Are you reading Bubbles yet? I hope so. I can’t help but think that if everyone read Bubbles and absorbed a sliver of its unpretentious love for art we’d be living in a far better world. In the 2+ years and 11 issues of its existence Bubbles has become essential.
In issue 11 creator Brian Baynes describes Bubbles as a “fanzine about what I’m currently obsessed with.” Thankfully his obsessions are diverse and deep. Each issue burrows into a wide range of work. For example, issue 11’s selection includes art comics star Dash Shaw, little-published-in-US Finnish artist Amanda Vähämäki, and Morrie Turner of Wee Pals comic strip fame.
What’s in the latest ish
If Bubbles was just a hot mess of enthusiasm for comics I’d be on board but it’s way more than that. Baynes is a thoughtful interviewer who forges unusual connections with his subjects. Other Bubbles contributors, such as manga historian/translator Ryan Holmberg, match Baynes’s obsession for the material. There are no duds.
The amount of work Baynes has done on this project in such a short time is staggering. This latest issue is 48 densely-packed oversized pages plus a tipped-in 8-page art extra. That’s a lot of zine!
Every issue leaves me with a list of publications to seek, museum exhibits to covet, and comics destinations to someday explore. A zine that spotlights and uplifts an arts community outside of the grinding algorithmic media hustle is right in my wheelhouse. I’m thankful that Brian Baynes is going all out to make it happen.
Blood Horn was originally serialized in issues 1-5 of the Reptile House anthology (the most recent issue of which I cover here) but gets the deluxe collection treatment in an appropriately metallic cover. It’s the fluid-drenched saga of the band Blood Horn assembling to compete at a climactic battle of the bands in a Philadelphia bus station.
Bunch doesn’t let a molecule of page go to waste. Heavy black ink corrals the action. Panels are strewn with beautiful filth.
In among the visual assault the writing is sharp. Off-hand jokes scurry through the scenery. Characters are lovable and awful. All the right blood gets spilled. Blood Horn delivers transgressive underground mayhem with supreme style.
These are some adorable, educational minis from Marek Bennett. Marek is not only a working cartoonist but also a comics teacher. These little comics are both a testament to his cartooning skill and to the potency of the medium for which he advocates.
In each comic Bennett relates a brief, playful biography of a Greek philosopher. The format of these minis is one that I’ve seen referred to as “foldy comics” in which the entire comic is drawn on one side of a single sheet of paper, which can then be folded to form an 8-page booklet.
The minicomic, unfolded
The booklet can then be completely unfolded to reveal additional art on the other side of the page.
The backside
This format proclaims, “Anyone can publish their own comics.” You don’t even need a stapler. It’s a strong message beyond the marks on the paper, in line with Bennett’s overall approach toward artist empowerment.
Bennett has mentioned Ed Emberley as an influence and this work honors Emberley’s legacy of simple, fun, effective drawing. The ancient anecdotes are a pleasure to ingest. Educational comics sometimes bog down in tedious, literal depiction but Bennett elegantly hops over those pitfalls.
Beyond books and workshops, Bennett also maintains a lively Patreon frequently updated with behind-the-scenes and how-to posts. I enjoy it a whole lot even in my bitter, old cartoonist form, but as a budding, young cartoonist it would have felt absolutely crucial.
Taiyo Matsumoto (Tekkon Kinkreet, Sunny, Ping Pong) is on the short list of artists who jump to the front of my queue whenever new work is out. No. 5 is not truly new as it was originally serialized in Japan from 2000 to 2005 and has received various incomplete English editions since then, but this is the first volume of a new edition from Viz.
It’s a fantastical tale of the Peace Corps Rainbow Brigade, an elite military hero unit with members numbered one through nine. At the start of the story No. 5 has betrayed the team and absconded with the woman he loves. One by one the other members are sent to hunt him down. The perspective rotates among the cast and explores themes of military propaganda, hero worship, and team vs self.
