The Bridge Project Volume One
Ed. by Matt Leunig
Scraped Knee

It’s only natural for a cartoonist living in the middle of the country to glamorize life on the west or east coast of the U.S.  There, you’d always find someone to drink and draw with who could help you fix your bike or navigate public transportation.  Sounds great.

The Bridge Project, edited by Matt Leunig, is an anthology focused on west coast cartoonists.  Particularly, it demystifies a little about the dreams and lifestyles of 23 of cartoonists living in Portland, OR, and California’s San Francisco Bay Area.  I believe the core audience for this material is made up of the following people: those considering a move to these areas, and those current inhabitants who would like to contribute to volume two.

A team was assembled for each of the book’s 13 stories including one cartoonist from each region (so two artists on one story ideally), and the problem lay in how those collaborators would complete their contribution.  The result is an interesting display of temperament and cooperation from creative-types in two cities who are more accustommed to doing things solo AKA DIY.

As far as anthologies go, The Bridge Project is one of the better books I’ve seen in terms of talent and concept.  Its intent was to bridge two neighboring comics communities together, but with the added challenge of including some mention of either Portland or San Francisco within the comic.  As a result, the book does educate the reader somewhat about the authors’ locations and lifestyles and become quite interesting.

It’s funny how much people resent stereotypes, until they self-reflect.  The artists in this book were quick to talk about how vegan, nerdy and independent their communities seem to be, which is exactly what I would have guessed as an outsider.

The book takes a little time to laugh at the communities’ known social traits in this way, particularly Jonathan Hill and Calvin Wong’s story “Future Jerks,” in which a vagabond in the future tries to navigate the different strata of Portland’s post-apocalyptic punk and indie scenes.  Other stories incorporate musings on the terrain, like in Graham Annable and Scott Campbell’s “Shanghooked,” about a thrill-seeker and a salty sailor destined for an ocean adventure.

Being that the idea is to bridge two similar communities together through their common involvement in the comics medium, I’d like to think it was a success.  However, I wonder how the book was released.  Was the party in California or Oregon or both?  Or at all?  As much as one community might appreciate another, it’s a whole different matter when one of you is expected to drive 10 hours to celebrate how close you all are.

The method of collaboration must have been an interesting hurdle to surmount at such a distance.  I found that the comics with the least amount of varyation in style the easiest to digest just for their visual continuity, which can be important with more complicated storylines involving multiple characters.  Matt Leunig and Seamus Heffernan’s contribution “Lost Intersection” had the most difficult story of all, spanning large amounts of time where the three main characters ranged in age from child to aged geezer.  It took some concentration to keep the characters straight given the creators’ different drawing and inking styles — almost too much to really accept the full intertwinings of the plot.  I’m sure a second reading would right this just fine, but from an observational standpoint here’s some advice to other collaborators on non-anthology projects: if you’re thinking of creating a big complicated story as your life’s opus, maybe that comic should be penned by the same hand throughout.  I’ll close the book on that one until someone proves me wrong and makes a case for every-other-panel jam-style comics as legitimate launchpads for intricate storytelling.  Just saying.

Since Peter Conrad’s partner for the book flaked out, his contribution, aptly titled “The Bridge Project” was more proof of another flaw of collaboration.  Sometimes your partner just can’t pull through like they intend to do.  But that’s life all around.  You don’t need to live in the Bay Area to get left on the hook for some project you’ve now got to do alone.

All said, it’s a nice little book and I hope it attracts new talent for the next volume.  The book is $9.95 from Scraped Knee, but doesn’t seem to be available for purchase online.  I suggest writing a letter to the editor.

- Sarah Morean

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