The near universality of the Internet in the modern age has granted a strange sense of immortality to contemporary art. There’s a feeling that, no matter how minute or trivial a work is, it will be stored for posterity for far beyond the life of its creator, in some form or another. That’s not to say, of course, that work created in this contemporary context is somehow more worthy of preservation than its predecessors—or even that newly created works are built with staying power in mind (heck, many contemporary artists have happily embraced the concept of the ethereal meme), it’s just that it’s hard to imagine creating a work today that one won’t be able to revisit at some point down the road, should it be deemed worth of re-examination.

It is, in many ways, the polar opposite of the approach that drove much of ‘zine and early mini-comix culture. And while the argument can perhaps be made that nearly every artist is—on some level—seeking greater exposure, there’s something romantic in the sense of hyper-specific culture to which such documents cater.  “It makes little difference if fifty or fifty thousand people read them,” Comix World publisher Clay Geerdes writes in 1983’s “The NeWave Manifesto,” reprinted in full in the introduction of this new collection. “Ideas and their expression are the issue, not quantity or quality…Newave is about art, not money.”

With such idealism in mind, it’s easy to understand why the life of so much of this material has proven so finite. In fact, in many respects there seems to be something of a gap in the history of underground comics between the UG revolution of the 60s and 70s the alternative renaissance that really caught fire in the 90s. Newave attempts to plug some of that, and while the book certainly doesn’t claim to be anything approaching a definitive catalog even with its staggering page count (just under 900), the book certainly offers a formidable cross section of the artists who helped define the era.

As one might no doubt suspect from such an undertaking, there’s also a wide variety of quality in these pages, but much as the manifesto would have you believe, there’s little doubt that each creator was brimming with ideas and the desire for expression when they embarked upon their pieces. After all, when money is truly removed from the equation (whether due to idealism or the simple economic realities of such an endeavor), there’s little room anything but passion.

And while a good deal of strips contained herein may not offer specific value for the reader with little context outside these pages, there’s certainly value in the abstract—the package. Taken as a whole, Newave presents a portrait of an era that might otherwise be overlooked as a vital link between, say, Zap and Eightball. For those with little invested in such contextual views of the medium, the book also succeeds as an intriguing little curiosity—the perfect shape and size for the “periodical” section of, say, a Spencers Gifts.

In either case, the book is a veritable treasure trove of material that would otherwise have been lost to the ages. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s a hell of fun read.

–Brian Heater

At some point, for those lucky enough to realize their dreams, passions morph into careers. A blessing, to be sure, but certainly not entirely devoid of its own built-in curses. The line between love and obligation is often simply a matter of obligatory repetition. It is with that in mind that Lewis Trondheim declared his retirement from the form in 2004. And while deeming his venture dubious would be a touch generous, it speaks to a greater truth in art: transforming a passion into a job oft has the tendency to extinguish that initial spark.

No better is this double-edged sword demonstrated than in the world of the diary strip. Plenty of noble intentions give rise to such things. They can serve as a fantastic tool with which to hone one’s line or pacing or simply help an artist keep track of otherwise fleeting memories. Somewhere along the line, however, such intentions fairly often give way to obligations. Whether for public consumption or private reference, a diary strip holds little value if it’s not maintained.

As with all passions-turned-obligations, the question inevitably arises—has the value of such a pursuit been eclipsed by a sense of responsibility? What value, after all, is there for a reader in a work born of habit? Here, often, is where things get weird, with flights of artificial fancy, or, as is more often the case, simply peter out.

And then, of course, there is Trondheim. Its unfair to suggest that the artist thrives on the mundane. Doing so would discount the stellar work he brings to the table in nearly every genre he tries his hand out. Rather Trondheim embraces minutiae with the same zeal that he applies to the fantastic.

Take, for the sake of comparison, the work of James Kochalka, another pillar in the world of the contemporary diary strip. As is often (and rightly) reiterated in reviews of American Elf, the appeal of Kochalka’s diary only truly becomes apparent in the abstract. Repetition is the reader’s friend. If he or she does not surrender to boredom or bafflement, the payoff is great, the pieces of the puzzle coalescing into a truly human portrait.

