Shortpants loves Shawn Hoke even though he's a Colts fan

Ha ha, just kidding, Shortpants doesn't really care about football. Although we are looking for a bar wherein to watch the Superbowl, mostly because Shortpants wants to be there when the looting starts.

But check out the review posted yesterday on Size Matters!

Here's an excerpt:

"Night and Day, from Sarah Becan and Chicago-based Shortpants Press, is another perfect example of what mini-comics can do so well. In just over 50 pages, Becan creates a tight, engrossing story of love and insecurity. This mini is the third of the loosely connected Shuteye series. I haven’t read one or two, but the third one stands alone as one of the finest story-based minis I’ve read in some time."

Trains are... Mint

Oliver East (excellent name, btw) sent Shortpants a comic called Trains Are... Mint. We've been a long time getting around to this review, mostly becos we procrastinate, but also partially becos it's such a delicately and precisely awesome mini that we wanted to write a delicately and precisely awesome review for it.



Trains Are... Mint is a beautifully made mini, with delicate and deliberately childlike line drawings layered over a series of meditative watercolor studies of Manchester's train stations.





There's a calmness and solemnity to East's work that Shortpants found very attractive, and which Shortpants finds hard to put into words. You know the feeling, when something's so just-right that it feels as if trying to explain it might break the spell.



Or maybe we're getting too philosophical about it. It's essentially a journal comic, but rather than invite us into some self-obsessed navel-gazing internal conflict, this book made us feel like we were wandering the train tracks with East on a quiet grey day, pointing out this building and that, enjoying the subtle aesthetics of the sometimes bleak urban landscapes. Trains Are... Mint takes the reader on a clever and surprisingly affectionate tour of Manchester; it's very easy to see that East really cares about his subject.

This was our favorite page. Shortpants wishes we could work watercolors like this:



You can see lots more page samples on East's site, where you can also get your very own copy of Trains Are... Mint. Which Shortpants recommends that you do. Cos it's a great book, and we're very much looking forward to seeing what else East has to show in future efforts.

Oops. I missed one

You know who writes the fastest comics reviews in the whole of comicdom? Whitey, over at Optical Sloth. Shortpants only sent Shuteye #3 out for reviews last week, and he's already got it reviewed and scanned and everything.

"I've known about Sarah's work for right around a year now, and it already makes my day when I get a new comic from her in the mail. This is the story of a young couple who seem to completely love each other, but have to deal with roomates and their families not approving of their relationship for different reasons. They decide to take a long camping trip to get away from it all, and end up stumbling across a house in the middle of nowhere, and any more than that gives the whole thing away. This may (emphasis on the "may" here, as I like most of her stuff) be the best comic that Sarah has done yet. She sets up the difficulties of the relationship beautifully and deals with the awful truth of that house as honestly as possible. She also points out in the letter that came with this something I hadn't picked up on, that the end of every Shuteye focuses in on one person dreaming and that person carries on over to the next issue. Missed that one completely, probably because I've been reading these things months apart. Anyway, it looks gorgeous and has a great story. What more do you need?"

Right on, right on

So, I finally got my hands on issue #76 of Punk Planet magazine (thanks go out to Alex of Art of the Underground for bringing it to my attention) where there are not one but TWO Shortpants reviews hiding in the very back.

Here's what they had to say about Shuteye #2: The Liar:

"At first read, The Liar is an all-American fable of the stranger in town, escaping the circumstances of his past and falsifying just enough of a past to stay within the good graces of the man pouring the whiskey at the bar. The stranger brings trouble and hides the truth, making it unclear to the reader what's a lie and what's a memory and what the narrator himself believes. Like other American tales, this brown paper comic contains twists and turns. You might need to pick up Shuteye more than once before the subterfuge comes to light."

And here's what they said about To the Mouth of the Source:

It would be difficult to review Grant Reynolds' To the Mouth of the Source without harping a bit on its concept: "comic vignettes based on the lyrics of Joanna Newsom." Sure, the music of this modern-day woodland sprite (who seems to pluck her words from the more obscure corners of the OED) might inspire truly imaginative visual art, but there's also the possibility that an ekphrastic comic - crammed with clams, crabs, cockles and cowries - might be somewhat of a visual trainwreck. Fortunately, Reynolds opts for a simple approach, drawing mythical creatures in black ink against stark backgrounds. He uses very few words, masterfully weaving together recurrent Newsom motifs: bones, white coats, water, gnawing, night. When strung together this way - and when accompanying Reynolds' expressive images - the lyrics take on new meaning, while still adhering, remarkably, to the overall mood of Newsom's songs. Indeed, this book is right on."

