Five Choice Books of Small Press Expo Book 5: Boxcar Joe

by Max Evry

It is fun to imagine the whir of hundreds of printing presses and, yes, Xerox machines working tirelessly in the days and hours before the Small Press Expo kicks off each year. The two-day celebration of independent comics in Bethesda, Maryland attracts the many brave souls who put their hearts, minds, and cold-hard cash into getting their cartoon visions out to attendees.

With so many titles to choose from, it can be difficult to tell the wheat from the chaff. Is it a beautifully drawn title, or merely one with a nice cover? This series will shine the spotlight on five authors who represent the most promising emerging talents on the indie comics scene, including exclusive interviews where they discuss their process, their inspiration, and their joy in creating these works.

“BOXCAR JOE” by Pranas T. Naujokaitis

Having followed web cartoonist Pranas Naujokaitis for quite some time, from his trippy, gag-laden SCAD student strip “Rocket Tonic” to his (almost) daily journal comic “Inkdick,” it can be said that he is the very definition of an emerging talent. While many of the others in this series have clearly found their niche, Pranas’ style is still exponentially evolving.

A prime example of this continued experimentation with form is “Boxcar Joe,” a mini-comic that literally takes the shape of a bright-red train car. The slipcase has a cut-out window through which we see the book’s hero, an old bearded hobo who rides the rails without a care in the world. Once removed from the slipcase, each successive page contains a single panel, the interior of the boxcar. This never changes, but both the scenery in the background and the characters in the foreground do, and the tale almost unfolds like key storyboards from an animation, with the title character meeting a friendly dog and a not-so-friendly young rival. By the end the reader feels as if they have taken this trip along with Joe, and the subtle gestures in each panel create surprisingly vivid characterization from relatively simple illustrations.

Naujokaitis had this to say on the creation of the book:

“I created ‘Boxcar Joe’ as part of a mini-comics class I took during the winter 2008 quarter at SCAD. Before this book all my minis were simple fold-and-staple deals. But after doing something like this, I have trouble going back to doing simple fold-and-staple books. After ‘Boxcar Joe’ every mini-comic I do now has to be handmade, crafty, and really play with and push the boundaries of what mini-comics can be. For me, the creation of ‘Boxcar Joe’ was a huge game changer.”

Check out Pranas T. Naujokaitis HERE: http://ghostcarpress.com/inkdick/

Five Choice Books of Small Press Expo Book 4: MOTRO

by Max Evry

It is fun to imagine the whir of hundreds of printing presses and, yes, Xerox machines working tirelessly in the days and hours before the Small Press Expo kicks off each year. The two-day celebration of independent comics in Bethesda, Maryland attracts the many brave souls who put their hearts, minds, and cold-hard cash into getting their cartoon visions out to attendees.

With so many titles to choose from, it can be difficult to tell the wheat from the chaff. Is it a beautifully drawn title, or merely one with a nice cover? This series will shine the spotlight on five authors who represent the most promising emerging talents on the indie comics scene, including exclusive interviews where they discuss their process, their inspiration, and their joy in creating these works.


“MOTRO” by Ulises Farinas

The work of Ulises Farinas can be described in many ways, except perhaps “easily describable.” Visually his art is cut from the same cloth as past generation’s masters of intricate, detailed ligne claire, namely Moebius, Geoff Darrow, and Seth Fisher. In fact, it should not surprise anyone one iota if he were pounding out work for mainstream publishers in only a few years time, but to speak with him about it, or see the work itself, you may get the impression that this is not his goal…his goal is MOTRO.

That’s “MOTRO” in all caps, as he so kindly pointed out. We’ll forego any simple explanation of plot or who the young warrior boy Motro is, but we can tell you that the bearded Farinas himself is literally a character in it, along with a host of other strange creatures and hallucinogenic landscapes. Although there are several print editions, it is HIGHLY recommended that you check the work out online to experience it yourself.

What was your inspiration for "MOTRO", both conceptually and visually?

ULISES FARINAS: “MOTRO” is actually one aspect of a larger universe that I've been creating for the better part of the last 5 years. I've named it the New Elegant Universe, and it's sort of a mirror to our reality, but with almost every mythological, metaphysical, philosophical surreal thing I enjoy and imagine stuffed into it. “MOTRO” was created almost on a whim, when I decided I wanted to write my own hero's journey epic, influenced by “He-Man,” the “Beastmaster” movies, and the Arnold Schwarzenegger “Conan” movie.

What roles do psychedelia and meta-narrative play in your comics?

