Papercutter #7
Edited by Greg Means and Galen Longstreth

Papercutter issue seven spotlights four emerging comic artists with three solid stories. Though none of the tales ranks among my new favorites, the artists prove their mettle and position themselves as ones to keep an eye on in the future.

The featured story, “Americus,” is the tale of two boys on the day of their middle school graduation. A collaborative effort by MK Reed and Jonathan Hill, “Americus” offers somewhat typical fare for plot: a smart, nerdy boy (Neil)has a tough time fitting in in middle school. His friend Danny is also a nerd, but somewhat less socially inept and less picked on, meaning he ends up with a slow dance at the end of the night while Neil ends up rummaging through a dumpster to fish out his book, which a couple of bullies grabbed and threw inside.

Not particularly new stuff, but Reed and Hill do a good job keeping the story moving with some unexpected moments: finding out Neil has no father in the picture and a brief, two-page escape into the fantasy world of the eighth book of one of the boys’ favorite series — the cleverly titled Chronicles of Apathea Ravenchilde, the Huntress Wytch. (Sort of a Harry Potter meets The Chronicles of Narnia.) The artwork, like the story, doesn’t take any big risks, but the bold, clean style suits the story, and at the end especially, frames of Neil digging alone through the dumpster with the shading of nighttime around him are particularly touching.

Aron Nels Steinke’s contribution to the anthology comes next and lasts for one short page. It’s impossible to really get a feel for an artist from only 16 small panels, but “The Hill” shows that Steinke clearly has a strong sense of layout, timing, and humor. The frames are arranged like a contact sheet of slides, or a rows of film strips, and the story—of the artist falling off his bike while riding down a hill when he was seven—moves with a corresponding cinematic feel.

Far and away my favorite story in the anthology, however, is the final one, “The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep,” an adaptation of a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale by Andy Hartzell that tells the tale of forbidden love between two toy figures. Much of the story’s charm lies in its funny writing (“The figurines had a great deal in common. Both were young, both were made from the same clay…”), and Hartzell makes a great habit of juxtaposing the inanimate, motionless faces of two of the toys with the completely melodramatic expressions of the two others.

In addition, more than any of the issue’s other artists, Hartzell experiments with layout. The last two-page spread of the comic is absolutely fantastic; it follows the runaway couple up the chimney, pans across the giant real world that lays before them—taking in their terrified reactions—and then follows them back down the chimney (one mere glance at the outside world out proves too much for the sheltered, overly emotional shepherdess). The spread is thoughtfully done, with comedic drawing and timing, and a perfect contrast between the sweeping vista of the outside world and the small, close-up panels showing the shepherdess and the chimney sweep.

Papercutter bills itself as a quarterly mini-anthology “dedicated to showcasing the best young, underexposed and emerging comic book artists.” So far as I can tell, it’s doing its job.

–Jillian Steinhauer

The Tinderbox
By Damien Jay [Adapted from a story by Hans Christian Andersen]
Self-Published

In modern America, the word “fairytale” has taken on an almost derisive meaning, immediately evoking images chalk full of genre cliché and the manner of unrealistic life expectations that come coupled with habitually happy endings. Those whose familiarity with the style extends beyond 20th century Hollywood adaptations, however, know that these stories have roots that run much deeper, to tales with far darker overtones, more graphic imagery, and messages steeped in moral ambiguity than the Disney remakes so central to our childhood memories have ever led on.

The pure, unhomogenized works of The Brothers Grimm are oft pointed to as an example of this phenomenon. Those stories that have found their way into the latter half of the 20th century and beyond, relatively intact, such as Hansel and Gretel, broach topics that now seem about as far from children’s lit as imaginable when juxtaposed by their works best known through their Disney iterations. As Damien Jay happily demonstrates in his mini-comic adaptation of The Tinderbox, many of the same things can be said about the works of Hans Christian Andersen.

For all those not exposed to the story early in life, reading The Tinderbox can prove a downright surreal experience. It’s a tale of a morally ambiguous hero, random acts of violence, and, of course, three tiny dogs with increasingly disproportionate sets of eyes. When the story’s bizarre set of plotpoints have finally finished unfolding, Andersen has put forth none of the concise morals that define works like The Ugly Duckling.

In fact, any attempts to read one into the story in a modern context will likely ultimately prove troubling. Our protagonist is rewarded after committing various acts, which, in a contemporary children’s tale would have easily pegged him as a villain. His ultimate redemption occurs by way of a similar violence that doomed him in the first place. His reward for such an act is the monarchy and the hand of the fair queen.

Jay, much to his credit, opts to keep such troubling aspects intact. In fact, if anything, the artist has embraced such elements, as in an extended action panel, in which the bloodspattered face of a recently beheaded witch flies into the foreground. Of course the artist’s work maintains a largely cartoony feel throughout, so even at its most graphic, the imagery never embraces the story’s full disturbing potential. If anything, Jay’s work adds a level of humor not entirely present in Andersen’s work. Colored with thick globs of paint, and nary a black dividing line in sight, the artist seems content to let both the author and the imagery to speak for themselves.

The hand silkscreened cover rounds out the package, a beautiful book and a unique and welcome remainder that happily ever after is never as easy as it sounds.

–Brian Heater