Random Thoughts

Sin (1992) #1-5 by Jason Stephens

I have to admit that I wasn’t quite sure whether “Jason Stephens” was the same guy as “Jay Stephens” — I mean, it would have been quite a coinkidink for Tragedy Strikes/Black Eye to publish two people with almost the same name, but Jason’s style seems so different from what I remember Jay’s style being… More scratchy and less streamlined/oldee fashioned animation/comics influenced. And didn’t he do a series that looked kinda like Mike Allred? Do I totally misremember?

But yeah — I guess they’re the same people! *gasp*

Anyway, I think that means that Stephens is the person I’ll be reading the most comics by for this blog series. While he doesn’t have a long-running series, Tragedy Strikes (and later Black Eye) has done a lot of different things by him over the years, and is still publishing him today (after a two decade pause).

(Vrána noted in a comment to a previous post in this blog series that Tragedy Strikes and Black Eye aren’t the same company — but there certainly is a continuity editorially (Vrána was the Tragedy Strikes editor and then started Black Eye), so I thought it made most sense to cover both publishers in one series.)

We get plenty of these pages here — collages of old ads, with pleasantly incongruous texts, and this makes me wonder: How old was Stephens when he did this, anyway? Because I remember I used to do this kind of thing when I was a teenager…

… and the book has that energy: It’s extremely loopy, going from one thing to another, and dropping as many quips as possible along the way. It reads very much like something a teenager would do.

Including the funny sex scenes.

But the artwork is quite accomplished, so hm. OK, I’m going to guess that Stephens was… 19 when he did this book. And I can’t contain my excitement any more and I’m now going to google Stephens! (I never do any research for these blog posts before writing them, and I’m proud!)

Pow:

Jay Stephens (born March 22, 1971) is a Canadian cartoonist and animator currently living in Guelph, Ontario.

OK, I was wrong. But not that wrong! He was 21 when this was published.

He is best known as the creator of Discovery Kids’s animated television series Tutenstein , Cartoon Network’s The Secret Saturdays,[1] and the JetCat animated shorts for Nickelodeon’s anthology series, KaBlam!.

Oh, I had no idea… Well, that explains his style change — cartooning will do that to you.

Stephens asks people to send in their dreams, and he’ll illustrate them.

So how’s that for a first issue? It’s just brimming with restless energy, and it’s a lot of fun to read. Nothing really goes anywhere, but whatevs — it’s funny.

The series continues as it started — lots of non sequiturs and random oddness.

And also some recreated children’s drawings.

Some of the issues feel pretty coherent in a way — every other page, we get a callback to something that happened many pages later, and it’s got this cumulative funny effect going.

Famous people write in.

The second issue has one of those flip-around back covers…

… and a super-hero parody (that sort of continues through all the issues).

Stephens gets married, but kinda surprisingly we don’t really get much autobio stuff — it would have been typical for the time period and for this kind of random one-person anthology thing, but nope.

Heh heh. Now that’s a super-hero.

Hm…. *squints* Very complicated fold in.

The issues do become calmer as we go along.

And we get an extremely brief comment on modern, gritty super-heroes.

And somebody actually wrote in with a dream to be illustrated!

The final issue seems even more scattered than the previous ones…

… and I think Stephens had run out of stuff to do in this mode? I guess we’ll see — I don’t remember what Sin Comics (his next series) was like.

According to comics.org, the comics featured here haven’t been collected anywhere, and I can see why that would be difficult to do. Or were parts of this collected in Land of Nod? I guess I’ll come to that in a couple weeks…

In any case, this series is a good read. But what did the critics think?

Wizard Magazine #37, page #118:

Stephens started off in minicomics and graduated to Sin, a full-sized comic published
by the late Tragedy Strikes Press, Sin featured Stephens’s bizarre creations, including Nod,
Irwin. and Dave, who were simplified, abstracted versions of Felix the Cat, Mickey Mouse,
and Donald Duck. Just after picking up steam and gelling five issues Of Sin published,
tragedy struck and Tragedy Strikes disappeared from the face of the planel bringing
Stephens’s comic to an abrupt end. IA sixth issue was completed, but it hos never seen print.}

Huh.