But while American Elf is something akin to a serialized novel, the same descriptor cannot be applied to Little Nothings. Trondheim’s diary work is more comfortable compared to a book of poems. Every strips is a self-contained meditation. And while the nature of the genre certainly necessitates some degree of overarching story arc, the book presents little, if any, learning curve for the reader.

As the series’ typically self-effacing title and artwork (a happy middle between a sketchbook page and an art class watercolor) suggest, Trondheim seemingly welcomes with open arms those readers who approach the work with a cavalier sensibility. And while Trondheim’s own nonchalance is likely as deceptive as his seemingly simplistic artwork, there’s something to be gained in even the most cursory reading of the worked contained herein. It’s funny, it’s charming as hell, and it’s almost painfully relatable. And best of all, it’s not work.

–Brian Heater

Hive is a theme-less comics anthology that’s edited by J.M. Shiveley and printed by Grimalkin Press — Shiveley’s ambitious DIY publishing company. To wit, the third issue of Hive is being sold through a Barnes & Noble store.  See?  Ambitious.

Yes, individual B&N stores have a history of carrying books from small-time publishers, but those titles tend to cover local history and still look like “books.” You know, soft- and hard-cover vanity-pressed books.

None of these terms describe Hive 3 which is folded concertina-style and has a double-sided letterpress cover. Hive 3 is certainly a fat 2-in-1 booklet, which is something I thought I’d never see in a big box bookstore.  I’m calling that an achievement.

That said, while printing experiments in comics are admirable, there are some clear issues with the publication style of Hive 3.  It’s eye-catching, sure, but there’s just too much going on with the printing of this book that doesn’t make sense for the material.  I guess if you’re going to charge $10 for a self-published hand-made black-and-white anthology, it should really have something distinctive going on, but I’m afraid this issue has crossed the line from unique to gimmicky.

To be fair though, a book shouldn’t be judged entirely by its cover, and what Hive 3 presents deep down inside is a high-quality selection of short comics and art.

Hive 3 a is simply outstanding collection of comics.  Every story is excellent.  It captures a full array of styles and subjects and I enjoyed every minute spent reading and re-reading it.  Contributors for this issue include Karl and Matt Kindt, Malachi Ward, John Kinhart, Dax Delap, Hawk Krall, Andrew Drilon, Jon Freihofer, Eamon Espey, Chad R. Woody, Joe Decie, Joshua W. Cotter, Mostyn, J.M. Shiveley, Douglas Wilson and Mark Leicht.

Krall’s contribution is a series of “Summer of 7-11″ recollections, in which he describes a summer job as a convenience store clerk. His stories are full of crazy, incomprehensible, foul characters. It’s awesome. And his drawing style is perfect for expressing the wild, nasty people he encounters in the store.

Ward tells a science fiction story that takes place partly in a cave and partly in the protagonist’s mind. It jumps swiftly from strange to eerie and is rendered in his lovely brushstroke style and with gray accents.

Drilon tells a story that is a sobering mix of memory and mysticism for a man in the Philippines who struggles with his family’s response to his first homosexual relationship.  He uses interesting stylistic devices to distinguish between past and present.  In the present, his drawings are layered and realistic and tonally more grown-up.  The adult years are also narrated by type-written text, rather than hand-written text.  When he looks back on his past, the illustrations have a clean line and look more playful.

This is a very full anthology and covers monsters, the Civil War, sex, and death.  It is also 140 pages long!  This could have easily been two issues instead of one.  Still, Hive 4 is on its way to the presses and it seems Shiveley has no shortage of willing contributors for future issues, so there was really no reason to space out the material.  That’s a good kind of problem to have. I am just befuddled by the way Grimalkin Press decided to handle these pages for the publication of Hive 3 which, as I mentioned before, uses a concertina fold.

