Once upon a time, at a pirate-themed party, the official Shortpants digital camera got splashed with some wine. It proceeded to work more and more crappily, and finally just shut down. Apparently digital cameras can't hold their liquor.
A week ago, the official Shortpants cell phone got upgraded to a device that does more than just answer phone calls. One of the things it does is take crappy photos.
That's what the official Shortpants studio looks like when someone's silkscreening 250 comic book covers. Anyone who hasn't been able to find Shuteye #4 on the shelves of their local comic book store, it's coz we already needed reprints. And now they're getting the creep trimmed, and they should be available just after the holidays. Enjoy!
Welcome to the last review of Stuff We Found At SPX 2006. During one of the VERY few 3-minute breaks that Shortpants took to walk around SPX, we stumbled upon the table of one Jamie Tanner, who frankly, we probably should have known about before. :)
We picked up this little gem from him:
The book we picked up has six short stories in it; one's about zombie reality television, one's about a homicidal foul-mouthed robot. One's about Egon Schiele, which was just obscure and dark enough for our taste.
Tanner's work has an old-timey feel to it, to the lettering, the art style, the dialogue, and content. (Shortpants loves old-timey stuff. We should tell you someday how long it took us to get a DVD player.) He does some pretty beautifully obsessive linework, too.
This one's from the first story, a dark-side-of-relationships type of story called "Always in Love":
It's a gorgeous and poignant tale about love and loss; mostly the loss of oneself when it comes to amorous fascination. Shortpants really liked the metaphor of a zombie falling apart and losing pieces of himself whenever he falls in love. And the lovely detailed Old Europe backgrounds didn't hurt, either.
Shortpants liked the shit-talkin' robot too. In this piece, innocuously called "The Assignment", Tanner displays a fondness for non-linear storytelling and plot-based absurdity. You'll find this in a lot of his other stories as well, a random jumpiness that keeps one just barely off-balance, a refreshing unpredicability that keeps the reader awake and wondering just what the hell he's going to find next.
(ps: BTW, Shortpants also feels a little pathetic in recalling our meeting with Tanner; we purchased his book, chatted, pointed out our table, and fifteen minutes later he came by to browse our selection. Only we were so sleep- and coffee-deprived that we didn't recognize him at first. FIFTEEN MINUTES after meeting him. Lordy.)
Shortpants got a mention in the most recent issue of Arthur!
"Received the first two issues of Sarah Becan’s comic, Shuteye (Short Pants Press). Each issue has one story unrelated to the other by anything except mood. The first issue is called “Vea,” and has a vaguely Poe-like vibe, telling a story about a deserter drifting into different realities amidst an everchanging world of grass. The second, "Liar,” is about loss of identity and Scotch hallucinations. Both are simple, but very well told, and the art (as well as the silkscreened covers) is quite bonus."
Hearts and flowers to Byron Coley & Thurston Moore for making me feel all blushy today.
How horrible at this are we? It's DECEMBER ferchrissakes.
One very nice person we met at SPX was J.P. Coovert, a member of One Percent Press, which is a great little minicomics consortium after our own hearts.
Coovert tossed us a nice little collection of books, including a split mini he did with Hope Larson:
It's an interesting split; both stories have to do with automobile-related misadventures, and both stories have a sort of beautiful twingey melancholy to them. Coovert's linework in this one is loose and simple, and seems almost rushed at times, but that creates a feeling of urgency that compliments the story well.
He also gave us "Unattached", which is bound cleverly in a dissassembled envelope, a feat that impressed me, the paper whore that I am.
Unattached's linework is tighter, smoother, very Porcellinoish.
The story itself is less of a story and more of a haiku-like meditation, brief, and while it's a little abstract, it's still a very nice piece.
Lastly, we got his "The Other Side", a short story about two young prepubescent boys roaming a subdivision and getting up to some pretty innocuous hijinks.
Coovert makes some very pretty books. The artwork has a fluid sort of minimalism to it that matches the simple, quiet nature of the stories he chooses to tell. They're not complicated or elaborate, visually or substantially, and they end up feeling like little poems; stories told in brief, sometimes almost staccato vignettes, where whatever's happening in the panel speaks volumes about the characters and the situation. Coovert's work is a very subtle treasure that can easily sneak under your radar, but if you spend a little time with his books - all of which can be purchased at One Percent Press - you won't regret it.
"In To the Mouth of the Source, Grant Reynolds pencils a series of connected drawings based on the lyrics of Joanna Newsom. His work features a human-headed creature named Sadie who has cloven hooves for feet. Underneath the often animated Newsom lyrics, Sadie bounds from page to page, gnawing and burying bones. Reynolds creates a playful mood early in the comic as you settle in with an easy rhythm of Sadie carrying bones back and forth. Then suddenly, from the side of the rocky mountain she's perched on, a freight train explodes, just narrowly missing her. This scene totally changes the nature of the story, keeping you slightly off balance for the rest of the comic.
Reynolds does a fantastic job of echoing the lyrics in his images. He uses movement and posture and even the shape of the words, to make the lyrics and pictures work well together. His art conjures up scenes of desolation and desperation.
Midstream in this mini, he switches briefly from Sadie to her winged kin, who also carries a basket full of bones. Then it's back to Sadie who wakes up alone and confused, only to wander through a barren landscape, keeping time with the lyrics. This sounds stark and foreboding; however, Reynolds' mini is also uplifting and rewarding. Yes, you feel Sadie's genuine effort and fear marked by deftly-used startle lines and thick sweat beads. But you also stumble across flashes of surprise and wonder as she discovers a river full of tadpoles.
To the Mouth of the Source was published in July by the Chicago-based Shortpants Press."
