Meanwhile, at Comics Alliance...

This year is First Second's tenth anniversary, and to note the occasion I interviewed a handful of First Second's finest about their time with the publisher for Comics Alliance.

If for some strange reason you read my blog but don't read Comics Alliance, and thus missed them, here are links to the interviews: Cartoonist Sara Varon (author of one of my all-time favorite comics Robot Dreams, a portion of the cover of which is above), Olympians cartoonist George O'Connor, one-third of the Adventures In Cartooning series' creative team James Sturm and, finally, First Second Senior Editor Calista Brill.

This is my least favorite part of Odd Duck:

In the first chapter of prose writer Cecil Castellucci and cartoonist Sara Varon's collaboration, we are treated to the above image of the protagonist, Theodora, at the grocery store. This page is pretty representative of one of Odd Duck's chief pleasures, namely the amount of details that Varon works into the pages. One could argue about her art style, but I think it's safe to say it lies closer to the more minimal, more abstracted end of the cartooning spectrum, but the simplicity of her figures, character design, expressions and posing belies just how richly detailed the panels all are.

In the world of Odd Duck, the ducks may be anthropomorphic, but they are still ducks; they're not like the Disney ducks, which are basically human beings who happen to appear in the basic form of anthropomorphic duck. And so when Theodora goes shopping, its not for simple, blank box shapes, but for actual products with actual brands (the ducks all eat duck pellets).

Almost every location in the book is full of such details. The book's on Theodora's bookshelf have titles on the spines, her bed spread and pillows have a matching design, the books she checks out from the library have cover images as well as titles, and, in a scene where Theodora is baking, we see the carefully designed and rendered ingredients in familiar packaging: The sugar resembles that of Domino-brand sugar, with it's white, blue and yellow box, and the egg replacer (of course a duck would use egg replacer instead of actual eggs; what kind of monstrous duck would bake a cake using eggs?) comes from a box featuring the colors and the basic design of Ener-G brand egg replacer.

It's an all-around great book, sharing in common with many of Varon's own books a focus on friendships (that is easily applicable to other, more serious sorts of relationships, if one wishes to read them as such), an that peculiar, semi-elegiac, semi-comedic tone of her best books. Where it perhaps differs is in its length and pacing; not quite a traditional graphic novel in format, Odd Duck is more like a picture book the length of a short chapter book, if that makes sense.

Anyway, my least favorite part? That Varon drew the duck version of Quaker Oats on the page above, and did not label them "Quacker Oats."

I suppose there are several reasons for this, including the fact that Varon and/or Castellucci both have more sophisticated senses of humor than I, or that such a joke has been made elsewhere before, but I was a little surprised to see the Quaker oats of this duck world simply labeled "Oats."

That is my least favorite part of Odd Duck. I love every other part of it.

Recent children's books that may (or may not) be of interest

Legendary cartoonist Jules Feiffer has provided the illustrations for a new children’s picture book, which he made with his daughter and occasional collaborator Kate Feiffer. It’s called Which Puppy? (Simon and Schuster), and deals with President Barack Obama’s election night promise to his girls that he would get them a puppy.

You may have heard of it already. A couple of weeks ago, USA Today gave it a front page write-up along with another kids book on the subject, First Dog, and Stephen Colbert mentioned it on his show when unveiling his own children’s book, You Spent 10 Trillion Dollars in a Day Just Buy a Goddam Dog Already.

Both Feiffers have made children’s books before, both together and apart. I scooped up as many as I could find from my library the other day after reading this one, and the one that seems most relevant is probably Henry, The Dog with No Tail, which, in addition to being written by Kate and illustrated by Jules, also dealt with dogs.

Which Puppy? begins on election night, with a view of Obama from behind, making his announcement:
From there it follows the news from the animals’ perspective. It gets passed on from animal to animal until “it seemed like everyone wanted to be that puppy.”

And not just puppies and dogs. A guinea pig named Sam wants in on the action, a turtle named Marple plans to take up barking lessons, a kitten named Keisha started pretending to be a puppy, and so on.

Eventually, “thousands of puppies, hundreds of reporters, and more kittens, skunks, turtles, raccoons, guinea pigs and rabbits than can be counted on two hands gathered together.” Wait, that’s only ten. That’s not that many.

Well, they gather together and argue about various methods of determining which will be the Obamas’ new puppy, and after some contests and a drawing, a big fat dog says that “ancient custom dictates that a true presidential puppy must have two rings around one paw, a heart on its face, an eye that winks, and a tail that tells time.”

