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The Unsinkable Walker Bean

7/23/2018

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The Unsinkable Walker Bean. By Aaron Renier. First Second, 2010. ISBN 978-1596434530. 208 pages, softcover, $15.99. Colored by Alec Longstreth.
(This review originally ran on the now-defunct Panelists blog in June 2011. I've revived it here and now because a sequel to Walker Bean is promised this fall. Ever the fusspot, I have not been able to avoid the temptation to trim and update, albeit slightly. - CH)
Piracy on the high seas—storybook piracy I mean, the kind we know mostly from echoes of Stevenson and Barrie—remains an adaptable, nigh-bottomless genre. The piratical yarn lends itself to the dream of an infinitely explorable world, to lusty romance, oceanic myth, and shivery deep-sea terrors, all of it salted with enough bilge, filth, and real-world cynicism to sell even the flintiest skeptic. The golden age of Caribbean piracy, which even as it happened was a set of facts angling to become a myth, helped redefine the pirating life as radically democratic, an anarchic space of freedom—ironic, since it grew out of colonialism and the Thirty Years’ War. That age bequeathed us a roll call of larger-than-life persons, Calico Jack, Anne Bonny and Mary Reade, Blackbeard, and the rest: real-life opportunists from whence Stevenson distilled his great, demonic “Sea-Cook,” Long John Silver, Treasure Island’s indelible villain.
Silver’s slipperiness lives on, I suppose, in Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow, ever scheming, ever sidling away to scheme another day. Pirates of the Caribbean reinvigorated the old genre, but with a heaping dose of hypocrisy. For example, in Bruckheimer, Verbinski, and Depp's third Pirates film (2007), the multinational juggernaut that is Disney pits globalization, in the person of the über-capitalistic East India Company, against scrappy piratical “freedom,” represented by Sparrow and his fellow rum-soaked scumbags. Huh? Couched in terms of post-9/11, post-Patriot Act resistance to a neoliberal mercantilist New World Order, that movie of course made shiploads of money. Such irony. So, the myth of the high-seas pirate carries on, its popularity an index of how we feel about the tug o’war between hegemonic authority and the individual will to live and indulge.
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N.C. Wyeth does Stevenson: endpapers for "Treasure Island," Scribner's edition, 1911.
Cartoonists in particular seem to love pirate tales and other nautical yarns, maybe because such tales make the world feel larger, maybe because they give license for scruffiness and odd character design (think Segar), maybe simply because the high seas invite so much gushing ink. A fair handful of graphic novels from recent times either plunge into the deep sea or sail off to faraway places: Leviathan, That Salty Air, Far Arden, The Littlest Pirate King, Blacklung, Set to Sea, et cetera (I bet readers can name a few others). Aaron Renier’s The Unsinkable Walker Bean (released, what, eight years ago now?) dives into the genre with a hectic, dizzying 200-page story and a surplus of delicious inky craft.
Written and drawn by Renier and colored by Alec Longstreth, Bean is a beautiful, odd book aimed squarely at young readers, the first of a promised series that, it seems to me, aims to mix a carefully rigged Tintin-esque plot with the jouncing unpredictability and eccentricity of Joann Sfar, whose organic approach to both plotting and drawing probably provided inspiration. The materials are familiar enough, but the execution is, wow, crazy. The results strike me as imperfect but delightful.
Walker Bean (a cartoonist’s surrogate?) is an unlikely pirate: a nervous, sensitive boy prone to doodling and mad invention, slightly pudgy and bespectacled to make him seem an unexpected hero. His emotions are worn near the surface. The plot tests his ingenuity and bravery, offering plenty of swashbuckling and catastrophic violence in the bargain. It’s sometimes bloody and boasts some real scares. Walker’s world looks like a farrago of eighteenth and nineteenth century elements—costume, settings, ships—but frankly it’s unreal, a synthetic alternate world. Per the map on the frontispiece, that world is like a distorted view of ours but bears fanciful names (e.g., Subrosa Sound, the Gulf of Brush Tail, and cities like New Barkhausen and Tapioca) alongside real ones like the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Anachronisms abound, such as a middle class child’s bedroom casually appointed with books. Stops along the way, such as the colorful port of Spithead, teem with diverse character types who lend the storyworld a distinctly postcolonial vibe.
The plot, a mad, churning mess, begins with mythical backstory: a child’s bedtime story about the destruction of Atlantis. Then it veers sharply into pure breathless adventure. Young Walker, to save his ailing grandfather, must brave the high seas in order to return a maleficent artifact to its home in a deep ocean trench. That artifact is a skull of pearl formed in the nacreous saliva of two monstrous sea “witches”: huge lobster-like monsters who caused Atlantis’s fall. The skull is itself a character, evil, cackling, and seductive. One glimpse of it can send a person into shock or even death.