Comics Scene Volume 2 #43, page #059:

“Because Nod was based on a real
experience, he’s more real to me than
the other characters,” Stephens says.
“In the beginning, I didn’t feel capable
of writing Nod well enough to do him
justice. I didn’t want to ruin him, so I
played him down.” In fact, Nod disap-
peared from Sin after #1. In Sin #5, the
other Sinners mounted a search party,
but all they found were a passel of
evil-smelling Yeti.
Nod’s main disciples, Merv and
Dave, similarly recall cartoons Ste-
phens loved as a kid. “They’re kind of
postmodern,” Stephens explains.
“1
took Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck
and stripped them of any recognizable
characteristics.” Well, Merv’s pants are
still a giveaway, but it’s true that you
can’t even tell what animals they’re
supposed to be. According to Ste-
phens, they’re not any specific ani-
mals, neither are Nod (though
Stephens’ printer once called him a
cat) or Captain Rightful (a kind of
snake with legs).
This genus-free menagerie set Sin
apart from the independent comics it
rubbed spines with on the shelves—as
Stephens puts it, “Sin wasn’t exactly
‘cool.’ ” For one thing, the comedy re-
volved around the characters’ love for
particularly cheesy comics. Merv and
Dave once mounted a commando-style
raid against Fascinating Komics Incor-
porated when they thought the Sinister
Horde comic was getting too moody.
Stephens roamed through Sin too,
usually in the guise of the Cranky
Badman, who holed up in the Hall of
Brooding. “I actually have a Badman
costume,” Stephens announces.
“I
made it for Halloween in 1991. It looks
like it does in the comic, except a lot
messier, and I look really stupid in it. ”
Sin ran for five issues from 1992 un-
til 1993, when Stephens left the book’s
floundering publisher, Tragedy Strikes
Press. The wages of Sin had been god-
awful by mainstream standards—
around $20 a page. But due to T SP’s
financial troubles, Stephens wasn’t
paid for the last two issues.
“I almost completed #6,” he says. “I
could have done it, but it would have
been for free.” Too bad—it was a
humdinger. “Almost everyone dies in
it.” This lost issue may someday see
print as part of a Sin collection,
Stephens says.

The Comics Journal #212, page #103:

STEPHENS: I used acrowquill for the Sin stuff. Thatwas
one ofthe big leaps in art between Sin and Sin Comics,
learning to use a brush. Now I use a brush, butl no
longer use a brush and dip ink, except for filling blacks.
When I moved to Prague, I got turned on to this brush
pen that Pentel makes. You have refills you screw on,
you squeeze them. And ifs a brush. les the same nib,
and ink, but ids so much easier. I can get stuffdone
in halfthe time, because I don’t have to dip it, and clean
it, and wash it.
SIALIVAN: So you’re brushing along, andyou run out of
ink, andyou squeeze it —
STEPHENS: Squeezæ it and more ink comes down, yep.
SULLIVAN :And ifyoa squeeze too bard, youget agiant blob
Qfblatk on your —
STENENS: I suppose you could, but Ive mastered it.
[laughs)

The Comics Journal #212, page #090:

Stn.LIVAN: Was Michel your editor and yourguiding light
when you were working on Sin back then?
STEPHENS: Uh…offcially, he was my editor. But I
would say we were friends back then, so as far as
guiding light, I mean, he laughed at my jokes. There
“‘as very little editorial input. Initially, when I was
concocting what I would do for my own book, from the
short pieces I’d done in Reactor Girl, Michel was very
much a part of-helping me decide what kind ofa format
to choose, which of course ended up being no real
format at all. But no, he was great. He corrected my
spelling.

