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Hey everybody. I thought I’d copy Jeet and post some of the things in my notebook that I’ve been carrying around for the last few weeks. Nothing super substantial but hopefully enough to get some discussion going in the comments.  I just got back to Pittsburgh after a week in NYC working with Dash on his animation project. He and I talked a lot while I was up there and I gotta get this stuff outta my head. Please forgive the randomness of these notes. Maybe someday I’ll turn some of these riffs into more well-rounded posts but until then this is it. 

Why don’t the old guard guys make graphic novels? As someone who loves tracking down old comics by Howard Chaykin, Walt Simonson, Barry Windsor-Smith, Michael Kaluta, and other guys who made “art” comics back in the day, I often wonder why these guys don’t make long form works. Chaykin just did a new Dominic Fortune story but released it as a serialized comic book. His pair of Time2 graphic novels from the late ’80s were amazing and it makes me wonder why he doesn’t “do a Mazzucchelli” and really show us something. Is it the money? I figure he probably knows he can do it as a serialized comic and get paid. I’m guessing that not many publishers can offer guys like him a hefty advance so he can take time off from the pulps and focus on a long form book. But it’s kind of weird, isn’t it?  When I dig through my collection I come across comic after comic from the ’70s and ’80s by guys like Chaykin, Windsor-Smith, Corben, and many others that all held the promise of some future where they could make long form “adult” comics that would appeal to a wide audience. Well, the time is now and it’s strange to me to see them still doing serialized comics. Only Mazzuchelli made the jump. Will others follow his lead and do long form works that aren’t serialized? Does it matter? No, but it is weird, I think.
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This isn’t a review or anything that attempts to cast a truly critical eye on the comics work of Tom Kaczynski. It’s more of an appreciation. For me, Tom’s work is an oasis in the desert. And the desert is contemporary alternative comics. I find 80% of today’s alt comics poorly constructed — a veritable colony of lean-to shacks that could be blown over in a strong wind. In contrast, Tom K builds comics that could be likened to a brick house. These are solid comics. Is it any surprise that many of his stories have to to with architecture or that he went to architecture school?

I’m purposely composing these notes without any of his stories in front of me. I just read all of his MOME stories in order, one after another. And now all those volumes are back on the shelf. I chose the images for this post as randomly as possible before I wrote what follows below. The idea is to let the stories “work” on me like a half-remembered dream and to try a decode what it is that’s successful about them. Also, I’m focusing on their construction rather than the stories themselves.

Sense of space/place
I feel firmly rooted in Tom’s stories. I understand where the characters are, where I am as a reader. Never a bottle-necked area of the page or spread. It’s all very clear and airy, like walking through some Beaux-Arts 19th century library building. There are clear sight lines and strong centers on every page.

-The “Highway Story” (100,000 miles) is interesting because it balances a certain sense of movement along with a realistic, believable sense of scale. Cars packed on a highway in slow motion, car crashes, cars lined up in a parking lot. Close-ups of the protagonist in his car and long shots of endless highway ribbons. It’s a short story, maybe only 8 or 9 pages—yet within the first couple pages a world is defined by the landscape itself. Also worthy of note is a remarkable transition in which a suburban tract of houses (replete with countless cul-de-sacs) sort of fades into a drawing of a pair of lungs.

-The “Condo Story” (976 sq ft) in contrast is less about balancing movement & scale as it is about scale itself. It opens with a couple on a rooftop looking down on to the street where a woman is walking a dog. So immediately here is the set-up: Seeing the world, or more specifically a neighborhood as a scale model. There is also a wonderful transition where the condo in real life fades into an architectural scale model of the same building.
There’s a mirroring here too of the condo itself and the panels on the page. The story begins with a six-panel grid and ends with a nine panel grid; there’s a crowding of space that reflects the characters feelings towards the building. The new condo being built in the neighborhood is taking away the sky and the crowded pages in the latter half of the story reinforce this anxiety. There’s a great vertical panel in the middle of a page that is taller than the rest; it breaks the grid. Fittingly, it’s the moment when the new tenants of the condo move in (directly across the way from the couple’s window, so it looks like the scale model. Just perfect framing.)

