2025-01: Trying to Find Something I Can't Find Yet
Another new year, I suppose. Dare I engage in a year-in-review routine? It’s a tough one. To a great degree, at least on the external level, this has been a Good Year for me: I got to take two trips, see beloved friends, go to concerts by several of my favorite musicians; I published a whopping seven comics, after a few years of barely managing one a year. And yet… I’ve been feeling increasingly unsure of “my place in the world” and all that fare, and, more concretely, increasingly out of place in my country, which continues to commit mass murder under the guise of a justice that, of course, it cares very little about. (Plus, since I’ve started writing this, the situation in California has reminded me that, basically, it’s bad everywhere, in differing ways and flavors.)
I don’t know what to say to all of that. The beauty of misery: there’s so many different kinds.
Anyway. How are you doing?
WHAT I’M WRITING
Comics
I managed to publish one last comic before the end of the year, the eight-page “Going Up” with art by the genuinely brilliant J. Marshall Smith. This one has been a long time coming — I only got Jonathan on board earlier this year, but the script was written in 2022, so I’m glad to finally have it out there. I genuinely am thrilled with how it came out. Here’s the first page:
You can read the rest of it on Bluesky, or Instagram, or on a PWYW basis on Itch.io. Which, speaking of…
I’ve put up a bundle of all of my 2024 comics on Itch.io and Gumroad, for anyone who wishes to show support.
But that’s not all! This week I published my first comic of 2025 — and, unusually, this one is all me. “Running” is an eight-page collage comic that I drew myself, based on photos from willing participants, and I’m, honestly, quite fond of it. Working on it was interesting — mostly, it indicated to me that I truly have no idea how to go about drawing on the technical level (the process was this was, I took the original photo, printed it out at a low quality, then traced over it using an emergency flashlight that didn’t quite align with the paper, size-wise, so I could only sort of see what I’m doing). Here’s the first page of it:
You can read the rest of this one, too, on Bluesky, Instagram, Gumroad, or Itch.
I don’t think I’m going to become A Regular Cartoonist by any stretch, but I am kicking around an idea for an abstract comic, so who knows. In the meantime, I’ve got plenty in the works with other people, all of whom are infinitely better artists than I am, for which I’m grateful.
Criticism
Since we last spoke, I wrote for TCJ about 1949 by Dustin Weaver, a comic so shabby that it functionally made me want to stop engaging with ‘straight’ genre work (not that I did much of that to start with), as well as about three books I bought at Thought Bubble: Dogbo by Jon Chandler, Dogbody by Lily Vie, and Customer Service Eternity by C A strike.
For SOLRAD, meanwhile, I wrote about Iris: A Novel for Viewers by Lo Hartog van Banda, Thé Tjong-Khing, and Rudy Vrooman (tr. Laura Watkinson), a book fun enough that it got me writing about the Beach Boys for some four hundred words, and about Distant Ruptures: A Selection of Comics 2000-2010 by CF (edited by Sammy Harkham), which gave me a new appreciation of CF, a cartoonist I’d failed to really connect with based on the handful of shorts I’d read by him.
Coming up next are pieces on:
Tokyo These Days by Matsumoto Taiyō (tr. Michael Arias, Viz)
Les trembles by Thomas Merceron (Éditions Quintal)
Séquences by Robert Varlez (Éditions The Hoochie Coochie)
Elise and the New Partisans by Dominique Grange and Tardi (tr. Jenna Allen, Fantagraphics)
autobiography has become a stone in my shoe by Peony Gent (self-published)
BEST OF 2024
So, let’s get this out of the way first. In 2024 I:
read 491 comics, 30 fiction books, 24 nonfiction books, and 6 plays;
watched 2 plays, 45 movies, 9 documentaries, and 7 seasons of television; and
listened to 38 albums.
I know, I’m skeeved out by the numbers approach as well. But honestly the main reason I keep lists is because I’m so fucking forgetful nowadays that when people ask me for recommendations I freeze up and panic. For comics, I wrote a list of best comics for TCJ’s usual roundup:
As for other favorites… in prose, Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits (new) and Calvino’s Numbers in the Dark (old); in nonfiction, Miss May Does Not Exist by Carrie Courogen (new), Four Shots in the Night by Henry Hemming (new), and Krazy by Michael Tisserand. In movies, Wenders’ Perfect Days (new), Malle’s My Dinner with Andre (old), La chimera (new), and Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion (old). And, in music, MJ Lenderman’s Manning Fireworks (new), Christian Lee Hutson’s Paradise Pop. 10 (new), and the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds (timeless). I think that about covers it.