[…]

You publishedfive glorious issues ofSin, and not six,
even though you did a sixth one — what happened?
STENENS: I hadn’t been paid for #5, basically. The
other thing, too, is I got spoiled. Tragedy Strikes
started off as a real honest outfit, in that Shane Kenny,
the publisher, wanted to do it right, and he really
wanted to pay us. It wasn’t a lot of money, but he did
pay us, and I got paid on time, and I got paid a page
rate, which was probably nothing. And then when the
money stopped coming in, I got kind of indignant.
Which is hilarious, because it took meyears to get paid
anything after that. But I basically folded up shop. I
sent Shane a letter telling him that I hadn’t been paid
and I needed the money. From the get-go I made
comics an actual part of my income. I was counting on
the money. So I wrote him a letter — very civil,
registered mail — and said, haverft been paid, and
officially that voids our contract, and what do we want
to do about it?” He was really cool about it. He just
said, “We don’t have the money. You can take books
in trade.” So I said, “Great,” took a stack and left, and
that was it. The sixth issue was almost finished, but it
didn’t see print until the collection.
SULLIVAN: And Ibis is uhen Michel started Black Eye?
STEPHENS: Uh-huh. The continuation ofPi’kle, I think,
was the inaugural comic. Sputnik and the new Sin
Comics debuted almost simultaneously afterwards.
JAY’S MEDIA BLITZ
SULLIVAN: With the new seriesojSin, there was a big,ium/d
inyour art. Haw long a timeperiod was it between the
series and the new series?
STERENS: Oh, it would have been months. And I was
drawing in the meantime, and reeducating myself in
comics. I’d read Lowe andRotkets earlier. In high school
even I was into that, and Yummy Fur, and Flaming
Carrot, but my knowledge Of the modern under-
ground, or the New Wave movement, or modern
comics in general, was prety narrow.
so I was trying much harder now to improve the
arnvork, whereas with the first Sin, I was trying to just
be — I don’t know what I was trying to do. But it
somehow took on a different meaning to me, in
between those projects.
SULLIVAN: In the early Sins, it seemed like you were
thinking, “How quickly can lgetfrom tbispaneltothe next
panel? • In the second series, it a lot slicker.
I think the writing was still important, but
I v,nas trying to do more than just make people laugh.
I started to realize that those gags worked well in short
pieces, but there didn’t necessarily need to be a con-
necting narrative. I started focusing on that kind of
humor in shorter bursts, and simultaneously working
to develop other ideas, like the Atomic City stuff
a pretty awkward stage, actually. I find the Sin
Comics issues hard to look at.
SULLIVAN: Really?
STEPHENS: Yeah, because I can see what I was trying to
do. I’m self-educated, and ids all on public display. I
leamed a lot from working through those 80 pages, so
I’m glad I did it. But it was a pretty awkward growth
spurt.
SULLIVAN: I thought those issues showed a big
couth spurt for you.
STERENS: Don’t get me wrong, I was pretty
proud of them at the time. [laughs]

Rich Kreiner writes in The Comics Journal #161, page #098:

Exploiti ng the available artistic liberty most
fully is Jason Stephens, who, in Sin, delivers a
high self-interested version of what comics
could or ought to be. At once both an unapolo-
getic insurrectionist and ensconced creative
dictator, Stephens dresses the form and content
of funnybooks as his personal court jesters,
staging entertainment most agreeable to him
and most hilarious to the rest of us. Sin is a non-
Stop parade of his whims and wiles delivered
with a reckless obliviousness that borders on
the unconscious.
In its five issues, Sin has toyed with and
subverted comic book conventions. ‘The Land
of Nod,” one of the three recurring features of
the book, mines the funny animal vein. Its
simple yet distinctive characters tap into the
primal acceptance of amicable critters instilled
in many readers during formati ve years Ofcomic
absorption. But motivations, vocabulary, and
grammar are simplified still further by Stephens,
making them even less plausible and more
goofy. Concurrent with this reductio ad absur-
dum, characters of Nod are forced to deal with
Incongruencies, improbable complications, and
mature issues incompatible with a “real” juve-
nile humor comic.
With “Badman,” Stephens puts his signa-
ture spin On autobiographical comics (“I can’t
think of anything to draw! I’m drawing myself
not thinking of anything to draw The top-
ping twist comes as Stephens pictures himself
as a costumed character within the confines of
its dopey and contrived alter ego (“We join
Badman in the Hall of Brooding! ‘I hope I’m
not just nuts!”‘).
The superhero genre gets a shellacking Of
its own with ‘The Sinister Horde,” which in-
cludes such characters as The Clot, Captain
Nasty, and Teen Satan. Here, as with “Nod,”
there is an unmistakable familiarity, a nostalgic
affection, mixed with a contemporary. wide-
eyed awareness ofthe inherent silliness of it all.
Sez Red Maple, “I’m afraid we can’t let you
into Canada. Of course, if you evil bastards
want to stick around for a fight, it would suit uS
just fine.” “Yeah,” chimes in Rocky, the Cana-
dian Shield, ‘We have free medical care! Ha-
ha!”
Plotting proceeds from the seat Of the pants.
A chief delight of Sin is its rollicking unpre-
dictability, a total uncertainty over where the
story will careen and what will be laughable
next. The language is an element of the book’s
alternating personality: from naive and infec-
tiously charming to bombastic to taciturn. The
use of the banal, in both word and picture, is
crucial, acting as a means Of pacing the reader,
as a set-up device, and as its own source of
stoned chuckles.
The art, in keeping with narrative spirit, is
likewise unpredictable, fantastic, spare, dynami-
cally hokey, conspicuously risible, and, above
all, unfussy. There is real skill in the constant
visual refrains of genre attachments and in the
ability to keep the graphic hodge-podge from
hardening like taffy.

