Sunday, December 9, 2018

Thirty One Days Of CCS #9: Andres Catter, Issy Manley and Tim Patton

Stone Harbor and Photobooth, by Andres Catter. These are quiet, personal comics about small, intimate moments. Photobooth takes its inspiration from “the story of J.J. Belanger and photoboots as a queer safe space”, and the comic itself is shaped like the strip of photos one might get from said photobooth. Each page features a different queer couple: smiling, kissing, touching, embracing. It is a powerful statement of being seen, even in an otherwise potentially dangerous set of circumstances. Stone Harbor is a story of late summer and time slipping away. It's done in colored pencil: blue for the boy who hurries from a swimming pool with clouds swirling above and red for his love, waiting for him at the beach. The girl he meets does not immediately present as male (though she does wear a top and bottom when they go swimming in the ocean), and this ambiguity is deliberate. We don't know their story other than their love and that time may be running out. That each panel is a single page points to this idea that both want time to go as slowly as possible, savoring each moment.

Small Plates, The Sound Of Snow, and An Axe To Grind, by Issy Manley. These are politically charged comics that question the core beliefs of society. An Axe To Grind interpolates the Aesop fable “The Man and the Wood” with a speech by Donald Trump in the wake of the Brett Cavanaugh hearings for the Supreme Court. It's a clever approach, as the fable's moral is “Give not your enemy the means to destroy you”. Manley notes that many white women in particular have fallen right in line with regard to supporting Trump, despite his policies being actively hostile to women. She asserts that part of this is because their race and class make supporting fascism in their best interests overall, so they become complicit in such policies. Manley uses a naturalistic style that does the job in terms of getting across her points, but it felt like she wasn't entirely comfortable drawing this way at times.

Small Plates is a folding comic that once again hits on a striking image—that of the “small plates” of many tapas restaurants—and uses that to talk about being in the service industry. Everything in the restaurant is measured solely by its utility, and that includes the workers. The contrast between the care each pair of hands must take with the plates and the way the workers rip open their disappointing paycheck is the payoff of the comic, and it works well. The Sound Of Snow is a silent comic about a woman skiing with a man who's an instructor of some kind. The question is, what kind? When she creates sounds that are mere echoes of what's around her, it's an embarrassing failure. When she sits with nature and actually hears the “real” sound of snow, she's able to sing it out loud. It's drawn expressively and underlines the difference between hearing and speaking.

Gemini, Non/Dom and Oscillator, by Tim Patton. Patton is a member of the mark-making school of comics, where the line qua line is every bit as important as any narrative it's a part of. It's all about creating an environment for the characters to react to. Oscillator is wrapped in a ribbon and bound by three rings, with each page a different card to flip. The cover page is of a person (perhaps the author?), whose face is entirely made up of these rabbit-like creatures. On the following pages, they wriggle, jump, bounce, vibrate, melt and mutate into all sorts of shapes. It pukes and multiplies until the hare inevitably is consumed by a tortoise who becomes full of energy, zips around, gets stuck from being too big, and cries itself a river. It winds up landing on another rabbit, discharging its energy. Patton has an extremely assured, thin line that allows him to craft tiny images with a great deal of clarity.

Non/Dom looks like a jam comic he did with Hachem Reslan, featuring two characters in bobcat suits doing all sorts of odd things in the forest. The entire story looks like it was made up on the spot as they traded a sketchbook back and forth, both trying to draw in the same hand. It's an interesting experiment with some funny parts and some surprisingly cogent call-backs, but its too wobbly to be anything but an experiment. Gemini is Patton solo once again, and this time he works big but still uses the same kind of storytelling. This time around, the titular twins are one being split by lightning and have to find their way back to each other. It's a wordless epic as they endure hardship as they cross deserts, mountains and oceans until they see each other and their mutually binding rope. It's fascinating to watch Patton experiment like this, as he's clearly thinking about different kinds of world-building and different methods of achieving it.

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