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Walker’s grandfather, an eccentric, bedridden admiral, entreats the boy to dispose of the skull, while Walker’s father, Captain Bean, a vain, greedy fool, plots to sell the skull for maximum profit, egged on by one “Dr. Patches,” a fraud and a fiend. The action, which zigzags unpredictably, includes long stretches on a pirate ship called the Jacklight. There Walker becomes an unwitting crew member, working with a powder monkey named Shiv and a girl named Genoa—an able thief and fighter who more than once nearly kills Walker. That's as close as the book gets to the excitements of courtship.
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The pearlescent skull is said to be a source of great power, of course, but keeps tempting would-be possessors to their doom (there’s a strong hint here of Tolkien’s one Ring). Donnybrooks and sea battles alternate with creepy scenes of the skull exerting its influence and big, splashy encounters with the horrific witches. Pages vary from minutely gridded exercises to explosive full-bleed spreads. Plot-wise, there are double-crosses, shipwrecks, and weird critters aplenty, a burgeoning cast of supporting players, and moments of tenderness, confusion, and self-realization. Walker, Gen, and Shiv are all well realized. Walker himself becomes the true hero that the title promises. In the end, things are resolved but other things left open, setting up Volume Two. 
Renier has not worked out his story perfectly. Honestly, I didn’t retain most of the plot details after reading through the first time; the story ran by me at a mile a minute, and I couldn’t catch it. The plot twists confusingly like a snake underfoot, and logical stretches are many; even for a pirate yarn, the book strains belief. At one point, the remains of a smashed ship conveniently drift into port. At another, the Jacklight, having been completely wrecked, is rebuilt and transformed into an overland vehicle (with wheels) in the space of a single day. In short, Renier leans on plot devices that don’t convince. What’s more, the storytelling is at times more exuberant than clear; certain double-takes and surprises confused me. Pacing and story-flow sometimes hiccup. What we’ve got here is a patently rigged plot set in an overstuffed story-world that is still in the process of being worked out. Walker Bean is a generous story, almost risibly full, but sometimes it's hard to believe.
Ah, but how it testifies to the love of craft! The book’s colophon describes in detail Renier’s process of drawing and hand-lettering (on good old-fashioned Bristol board) and then the shared process of coloring (where the digital takes over). All tools and techniques are duly described, even razor-work and the use of Wite-out to vary texture. The descriptions are aimed at any reader; no prior knowledge of technique is assumed. It’s as if Renier and Longstreth wanted to let young readers in on their trade secrets. The book’s coloring, it turns out, began collaboratively:
Using some old, faded children’s books for inspiration, Aaron and Alec created a custom palette of 75 colors, which are the only colors used in this book. Coloring a big book is easier when one has only a limited number of colors to choose from, and it makes the colors feel very unified.
The results do exhibit an aesthetic unity, without disallowing the occasional eruption of tasty graphic shocks. In any case, the blend of line art and color—handiwork and digital—is gorgeous. Renier, if not yet a surefooted storyteller, is a terrific cartoonist. Vigorous brush- and pen-work, lush texturing and atmosphere, dramatic staging, complex yet readable compositions, and even formalist games—all these are in his ambit. Examples are legion. For instance, check out this panel depicting a bumpy ride:
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Or this much quieter one, depicting a secret hideout:
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Renier’s commitment to the work and talent for conjuring strange places and characters show in every page—and every page is different. This is first-rate narrative drawing, stuffed with beauty and promise; it takes the gifts shown in Renier’s first book, Spiral-Bound, and boosts them to a new level.
Finally and most importantly, Walker Bean has soul. It makes room for emotional complexity. Minor epiphanies and finely observed silences, scattered across the book, make it much more than an opportune potboiler. Behind the book is a thumping heartbeat that testifies to a reckless love of comics and adventure. This is a yarn without a whiff of condescension: mad, high-spirited, and cool.
(Volume Two is due this October. Hmm, what difference will eight years make? Also, note that KinderComics will be on summer break between now and Monday, August 20, 2018.
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KinderComics at Extra Inks