WHAT I’M READING
COMICS
Future by Tommi Musturi (Fantagraphics, 2024)
So I read the first six issues or so of this a couple of years ago, and I remembered being simultaneously impressed by the artistry—I strongly remember Tom Shapira and I trying to understand if this was an anthology of simply one artist stretching himself to the fullest—and frustrated by the sort of eye-rolling sarcastic tone of it. Two years on, having gotten the collected edition, my impression is roughly the same, with the caveat that I’m less impressed by the artistry because I can see who influenced it better. Musturi is at his best, cartooning-wise, when he is at his most tactile; the messy inks and warm colors on the underground-artists storyline (see above) are beautiful. But in the cleaner, more desensitized portions he just doesn’t give me anything to latch onto; it’s clearly Ware-informed, but without the actual charm. Two years ago, I would’ve deemed it ambitious but unfocused; now I think it’s the opposite — the focus chokes all the ambition out of it. A shame.
Worms: Book the First by Erika Price (self-published, 2024)
Erika Price, one of my absolute favorite cartoonists of the moment, follows up her Disorder with a more straightforward narrative effort that loses none of the momentum of its precursor. I think Erika, more than most other artists I can think of, is an artist of texture — every single line feels physical, almost engraved into the page. It’s work that reveals its own tactility, its own status as labor. I like that.
Hot House by John Hankiewicz (Fieldmouse Press, 2024)
John Hankiewicz is at the forefront of artists I don’t necessarily understand but always feel very strongly, and this latest outing is splendid. A rare beast: a wordless comic that’s actually good. Strongly recommended for any Martin Vaughn-James heads in particular, which, coming from me, is the highest of praise.
Arsène Schrauwen by Olivier Schrauwen (Fantagraphics, 2014)
At least from the two comics I’ve read by him, Schrauwen belongs to that lineage with which I often struggle that I’ve taken to calling ‘loser comics’ — you know, Clowes and Ware and the likes. And yet him I actively and unreservedly enjoy. What defines his work, to me, is the tension between his too-refined linework—the steady, clean, uniform lines, indicating technological progress that more or less obviates printing problems completely—and the largely-outmoded use of overly-literal narration as framing — it’s a clash between ‘present’ and ‘past’ that I find very interesting. And this book is, I think, the perfect vessel for that tension. Fantagraphics is putting out a reprint in May, and I strongly encourage you to pick it up.
Not Today: Undoing Home Repairs by Ana Margarida Matos (English edition translated by Victor Martins, Fieldmouse Press, 2023)
I thought this was lovely. The Spiegelman axiom that comics is time presented as space is completely eschewed here to create a space that is entirely impact — in presenting her COVID diaries, Matos essentially brings the page into a state of collapse to reflect the collapse of the self in isolation. Time is completely divorced from its physical reality. This is a slow, taxing read, just as it should be. Seek this one out.
Flash Point by Arata Imai (English edition translated by Ryan Holmberg, Glacier Bay Books, 2024)
A striking change of tone from the previous Arata Imai book, F, but one that feels nonetheless logical — the search for coherence within political collective can only ever end in absurdist collapse, which Arata renders wonderfully.
WHAT I’M WATCHING
The Night of the Hunter
I’ve been hearing about this one for years, and I thought it was great — perfectly paced, richly atmospheric, and remarkably tight. Sometimes a bit heavy-handed with its dialogue/symbolism, but nonetheless affecting. I suppose I should watch more Robert Mitchum now…
One, Two, Three
It’d been years since I last watched a Billy Wilder, but Sunset Boulevard took my breath away when I was in high school, so I’ll always be inclined toward him. What came to mind while watching this is, oddly enough, The Adventures of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets: not only in the construction of the humor but also in the ideological landscape. This is a movie that is not propaganda so much as post-propaganda — it assumes that there is no real political discourse, that its rectitude is known in advance, and so that there is no real need to explain itself or justify itself. A conservative work of art through and through, but this element ‘redeems’ it insofar as it feels completely divorced from the real world.
There are no Fakes
I love an art documentary, and I love a ‘feud in an insular circle’ story, so this was great. It’s about a wide-scale operation to forge paintings by a Native Canadian artist named Norval Morisseau, though the issue itself remains, as of its production, highly contentious — the dealers who sold the paintings swear up and down that these paintings were real. The film, for its part, takes a very clear stance — it demonstrates, in detail, how they were forged and to what ends, before going even deeper to articulate several layers of ethical questions behind this particular case. I found myself fascinated throughout, and, as a bonus, I found out about a new artist I’m very into.
SILLY LITTLE GUY
Today’s Silly Little Guy is a remarkably sweet dog I met on a walk the other day who was incredibly eager to receive attention. I didn’t get her name, but rest assured I gave her plenty of love. Just look at that smile. Don’t you just love a Creature?
CONCLUSION
That’s it from me, folks. As ever, I have no idea what, if anything, people expect out of this newsletter, so please feel free to tell me if there’s anything you’d like to see me use this space for. Also, just feel free to tell me anything, honestly. I’m told that my grandmother Bella, God rest her soul, used to say, “I should just cancel my phone plan since nobody calls anyway.” I think about this daily.
Until next time, peace be with you.