This blog post is part of the Total Black Eye series.

Way Out Strips (1992) #1-3 by Carol Swain

I re-read these books last time when I did the Fantagraphics blog series, but I wanted to read them again now, so here we go.

Hey, foreword by Paul Gravett that gives some background as to how Swain started doing comics.

Hm, perhaps I should do something with the white balance… I mean, these pages really look that yellowed in real life, but I could make them whiter here on the screen. Eh, too much work.

Anyway, isn’t that an amazing spread? Total punk show feeling.

Swain has been very consistent throughout her career — mostly nine panel pages, all done with charcoal (I think), and all using this restless “camera” to depict people from all angles. It’s hypnotic.

We get about five pieces per issue — some are complete in one, but many of them continue.

Heh heh.

I really like this thing she does here where the main character talks directly to the reader, as if we’re doing a first person camera thing. And as always, mysterious things, seldom explained, keep happening. But not in a non sequitur way, but as just these things that happen in the world we’re watching.

Hm… wasn’t this also published in an issue of Reactor Girl? That’s pretty odd — publishing it twice around the same time in different mags. I’d have guessed the overlap in readership between the mags would be like 97%.

Many of the stories have a kind of science fiction thing going on, but as part of the scenery — not really investigated in the typical sci fi way.

By the third issue, four of the five pieces this issue are continued stories.

The best piece in this story is the one complete story — it’s about people being smuggled into London, and it’s pure magic.

Tragedy Strikes announce a CD format “sampler” magazine — but it never happened, because Tragedy Strikes broke up. Pickle continued publication with Black Eye, but Way Out Strips moved over to Fantagraphics. Swain has continued to publish graphic novels with them over the decades.

I don’t think any of the stories in this have been collected? And I don’t remember whether the continuing stories were completed in the Fantagraphics run or just abandoned.

In any case, somebody should do a hefty Swain collection of all this stuff.

Wizard Magazine 025, page 114:

Tragedy Strikes also publishes another anthology, Way Out Strips, although it is a
little different since it only features the work of one creator, Carol Swain. Way Out Strips
was originally a mini-comic that ran for four issues, until
it was published by Tragedy Strikes in 1992. Swain’s decep-
tively simple grease pencil cartoons evoke several emo-
tions—from uneasiness to the restlessness and brashness
of youth. Some of the stories in Way Out Strips are self-
contained, like “Gallions Reach” and “Sons of Sam”, while
others continue through several issues, such as “Get the
Joke” and “In My Neighborhood.”