7/18/2018

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Of course San Diego’s Comic-Con International begins today, along with the associated Comics Conference for Educators and Librarians at the San Diego Central Library. Part of me wishes I could be there, but, as the saying goes, I have other fish to fry. First, an announcement:
After next Monday, July 23, KinderComics will be taking a four-week break so that I can prepare for the Fall 2018 semester and also address some technical problems that have arisen around this site. That is, I will have a review up next Monday, but after that KinderComics will likely hibernate until Monday, August 20. My hope is to get KinderComics on a more secure tech footing and then resume blogging on a biweekly basis just in time for the Fall semester. Expect this site to delve into teaching in a big way come August 20-27.
I’m sorry that I’ll have to be out of action for a bit. KinderComics is something I’m very proud of, and has given new shape and meaning to my life as a comics reader. Since taking this blog public about four months ago, I’ve published nearly forty posts and reviewed nearly a score of books, including nine or ten brand-new titles. I’ve hosted posts by Joe Sutliff Sanders and Gwen Athene Tarbox, published news and commentary, brainstormed for my forthcoming children’s comics seminar, and drawn hundreds of visitors. This is a project I definitely plan on continuing, even if my teaching schedule may make weekly posting impossible. Essentially, KinderComics is my way of keeping track of the new “mainstream” in comics, practicing comics criticism, and reflecting on the emergent discourse of children’s comics scholars—so it matters a great deal to me. Look out for new posts on July 23 and August 20!
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Secondly, back on July 3, which to me feels like a hundred years ago, Inks editor (and my Comics Studies Society colleague) Jared Gardner published an interview with me at Extra Inks that delves into why I am doing KinderComics and what I hope this blog can contribute to the scholarly community. Jared, a top-notch scholar and critic, is one of my guiding lights in this profession, and I'm proud and grateful that he chose to spotlight KinderComics. In general, Extra Inks (the blog of Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society) is a great resource for reviews and features pertaining to comics and comics scholarship, well worth bookmarking and visiting often. (Take for example my colleague Candida Rifkind's timely and helpful post spotlighting migrant and refugee comics, from July 8.) Thank you, Jared!
Back soon...
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Comic-Con 2018: What's on the Program?

7/16/2018

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San Diego's mammoth Comic-Con International is happening this coming week, July 18-22, once again filling the city's Convention Center, harborfront, Gaslamp Quarter, and myriad hotels with thousands and tens of thousands of pop culture fans and purveyors. I, though a CCI veteran, will be sitting out Comic-Con this year, for financial and personal reasons, but, as usual, I have been skimming the Con program with interest. It's my way of staying in touch. Studying the CCI program reminds me of the delights and frustrations of the Comic-Con experience, the sheer scale of the thing, and the uneasy overlapping of fan communities that make CCI such a beast. 

