Darryl Ayo writes “Freestyle Friday” for Comix Cube. He loves discovering artists that he didn’t know about before.

Lunch Break is a short round-up of favorite webcomics appearing here each weekday at noon. Here’s something for you to enjoy over your lunch break or whenever. The premise is simple: it’s another day on the internet. Here’s a new or forgotten comic that seems interesting.

We’d love to have you guest edit Lunch Break! Check out the Contribute page for more information.

1. Lovely Day by NikkiNack // May 28, 2011
2. New Nose by Brandon Graham // May 27, 2011 NSFW
3. m – salatis – arrival by Sloane Leong // February 9, 2011
4. Making Tortillas” by KickSatanOut // October 11, 2010
5. PC: Sexy Grocery Shopping by David E. Belton II // May 27, 2011 NSFW

– Sarah Morean

Paying For It
By Chester Brown
Drawn & Quarterly

There is, of course, painful truth in all great autobiography—even the manner that walks that thin tightrope separating itself from fantasy. So, naturally we were all thrilled to death at the prospect of a new Chester Brown book chronicling the cartoonist’s long-term relationship with the sex industry—oddly enough, I can even remember where I was when I’d first heard about the project: in some strange hotel room in Bethesda, Maryland, Drawn & Quarterly’s Tom Devlin teasing the 500-page prostitute-laced memoir from a champion of painful biography. I Never Liked You was something of a masterpiece of awkward truths, and the idea that Brown might be able to channel some of that pulsating adolescent awkwardness into a tome about less youthful indiscretions is the stuff of limitless potential.

But those hoping for a work of deep emotional resonance will no doubt get the picture pretty early on—this is not that kind of book, and Chester Brown is not that kind of artist or person, judging by the available evidence. Paying For It is, in fact, bookended by testaments to the artist’s relatively limited emotion range by two rather esteemed delegates of the art form.

Robert Crumb makes a point of drawing attention to the expressionless lines with which Brown draws his face, comparing him to the offspring of some hapless woman impregnated by the seed of space aliens. The accompanying book jacket photo is also used as evidence of this claim. Seth also devotes a portion of his footnote-based rebuttal of Brown’s ethical stance to this discussion, pointing to his ongoing reference to his close personal friend as “the robot.” “The truth is,” Seth writes, “Chester seems to have a limited emotional range compared to most people.”

It’s through this range, not surprisingly, that Paying For It is framed—the work, one gathers, of some half-alien robot sent to our world to catalog its inhabitants. This isn’t to suggest, of course, that Paying For It is a work devoid of introspection. Brown spends a good deal of time in his own head, particularly as he comes to grips with the end a long-term relationship—one of a very small number in his life—a pivotal moment that ultimately spurs his maiden bike ride into the city in an attempt to find his first prostitute on a street corner.

Brown, thankfully, become a bit more savvy in his pursuit of his adopted lifestyle, quickly settling on escort services as the preferred method of discovery. But as his change in approach changes, introspection wanes, and Paying For It soon shifts more something of a catalog of his encounters, a clinical compiling of his sessions. And while Crumb’s description of Brown’s expressionless face is certainly apt, the cartoonist largely forgoes even that limited detail, opting to make the prostitutes in his story largely faceless, instead focusing on the general attractiveness of their bodies and their approach to the act.

It’s easy to imagine the cartoonist filling out a checklist in some notebook in some deleted panel, cataloging characteristics like a naturalist out on safari. And when he calls out a woman for staring at a television set, mid-coitus, it’s hard not to call Brown out for a similar sense of detachment. For him, the act of sex seems no more enjoyable than it does for the women he pays to have it with him.

But Paying For It is more than just a collection of Brown’s exploits as a john—it’s also an attempt to justify his lifestyle in the face of judgment and general disapproval. Some of this plays out in his in-story conversations with best friends Seth and Joe Matt. Most of it, however, unfolds in Brown’s customarily epic post-script, which comprises around 50 of the book’s 280 pages. Paying For It’s notes, appendixes, and afterwords, are practically a book in their own right. In fact, one suspects that the artist flirted with the possibility of releasing his treatise as a collection of essays, rather than a comic.

