Cherry Bomb Comics

Skim
Mariko Tamaki & Jillian Tamaki
Kiss Machine: 2006

Kim Takota, or "Skim" as she's known at school is a teen-goth with an
interest in wicca. She's angry, she's depressed, she thinks she's fat.
But before you dismiss this as a teen "issues" comic, you should google
the author Mariko Tamaki first...Ok, so now that you've done that we
can talk about the comic. (Yep, that was my lazy way of avoiding having
to explain about her)

Skim was put out by Kiss Machine, a magazine of arts, culture
and politics edited by Emily Pohl-Weary. The art is dreamy and wind
swept, not overly stylised but suggesting rather that Skim's world is
happening around her, but she is not quite engaged in it.

Skim is cynical. She goes along to a meeting of witches with her best
friend's older sister hoping to find some like minded people, only to
be weirded out by the burned out hippie-esque nature of what turns out
to be more of an AA meeting than a black mass. She knows she's
different, and like all teen girls in coming of age comix, she's
growing apart from her best friend. It's at this confused and dark
point in her life that her unconventional female English teacher
surfaces in her conciousness. The teacher is interested in Skim and the
two start hanging out at lunch time. While the jocks and the cool girls
are having their crises, her parents have their passive aggressive
arguments, and her best friend grumpily puts her down for being weird,
Kim and the English teacher start exploring their unconventional
relationship...

MS 15/09/06

Papercutter #2 featuring Becca Taylor, Paul Tobin, Colleen Coover & Liz Prince
Tugboat Press: 2006

Papercutter is a quarterly publication put out by Tugboat Press with
the intention of showcasing the talents of "emerging and underexposed
comic artists from every corner of the cartooning world"
(www.tugboatpress.com).

The cover is from the longest comic in the anthology, "Cherchez la
Femme" by Becca Taylor. It's great! Like all the best short stories, it
manages to convey so much with only a few pages. The comic depicts the
parallel stories of 2 women who are recognisable to the reader as
Aileen Wuornos and Charlize Theron, but the author uses different
names. Yay! Pop Culture!

But Chercez la Femme isn't just a parody of how Hollywood
likes nothing better than ripping off the life of a troubled person.
Becca's use of fractured conversations from movie-goers, movie critics,
the police, lawyers and judges involved with Aileen's case, and of
course the women themselves (often quotes taken from news articles etc)
builds up a nuanced portrait of society's ambivalence and biases over
who and what a woman can be, and what authenticates her story.

The page I love the most is obviously the result of the
author typing "Aileen Wuornos" into Google - she has illustrated a
Google-esque page with all the images of Aileen that appeared for her.
If you Google the name yourself, you will come up with something
similar. This comic blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy
and parody and critique.

The other comics in this anthology are "Criminal Intent", which is a
collaboration between Colleen Coover and Paul Tobin about a beautiful
Cat Burglar who wins the heart of everyone she robs, and "Ghost
Buddies" by Liz Prince which is a short comic about 2 people who go to
a gig dressed as ghosts, it's got that cute, tongue-in-cheek kind of
humour, kinda reminded me of Cat and Girl?
MS 02/05/06

True Lives 3: The Dragorous World of Glam!!
Claire Harris
Frail Sister Comics: 2005

Alas! With misty eyes I read the final (and very last) instalment of Claire Harris' fabulous True Lives series...

The three issues in this series of full-colour photo-comics each
faithfully relate the emergence of an unassuming character's
extraordinary alter-ego. True Lives #1 releases Road Fox: beware the
wrath of the lady bicyclist! True Lives #2 reveals the intimate 'high
school pain and dreams of fame' of one trapped Gore lass turned
belle-of-the-ball.

True Lives #3 moves up a notch by telling the story of the birth of
Lilith, the inner drag-queen of Gareth Farr, famous Aotearoan composer
and percussionist. From humble beginnings as a 10-year-old boy in love
with a blue dress, and through many trials and tribulations, Lilith at
last poses picture-perfect on glossy pages, larger-than-life,
lip-synching her heart away.

The slickness of the comic and the gorgeous photographs be-lie the
difficulties and mishaps during production which Claire Harris confides
with the reader in her end-notes. At least it turned out all right in
the end!

All the True Lives stories are told with much humour, wit and
tenderness, and include a wee selection of amusing letters to (and
responses from) the author in the back of each comic.
TG 28/10/05

Oliver
Jennifer Daydreamer
Top Shelf Productions: 2003

I once got one of my stories sent back to me from a publisher with the note 'your dreams may be of interest
to you, but nobody else wants to read about them'. I found this a little bit crushing at the time but hey,
what do they know? I still think that the exploration of dream-life is one of the most fascinating things to
write, read and draw about. Too often dreams are cast off from “rational” human experience and seen in simplistic
Freudian terms as unconscious animal drives. However, there is a growing culture in graphic novels -
where real and surreal often intersect - of giving weight to dream material, such as in the disparate work of Julie Doucet,
Neil Gaiman and Jennifer Daydreamer.

I first read Jennifer Daydreamer: Oliver one evening when I was stoned and it was a good way in, though
not essential(!). The book feels soft and deep and lonely, and is filled with a cast of characters who are
maladjusted yet highly lovable. Oliver is a little devil and a fallen dream “He opened his eyes to find the world in a
peculiar way... What was inside his head was now on the outside. He meets an angel and traverses landscapes
and reaches a tented circus, which seems to be the apex where all the characters emanate from or are attracted to.
A second book - Jennifer Daydreamer: Anna and Eva (published in 2004) - develops Circus Zazel and begins to name more
aspects of the ethereal world of Oliver .
The drawing style manages stillness and dynamism all at once and the spaces are huge whilst belonging
inside the encephalon of characters who are tiny and delicate. Over everything a dream-like quality prevails -
a sense of loss and unease, a sense of discovery and fate, and a sense of the theatrically absurd.
TG 17/9/04

Stiro #1 by Mardou and Fortenski
2003

Discovering Stiro was one of those serendipitous
events that make your day just seem a whole lot better. Chosen
especially for Cherry Bomb Comics by Debra Boyask, a NZ comic book
laydee who lives in the UK at the moment, Stiro is a 3 issue comic drawn by Mardou (girl) and written by Fortenski (boy).

And it is hilarious. I am one of those self-conscious people who never
laughs out loud while reading, but - (it's a breakthrough) - I did with
Stiro !!
The writing style is very laid back, cool to the point of being
pretentious - but it knows it, and that's the point, so it comes full
circle back to cool again. It makes you wanna don your stripy sweater
and your beret and stand on street corners and shoot spud guns at
passing tourists....just like....

...Marie Antoinette...the first character we meet in Stiro #1.
When Marie Antoinette is not taking out tourists, she is charming every
man she meets, forcing them to Dance! Dance! Dance! for her. The comic
is made up of lots of small, unrelated stories set in mostly England
and France. They take a dead pan look at some of the things that make
up our society: self-help books, the intrinsic coolness of smoking,
being a punk rock absent father, psychics and talking bottles of
whiskey (you know, all of those things that make up our daily life),
and they even throw in a board game "Friday Night" that would put the
Game of Life to shame. What more could you ask for really?
Mardou also does a comic called Manhole , which she writes and illustrates. Maybe I'll review that next time.
MS 15/8/04