-The “Corporation Story” (Million Year Boom). I can clearly see in my mind how perspectives & sight lines carry the reader across panels and the spreads of this story. There are very strong “horizontals” in this story (almost in counterpoint to the strong “verticals” present in the “condo story”). The corporation headquarters is low & wide, and the page compositions are tailored to convey the sense of open yet contained space. There’s a great scene when the protagonist dives into a long rectangular pool that spans two panels. Another beautiful coupling of panels illustrates the top of a parking garage. And I can clearly see one of the characters standing near a grove of trees and while gesturing to the trees, his motion rhymes with the sweep of the trees themselves. Characters change scale rapidly. Simply by walking around the corporation grounds is an exercise in alternating camera angles. This strengthens the narrative which is pregnant with a particular kind of corporate anxiety & alienation.

Figures in landscape
The solidity of the figures in Kaczynski’s stories is also worth noting. The figures are rendered objects, as “real” as the landscape they inhabit. This is important. It’s clear to me that the pages are composed to allow, to facilitate a smooth transition between “figure” and “ground.” There is no rift, no schism between the two. Whether simply sitting on a couch, walking down a street, or standing before a wide vista—the characters do not dominate the page design (as they do in most comics). There is a very strikingly ordered balance. Again, this strengthens the narrative.

Kaczynski’s use of tone/color is very helpful in this regard. Strong lights & darks, and strong “modeling” of forms both of the figures & of the forms within the landscape creates a pleasing depth. The figures stand out from the landscape rather than blending in or disappearing into the background.

Also, Kaczynski creates depth by often pulling the camera back & up slightly. The reader is positioned above the action and different sight lines are created because of it; it’s less of a “flat” angle. Add to that his seemingly innate feel for “airy” panel and page compositions. He only draws what is necessary for each panel, each scene—there appears to be a lot of room to breathe in the pages themselves. By doing so he can add details and important elements without ever crowding the frame or the page (unless, like in the “condo story”, he wants to).

Writing and Drawing
I really enjoy his writing and drawing. He definitely owes a debt to the works of J.G. Ballard and Daniel Clowes. This is not a bad thing. Ballard was a surgeon with his words and the same could be said for Clowes with his drawing. Kaczynski has incorporated both masters’ approaches into his own work in a way that I find inspirational. He went through his influences and came out on the other side with something new, something his own. Like some hauntingly familiar “house style,” the approach fits the subject matter like a glove.

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FRIDAY

The drive from NYC to Toronto was fun. Dan, Dash, the books, and me. I drove most of the way. It’s a hoof, for sure. Basically ten hours when it’s all said and done. Dan’s a decent navigator, but he likes those Google directions, and I prefer Ye Olde Atlas, so a few times we goofed and missed a turn. For the most part we found our way and got there in one piece. Dan backed into the gas station and crunched the bumper a bit in Buffalo. So, y’know, the usual drive to a con for me and Dan.

Dash is whatchacall a good conversationalist, so he and Dan riffed on all things comics most of the way. The future of print magazines, new subscription models, online comics, animated shorts, oh yah—Dash has these new short animation pieces that he showed me and Dan on his iPod. All hand drawn by him and Jane Sabrowski they look fantastically modern, fresh. Dash sees no distinction really between comics and animation. It felt like reading a solid short comic story. Only two minutes long but just shimmering with a very particular pacing. Remarkable detail and movement.

Dan’s finishing up his second Art Out Of Time book and we talked about John Stanley. Somehow that led to Trevor Von Eeden. Lay-outs. That’s the connection. Comic book page lay-outs. John Stanley horror comics and their page designs. Thriller and how it was DC’s “art” comic. Crazy art by Von Eeden colored by Lynn Varley. And how DC’s other “art” comic at the time, Ronin, was also colored by Varley. Everyone knew she was the secret to Miller’s successful visual breakthrough (don’t laff) on Ronin, but she was also the real reason why early Von Eeden is so good. And then, after Ronin, she mostly only worked with Miller. Things that make you go hmm…..

John Stanley, Lynn Varley. These were the important matters of the day. Then it was Steranko. And Mazzucchelli. Dash did an interview with Mazz for an upcoming Comics Journal. They talked about Steranko.

Dan’s curating a Mazz show for MoCCA. I still haven’t read Asterios Polyp. Dash didn’t know that Richmond Lewis colored Iron Wolf by Mignola and Chaykin. Chaykin! Chaykin was into Steranko. That led us back to Photoshop and animation. Chaykin should do animation. I could do all the backgrounds. Dash would color it. Chaykin would just have to draw the figures over my lay-outs. Cody Starbuck 3000.

