#Pete Faecke

[arecomicsevengood]

Two from Pete Faecke

Pete Faecke does these little digest sized comics that are splits with other cartoonists. He maintains sequential numbering on these “double digests” though the genre switches up. Issue 1 was “wacky westerns,” done in collaboration with A.T. Pratt, issue 2 was “Detective,” done with Drew Lerman. The cover stock quality has varied, but each has worked a two-color printing palette. The third one, newly released, is Hairball Double Digest, and the genre is funny animals. This is done in collaboration with Madeline McGrane, who I’m unfamiliar with. I’ve never seen an issue of Critters, but I think both halves would be at home there: McGrane’s story is a little more dramatic, a little more fantasy oriented, while Faecke’s story involves kids in a neighborhood, going on a treasure hunt and digging up a VHS tape. One would reasonably assume this is all prelude to a sort of underground comics twist of depravity, but Faecke keeps it wholesome, digging into his characters’ emotions in a slightly jokey way that is just classic comics characterization. He’s doing these exercises in stories that seem like he could develop it all further but he’s not doing a run of these stories, just trying to offer a distilled version of the form.

The VHS tape the kids dig up contains a horror movie, hosted by a character that’s like a depressed Elvis impersonator, and he shows up to host Faecke’s one-man anthology magazine, Please, I'm Begging You. Truth be told, this little carry-over was my favorite thing in the latter title, the sort of meta-joke that seems to hint at the building out of a Faecke-verse. As much as I appreciate that consistency, the aspect of the comic I liked the least was the sense that some stories were exercises, or attempts to demonstrate range: this is most obvious with a comic from 2017, about wrestling, done in an overdrawn style that feels closer to nineties Extreme studios excess than the pared-down, pseudo-Charlton/Gold Key visual stylings of the rest of Faecke’s work. Still, the latter is a nice value, at 8 bucks and magazine size, especially since the Double Digest is ten dollars, so if you’re interested in one, no reason not to try both.

[biblioklept]

New Snake Creek comix from Drew Lerman

New Snake Creek comix from Drew Lerman

I’ve been a fan of Drew Lerman’s strip Snake Creek for a few years now. Reviewing Lerman’s first collection (simply titled Snake Creek) in The Comics Journal, Brian Nicholson wrote that, Looking at these strips, you’re looking at something that recalls George Herriman, Harvey Kurtzman, Robert Crumb, Daniel Clowes, Matt Groening, but also thinking: What if Stanley Elkin drew a comic strip? What if…

[arecomicsevengood]

Self-Released Comics from 2020

A bunch of zines came out this year that I liked but haven’t written anything about because I’ve been working under the assumption that my liking the artists involved is unsurprising. But I might as well, I like them more than much of what’s offered by larger publishers and they’re probably doomed to some degree of obscurity. I should excerpt images but don’t feel like doing that. All of these would be in consideration for a theoretical “best of the year” list, but I generally get conservative with those and limit it to five books that are widely available as a concession to an imagined general audience.

Gonzales, by Matthew Thurber and Ric Royer, available through Matthew’s online shop

The parties involved in this comic’s creation would probably prefer I not mention that Ric, the writer, was “cancelled” and made a pariah in Baltimore (and I believe Providence too) due to his behavior in relationships, which had a marked pattern of manipulation and psychological abuse. I don’t know how many people outside these places, in the broader comics community, are aware of such things, but certainly some people are probably buying this comic not knowing anything about it who would be uncomfortable with the concept if they knew. I support Matthew’s willingness to support his friend as an artist by collaborating with him in a context where it’s unlikely women would come into his orbit (this isn’t to imply there aren’t women in comics, only that there aren’t festivals happening right now) but not so much so I can look the other way entirely. If I had to have hand-wringing conversations with Baltimore friends, you have to have them in your head: Heads up for those who don’t like it when authors are creeps.

The comic itself is pretty good! It’s a satire about the Satanic Panic of the 1980s that basically works as a kid’s comic, where a superhero named Gonzales teaches kids to overcome their parents’ fears. Thurber’s a great cartoonist, and I don’t think he loses too much working from a script here. There’s less improvisatory surrealism and more general storytelling economy.