If you’re not familiar with concertina folds, just imagine two mini-comics that share a back cover. Once you finish with one side, you flip over the book to find a second booklet. This can be a very cool way to print something if you have the right reason to do so. 140 pages is admittedly a lot of paper to deal with, and a concertina fold can break that up into manageable parts, but its use in this instance is so entirely uninspired. The book as a whole doesn’t share a theme or have a “flip side” perspective — its content is all over the map. There is no logical way to break up the content to begin with, so separating it physically into two parts is just arbitrary compartmentalization that clearly reduces the comics to their page count. It just looks like, because the previous two issues were fold-and-staple, they went that way a third time by default. For a DIY publishing company that aspires to think outside the box, this is a pretty disappointing display of their talents.

There are so many interesting ways that they could have bound flat pages, or worked in signatures, or something even crazier than my mind can conjure. Finding ways to hand-bind 140 pages as a single book is a challenge, and I’m not impressed by the way Grimalkin Press chose to meet this challenge in this instance. Not to mention, the two booklets each need a face trim (a cut that makes the pages flush on the right side and easier to turn). Any self-published book that wants to be taken seriously ought to have a face trim. The technology is simple: cutting board + metal ruler + razor blade = go!

The double-sided letterpress job on the cover is another story. It’s very cool that they went letterpress with this issue, but the intent of the letterpress is confusing. The cover stock is so thin that impressions compete with each other and end up creating very little indentation on the page at all. Plus, letterpressing both sides has had given the effect of streaky ink, which you’ll notice in the cover photo accompanying this review. Whether or not that effect is desirable comes down to taste.

The title of the book was printed on a proof press with large type. To see the whole title, you’d need lay out the whole cover flat (more or less). The way this effects how text appears on the cover is interesting. The effect of the broken-up subtitle leads to a misrepresentation of the book as a “quarterly comic journal” instead of “a somewhat quarterly comic journal.”  However, most confusing for me is that it’s not even a journal!  It’s an anthology.  I realize that coming from someone at The “Daily” Crosshatch this must sound like the pot calling the kettle black, but as someone who works with real journals all day in a library, I couldn’t not notice the cheeky disregard for nomenclature. There is not a single journalistic element to the book, just comics and bios.  The editorial selection process of culling talent for publication does not make a book a journal.  That’s an anthology.

The take away from all this is that when it comes to Hive 3 — just read it.  Don’t think too much about it. I’ve thought about it enough already for all of us.  Just read those lovely comics and remember that Hive 3 is likely just the third publication that Grimalkin Press has worked on. They’re clearly ambitious and have their heart in the right place and will continue to promote amazing artists and work on unique books for many years to come. This particular issue just rubbed me the wrong way.

If you’d like to be rubbed wrong by Hive 3 — it’s $10 + shipping through the Grimalkin Press etsy shop.

Hopefully they’ll be around producing books for many years to come and dare to push the envelope of self-publishing a little farther and more masterfully with each attempt.  I’m sorry that the first time I’ve discuss their catalog it sounds so negative, but I really do believe if they live up to their creed and gain more experience they’re going to be amazing.  Watch out for these guys.  They could eventually cross a line where all these confused printing mechanics get used in a most incredible and inspiring way.

- Sarah Morean

The apocalypse is a thing to be feared, right? The horseman, the boiling seas, the mass extinction, all of that Kevin Costner postal service nonsense. From Mary Shelley to Cormac McCarthy, the post-apocalyptic literary landscape has nearly always been dire, at best, a banning together of rogue survivors, in the last glimmers of hope at the prolonging of an otherwise doomed species.

That’s not to say that there’s no precedent for eager the anticipation of such events. Fundamentalist Christian literature, for one, has often heralded its arrival—most notably in recent years is that Kirk Cameron favorite, Left Behind, which all but rolled out the welcome mat for the army of fiery sworded angels.