I've learned to look out for specific things in the program and focus on them ruthlessly, while filtering out literally hundreds of other things. The personalized online scheduling provided by SCHED.org, with its color-coding and organization by day, venue, and category, makes filtering that much easier. This year I have a particular eye for the following:
  • The third annual Comic Conference for Educators and Librarians (CCEL), that is, the slate of librarian and educator-focused sessions that will once again be happening during the run of CCI but offsite, at San Diego's Central Library, specifically its Shiley Special Events Suite. The CCEL has become a great new tradition. It begins on Wednesday evening (Preview Night) and continues through Sunday. I gather that it can serve as a professional development event for librarians and teachers. CCEL is actually a free public event, i.e. you do not need a Comic-Con badge to attend, but space is limited, so attendees must either register in advance for each day or have valid Comic-Con badges (CCI badge-holders are not required to register).
  • The academic sessions that comprise the Comic Arts Conference, one of the longest-lived annual academic gatherings in comics studies. These will be happening in the Convention Center's Room 26AB.
  • The sessions put on by the nonprofit Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, featuring CBLDF executive director Charles Brownstein, editorial director Betsy Gomez, and others. These will mostly be in the Convention Center's Room 11.
  • The 30th annual Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, which will be given out, per tradition, in a lavish ceremony on Friday night at the Hilton Bayfront. (I wrote about this year's slate of nominees back in April.)
  • Sessions featuring certain of Comic-Con's special guests: Thi Bui, Emil Ferris, Liniers, Jason Lutes, Carol Tyler, Noah Van Sciver, Tillie Walden, Jen Wang, and my CSU Northridge colleague, Randy Reynaldo. (Plus, wow, Raina Telgemeier and Molly Ostertag are each doing a bunch of panels.)
This year I note an especially strong emphasis on progressive political issues, including questions of diversity and inclusion, representation, social justice, geek activism, the challenges of bullying and incivility, and the pitfalls of cultural appropriation. I also see, as expected, a continuing emphasis on children's and YA publishing, which have become crucial parts of Comic-Con. 
What follows is a list of particular panels I'd be trying to get to if I were at Comic-Con, aside from the obvious spotlights on individual artists (Bui, Ferris, Liniers, Walden, Wang, Reynaldo) and graphic novel publishers that I admire (e.g. Abrams, Drawn & Quarterly). Clicking on the panels' titles will take you to online descriptions:

Teaching with Comics: An Interactive Workshop for Educators
Wednesday, July 18, 4:00-6:00pm, San Diego Central Library, Shiley Suite

This workshop opens the CCEL, and seems to be becoming an annual tradition. It's a great way for educators to kick off their San Diego experience. This involves dear colleagues of mine, speaking on important things and facilitating hands-on activities, and would be an unmissable Must for me were I able to attend CCI. Per the program:
Peter Carlson (Green Dot Public Schools), Susan Kirtley (Portland State University), and Antero Garcia (Stanford University) lead this hands-on workshop for integrating comic books in your classrooms. Using contexts from K-12 to higher education instruction and communities of comic scholars, this action-packed workshop guides participants through approaches to teaching comics and teaching with comics while including the voices of Nhora Lucia Serrano (MIT Press), Johnathan Flowers (Southern Illinois University), and Ben Bolling (University of North Carolina) to share key strategies, theories, and scholarship on comics pedagogy.

Writing and Drawing the Past
Thursday, July 19, 10:00-11:00am, Convention Center Room 32AB

Featuring Thi Bui, Jason Lutes, Noah Van Sciver, and Jen Wang, and moderated by Abraham Riesman.

Art During the Holocaust
Thursday, July 19, 1:30-2:30pm, Convention Center Room 4

An examination of WW2-era art and propaganda, including the perspectives of Holocaust survivor Ruth Goldschmiedova Sax and her daughter, author Sandra Scheller.

The Treasury of British Comics: Can a Forgotten Archive Teach Us about Comics in the 21st Century?
Thursday, July 19, 2:00-3:00pm, Convention Center Room 29AB

A panel on Britain's tradition of weekly comic papers, described here as a "missing link between American comics, European comics, and manga."

YA Comics FTW!
Thursday, July 19, 3:30-4:30pm, Convention Center Room 4

Featuring Jen Wang, Scott Westerfeld, and Tillie Walden.

Splashing Ink on Museum Walls
Thursday, July 19 , 4:00-5:00pm, Convention Center Room 29AB

A topic of particular interest to me, given my curatorial experience, plus a strong lineup, a sharp moderator, and a peek into the coming Comic-Con Center for Popular Culture. Per the program:
Do comics belong in museums? Lots of major art and cultural institutions seem to think so, with ambitious new shows and comic art museums springing up everywhere, including one spearheaded by Comic-Con itself. Artist/writer Emil Ferris (My Favorite Thing Is Monsters), Kim Munson (editor, From Comics to Frames: Comic Art in Museums), writer/editor and exhibition consultant Ann Nocenti, and SDCC museum director Adam Smith converse about the future of comics on display, moderated by Rob Salkowitz (Forbes, Full Bleed).
[Having recently met with Adam Smith to discuss the SDCC museum, I'm excited about where this conversation could go.]