FARINAS: I've always loved the Ray Harryhausen stop-motion films, and I wanted a story that expanded that stylistic genre into a more personal narrative that addresses both being a viewer of B-movie classics and being a creator. Meta-narrative is what I consider the hidden over-story of “MOTRO,” whereas the actual adventures of the boy named Motro is what keeps the story moving. The character of Motro has some very limited understanding that his world isn't exactly what it seems to be, and his hero's journey is coming to terms with that. Exactly what is a hero's journey, if the hero becomes metaphysically aware? That's what I want to answer with this epic.

How does your work with the online Act-I-Vate comics collective give you freedom you wouldn't have by going through more conventional means of distribution?

FARINAS: The goals I have for “MOTRO” have fundamentally limited any means of conventional distribution. For American comics, 120 pages is considered a "graphic novel," but I disagree. 120 pages using the comics form, mostly condenses to a few hours of reading at most, and should be called a novelette. I seek to write a hero's journey that doesn't skip 40 years to get to the ending, and really explores a character's loss of innocence and slow soul death that would occur in anyone fighting to survive. This can't be done in 120 pages. I’m not sure how many pages it would take, but I want to write it as long as it has to be. Publishing online doesn't give me any firm deadlines and artificial constraints. Although I enjoy someone reading my comic as it’s created, the internet and ACT-I-VATE gives me the freedom to create in the long term, while I focus on more immediate projects that are more "economical."

You told me you are only 23-years old. How long have you been doing comics and what are your ultimate goals in terms of your career in the industry?

FARINAS: I've been drawing narratives since before I can remember. I literally do not remember a time where I wasn't drawing. My main focus in writing and drawing has always been the desire to have some ability to create life. I know that sounds insane, but the act of creation, of any creation, I think makes you more human and more sane, and it's been that constant need to create that has kept me relatively sane.

Check out Ulises Farinas HERE: http://ulisesfarinas.com/

Five Choice Books of Small Press Expo Book 3: The Secret Science Alliance

By Max Evry

It is fun to imagine the whir of hundreds of printing presses and, yes, Xerox machines working tirelessly in the days and hours before the Small Press Expo kicks off each year. The two-day celebration of independent comics in Bethesda, Maryland attracts the many brave souls who put their hearts, minds, and cold-hard cash into getting their cartoon visions out to attendees.

With so many titles to choose from, it can be difficult to tell the wheat from the chaff. Is it a beautifully drawn title, or merely one with a nice cover? This series will shine the spotlight on five authors who represent the most promising emerging talents on the indie comics scene, including exclusive interviews where they discuss their process, their inspiration, and their joy in creating these works.

“THE SECRET SCIENCE ALLIANCE” by Eleanor Davis

Probably the least “indie” of all these titles is this graphic novel aimed at children by Davis, who along with her husband Drew Weing has produced some gorgeous looking self-published work aimed more at the hipsters in years past. The full title is actually “The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook”, which indicates that this is to be merely the first of many adventures featuring the nerdy Julian, adventurous Greta, and athletic Ben, all young middle schoolers with brains to spare. After these three team up to create inventions like “Glue Bombs”, “Stink Meters”, even their own helicopter, their invention book is stolen by an older scientist who plans to use their inventions for evil, unless they can stop him first…!

While the concept may seem cliché, the artwork is anything but. With inking by Weing and colors by Joey Weiser & Michele Chidester, the 150-page book is bursting with invention, from the gorgeous layouts, word bubbles and panels that literally point, poke and prod, as well as Davis’ painstaking attention to the most minute details. Readers of all ages could probably pour over all fun bric-a-brac in the backgrounds for days on end, and the humor is good natured and energetic enough to appeal to its target demographic. As this book was put out by the American wing of Bloomsbury, which is responsible for, among other things, being the original publisher of “Harry Potter” in the UK, it is certainly the most commercially accomplished of all the books on this list. Whether the “SSA” becomes a viable enough property to propel Davis permanently out of the self-published beauty of earlier comics like “Bugbear” remains to be seen, but her enthusiasm for her work is undeniable.

What was the genesis of creating this book, which is somewhat of a departure from your earlier independent work?

ELEANOR DAVIS: I had the opportunity to pitch a children's GN to Bloomsbury, and I just tried to come up with the most exciting story I possibly could; the kind of comic I would have wanted to read when I was a kid. Because I had never done anything for kids before I started working on “SSA” it was a real learning experience!

How did your time spent at the Kino School inspire certain aspects?