Cartoonist Bob Fingerman, while likely never having been casually mistaken for a representative of that crowd, lets it be known fairly early on From the Ashes that, well, there are worse possible outcomes than the decimation of six billion or so of his fellow earth dwellers.

After a fairly standard letter into the abyss intro by the author turned narrator (“I’ve got one ream of paper, so I have to get this right”), which fails altogether to explain away the cause of such global destruction, we find a fictionalized version of Fingerman surveying the urban ruins with his wife Michele by his side.

Between the two of them, it doesn’t take long to reach the conclusion that maybe this whole mass extinction thing is really such a raw deal after all. “I’m really torn,” Fingerman begins, standing in a crater in the middle of what appears to have once been a Manhattan tenant building. “The so-called civilized world has just been pretty much obliterated, so I guess I should be bummed out.”

The realization comes quickly—no work, no BlackBerrys, no right wing blowhards. Hell, aside from a few minor inconveniences, the whole thing seems a veritable Garden of Eden.

Naturally, even in “speculative memoirs,” such scenarios are never so cut and dry. Standing between the couple and the paradise on earth they initially envisioned are bands of mutants, the undead, repopulation camps, and the bionic reincarnation of much loathed media blowhard.

Ultimately, in true Fingerman fashion, the book exists at the crossroads of a handful of divergent storytelling traditions. The most immediate, of course, is the oft-re-visited (particularly, it seems, as of late) world of post-apocalyptic literature. Like much of his genre work, Fingerman uses clichés as something of a springboard toward his true intentions.

First is social satire. The end of the world offers Fingerman ample opportunity to poke fun at right wing warmongers, who, one almost immediately assumes, played a role in whatever it was that ultimately triggered such catastrophe. Here, as with his free flowing line style, is where the influence of the Kurtzman lineage of Mad artists really comes into play.

Fingerman’s cynicism, ultimately, is tempered by book’s other primary function as a love letter to his wife, Michele, a fact the artist makes no effort in masking, beginning with the book’s dedication, which reads, in part, “I don’t wish for the apocalypse (well, not too often), but if it does come it would be bearable with her by my side.”

It’s a sentiment that is often times overlooked in works of contemporary satire. It’s precisely this sentiment that keeps Fingerman’s work from getting too tangled in the weeds of cynicism, suggesting that, even in the direst of circumstances, there’s always room for a little bit of hope.

–Brian Heater

Depending on your mood, you will either find Sad Animals mildly amusing or totally hilarious.  When I bought it a few weeks ago I thought it was clever.  Today though, it’s really entertaining me.  I don’t know how the gags got funnier, but they did.

Sad Animals has been sitting near the register at Big Brain Comics in Minneapolis for over a year now.  I took my sweet time buying it, for sure.  I mean, it’s kind of a breezy read.  You could easily finish the whole mini just waiting for Michael Drivas to bag your books.  When I finally broke down and got it, Drivas was kind enough to tell me the history of Sad Animals and its legacy at his store.

Sad Animals was written by an artist in North Carolina named Adam Meuse.  He doesn’t usually make comics.  Meuse is a fine artist who makes a living on portraiture.  I assumed his book was sitting at Big Brain for so long because nobody was buying it.  Apparently though, it’s a local best-seller.  Drivas can’t stock enough of these, and Meuse just sits around waiting for orders while rolling in cash (one assumes).  I’m a little in awe, but that’s mostly the jealousy.  Who wouldn’t kill to have one great mini that basically sold itself?  I’ve since learned that it’s also a best-seller at Skylight Books in Los Angeles.

The idea of the book is simple.  One gag per page, illustrating a wild animal introspecting.  Take the fish who thinks ‘I’m one dumb motherfucker’ or the bulldog who realizes he’s fat.  This is ridiculous shit.  It’s good for a re-read, good for a gift, good for impressing your friends, good for the spirit.

The book is $4 and that’s money well-spent.  You can order it online through Atomic Books or pressure your local store to stock it.  Warn them though, it has a tendency to fly off the shelves.

