Liz Baillie’s ongoing webcomic Freewheel can best be described as a slice-of-life fantasy.  Volume 1 of the series (collecting the first five chapters) introduces us to Jamie, the young girl who runs away from a foster home in order to find her brother.  Baillie slowly reveals a world of hobo encampments, secret cants and signs and an invisible culture.  As the reader adjusts to this new information, Baillie eases the reader into the real fantasy elements of the series.  This culture is intimately wrapped up with the magical, the mysterious the unexplained and the quite hazardous.  Ballie uses the classic fantasy story tradition of leaving the protagonist completely in the dark as both reader and heroine try to decipher this world.

Baillie is a cartoonist whose previous book, My Brain Hurts, was a slice-of-life/coming-of-age queer youth story set in 1990s New York.  There weren’t plot threads so much as there were occasionally overlapping character threads.  In the first volume of Freewheel, the plot was mostly an excuse to find ways to introduce and explore a variety of interesting characters.  Baillie was in no hurry to get the reader from point A to point B and instead invited readers to get lost in moments of chitchat and story-spinning with her characters.

That said, there was still an easily-discernible plot thread to pick up in the first book, and that continues here.  The second volume very much feels like the second act of a three-act work.  With characters established, Baillie deepens mysteries, introduces new threats, derails Jamie’s plans and finally points her back in the right direction to set up the climax of the story.  As such, there’s a little less of the ambling charm of the first book to be found here, given that Baillie is spending a lot of time hinting to the reader that the mysteries of the book go far deeper than one would initially suspect.

Some of the fantasy elements of the story remind me of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere.  That’s the story of a man accidentally exposed to the secret culture that lives underneath London, a scavenger society with the same sort of rules & regulations regarding contact & business that Baillie slowly unravels in Freewheel.  Both books are quite clever in how they take urban or national legends and weave them together in unexpected ways.  In both stories, knowledge is one’s most valuable weapon, because its lack is quite hazardous.  A significant difference is that Gaiman’s characters feel more clever than truly heartfelt; one always understands that they are characters, not people.  In Baillie’s story, she has a way of endowing even the most trivial of characters with a sense of humanity, even warmth.  Even the most eccentric characters get just enough backstory for the reader to understand why they’re lunatics.  That said, the “darkness” introduced as the primary antagonist feels awfully generic and cliched at the moment.  We’ll see what Baillie ultimately does in setting the series’ ultimate conflict on its ear so as to avoid easy “light vs dark” cliches.

Throughout the course of illustrating the frequently challenging layouts, Baillie has become quite an assured storyteller.  The complexity of her pages, the intuitive and almost poetic full-page word/image mash-ups, and the way she depicts gesture & interpersonal contact make this a beautiful strip to simply look at.  About the only aspect of her art that I find lacking is the way she depicts motion.  It’s herky-jerky and static at times, lacking a sense of panel-to-panel flow.  Baillie mostly avoids having to do straight chase or fight scenes, so the impact of this is minimal if still noticeable at times.  Honestly, Baillie could turn this weakness into a strength if she played up the static nature of her drawings in an exaggerated fashion during action sequences.

What is most interesting about this chapter of Freewheel is the way in which it becomes quite clear that this is a girl’s story in a society were women have every bit as much clout as a men.  Jamie’s “minder” is a girl, the minder’s mentor is a woman, Jamie’s spiritual advisor is a female cat-creature called the Contessa, etc.  It’s all very matter-of-fact and subtle but still serves as an interesting corrective for the thousands of entries in the “boys’ adventures” genre.  Baillie plans to wrap up the story in the third book and then start a sequel using the same set of characters.  It’s a world that clearly appeals to Baillie’s punk rock sensibilities, a gritty world that nonetheless has a lot of room for warm-heartedness and friendship.

Ross Mackintosh’s Seeds is a first-time effort with an artistic style indicative of Alison Bechdel or Marjane Satrapi.  Deeply thoughtful and profoundly heartfelt, Seeds explores a universal experience made all the more personal and tangible as Mackintosh reaffirms the intimate connections between the reader and the text itself.