Everglide by Carlos Gonzalez, available through Wasp Video Roadhouse

This kinda feels like Carlos’ eXistenZ, by which I mean it’s about humans “jacking in” to video game worlds where they can run around. Also I think eXistenZ is the best Cronenberg movie, and who knows how good this comic will turn out? I like the serialized minicomic format. I do feel like the ideal format for this would be typical comic proportions, sold in retail stores monthly, and Carlos’ thin line that delineates the shape of a figure but none of its weight or texture could confront readers with its seeming amateurism. But alas! No one can afford to put out black and white genre comics in stores regularly these days. As a minicomic with so many pages in each issue, the focus on the narrative, and each issue feels satisfying on those grounds, building out its world.

Detective Double Digest by Drew Lerman and Pete Faecke, available at The Stink Hole

Drew Lerman takes his Snake Creek characters out for a detective caper with gags about pissing and a plot about cryogenic freezing. Pete Faecke, who I’m unfamiliar with, but is in the new Bubbles writing about the horse sequence in Jimbo Adventures In Paradise, does a comic where multiple people huff gasoline. It’s great. There’s plenty of jokes, an interesting tone, but also a good deal of narrative space being covered in a short amount of pages. The contrast between art styles works to the advantage of each, with Faecke sort of approximating a stiff “golden age” style while Lerman works in a scribblier cartoonier form, closer to a comic strip like Barney Google. Faecke also did a similar format split with A.T. Pratt of western comics that looks pretty good too.

Whisnant by Max Huffman, available at Motion Goods

I loved reading this comic as pages would pop up on Max’s social media feed. Honestly considered buying a page of the original art to finance the printing of the minicomic version. Improvised goofball comedy, tells a story, interrupts that story, then comes back to it, the way the gags and callbacks work is insane in this. I kinda hope he continues with it but maybe it won’t work if it attempted to function like an ongoing comic and not just a stream of consciousness thing that’s disinterested in resolution. On any given page, it feels either like Huffman is going for some weird gag or he’s exploring the form and abstracted geometry of page layout and shape. The amount of panels per page is generally pretty low, so it makes for a breezy minicomic, but reading it online a page at a time I always imagined it at classic comic book size, feeling like part of the point was the subversion of expectations of a classic “teen” comic like Archie.

Hubert by Elijah Brubaker, available at his Patreon

Elijah put up a few issues of this for free as PDFs somewhere but that might’ve been a limited time thing, and it’s worth tossing him some small amount of money to get these. They’re comedies about being an obnoxious dumbass who’s dumb and horny, sorta sitcom-y, sorta weird indie movie vibe, but with a cartoon’s sense of freedom from consequences. Strange and likable, uncontrived, honest to its world of slackers. Would be a good alt-comic in the tradition of Hate or any number of forgotten Slave Labor comics. Hubert the character’s abstracted cartoon shape is kinda like Ben Jones’ Alfe but he ends up in a house full of women and there’s a flirtatious chemistry in his interactions as opposed to Jones’ sexless goofball shenanigans. Since Brubaker’s I think most known for his Wilhelm Reich bio-comic and is currently working on a Charles Manson thing, this feels more “accessible” to a certain alienated pandemic brain looking to live vicariously through fiction while maybe the other stuff is more saleable to libraries. That may sound more cynical than I intend, I mean this comic is fun and it would be nice to encounter it on someone’s coffee table when you’re at the house getting drunk and stoned in a different era. The artist is unemployed and currently only making money from his Patreon, he deserves people kicking in donations for this thing.

Dog Biscuits by Alex Graham, viewable at Instagram for the time being

For a fictionalized document of the pandemic times we’re living in, currently being serialized on Instagram, running in sequences of panels you click through, I like this better than Crisis Zone. It seems close to wrapping up, at which point Alex will collect it into a self-published book I think will make a worthwhile purchase. As time has gone on, and the strip’s moved away from discussing protests and the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone overtly, settling in with the romantic drama of its small cast as they try to find their way in a world where it feels like every stupid asshole might have exposed themselves to COVID already and now thinks nothing of exposing you as well feels fraught as any editorial cartooning, a sense of desperation to find joy underlies a multipage XXX sequence of characters boning. The Instagram comments are lit up with people seemingly familiar with only reading YA getting really emotionally invested and being extremely judgmental of the characters, with maybe the weirdest moment from my vantage point was someone asking the author what a character’s astrological breakdown was. These reactions do bring home how thought out, alive, and well-observed these characters feel.