– Sarah Morean

In its purest form, a zine ought be regarded as a clearing house for ideas, a thrown against the wall approach to literature, largely—or, more preferably, entirely—devoid of outside editorial oversight. Its an approach that Al Burian has seemingly become rather comfortable with, one which manifests itself in issue 14 of Burn Collector more than in many other recent issues of the seminal Chicago zine.

While Burian’s near-poetic true life tales have long been the selling point of his sporadic publication, there’s a clear joy in the seeming abandon with which the author culled together the rather dissonant approaches into a single volume. The issue begins in a fairly standard manner, with musings on the Chicago Transit Authority (not the band) and the happy resurgence of house shows in the area. All the while, however, the pieces are supplemented with Burian’s own crudely-drawn strips, sometimes complimenting the text, and other times simply playing out as their own contextual tangents.

Halfway through 14, Burian shifts abruptly, with a nine-part essay, entitled “The Future of Comics,” wherein the artist takes on “Modern Cartoonist,” a decade-and-a-half-old treatise on sequential arts penned by Dan Clowes for Eightball #8. For all intents and purposes, the piece might as well have been titled—“Why I Draw,” or, better yet, “Why I Have Been Devoting Pages of Burn Collector to My Drawings.” Okay, okay, I’ll admit that the second one is probably a touch too longwinded for Burian’s purposes, but the point remains.

The author does forward his own hypothesis about the upcoming wave of sequential art, rejecting Clowes’s assertion that forward thinking artists ought “get away from the arena of vagueness and into the realm of the specific.” Instead Burian cites a seminal moment from his own childhood, wherein he discovered that, as with the guitar playing of Black Flag’s Greg Ginn, the best art isn’t always the most technically proficient—which is to say, in a sense, cartooning is Al Burian’s punk rock.

It’s a philosophy that manifests itself in every panel on every page of issue 14. And while Burian’s poetic prose has long been reason enough to pick up what is arguably the best on-going zine this side of Aaron Cometbus’s eponymous book, Burian’s journey down the sequential art rabbit hole offers added incentive for comics fans and artists a like. Burn Collector 14 is finds an established artist dipping his foot into a new craft. Burian offers criticism and a running commentary of his own trials and tribulations within the context of his panels. “But what can you do?” he asks in a strip toward the beginning of the issue. “You can’t force poetic insight…And I can’t even figure out how to draw myself.”

Burian doesn’t let such frustration hinder him, however. In fact, he embraces it, alternating with reckless abandon between graphical takes on the manner of autobiography that has defined much of his work and far less nuanced takes on genre work, including war comics, funny animal strips, and Jack Chick tracts, the whole thing culminating with one extended, hyper-self-aware take on Eternals-era Jack Kirby book.

Burian, it’s clear at first glance, is far from a master of sequential art, but there’s a lot to be said for the author’s commitment to the form—and for his willingness to share his unrefined attempts in a very public forum. And while Burian will likely never be the next Dan Clowes, the writer seems rather content with his fate.

“Comics are just one more tool for expressing universal truths,” Burian writes in ‘The Future of Comics.’ “Clowes wants desperately to fit into the grown-up world, to be accepted as a professional who sits at a desk like everyone else. The last I hear from Mat [Brinkman], he was squatting an abandoned Wal-Mart. For me, the choice of role model is obvious.”

Surely Greg Ginn would be proud.

–Brian Heater

Eliza Frye has an overwhelming talent for constructing beautiful images.  I sat next to her at APE in 2009 and was totally awestruck by her work.  Dumbstruck even.  Still, fans kept flocking to her table, chatting her up, and I wondered ‘How does anyone know what to say to someone whose artwork is so goddamn gorgeous?’  Fandom is an art all its own, I tell you.

Her background as an illustrator and character artist comes across strongly in projects like The Lady’s Murder.  In it, she takes a rather sexy poem from S. Albert Chatman and uses his idea to build a bony story structure from which her gorgeous art hangs lush and wild.

