Originally conceived of and published back in 2015 but only recently making the rounds through some of the better “alternative” distros now, cartoonist Lex Rocket’s sturdy, riso-printed (although the cover may be offset?) mini, Mud Thief  Vol. 1, is at first glance an exercise in strict formalism, apportioned into three roughly equal-length segments — and while that’s not an inaccurate perception, it only scratches the surface. And if there’s one thing the erstwhile Mr. Rocket has crafted here, it’s a ‘zine of tremendous depth and complexity.

About the only thing I can think to compare it to is the early-days Chris Ware strip “I Guess” that ran in Volume 2, issue 3 of Art Spiegelman’s Raw, but even that head-to-head comes up short given that Ware was juxtaposing non-congruent, and trauma-based, text with deliberately-ironic superhero visuals, while Rocket is engaged in nothing so straightforward. Yeah, that’s right…

For his third release from Birdcage Bottom Books in under a year, Twin Cities cartoonist Lance Ward is once again going the autobio/memoir route, but taking more of a “long view” than he did with his tightly-focused graphic novel Blood And Drugs and it short companion/epilogue publication, The Truth Behind Blood And Drugs. Specifically, he’s going back to his childhood, beginning his ruminations at age 11 when he lived with his soon-to-splintered family in the soul-dead “exurb” of Forest Lake, Minnesota — a place that, trust me, anyone is lucky to make it out of in one piece, mentally speaking.

It’s debatable whether or not Ward managed to actually do that, of course, although he seems stable, amicable, and definitely on a creative “hot streak” in recent months, a fact for which we should all be grateful — but getting to “here” from “there” has been no easy task…