The fantasy/sci-fi world of No. 5 is presented without exposition. Matsumoto shows great respect to readers, trusting we will understand the situation without a cheat-sheet. Mood and character are foremost.
As a young artist Matsumoto traveled through Europe and he acknowledges Moebius as a major influence. Of all of Matsumoto’s work that I’ve read this influence is most apparent here. The characters range across surreal landscapes packed with playful design. Disciples of Moebius have produced a lot of all-style no-substance comics but Matsumoto does not suffer this fate. No. 5 drips style, but, once again, it’s all in service to mood and character development.
I love Matsumoto’s crinkly, loose linework, suggesting breakneck inking sessions uncontained by pencils. The drawing is full of energy which Matsumoto fine-tunes as the story dictates.
I had to slow my reading to take in the 300+ rich pages. By book’s end I felt stuffed, with heaping platters still left on the table. Volume 2 will release straight to the top of my to-read pile.
I’ve added a Resources page (also accessible via the sidebar to the right) as a repository of information for the discerning art/weird/mini comics reader. Right now it’s just a list of online shops that sell the good comics but I hope to add other useful categories over time.
The online shops I’ve listed carry (and, in many cases, publish) all sorts of unique comics. If you’ve got some money for art I recommend browsing around in there.
I thank Matthew Allison for introducing me to a new word: anamnesis. It can mean a medical history, or, more appropriately in this case, a recollection of a previous existence. The self-published Cankor: Anamnesis is a consideration of specific past events that set the creator on his path as an artist.
I’d previously read the Cankor book published by AdHouse and this new material is in the same vein. The Cankor stories are self-reflections set upon a surreal stage of cosmic actors.
Allison’s drawing is impactful and beautiful, and ushers the eye through the story at a deliberate, masterful pace.
The artist clobbers himself with an Ignatz brick.
I’ve read (and perhaps created a few) autobiographical comics cloaked in fantastical elements serving mainly to keep the artist awake as they reel out mundane stories. That is NOT what’s happening here. The surreality of Cankor heightens the force of storytelling and focuses the reader on understanding the artist’s inner turmoil. There’s also plenty of ambiguity to gnaw on. These comics satisfy while read and linger in mind after.
Currently Allison is sold out of this new issue on his website but has sent stock to a select group of stores, so keep an eye out.
Reptile House identifies itself as “a Philly-based lowbrow comic quarterly.” This seventh issue is a dense 48 pages of the dozen contributors simply going for it. I don’t get the sense that these guys hold back.
There’s some underground aesthetic in there but no one is content to stay within that tradition. Some pieces are more avant-garde than others but there’s probing exploration throughout.
Standard Anthology CaveatTM regarding consistency of pieces but I found something interesting about every one of them. That’s really all I can ask for from an anthology. I’m down for issue #8.
I have no outside information on this group of artists but this comic feels like a glimpse into a tight scene, reverberating off of each other, pushing each other to go further, maybe having some cool parties. It’s fun to think, “Oh yeah, Philadelphia, they got that Reptile House crew.”
Here’s a bit of an arts-and-crafts project. A while ago I posted photos of a box I made, in the style of a standard comics longbox, but sized down for minicomics:
Kamandi #31 shown solely to provide a sense of scale
I got a few requests for a how-to so that people could make their own custom-sized minicomics boxes. Here goes.
The first thing to figure out are your dimensions. I decided to make this box to hold the inventory of my own recent work, which are all classic quarter-page sized minis, 4.25″ x 5.5″.
Weird Hoops, by me, a classic minicomics fit
You need some wiggle room so as not to cram the comics in too tight. Comics gotta breathe. I settled on 4.75″ wide by 6.25″ high by however long fit on the piece of cardboard I used. I had some perfect-looking cardboard that was supposed to be a box for business cards or something, but you can use whatever. Cannibalizing an actual comics box would probably work. I had to make the box out of two pieces because I didn’t have a large enough piece of cardboard to form the whole thing. Here’s my layout for one of the pieces:
I cut out the shape with an X-Acto knife. Once I’d cut out the first piece I traced it on more cardboard and cut out a second.
