Inkstuds Radio

I opened Kenan’s small envelope with excitement. What manner of comic goodness (or badness) would be inside? And that’s why, though Prologue, a one-page comic in booklet form that unfolds as the plot does, is available online in its entirety, I suggest getting a paper copy, so that you too can find out what comes in small packages.

Prologue’s story concerns a shy guy at a party. With each unfolding of the comic, a new thought or event occurs in what proves to be a “too good to be true” night for him. Although the whole awkward-guy-finally-meets-adored-girl set up is overused in short story alternative comics, but I wanted to see where Kenan was going to take it and in the end I wasn’t disappointed.

By getting creative with grays, Kenan sets the rollicking party scene and night streetscapes apart from the romantic drama happening in them. His main characters are in richly shadowed black and white, also highlighting the intense quality of their interaction.

Prologue is a good example of form dictating narrative flow. I’d like to see more of these Oubliettes (French for secret dungeons) and how Kenan continues to work with the folded form.

Do you remember those post-apocalyptic 80s movies where the world is all teenagers and everybody roams in packs and smokes and is bad? Hellen Jo’s world is kind of like that except everybody is thirteen years old and Asian.

We are introduced to Jam and Hank, two greasy, smoking, kids fucking around outside of a church somewhere in Californialand. When out of the church comes Jin, bored of rabid sermons on sin, long hair flowing and a disapproving remark on her lips, a strange alliance is born between her and Jam. Add Ting and Terng, foul-mouthed conjoined twins with an appetite for fighting, a potato chip beef at the bus stop and the healing power of rock n roll, and you’ve got the first issue of a kick ass fight comic all rolled up.

The story may be slight in this first issue, but the characters are so fully formed that they’re practically heaving with back story. Occasional non-instigatory dialogue bits hint at the kids’ larger worldviews in an effective way that doesn’t break the action:
“Why would they build a playground across from a bar?”
“…So all the kids in town know where they’re going to end up.”

However, all that would be nothing without Jo’s beautiful, intricate, black and white art. Her delicate lines sketch her coarse characters perfectly. There are visual cues to the character’s secrets everywhere, like when Jin meets Jam for the first time, and Jam’s mischievous face is framed by wild and beautiful fish that seem to cloud Jin’s internal controls, signaling confusion ahead. The panels explode with the surreality of teenagedom, where every sound, smell and moment is amplified to an excruciating degree. Jo creatively uses traditional panel structure to animate the fight scenes, using the rigidity to somehow highlight the physicality of her characters in action.

I fell for Jin & Jam after the second reading. Now that I’m hooked I can only hope the next issues deliver more story with the biff bang pow.

How could I resist? Though I didn’t get my copy at a convention, and therefore missed out on the free tampon, there was no way I would miss a book with such bloody themes.

Jen Vaughn is a MFA student at CCS. Her focus in Menstruation Station is less coming-of-age wah wahs and more fantasies inspired by blood and blood production. “Safety Net” is a circus love story gone down the drain and the inside of a vagina, “VIP Seats” is about sacrifices people make for the rock and roll lifestyle, and “Charms” is a funny, Buffy-style take on teenage witchery. “So Now You Are a Woman” is the only take on menarche proper, and instead of being smug and reassuring like most stories about that first bloody day, it’s a negative (and very true) rendering of the experience.

The four short stories and assorted extras in the mini show her facility depicting motion and the emotions of the characters through facial expression. The inky brushwork in concert with light, deft lines, add a lushness to some of her subjects (hair, shadows, blood fountains) and move your eye around each panel. Perhaps I’m a bit old-fashioned, but my reading experience would have been a bit better if each story had a title panel, or some other way of signaling the start of a new story.

Because Vaughn’s character design is so good, I wanted the stories to be longer and fuller. I am looking forward to the next installment.