Sean Seamus McWhinny
Northwest Press
$9.99 Digital Only Edition

Review by Joe Palmer

Do you like the idea of easy money? Student loans looming high? Does the prospect of smelling like fast food overcome your fear of mountainous debt?  Are you a masochist, feeling desperate, or simply delusional? Can you grovel on command? Are you versed in or willing to learn the art of illusion even if you may lose your own grasp on reality? Congratulations! If you answered yes to one or more of these questions then you too can rub elbows with the rich and famous as a catering whore! Better yet – spare yourself giref and humiliation by reading McWhinny’s misadventures and musings in his humorous compilation Diary of a Catering Whore.

American poet, writer and satirist Dorothy Parker wrote “Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words”. McWhinny displays ample talent in both wit and wisecracking, two requisite tools anyone who wants to make it in — or out of alive — food service must have. By the time I’d finished panel two of opening strip Űbercool I knew I’d be in sympatico with the entire book. The hip hop jelly doughnut rapper two panels later was met with a not very ladylike snort as memories of my own days as a catering whore (we were simply cater waiters though I admit to whoring for shifts) came rushing back. McWhinny’s catering experiences are a great deal more interesting than mine were and his accounts are hilarious because they’re the kind of incidents that you wouldn’t have the unfortunate luck of happening to you because it wouldn’t ever happen during the course of a mundane work day. The humor in Catering Whore darts and dashes between farce, screwball, slapstick, and satire, though if anyone lampooned herein improves their lot it would be McWhinny by virtue of having drawn and written the strips. Many of the numerous incidents I found particularly funny were catering related, though anyone should appreciate the absurdity of the situations.  I’ll never look at Olympia Dukakis without thinking of her depiction here and the Spam Ambassador piece highlighting an annual party thrown by Spam heir and gay ambassador James Hormel will color my reading of an advance copy of his “Fit to Serve” book I’ve received. The clever dialog and comedic set up throughout the collection leads me to wonder if McWhinny isn’t a David Sedaris in the making for the gay niche of indy comics.

Mchwinny’s art is crisp, open and wonderfully cartoony with the right amount of detail to create a believable stage to place his characters’ antics without visual distraction. Facial expressions are distilled to essential lines and adeptly conveyed to accentuate character traits, individual moments, and to emphasize punch lines. Kudos on making it look so easy! At first I thought I had a small quibble with an occasional rough spot with lettering until I realized the screen resolution I was reading in was 177 percent. The art and lettering are just right at 100 percent so don’t make this mistake. Bigger is not always better, boys!

You can download a preview of Diary of a Catering Whore from iTunes here, be teased a little here and purchase a copy here.

Rick Worley
Northwest Press
$19.99 136 pages

Review by Joe Palmer

“Foul mouthed, sex obsessed, and misanthropic, Rick is no ordinary cartoon rabbit” reads a line in the promo material neatly tucked in with a copy of A Waste of Time, the latest publication from Northwest Press, from the talented hands of Rick Worley.

Truth be told — and why not if Worley himself is so transparent? — the first time I started to read A Waste of Time I didn’t get more than a few pages before putting the book down. Internally I could feel lovely psychic walls being rapidly thrown up in response, if only because his “lay it out there” attitude is in direct contrast to my diplomacy-as-survival-skill ingrained in me thanks to my screwed up family. But who doesn’t have a history of familial dysfunction? But then I remembered I love Dan Savage for his ability to cut through all the crap like he does. So what was going on? Oh, yeah. The same reaction happened early on when I read Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan years and years ago. God, Spider Jerusalem was such a dick, I thought, until I realized that Jerusalem was really a deep down idealist/ romantic and all his bluster and anger was to cover the disillusionment. Well, that was my take on the character and it helped me to understand the character that way to  read and, well, not exactly enjoy, but experience the series. With that in mind I finished the rest of AWoT in one setting. Not that Worley is a Warren Ellis or Dan Savage. And  that’s okay because while he cites the auto bio comics work of R Crumb and Jeffrey Brown for thematic inspiration, Worley has his own voice. Oh dear, the die hard spandex crowd just had a collective wide-eyed stare at those names. Don’t you worry! You can enjoy this book without danger of your superhero lover card being revoked.

What set Worley upon this path of acerbic, unflinching, unapologetic, and hilarious public self-examination? Relationship hell with a man who couldn’t appreciate the simple gifts of a single rose on a pair of occasions over the $300 jeans he wore and couldn’t understand the thrill Worley experienced after receiving a handmade Jeffrey Brown zine. (Granted, you might not have either, but you learn how to give and fake it well in a relationship.)