Superstars in Children's Graphic Novels
Thursday, July 19, 5:30-6:30pm, Convention Center Room 26AB

Featuring Raina Telgemeier, Jarrett Krosoczka, Aron Steinke, Molly Ostertag, Ian Boothby, and Gale Galligan.

Transformation Magic: Transgender Life in Comics from Street Level to the Stratosphere
Thursday, July 19, 6:00-7:00pm, Convention Center Room 28DE

This strikes me as a great breakthrough: "What do comics both indie and mainstream have in store for the transgender community in a politically fraught climate? How can trans comics artists best serve their creative and financial interests in an industry that has yet to fully embrace them?" Tied into Prism Comics and the trans comic anthology We're Still Here.

How to Read Nancy (with Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden)
Thursday, July 19, 7:00-8:00pm, Convention Center Room 28DE

A work of obsessive genius and a very useful textbook!

Meet the Makers: Kids' Comics Extravaganza
Friday, July 20, 11:00am-12:00pm, San Diego Central Library, Shiley Suite

Aron Steinke, Jennifer Holm, Jordan Crane, and Heidi Arnhold talk process!

Revolutionary Ink: The 50th Anniversary of Underground Comix
Friday, July 20, 1:30-2:30pm, Convention Center Room 8

Featuring Mary Fleener, Denis Kitchen, Trina Robbins, Ron Turner, Carol Tyler, Robert Williams, and moderator Charles Brownstein.

Trends in Graphic Novel Publishing
Friday, July 20, 2:00-3:00pm, San Diego Central Library, Shiley Suite

Peggy Burns (Drawn & Quarterly), Margot Wood (Oni Press), Emily Meehan (Disney Publishing Worldwide), and, I think, Gina Gagliano (Random House Graphic) in conversation. Sponsored by the Children's Book Council Graphic Novel Committee.

LGBTQ Graphic Novels
Friday, July 20, 4:00-5:00pm, San Diego Central Library, Shiley Suite

Aminder Dhaliwal, Molly Ostertag, and Ivy Noelle Weir.

Using Graphic Novels to Cope with Bullying
Saturday, July 21, 10:00-11:00am, San Diego Central Library, Shiley Suite

With Dr. Katie Monnin (Pop Culture Classroom), Raina Telgemeier, Molly Ostertag, Christina "Steenz" Stewart (Archival Quality), teacher Derek Heid , and moderator Tom Racine. 

My First Comic
Saturday, July 21, 12:00-1:00pm, Convention Center Room 29AB

Jen Wang, Matt Loux, Jim Pascoe, and Mairghread Scott “discuss the first comics they read and the journey from reading their first comic to making their first comic.” 

The Comics Revolution (with First Second's Mark Siegel)
Saturday, July 21, 1:00-2:00pm, Convention Center Room 29AB

Adapting Folklore, History, and Myth in Comics
Saturday, July 21, 2:00-3:00pm, San Diego Central Library, Shiley Suite

Johnnie Christmas, Marco Finnegan, John Jennings, Kit Seaton, and moderator Katie Monnin. 

Wimmen's Comix
Saturday, July 21, 3:30-4:30pm, Convention Center Room 26AB

Per the program: In the early 1970s, a group of women proved to the world that underground comix—and mainstream comics—wasn't just a boy's club by publishing the first and longest-running all-women comics anthology, Wimmen's Comix. Trina Robbins, Mary Fleener, Lee Marrs, and Carol Tyler discuss of how they made herstory addressing menstruation, reproductive rights, and countless other topics that their male counterparts were unwilling or unable to tackle. Moderated by Betsy Gomez (CBLDF Presents She Changed Comics).

Alternative Comics Anthologies, Then and Now
Saturday, July 21, 4:30-5:30pm, Convention Center Room 26AB

Great topic, great lineup: Eric Reynolds, Justin Hall, Carol Tyler, Robert Goodin, Manuele Fior, and moderator Rob Salkowitz.

Audrey Niffenegger and Eddie Campbell on Their Bizarre Romance
Sunday, July 22, 10:00-11:00am, Convention Center Room 29AB

The Annual Kirby Tribute, moderated by Mark Evanier
Sunday, July 22, 10:00-11:15am, Convention Center Room 5AB

Of course a tradition for me!