Frye’s art is the meat of this piece.  The story is an extension of the poem, yes, but the intention of the comic isn’t to flesh out the poem’s core plot, but to flesh out the subject of the poem — a woman who is dangerous and lovely named Marie Madeline.  Her story is told in a series of vignettes styled as conversations between an anonymous, silent interviewer — the reader — and the people from her life.

These former friends of hers are mostly lascivious men.  When they remember Marie, their recollections feel quite voiceless and hollow, merely stating what she does or where she goes.  They say nothing about who she is or what she wants.  Everything you learn about Marie Madeline, the woman who captured so many hearts, could be summarized as a crude observations of her body.  Still, that’s where Frye shines.  She draws lady bodies like nobody’s business.

This book serves as an incredibly superficial definition of one girl who led a pretty fascinating life.  It’s too bad that the book only shows one side of her, it would have been interesting to see into Marie’s personality.  Perhaps it will take a third author, drawing from Frye’s work, to take Marie’s story to the next level.

Most comic books strive to become multi-layered character-driven stories, but get trapped by their very ambition.  For that reason, it’s easy to appreciate the straight-forwardness of this piece.  Frye’s interpretation of Chatman’s poem is the one that happily permits ample freedom for her to demonstrate her artistic prowess.  She didn’t let the story bog her down and as a result the story of The Lady’s Murder is almost entirely functional and allows her pure ambition to create a beautiful comic book shine through the project.

It’s clear that what Frye relishes the act of knowing a character’s form from all angles.  And she’s amazing at it.  Each page showed a new aspect of Marie Madeline that was alluring and interesting.

If you can find the lovely limited-edition screen-printed hard copy, currently sold out, it will be among the jewels in your collection.  Or if you just want to read the story and see Frye’s gorgeous art, she has posted the entire book online which you can read for free: http://www.theladysmurder.elizafrye.com/?p=6

- Sarah Morean

At the close of Amulet: Book One, there’s a clear sense that the reader is standing on the cusp of something huge—author Kazu Kibuishi has offered up mere hints of the world he plans to explore over the course of his story. The sheer possibility of scope is reason enough to be compelled to pick up further volumes of the story, and—along with Kibishi’s stunningly rendered fantasy artwork—has led artist like Jeff Smith to declare themselves big fans of his work.

The expectation of such scope is also something a detriment upon picking up Copper. Where much of Amulet’s appeal lies largely in Kibuishi’s slow but steady reveal, Copper’s stories subscribe to a form of storytelling akin to that of the syndicated strip. Each story in the book presents a new universe for the titular boy explorer and his worried but obedient talking dog, Fred. And then, after a page or two, that window is closed and our protagonists are back at square one in a new world.

For this reason, those who hoped for more of Amulet in Scholastic’s new collection of Kibuishi’s Web strips, may find Copper’s storytelling a bit jarring at first. It’s a book built on a vastly different rhythm than the artist’s other work. When one takes into account comparisons by critics to strips like Calvin and Hobbes, however, Kibuishi’s intentions become much more clear. Copper is not an overarching epic tale, but rather a collection of epic vignettes, if one can forgive the seemingly self-contradictory phrase.

There are adventures, no doubt, beyond the final panel of each strip. Kibuishi could, likely, construct an entire volume from nearly ever micro-adventure contained herein, but opts to leave that work for his young readers, instead closing each with a joke or sentiment—or, from time to time, forgoing such punctuation to embrace the stories’ own open-endedness.

It’s a testament, of course, to Kibuishi’s own gifts as an artist and storyteller that he’s capable of crafting an absorbing world in a few short pages. In that respect, Copper feels like something of an exercise for the artist—a change to step away from the inevitable monotony of working on a multi-volume book. Kibuishi embraces the opportunity, crafting with aplomb a broad swath of landscapes, from space stations to desert islands to graffiti-covered subway trains.

The book’s plucky duo are merely visitors in Kibuishi’s sketchbook, but thankful the artist has imbued both with enough character to hold their own in amongst their elaborate settings. Whether flying hand built planes, manning submarines, or just fishing leisurely in a pond, the dynamic between Copper and Fred is the common thread between the geographically diverse strips.