Although it may be off-putting, the topic of cancer and the death of a loved one is something that has, unfortunately, touched and affected most people.  What is more surprising, however, is that Seeds really is not about death, but rather about character, soul and relationships.  Many times, readers look to graphic novels for escapism as the majority of what fills the store shelves in either comic shops or chain retailers caters to the adventure-driven, superhero market.  With a book like Seeds, though, it is hard not to escape the realities of life as Mackintosh does a superb job of creating viable, everyman characters and authentic dialogue and experiences for them.

While the crucial dynamic of the narrative is the important bond between father and son, the story itself is anything but overtly masculine or patriarchal.  In fact, it can be argued that the truly significant relationship is between generations and family as the main character finds comfort and solace engaging with his daughter as he had once done with his father.  This primarily autobiographical exploration also finds levity in humorous moments shared during the exasperatingly difficult times in the hospital as Mackintosh witnessed his father deteriorate.  The “spinnos” game between Mackintosh and his dad immediately comes to mind.

Seeds reflects the rougher edges of storytelling and pacing to be expected from a beginning writer.  At times, the transitions can feel rushed, as if Mackintosh could have included more story or detail, developing the narrative further with additional sequences.  Although Mackintosh’s experiences come through clearly and the panels and their structure emphasize the authenticity of Mackintosh’s voice, some readers may be left wanting more.

Seeds is difficult to read without experiencing that lump-in-your-throat reaction as the realization of death and the loss of a beloved family member hits home.  Even a second or third reading does not dilute Mackintosh’s abilities to connect with audiences on some meaningful level.  In fact, sons and daughters, as well as those with children of their own will find something special in Mackintosh’s book.   A strong statement of sequential art’s potentials beyond the spandex-clad mainstream, Seeds, like others before it, illustrates how serious, mature themes in graphic format can achieve just as powerful an impact often reserved for traditional literature.  As with Forty-Five, Com.X deserves praise for giving a platform to another important, new voice in the comics medium.

images ©Ross Mackintosh

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That the first one is possible only in a comic strip seems obvious. The next two, scrolling down, are perhaps less obvious. But in both, the multiple images not only attract attention to themselves (an important aspect of competing with other strips on the same page for readers) but create, by their very multiplicity, a puzzle that the concluding panels “solve.” Only in the comics.

Here are a couple more:

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In these two strips, the visual devices to which Scott and Borgman have resorted may seem obvious. But, as Samuel Johnson is said to have remarked about the alleged genius of Gulliver’s Travels, once you have thought of little people, the rest is a foregone conclusion. Well, yes. But thinking of the little people wasn’t all that easy.

You can find this sort of deployment of image and verbiage in Zits several times a week. I can’t help thinking that a contributing factor may be that Borgman has more creative time on his hands these days than he did when he was also doing editorial cartoons several times a week. To fill the time, he doodles up more and more outlandish combinations of word and picture. Not by formula, mind you. But combining word and picture into an image is how a cartoonist thinks. That’s his way of being. He does it without, er, thinking about it.

Here’s another one — Zits breaking a taboo this time.

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That’s Pierce’s bare ass he’s holding in the third panel. Bare buttocks are forbidden visual fare in most comic strips. In Pierce’s remark, however, Scott and Borgman surrender to contemporary mores in substituting “butt” for “ass.” Yes, they mean the same thing, but somehow “butt” is less offensive than “ass.” Dunno why.

Below Zits is another in our continuing series showing how toilet humor has infected newspaper comic strips. I can’t seem to go a week these days without encountering yet another example of the same erstwhile verboten topic. What a joke. Two days! I can’t go two days without another toilet joke!

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Darby Conley may have achieved an Enviable First in Get Fuzzy for Feb. 26 — a picture of a comic strip character sitting on the toilet! Not that I mind, y’unnerstan. If it’s funny — and this one is — any amount of porcelain can be tolerated, even welcomed.