DAVIS: Thanks for asking about Kino! Kino's an alternative school in Tucson, Arizona of only about 100 students, ages 5-18. My sister and I went there from when we were little, and my parents both teach there. The educational philosophy is based around students choosing for themselves what they want to learn, and having fun learning it. It's a philosophy that respects the intelligence of children. I wanted to write a book about smart, motivated kids who build things and invent things and DO things, just like we were encouraged to do at Kino. My experiences at Kino also affected Ben's character. Ben is basically a genius, but because he gets bad grades he has terribly low confidence. This happens to smart kids every day all over the world; because they aren't good at taking tests, they're told, and often believe, that they're dumb. Kino doesn't have tests or grades, and I think it helps students figure out their own strengths and motivations.

What is the collaborative process between you and Drew like? How long did it take to create this book?

DAVIS: Oh, man, it took about two years of work on my end, about seven months for Drew to ink, and lots more time for Joey and Michele to color. It was a real process! Drew helped a lot all along the way. From the beginning I would bounce ideas off him constantly, through the thumbnailing process he re-read everything again and again, and then I checked with him on each final page of pencils. He basically edited the whole thing five times over, and provided tons and tons of support! When it came to the pencilling/inking, the process was more technical. I would pencil a page at-size on copy paper, scan it into the computer, make a bunch of small fixes, then print it out larger onto bristol in blueline. Drew would ink it, I'd scan it, and then send it to Joey and Michele to color and Bryant Paul Johnson to letter.

The layout of both the panels and the letter bubbles is very creative. How painstaking was this to figure out for a given page?

DAVIS: The layouts were really fun, kind of like an exciting puzzle. What got tricky was editing such tightly laid-out pages. Taking a panel or two out here or adding them in there was no laughing matter; sometimes I'd have to redesign whole scenes to get things to fit again! I tried to do a different, fun layout 'trick' for each page. In addition to being a fun challenge, I was hoping to give the book a scientific feel.

How have young readers reacted to the book so far?

DAVIS: The feedback I've gotten has been good! I think young people really respond to work which they know has had someone's heart put into it; they can lose themselves in the details and re-read it again and again. At least, that's what I'm aiming for!

Check out Eleanor Davis HERE: http://www.doing-fine.com/

Five Choice Books of Small Press Expo Book 2: Food/Fall

By Max Evry

It is fun to imagine the whir of hundreds of printing presses and, yes, Xerox machines working tirelessly in the days and hours before the Small Press Expo kicks off each year. The two-day celebration of independent comics in Bethesda, Maryland attracts the many brave souls who put their hearts, minds, and cold-hard cash into getting their cartoon visions out to attendees.

With so many titles to choose from, it can be difficult to tell the wheat from the chaff. Is it a beautifully drawn title, or merely one with a nice cover? This series will shine the spotlight on five authors who represent the most promising emerging talents on the indie comics scene, including exclusive interviews where they discuss their process, their inspiration, and their joy in creating these works.

“FOOD/FALL” by Joseph Lambert

“Food/Fall” is a charming entry by Lambert with remarkably vivid use of color. In fact, the second of two title stories conceptually revolves around color when a father and son encounter Fall itself, anthropomorphized as a giant mopey guy with a hat made out of a pumpkin. When Fall tries to put some new colors into his seasonal palette he is outdone by Spring, who turns all the trees into gaudy primary colored oddities. The other story, “Food”, features a strange brother-sister pair who steal food from people and then try to escape Earth with their loot in a spherical spaceship, only to be thwarted by a flying tentacled Space Whale straight out of Lovecraft.

As you can probably surmise, whimsy is the name of the game here, but Lambert’s renderings are so rich and lively they become magnetic. The art is pleasing to the eye in a way many indie comics aspire to but often fail to reach, and with as many as 12 to 17 panels per page the creator could almost be a benign twin brother of Chris Ware…the good twin.

You're part of the Sundays online comics collective. How does making your comics available online enable you to build readership and (hopefully) make money off your work?

JOSEPH LAMBERT: I don't know if it helps make any money other than helping build readership. The kinds of strips and stories we do aren't usually immediately marketable or even describable so it's nice to have people familiar with the kind of work we do so that they'll know what we're doing when they see us or our comics at conventions or in shops or whatever.

"Food/Fall" had some of the richest, most vivid colors of any book at SPX. What techniques do you use? Did it make your work stand out for a lot of attendees?

LAMBERT: Thanks. Yeah, I think the size and color make it accessible to most people. It's my most standard size, 7.5" by 10.25", as opposed to the rest of my books, which are all different, smaller sizes. It's also 20 pages of comics with two full stories in there. So hopefully people feel like they're getting a good deal. I color the book in Photoshop. And I really really try to keep my palette limited when coloring in Photoshop, since I can do pretty much whatever I want in there, as opposed to screen-printing or spot coloring where the options are limited to a few.

