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Friday, September 3, 2010
Letting the Art Hang Loose
Kramers Ergot 5
If you liked to draw as a kid, then you probably remember how much you enjoyed just letting your imagination roam as you randomly filled page after page of paper. Half the time, you had no idea what you were going to draw, or just where that page would take you, but sometimes you stumbled onto something great. Or at least you thought it was great, or your parents thought it was great. That page hung on the fridge for weeks as a reminder of your breakaway artistic talent. There's something to be said for that, drawing for drawing's sake, drawing or sketching because you just have to draw to burn off that energy. And not the formal penciling with rulers and a slavish obligation to perspective and proper form, but just letting your mind and hand run wild in a world that only you could create. This guy at work has drawings by his kids on his office door. Most of them are nonsensical, beyond abstract, but kind of interesting I guess if they were by your kid. But one of these pictures absolutely slays me. It's this monster/warrior/beast on the edge of this steep cliff; he has powers that are spelled out around the border of the drawing. I have no idea what powers this fellow may have, because the writing is indecipherable, but the picture has so much life, so much energy that it nearly leaps from the page. The warrior is about to step off the cliff, and almost surely to his death, but he's got this weird extendable bridge coming out of nowhere, maybe out of his foot or the side of the cliff. It's nonsensical, it's impossible, but it's just brimming with possibilities. Every morning when I pass that door, I can't take my eyes off of that picture. You get that same sense of unrefined energy from a few of the pieces in the latest volume of Kramers Ergot. Last year's volume charmed almost everyone who was lucky enough to lay eyes on it, and this one is equally as appealing. The construction of the book itself is better; it's sturdier and more visually engaging. Although Mat Brinkman's "monster striding the rainbow" crayon cover from last year was pretty striking, the book didn't travel as well as this one does. I've had this volume in my bag for a few weeks and it looks like it just came off of the shelf. Kramers Ergot Five (check out this preview from Jeff Mason's Indy Magazine) has a C.F. front cover, a mesmerizing spine (Kate says it looks like a Pucci designed scarf) and a back cover made with different colored ballpoint pens (C.F. also) that can take fifteen minutes to fully absorb. Inside, it's a similar eclectic collection of artists, with a somewhat looser feel to it than last year's. That is loose, except for the formal, almost stiff, Chris Ware piece that seems oddly out of place. Editor Sammy Harkham (Poor Sailor and other fine minis available from Avodah Books) has assembled a talented crew of cartoonists and artists for KE5, featuring familiar names from last year, including Souther Salazar, Mat Brinkman, C.F. and Paper Rad; along with less familiar names like J. Bradley Johnson, Fabio Viscogliosi and Elvis Studio (Helge Reumann and Xavier Robel). Anchoring the volume in the middle is a large chunk of black and white sketch pages from Gary Panter. This makes sense, because Panter must have influenced a number of these artists, some more obviously than others. Harkham starts off the volume with a color story called "Alexander the Greatest." A naked Alexander is wondering around in a forest with an elk's head as a mask. At only two pages, it's just enough for Harkham to establish a mood for the book and place his own unique stamp on the collection. He had originally planned on using his online strip "Black Death" in this volume, but it ended up being a bit too lengthy. If you were one of the people that were looking forward to seeing more of "Black Death," fear not, it will be published this July in a new title called Crickets. In "Mutant Life Expectancy," Mat Brinkman's eerie monsters come alive with Neil Burke's ultra vibrant colors. Brinkman's art has never been more disturbing, but it remains fun at the same time. After a first page that resembles a concert flier for a local hardcore band, an absurd story begins. The purple one-eyed monster admits to wanting to buy stuff, but not having enough money. A droopy-faced green monster takes him to a factory where he tries to earn "silver circuit chips." The story is ridiculous and strangely fascinating; I enjoyed this piece as much as anything in Teratoid Heights. Souther Salazar's pages are less inspired than last year's, but still enormously satisfying. At the beginning, Salazar tells us that he has been charged with being the "official documentarian" of a bird named Fervler and his best friend Razzle, who is either a "squirrel, a mouse or a cat." I prefer to think of Razzle as a cat, myself. I've proclaimed my love for Salazar's work many times before, and I stand by it now. His art is so engaging and delightful, that it never fails to brighten my day. These pages are the adventures of Fervler and Razzle in every format imaginable. Footnotes, tiny panels, no panels, upside down panels, vertical strips, horizontal strips, cut out images and diagrams are scattered with no apparent pattern. It forces you to pay attention to the normally empty margins and gutters. There is always some entertaining nugget or figure to grab your attention in a Salazar composition. Probably the most engaging story in the book is David Heatley's "My Sexual History: Slightly Abridged Version." Heatley lays everything out in an exhaustive 48 tiny panels on each page, lending an almost claustrophobic feel to the story. However, it's nearly impossible to stop reading this once you start. Everything, including early exploration, doubts about his sexual preferences, awkward encounters with both sexes, it's all there in fascinating page after page. For such an explicit story, and it is very explicit, the art is disarming and it presents the subject in a non-threatening manner. Tom Gauld has a handful of one pagers scattered throughout the book. In each of these, Gauld riffs on a literary figure and their public notoriety. Dorothy Parker goes out to buy a typewriter ribbon – and ends up with a