Hi. How’re things going for you? Pretty awful? Yeah, me too. I don’t know what else to do, so I’ll just write about some more comics.
Crooked Teeth #9 by Nate Doyle
Here we have part four of the ongoing “Blood and Thunder” story, which takes up 23 pages in the ninth issue of Nate Doyle’s one-man anthology. God bows to math. Honestly, if anyone gets anything out of this monthly column I hope it’s this: it should be mandatory for cartoonists to include at least one “In the Previous Issue…” page if they are working a serial story. I’ve saved Comics now, thank you. With all that said, I’m glad I had the previous issues of Crooked Teeth not only for reference purposes, but because they are exceptional - just instantly readable and re-readable. There’s a timeless quality to Doyle’s cartooning. It’s sturdy and dense and fun, and it has a panel progression that streaks downhill. I would go as far to say that Nate Doyle is our crust punk Dan DeCarlo. I enjoy when comics make me question all my assumptions of what art and poetry can be, but I also enjoy the simple things in life, like seeing someone driving angry. I wish I was as good at anything as Doyle is at drawing vengeful, scared men behind the wheel of a car.
We’ve covered arithmetic already, so let’s get to the history lesson. “Blood and Thunder,” Crooked Teeth’s showcase narrative, started in 2016 with a hate crime and townie drama. Everett and Miriam have to skip town after retaliating against some goons, but Everett learns, unbeknownst to him, that there’s been a target on his back for years. Grubby onion layers keep unfolding as older generations get involved, until we’ve got Hatfields and Capulets gang warfare. If your imagination is limited by your experience, you can tell that Doyle draws violence like someone’s who’s been punched in the nose before. There’s some thrilling, brutal stuff here. The page composition and character facials Doyle wields throughout this issue makes me think he might have a new career if he ever teamed up with some sickly ambitious BookToker for a middling YA cashgrab. I respect Doyle for not falling into that conveyor restrainer system, even though he definitely could. Or should? I don’t know anymore. You’d have to read about him at Publisher’s Weekly then, and I’m a better writer than anyone over there. Even though each issue of Crooked Teeth is cause for a jamboree, Doyle might find himself in a little bit of a pickle. What to do when you’re too slick and accessible for art comics and too experimental and hard-nosed for the mainstream? I hope he keeps swimming up that rocky current and blazing his own renegade path.
Reality Slapped Me by Nebila Oguz
Twisted Sisters vols. 1 and 2 are my personal old and new testament, so imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon an Instagram comic that would fit right into the sacred scriptures. I was unfamiliar with the cartoonist Nebila Oguz, but it only took me two pages to become an immediate convert. The panels here are filled with homemade and irregular Ben Day dots and an irrefutable amount of this unique stippling in the background that’s somewhere between Kirby Krackle and TV static. When the main character is on the phone (a landline that includes a curling wire that bridges panels) with a mustachioed beau, the lettering becomes a flirty cursive and her eyes become Keane-like. And remember, this is only on the first two pages! Oguz is able to effectively and efficiently capture all the intangible elements that make ink-on-paper comics great.
The movie the semi-autobiographical protagonist wants to see is sold out and the man she’s trying to convince to join her already has his nightcap on. So she eventually finds herself alone in a bar, has a gin and tonic, then concludes the night content under a starry sky and a starry-eyed moon. That is, until a man spots her alone and becomes an ominous awooga wolf, trailing her down the street as she searches for a taxi. The end is a splash page kick to the jaw for the wolf with fanciful anatomy and a sigh of relief as the lead character finally finds a ride home. There’s really not much else to it; in and out, pure comics. Oguz pays acute attention to craft in a freewheeling manner, which makes this story more than worth your time.
Mole #10 by Andrew Pilkington
We’ve got another one-man anthology here. Is it safe to say that they’re back in a big way? Everything old is new again! And that includes “transgressive art” too, I guess. This issue of Mole consists of 11 stories, most just a few pages long, and reminds me of getting into devil’s advocate exchanges with the kids in high school who were really into Christopher Hitchens and could draw oozing photorealistic eyeballs in their spiral notebooks. There’s certainly a place in this world (or at least my world) for objectionable freak art, but it should be, has to be, courageous. The five single-page “Prey to God” installments in this comic, always ending with an unnamed character getting their skin ripped off, revealing sinewy brains and veins, are not exactly feats of daring-do. I’m 100% for getting intrusive thoughts out in (what Pilkington believes to be) creative ways, but there is no cunning commentary on society or autonomy via body horror or dark humor here in Mole. It’s just dead baby jokes all the way down.
