Mini-comics, art zines, fanzines and other self-published items of curiosity.

image © Carol Kossack

Cartoonist David Miller has recently started up a new website devoted to archiving the photography work of the late Clay Geerdes. For those unfamiliar, Geerdes was also an author, a cartoonist and the publisher of the Comix World / Comix Wave line of newave mini-comics. He is an extremely important figure in the history of mini-comics and photography was just one of the ways he documented the underground comix scene.

The sample above is of Mad Magazine's William Gaines. Other subjects at the site include R. Crumb, Spain, S. Clay Wilson, Harvey Kurtzman, Carl Barks, Charles Schulz, Rory Hayes and so many more (with many more to come).

Check it out for yourself at: http://comixcomics.blogspot.com/

For more info on Clay Geerdes, please refer to this obituary written by longtime collaborator Par Holman.

A fraction of the hundreds of minis Geerdes published can be browsed in the Poopsheet Shop.

Crazy Men is Michael Roden's art brut / "ugly art" series that began in 1982. Roden has recently begun publishing again, much to my own enjoyment, and #10 contains work by Tom Brinkmann (who did the cover), Andy Nukes, Brad Foster, Bob "X", Jim Thompson, Mike Mitchell, Arrington De Dionyso and Roden himself. Check out the Thru Black Holes Comix website for more info.

Find more Thru Black Holes Comix in Poopsheet Shop I.
Find other work by Michael Roden, Tom Brinkmann, Andy Nukes, Brad Foster, Bob X and Jim Thompson in Poopsheet Shop II.



Super by Kevin Breslawski comes in these nifty little packages that also include stickers, buttons and other fun stuff. Lots of full-color comics and sketchbook excerpts worth checking out. You can find some sample images at the Mortekai blog.



Funketti is the latest print project from Alan Rankin (Road Scholar) and is a wordless fumetti (photo comics) experiment involving actors and his own photography. Mysterious and cosmic. E-mail Alan Rankin for more info.

Find by James McShane (Carmine and Darnell and the Sleepy Creatures, Kramers Ergot) contains a small story in a small format under a two-color silkscreened cover.

Find it in the Poopsheet Shop



Elsewhere #2 by Gary Sullivan is a collection of imagery originally seen on a walk up Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn.

Find it in the Poopsheet Shop

Stripburger is an amazing international anthology based out of Slovenia that I've been enjoying for roughly a decade. A comix anthology that's been published for over ten years is certainly a rarity and fortunately, for you and me, Stripburger continues on.

Issue 44 is the latest and contains high quality comics and art from around the globe by artists such as Willem, Koren Shadmi, Vladan Nikolic, Kaze Dolemite, Nicola Witko, Wostok, Sylvain Schnaidt and many others. Special features this issue include a special section devoted to the French collective Les Requins Marteaux and an interview with Wostok. 99.9% of the comics are in English and the text features are in Slovenian but there's an English translation booklet included.

As of this writing, this latest issue hasn't been added to their website but there are many sample pages from many previous issues to check out so please do yourself a favor and go there.

Stripburger website

T. Motley has announced a new, revamped www.tmotley.com.



Ezra Claytan Daniels and Heather Kortan have started a new company that offers what are possibly the coolest greeting cards of all time. Loaded Blanks offers cards illustrated by artists like Dash Shaw, Alec Longstreth, Dave Kiersh, Jeremy Tinder, Grant Reynolds, Tom Herpich, Aaron Renier, Vincent Stall, Nate Beaty, Becca Taylor and others. Pictured above is the front of a Hanukkah card drawn by Dave Kiersh.



Chantale Doyle, who you may remember from '90s comics Misery and Vomit and As Air to Water, has a new comic / art zine out called Cry Me a River. Above are the front and back covers (I'm not sure of the printing method, but it doesn't translate as well in the scan as in person). Check out Chantale Doyle's website for more info.

 

Steve Steiner's got a fun cartooning style and has recently released the 28th issue of his one-man anthology Nobody Can Eat 50 Eggs. Check the website for more info.