Comics Studies at Michigan State University
​Sunday, July 22, 1:00-2:00pm, San Diego Central Library, Shiley Suite

Ryan Claytor (a friend and colleague of mine) shares information about MSU's expanding comics studies curriculum, including its Comics Studies minor.

Cultivating a Comic Book Culture in Academic Librarianship
Sunday, July 22, 2:00-3:00pm, San Diego Central Library, Shiley Suite

Glad to see my colleague Allison Mandaville on this panel! Per the program: Raymond Pun (librarian), Allison Mandaville (professor of English), Michelle Pratt (library specialist), and Jenny Banh (professor of anthropology) discuss strategies and practices for academic libraries to collaborate with teaching faculty to create a comic book culture in the classroom and in universities today.

Comics Arts Conference #16:
The Culture of Comic-Con: Field Studies of Fans and Marketing
Sunday, July 22, 2:30-3:30pm, Convention Center Room 26AB

Nine student researchers "present initial findings from a week-long ethnographic field study of the intersection of fan practice at the nexus of cultural marketing and fan culture that is Comic-Con 2018." Field experience organized and panel moderated by my colleague, Matthew J. Smith, Director of the School of Communications at Radford University.

Friends, colleagues, readers, whatever your interests, if you're going to Comic-Con I hope you have a rich, productive, exciting experience! Years ago, Tom Spurgeon, at The Comics Reporter, offered a guide to surviving and enjoying CCI, and I think it's still worth a look. If you do go, treat yourself well, and gently, stay watered, take breaks, and set aside some time for friends. It's a huge stampede of an event, but a bit of down time can work wonders.
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Out Now: The Kurdles Adventure Magazine

