New in the Store: You Don't Get There From Here #26 and In Situ #2!

We've got two awesome new comics in the shop this week! First up, the long-awaited next installment in Carrie McNinch's bittersweet zine series, You Don't Get There From Here #26. In this issue, Carrie goes to Oaxaca to celebrate Dia de los Muertos, sightsee, and spend time with friends. When she gets home, she finds that the cold has set in, the city is changing, and her father's mind is deteriorating even further. As always, she brings to this issue an incredible playlist of songs and some cute scenes of her cats.

We also have the second issue of Montreal-based cartoonist Sophie Yanow's comic, In Situ. A diary told in sketchy, half-glimpsed moments, this comic follows Yanow as she couch-surfs in California, Canada, and New York as she figures out her life and waxes political about the tuition crisis. Her art is vague, even rushed, but strangely elegant and poetic. She is definitely an cartoonist to keep an eye on!

In Situ gives the readers faded snapshots, half-glimpsed moments of Yanow's life couch-surfing in Canada and California, spending time with friends and lovers, and trying to figure out what she's doing with her life. Vague but strikingly elegant, this beautifully-designed and put-together comic is worth multiple reads. - See more at: http://sparkplugcomicbooks.com/shop/distro-books/in-situ-2/#sthash.kIke4EDJ.dpufA

In Situ gives the readers faded snapshots, half-glimpsed moments of Yanow's life couch-surfing in Canada and California, spending time with friends and lovers, and trying to figure out what she's doing with her life. Vague but strikingly elegant, this beautifully-designed and put-together comic is worth multiple reads. - See more at: http://sparkplugcomicbooks.com/shop/distro-books/in-situ-2/#sthash.kIke4EDJ.dpuf

Carrie returns to Oaxaca to celebrate Dia de los Muertos, sightsee, and visit old friends. When she returns to California, the days are shorter, the roads have changed, and she has to deal with her father's continuing descent into Alzheimer's. - See more at: http://sparkplugcomicbooks.com/shop/distro-books/you-dont-get-there-from-here-26/#sthash.c7Ir7TyD.dpuf

Carrie returns to Oaxaca to celebrate Dia de los Muertos, sightsee, and visit old friends. When she returns to California, the days are shorter, the roads have changed, and she has to deal with her father's continuing descent into Alzheimer's. - See more at: http://sparkplugcomicbooks.com/shop/distro-books/you-dont-get-there-from-here-26/#sthash.c7Ir7TyD.dpuf

Sparkplug Highlights: Take a Picture, by Asher Z. Craw

No discussion of work from local artists and writers can possibly be considered complete without including the Craws, and Asher's Take a Picture is a lovely and thoughtful addition to Portland's creative body. The first story included, "Unknown: Life & Death; Paris & Portland; 19th & 21st Centuries," is a reflection on the enduringly mysterious and alluring L'Inconnue de la Seine. One version of the story says that in the late 1880's, a young woman, a suicide, washed up on the shores of the Seine. Somehow, miraculously, her lips were curved into a smile. Her visage was so lovely, so placid and beatific, that a pathologist at the morgue was inspired to make a plaster cast of her face -- a death mask. People were so taken with her face that reproductions of her death mask became incredibly popular: politicians, artists, writers, and the bourgeois all had her death mask on their walls. Young women even fashioned their hair and makeup after her. Asher discusses the story and ponders the meaning of this poignant, macabre fascination with an unknown dead girl while utilizing his signature detailed cross-hatching and skillful variation of line weights to draw the reader in visually.

The second story contained in this little book is called "The Ladder Is Always There". This is an adaptation of Adrienne Rich's "Diving Into the Wreck," a incredible poem about self-discovery, the power of myth and stories, gender roles, journey and transformation. Asher's illustrations wonderfully bring the poem to life, faithfully reproducing and playing with photographs from Jacques-Yves Cousteau's The Silent World.

Take a Picture is a dreamy rumination on death, the creative process, and identity, and it is sure to inspire and provoke you.

 

Sparkplug Highlights: The Golem of Gabirol, by Olga Volozova

Olga Volozova's portrait of the life of the late Solomon Ibn Gabirol mixes ancient Jewish lore with her unique, fluid style of storytelling in The Golem of Gabirol. Originally told by Ibn Yahya in "Shalshelet ha-Kabbalah," legend has it that a rival of Gabirol's, a jealous Muslim poet, murdered him and buried his body beneath a fig tree. When the tree bore an abundance of extraordinarily sweet figs, a search for the missing Gabirol was instigated, and his remains were found in the roots of the tree. The murder paid for his crime with his life.