In fact, the combination of strong characters and restless settings may prove perfect for young readers who don’t yet possess the comprehension or patience to make their way through full-length graphic novels. Kibuishi also sweetens the pot with a “behind the scenes” exploration of his creative process—inspiration, no doubt, to a generation of budding cartoonists.

–Brian Heater

“How would all of this come together as a single rug?” Mendleman asks himself, wandering through the bustling rows of his local market, in search of some place that might purchase the hand-woven goods slung over his should. At this moment, it becomes clear that Market Day is more than simply a story about a struggling craftsman in early 20th century eastern Europe. It’s the story of an artist—an allegory, really, for the seemingly perpetual struggle of the artist community. It’s a struggle which author James Sturm—and, likely nearly every other 21st century cartoonist—has no doubt grappled with at some point in his career.

The next two pages form a spread, in which the market’s bodies and buildings melt away, forming a rug pattern. Mendleman draws the inspiration for his craft from the world around him, and his reward is the admiration of his peers-it’s a currency that serves little use when there is a pregnant wife to support at home—one whose physical shortcomings assure that she’ll never be able to contribute meaningfully to the economic well-being of the couple’s growing family.

“Why bring life into this world?” Mendleman asks himself in another internal monolog. He’s a worrier by nature, a man who clearly lives much of his life in his own head, with distressing thought processes that intensify in quiet early morning walks to work. Such internalization monopolizes much of Market Day, which is largely split between Mendleman’s narration, and wordless atmospheric spreads as the rug maker travels from one unsuccessful sale to the next.

In Mendleman we find a sensitive soul in the grips of depression, as it becomes ever more painfully clear that the job he was clearly born to perform will never be enough. “I keep moving, to what end?” the rug maker asks himself, slouched over, with an unsold rug on each shoulder.

Sturm offers no solutions for his protagonist’s plight, only more walking. For a solitary man in search of council, there is symbolism in everything—hungry dogs, crooked fortunetellers—but answers in nothing. Sturm’s own storytelling is sparse—both visually and textually, and while he offers up the possibility of emotional reprieve in certain objects, they are quickly deconstructed by his pessimistic narrator, who moves forward until he can walk no more.

For a brief moment, another world opens up to Mendleman. On the way home from an unsuccessful market day, a group of men huddle around a fire beneath bridge. Men without obligations, it seems. Self-proclaimed artists who revel in drink and dirty jokes. It’s an opening into a world in which Mendleman no longer belongs, and thus his walking must commence.

In the end, Sturm refuses to tie up unraveled ends. It’s not his style. He does, however, offer his character the sunrise of another day. Sometimes that’s the best anyone can ask for.

–Brian Heater

There’s nothing new, of course, in the idea of issuing one’s sketchbook for the world to see. The release of Robert Crumb and Chris Ware’s volumes helped set the bar for modern, commercially released cartoonist sketchbooks, and a handful of books, including, most recently Peter Kuper’s Diario de Oaxaca and Al Columbia’s Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days, have helped redefined the parameters of the space.

Where once sketchbooks were conceived of as private works—the visual equivalent, perhaps, of a personal diary—the line has since been blurred. Today a sketchbook can prove every bit as successful a commercial endevour as a graphic novel, so it should come as no surprise that contemporary artists often begin them with the ultimate goal of releasing them largely intact.

Joshua Cotter showed me Driven By Lemons for the first time in an uncompleted form at SPX 2008. I had been downright ecstatic in my praise of Skyscrapers of the Midwest, and in a couple of months would place the book atop my year end list. Cotter happily presented a little sketchbook with methodically detailed pages, fluttering between narrative and abstraction. It was a downright sight to behold, even while a good chunk of its pages remained blank.

