By any standard of measure, cartoonist L. Nichols’ recent Secret Acres-published comics memoir, Flocks, is a bit of a curious beast — for one thing, Nichols chooses to portray himself (or, earlier on, herself — I hope the pronoun is appropriate given his gender presentation at that point in life) as a stuffed doll, while everyone else is a standard human being. For another, he often communicates his internal thoughts, feelings, and self-perceptions by means of physics (or maybe they’re calculus? I dunno, I always sucked at both) equations. And for a third, the first several chapters essentially repeat a lot of the same information.

These things are all entirely explicable, of course — the first two, it should be said, are down to simple artistic choice, and while they took me some time to “get with,” I eventually found both to be “true” to the proceedings in terms…

Placing itself at the conceptual and philosophical intersection of comics and the works of art in other mediums (as well as the artists themselves) that inspire them, the quarterly “solo anthology” or “mini-monograph” series Ley Lines, a joint publication effort of Grindstone Comics and Czap Books, boasts a wider-than-it-sounds editorial remit, a “murderer’s row” of cartooning talent, and production values to match, each issue being approximately 1/3 (or so) the size of a standard comic book, riso-printed on high-quality paper with unique color schemes designed to match and, by extension, amplify the tone and tenor of the material on offer. Before the calendar flips yet again, I think it would behoove us to have a look back at the four installments of this remarkable title that came our way in 2018 —

Jia Sung’s Skin To Skin (Ley Lines #14) is visual and verbal poetry of the absolute…

It’s my understanding that among connoisseurs of the truly obscure and “outre,” Isabel Reidy’s 2012 self-published mini 1-800-Kravlox is considered something of a modern-day classic, and it’s not hard to see why : wearing its absurdity and outlandishness plain as day on its sleeve, it calls into question just about everything with its amorphous, energetic illustration and sparse, precise scripting — including, in a very real sense, its own aims, purposes, even reasons for being. It exists on its own, entirely self-created, terms and forces readers to either meet it on those terms or shrug their shoulders and walk away. That’s refreshing in and of itself, sure — but it’s also important.

Ostensibly a treatise on the nature of desire “starring” what must be, at the very least, an alien (perhaps even inter-dimensional, if not outright demonic) phone sex operator, it deliberately undercuts its own arguments — whatever…

Like the punk subculture she emerged from, you can’t keep Liz Suburbia down. It’s been awhile, sure, but you knew she’d be back — and you also probably suspected that the story she chronicled in the pages of Sacred Heart was far from over, as well.

Happily, both things are true, and in a manner of weeks, Suburbia will be marking her return to the “alternative” comics “A” list with the release of Egg Cream #1, the first book-sized installment in what promises to be an annual “solo anthology” title published under the joint auspices of Czap Books and Silver Sprocket. I was fortunate enough to get my grubby paws on a copy prior to launch, and eagerly consumed its contents in one sitting, amazed as always by Suburbia’s deft characterization, intricate long-form plotting, and raw, involving illustration. Time hasn’t mellowed her in the least, and for that, we should…

Just when we thought we were out — he pulls us back in!

The third (and, to date, best) installment of writer/director/actor Nigel Bach’s filmed-on-his-iPhone-in-his-own-goddamn-house Bad Ben series was supposed to be “The Final Chapter,” but here we are, one year and two more films later, and it still shows no sign of being anywhere near over. I can’t say I blame Bach — Amazon Prime keeps picking these things up, they cost nothing (or next to it) to produce, they can be cranked out fairly quickly, and they presumably turn at least a modest little profit. Just because you can keep doing something, though, doesn’t mean you should.

Let’s just call it like it is right outta the gate here : this is a remarkably unlikely indie “franchise,” and Bach deserves a lot of credit for his tenacity and belief in himself — but it’s also a franchise…

Damn, but it’s been awhile since I did one of these “Trash Literature” columns — a good few years, in fact. A brief skim through this site’s contents shows the last one to be a review of Peter Sotos’ “Tool.,” so I’m not sure whether or not freelance investigative journalist Joseph L. Flatley is going to consider himself to be in distinguished company now that he’s “next up” in the queue, but — things are what they are, right? And since Flatley was amenable to my “outreach” efforts after I heard his interview with Pearse Redmond on Porkins Policy Radio (a show that, full disclosure, I’ve also been a guest on a couple of times), once I got my copy of his latest book, Stan Goes To The Mind Control Convention — subtitled Manchurian Candidates, Recovered Memories, And The Dark Side Of Conspiracy Culture (And Other Stories) — I got right down…

You’ve gotta hand it to Jeffrey Brown (who occasionally employs the curiously-bifurcated nom de plume of “Tsujigo+Ink”) — he’s one of the most infectiously enthusiastic cartoonists in the mini-comics scene these days. When I told him I was going to be focusing this week’s Round-Up column on his work, he ran off fresh copies of the four minis under review here and is anxiously awaiting orders from you, dear readers, so I heartily recommend you make the effort worth his while. Now it’s my job to tell you why —

Dinner With Izanami Grey Part One sets the tone — and the stage — for all that follows, introducing us to both Jeff’s title character, the hapless Ms. Grey, and his unique slant on traditional genre tropes, particularly in regards to what is commonly referred to as “body horror.” It’s a brisk read focusing on Izanami’s big night out with…

What will the future hold? What changes, subtle or otherwise, will it usher in? How will it alter the essential character of our lives? And, perhaps most importantly — what will it look like?

Yumi Sakugawa has thought about these questions thoroughly, deeply. She’s considered how the past, how one’s heritage and cultural traditions, will not only survive into, but actively inform, both the aesthetics and the thinking of the world that’s coming (gratuitous OMAC reference there), and she’s laid out her vision in the pages of Fashion Forecasts, a kind of visual treatise recently released as part of Retrofit/Big Planet’s consistently-fascinating joint publication venture. It may not fit the traditional definition of what a “comic book,” or even a “graphic novel” actually is, but expanding conventional thinking about what comics can do or be has always been part and parcel of the Retrofit/Big Planet ethos, and…

I’m not normally one to put a tremendous amount of stock in a publisher’s promotional blurbs — they’re over-hyped by their very nature, and get the factual basics of the work in question, which they’ve presumably read, flat-out wrong with surprising frequency — but when Koyama’s pre-press promotional materials referred to Mickey Zacchilli’s Space Academy 123 as a blend of “Starfleet with Degrassi,” they captured the essential character of the book, originally serialized as a daily strip on Instagram, with fairly astonishing accuracy. But, of course, there’s a lot more to it than that.

Zacchilli, who hails from Providence, appears to have picked up no small amount of the residual energy left over in the cultural zeitgeist of that town from Fort Thunder, in that her strips are imbued with, and subsequently convey, much of the frenetic immediacy that her cartooning forebears made their stock in trade, but they necessarily…

Self-doubt is a crippling thing, but never has it been delineated in a manner as sensitive, as smart, as intuitive as in the pages of Angela Fanche’s latest mini-comic, Everly. This is work that comes from a deep wellspring of very personal experience, but the damn thing is : Fanche is such a singularly talented cartoonist, one so fundamentally in tune with her abilities and intentions, that she needn’t second-guess herself for so much as an instant.

Despite having a fairly robust internet presence, most of which consists of her occasionally-issued diary comics, Fanche isn’t someone I know a tremendous amount about, but a comic like this tells you as much as you need : her delicate texturing and shading, combined with deft figure work, definitely gives her art an ethereal, even wistful quality to it, but employed in service of painfully introspective subject matter such as this, well…