Of course comics are what Brown does best, and Paying For It certainly possesses its own peculiar charm. The book does display the unflinchingly painful truth that defines great auto-bio, but Brown’s own truths are seemingly largely devoid of emotional resonance, not due to some lack of storytelling ability on the author’s part so much as his own approach to the situation. Injected melodrama into these pages would be a falsification on his part. And any lingering sense that Brown might possess some remorse for his controversial decisions is put to bed by both the book’s reasonably happy ending and the pages of notes that follow.

Ultimately, those notes detract from the story itself, turning the book from a naked confessional to a defensive justification of Brown’s decisions—as if an anticipation for the inevitable backlash this book would incite on its release. Brown was right on that front, of course, given both the understandably sensitive nature of the subject matter and the internal critiques that define in the independent comics scene, self-generated controversy or no.

It’s this defensiveness, combined with Brown’s own nature that seem to hamper the work’s emotional resonance, and in a certain way, Paying For It’s biggest crime is that, in a certain the sense, the book actually doesn’t go far enough.

–Brian Heater

The Role of an Artist in Society
by Brendan Leach
Self-published

Ah, art school kids.

By now we’re all familiar with the basic stereotypes, yes? I mean, it’s been five years since “Art School Confidential” was made into a movie, plus 40% of our readers have partially-completed arts degrees*.

The Role of an Artist in Society was a jarring title to read, at first. It’s so pretentious. And look at that font. Look at the way he set that type. Ugh.  Hipster as shit.

I braced myself for something painfully arty.  I remember thinking if this book was by anyone but Brendan Leach I wouldn’t have been interested in it one bit.

Luckily, to be braced for irritating pretension is the perfect way to approach this mini.  It really aids the comedy.

The Role of an Artist in Society is not overly arty at all or painful in the least, I need to make that clear.  It is hilarious.

It makes use of direct address, with the subject speaking conversationally to the reader throughout the book.  The subject is an artist who you haven’t heard of, but whose work you might have seen around, maybe?  Yah, probably.  He offers to show you some of his work — right now.  So he reaches into his pocket, unwraps a handkerchief to reveal, what is that?  Oh.  Oh my.  Annnnnnnd he snorts up a big pile of coke.

It’s disarming for sure.

Then the subject responds to the substance through the end of the comic, all the while trying to describe his creative process, which chiefly involves him altering his experience and surroundings with the use of drugs, which of course has an impact on you since you’re now bound together through the remaining pages.

Brendan Leach is certainly one of my favorite mini-comic makers today. He’s consistently curious and inventive as a storyteller and involved in the medium of bookmaking in a way that is really refreshing.  This looks like a simple mini but the size and format work really well for the purpose of telling this particular story and, like I said, the design of the cover gets you in a mindset to really enjoy the story from page one.  The story works largely on surprises made more surprising by a page turn, so each square page contains just a small piece of art or text.  It’s pretty spread-out, which can mean lazy planning from some minis, but in this case it’s purposeful and impactful.

Leach was among the first artists I sought out at MoCCA Fest this year, genuinely excited to meet him for the first time and see what he’d been working on since The Pterodactyl Hunters in the Gilded City. Making fun of his recently acquired arts degree from SVA, apparently. Haw haw. Good one, Leach.

The art is uniquely his — featuring sketchy, playful figures with really expressive eyes.  I like his weird little hulking bodies, where the upper trunk and lower limbs equal each other in length on either side of the pelvis.  The hands are graceful and take on a different look depending on the closeness of the shot, which is maybe one of my favorite things comics can do: Stylizing figures and scenery for wide vs. close-up shots. I don’t know why.

There’s no cover price and the book was given to me as a freebie (P.S. Thanks!). It’s not available for sale on Leach’s website and I can’t find evidence of it being sold anywhere else online. The book measures 5.5″x5.5″ and is 32-pages long.