In Zits, one more time — only in the comics. We don’t need the words much in this one — except to add a dimension of familiar personality to the episode. Borgman’s visual touches always amaze as well as amuse. Jeremy’s mother’s boobs jump when she gets the full blast of her son’s “music” through the earpiece. And we don’t really need Jeremy’s father in this strip for the joke: His getting burnt to a crisp is a laugh bonus.

Excellent, excellent, excellent.

images ©their respective owners

Nick Bertozzi is an alt-cartoonist who’s never been easy to categorize. He comes from a mainstream tradition in some ways but has always had an interest in formalism, like with his map comic Boswash. His comics often touch on the grotesque while still fiddling with formal challenges, such as his comic The Masochists or his series Rubber Necker. At times, he even drifts into the surreal, as in his contribution for the anthology New Thing: Identity. Of late, he’s turning to historical fiction in places like Syncopated, using a simple and scratchy line that wouldn’t look out of place in mainstream B.D. His The Salon turns this historical fiction on its head by introducing a fantastical plotline to a story that is really more concerned with the birth of cubism. Bertozzi has never been published by one of the significant alt-publishers (although arguably Alternative Comics was close to holding that status) until he landed with First Second. Lewis and Clark is very much the model of what Kim Thompson refers to as “good crap”: a clever, well-crafted and exciting mainstream story with a number of deeper flourishes. This is very much by design, as Bertozzi aims this book at a somewhat Young Adult audience; what he comes up with is the model of what this sort of book should be.

It’s an interesting fit, since in many respects, First Second is best at producing and/or translating “new mainstream” books. That is, books that are either young adult-fiction or straightforward fiction. The art tends to have a very European sensibility to it, including the American artists who produce original work. Lewis and Clark is very much a mainstream comic designed for a wide audience, yet it capitalizes on the idiosyncrasies of Bertozzi’s style in the form of clever layouts, an attention to unusual detail and a certain focus on visceral and even scatological detail. Bertozzi goes out of his way to ground the legend of Lewis and Clark into a narrative that is as much about muck, hard-drinking and madness as it is about science and pioneering. Along the way, Bertozzi manages to avoid a number of storytelling traps that could
have made the story cliched, jingoistic or preachy. Indeed, the deftness with which he avoids these pitfalls rivals the skill of the intrepid explorers themselves.

Bertozzi makes the shrewd move of focusing on the expedition’s leader, Meriwether Lewis. He’s depicted as a combination of visionary explorer, upright patriot and total lunatic. Commissioned by president Thomas Jefferson to find a water passage to the Pacific Ocean, Lewis is shown as someone who gets things done in part because he’s so unforgiving and demanding. He’s a smart figure to hang the narrative around because of the way his life unfolds:
carrying out the mission despite great adversity on route to becoming an American hero, only to slowly go insane, become an alcoholic and eventually commit suicide. The way Bertozzi starts to poke hints of Lewis’ madness into the story (in the form of a dark, blurry homunculus of a figure) is a smart juxtaposition to both Lewis’ frequently cruel drive and gleeful, childlike
enthusiasm in pursuit of his goal. His madness, it is revealed, has much to do with a family history of insanity, but one can see the edge between that insanity and genius throughout the story. Bertozzi hints that Lewis being removed from the structure of his society during the course of the journey may well have begun the process that eventually unhinges his mind.

Bertozzi makes another smart move in the way he depicts the Indians that Lewis’ crew encounters. When the two groups speak, the reader “hears” the dialogue from the point of view of the Indians, as the white men were shown speaking haltingly. That move strips the narrative away from Lewis, putting the reader into a parallel narrative whose complexity is entirely lost on the white explorers. Lewis, accustomed to being the master of all he surveys, is very much a lost stranger in these sequences, often flying off the handle when he’s frustrated. At the same time, Bertozzi is quick not to depict the various Indian tribes as noble savages. Each tribe and each tribesman is different, with different means and goals. In dealing with the French, British and Americans, each tribe was quite adept at manipulating political ends and parlayed with that in mind. There are a few heartbreaking moments where Lewis promises some of the friendlier tribes that they would keep their land (Andrew Jackson was just a few years away). Other chiefs know better, understanding that Americans were settlers, not mere tradesmen.