Then we were there, we made it, Friday night. This year’s TCAF was in the big Reference Library in Toronto. I was skeptical of the new venue but it turned out to be perfect. We dropped our books off. Checked into the hotel. Went and got burgers. Walked around, got a drink. Dan tried not to smoke cigarettes.

SATURDAY

I spent almost all day Saturday behind the table, pricing my “curated back issues” for the discerning Toronto crowd. In other cities my back issues cause a riot. But in a town that boasts one of the best comics shops in the world—The Beguiling—most of the TCAF attendees were like, “Oh yah, I have all these…” I was shocked. “What? You have Dennis The Menace Goes To Mexico?”

Somebody was rifling through my sets when he pulled out Gilbert Hernandez’s Speak Of The Devil and pointed to the “hype-up” sticker I affixed to the bag. “Is this really the GREATEST MINI-SERIES EVER?”

I was ready to deliver my best fastball sales pitch when the gentleman stopped me and introduced himself. “Hey Frank, it’s Robin McConnell.” Whew. I was getting ready to go off like some used car salesman loudmouth, ha ha. And I thought I had recognized his voice, he of Inkstuds fame, but i didn’t have a moment to register it all. In all the rush to set up the PictureBox table and arrange our wares, I’d almost forgotten about the panel discussion we we doing in the early afternoon that Saturday.

The panel was basically about how old mainstream comics from the last 30 years had a lot of influence on how alt comics were formed. More or less. I think, really, Robin and I wanted to just throw the ball around in front of a crowd. So we got some other folks who are equally comics-crazy to join us: Dash Shaw, Dustin Harbin, and Robert Dayton.

Robin moderated the panel. But I hi-jacked it early on and spent maybe a little too much time trying to guess if the audience had really read all the stuff we were riffing on: Ditko, ’70s Kirby, Steranko. I think my fellow panelists were being polite and just let me TRY and explain why mid-70’s Kirby is important to me as an artist. Once I just spoke “normally” and let someone else talk, the panel occasionally assumed some sense of order. Dustin tried to be a voice of reason. When the audience jumped in was when it really went somewhere. It was fun, anyways.

[UPDATE FROM TIM: You can listen to the panel here.]

(I think at this point I’ll leave the panel description to anybody but me. Please feel free to add your voice in the comments. I’m completely unreliable recalling whatever it was I was ranting on about—and even listening to the mp3 Robin sent me hasn’t helped. Ask Dash. Ask Robert Dayton. But don’t ask Dustin. Or Bill K. (Just kidding, geez…))

Back at the table, business was brisk. I sold a Dennis The Menace to a little girl for 3 bux. She seemed happy. Even Dan was happy. He was only grumpy cuz it was pretty hot in the room we were in once it filled up. It was packed for most of the day. I barely walked the floor to see friends cuz of the traffic at our table. We did okay. I was selling Cold Heat sets at an unexpected clip. People were actually bringing their copies of Storeyille from home to be signed. Saturday just blew by. It was great.

SAT NIGHT

The bar was packed so we had to go upstairs on the enclosed roof. It was loud. Dan hobnobbed with Mr. Oliveros and Mr. Tomine.

Gabrielle Bell, Dash, and I made of list of comics we’d like to “cover”—like we would re-mix a Crumb story or something. But it was just an excuse to ask Gabrielle to collaborate on a Cold Heat Special. She said “maybe” and laughed. I tried to flatter her by telling her that she had nice angles in her artwork. “Maybe.” I tried to compliment her color sense and that we could exploit her mastery by doing a full color offset job for the project. “Maybe.” I tried to buy her a beer. “Maybe.”

Dash has these ideas about re-mixing comics, like “covering” well known comics and just using it like a melody. Just riffing on it. Like sampling, but not. And he also has these interesting ideas about imitating TV formats. Wait, that sounds too literal. It’s more like trying to distill the melodrama out of the narrative. Boil it down. He showed me this Blind Date comic he did where he riffed on the reality dating show and used the format of the show to underpin the arc of the story or episode. Boy meets Girl, Boy loses Girl, you know what I mean. It was a short story, but it really made me think about how one could build comics more informally, how things like TV and YouTube have shaped our sense of narrative. After all, it’s the snippet of story, action, drama, that we like to experience in these other mediums, this instant unfolding. Dash didn’t bother with too much set up at all in the story, it’s all there, programmed into our heads already. So the focus was on the boiled down back and forth between the characters and their movement through space and time. It FELT like a 15-minute episode of a show and not a comic that I read in 3 minutes.