The Comics Journal 165, page 19:

Carol Swain’s Critically Acclaimed
Way Out Strips Resumes Publication

Carol Swain’s comic book Way Out Strips was
orphaned after three issues when her publisher
Tragedy Strikes Press went out of business in
the summer of ’93, but found a new home at
Fantagraphics Books which will publish her
work under the same title, beginning with Vol-
ume 3, Number l, in January.
Swain’s route to writing and drawing com-
ics was atypical. She was never a comics fan,
per se. She “‘Is, in fact, a painter, having stud-
ied painting for four years in college. Accord-
ing to Paul Gravett. in his introduction to the
first Tragedy Strikes issue of Way Out Strips,
“In the summer of 1987, London’s Institute of
Contemporary Art was showing Comics
Iconoclasm, a skewed survey of ‘high’ art in-
spired by ‘lowly’ comics… , Carol joined a
workshop there organised by Escape, the
magazine I co-edited. Rather than presuming
to teach anyone, the object was to get every-
body to create a page for a comic to be pro-
duced in two hours on the ICA’S photocopier.
Carol came up with six silent panels, in which
a young man finds blissful oblivion in his can
of beer, echoed as the city around him distorts
and wobbles in sympathy.”
Swain was attracted to the idea of composing
a page Of comics when she saw an advertisement
for the exhibition. It was a time, as she put it,
when “l was getting bored with painting” She
elaborated uvxjn her circumstances, ‘”I hadn’t re-
ally thought about [comics]. I was out of college
and unemployed, trying to avoid full time work
which I’m still trying to avoid. Trying to do
painting was a complete waste of time as far as
getting a living was concerned. Then I saw
people like Ed Pinsnet. Chris Reynolds, En-
glish small press self-publishing artists —
that’s what interested me.”
Although Swain hasn’t painted since she
started drawing comics, “At the time I was doing
painting it seemed the most important medium
there was.” Swain actually considers the comics
medium’s lack ofresp:ctability an “attraction. •me
little I saw of the art world is it was very elitist
class-ridden; you had to have gone to the right
colleges — this is me being bitter — the Royal
College or the Royal Academy, something with
‘Royal’ attached to it.”
Swain met Nick Craine when he was doing
animation work in England. Craine saw
Swain’s self-published comics, and after
Craine moved back to Canada, he called Swain
and offered to publish a comic by her under the
Tragedy Strikes Press imprint, which he co-
fonded with Michel Vråna and Shane Kenny.
•Tragedy Strikes Press was a tragedy,” Swain
told the Journal. “You shouldn’t tempt fate
with a name like that. If they start up another
publishing company they should call it •Roll-
ing in Money’ or ‘Retiring to the Carribean.’
After Tragedy Strikes folded in 1993, she got in
touch with Fantagraphics Books, who immedi-
ately offered to continue publishing Way Out
Strips.
Swain’s first Fantagraphics issue contains
four short stories, three of which are ongoing,
and continued in the next issue.

Rich Kreiner writes in The Comics Journal 161, page 99:

Where Jason Stephens has his unique ver-
Sion Of comics, Carol Swain Offers a vision. In
the three issues of Way Out Strips, an astute and
refined sensiti vity reveals itself within a comple-
mentary and fully realized visual style.
As Paul Gravett, one-time co-editor Of
Britain’s Escape anthology, relates in a fore-
word to issue , Swain’ s perceptivity and style
are grounded in her interests in painting, prose
fiction, and movies. Coming to the medium, she
began composing each panel both as a painting
and a movie shot. She switched to stark, textural
charcoal, in a style that French BD critics have
termed ligne grasse, literally the “dirty” or
“rough” line. She also found her voice, keeping
her words to a minimum, using terse dialogue
and silences, constantly shifting “camera” angles
and fierce, warped perspectives to add to the
feeling of disorientation. Atmospheric, oblique,
darkly humorous, her strips are like glimpses
that hint of bigger stories. Each of these ele-
ments — the scrupulous composition, the tex-
tured line, the sparing words. the profusion of
angle, the weightiness of atmosphere, the pref-
erence for the understated, the pictorially un-
usual, the oddly comical, the suggestion of
greater histories — work toward a narrative
where mood is palpable and preeminent.
Swain squares Off her distinctive pages into
a fairly regular three-tiered grid of nine panels.