Both groups are “savages” in their own way, as Bertozzi isn’t shy about injecting scatological humor into the proceedings. This is a shorthand method Bertozzi employs to forward the idea that both groups are more alike than different in a number of ways, including their senses of humor. It’s an entryway to demonstrate that both groups are flawed, ambitious, clever, funny,
playful and loyal to their own kind. Neither group can see this in the other, viewing each other as savages. Bertozzi doesn’t linger on this point for very long, instead letting this emerge as a series of humorous jabs that give way to the main narrative itself. Lewis himself emerges as a bundle of contradictions: he’s a Virginian and a gentleman, having little tolerance for the niceties of negotiation with the tribes (despite orders from the President), yet he develops great admiration for Indian maps, methods and even dress.

The other major character in the story, the young Indian guide Sacagawea, is depicted as being conflicted. She’s shrewd enough to be a great negotiator and guide but is uneasy both with the white men and her own tribe. Her relationship with French trapper and translator Charbonne is more akin to master-slave than husband-wife, a power relationship that’s compared to Clark’s own slave.  Slavery is discussed in a matter-of-fact way not to dismiss it, but to immediately alert the reader that the heroes of the story (even President Jefferson) were mostly slave-owners, with all that power that that relationship entailed. The reaction of Clark’s slave, York, not wishing to run off said a great deal about their relationship, but it also reflects a bit of what could be considered the 19th century version of Stockholm Syndrome. York considers himself to be a Virginian and wants to “earn” his freedom, even when offered a way out. Bertozzi prefers to let the reader sort out their own feelings about the matter, refusing to absolve or absolutely condemn any of these figures.

The big format of the book is instrumental in its success. Using an 8.5 x 11 page, Bertozzi employs a dizzying number of panel and page formats. He uses two page spreads, standard grids, pages with no panel borders, pages with decorative panel borders (the latter two seen for intra-tribe interaction), huge splash images with smaller panels dropped on top, zig-zagged light and dark panels that depict movement over time, insects buzzing outside of panels to indicate their omnipresence and many other tricks. What’s impressive is that these tricks help drive the narrative and never feel superfluous. The thickness and scratchiness of his line gives the reader something to hold onto even as the narrative itself flew by. These details add to the humor and irreverence of this comic while still allowing it to stand as a reasonably complete and accurate portrayal of the real historical events. Nick Bertozzi does a lot of work to keep things simple.

Milan Hulsing has been living in Cairo for years, waiting for an opportunity to condense his gathered experiences into a story. With the graphic novelisation of Egyptian avant garde writer Mohamed el Bisaties novel Al-Khaldiya, he has found the perfect outlet to canalise his exposure to the Egyptian way of living.

In an undisclosed time frame, Egyptian civil servant Salem brews up a plan to create a fictional city near the Nile in order to collect the incomes of the local police outfit. In order to keep the lie consistent, he finds himself buried evermore in the fictional happenings of Khaldiya. While producing and endless stream of fines and terrorist threats, the old part of the city comes ever closer to a revolution against the repressive polit bureau and Salem finds himself more and more under strain while events in Khaldiya seem to influence his own hold on reality.

City of Clay is definitely a graphic novel that demands re-readings and a closer look at the proceedings. While a first read can lead one astray by classifying it as a magical realist story thereby dismissing the more absurd scenes as pure fantasy, a second look actually brings the psychological aspects of the story to the front. Protagonist Salem’s own background is already soured from the start; obviously a loner in an isolated life, shunned by his colleagues, he is also confronted with a runaway wife with a son under the guise of there being no decent schools in the town they lived in.