(incidentally, I'd only ever heard the word ekphrastic before when talking about literature reinterpreting visual art, not the other way around, but I like it. Rock on.)

More Shortpants Props, or We Love Monte Williams

Shortpants kindly urges you to go check out the writeup of the Ouija Interviews (and Shortpants in general) got over at PopMatters. Here is a delicious, delicious excerpt:

The gimmicky premise, the humble packaging, the minimalist illustrations and the overall cuteness of Ouija Interview serve to let the reader’s defenses down so that its moments of power are all the more surprising and upsetting. Whether you decide the series is cute and silly but also emotionally unpredictable and surprisingly touching, as I did, or just a purely humorous and frivolous comic whose crueler bits are merely darker shades of its humor, you will agree with me on one score, at least: Ouija Interview is goddamn cute.

shortpants props, and sorta-props

We got a nice little mention on The Comics Reporter for the fourth Ouija Interview:

This is a standard quarter-sized mini-comic with better-than-average paper wrapped in an attractively tinted card stock cover. Plot wise, this is pretty much as it sounds: a series of interviews with spirits through a Ouija board put into comics form. This is probably the most involved one, as it involves two different acts of spiritual outreach. The first is to a child and his sister, Mack and Agatha, who let it be known they were murdered by their father. They seek their mother, who they believe suffered the same fate. It's hinted that until some solution to this problem is found, they won't be able to move on. The unseen Ouija board users then summon Samantha, Mack and Agatha's aunt, who lets them in on the horrible secret that is likely keeping the first two spirits from a higher place.

It's the details that are fun here: the "old-timey" design on the ghosts, the goofy dialog lettered in Ouija board letter approximates, the hesitant but helpful questions asked by the unseen interrogator. This is the kind of thing that is much better of relegated to a small publication like this one, where it makes for a quirky and fun object.

Plus, once upon a time, a good friend of Shortpants Press implied that perhaps we only hyped the really fantastic reviews we got, and swept the "bad" ones under the rug. Let it be known that this is not the case, as we got a mostly good/sorta critical review for the Shuteye Series over at Sequart.com:

SHUTEYE #1-3 by Sarah Becan. This ambitious minicomics series explores worlds that aren't quite what they seem, and in particular the world of dreams and hallucinations. Identity is another central idea, particularly the concept of ego loss. I love Becan's design sense and the way she composes a page, as well as the way each issue leads into the next despite being stand-alone comics. The problem is that her ambition outstrips her execution at times. The best of the three issues is #1, about a soldier lost in a mysterious desert. He winds up in a village and finds that every time he wakes up in the morning, time has warped around him. His experiences are felt in the dreams of the soldiers he left behind when he deserted. It's graphically simple but elegant--Becan's chops don't exceed her reach here, and the story itself is perfectly paced.

The problems begin with #2, about a young man who stumbles drunkenly out of a car in an unfamiliar neighborhood who proceeds to lie to the bartender about everything imaginable. When he realizes that he may have accidentally killed someone in a drunk driving accident, the world suddenly shifts around him unexpectedly. It's a clever twist ending, but the problem with the story is that it's reliant on subtle facial expression and shifts of mood, and Becan's art isn't quite up to it. Becan hovers between realism and a more stripped-down style, and the result is something that looks rushed. One senses that she's afraid of losing her decorative touch if she went too simple.

#3 is overstuffed at 50 pages. It's a tale of a couple who go hiking and wind up in a weird house that forces one awake while the other must sleep. The revelation from the young woman that this fate does not upset her is clever given what Becan sets up early in the story. The problem with this one is pacing. The story feels padded and the figures are clearly rushed. There's just not enough to look at on a given page to hold one's attention throughout.

Becan is a very clever cartoonist who's clearly going through a learning curve. I like how the slightly genre trappings set up human interactions--it's not unlike an episode of The Twilight Zone. I expect to see steady improvement as she learns what works and what doesn't.

2007 Release Schedule...

...is developing a lot more slowly than we thought it would. There will be at least two new Shuteye books, probably a new Suckerpunch or two, we're hoping a handful of new Ouija Interviews too. More importantly, by the end of the year we're going to be releasing our biggest piece to date, an anthology of Chicago-based (and ex-Chicago-based) comics artists. We've got a really impressive group of artists signed on to the project so far, and we're really excited about it. More info as the project develops.

Also, I'll have a loose release schedule for you, oh, let's say in a week or two.

PS: Apologies to Oliver of Trains Are... we owe you a review, it'll be up this week, je te jure.