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

“I feel really lucky to have this location,” Jason Leivian admits, adding that students, office workers, city officials, and lawyers all come in to buy comics. A young woman with green-rimmed glasses walks in Floating World Comics and says, “I had no idea you were here.” In July of 2006, Leivian opened downtown Portland’s only comics shop.

In 2005 my girlfriend brought me to her house. She lived in a shared house with two young artists from Phoenix; Leivian was at his computer working on music. The shelves of his room lined with books, art books, comic books. His demeanor and expression were gentle and open. In the basement they had set up a performance space with chairs for the audience. He played guitar in a rock band and he was busy, but we did play. And when I fell out of touch with my girlfriend, she said it was okay to come by the house to play music, but I didn’t.

I didn’t see Leivian again until the the fall of 2006. His picture in a local paper alongside an article about his comic book store. I never imagined it, but this fit: there he was surrounded by books. I went down to visit him that day; and two years later, he’s going strong.  “I think of my shop more like having the vibe of a record store, even though we mostly sell paper and books,” Leivian explains. “It’s like a combination of three stores: we carry mainstream books for Wednesday customers, indie and alternative like Reading Frenzy, and a good selection of international art books and magazines.”

He stands behind the glass case. His laptop open and his music collection shuffling minimalist techno and 60s and 70s funk. And there’s a Beck song. “I got my first comic book at the base exchange in Phoenix.” explains, “My dad was in the airforce. The base exchange is like the commissary or the supermarket-–where military people could go out to. The comic was in the magazine rack, with all the People Magazines and all that stuff. I picked up a ROM comic book.”

Leivian moved to Portland as an artist and musician, and he created something more than a retail outlet. “One thing I accomplished with the shop in the first year that I’m really happy with is becoming a part of the Portland art’s community. The artist in me wanted to be a part of that somehow. I didn’t know how that was going to happen-–like as a creator? and now it turns out, I’m like a curator.” Being next door to the Portland Art Center and a string of small galleries that host art openings every first Thursday, there’s a new crowd every month being introduced to comic art. “Some of my first Thursday shows got national coverage. This current show: Gabriel Bá . . . the Al Columbia show . . . the ROM Spaceknight-–we did a tribute and had a bunch of different artists do their rendition of ROM. It was a fund raiser for Bill Mantlo who wrote all the ROM comics. He was paralyzed in a hit and run accident over ten years ago; he’s on life support, and he will be for the rest of his life.”

The words triggered something in me, and Leivian confirmed my reflection, “Yeah, we thought about that: Bill Mantlo created a cyborg hero, and he’s connected to a life support machine. I was like seven when I got my first comic,” Leivian reflects back on a silver cyborg who looked really cool and fought these ugly aliens who invaded earth. “This kinda scary science fiction comic that I really liked. And then from there, I remember getting comics at the Circle K down the street . . . but buying comics in those places, you’d miss an issue and that was a crazy feeling; it’s like, oh my god I missed an issue; what am I going to do? and so I busted out the yellow pages, and looked up comics and that led me to comics stores – where you go to find your back issues and stuff.”

“I liked to read and I like to draw, so comics inspired me to draw my own,” Leivian muses, “It must’ve been the coolness of the characters-–discovering the characters that we’re very familiar with now–-characters like Spider-man, Wolverine, Batman . . . imagine discovering them for the first time, and not being familiar with their stories and powers – and there was no Internet, so you had to piece it together from the pages of these books.”

With the Internet handy, Leivian has pieced together an entirely different kind of publication. He calls it Diamond Comics Newspaper. He showed it to me proudly at the First Thursday show in October. I bought a copy for three dollars–-that’s the asking price-–but he leaves them in cafes and bookshops around town like treasure buried in newsprint. “That’s a lot of fun. That’s where a lot of my passion is right now,” he says and smiles. “It’s a great way to connect with visual artists all over the world, just through email. They can email me their hi-res files, and they don’t have to ship artwork back and forth or anything.” Leivian explains, “It started as a book project with Brett at Topshelf. He had asked me to put together a zine of local avant-garde artists  because he was impressed with the First Thursday shows that I had done here, and he felt like I had a connection with some of the new artists that were coming up.”

There’s five guys milling about the store and a few come up to the cash register with their books. Leivian knows his regular customers and I step back and admire how pleasant this feels. These guys love their comic books and it’s just okay to share that. When we have another moment to chat, he confirms, “That’s part of the amazing luck that I’ve had in the couple years of having this store-–just finding all these artists out there that nobody knows about.” The Internet can unearth unknown talents, and puts it simply, “I’ll email ‘em, and then it’s a brief email telling them about the project, and I’ll probably link to my Website so they can see that I’m legitimate, and usually that’s enough-–like if they’re not too busy with other stuff, they’re more than happy to share their art and be part of the next issue.”

“Eventually I hope to do an art magazine. I like Rojo Magazine-–this really cool art magazine from Barcelona. There’s no text; it’s just graphic design and photography.” Leivian shows me a stack of portfolios, all Xeroxed from his global image mining. I enthuse over this and he shares his vision to publish collections of comic art, say of all the pictures of ROM-–he has a portfolio full of cyborgs by illustrators from around the world. “Publishing is what I’ll be doing more of in 2009. We’re going to be publishing our first comic this December; it’s called The Caterer. It’s by Jeff Lint, this really bizarre, reclusive science-fiction writer. He did nine issues of this comic called The Caterer in the 70s for Pearl Comics Group . . . I’m going to do another print run. I’m going to remaster the color. The artwork is really weird. It looks like it’s kinda collaged together from old comics.”

