Harkham, Huizenga and Nilsen Tour

This is like a mini-comics (okay, they’ve graduated from minis, but they still have that all important mini-comic street cred thing going) Super Group Tour of your dreams.

I noticed this from Flog! this morning and I got that jealous feeling that I always get when I see cool stuff happening on the East or West Coast. Then I noticed that the Mini-Comics Super Group Tour will stop at Quimby’s in Chicago on Saturday, February 25th. Not only that, but just yesterday I had reserved a hotel room for that very day, as Kate and I will be celebrating her birthday extravaganza weekend.

I must be living right this year.

Again, Sammy Harkham, Kevin Huizenga and Anders Nilsen, pretty damn exciting and I’ll get to actually check this out.

Guest Post on SPX by Kate Nyland
Although Shawn and I have only been married for a few months, we have lived together for years and thus I’ve been subjected to his obsession with comics for quite some time. I grumbled under my breath about how his long white boxes detracted from the atmosphere of our college apartment. Last summer, when he ebayed most of his collection, I was pretty disgruntled at being the post office envoy by default (as a teacher, I had a few months off). Now, my spirits perk up when I see a package in the mail (a near-daily occurrence) – perhaps it’s a forgotten-about lipstick I had ordered or a care package from Mom - only to discover it’s a parcel of comics. Lest you think I negatively dwell on Shawn’s hobby, note that I took a course (The History of Comic Art) in college that was fascinating, and I sometimes incorporated graphic novels into my lesson plans as a social studies teacher. I loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Hell, I came up with both of Shawn’s column titles. However, I’m not a full-fledged comic fan and can’t imagine I ever will be. I’m ambivalent about comics due to a lot of the issues Shawn often rants about in Past the Front Racks – the gaming tournaments in the back of the store, the costumes, the objectification of women on too many covers, the comic lovers who spend thousands of dollars a year collecting statues…I will address other (less superficial) reasons for my conflicting feelings about comics in a future post.

Our idea for my guest posts this week was this: take an outsider (me) to SPX with $30 to burn and see what I think about the expo and the mini-comics I picked up. Are my musings indicative of what the general public thinks of comics? No. Do they represent what women think of this art form? Of course not. They are my personal observations and should not be extrapolated. I picked up twenty-one minis in all, but in each post I am only going to review a few of the ones I found to be extraordinary.

First of all, SPX itself. I was impressed that most of the attendees looked and acted liked regulars from our local Punk Rock Night, not The Simpson’s Comic Book Guy. Although it was crowded, I was pleasantly surprised that, unlike my other comic con experience, I wasn’t “accidentally” felt up. It was difficult to visit a table without feeling (mostly self-induced) pressure to buy something, so as Shawn instructed, if the offerings of a table looked dubious, I didn’t make eye contact and just kept on walking. (If I didn’t visit a stall it may very well have been because Shawn had told me he already had everything from it and there was no need for me to buy it again.)

I picked up JP Coovert’s Blind because of the attractive packaging (100% recycled, acid-free paper in earth tones that complemented the story) and I enjoyed the short, sparse The Giving Tree-esque tale of a guy who loved a tree and the man responsible for its demise. The beauty of this mini lies in its simplicity.
the monkeynauts by Sarah Becan is also an attractively-produced mini. Bombo the Monkey relays the true accounts of simians who were employed by the US government to test space flight. The art is a breathtaking mix of Xeroxed silkscreen images and real pictures. Anyone who loves animals (not the “oh, I love cute cuddly puppies!” variety but the “how could these wonderful creatures be used for food/clothing/entertainment” kind of animal lover) would be moved by this mini, especially when reading the chilling last page. After reading this on Saturday, I’ve thought about it a lot since. It has stayed with me, a good test for any art form.
Kevin Huizenga’s Or Else is technically not a mini, but is so genius that I wanted to mention it here. Of the little vignettes, I particularly liked “I Stand Up For Zen” and “Al and Gertrude,” stories that really resonated with me. In the latter tale, Huizenga works in an understated manner to tell a very sad and human story. In the former, the author, at the time a graphic designer for a wholesale distributor, grappled with whether or not to help advertise “Power Bead” bracelets. The example below shows the creativity Huizenga uses with page layout in this comic.
In my next post I will review a few more minis and then give some general (nameless, title-less) thoughts on the minis I wasn’t as keen on.

Top Five Desert Island Series

This won’t really be mini-comic related (until the end that is), but I wanted to answer a colleague’s request. So, I’ll hope you’ll indulge me until tomorrow. To celebrate his 100th column, Marc Mason has listed his Desert Island Comics over at Movie Poop Shoot. Look around the blogosphere and you’ll see some other bloggers doing the same in honor of Marc’s 100th column. Marc, congratulations; here are my own Top Five Desert Island Comics in alphabetical order.

Acme Novelty Library by Chris Ware
Repeated readings of these comics have unearthed little details that I must have glossed over the first time. With the complete series, you get Quimby, Jimmy Corrigan and other stories. Not the most uplifting stuff out there, I know, but they'd certainly help me pass an afternoon or two on the beach.

Darevevil Issue 1 to present
I knew I would pick one long running comics series for this list, I just didn’t know it would be Daredevil. There are some awful stretches of comics in this run, I’m sure, but I’ve probably only read half of them. But I’ve read all of Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Batman and the other usual suspects. Besides in the DD run, there are the wonderful and gritty Frank Miller comics and, I know you’ll laugh, the Bendis/Maleev comics that I’ve enjoyed a great deal. There is the lengthy string of team-up issues with the Black Widow that took place somewhere around the century mark and the Born Again issues. I can do without Daredevil: Man Without Fear though, just give me the original series, warts and all. That should keep me busy for a long time.

Love & Rockets by Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez
This is a bit of a cheat really. Since I’ve read Palomar and Locas, I think of these as two distinct series. But I've still got all of the old magazine sized issues, so that would make for great reading. Since this is a game, I get to have the Love & Rockets issues from the current volume as well...

Starman by James Robinson and Tony Harris (and others later on)
Starman is my favorite super hero series and one of my favorite series of anything. It’s not a monumental or groundbreaking book, by any means. But it gets to the heart of what makes a super hero. Starman is first about the Knight family and second about Starman. It’s about what holds a family together and what drives a family apart. I liked Jack Knight a great deal as a character. I like the attention that James Robinson paid to the things that made Jack’s life so interesting. His love of old viewmaster reels, old LPs, old shirts and prints, and old cocktail shakers made Jack human; he wasn’t super human, but he was a hero, however reluctant. His love of the past was a way to connect him with his own family and his father’s past. Once he got past his initial revulsion of being Starman, he was able to appreciate where his father and his brother (very briefly) were before he went there himself.

Uncle Scrooge by Carl Barks
The original run of the Scrooge McDuck characters by Carl Barks has remained a favorite of mine since before I knew who Carl Barks was. As a kid I bought tons of Barks reprint comics without ever realizing why I liked his stories the best. Barks was a great storyteller and he knew how to make the art pop. His characters felt more alive and the stories themselves were more involving than those done by other Duck artists of the time.

Now, to bring this back to mini-comics, Five Desert Island Mini-Comic series:

Obviously King Cat Comics by John Porcellino
There are a bunch of his early issues that I haven't read, so that would be fun.
Supermonster by Kevin Huizenga I noticed that Graeme included these over on Fanboy Rampage.
Dirty Plotte by Julie Doucet. These were reprinted by Drawn & Quarterly thankfully.
Jennifer Daydreamer's complete set of mini-comics
Happy Town by Justin Madson