|
Post by arecomicsevengood on Jan 29, 2023 18:43:05 GMT
Not necessarily MOST underrated but John Kerschbaum is a really good artist and a funny writer who is also hit and miss enough that it probably led me to underrate him. I never read his Petey And Pussy books that Fantagraphics did, but I should maybe try to track them down. (I also think I should track down Ted Stearn's Fuzz And Pluck books - another "funny animal" comic I've skipped from an alt-comics cartoonist whose work I basically do like when I engage with it.) I really liked his comic in the Project: Superior anthology, and the Cartoon Boy strips he had available online. Years ago I bought the third issue of his Wiggly Reader series and was sorta let down by it but I just am today reading the first two issues and I like them a lot more.
|
|
|
Post by cartoonysam on Jan 31, 2023 15:31:17 GMT
From the zine scene I'd say Eunsoo Jeong (Koreangry). She's up to 10 issues now (I think??). I love the chaotic energy of her puppet illustrations and how her work spans comedy, diary, and politics. View AttachmentI follow her comics on social media and met her during MoCCa Fest last year where she was on a panel with editorial cartoonists Mattie Lubchansky and Eli Valley. Awesome person who I'd be happy to see at another convention!
|
|
|
Post by manoopuesta on Feb 4, 2023 16:51:33 GMT
This might be a false idea I got, but I feel Kate Beaton is kind of underrated within the alternative comics circles even if she is published in Drawn & Quarterly. Mostly because she made it big and her comics are of the conventional kind (in comparison to for example Simon Hanselmann who has had a lot of success but of course his comics are very transgressive). She has even transcended the humor genre slot in which she was categorized in after Ducks, which is one of the best comics of 2022 (in my opinion)
Another one that I feel underrated is Steven Weissman, I don't know if underrated by the general comics audience but definitely he was overlooked/underrated by me. I have seen his comics around for many years but never paid too much attention. Then I finally discovered him in Kramers Ergot #9; he is one of a kind. I follow his insta account and his comics and artwork there are a delight to see (I especially enjoy when he posts his illustrations for Seattle's The Stranger).
|
|
|
Post by owaddled on Feb 7, 2023 23:10:00 GMT
Anya Davidson. I think her vision is super precise and requires your full attention. I don’t think we have a sort of critical landmark that contextualizes what she’s doing yet. If you have time, would you be willing to expand on this? Anya Davidson is an artist I've tried to appreciate a few times, and I'm super open to the idea that I'm missing something so I'd like to hear about what other people find exceptional in her work. I just re-read Barbarian B***** from Kramers Ergot 8 and I can definitely see the need to pay full attention on that one. But Hypatia's Last Hours in Kramers 9 is definitely good, it also felt fairly straightforward.
|
|
|
Post by arecomicsevengood on Feb 7, 2023 23:52:18 GMT
Anya Davidson. I think her vision is super precise and requires your full attention. I don’t think we have a sort of critical landmark that contextualizes what she’s doing yet. If you have time, would you be willing to expand on this? Anya Davidson is an artist I've tried to appreciate a few times, and I'm super open to the idea that I'm missing something so I'd like to hear about what other people find exceptional in her work. I just re-read Barbarian B***** from Kramers Ergot 8 and I can definitely see the need to pay full attention on that one. But Hypatia's Last Hours in Kramers 9 is definitely good, it also felt fairly straightforward. As someone who fully thinks Anya rules and is the coolest, I'll take a stab at this: She's underrated because people don't necessarily get how to write comics well. Davidson is a great character writer, both in terms of dialogue that has a certain poetic economy or sense of humor -- I think of the line "Never trust a man who washes and peels his carrots!" all the time, that's from her story in the anthology Off The Press. There's also lots of great examples in Band For Life, where all of the characters are cool and funny, true to life within the milieu they represent, but they're also totally distinct and able to have conflict with each other in believable ways. I'm not sure how many cartoonists are interested in making works filled with varied characters that are all so well-realized, in a way that makes them both totally "cartoon characters" but also real people. In her book Lovers In The Garden you can see the same sort of approach, filled with digressions to fill in characters' back-stories, there's just this deep empathy for different types of people and understanding of the struggle it takes to be a person. And it can flit in and out of genre without becoming mere pastiche, there's nothing cheap about it. And that earlier stuff that's more collage style or obliquely approaching its subject matter by cutting between different stories or approaches to prose, that stuff is so unique to her but also really demonstrates her skill set in terms of just making single panels that work on their own because they're essentially out-of-context by design. (I say all this while actually being vaguely worried about her work getting watered-down as it gets put into more approachable vessels. She's done some nonfiction reportage comics, and I can sense in them her editors taking her curiosity about the world and flattening out the depth in the name of concision. I know she's doing a YA graphic novel with a big publisher which looks pretty unappealing to me based on the bits of it she puts up on Instagram, despite the fact that her book School Spirits was about high-schoolers and was the best comic of the year it came out.)
|
|
|
Post by owaddled on Feb 8, 2023 1:10:48 GMT
Thanks for the thoughtful reply! I just breezed through Lovers in the Garden after my post. I hadn't even finished it before...but you're right she's a superb writer. The amount of backstory, personality and interpersonal connections she's able to give at least 8 characters in such a short page count is very impressive and she keeps the plot moving forward at the same time. And there's no laziness in painting certain characters as good or evil, everyone has moments of selfishness and kindness.
Where I feel like I'm missing something are her visual choices. For instance in Band for Life I remember thinking, "why are the characters monsters? She's not doing much with it." If I'm not mistaken, I saw an interview where she expressed the same question.
Lovers in the Garden has some surrealist color choices, but they are paired with a story that's told in a pretty straight forward manner. If you don't mind, how do you feel the art and story work together?
I feel like the textures give a warmth to the depictions of the characters. And I do suppose that a touch of surrealism may be the point. To give the narrative a fable like feeling to indicate that it's more than just the surface level story.
|
|
|
Post by katieskelly on Feb 8, 2023 1:29:58 GMT
|
|
|
Post by BubblesZine on Feb 9, 2023 13:05:13 GMT
Mary Fleener. Her cubistic style is unlike anyone in comics, seems incredibly high-effort yet extremely readable & not at all show-offy. Love her autobio stuff, Billie the Bee was also great and it seems like it got zero respect or accolades. I think she's currently working on a book about her time in art school. Billie The Bee completely missed me, ordering one now. I got my Billie The Bee and read it the other day (my cheap used copy came signed too, ha). It was a cute comic story wise, but the art was definitely next level. I definitely enjoyed the parallels she made with bee-life and human life, not to mention I learned quite a bit about bees. But the pages where she like drew songs or music, that was truly next level cartooning. Such a good style.
|
|
|
Post by manoopuesta on Feb 9, 2023 21:11:46 GMT
Billie The Bee completely missed me, ordering one now. I got my Billie The Bee and read it the other day (my cheap used copy came signed too, ha). It was a cute comic story wise, but the art was definitely next level. I definitely enjoyed the parallels she made with bee-life and human life, not to mention I learned quite a bit about bees. But the pages where she like drew songs or music, that was truly next level cartooning. Such a good style. I always associate Fleener's Billie The Bee with Kurtzman's The Grasshopper and the Ant, since they were next to each other for many years on a shelf at my LCS. Always wondered about them, if I should get them. Billie The Bee is now gone (I regret I didn't buy it!) but The Grasshopper is still there (at least last time visited). Anyone have read it? How is it?
|
|