The cast comprises Rick, a horny cartoon rabbit, and stand in for Worley, with an obsession for twinks; a tiny robot named Rickets; a fox who goes by the nickname Truckstop, and Prester, a cute bear with fundamentalist tendencies. Rick the rabbit pursues one relationship after another with a series of twinks, giving Worley the opportunity to show us a look at gay culture filtered through his sensibilities. As oversexed as Truckstop is, we only hear about it after the deed is done. If you’re wondering about the nickname, he explains he got it after writing a date on a rest stop wall and going back later to have an orgy with 15 guys. You know you’ve wanted to do something like and here’s this cute little cartoon fox on paper who’s beaten you to it! As twisted as Prester and Rickets think Truckstop is, and they do think he is, Prester is just as much if not more. Prester has a thing for man on man on man sex, well, man on robot because it’s with Rickets, but only while drinking and doing enough cocaine “to stun Lindsay Lohan.” The depiction is totally absurd as they drunkenly fumble during sex yet a little hopeful and sad to learn that Rickets is ambivalent in his concern and denial of his own feelings the next moment. And Rickets? To me he seems to be the type of person who just really wants so much to belong with someone in a relationship that it almost doesn’t matter who it is. As unaware of their own choices and feelings as each of the characters can be (isn’t that just like real life?), each of the characters can be surprisingly insightful and supportive of the others.

One of the first strips is titled “My Life in a Pie Chart”. Rick shows Rickets a pie chart that he’s drawn up to figure out how he spends his time. Not surprisingly, a crappy bookstore job takes up the majority, followed by other stuff taking up everything else except for the smallest sliver for making his art. It hit a little too close to home for me. Not that I’m going to share with you the things that would be on my pie chart. My distractions are boring as hell and anyway, this is supposed to be a review. The wordless “Marching to the City” is a charming and bittersweet look at Rickets life telling the story of his relationship with another robot from beginning to end. A scene in which Rickets tries to give his boyfriend a single flower suggests the story reflects elements of Worley’s failed relationship that led to making the strip.

Now about Worley’s use of cute little animals as stand-ins for people. If you’re like me then you pretty much despise cute little animals in pop culture. My evil heart desires to stomp on and mutilate Hello Kitty whether it’s in a store window or adorning a little girl’s back pack as she crosses my path. The only ones I’ve liked till now are Bucky Katt and Satchel. But Worley using these cutesy avatars is a smart idea. It catches the reader unprepared, a bit of cognitive dissonance, like when raunchy and unvarnished truths come spilling out of their mouths.The other reason involves an idea that Scott McCloud put forth in his “Understanding Comics”. In a nutshell, McCloud theorized that the more cartoonish a face is, the easier it is for individual readers to project themselves onto the character and into the comic. A copy of McCloud’s visualization is here , but feel free to read a wordy essay here if you’re so inclined. You’ll want to Google “neotenic” first though. Basically, cartoon animals work like cartoonish faces to let (or maybe trick?) readers into identifying with the characters on a deeper level. Whereas if Worley drew himself in the strip the stories would fully remain his with an additional layer separating the readers. That Worley draws the objects of his lustful eye as real guys and not cartoon animals strangely makes it all the more compelling.

A dozen pages feature figure drawings of partially or completely naked men that Worley had relationships with. The circumstances behind the drawings become integral parts of Rick’s quest for love or at least a damned good fuck. There’s a nice assortment of nudes in the “fine art” sense where they’re simply objects to be looked upon and others that look out to engage the viewer in their little fantasy. They’re quite beautiful, done in a realistic style, and I’d love to see more work like this too. Plus, I love that Worley was able to work in talk about Michelangelo and Caravaggio into his strip. Who am I kidding? I love that he knows Caravaggio, a painter thought to be a bit of a twink-loving bad boy back in Renaissance days when you could be thrown in prison or worse for sodomy.

You lucky Apple addicts can find an iTunes preview. You could read it online at Worley’s website but that would make you a cheap, non-supportive douche, no matter how hot and tempting to Rick Worley your twink ass may be.

Long live debaucherous twinks!

Ragnar Brynjúlfsson
$14.95
Self Published

Review by Joe Palmer

The Raft and Other Stories is a collection of five pieces spanning a decade from Icelandic cartoonist Ragnar Brynjúlfsson. “The Raft” and “Tim”, by far the longest stories, serve as bookends for three short works placed between them. These two long stories also share the theme of love between two pairs of young best friends.

In Brynjúlfsson’s opening story “The Raft”, Nathan and Devon are the best of friends. Together they’ve secretly built a raft and plan an adventure to sail to a nearby island and provisioned it with food and wine stolen from Devon’s mother. But each of the boys has a secret. For Nathan it’s that he intends to confess his love to Nathan. So he’s noticeably upset in typical teen fashion when he learns that Devon’s surprise is Janet, a girl that Devon has fallen for, or at least his hormones have. Nathan might have decided in his fit of pique to storm back home for a good long sulk, but Brynjúlfsson takes another route with Nathan jumping on board at the last moment. It’s a far better choice as what follows is a very intriguing exploration of relationships between the trio. Surprisingly Nathan warms up to Janet and accepts her on friendly terms rather than as a rival, much to her benefit at a later point when an accident occurs.