martini. Cervantes decides he must finally take a break and go outside – only once he's outside in the clear night sky, he can't stop thinking about his writing desk and decides "I'll just do another hour's writing, then straight to bed." Gauld's pages are done in an Edward Gorey style black and white, with heavy blacks and numerous crosshatching lines for shading. A whole book of these strips would probably still leave me wanting even more. Jordan Crane's cowboy story, "The Hand of Gold," uses color in a dynamic way, shifting the mood from page to page as the story progresses. This tale begins at night with the colors blue and black. Blue and black gives way to orange and black as the story intensifies, then back to blue and black. Finally as daylight appears, the pages are colored in yellow with a touch of black. For such a dark tale (there's an arm and a machete involved), there are funny surprises and visual gags. Crane knows how to use movement and suspense in his comics and this tale is certainly no exception. Kevin Huizenga turns in his usual masterful piece called "Jeepers Jacobs." Golfers from two different generations try to relate to each other as the older man struggles with the younger one's lack of religious faith. This is a substantial piece rich with ideas about hell and what it means for Christians. I'm not sure if this will eventually be reprinted in Or Else, but it deserves as wide an audience as it can get. Dan Zettwoch, or the guy that keeps a steady stream of mini-comics coming to my door from USS Catastrophe, closes the book with an awesome story ("The Ghost of Dragon Canoe") of an almost fateful church bus trip to an underground cavern. In this story, Dan shows his remarkable skill at the cut-out illustration and the birds eye view. Cut-out illustrations include the church, the bus seat, a metal-head named Clint’s skull, Clint’s Discman, and the 1977 Superior Ford church bus. Zettwoch also uses a two page spread to illustrate the anatomy of the cave as the church group descends into its depths. The level of detail, similar in scale to that used in his mini-comic Ironclad, helps the reader buy into the story. He even has a passenger manifest and a diagram showing where each person was sitting on the bus. Zettwoch's pages make effective use of a red-based color scheme, and it takes the story to the next level. It's worth noting that these are cartoonists and artists that are skilled at manipulating black and white, but they each pick an interesting way to use color. Gabrielle Bell's short piece about a woman who sometimes transforms herself into a chair is colored in a way that reminds me of a children's storybook. Probably one of my favorite sections of the book, the C.F. pages, uses light watercolors, while the Paper Rad and Brinkman pages use "poke your eyes out" blazing color. The Fabio Viscogliosi section uses a tasteful burnt yellow and orange palette and Leif Goldberg uses every color in the rainbow. Basically, the use of color in this book is as individualized as the stories and art. Not everything works flawlessly in this book. There were two sections that I had difficulty enjoying completely and they were, not suprisingly, by the artists that I am least familiar with. J. Bradley Johnson's strips were mostly amusing, but his section seemed too long in relation to other sections that I was more interested in. I'm not suggesting that his section was without merit, as a few pages were solid, but I found myself wanting to get to the next artist. Fabio Viscogliosi's odd donkey and bird-headed characters lamenting life were visually appealing, but ultimately left me flat. Each one-pager has the two characters walking or talking in one loosely defined panel. These felt like illustrations from a turn of the century children's book with captions from a grown-up magazine. Lastly, the section by Elvis Studio felt a bit schizophrenic. I found myself grooving along to a very intricate double page complicated spread and then bogged down with longer silent narratives. Elvis Studio is an artistic duo, which explains the shifting style, but I found it disconderting. This isn't a book for someone accustomed to a steady diet of mainstream comics, but then again you could probably give it to someone totally unfamiliar with comics and get a positive reaction. Kramers Ergot feels like an exercise in freedom. It's as if the artists decided to let go of their inner critics (except for Ware of course) and just let the art flow from within themselves. They've traded perspective and form for energy and verve. They've created something unique and truthful. Harkham has done a wonderful job of recognizing these moments, and as a reader we are much richer for it. If you are unfamiliar with this anthology, you'll most likely be exposed to something that will challenge your ideas about what comic art can and should be; if you have last year's KE4, you know that you should already have this edition on your shelf as well. What the hell are you waiting for? Here are the details straight from Sammy: 320 pages, full color, flexi-bound (like a hardcover....but flexi), published by Ginkgo Press. In it is a new 18 page Mat Brinkman story (his first non-Multi-Force strip in years); a Gary Panter sketchbook section consisting of one page from each year over thirty years-time passing as you turn the pages; a new Kevin Huizenga strip, his first substantial piece since his amazing strip in the Drawn and Quarterly Showcase #1; a cowboy ghost story from Jordan Crane; a J. Bradley Johnson section of some his best and most beloved strips and minis; the obligatory Ron Rege, Jr. one pager; and new work from Chris Ware, Gabrielle Bell, Souther Salazar, Marc Bell, Helge Reumann, Xavier Robel, Leif Goldberg, Dan Zettwoch, Fabio Viscogliosi, Paper Rad, Anders Brekhus Nilsen, Tom Gauld, C.F., Sammy Harkham, and a David Heatley strip that will probably be the best thing you read all year and might possibly ban KE5 from a few countries... Get your copy of this 320 page beauty featuring from Buenaventura Press, Quimby's, Giant Robot or Copacetic Comics. Prices range from $27.95 to $32.95 and no matter what you pay, it's worth every penny.
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April 22, 2008:
February 4, 2008:
November 20, 2006:
A Comic-Con without the Captain