Salem’s alter ego in the fictional city is represented by the police commissioner, a Clint Eastwood version of the large and slim Salem.  The police officer is a brutal man who looks down on women and whose sole purpose in life is to maintain control by trying to control everything. His relationship with his wife is one of misogamy and terror. While seeming to be solely an imaginative power fantasy of Salem, a tip of the veil is lifted by Salem having the commissioner undergo the same experience with his wife as Salem had. Under the guise of closing the schools, Salem is able to re-purpose the freed up money into the local police apparatus but at the price of the commissioner losing his wife and son who abandon this cruel man. While seeming to be a cathartic exorcising, it is actually a representation of Salem abandoning touch with reality, retreating into the spiral of events that lead to his emotional breakdown and the eventual tragic ending. The police commissioner is Salem’s abyss. He is what the protagonist sees when he looks into his own soul, reflecting his experiences when he realises what sort of man he has become. The commissioner is the lustful, animal soul; the Undersoul of which there is no escape. Even Salem’s one effort to better himself turns itself against him in a half hearted attempt at doing good, the commissioner meanwhile retreats ever more into darkness and violence, being more aware of his own heart than Salem himself while Khaldiya slips into chaos and a revolutionary storm.

Salem looks over his sculpted creation, the city of clay Khaldiya

As it turns out, City of Clay can be read on a few levels hough: as the study of the mental breakdown of the main character, as an allegory and indictment of contemporary life in Egypt or as a phantasmagorical fantasy play. It is to Hulsing’s credit that all levels are present in the story and that deeper meanings only surface after a while.

Hulsing’s watercolour art swerves across the page with a German expressionistic flair reminiscent of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. He makes the straight white sandstone buildings of the Egyptian city conform to the mood of Salem and his inner turmoil; buildings croak, stand askew and loom silently overhead. Absurdist camera angles come and go befitting the mood of the Kafka-esque scenes and colour is used to differentiate between the real and fictional world, mixing things up as the mental springs coils up. The pages are drowned in brownish hues, reflecting both the dust filled streets and the stifling atmosphere.

Two sequential pages of City of Clay, illustrating Hulsing’s skewed approach to the city’s building blocks and interiors.

Once in a while you stumble upon a powerhouse of a story. City of Clay definitely fits into that category: brooding, evocative, thoughtful and timeless yet reflective of modern times. Milan Hulsing has chronicled the downfall of a man with nothing left to lose who just wants to escape from reality but finds himself maybe escaping a bit too much. Highly recommended!

City of Clay by Milan Hulsing is published in Dutch by Oog en Blik / De Bezige Bij. It is a 134 pages full colour graphic novel retailing for €19.90

With Rebellion/2000 AD making a strong push into the United States collected trade market through publisher Simon & Schuster, American audiences have, for the first time, ready access to comparatively priced graphic novels anthologizing material from the British weeklies 2000 AD and its sister, monthly title Judge Dredd Megazine.  While the material has been available in the individual weekly progs and magazine issues, finding them in local shops and even through online distributors is often difficult.  Furthermore, although Americans immediately recognize names such as Diggle and Jock, Wagner and Dillon, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons and Neil Gaiman, to name but a few, for their work with either DC or Marvel Comics, access to this classic material is also troublesome as 2000AD had only digitized a fraction of its immense catalog.

As such, the publication of Lenny Zero, along with Judge Dredd MegaCity Masters, Judge Dredd the Complete Case Files, Bad Company, Nikolai Dante, Judge Death(a personal favorite), and a host of other science-fiction, futurist, crime-noir, post-apocalyptic fiction is a welcome diversity on the local and chain-bookstore shelves.

This latest collection includes not only the three original Lenny Zero stories from Judge Dredd Megazine published from 2000-2002 and created by Diggle and Jock, but also a series of other criminal tales from the Dredd universe, including Slick Dickens, Carlito (Bato Loco), and a final story about life in Mega City One.  Diggle and Jock are natural collaborators and the only thing better than reading Diggle’s prose and viewing Jock’s stark and crisp black and white line art is comparing the first “Lenny Zero” to the script posted on Diggle’s site.  As if Jock’s art required any additional appreciation. But after enjoying the first read-through and then seeing how the artist not only interpreted the script, but also shaped Diggle’s revisions to suit the art (see picture four in the book versus the script), makes the entire experience much stronger.