Other surprises abound as well. In two back to back seqeunces Brynjúlfsson explores the dichotomy of public and private acts. In the first one Nathan becomes justifiably confused by an unexpected act that Devon initiates in front of Janet, yet it’s one long wished for by Nathan. It just isn’t playing out the way that he dreamt it would all this time. This is followed by a scene between just the two boys in which an intimate suggestion is tentatively put forward by Nathan. Based on Devon’s prior boldness one would think it’s a logical progression, but once again something else happens. Without Janet’s presence as a sort of homo-safe buffer (she’s retreated into the makeshift cabin) means the act would be real and not some display. Nathan hides the disappointment well unlike Devon who earns a bruised ego after misinterpreting an expression on Janet’s face. Turnabout can be such fair play!

What is truly beautiful about their brief sailing adventure is how Brynjúlfsson brings Nathan out of his fantasy world inhabited only by the notion of an idealized relationship between he and Devon and to the realization and gracious acceptance that their mutual friendship with quasi-romantic undertones for the gift that it is. I quite enjoyed this story. Well, more than that. It’s my favorite of the bunch here!

Brynjúlfsson’s “The Pillow Method” has nothing to do with this “Pillow Method” as a tool for building empathy or, thank you, Jesus, anything in common with this pillow method!  Rather, it’s a tongue in cheek approach for people facing the dilemma of making a difficult choice. Don’t try this at home, folks! In this case, young Rod can’t decide if he’s gay, bi, straight, or any number of other possibilities swimming around his head. Thankfully Rod comes to a realization before suffering the consequences.

The consequences of sacrificing oneself in a desperate situation is explored in the short story “Kamikaze”. Teenaged Nanahara knows his time is nearly up as the Japanese Imperial Army conscripts teen boys to fight in the waning days of World War II. Thanks to the unrequited love of another boy (and friend) who volunteers, Nanahara makes good on his escape. This five paged story is so packed full of emotion and elegantly told that I found myself wanting to know more about this pair of boys living in a small village. How did the younger, nameless boy fall in love with Nanahara? Did Nanahara have any idea the other boy loved him? Was he able to make it to the north as he planned? Such unanswered questions aren’t necessarily a liability in storytelling. Instead I see them as an asset, much like a film whose ending leaves the viewer left pondering and perhaps deciding the fate of its main characters on their own. Since my first reading I’ve thought about what life would have been like before this fateful day. It certainly is welcome to have a writer touch on homosexuality in other cultures, especially Japan in this instance as I’ve long been interested how homosexual relationships fit into its society before and after the Meiji Restoration during the latter half of the 19th century as the nation began to find its place in a post-isolationist world. I’ve no idea where this story falls chronologically amongst his other work, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this story was pivotal in Brynjúlfsson’s evolution.

Of all the stories only one did not succeed for me. This was one of the short pieces, “Haul”, a surreal recounting of a father trying to save his family who are clinging to life from a rope he’s thrown over the mountain edge. It may well be my differences in senses of irony and humor at work here.

A beautiful and romantic moonlit sequence revealing young Tim playfully trying to catch best friend Luke’s attention opens the self-titled “Tim” as the closing story. Alas, it’s only a dream in lovelorn Tim’s mind. In real life Tim and Luke are indeed best friends who often go on tagging adventures together. After one of these exploits that Tim works up the courage to tell Luke he’s gay which leads to both expected and unexpected reactions from Luke. Quite a nice touch here as it all seems very natural on both boys’ parts. There’s no time for either to really process the changes as the boys set off by train to meet Tim’s errant father who seems most comfortable with sailing and drinking rather than being a family man tied to the land. Brynjúlfsson makes Tim more fully rounded by having him love and miss his father and at the same time be realistic about his father’s alcoholism. Compare this to his mother who would prefer Tim have nothing to do with the man. Boys will be boys. So they devise a plan for their biggest tagging enterprise to date and then put it into action when Tim’s dad passes out drunk. Tension runs high when the boys are nearly caught and arrested by local police; the adrenaline rush lifting their spirits all the way back to Tim’s father’s boat at the docks. But is it simply adrenaline and teenaged hormone levels serving as pretext for Luke’s fumbling and playful wrestling around or is it the beginnings of mutual interest? Perhaps the answer is the latter, at least I want to believe so. Brynjúlfsson appropriately ends the story as it began, with an intimate dream sequence of the boys. Only this time they are in each other’s arms while it gently rains.

Art wise there are two different styles at work here. One makes use of thick line work and stylized heads and likely influenced by his animation work, which is alluded to on the back cover. The other method has thinner line work with rounded faces though he’s enjoying some individual artistic mannerisms here and there, as with eyes for example. Not in a Cubist Picasso sense, mind, because it all melds together very nicely.

The Raft & Other Stories has some touching stories that captured my attention and should most appeal to the American comics reader with indy sensibilities.

Visit Ragnar’s website, Queer Tales. Copies of the book can be purchased on Create Space  or on Amazon.

My friend François has also reviewed this book and given what may or may not be a different take. I make it a practice not to read his reviews of a book while I write mine.