Comics Forum 3, page 46:

C: Yeah, I like the grainy quality you get,
especially when it’s printed on really
cheap comics paper, because it burns out
all the subtleties. You get a lot of good
shadows.
S; I can see that in your black and white
stuff, but I’d imagine in colour it wouldn’t
work the same way. What do you use to
draw with…charcoal?
C: Anything that’s got a
gritty, grainy look, re-
ally—like a Chinagraph
pencil. Not really char-
coal.
S: Caran D’ Ache
Neocolour crayons?
C: I’ve used those. I like
those very hard black
lead pencils. The ones
that are solid graphite.
A: Do you draw on very
rough paper to get all
this texture?
C: Any paper—the
cheaper the better, really.
A: Not Bristol board or
anything like that?
C: I just don’t use it. Any-
thing with a bit of a grain
to it works better.
A: That’s the opposite of
most cartoonists; they
need a smooth surface to
put their ink down onto.
C: I use ink as well—to
fill in the black areas. But
generally…
anything
that smudges horribly
when you send it
through the post or
doesn’t print well…
that’s what I use.
S: Again I’m reminded that as the story
progresses there’s a lot more black in the
drawings.
C: Well, the story gets darker.
S: And perhaps you were working some-
thing through about your own approach?
C: I dunno. Hmmm…
S: Did the paper they were drawn on get
more sombre?
C: I think the last few were actually on a
fairly pale one.
A: It’s almost like Martin gets more de-
fined once he decidesVhat he’s gonna do.
S: By the end, it’s the black line-work that
choreographs how your eye dances
around the page.
C: Well, as we were saying, the story
starts off all pleasant and pastelly, and
gets darker and darker. Even if you didn’t
consciously make the artwork darker,
you’d probably find yourself going for
the black crayon more than the blue. I’d
say that when I was colouring Skin, I had
no experience or knowledge of the form,
so it was just kind of instinctive.
If I’m being very non-committal about
it because I really didn’t know what I
C: Yes.
A: Have you ever thought of doing some-
thing like Skin yourself, in colour?
C: My publisher, Tragedy Strikes…
they’re doing some publicity where all
their cartoonists do a 6-page colour story,
which is then packaged in a CD case, so
it’ll be minute.
S: You’ll be sticking with dry colour?
A: Even with what you’ve called “crude”
crayon drawing in Skin, you have these
soft edges, whereas your Way Out Strips
people are… like, square, with slits for
C: The drawing in Skin’s much more com-
plex than I’d ever do for myself.
A: Why’s that?
C: Well, if you get a good story idea, the
whole process of drawing it out some-
times…
it’s so tedious thaeyou tend to
simplify.
S: Impatience.
C: Yeah, maybe—I think that’s the best
way to work
S: Judging by appearances, I assume
you’ve had no direct experience of
skinhead culture.
C: Not that I remember… I don’t remem-
ber any skinhead friends at school or any-
thing.
S: so how did the story of Skin affect you?
C: I thought it was very direct, and I like
the idea Of the narration—and the lan-
guage the narrator used.
S: Yeah, the narrator isn’t anyone in the
story… more like a sort of skinhead Mys-
terious Traveller.

[…]

S: DO you have some kind of exclusive
deal with Tragedy Strikes?
A: Do you have a contract?
C: Yeah—contract. That’s a new word for
me. It lasts for 4 issues, or basically a year,
and after that hopefully I’ll have sold
enough to keep going. It’s very different
from self-publishing… I find with a pub-
lisher there’s a certain amount of rushing,
and maybe not changing things around
as much as you normally would. In some
ways, I think that’s good; it forces you to
develop, because you have to work at a
much faster pace. The idea of self—pub-
lishing again… it’s so time-consuming
and thankless, that I don’t know if I want
to do it again.
The Tragedy Strikes edition of Way
Out Strips # I’s come out, and I’m working
on the third one right now, and I’m run-
ning out of stories I’ve already printed. So
it’s got to be new stuff, and it’s all got to be
good stuff to make sure people buy it.
I suppose this is a bit like when you hit
“the Wall” in a marathon —
now is when I’ve got to put all
my energy into what is quite a
limited space. I’m starting to
feel that four issues isn’t a lot
of room.