Why so tough to find? Perhaps the role of the artist’s book in this case is to remain beautiful and obscure. Sorry. Maybe write Leach directly and see where that gets you: CONTACT.

- Sarah Morean

*Guessing here.

[Part One][Part Two]

Jeff Smith famously knew exactly what was going to be on the last page of Bone before he even started working on the series. I think Mike Mignola has had a similar approach with Hellboy, knowing the ark from beginning to end. Are you looking that far down the road?

Not that far, no. And I know Jeff. We traveled together on the Trilogy tour for a year. He developed his characters when he was in kindergarten [laughs]. Thorn was his college newspaper strip. They were with him for his entire life. And when we went to Ohio, he took us to places that Bone takes place in. It’s just incredible. He had the entire story mapped out, even before he started committing it to paper. It was just incredible.

I’m not that structured. I pretty much know where I want to take Usagi, but his final destination I don’t know.

Usagi made his first appearance in another character’s story in a very different form. But prior to latching onto him as your vessel for so long, was it your goal to create a character that you could work with for a long time?

Well, I wanted to do art work, and I was thinking mainly of going into advertising or commercial illustration, but I’ve always loved comic books, and that’s the direction I kind of steered myself in—not intentionally, not thinking that this is the kind of thing I’ll be doing forever. But it’s something that I wanted to do, but I never imagined that I would be doing this with my entire life.

But then, I’m glad I’m doing this. I love what I do. No one bothers me. My contract with all my publishers has always been: whatever I send in, they publish. So they have no editorial input, as far as the story goes. It’s an ideal situation for someone like me.

Do you enjoy working with other people? You’ve done a lot of work with Sergio [Aragones], and you’re still doing lettering [for the Spider-man Sunday strip]. Do you like working on other people’s comics?

I do—if it interests me. I did something for the Marvel Strange Tales anthology. That was great. They called me up and said that I could use any of the characters and do whatever I want with them. And my first thought was: Spider-man ninja. But that was too obvious. I wanted to do something I’m familiar with, because that’s the way I have to be because of deadlines.

So then I decided to do Samurai Hulk. Just seeing the Hulk in samurai armor, that would make a nice visual. And having him fight off an army seemed like fun to me, so I did that. And I told them I was going to kill him at the end, and they said, “oh sure. That’s fine.”

What’s your level of involvement on the Spider-man strip?

I just do the lettering for the Sunday strip. I’ve been doing that for more than 25 years, as well. I get to work directly with Stan Lee. It’s still a thrill. It’s really neat. I remember him calling me up and saying, “hi, this is Stan Lee, looking for Stan Sakai.” And I remember thinking, ‘he really sounds like Stan Lee.’ I thought that was the funniest thing.

It was the same thing when I did a signing with George Takai from Star Trek. And I kept thinking, ‘he really sounds like Mr. Sulu.’ It was the funniest thing. They really sound like their characters. And Stan is the way he’s portrayed. He’s always exuberant and friendly. He’s a really sweet guy, and the main reason I still do the Spider-man strip lettering is because of Stan.

Are there still things you can learn from someone like Sergio or Stan?

Oh yeah, oh yeah. Especially working with Sergio. He’s been doing this for such a long time. The research that I do for Usagi is something that I learned from Sergio. Because his approach to doing Groo, even though it’s such a humor strip—all of the ships that Sergio draws, they might not be actual ships, but you can build them and they would work. He has actual knowledge about ships.

He’s the one who taught me that you have to do your research, and that’s something that I try to do now. And even though Groo is a humor strip, it’s amazing how much he puts into it. The amount that he puts into it is something that I’ve learned from—and keep learning from Sergio.

A number of cartoonists have told me that one of the most important things about choosing your subject matter—especially on a longer project—is picking something that you enjoy drawing. Did that play a role in deciding on the subject matter for Usagi?