7/9/2018

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The Kurdles Adventure Magazine #1. Edited by Robert Goodin. Comics and other features by Robert Goodin, Andrew Brandou, Georgene Smith Goodin, Cathy Malkasian, and Cesar Spinoza. Fantagraphics, July 2018. 52 pages.
The new Kurdles Adventure Magazine, brainchild of editor-cartoonist Robert Goodin, revisits the nonsensical world of Goodin’s graphic novel, The Kurdles (2015), with its eccentric characters, cockeyed story-logic, and gorgeous drawing. The Magazine’s 52 pages include half a dozen short stories and one-pagers starring the Kurdles (two of them reprints from anthologies) but also various stories and features by alumni of Goodin’s erstwhile micro-press venture, Robot Publishing: Cesar Spinoza, Andrew Brandou, and, probably the best known of the bunch, Cathy Malkasian (Percy Gloom, Eartha). These artists created deluxe minicomics for Robot back in the day, and generally hail from TV animation (Goodin’s day job, so to speak). The Magazine, then, not only carries on The Kurdles but also reaffirms Goodin’s bond with a small community of likeminded cartoonists. It’s a lovely, strange concoction that seems less like a children’s magazine, traditionally conceived, and more like an artist’s pet project.
The Magazine offers new Pacho Clokey strips by Spinoza, a new Howdy Partner story by Brandou, and, strongest of the lot in my opinion, a lovely tale by Malkasian, “No-Body Likes You, Greta Grump.” It also offers, courtesy of Georgene Smith Goodin, a disarmingly complex set of directions for knitting one of the Kurdle characters, Pentapus (wow). Altogether, these features make for an odd, and defiantly uncommercial, mix. I found myself wondering who—besides me—this magazine is for.
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The Kurdles stories and pages here, Goodin’s, are sly and funny, reviving the quirky community of talking animals introduced in the graphic novel. Two of the stories, bookending the magazine, involve Sally the teddy bear (perhaps the series’s closest thing to a reader surrogate) asking questions about how color is perceived, and these become deliciously meta, in effect commenting on Goodin’s own choices as colorist and painter. These tales may bewilder readers unfamiliar with the graphic novel’s world, and are, well, pretty esoteric for first offerings from an “adventure magazine.” What can you say about a mag that begins with a story titled “Pentapus the Pentachromat”? In fact these stories didn’t quite “click” for me until I re-read the Kurdles graphic novel, and then re-read the stories—at which point their cleverness and characterizations made perfect sense. Readers who dig the Kurdles may wish for a much larger dose than what this first issue offers
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Malkasian’s “Greta Grump” concerns a mean, unhappy little girl who bullies a whole series of “rental” pets available at a pet shop until she finally meets her match in a blunt Seussian tortoise: a dapper, sharp-tongued Mr. Belvedere type who trades barb for barb and so bewilders the girl that he effectively disarms her. The relationship between Greta and “No-Body” is a tantalizing story engine, and Malkasian builds it with a light touch, avoiding didacticism even as she transforms Greta from a stock type, the little terror, into someone more shaded and interested. It’s a lovely, insinuating piece that has something to say about race (Greta is a white girl with parents of color who worries about not looking “like them”) but skirts the obvious moralisms, allowing its distinct comic twosome to get to know each other rather than worrying over the delivery of a Message. This is very promising work as well as a strong story in its own right. By contrast, Spinoza’s and Brandou’s contributions, though droll and distinctive, don’t seem to offer much in the way of future tales.
When I reviewed the Kurdles graphic novel I marveled at its uncommercial and non-formulaic nature, its embrace of nonsense and defiance of conventional wisdoms. I suppose I have to say the same about this new venture. Goodin calls it an "independent, kid-friendly comic magazine," but frankly I can't see it working as a magazine in the traditional sense, and certainly not as a children's mag. Publication plans seem to call for just one issue a year, as the next issue is promised for summer 2019 (though perhaps the magazine is meant to speed up, once established?). Further, the first issue, while absorbing to this comics fan, does not offer a serial of the sort that the phrase “adventure magazine” brings to mind. Nor does it offer a succinct and enticing reintroduction to the world of Kurdles for those who have not read the graphic novel. While Fantagraphics is promoting this as the “best kids comic mag since the demise of Nickelodeon magazine,” it's really a world away from that model. The comics in it seem ripe for alt-comix anthologies of the Pood, Mome, or Now variety, rather than a mag that aims to be “kid-friendly” (though I'm not saying that the work is kid-unfriendly). The low frequency, lack of an anchoring serial (Goodin promises one starting in issue #2), and shortage of other interactive features besides comics (those knitting instructions do not strike me as kid-friendly) make The Kurdles seem like a long shot commercially, and I'm left to wonder if Goodin's Kurdles universe might best be served up in another venue, say in occasional issues of a more general comics anthology.
Indeed the children's magazine format does not seem like the optimal vehicle for this work. Such a format needs to come out oftener, with a variety of appealing comics and non-comics features, such as activity pages, gag cartoons, and (I hate to say it) transmedia tie-ins. That’s what made the quirky comics section in Nickelodeon possible. Also, it should probably go without saying at this point that the direct market, which seems to be the primary market for this mag, is not the ideal matrix for a children's periodical. Despite some wonderfully eccentric comics, then--which will certainly lure me back for future issues—​The Kurdles Adventure Magazine strikes me as a quixotic proposition at best.
There's nothing wrong with that, but I do fear that the project will be hard to sustain without the kind of compromises that “kids' comic mags” usually entail. The Kurdles Adventure Magazine seems more likely to become an annual alternative comix booklet supported by diehards, as opposed to a kids' periodical with momentum, market presence, and a chance of making a dent in children's comics reading. Too bad, because a periodical with regular doses of Goodin and Malkasian is a wonderfully enticing prospect.
Fantagraphics provided a digital review copy of this book. (Having seen it at last on paper, I have to say that the printed version wows me, color-wise. Paper suits Goodin's work!)
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The Tea Dragon Society