This blog post is part of the Total Black Eye series.

Reactor Girl (1991) #1-6 edited by Michel Vrána

Oops, I’m only on the second post in this blog series, and I’m already three days behind schedule… Typical.

I really enjoy a good anthology magazine. And for a publisher it can function as a tent-post publication if you can get it published regularly: While anthologies rarely sell well, they can express a publisher identity better than publishing separate titles. Like: “Ah, yes. That’s a very Raw book”.

But the book has to be cohesive to function like that, so let’s see what kind of anthology this is.

Vrána had previously published three issues of the mini comics sized Reactor Girl, so we get off to a flying start here, with lots of interesting artists (most of whom I’ve never heard of before).

Initially it seems a bit scattered (Kit with David Corr here)…

… but the longest story in the first issue, by the wonderful Carol Swain, pulls it all together.

And, yes, there’s definitely a through line here — many of the stories are pretty harrowing (Peter Ferguson here).

But also a lot of experimentation with form (Jason Stephens).

And even a fumetti about the technical innovation of the day: Answering machines (Steven Lungley).

Linda Carson tells us all about ear piercings.

Vrána himself (with Ron Lum) does a pretty incomprehensible thing about the titular character.

And that’s just the first issue. It’s only 32 pages, but it’s really dense, and it has a clear mood going. Anthologies that are this short are usually not very satisfying, but this feels like a full meal.

Karel Barx tells us about the dangers of man spreading.

In the third issue, Vrána writes the first editorial, and he certainly seems to have a definite idea for the magazine.

Each issue is half returning artists and half new ones, which is a good mix, I think: You want to see more of the artists you enjoy, but you also want surprises. Dominic Bugatto’s thing here is very interesting.

Nick Craine (who also did Cheese Heads) collaborates with his mother, Sylvia Markle-Craine, on a very nice little story.

Cinders McLeod does one of the few overtly political pieces here, but it reminds me: For a 1991 anthology, there’s a lot of women artists in here.

Another name I can’t remember from anywhere else — Andrew Robottom — does a quite intriguing four pager. I wonder whether many of these artists were going to art school in Montreal or something?

Hey! An early Marc Bell page! From before he got the art style he’s been using the past few decades. This is one of the fun things about reading old anthologies — you happen upon early work from people who got famous later.

I really enjoyed Laurent Ciluffo’s piece here — not just because of the intriguing artwork, but also because it’s so different from the denser pieces that surround it. It’s funny how that works in an anthology — you want an anthology that has an identity, but also pieces that challenge that.

Linda Carson does a multi media thing.

Dylan Horrocks shows up with a couple short pieces, but that’s not really surprising, since Tragedy Strikes was publishing his Pickle series. I think everybody Tragedy Strikes published also showed up in this anthology?

Vrána announces a new anthology that would have longer pieces — New Planet Showcase. That never happened.

Hey! Adrian Tomine! I really love his style in this era, before he cleaned it up. It’s loose and fun to look at. And the story is pretty great, too, and I don’t think I’ve seen it anywhere else? comics.org doesn’t say that it’s been reprinted, and:

Huh.

Aaron Straup-Cope contrinbutes one of the wildest pieces…

… while Molly Kiely does a gag.

Hey! Anne Rubinstein! I guess a lot of the artists here were also published in the Drawn & Quarterly magazine.

Anthologies have a tendency to taper off as the publisher grows less enthused by losing money, but that’s not the case here — it’s strong until the end.

Se tuer by Vincent Delbaere & Laurent Cilluto is great, for instance.

Which reminds me of another unusual thing about this anthology: Many of the pieces are by writer/artists duos. Single creator pieces are more normal for this sort of thing.

Gary Dumm & Joe Zabel & Jeff Evans finishes out the series with a quite American Splendorish (that’s a word) piece, which I guess is also autobio?

Comics series usually just stop publishing, but here Vrána actually announces that it’s been cancelled… sort of. He says that it’ll return in a handmade fashion with #7… but that didn’t happen.

I didn’t mention the Reactor Girl design — it’s very Desktop Publishing 1991, isn’t it?