Where do you want to see yourself going in terms of your future career in this industry?

LAMBERT: I'm working on a biography of Helen Keller for The Center for Cartoon Studies biography series by Hyperion Books. And I'm putting together a collection of my mini-comic and anthology stories for Secret Acres. And after a while I'll have a few strips in Mome, the Fantagraphics anthology series. I would really like to do a few children's books. I feel like the kinds of mini-comics I make would translate just fine to the children's book format. And all the adjustments I would have to make in the areas that don't fit would be fun and excite me.

Check out Joseph Lambert HERE: http://submarinesubmarine.com/

Five Choice Books of Small Press Expo Book 1: Woman King

By Max Evry

It is fun to imagine the whir of hundreds of printing presses and, yes, Xerox machines working tirelessly in the days and hours before the Small Press Expo kicks off each year. The two-day celebration of independent comics in Bethesda, Maryland attracts the many brave souls who put their hearts, minds, and cold-hard cash into getting their cartoon visions out to attendees, often made right under the deadline. Founded in 1994, SPX also provides cartoonists who generally spend much of the calendar year shackled to their drawing boards a chance to socialize with fellow artists and fans. It is not uncommon to see them take much or all of the profits from selling their own books and spend it on other titles.

For those attending it can be an overwhelming experience, with truly gifted creators often sitting at tables directly adjacent to self-publishers whose work, sadly, should only be used as crumpled-up packing material to ship more professional books. With so many titles to choose from, it can be difficult to tell the wheat from the chaff. Is it a beautifully drawn title, or merely one with a nice cover? This series will shine the spotlight on five authors who represent the most promising emerging talents on the indie comics scene, including exclusive interviews where they discuss their process, their inspiration, and their joy in creating these works.

“WOMAN KING” by Colleen Frakes

While it reads like a fable in the Grimm tradition, “Woman King” reaches for far more complex themes of human nature than a mere morality tale. It weaves the story of a young child who is taken in by a clan of bears living in the woods. Determined to keep their land sacred and free of the taint of humans, they train the girl to despise her own people and use her as a leader in their war against mankind.

Even though the premise sounds like a hybrid of Philip Pullman and Robert E. Howard, the tone is far more nuanced, the images more gentle and haunting. This is a rather solemn meditation on nature versus nurture that just happens to be punctuated by moments of violence that leave the reader ambivalent as to which side is in the right.

“Woman King” won the Small Press Expo’s Ignatz Award for Promising New Talent, an award voted on by attendees. The recipient is given a red brick befitting its namesake, and on Sunday Frakes was displaying it proudly at her table.

Congratulations on winning the Ignatz Award! How did it feel and why was your speech so short?

COLLEEN FRAKES: Thanks! It felt...terrifying? Unexpected? Part of the tradition with the Ignatz is making the ceremony as short as possible so we can move on to drink tickets and chocolate fondue. That, and I really didn't have much to say. I'm not good with words, that's why I draw pictures.

What do you plan to do with your Ignatz Brick?

FRAKES: I haven't decided yet. I've seen my neighbor (Alec Longstreth) use his as a doorstop, and James Kochalka uses his to clean up cat puke. People keep telling me I should "put it on the mantle", but my tiny apartment doesn't have one. Right now, it's weighing down a pile of mini comics. That seems right.

What role has the Center for Cartoon Studies had in your development as a comics creator?

FRAKES: Everything about how I approached comics changed in my first year at CCS. They gave me the tools to start my career, and introduced me to a community of mini-comics artists and self-publishers that I would never have otherwise known existed.

"Woman King" deals with nature and gives the reader a real sense of being in the wilderness. Does nature figure prominently in your life or did the setting just come organically as a function of doing a book about bears?

FRAKES: I was raised in the Pacific Northwest, and spent my teen years on an island wildlife sanctuary in the Puget Sound. There was a large deer herd, coyotes, harbor seal breeding grounds, and several active bald eagle nests, but no bears. I'm much more comfortable drawing dense forests than I am buildings or cities or anything with too many right angles.

Were you inspired by fairy tales/fables in literature or comics and if so which ones?

FRAKES: Most of my comics are based in fairy tales or myths. "Woman King" wasn't inspired by any particular story, but it is based on several fairy tale "types", stories of changeling children, people who change into animals or vice-versa, and stories about feral children.

Check out Colleen Frakes HERE: http://tragicrelief.blogspot.com