Yeah, I think so. Originally, I had wanted to do a series inspired by the life of a 17th century samurai named Miyamoto Musashi, but –he’s regarded as one of the great swordsmen in Japanese history, but one day I just drew a rabbit and Musashi became a rabbit. Instead of Miyamoto Musashi, my charcter was Miyamoto Usagi—”usagi” means “rabbit” in Japanese. The “Miyamoto” part I kept as an homage to the original Musahi, but everything else is pretty much original.

[Concluded in Part Hour]

–Brian Heater

SpongeBob Comics #1
Edited by Chris Duffy
Bongo Comics

When Nickelodeon Magazine folded in 2009, its absence was felt all over the indie comics community. Under the guidance of editors Chris Duffy and Dave Roman, the periodical’s comics section grew into that rarest of beast for cartoonists—a steady paycheck. Duffy was at the helm of the section since 1996. During his tenure, the magazine published a veritable who’s who of indie comics artists, including James Kochalka, Nick Bertozzi, Richard Sala, Sam Henderson, Kim Deitch, Graham Anable, Evan Dorkin, Jason Lutes, Emily Flake, Roger Langridge, Gahan Wilson, Art Spiegelman, and Jason Shiga, to name but a few.

I remember replying somewhat baffled upon hearing that a kid-focused magazine was printing works by the likes of Johnny Ryan, Kaz, and Ivan Brunetti. But it worked. Ryan, for instance, wasn’t trying to squeeze Blecky Yuckerella into the tiny hands of Nickelodeon’s fan base (not that Duffy or Roman would have let such a thing slip below their radar), he was tackling subjects like the tooth fairy. And the result was a sense of off-beat humor that has flavored Nicktoons at their best.

When the magazine went away, it meant more than just the loss of regular income for artists, it meant the loss of kids entertainment that’s so exceeding rare in a world where a talking mouse has a vice-like grip on what we show our children.

I’ll be the first to admit that, as the editor of a comics site, I get some rather strange fare delivered to my door. In the past year, I’ve received at least two graphic novels penned by Stephen King second stringer, Dean Koontz. I still wasn’t sure what to make of the arrival of SpongeBob Comics #1, until a note from Duffy fell out. I flipped through the issue, and it was clear—the cartoonist-turned-editor’s fingerprints are all over the thing.

Where Roman used the closing of Nickelodeon Magazine as an excuse to dive headfirst into a cartooning career, Duffy has stayed even closer to home, remaining under the Nickelodeon umbrella (by way of Bongo Comics), and employing a stable of familiar names to carry out his dirty work—R. Sikoryak, Graham Annable, James Kochalka, and Top Shelf’s Corey Barba all make appearances in this first issue. Heck, even Duffy takes a stab at a story.

For the most part, the work contained herein stays true to the SpongeBob style. In fact, of the aforementioned names, only Sikoryak and Barba’s main strips are actually drawn by the cartoonists themselves (Sikoryak’s is an old timey “Pirate Service Announcement”), though Kochalka is also given the back cover, for some stick figure SpongeBob strips that look awful American Elf-esque. A surreal combination.

The gags are also largely in line with the source material, as though some of the cartoonists were just waiting for the opportunity to break out their dusty SpongeBob scripts. As with all kid-targeted products, however, adults must gently remind themselves that this wasn’t created with them in mind.

There is, after all, a certain level of loyalty these comics need maintain, if they are going to keep young fans of the TV show on board. Thankfully, the source material is quirky enough to give the artists plenty of wiggle room in this first issue, and I’m sure that subsequent issues will offer Duffy and a rotating cast of cartoonists even more opportunity to stretch their legs. Perhaps an exploration of supporting cast members will hasten that along.

This first issue is a promising start and will hopefully land in the hands of those still mourning the loss of its beloved predecessor.

–Brian Heater

Barbra in the Sky with Neil Diamonds
By Joshua Cotter
Adhouse Books

“[B]efore long,” Joshua Cotter explains in the ‘Outroduction’ of this limited edition volume, “I was trial and error-ing my way through the land of three to four panels…for an audience of over 500,000 Midwesterners, many of which (judging by the piles of hate mail I received), were the cranky, ‘blue-haired’ variety.” This is the story of Send Help, a strip that existed for five years, published on a weekly basis for The Kansas City Star.