Cotter was insistent that the sketchbook was more than just that—it was his next work, and it would be released to the public in more or less the format that I was currently holding in my hands, a promise he and Adhouse’s Chris Pitzer kept, with a stunningly faithful recreation of the original book. It’s all in here, pencil lines, white out marks, smudges—even the hardbound cover maintains aesthetics of the book’s original packaging.

That SPX marked the first time I had met Cotter in person. I’d recently reviewed Nate Powell’s Swallow me Whole and had formed a—perhaps tenuous—connection between the two in my head, one I happily explained to Cotter. It had something to do with the perception of sanity. Skyscrapers explored childhood fantasy as a means of escapism. The characters in Swallow Me Whole, a few years older than their Skyscraper counterparts, were diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia. The theory held that, in the case of these two stories, the divide between imagination and insanity was simply a factor of time and diagnoses.

Perhaps the fact that Lemons opens with the story “Skyscrapers of the Midwest II” is a bit more than just a bit of cheekiness on Cotter’s part. No one would mistake the four-page story for a proper sequel, of course. The wordless piece is a much more literal interpretation of its title than its predecessor, comprised of four sequential panels that find a semi-truck falling from the sky past the Sears (okay, Willis) Tower.

As a sequel, it reads like something of an inside joke from the author, directed toward those who demanded a continuation of his previous book. For readers who fall into that camp, perhaps there’s some consolation in imagination that, just out panel a giant robot has released the plummeting truck from a cold, robotic hand.

If, the tenuousness of sanity was, indeed, a driving factor of Skyscrapers, then Lemons can certainly be taken to be a logical extension of that conceit, driving ever deeper into unknown realms of perception, often times beyond familiar character reference points into pure geometrical abstractions. If Skyscrapers drew heavily upon Robert Crumb’s Fritz the Cat period, Lemons takes more than a few cues from the work of Charles Crumb, with panels of sequential art dissolving into full pages of hand-scrawled text and progressively more elaborate abstractions.

In fact, were Cotter not so sociable and seemingly well-adjusted in person, large portions of Lemons might easily be mistaken for the works of a far more unhinged individual. Attempting to interpret the book as a cohesive narrative might similarly drive the reader to the brink.

Which isn’t to say that those elements aren’t in here. Cotter seems intent on delivering a story with Lemons, albeit one illustrated in something of an experimental fashion. Where, in a book like Pim & Francie, cohesion is largely placed upon the interpretation of the reader, built by piecing together disparate scraps culled together from more than a decade of work, Lemons was created in one go, and the author no doubt purposefully planted the seeds of comprehension.

Locating them all and connecting the dots certainly isn’t an easy task, however, and, as evidenced by what is presently the sole comment left of the book’s Amazon page (one star), the task may likely prove alienating for readers seeking clear narrative. Fortunately, however, Cotter’s pages are rendered beautifully enough for Lemons to be appreciated while divesting narrative context. As an art book, this stuff is downright fascinating. And given its packaging, it could almost be a piece of outsider art, the journal of a Henry Darger-like character.

For Cotter, half the fun will no doubt be listening to reader interpretations of his work. After all, Driven by Lemons is, above all, a book brimming with ideas—more than its 104 pages can contain, perhaps. Ideas that are often in conflict with one another, creating a sometimes uncomfortable juxtaposition of visuals. From the malapropism attributed to William Faulkner, which lends the book its name (on the next page, Faulkner, incidentally, transforms into a cartoon lemon) to the end of book superhero Jesus (himself, it seems, transformed from the robot in Skyscrapers to a more fundamental view of what constitutes a hero), Cotter seems as though he’s almost struggling to get everything down on paper before it dissolves into the ether.

It’s demons, by the way. That original Faulkner quote. An artist is a creature driven by demons. The inside cover features colorful reproductions of the Faulkner quote, with Ls hastily pasted over the Ds. Whatever his muse may be, Cotter is certainly driven by something, that much is certain. The result is sometimes terrifying and sometimes beautiful, but however you might ultimately interpret it, it’s nothing if not completely engrossing.

–Brian Heater