No one animal fits that criteria, but they found one puppy with the rings, another with the wink and face-heart, and Sam the guinea pig’s tail could tell time. So the trio set off for the white house, only to discover that the Obamas already had a puppy:
(Not pictured: The actual puppy, as apparently Feiffer was drawing long before it was actually announced)

Bummed out, they turn to leave, but “the two girls who had just moved into the White House,” visible only from the knees down, ask them to come back and play. “We have a puppy who needs new friends.”

As a story, I found it rather meandering and uninteresting, but then, it’s recommended for kids ages four to eight, and I’m actually four times eight-years-old. The main reason I looked into the book was to see the ender Feiffer’s work.

And there’s plenty of it here. Using brush, ink and watercolor markers, he designs and draws dozens of loosely-assembled, somewhat scribbly dogs that look like they could be wiped off the page with a god scrubbing, they’re so delicately outlined and wet with watercolors-looking.

Human figures are kept to a minimum—those are the two instances in which he draws Obama himself above—and the focus remains on the dogs and other animals throughout.

I’m hesitant to recommend it, but it’s definitely worth a look from Feiffer fans.


In other recently released children’s book news, a couple of books I’ve talked about before here have gotten sequels. Melanie Watt’s Scaredy Squirrel returns in Scaredy Squirrel at Night (Kids Can Press), which fits snugly into the highly repetitive but still somehow kind of enjoyable formula of the first thiree.

As you’ll recall, Scaredy is a squirrel that seems to suffer from a variety of crippling mental illnesses, particularly agoraphobia and other anxiety-related disorders. In the course of each book, he conquers his phobia and makes a small step toward recovery. Only to have a different behavioral problem in the next book. Poor Scaredy!

This time, I’m unable to pinpoint the exact disorder, but it’s another fear/anxiety-based one:

Scaredy Squirrel never sleeps. He'd rather stay awake than risk having a bad dream in the middle of the night.

There’s a list of a few of the creatures he’s afraid might appear in a bad dream, and they are all extremely cute:
Although the fairies and unicorn look a little rough; I’m kinda scared of those spindly-armed, buck-toothed, ball-headed fairies Watt draws too.

There are, of course, side effects to Scaredy’s sleepless nights, including energy loss, moodiness and hallucinations. Once again, Scaredy suffers from a real-life problems, and it is ruining his day-to-day life. God these books are sad.

One night Scaredy, a Libra, sees in his horoscope that, “At midnight all your dreams will come true.” Fearing this means ghosts, vampire bats and dragons will team up with fairies and unicorns to come get him, Scaredy plans to face them a series of strange tools and plans (distracting the fairies with cupcakes, afan to blow away ghosts, molasses to slow down the unicorn, et cetera).

Instead of the various monsters, however, Scaredy is visited by a bunch of raccoons and other nocturnal creatures, including some super-cute bugs which I just now noticed and which I wish I would have scanned, on account of their cuteness.

Relying on his usual defense mechanism, Scaredy plays dead, and laying down with his eyes closed while exhausted, he falls asleep, making it through the night without suffering a bad dream an learning sleeping all night is awesome.

If you’ve read one of these books, if you read them all, but this one does have some better, cuter character designs then some of the previous ones, plus a cover with a glow-in-the-dark element that’s pretty cool. See Scaredy’s tooth smile on the cover up there? It glows.


Finally, Sara Varon of Robot Dreams fame just released Chicken and Cat Clean Up (Scholastic), the sequel to her excellent graphic novel-that-looks-like-and-was-sold-as-a-children’s-picture-book book Chicken and Cat.

I wrote a bit about Chicken and Cat Clean Up over at Blog@ already (you can read my review of it here), so I won’t repeat all of that here.

All I wanted to add was how weird Varon’s New York City is, particularly in the way it’s peopled with anthropomorphic animals, humans and normal animals, something that often takes me a little getting used to (It really freaked me out when I first started seeing Dragon Ball cartoons, for example, and I still haven’t come to terms with the fact that Goofy is Mickey Mouse’s friend while Pluto is his pet…and that Pluto is to Mickey as dogs are to humans in terms of size proportions).

It sits fine with me personally, but I’m not sure I could have dealt with it as a little kid.

Check it out. Here’s Cat waking up in bed, with what I assume is a teddy bear:
That is a teddy bear, right? A toy stuffed animal? And not just, like, a dead baby bear cub? Because that would be horrible. (I like the cover of the book Cat’s reading; is that Moby Dick, do you think?)

Once Cat joins Chicken in the kitchen for a breakfast of orange juice, doughnuts and coffee, Cat looks in the paper for a pet to buy:
A house cat wants to buy a pet? A pet with a pet?! The sheep looks like it may also be anthropomorphicized like Cat, but the fish and horse are to Cat as hey would be to a human being. Also, a cat with a fish for a pet? Wouldn't the cat just eat the fish?