The way Cotter tells it, it’s the story of a young cartoonist given a broad and far-reaching forum with which to hone his craft—a rather rare unfamiliar tale in this day, in which the aging-out format that is the newspaper comic seems almost entirely off limits to all but a small and elite club. For the cartoonist, it was something of a dream come true—after all, the format was Cotter’s only insight into the world of comics. He grew up on a small farm, relying upon syndicate strips at an age when many of us had noses buried in X-Men books.

It’s clear, of course, what Cotter’s editor’s saw in the young cartoonists—while he admits in the book that this collection represents something of a Send Help “greatest hits,” with an unspecified amount of material glossed over for aesthetic reasons, what’s present is, at least visually, on-par with Cotter’s Skyscraper’s work—in fact, there’s a deal of timing overlap in the creation of both titles.

It was the writing side on which Cotter readily admits he needed the most work. And in that respect, perhaps the three/four paneled newspaper format wasn’t the most ideal for Cotter, a cartoonist clearly looking to set out upon a career of crafting longer pieces. Send Help follows a pretty straight gag strip format, often with a b-reel joke at the bottom, following the adventures of two cartoonishly violent hamsters.

Rather, what the format really granted Cotter was a regular schedule—an obligation to crank out a new gag on a regular basis, and really, there’s no greater gift for a young cartoonist than a steady deadline and paycheck. The strips deliver with varying results, but it is, more often than not (at least those culled together for this book) quite hilarious—it’s a side that really didn’t make itself known in Skyscrapers or its followup, Driven by Lemons.

It’s a path one might recommend for the artist, were his longer form pieces not so well orchestrated. Of course, the first recommendation in that scenario be that Cotter find a forum a bit more welcoming of his morbid punch lines—while his editors do appear to have been surprisingly lenient, the Kansas City Star readership was downright livid that the strip was allowed to continue for so long.

And its not difficult to see why. Cotter’s jokes clearly emerge from a rather angsty place—they’re often violent (albeit cartoonishly so) and take aim such symbols of Americanism as Superman, Santa Claus (you know, the guy invented by Coca-Cola), and the meat processing industry. Whether or not they’re actually, you know, funny (they are), is sort of besides the point.

The real treasure here for Cotter fans, however, is a longer form work sandwiched halfway through the book titled, “The Richest Man in the World,” a first person account of a post-apocalyptic survivor generally lacking in the sort of gumption we’ve come to associate with the last man on earth. It’s fascinating, funny, and offers a few glimpses of what might have become a larger story, had Cotter not been derailed by the wonderful Skyscrapers.

There’s a surprising amount of worthy material packed into this slim volume, and for anyone who fell in love with Skyscrapers and Lemons, it’s worth the steep price tag—that is, if you can still manage to get your hands on one (the entire run is limited to 99 copies). Everyone else will have to wait for the inevitable Cotter b-sides collection.

–Brian Heater

Drinking at the Movies
by Julia Wertz
Three Rivers Press

There’s something to be said for having goals. For being responsible and readying yourself for the next big challenge and having your ducks more or less in a row. For growing up smart and successful and being in a good position to take advantage of opportunities whenever they are presented to you in life.

That sounds like nice work if you can get it. But is there any help or advice for us poor fuck ups?

Drinking at the Movies says to me, well, if you can’t put yourself together the best you can do is hang on and see what happens.  Rings true enough.

After a string of bad jobs and empty bottles of bourbon Julia Wertz finds herself, by the end of the book, in a pretty good place. After not so much learning and growing as just staying true to herself and, frankly, being lucky.

Those familiar with Wertz’s webcomic and its ups and downs will vaguely remember her past life back in San Francisco.

‘Oh, that Julia Wertz?  When she had a boyfriend and her brother and mom were like her best friends and she said awesome crazy shit all of the time?  I remember and liked her.  Sure.’