For the uninitiated, Mega City One is quite an easy world to jump directly into.  Mentioning Dredd among American readers usually elicits a sighed groan or look of horror as one might recall the 1995 film starring Sylvester Stallone.  Unlike the often perplexing and convoluted nature of American superhero comic universes, Mega City One is simplistic — but in no way does that detract from the stories being told here and in other collections.  If anything, it makes for an even stronger playground for writers and artists alike to hone their creations.

A common theme in many of the Lenny Zero tales, and for that matter, in other Dredd-related stories (Jack Pointe, the Simping Detective comes to mind), is the undercover Judge working among the filth and degradation of Mega City One’s most vile criminals.  This atmosphere is shaped and molded by the sometimes heavy, jagged lines Jock produces that hold the readers’ eyes whether it is an up-close profile image of a weathered and shadowy-faced villain, or the weighted feeling of being pulled directly into the barrel of the gun Judge Dredd is aiming at you.  “Sci-Fi Noir” or Future Noir is the best description of Mega City One whether it’s Jack Pointe or Lenny Zero and the artists of 2000AD take the chiaroscuro world of American detective fiction and make it something decidedly original and innovative.  The “Lenny Zero” sequences are rough and brutal at times, but with a finesse and tact not often found in comics or graphic novels.  Diggle does not take short cuts and as a result does not fall prey to the crutch of gratuitous violence to shape narrative development or mode or tone.

After the black-and-white world of Lenny Zero, the appearance of full color Steve Dillon art in Slick Dickens is a shock, but a temporary one.  John Wagner can rarely do wrong; yet here, the literary device behind the Slick Dickens stories may cause some audiences to wonder how often 2000 AD can play out this experiment.  Personally, the humorous nature of the Dickens stories, the bizarre adventures and triumphs over Mega City’s finest, and the art, particularly Greg Staples’ pages, make it an enjoyable diversion from the often stoic, authoritative Dredd tales.

The last three installments round out the Lenny Zero collection with shorter, vignette-style explorations of Mega-City One.  Gordon Rennie is another favorite from the 2000 AD fold and may be best known here in the states for Necronauts, Caballistics or Storming Heaven.  Similarly, Robbie Morrison’s co-created Nikolai Dante is also one of the most popular 2000 AD series.  In terms of a character-driven story, however, Rennie’s Carlito entries and Morrison’s are not as strong as Diggle’s Lenny Zero.  Like Wagner’s contributions, the two are avenues more for encounters with Judge Dredd rather than a platform where Dredd occasionally interacts and appears.

For fans of Diggle and Jock’s collaborations on Green Arrow or The Losers, the publication of Lenny Zero should find an already well-established audience and, potentially, the collected softcover could increase interest here in the U.S. for the world of Mega-City One.

Click for full-size image.

It’s fair to say that Jason Shiga is experimenting with graphic narratives in ways that are truly pushing the envelope.  While his graphic novels, such as Fleep, Bookhunter or his new work Empire State distinguish themselves with quirky, off-beat subject matter and Shiga’s always comical drawings, it’s his minicomics that really set themselves apart through interactive storytelling.

Beginning with simple “choose your own adventure”-style stories, Shiga rapidly expanded the realm of what was possible by producing paper calculators, comics with moving parts, books that could store memory like a simple computer, all of which led to his magnum opus with nearly 4,000 possible storylines: Meanwhile.  Now released as mass-market hardcover from Abrams, it saves Shiga the labor-intensive process of making each one by hand — reportedly 20 minutes per comic.

