by Austin English

Pretend
Sketchbook
Fiona Logusch

Pretend is one of my favorite minicomics from the last five years. Every drawing in it is beautiful, and it's just pure drawing. It looks like Logusch drew each drawing on the first take. That might not be true (the drawings are skillful enough to be the results of constant editing and re-drawing) but it sure feels like that. Pretend feels like Logusch sat down and drew the whole thing at once. I'm not interested in the formal aspects of sitting down and drawing a comic all at once. I am interested in how it feels to read a comic that seems like it was drawn all at once. It feels really great and cool. The images and ideas in Pretend are complex, make no mistake, but Logusch's style makes it seem like she's forming the ideas on the tip of her tongue. The images seem to decide themselves as they get drawn. There's a drawing of a girl walking down a road with a few trees around -- I think the tone and mood of this drawing got worked out as Logusch was drawing it. Logusch is in control of what she's drawing but not so in control that everything is decided once she puts pen to paper. I think that's something that the majority of cartoonists lack: the ability to let your drawings take shape as you're drawing them. It's like that James Thurber idea: "I don't know how my drawings are going to turn out until I'm done with them." To me, that's exciting, meaningful drawing.

The story in Pretend is simple: A girl and her mom have little fantasies while the girl's dad yells at them. So, a story that could be a little maudlin if not given the right amount of care. The dialogue in this book is so minimal, and I think that's the key. Not that Logusch is into "minimal" dialogue; it's more that the drawing says everything here. The amount of weight she puts down on her pencil -- that really says more then a paragraph of dialogue. The real writing here is how every scene easily melds into the next one: a girl opening a door, a girl talking to her mother, then girl and mother suddenly standing together as mermaids. No explanation, no dialogue explaining the transformation. The transformation happens as quickly as the thought of transformation mighjt happen in your mind if you were pretending yourself.

Those drawings of mother and daughter as mermaids are some of the best comic illustrations I've seen in minicomics in ages. Perfect little drawings, and in the context of Pretend, it's even more thrilling to see them then if you encountered them as isolated images (as you might see them re-produced on this sight). Logusch does a little of what Gary Panter does: She varies tone and perspective and artistic approach from panel to panel. In a Panter book, one panel might be drawn in brush, the next one in rapidograph. It's something that really looks great in comics, the tone varying but the story staying the same. When novelists try this contrasting tone thing, it gets a little weirder. It seems overly thought out. But in comics it feels so natural and good. So when Logusch is drawing all scraggly and then with the mermaid panel she starts drawing very fine and clean, it's a wonderful effect.

Logusch's Sketchbook is a little less of a tour de force then Pretend, but still an interesting book. Pretend, I think, has no false lines, nothing that shouldn't be there. Sketchbook, which is in full color, has some great images, and then some standard, run-of-the-mill kind of drawings, but Logusch's line is still there. Logusch has a really weight to her line, and is inventive because I think she enjoys drawing inventive stuff, not because it seems like the right thing to do.

It's interesting to look at the two books side by side. Logusch may be one of those cartoonists that excel at drawing things that tell a story -- that is to say, when just doodling in a sketchbook, her drawings don't have the force of imagination and immediacy behind them that her comics work does. The drawings in Pretend are off the cuff, sketchbook-type drawing, but her actual sketchbook seems more labored. In cartooning, Logusch knows exactly what to draw, while in sketching she just knows that she likes to draw.

There are half dozen cartoonists right now who are doing great work in minicomics that would benefit from a nice, glossy collection of some sort. I'd like to see some publisher commission Logusch to do an ambitious, 100-page graphic novel. If my idea that comics are so small and that all you need to do to get noticed in the comics arena is produce some great drawings, then this type of Logusch comic may not be that far off.

Go to www.davekcomics.com/fiona.htm for more info about Pretend.

Austin English is a cartoonist living in Manhattan. His latest book, Christina and Charles, is available from Sparkplug Comic Books.

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