Clearly, since moving to New York in 2007 a lot has happened for her.  She’s gotten more exposure through publishing and it wouldn’t surprise me if the people coming to her books now — books like I Saw You…Missed Connections Comics which she edited and Drinking at the Movies which she wrote — were completely unaware of her early work. However, though Drinking at the Movies relies heavily on the reader knowing how good she had it to appreciate how far she fell, I do think she succeeds in bringing the newbie Wertz reader up to speed.

The book works for us obsessive fans too, answering questions like ‘WELL WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN, JULIA WHAT DOES IT MEAN?’  Because obviously her move to blogging, cessation of drinking and desire to disassociate from the fartparty.org webcomic that launched her must mean something, right?  Sure it does.  And this book lays it out for us: a lot of her memories from that period just fucking suck!  Poor Wertzie.  This book looks like a prelude to homelessness.

Without saying it straight, she’s definitely alluding to the fact that years of her life have been spent somehow, miraculously, not hitting rock bottom.  She pushes away relationships — you could read that generally as people who would look out for her — in favor of friendships that allow her to indulge in bad habits like drinking.  Constantly.  She self-destructs regularly in the workplace.  She takes no pride in herself physically.  It’s funny in the right context — this context — but her constant brushes with the homeless and crazy in the book also remind you that if she didn’t have some percentage of a good head on her shoulders she could easily slip and be one of them.

So what does it all mean?  It means she had a pretty good life for a bit, and so did those around her, until finally shit went crazy and when it all came back together it’s a miracle nobody died.  Her move to New York was hard, finding work was hard, being a good sister to her drug-addled brother was hard.  But somehow it all worked out.  And she did it all alone too.

It’s evident through this book, and kind of shocking, how much she must have relied on Oliver back in San Francisco.  Wertz is a wily bitch and me and my friends admire her a lot for that.  But I guess there was something significant about that relationship at that time in her life that made losing it really hard.  From the looks of it, she took years to recover.

It sucks.  The first time you lose something you thought you could hang on to.  The first time you free fall and try to make a life for yourself.  Some people thrive under these circumstances and some people are lucky to just stay afloat — even if on a sea of booze.  Miraculously, through it all, she managed to make friends, have new experiences, create art that is meaningful to people and have her work published.  We learn in the book that someone even wants to turn her story into a television series, one that she would get to write.  How cool is that?

So what’s weird to me as a reader and a Wertz fan is that the only time I really wanted to shake her like a baby and speak sense to her was when she decides not to commit to the TV show.  ‘WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU TV IS AWESOME WHY DON’T YOU WANT TO WRITE FOR TV?’  But, you know.  It’s not my life.  And if I’d been at the helm, probably I wouldn’t have made it half so successful.  Probably I would have stayed in San Francisco, sweeping up the remains of my brother’s life, feeling abandoned, living in an apartment I couldn’t afford, feeling sorry for myself and by all accounts miserable.

So while it may look like, geez, Drinking at the Movies is demonstrable proof of fuck-up-ery I’d say it’s definitely not.  I’d say being risky and open to change and finding ways to accept and deal with change is something a person with a really bright future would do.  As always, I look forward to Wertz’s next steps.  As a cartoon character or a blogger or (PLEASE PLEASE) as a screenwriter.

– Sarah Morean

Mister Wonderful
By Daniel Clowes
Pantheon Books

Wilson wandered and meandered and generally spun its wheels until somewhere near the midway point, when, thankfully, things congealed. It was almost as though the artist didn’t truly recognize an objective until the book was well under way. Now granted, such an approach doesn’t always spell disaster, and surely some of our greatest works have begun life largely devoid of purpose, but in the case of Daniel Clowes’s last book, the result felt downright aimless at moments in that first half, as though the cartoonist were content to let the book exist largely as canvas for showcasing different styles, a skill on which he has seemingly never had to work too hard.