Sparkplug Comic Books has been busy this year! Here are a few of their recent releases:

Asiaddict by Mats!?
This amazing collection of illustrated travel chronicles the bizarre as well as the mundane experiences of a recent trip through Thailand, Cambodia and Laos.

Wiping off the nostalgic "Shangri-La" mystique off of contemporary monstro-"Cities" like Bangkok; it reveals a more western smearedbellished recent history...with a few "Bombs" dropped in between...

With his flair for details, Mats!? takes us on a journey, littered with landmines, through a landscape of beauty and horror, humor and disbelief.

Mine Tonight by Trevor Alixopulos

Stylish, violent, and sordid, Mine Tonight is a story of individuals with high ideals but few scruples.

Lukas is an amoral gun for hire who finds himself embroiled in the corrupt 2004 Presidential Election. Pulp noir blurs with autobiography as the lives of Lukas and Alixopulos intersect, from the heady chaos of 1990s WTO protest Seattle to the moral fog of post-9/11 New York.

Matter Summer Special by Philip Barrett

When the local wacky-backy supply runs dry and the chopped-up grilled skin-of-banana still refuses to smoke right, the world of full-time wasters Whitey White and Sean Brown becomes all hard-edged and distinct. Worse still: their sex-drives are returning! In desperation the duo respond to a small-ad cypher and soon receive the kind of imbibation capable of transporting them through an interdimensional lesion and are soon embroiled in a covert corporate struggle for monopoly of the transporting substance.

Tales to Demolish #3 by Eric Haven

Eric Haven is back with a new issue of Tales To Demolish... in eye-popping full color! Deconstructing the tawdry form of the traditional comic book, Haven builds layers of dark, dorkish humor to undermine the expectations of certain familiar genres.

Watching Days Become Years #3 by Jeff LeVine

"When I sit down at my drawing table – scratch that because I don't really have a drawing table anymore... Actually most of these comics were drawn on the fly, on the road, wherever I happened to be – sitting in a cafe, on a street corner, on the sidewalk, in a park – wherever. The goal is to capture that elusive something, possibly a little bit of the truth, through the wonderfulness of words combined with pictures i.e. comic books. At the same time the goal is to try to create something new, to find a new angle, a new approach – to challenge myself and hopefully the future reader."

Asthma by John Hankiewicz

Asthma is a collection of recent comics by John Hankiewicz. From story to story, even page to page, the book mixes a startling range of graphic and narrative styles to form a dreamlike whole.
At once perplexing and moving, disturbing and playful, Asthma explores the formal and emotional reaches of the comics medium.

Go check out the Sparkplug website for more info and Poopsheet Shop I for more Sparkplug back issues.

Are you familiar with the Danish art brut / comix zine Smittekilde? Issue 10 is actually the first I've had the pleasure of reading and it's a pretty great collection of work by artists like Mat Brinkman, Monobrain, Zeke S. Clough, Jelle Crama, Zeloot, Crippa Almquist, Sylvain Gerand, Soren Mosdal, Jonas Delaborde, editor Zven Balslev and many others.

Smittekilde is also a record label. Check out the website for more info.

[ thanks to Marc van Elburg ]

One of the highlights of any alt-comics event is the opportunity to take a look at a new crop of mini-comics. Some of them are by established artists who have regular, professional publishing outlets. They often make minis just to have something new to show at conventions, or do it as a way of publishing chapters of new, long-form works. Other minis are by young artists looking to establish themselves, and yet others do minis purely as an end unto themselves. Some are elaborate, with die-cut or silk-screened covers; while others are humble Xeroxed efforts. The minis I included in this article were those that were my favorites. There were a number of other minis that I enjoyed as well, but the minis I wanted to include here were a bit more substantive--both in terms of content and page length. Without further ado...

The preceding is the introduction to one of Rob Clough's "High-Low" columns at Sequart.com. He continues with informative reviews of a dozen of his favorite finds from this year's SPX comics festival in Maryland.

Click here to continue reading and be sure to take a look at the archived articles in the right-hand column as well for more writing about mini-comics and alternative comics.