I cut out two identical pieces, each of which will form half of the box.
For each piece I cut a groove out below the section labeled “FRONT” and I also cut away a little strip below the connection tab. Then I held a ruler down on each of the pencil lines and folded up, trying and somewhat succeeding to make precise creases. Don’t worry if this isn’t perfect though. Cardboard is a forgiving material. It’ll be fine.
At this point you can get a sense of how each piece is half of the box by squaring the fold between the bottom and the side:
Before I could actually get folding I had to connect the pieces. I placed them side-by-side, put a bead of glue on the connection tab of the left-side piece, and then overlaid the left edge of the right-side piece on it. It’s important to keep this all square. Then I flipped the whole thing over and put a piece a tape along that same joint to reinforce while the glue dried.
There’s some clear tape in that right-most image, I swear.
Once that glue dried I folded the now-joined piece in half, right-side out, folded the other connection tab in, and glued it to the opposite end of the full length of cardboard. This second joint makes it so that the sides of the box are now all connected. This is a confusing description but hopefully the pictures help it make sense.
Glued the tab, taped on the other side, and used a book to smoosh it all tight while the glue dried.
At that point I had an open ended rectangular tube of cardboard, which is what you get when you buy pretty much any flat, unassembled box.
You still with me?
The next part is the standard folding for a comic box: fold the bottom flaps into the box, flip the whole thing right-side up, push one bottom flap down and unfold its side flap up, then do the same thing for the other bottom flap. This part seems like sorcery, but trust me and look at the pictures.
I had to do a little bit of trimming along the edges of those bottom flaps to get them to fit in nicely. Don’t be afraid to adjust generously with scissors. Those flaps will all be inside the box and not too visible, so hack away. At this point I had a perfectly serviceable miniature comics box. But for cuteness’s sake I had to cut out the customary handholds.
And voila!
I’d say even waiting for glue to dry the whole thing took me maybe a couple hours? Alternatively you could keep mini-comics in an empty Cheez-Its box, but isn’t this cooler? ISN’T IT??? I’m not sure??? Anyway, if you end up making your own custom mini-comics storage system I’d love to see it. And hit me up with your questions/concerns.
I don’t know if the so-called Oscars of comics need a signal boost, but these are weird times and the winners were announced last night in an online ceremony. However you feel about the ranking of art it’s nice to see cartoonists recognized and maybe it brings greater visibility to some books. Maybe?
In the past year the Comix Claptrap (of which I am a member, along with cartoonists Rina Ayuyang and Thien Pham) interviewed big winners Gene Luen Yang and Adrian Tomine. And I can attest that Yang’s Dragon Hoops was a well-received recommendation among young people I know.
The creators of Scarfff accurately label it “an underground comix anthology newspaper.” There’s a lot to like in every word of that description. An all-comics newspapers radiates unique power. The vastness of a broadsheet dense with drawing. The fuzzy absorption of the lines in soft paper. The reek of ink. The modest format pairs well with the irreverent, playful, raw comics within.
Issue 7 is 28 pages with roughly 20 contributors hailing from Seattle and San Francisco. Each issue has a theme with issue 7’s being martial arts. The artists of Scarfff ingest this theme and excrete it out every which way. There’s autobiography, fantasy, humor, wordplay … some contributors attack the subject head-on while others land a glancing blow and then follow through to another galaxy.
As with anything like this, there are hits and misses but the unpredictability is part of the fun. The whole experience is a messy, satisfying burst of energy.
Some previous issues
Scarfff publishes on a quarterly schedule, and the cover price is FREE if you find it out at whatever blessed location. If not, there are inexpensive options to subscribe by mail and support this noble effort.