Perhaps part of the book’s failing (which, of course, is not to suggest that the book was a failure, per se), was the fact that, aside from the its strip-per-page format (which was certainly a point in its favor), Clowes didn’t seem to have imposed too many restraints upon himself, which resulted, ultimately, resulted in a slight loss of control over the story’s direction.

Mister Wonderful, on the other hand, is a book defined by its own constraints, beginning with the serialized format with story was originally presented—as 20 installments, which first saw publication in The New York Times Magazine, a format that shares a sense of finite space per issue with Clowes’s own Eightball, a series that gave rise to the artist’s tightest and best work.

Aside the built-in limitations of format, Clowes has constructed Mister Wonderful around two key self-imposed restraints. The first is time. Along with the limited pages, the story is grounded on a rather short timeline, largely revolving around a single night.

The second even more concrete restriction is the fact that, for all of the external dialog that exists on these pages, Mister Wonderful never really truly leaves the protagonist’s head. His internal monolog is our center, our compass, our play-by-play, our comic relief. It spills forth psychosis, offers up context and back story, provides asides, puts us through the emotional ringer before a single word is ever spoke, and, on occasion, even manifests itself in an overtly cartoonish manner, as a Charlie Brown-esque hovering raincloud, or a standalone, floating voice of reason like something straight out of The Flintstones.

The result is a story devoid of any slack. Sure, it doesn’t offer the grandiose, ensemble cast of the sublimely terrific Ice Haven, but that’s not the point. Clowes does much of his best work when he’s operating in his own head, whether with the short autobio strips he would occasionally offer up in Eightball or with a storyline like Ghost World, where the lead characters often served as mouthpieces for what really seemed to be the author’s criticism against the direction of an eroding society.

The limited number of panels has also forced Clowes to let the spatial constraints take some of the brunt of the storytelling, zooming in on panels, which sometimes take up full pages of the oddly shaped book, a lesson he learned, perhaps from the time he’s spent in films in recent years. At particularly urgent moments, Clowes will interrupt the pacing to blow up a tiny fraction of a panel, laying bare the imperfections of the formerly minute line. These choices are themselves almost a compelling enough reason to pick up a book of material that’s largely available for free online.

The best reason, however, is the ability to crack open the strongest and most concise work we’ve seen from Clowes in a while, an ode to the pitfalls of middle-aged dating, the fallacies of love, and the struggle to step outside our own heads long enough to show another human being our true selves.

–Brian Heater

Usagi Yojimbo: The Special Edition
By Stan Sakai
Fantagraphics

There is, it turns out, a marked downside to turning something you love into a job. After a while, it begins to feel like work. That includes even so enviable a path as reviewing comic books for a living. Complaining will get you nowhere, of course, because there’s likely not a soul on earth outside of the field itself who would empathize with your privileged moanings—and besides, most of the folks I know who toil over comics reviews day in and out still have a fundamental love for the medium.

It’s just that it’s often difficult to divorce yourself from the work enough to remember what it is read for sheer pleasure—not analysis, not context, not criticism—just a pure love for the material. If you’re lucky, however, a book comes along every so often that kicks your critical ass, bringing you back down to earth for a second and reminding you of more innocent days reading comics on school buses and under bedspreads.

It was clear from the moment I unwrapped it that Fantagraphics’ two-volume Usagi Yojimbo collection was destined to be that book. I lay down on my bed, cracked it open, and promised myself I wouldn’t start another comic—not for work, not for fun—until I had finished all 1,200 pages. It’s not so much issues of continuity—the seven volumes that comprise the set are largely broken up into relatively short vignettes—it’s just that, while reading, it’s hard to imagine stumbling upon another book capable of maintaining such a joyfully electric pace for so long a period.

Indeed, Usagi Yojimbo is a work of pure joy, one that, for a variety of reasons, I’d only enjoyed in fits and starts, during my relatively late flirtations with the black and white comics boom of the mid-80s, brought on by a youthful obsession by kindred cartoonists, Eastman and Laird, who happily adopted San Sakai’s ronin rabbit as one of their own for a number of crossovers.