Rich Kreiner writes in The Comics Journal 161, page 100:

Both Swain and Stephens are regular lumi-
naries in Tragedy Strikes’ anthology, Reactor
Girl: Swain with her succinct visitations and
Stephens generally having the last laugh with a
two-page spread at the end of the book (“Do-It-
Yourself Children’ s Drawings”) for your own
refrigerator). Between them they pretty much
establish the extremes of artistic aspiration,
leaving the equally wide continuum Of inten-
tions, means, and abilities to be staked Out by
the almost thirty contributors to the book’ s five
issues.
The title can boast of an unusually high
percentage of successes, due, no doubt, to the
broadly-based discrimination of editor Michel
Vrana, who also adds the titular strip to the
anthology. In the third issue, Vrana spells out
the book’s purpose and its glue:
Part of my mandate. is to bring artists and writers
from outside thefield 10 integrate the techniques and
aesthetics oftheir medium with that ofcomics, to have
comics artists experiment with new ways to express
themselves… With such a potential variety of media
and styles, the Reactor Girl theme oflife in the modern
urban environment serves to bind the stories together.
Though Reactor Girl’ s contents is spangled
with other Tragedy Strikes creators, it is far
from a vehicle of self-promotion. A sizable
majority of contributors are unknown to me and
list no previously published work in their per-
sonal notes. The assembled cast does not quite
provide the brave new cross-pollination that
Vrana aims for but it unfailingly demonstrates
diverse interests, individual venturesomeness,
and distinct, if sometimes tentative, talent.
The list of standouts would have to begin
With Linda Carson, whose compelling pieces
have appeared in each issue. Carson “considers
herself primarily a writer” and her facility with
language bears this out, particularly in her se-
ries, “Some Things You Need To Know”
(“Cream rises. Shit floats. Everyone on top got
there One way or another.”) Her topical text is
accompanied by arrangements of collage and
drawings. Carson lists a range of MFA diver-
sions which, perhaps, complicate equally inci-
Sive graphic statements. Her powers of obser-
vation seem sharp and true, and she constructs
rich, satisfying narrative portraits.
Cinders McLeod offers pointedly social
and political commentary, particularly in issue
#3′ s stirring “Why Are There No Women Car-
toonists?” Her tiny panels (as opposed to the
full-page doll clothings of issue #5) relentlessly
catalog Obstacles and injustices, uniting sec-
ond-hand cant and first-hand experience into a
sympathetic and running indictment of the in-
dustry and of each of us.
The cartoonists Of the anthology consis-
tently display a keen eye, sharp intellect, and
distinctive, attractive visuals, suggesting that
these elements are cultivated as part of the
Tragedy Strikes “house style.” As some artists
use artificial restrictions to more fully stimulate
creativity , Andrew Robottom overcomes acon-
fining graphic format to convey the complex
uncertainties of a one-night stand in issue #4.
Karel Barx (??) sketches a “Group Portrait” in
issue #2 that is light, deft, and incisive. As with
cringe’ that comes from being so far from the
cultural center of the world.”

The Slings & Arrows Comics Guide, page 534:

REACTOR GIRL
Tragedy Strikes Press: 6 issues 1991-1992
Committed to exploring comics in a variety of forms
(photo strips, mixed media, puzzles), around the central
theme of urban life, this Canadian anthology continues
from a run of minicomics published by editor Michel
Vräna, It’s key creators are Jason (Jay) Stephens (1-5) and
Carol Swain (1-4), the former with schoolboy Sparkie
McGee’s ABCs of things not to eat or that make you bleed,
the latter with noir tales in her distinctive style. In 3, the
mother and son team of Sylvia Markle-Craine and Nick
Craine offer a melancholy view of old age while Cinders
McLeod asks why there are no women cartoonists In a
simple, yet endearingly cartoony style. Better known for
work elsewhere, Dylan Horrocks turns up in 4 and 6,
Adrian Tomine in 5-6. The more avant-garde approaches
are the least satisfying, but the quirkiness of a McLeod and
the clear line of Laurent Cilluffo (6) offer a way past the
more wilfully difficult selections—NF

This blog post is part of the Total Black Eye series.