertubes.  I just had failed to draw the connection.  Unsurprisingly Alex Robinson's attempt at The Wonderful World of Alx Robinson is both awesome and a little freaky.

Hirsch did the art for the B alternate cover for the third issue of Adventure Time:Marceline and the Scream Queens.  He will also be doing a cover of another issue in November.  Hopefully this is a good link, if not he posted both covers at It's Andy Hirsch.   The six issue Marceline series were done by Meredith Gran.  Gran has been rocking out her own web-comic called Octopus Pie.  Octopus Pie: There Are No Stars In Brooklyn, is a hoot and brought back the few fond memories I have of Brooklyn.  Hirsch 's cover highlights Liz Prince's seven page back-up story.  I ran out and got it but starting at issue three of six left me a little at sea.  Gran's work seams like some solid story telling.  Prince's back-up story Fruit Salad Days is hilarious and stands on its own.  With the Hirsch cover it is totally worth the cover price all on its own.

Prince with Hirsch's Cover

So that's where things I had been anticipating converged.  Some of the other things I am looking forward to have been in print for years.  Following Alex Robinson on social media is a reminder that I have three more reviews of already published work, that I hope to explore here. He also keeps on putting out teaser pages for the book he is currently working on.  He just posted page eighty-eight; it is ridiculous good but frustratingly gives almost nothing away.  Also, when I wrote my Guy Davis review Guy Davis Artworks was off line for renovation.  Now it is back up with many awesome preview pages including may works I missed.  From adverts in B.P.R.D. I knew I had missed Nevermen but I had no idea about The Zombies That Ate The World and some other work he did for Les Humanoides Associes.  As I track down those works there is also some work free of charge on My Space Dark Horse Presents. 

I came across two things slated for 2013 that have me chomping at the bit.  Monica Gallagher had mentioned that she had done some work for Oni but she has now announced that  Glitter Kiss will be coming out in January.  She is also stepping up Bonnie N. Collide to a twice weekly comic strip!  There are also all her mini-comics Boobage, When I Was A Mall Model and Go For The Eyes that I hope to review.  The 2013 news that has me jumping up and down is issue number four of Varmints!  I am not normally an exuberant guy.  As far as content goes, on the surface of it, Varmints is one of the lighter books that I follow.  While deeper things are developing, each issue stands on its own as a little comic adventure.  Hirsch recently posted a page that reminded me why I just can't wait to see where his work is going.  I have been accused of being dourer and I do hate musicals.  So why am I so giddy?   It is the audacity of having a singing dancing extravaganza conveyed only in static silent juxtaposed illustrations.   I would call bullshit on many others artists, but he makes it look easy.  You should go to It's Andy Hirsch and look at the larger  image.  I could (and may) write a entire review just on this page.

That's it for now.  I still have a stack of mini-comics to get through before I see what people bring to Artists' Alley at Austin Comic Con. 

Monica Gallagher's Bonnie N. Collide

Bonnie N. Collide

By Monica Gallagher

Normally I want to focus on Comic books rather than comic strips.  Bonnie N. Collide is the exception  that proves my reasons for this preference.   It is hard to develop and expand a sense of space and motion in three to five panel chunks.   You can see, here in her 72nd strip, Gallagher is challenging some of the spatially linear tendencies of the comic strip medium.  It takes some dramatic shifting angle on single character in motion to set up the punch-line.

http://eatyourlipstick.com/comic/bonnie-n-collide-72/

I think of comic strips as more like poetry that prose or more like punch-lines than comedies.  Bonnie N. Collide has been making serialized narrative out of stand alone vignettes.  Over that last five years of building narrative I have found myself more attached to Bonnie and the crew than Nona La Bette from Gallagher's long form comic Lipstick & Malice. 

Bonnie splits 90% of her time at here 9-5 job and 110% of her time at the roller derby.  She goes careening through her life, on and off the derby track, in skates and roller gear.  There is a great strip that explains the Roller Derby that you can skip to before digging into the story.

Bonnie's office is populated by the mundanely named Herb, Sherry, Barb, Greg, Carl and her love interest Stuart.  Her 'off' hours are spent in grueling practices and bruising competition with the more colorfully named Hattie Hellfire, Mimi Madness, Mouthpiece Molly, Fresh Meat Fran and Agro Amelia.  There is a playful unreality that normalizes Bonnie's office space derby antics.  The rest of the office is more or less normal with the exception of Herb who is a werewolf with a file cabinet of meat.  This is not a spoiler; you never see Herb with out hair sticking out of his button-down.  The magical unreality of it is that nobody in the office is reasonably disturbed by this.

I have come to count on Gallagher for strong well rounded female roles.  Bonnie takes her knocks; she has personal and competitive upsets but she always bounces back.  This is kinda rare in light of some of the genre and the medium expectation  of  a romantic comic strip.  Bonnie is a busy lady; she doesn't have time to sit around feeling sorry for herself.

http://eatyourlipstick.com/comic/bonnie-n-collide-61/

Bonnie N. Collide is a true romantic comedy.  Romance comics were briefly a possible alternative to the horror comics of the 1940's mainstream comics.  There has been more romance in the self published indie comics.  Both Jamie and Gilbert's long works in Love and Rockets as well the works of Terry Moore are explicitly romances.  I'd also like to give a shout out to Fade to Blue that I picked up the first trade paper back many years ago and am looking for issues 6-10.  There are also important romantic arches in Scott McCloud's Zot! and Wendy Pini's Elf Quest.  How excellently fitted the medium of comics are for romance is often overlooked.  To bring a romance to stage or screen you need not only a writer and director (Gallagher like all writer/illustrators wears both hats), you also need the skills of at least two actors and an x factor called chemistry.  Comics allow for the illustrator to do all of the acting. 

http://eatyourlipstick.com/comic/bonnie-n-collide-91/

What Gallagher shares with the Hernandez brothers, Moore, McCloud and Pini is a delight and mastery over expressive body language and dynamic facial expression.  Look at how expressive everyone is in strip #91.  She pulls this off with a minimum of lines.  Take the time to note how Gallagher refines her style over the course of this strip five year history.  It is a rewarding study in how much human emotion can be conveyed with a few elegant lines.

Part of the reason I felt I needed to review this strip is just how much enjoyment I have gotten out of Monica Gallagher's Bonnie N. Collide updates as well as her own blog.   You can follow these for free but the hand made Bonnie and Lipstick & Malice collections are pretty cool.  You can pick them up from her at her on-line store, as well as her auto-bio mini comics.  I still have to read Middle School and Go For The Eyes but her other mini comics have been awesome.  She had some great web content on her old web-site especially her Relentless Buzzing.  She should be uploading it at some point and you can keep eye on her page here.

The inspiration for my Blog came from Indie Spinner Rack and the way Charlito and Mister Phil created a community to encourage and celebrate indie comics.  The motivation that keeps me posting with some regularity is the example and advice that Liz Prince and Monica Gallagher shared at the Women of Webcomics panel discussion Staple! 2012 and in their regular posts.  You can meet Monica at Baltimore Comic-Con September 8-9 and at Emerald City Comic Con March 1-3 (which means we will miss her this year in Austin).