Meanwhile, with its complex system of tabs and “story tubes,” really blurs the line between comics,  mazes and pop-up books — it is a completely unique reading experience.  Yet, it much more than just a gimmick as it addresses some real fundamental concerns of sequential art: the creation of motion, the passage of time and reader response.  Following the looping, recursive storyline back-and-forth through the book allows Shiga to play with notions of time travel and déjà vu in a way that’s practically inseparable from the form.  It’s part of his genius that his stories are so innately tied to the way in which they are told — it’s impossible to imagine stories like Meanwhile or Hello World being presented in a linear format.

On his recent West Coast tour with Aaron Renier, Shiga gave a presentation on how his work has evolved over the last 10 years and gave some enlightening glimpses into his working methods.  I spoke to him afterward and had him take me through the workings of his unfinished masterpiece, Theater Eroika:

So Buttons Holiday Special #1; Written by Jonathan Baylis with art by various celebrants; Black and white; 8 pp.; Self-published; $2

www.sobuttons.com

The latest pair of comics from writer Jonathan Baylis come themed. The more substantive is the third issue of his series, So Buttons, subtitled So Horror-ble. Accordingly, scary is the watchword, beginning with a Danny Hellman cover paying homage to spooky EC titles. The image, that of an encrusted skeleton arm reaching out to choke the male of a seaside couple, ties into the lead story. “In Need of a Hand – or – So I went to L.A.” is an eight-pager with art by Thomas Boatwright. Looking at the larger scheme of things, Baylis finds the tale fits “perfectly as a transition from my usual auto-bio stories into the horror fiction.”

The mood struck by word and picture is quite perfect, too. Speech is conversational and plausible, the action nicely composed and framed. It feels natural enough to be, at bottom, an autobiographical incident with added authorial wrinkles, including Baylis’ stretch into the purple prose of vintage EC (spoiler alert: liberties have been taken with that boney strangling hand). It’s in color and Boatwright does a good job keeping both the mundane and the weird alive and in close company.

David Beyer Jr. takes over for two stories of more concerted horror featuring genre staples. Set in an alternative world where vampires have lived beside humans for a hundred years, “In the … Old Fashioned Way” posits that the predators have found an alternative food source. Or so they maintain. The zombie tale that follows, “In the Head Please!” is “sick” enough to earn a disclaimer from Baylis: “This is not what typically goes on in my brain, people.” I’m no connoisseur but the narrative does ooze a few surprises.

Both offerings are eight-pagers done in black and white. The vampires get a cleaner, lighter, more open look from Beyer, as befitting the more “civilized” tone to their story. The zombies, meanwhile, are given a funkier, clotted rendering. Both efforts are comparatively humorless.

…unlike “In the Heat of Battle,” a three-page coda in color with art by T.J. Kirsch. Think of the chess match from The Seventh Seal with a zombie in place of Death with running movie commentary and situationally appropriate stakes.

The So Buttons Holiday Special leads off with a quick recollection of childhood Thanksgivings, festivals that center around King Kong rather than turkey. Through its two pages Boatwright keeps things light afoot with substantive efficiency. Ophira Eisenberg, Baylis’ wife, provides the basis for the concluding five-pager, a “Christmukkah Story,” as adapted by her husband and drawn by Kirsch. It goes a long way over familiar territory for its joke, but at least it’s Canadian territory with all its foreign exoticism. In the select company reviewed here, the story is something of an anomaly, extravagantly simple where Baylis’ other material is economically kinked.

Holiday bonus: On the back cover, Kong, in yarmulke and prayer shawl, sends a punched-out giant Santa reeling back onto a church, crushing it, as a beak-nosed Fay Wray figure cheers and a distant Godzilla looks confused. It is perhaps the oddest single image — a fusion of religion, aggression and iconic figures — that I can recall from the tenure of this column.

Such an expansive summary pronouncement reflects a bit of nostalgia as, with this installment, Minis Monday folds its tent and steals away into the electromagnetic ether. Nonetheless, I’ll still be ahead for the unstinting torrent of your self-published, low-to-the-ground, irrepressible expressions of idiosyncratic intelligent design with undiminished anticipation and, no doubt, pleasure. Om Shakti Om, baby!