7/2/2018

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The Tea Dragon Society, by Katie O’Neill. Oni Press, 2017. ISBN 978-1620104415. 72 pages, hardcover, $17.99. Designed by Hilary Thompson.
A gentle, winsome fantasy set in an unspecified secondary world with hints of backstory, The Tea Dragon Society is a lush, verdant, lovely thing: an exquisitely rendered, Miyazaki-esque idyll full of greenness and life. Testimony to a very specific set of passions, the book practically elevates cuteness—in the form of miniature, catlike dragons who have to be coddled and protected—to a moral good. In this world, traumas and losses have happened in the past, to be sketched in via poetic flashbacks, while the present action has a quiet, almost palliative quality (absent Miyazaki’s occasional hardnosed gift for terror and trial). The artwork conjures forms and volumes through blocks of color rather than heavy linework, and makes me swoon from its sheer gorgeousness. Aesthetically, then, the book as Object fairly mesmerizes me, though I confess that the ingratiating sweetness of the conceit, the world and its dragons, wears on me a little. Call me a grouch.
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Ironically, this handsome, bookish book began as a webcomic. I say ironically because The Tea Dragon Society is a heartfelt paean to traditional crafts—blacksmithing, dragon-tending—and the people who keep those crafts alive, passing on skills and techniques but also, most importantly, memories, both personal and cultural. The protagonist, Greta, a young smith in training, rescues a lost tea dragon and finds herself entering a new world of dragon-keeping, one of utmost delicacy. Tea dragons literally grow tea leaves from their horns, leaves that can be harvested only with a knowing, gentle touch. The tea brewed from said leaves brings back memories: to drink tea dragon tea is to reexperience the past, in quiet reverie. Dragon-keeping and tea-making are slow arts, requiring patience, precision, subtlety, and empathy. There’s a strong suggestion of Japan’s traditional craft (kogei) and art forms, forms bound up in the succession of generations, in the spirit of particular places, and in the relationships between mentors and pupils. Greta comes to know two dragon-keepers: a couple of former adventurers, now settled, who are striving, in defiance of cultural change and time, to keep the tea dragon tradition alive. She also meets the keepers’ shy, enigmatic ward, Minette, a girl who, it turns out, was once a prophet. Love between the two keepers, as well as the possibility of love between Greta and Minette, is romantic and idealized, queer-affirming, and chaste but not timid (i.e. the romance, though never earthy, is more than implicit). Gender conventions are flouted at every turn, albeit gracefully. The book strikes me as aesthetically genderqueer, its characters always beautiful and its art sensuous, yet it’s entirely, as we say, child-friendly: a quiet ecotopia of loving connection and small, tender gestures.
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Like its dragons, The Tea Dragon Society has about it an air of preciousness and fragility. The story is based on a pretty frail concept—albeit one elaborately explained in the book’s back matter—and readers unmoved by the bonding of dragon and caregiver may find the tale twee and oversweet. The logic of the story’s world frankly seems rigged so that O’Neill’s particular interests, dragons and tea, can together serve as a metaphor for the way that craft traditions preserve cultural memory. There’s a tidiness about the conceit that isn’t quite believable: tea dragon tea leaves only evoke memories shared by dragon and owner, meaning that the dragons do not pass on memories of their own, but only those experienced by the bonded pair of dragon and caregiver. Dragons rarely bond with each other as strongly as they do their caregivers, and so the social lives of these creatures are bound up in the dyadic closed circuit of dragon and owner. This is a tad too perfect, I’m tempted to say—something like a cat-lover’s daydream. In that sense, The Tea Dragon Society hovers between a credible fantasy world and an indulgence as delicate as spun glass. (It’s easy to be cynical about a story in which petting, pampering, and bonding with small, cute creatures makes everything happen.) Yet the pairing of Greta and Minette—one a crafter of memorable things, the other a fallen prophet who has lost most of her memories—gives the theme of remembering a special urgency, and the bonding of the two makes for an unusual love story. Further, O’Neill’s cartooning, especially her delineation of form through color, creates an immersive visual world that is delightful to visit. The sequences of shared memory include some wonderfully organic layouts, and the book is a treat to page through and reread. Finally, I have to admire the book’s determined emphasis on working and making, so different from what we’ve been conditioned to expect from fairy tales.
I am perhaps too old and curmudgeonly for the story of The Tea Dragon Society. I admit, I’d like a world that resists and confounds its characters a bit more, something spikier and less comforting. But I’ll be sure to queue up for O’Neill’s next book (reportedly due out soon). She has the power of worldmaking and her narrative drawing is clear, graceful, and transporting. One of the charms of comics is the way the form invites us into private worlds, and The Tea Dragon Society does that beautifully.
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    See Hatfield, comics and children's culture scholar

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