By far the most interesting part of this comic is the Nick Drnaso influence. My admiration for Drnaso’s work has been noted, so I was a bit tickled that he has some aesthetic pull on Pilkington’s work. The most blatant example is the story “Leak” near the end of the issue. It’s all over the first page: the dominant block-lettered title; the big establishing panel full of geometric levels; the thin lines; the warm, muted color palette. When it comes to the content of the stories, though, Pilkington and Drnaso are miles and miles apart. “Leak” ends with a one-toothed pigtailed girl crawling under a public stall and stabbing a woman in the chest as she’s trying to relieve herself at the mall. Blood fountains out of the open wound and overflows a toilet. That’s it. There are constant choices made in Mole that make it go from irreverent to irrelevant in whiplash speed, faster than I can even roll my eyes. I don’t know anything about Pilkington, but hopefully he’s young. That way he can improve his storytelling and drawing chops and get past this. There’s been 10 issues, so it’s unlikely he’s able to change course, but, like they say, you can always put the genie back in the bottle. Being cynical, being callous, being misanthropic isn’t hard. Be harder.
Jaywalk #4 (cover art by Hope Kogod)
Smoke Signal #42 (jam cover organized by James Tonra)
Writing about these two anthologies is a tall order. Mostly because at times they make my brain feel like it’s cracking wide open. Several of the artists that comprise these newsprint publications are “Arrivals and Departures” favs (Juliette Collet appears in both!), but the majority of them are new to me and don’t seem to be basing their work on anything that harkens back to anyone else. There are so many stories in these books that are untethered in the most confounding and challenging manner. These cartoonists are working closer to the medium’s potential than their own personal potentials. All in all, it feels massively significant.
Jaywalk is edited by the formidable team of Austin English & Floyd Tangeman. This issue starts with a tone-setter called “Boothspiders” by Minnie Slocum. It has an arts-and-crafts/personal diary feel with its lined binder paper and gives the impression of being both very accomplished and completely spontaneous. I couldn’t help but think of the renowned 1986 The Quadro Gang comic by Joyce Lorraine, which might create a stir right now if it was new or even re-published. Nick Fowler has a story about automated public transportation that is vertigo-inducing with shifting angles and lines of vision. Lillian Ansell lets chaos go her way as she sends up corporate chemicals and media. Mara Ramirez continues building a body of work that feels like a gentle hand baptizing you in the Pacific. To fully get into these comics, most just a few pages long, I had to let all my judgments and notions about narrative, sequentiality, readability just roam. For a control freak like myself, that can be difficult and take a couple tries. But it’s worth it.
Put out by Gabe Fowler and Desert Island Comics in New York, Smoke Signal is perennially interesting, but this has been the best issue I’ve encountered. Angela Fanche, working at such a particularly high degree already, continues to level up. Allee Errico and Dan Welch really use the size and dimensions of the fold-out broadsheet to their advantage. A new cartoonist to me, Ashton Carless, caught my eye with his story “Formosa.” Set about 10 years in the future, these two pages are full of puzzling, one-sided dialog and the watercolor (I think!) on the newsprint really sets it apart. My only beef with the story is that it has a “To be continued…” at the bottom. Continued where? I’ll get over it.
Jaywalk and this edition of Smoke Signal are just a couple of examples of this massive output of work being made in art comics right now, much of it awe-inspiring and unbridled. There’s the Deadcrow collective out west, the Philly cartoonists (which I bring up every single month in this column), the New York/Cooper Union crew. These scenes, which seem to tangle and coalesce, are intimidating and prodigious. I feel lucky and obligated and honored to document this burgeoning… whatever it is that’s happening. We’re on the brink of something here that I don’t think has been seen since the days of Paper Rad/Paper Rodeo/Fort Thunder. But this new batch of cartoonists have replaced Saturday morning cartoons and genre nostalgia for toiling meditation and self-scrutiny, putting form and self on an even playing field in dreamy and deliberate ways. There’s a vibration to these aforementioned anthologies—and the scenes that have wrought them—that feels seismic in scope. Sound the alarm, I’m glad to be alive.
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Questions, love letters and submissions to this column can be directed to @rjcaseywrites on Instagram.