Among the many alternate-world scenarios to consider if Al Gore had won the 2000 Presidential election (or rather, had won the Supreme Court decision) is the one where Tim Kreider had never become a political cartoonist.  Indeed, prior to the Bush reign, he was an observational cartoonist in the vein of B.Kliban by way of Jules Feiffer.  In a sense, he was also an autobiographical cartoonist, using his own problems and his friends as fodder for comedy.  His work was scathing, nasty, occasionally disgusting and invariably hilarious.  This cartoon, for example, came from prior to the election in 2000:

As he noted in one of his no-holds-barred “artist’s statements” (more like rants), he never set out to be a political cartoonist.  However, he became what he described as a “conscript” in the uphill battle against the excesses, stupidities, lies, manipulations and outright crimes of the Bush administration.  Kreider turned his impressive talent to spin vitriol on the party in power not so much as a partisan move (he saves plenty of invective for the ineffectualness of the Democrats), but rather as one man literally attempting to speak truth to power.

Battling an administration that smugly created their own reality, even if (and sometimes, especially if) it flew in the face of reason, morality and/or common sense, Kreider employed a vicious, scorched-earth set of tactics that matched the passionate intensity of the right, only embued with a wicked and outrageous sense of humor to go with a keen sense of observation.  Whether or not one agreed with all of Kreider’s observations about American culture (and I certainly don’t, especially his conflation of non-urban areas with where he lives in Maryland), the sheer relentlessness of Kreider’s attacks combined with the elegance and intensity of his line carried a certain punishing quality.

The book’s title refers to the time period of the cartoons and essays collected: 2005-2008, or the lame duck, twilight years of the Bush administration.  I read these one-page, usually four-panel cartoons online every Wednesday; a new The Pain strip was always a cause for celebration.  For me, the strip served precisely as Kreider hoped: a beacon of sanity for those who wondered why everyone around them had gone crazy, as well as someone who could be truly, incredibly, unfairly mean to Bush and his cronies.  Kreider’s depiction of Bush as an almost lovable simpleton, Dick Cheney as a sort of hand-wringing villain and (most hilariously) Vladimir Putin as Doctor Doom gave his strips a sort of through-line narrative that typical political cartoons lack.

The other through-line in these strips is that of Kreider continuing to do an autobiographical gag strip.  He frequently depicts himself and his friends as a sort of Greek chorus, the butt of jokes or as a shorthand way of depicting a particular political or cultural point.  Reading this collection buttressed a feeling I had when I read these strips online: as the years went by, the strips lost some of their power and humor.

Kreider was obviously starting to burn out, and it affected not only the inspiration for his ideas, but his cartooning as well.  Kreider got better as a draftsman over the course of the 00s but his strips started to get fussier and less elegant in terms of their design.  There were notable exceptions. “Show Yer Tits”, from September 2005, is a powerful, awful and hilarious indictment of Bush’s reaction to Hurricane Katrina. “We Even Yet?” combines the sort of quick-punch image of traditional political cartooning with a bit of his own irreverence.  “Our Secret Weapon” is a hilarious image of Bill Clinton seducing Sarah Palin so as to knock her up.  Kreider’s gift for caricature is especially on display here, expressing a sort of emotional verisimilitude for these figures he draws.

By 2008, Kreider started to run out of steam, and he mostly quit cartooning altogether in early 2009.  As he notes in the book, he was burned out from having to mine the same material week after week.  Swimming in bile for that long has to have a corrosive effect on one’s own system.  Perhaps Kreider would have wound up quitting anyway; a weekly deadline can be tough for any cartoonist, especially one like Kreider whose line is clearly work-intensive.  I look forward to his forthcoming collection of essays, which will no doubt be funny, revealing and mean.  That said, my last resentment of the Bush years is that they eventually took him away from comics, even if it made him a better cartoonist for a long time.   Kreider simply fired every bullet he had in his rhetorical armory and threw the gun at his target for good measure.