The comic book described by Alan Moore as “The Holy Barnacle of Failure” presents its reader with simple instructions: The Caterer Code. “You can be The Caterer-–or at least a matter for serious concern in your neighborhood–-by following Jack Marsden’s code of dense glee and ascended dereliction. Resignation isn’t as innocuous as you seem to think. 1.) Carry out every activity in such a way as to covertly draw attention to your chin. 2.) Cradle a potato like a child, then give it to a policeman. 3.) When ordering a drink, add under your breath: ‘But you didn’t hear it from me.’” This list goes on and on, but the book’s cover states it plainly enough: “TRY AND TRY TO JUSTIFY . . . THE CATERER” A brand of humor last seen in the pages of Flaming Carrot–one that the world was not ready for in the 70s–-reappears courtesy of Floating World Comics.

“This is a dream project,” he says. Comics are like that.

–Arthur Smid

Standing behind the counter, Chris Onstad and his publicist Jacquelene talk with fans at Portland’s Floating World Comics about “The Great Outdoor Fight.” The Great Outdoor Fight? There’s posters taped to the counter reproduced from various decades–each marked by the era’s graphic design–and I’m thinking, did these fights happen?

“What is the Great Outdoor Fight?” I ask Chris, referring to the posters.

“It’s completely fictional,” Chris says, “but it makes sense . . . an enormous outdoor brawl.”

I thought it happened as advertised.

“The poster is promo . . . I worked as a graphic designer.”

A beaming young couple approaches the counter. The woman pulls out a mailing tube and Chris says, “hey, I recognize that.” She takes one of his posters out of the tube–this one circa 1950 with an illustration of elk locking horns.

“Who am I signing this to: your name, an imaginary name?”

The couple exchange excited looks, expectant. “What do you think?” the guy asks.

“I think a signature’s fine, but it’s your poster.”

The woman starts talking pastries with Chris, something requiring “sugar pumps”.

“I work with laminate dough,” the baker says cryptically. “The sheets . . . making croissants. I spend a lot of time with butter.”

“We can talk about baking,” Chris says. His self-published cookbook is displayed on the counter. She’s a student at the culinary institute and asks Chris to draw a character on her white chef’s coat. Chris sketches Philippe onto the white coat with a Sharpie, each indelible line going onto the fabric with speed and facility of writing. I ask Chris if he ever uses a tablet to draw onto the computer screen.

“Originally, I drew the strip with a mouse. My wife finally got me a tablet for Christmas . . . it went native right away; the tool works really well.”

“Now all the drawing’s been done years ago,” Chris confides. The characters are vector-based graphics, allowing infinite variations and resizing of the same drawing. “I was just doing my thing in my house, posting on the Internet, but now we have the book out: we have to get on the plane.” Chris is on a ten city tour, posting up-to-date info on his blog.

“Since we published the book, we’ve lots of attention from animation: Adult Swim, Nickelodeon–” Fans at the counter start commenting on the major networks, what can and can’t be said on Cartoon Network versus the creative freedom of Webcomics.

The Great Outdoor Fight collects a three-month story arc from Chris’s Achewood, a strip featuring characters based on his wife’s stuffed animals: cats, a bear, a baby otter, a squirrel (and some robots). His wife now runs the business side of Achewood, and they have one full-time employee. With some 10,000,000 page views per month and Time Magazine’s praise–Achewood ranked best graphic novel of 2007–the opportunity to share his hilarious brand of comedy has arrived.

Now, Chris contributes weekly to the New Yorker’s online “Cartoon Lounge”. Though it sounds animated, there’s no drawings; he’s writing comedy in tandem with Zachary Kanin. The strength of Achewood is Chris’s writing. While his book sells in comic book stores, he admits to rarely reading comic books. He’s a fan of comedy writing: P. G. Wodehouse, Dave Barry, and P. J. O’Rourke (and cookbooks, too).

Jacqulene mentions Achewood Vol. 2, and I ask when it will be coming out.

“He can tell you,” Chris says, pointing to a man who has just arrived with a curly red-haired woman. “That’s Dave Land, my editor.”

“May 2009,” Dave says. “Maybe a little later.”

Dave tells me The Great Outdoor Fight is doing well in comics’ specialty shops, and there was a piece on NPR about it last week. After the radio show, Dave checked the book’s rank online–Amazon updates sales figures hourly–and saw a bump in sales. Word-of-mouth built the strip’s popularity, so I ask Dave how did he first hear of Achewood.

“When Chris first started posting The Great Outdoor Fight online, I heard a buzz that it was really hilarious.”

At first sight, the strip looks like a wire-frame. It’s all one line weight. For cartoonists who spend their career on finely crafted visual storytelling, Achewood requires some investment. There’s not much to the visuals; but once you read it, the strip gets you laughing.

Chris’s work is part of Dark Horse’s Webcomic line—they’ve published a handful of other Web-based comics: Perry Bible Fellowship, Wondermark, K Chronicles, and Slowwave. It’s anyone’s guess what new roads will open on Achewood’s book tour, but for a full-color vista: check out the eight page strip on myspace.com/darkhorsepresents.

–Arthur Smid