But as my own reading habits have focused on other works, I’ve waited with fingers crossed for a sufficient entry point into Sakai’s ever-broadening world, and thankfully, one couldn’t ask for a more perfect red carpet than Usagi Yojimbo: The Special Edition. Fantagraphics has faithfully reprinted the first seven volumes (the publisher’s full run) of the epic here, easily consumed in one devoted weekend, or, if it helps justify the admittedly large price tag, spread out indefinitely.

The publisher has also backloaded the second volume with a number of extras, including a pair of Ninja Turtle crossovers, full color cover reprints, an extended Comics Journal interview, and a goofy “How I Do Usagi” bonus strip. Good extras, but for those already in possession of the first seven volumes, likely not enough to justify the $100 cover price.

If, however, those old trades and single issues are distant memories, you’ll likely not find a better reason to reacquaint yourself with Sakai’s magnum opus. And for those waiting idly by for an excuse to dive into Usagi, this Special Edition offers up about 1,200.

–Brian Heater

Scenes From an Impending Marriage
By Adrian Tomine
Drawn & Quarterly

The news of Adrian Tomine’s new book no doubt sent a wave of excitement out amongst the cartoonist’s loyal fan base—not only due to the fact that his comics output has seemingly slowed over the past several years, it also promised to offer a certain level of insight into the psyche of the man himself. Tomine, after all, has largely stayed away from overt autobiography in his Optic Nerve series, and while readers have, no doubt, attempted to read flashes of his own person into the rotating cast of characters, such connections are largely the fabrications of amateur psychoanalysts.

Scenes from an Impending Marriage promised both glimpses of the man behind the work and a belated invitation to one of the biggest moments in his life, as a mass produced reprinting of a wedding favor created by Tomine at the best of his soon-to-be-wife. The news of the extremely limited run mini-comic hit the Internet around the time of the artist’s 2007 wedding, and no doubt drove many a fan a bit crazy with the knowledge that there was non-Optic Nerve work out there that they would likely never actually see.

But while the book’s title is a tongue-in-cheek homage to Ingmar Bergman’s much-beloved, but utterly devastating 1973 film, Scenes from a Marriage, the book doesn’t offer much in the way of stripped naked critiques on the state of matrimony in contemporary society—a fact that likely won’t come as a revelation to those aware of the book’s origin. After all, stripped naked critiques on the state of matrimony in contemporary society make for lousy wedding favors.

Rather, the book is a suitably breezy and light-hearted collection of strips taken from real life vignettes in the months leading up to marriage. The art is some of the simplest we’ve seen from the notoriously meticulous Tomine—small ink drawings that look as though there were pulled directly from a sketchbook, often borrowing from Schulz’s drawing book both for comedic effect and to offer up a quick distillation of a scene in cramped panel real estate.

Insights are offered into Tomine and his relationship with his fiancée, Sarah, but for the most part, they exist to serve punch lines to cute stories about eccentric wedding DJs and tie shopping. In the end, those bits and pieces do come together to form a picture of its leads—Sarah attempting to pull together her dream wedding and Adrian doing what he can to make his future wife happy in that respect, while tripping things up a bit with minor resistance and little obsessions along the way.

An epilogue, created specifically for this collection, offers a warm reminder of precisely what this whole story is about: two people really in love, willing to look past—or perhaps even embrace—their respective shortcomings. The warmest and strongest moment in the book emerge once the pomp and circumstance of the special day has come to a close, a reminder that, once the DJ has stopped and the bar has closed, we’re left with two people who have pledged themselves to one another

To that end, Scenes from an Impending Marriage will likely have a life beyond those Adrian Tomine fans happy to see their artist stretch his legs outside his often somber subject matter for a funny and breezy take on a serious subject—this $10 hardcover pocket book will likely be gifted to many young newly-engaged couples in the coming years. It’s a small book that is ostensibly a lighthearted take on the trials and tribulations of planning a wedding—but in between the lines, it’s a reminder about why we put ourselves through such difficulty in the first place.

–Brian Heater