It is also said that Gabirol created a rare female golem, a creature made of inanimate matter and brought to life by magic, to serve as his companion; when the authorities found out, they were outraged (some say because of the potentially romantic relationship between Gabirol and his golem), and so to save himself from brutal punishment, Gabirol withdrew his magic and turned his golem back into a pile of wood.

Volozova has woven these two fascinating, poignant stories together into an achingly beautiful story of unrequited love, jealousy, magic, and justice. Her watercolors, complex detail work, and her fairy tale-style pacing all work to create a thoughtful and vivid retelling of an incredible fable that remains powerful to this day.

 

 

 

 

 



New in the Store: Vortex #4!

Welcome to the psychedelic space fantasy cosmos of the Hyperverse, a realm filled with immensely powerful beings who battle over worlds with strange geologies and hoard advanced technologies left by ancient starfarers. The Vortex are shape-shifting berserkers created and enslaved by the Empire of Tolx. In Vortex #2, the Miizzzard entered the shred Vortex dreamworld to destroy the device by which the Empire controls the Vortex. In Vortex #3, the Miizzzard battled his way to the control device and stepped inside...

In this amazing conclusion to the Vortex series, the Miizzzard enters into a deadly battle in order to destroy the Empire's Vortex-controlling device...but does he succeed? Get this visually stunning final issue to finish Cardini's incredible series and find out!

Sparkplug Highlights: Watching Days Become Years #1, by Jeff LeVine

Be warned: the first issue of Watching Days Become Years will sneak up on you, make you feel like you're understood and in good company, and then, at the last possible minute, punch you right in the gut.

Knowing that, do you still want to read it? You should.

Jeff LeVine writes about his life (or a life, in any case), which in itself isn't anything groundbreaking. What makes him stand out in a sea of autobio comics is the way his vignettes -- most often depicting quiet, single moments -- speak to the broad human experience. The feelings he expresses, the small joys and dull pains of everyday life, are nothing I haven't felt a hundred times before, which makes them resonate that much more strongly. His slow spiral into depression and substance abuse hits harder because we understand exactly how he got there -- and maybe we've even been there ourselves. Watching Days Become Years is Jeff's story, but it's a story that belongs to a lot of other people, too. When do we realize that the minutes and hours gradually slipping by are our lives? How do we reconcile the way we spend our time with the people we want to be?

Honestly, though, Jeff's art is reason enough to read this comic. A skillful blend of chunky lines and precise crosshatching create beautifully textured scenes that convey the emotional weight contained in the mundane. His settings and cityscapes are incredibly realistic but never distracting or overly busy, as if he has distilled the most essential elements from a photograph. Occasionally, there will be looser panels or whole pages done in grayscale washes, and these serve to show the audiences flashes of the dark, uncomfortable emotions that have been roiling just beneath the surface the entire time.

Watching Days Become Years is an incredible addition to anyone's comic collection. And, when you're left at the end of issue one with your mouth agape and your brow furrowed, take solace in the fact that there's another issue right behind it.

 

 

 

Sparkplug Highlights: Neptune, by Aron Nels Steinke

Aron Nels Steinke possesses a rare talent: he has the ability to create stories that will appeal to children and adults in equal measure. This talent is exercised magnificently in his first graphic novel, Neptune. Co-published by Sparkplug Books and Tugboat Press, Neptune is a quirky, adorable tale about a precocious young girl named Erika, her brother, Patrick, and their dog, Neptune. The story begins with Erika starting at a new school and having to tell her classmates who she is and where she comes from. She decides to tell the story of how she was expelled from her last school, and the reader is instantly swept up in her strange and compelling yarn. Everything revolves around the mysterious Neptune, who appears in the kids' home one morning and quickly proves himself to be a loyal and faithful friend. After following the siblings to school, though, an incident occurs with the strict administration and a terrible storm floods the town, forcing the trio to find their way home alone. The bizarre series of events leads to their expulsion and subsequent move to Oregon, and everything seems like it will be alright...but what happens when Erika brings Neptune in to meet her new class? Stienke, surely drawing on his own experience teaching young children, perfectly imitates the way children tell stories: with the utmost conviction and belief in what they are saying, even if their version of the events seems fantastical or impossible.

Steinke's art also successfully straddles the line between children's and adult comics. His rounded shapes and simple characters ensure an easily understandable visual story, but his intricate textures, repeated patterns, and inventive panel layouts and splash pages will appeal to more sophisticated artistic eyes. Neptune is a delightful little book that will make you fondly remember the stories you told as a child; it will also make you want to go hug a big, friendly dog.