Back at the hotel, Dan asked me if I had seen Seth‘s new book. I hadn’t. Holy shit, Batman. George Sprott is a stunningly beautiful book.

SUNDAY

Got a slow start. Everyone was doing the slightly hungover shuffle. Went and had a coffee with fellow Pittsburgher Erin Griffin. Surprisingly, many coffee shops in Toronto have never heard of soy milk. Maybe I was mumbling.

Dash and I put some of our Cold Heat Special #3’s together. Dan realized I had “borrowed” the stapler from the PictureBox office back at SPX last year. “Hey, that’s where the stapler went!”

Walked the floor a bit. Talked shop with Brett Warnock. Said hello to Nate Powell. Stopped by Alvin Buenaventura‘s table. Said hi to Jessica over at D&Q. Stood in line to get a George Sprott book from Seth. The D&Q table was like a warship at battle. There was a line that stretched out the door for Tatsumi.

Met lots of people read Comics Comics who said they thought I’d be a jerk in person. That’s always nice to hear. I think. Sold some Shaky Kane and Brendan McCarthy comics to Tom K.

Tom K is one of my favorite cartoonists these days. His sense of space is impeccable. No surprise then to learn that he went to architecture school. So we stood around riffing on the Golden Section and how most artists and architects just take all that (knowledge and irrationality and measure and magic) for granted. Tom also has discerning taste in back issues and browsed my back issues for a good twenty minutes. I asked Tom about his MOME comics and if they were going to be collected. He said his recent move to Minneapolis (a year ago now, actually) has impeded his progress slightly on cranking out the comics. And everyone still thinks he lives in New York.

Dan had a panel late in the afternoon. There were still a lot of people milling around. Met plenty of nice people who wanted to talk about old comics. Jim Rugg came by and got a copy of Nemoto‘s Monster Men.

Then the show was over. And then Dan realized we could make it to The Beguiling before it closed. So we packed up quick and raced over there. We couldn’t let another TCAF go by without actually seeing this awesome store that we’ve always heard so much about. And, man, it really is an awesome store. Dash found a whole set of Mai The Psychic Girl for a song. I found a set of Star*Reach. And a set of Trevor Von Eeden’s Black Canary. Dan unearthed some rare Real Deal comics. We were in heaven. And our finds fueled a whole ‘nother round of riffing on old comics at dinner.

That’s what I love about TCAF, that there’s an opportunity to really share ideas and talk at length about comics. I mean, I talk about comics all the time anyways and at other festivals but when everyone gets together like this in a comics-hospitable environment like Toronto, man, there is like none of the guilt that goes along with some comics gatherings, that “What am I doing here?” feeling. So somehow the urge to just keep talking shop and imagining some bright future for alt/art comics sticks around. And the conversations go on for days essentially. Like I started to feel like Dan, Dash, and I were in a Chester Brown comic where he walks around town and goes to bookstores with Seth and Joe Matt and they’re all riffing on comics and art. It was pleasantly surreal. And genuinely enjoyable. We had a great time. TCAF is something special.

[UPDATE FROM TIM: Inkstuds posted the audio from the “Post-Kirby” panel Frank was on here.]

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CARTOON DIALECTICS, Vol. One
Tom Kaczynski
Uncivilized Books, 2007

Without writing a full-on review, I still wanted to point out something interesting in Tom K.‘s Cartoon Dialectics. I really dug his use of color, particularly on page 20 — and how he formally plays around with the page.

Check out how he uses the color to pull the reader’s attention “over” the flashback.

Simple, direct, & totally effective, his use of color and a limited palette adds a layer of meaning to an aspect of the story that could have been revealed in a more “illustrated” and drawn out fashion. Like some faded movie memory, within two panels, literally BETWEEN two panels, Tom has mirrored the first panel of the page and effectively doubled the meaning (and impact) of the flashback.

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Sorry I haven’t posted for a while — still recovering from a surprisingly turbulent Thanksgiving. I’ve been mulling a review of the Black Dossier, but am not sure if I have much to say that hasn’t already been said — though I liked it a little more than most people apparently did. We’ll see.

In the meantime, in the comments to Frank’s Galactikrap review, reader Luke Pski pointed out a really terrific post written by cartoonist and all-around great guy Tom K. on Yokoyama’s New Engineering. The J.G. Ballard comparison is brilliant, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of it first.