Refreshing Rectangles

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.

• 2021 Eisner Award winners
• 2021 Eisner Awards full list of nominees
• Comix Claptrap interview: Gene Luen Yang and Lark Pien
• Comix Claptrap interview: Adrian Tomine

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.

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.

• The Scarfff website
• Scarfff on Patreon
• Scarfff on Instagram: @scarfffcomic

Alixopulos is one of my favorite cartoonists, full stop. He’s also criminally under-published which is why I’m so excited that he’s crowdfunding his latest, Lipstick Traces.

It will be a substantial 130+ album-sized pages of, “Parties, dance parties, after-parties, comics about getting ready, going out, hooking up, breaking down. Things that vanish with the dawn and traces that linger on.” Whew, right? You want that, right?

The Kickstarter is already funded, so the book happens with or without you. It’s just a question of whether you get one or not. From what I understand he’s not planning to overprint. With the campaign ending soon, you’d best hop to it.

• Get Lipstick Traces via Kickstarter
• Alixopulos on Instagram: @clubtrev

Cover Not Final by Max Huffman (Adhouse Books, 2021) is relentlessly fun, from a table of contents laden with wordplay (“Tennell Leffitt Man Detective”, “Hot Dignity Dog”, “Nounin Out”) to the compact, paperback design that feels like illicit pulp from a smarter timeline.

The comics within deliver on the package’s promise. Huffman’s drawing thrills with lines alternately bouncy and angular. Perspective is masterfully abused.

I could keep spewing adjectives but I don’t wanna be the fussy lecturer over-explaining obvious magic. Just look at those comics. This was the rare book that had me re-reading immediately because each page had more pleasure to give.

Chris Pitzer recently announced that he’s wrapping up Adhouse Books. Congrats to him on the run, and for going out on high notes like Cover Not Final.

• Max Huffman on Instagram: @maxhuffman
• Cover Not Final at Adhouse Books

I’m always excited to get new minis from Fred Noland. His latest is a 10-panel piece documenting his experience at a COVID-19 vaccination site in East Oakland.

As usual for Noland, it’s beautifully-rendered and well-observed. This is a perfect use of the short, photocopied minicomic form, where he has a brief, focused point to make.

As you can see Noland has been a reliable source of excellent minis for years, so it was appropriately excellent news that Drawn & Quarterly will be publishing Noland’s graphic biography of trailblazing cyclist Major Taylor.

Noland previously published some short comics about Taylor that hinted at how much more there is to say about this fascinating historic figure. I’m looking forward to the 2023 publication of this in-depth work.

• Fred Noland on Instagram: @frednoland
• Get The Big Jab at Birdcage Bottom Books
• More Fred Noland publications available at Fred Noland Art

Manga artist Naoki Urasawa (Monster, 20th Century Boys, Pluto, Asadora, etc) recently started a Youtube channel.

There are only a few videos up so far, but I’ve enjoyed them all. I’ll take any opportunity I can get to watch a master of the steel nib scrawl away.

There’s also an interview he conducts with a former assistant who’s gone on to become a popular mangaka in his own right. Shades of Urasawa’s Japanese TV program Manben, in which he records mangaka working in their studios and then discusses work process with them as they review the film. As far as I know Manben has never been officially translated and released outside of Japan, but you’re a resourceful hacker of the ‘net. I’m sure you can find it. Meanwhile, we have a bit of Youtube.

I hesitate to identify new trends since it’s quite possible that something is not new but rather that I am an oblivious ding-dong late to the party. Nevertheless, it seems to me that comics-related zines are having a moment. I’ve been enjoying (and will, at some point, feature) recent zines Bubbles, Strangers, and But Is It … Comic Aht? and am looking forward to digging into Shah Emami’s new zine companion to his Wits’ End podcast.

The Wits’ End podcast features conversations with independent creators and a healthy amount of Jack Kirby appreciation. That mix is represented in the first issue of the zine as well, including a couple Kirby features, interviews with cartoonists Jim Rugg and Jim Mahfood, a comparison of cowboy and samurai films, and a preview of a comic written by Emami with art by David Moses.

My first impression of Wits’ End: the Zine is that this thing is dense with information, which is exactly what I want in a zine. A serious chunk of comics knowledge to ingest.

• Shah Emami on Instagram: @shah_comics
• Get the Wits’ End zine
• Episodes of the Wits’ End podcast

Probably, hopefully, you better damn already know about the brilliant Eleanor Davis. This is not her newest work but for whatever reason I hadn’t seen this 2017 Koyama Press publication in a store until recently.

You & a Bike & a Road is 172 pages of sketchbook diary of Davis’s bicycle journey from Tucson, Arizona to Athens, Georgia. The loose, spare pages bring us along for the pains and triumphs of the ride.

Eleanor Davis does not flinch from shining a light on her own insecurities and dark thoughts. But just when the struggle threatens to overwhelm there’s a moment of kindness or beauty to reinvigorate her. Davis’s comics are full of moments that linger long after reading. Her pen always hits a nerve. If, like me, you’ve missed this one then I urge you to seek it out.

• Eleanor Davis on Instagram: @squinkyelo
• You & a Bike & a Road at Koyama Press

The short: it’s my new blog where I post about small-press comics.

The long: I miss blogs, ya know? I have rosy memories of the age of blogging, when enthusiasts on every subject curated their little niche of art, news, weird links, etc and you could peruse them at a leisurely pace with a bit of egalitarian RSS wizardry. And that was fun, yes, but maybe a bit too decentralized for the big brains of Silicon Valley to wring generational wealth from? So now, every morning, we report to the almighty social feed and open our gullets for the content funnel, a great big sluice of low-nutrition cross-talk that surely contains an occasional tasty nugget and even more surely generates primo foie-gras for our tech tycoon overlords. Yum!

I’m not telling you to delete your apps (on the contrary, go follow me on all of them!) but when it comes to my favorite subjects I’m craving ye blogges of olde. So here I am carving out my own little spot.

As for comics, I’m more excited about the medium all the time. This is my effort to share that excitement and provide a resource for the community.

I reserve the right to my blogger’s whims, but at first I plan to post:

• Mostly indie, small-press, weird
• Work I like
• New/upcoming releases you should know about
• Community: show/scene/shop resources
• Updates on my own work … it’s my blog, damn it.

I do NOT expect to post:

• Stuff about comics movies, shows, casting … by all means, get that shit on Twitter.
• Serious criticism. I admire thoughtful critical writing but I’m not equipped to provide it. Maybe a guest blogger down the road?

I hope that’s a clear enough picture and I also hope that reading this long version is the last regret you have on my new blog. Welcome to Refreshing Rectangles.