This is the part that really bugged me:

Ha ha! Bugged! It's funny because look, there is a lady bug right there! Note that the bug and the mouse are roughly the same size. Is it a tiny mouse or a gigantic lady bug? It's weird and gross is what it is.

Cat catches the mouse, and turns him over to the police, as he's wanted for being a thief and a liar:
Lying is a crime in New York now? Wow, they really did crack down on crime! Now, note the fact that the mouse is an intelligent, clothes-wearing, anthropomorphic mouse, but he's nowhere near the size of Cat. In fact, he is to Cat as a regular mouse would be to a regular cat. But, fucking things up even further, there's a human being in the police station, and the person is not significantly larger than Cat or Chicken.

Finally, with the reward Cat received for catching the mouse, a pet is finally bought:
And the one animal owns another animal as its pet.

So weird...

This is (actually) a graphic novel: Sara Varon's Chicken and Cat

You are probably (hopefully) aware of the work of Sara Varon, whose Robot Dreams is one of the most heart-breaking comics I’ve ever had emotionally destroy me for an evening (Seriously, it’s right up there with Good-bye Chunky Rice in the How Can Something This Cute Be This Sad? department).

Are you also aware that she’s also broken into the children’s picture book maket, with 2006 book Chicken And Cat (Scholastic Press)? I was not.

Like Robot Dreams, Chicken and Cat deals with the subject of relationships, both the joys and difficulties inherent in them. Unlike Robot Dreams, it’s a much shorter, simpler and ultimately more optimistic story—one that ends rather happily, instead of coming to the fatalistic conclusion that life is like this, and that’s neither good nor bad, it’s just the way it is.

Also like Robot Dreams, it’s completely wordless, yet the thoughts, feelings and even words of the characters are hardly enigmatic. Varon is one of those extremely gifted artists who can take an extremely simply drawing and somehow—magic? Alchemy?—imbue it with clearly communicated, somewhat complex emotions.

Here, for example, is a picture of Cat, looking out the window at an empty lot sealed off by a chain link fence and nestled between a half dozen gray apartment buildings:


This is one of those interesting books that is probably technically comics, although it’s packaged, presented and (most likely) shelved with children’s picture books. It has the shape, size, general format and price point of a kids book, but the contents are simply a series of sequential images. Sometimes the illustrations take up the entire page, with the borders of the pages serving as panels, but a few of them are divided into actual panels, like this sequence:


Cat has just arrived on a bus, carrying a suitcase, and is met by Chicken, who walks him/her/it to his/her/its (their?) apartment. Along the way, Cat notices some facts of urban life, the smile he/she/it had upon first seeing Chicken having evaporated into this expression. (Although in that last panel, Cat may be reacting to the fact that there are dogs that go about on all fours and wear collars and leashes inhabiting the same world that Cat and his/her/its bipedal friend Chicken live in. Varon’s city is kind of funny in that there are both anthropomorphic animals and humans—all around the same size and same peanut-esque shape—and normal animals who don’t walk upright, have thumbs or do human things).

Chicken and Cat spend the day riding around the city on their bikes and visiting the park, and then Cat goes to sleep in his/her/its won room that night (Cat seems to moving in with Chicken, rather than visiting).

The next day they take the F train to Coney Island, where they wear old-timey men’s bathing suits, and hang out at the beach. On the way home, Cat looks at an apartment with that look in his/her/its eyes again, and Chicken notices. So they go and buy a bunch of seeds, plant them, and turn that empty lot across the street into a garden full of flowers and vegetables. Now when Cat looks out that window, with Chicken, cat has the smile he/she/it had on when he/she/it first arrived.

Varon’s work loses nothing by appearing in such a large format. Most of the “panels” are eight inches high and ten inches across, and, rereading it to pay closer attention to her line work, I found the bigger size actually helps a bit. Certainly it makes her characters’ faces easier to read, probably a must given that this is geared towards the youngest readers (at least according to Amazon.com), but it also underlines how simple the artwork is on a technical level, which only makes it more impressive that it is as effective as it is.

Additionally, it really draws attention to the fact that the art is handmade—the dots that serve as the pupils in her character’s eyes, for example, are made with a tight, controlled scribble that keeps them from attaining a perfect orb shape—and only makes it all the warmer.

It feels kinda cheesy saying this—which is why I prefer talking about comics—but this really is a children’s book for all ages. Certainly little kids, less-little kids and grown-ups will all get different things out of it.

I’d certainly not hesitate to recommend it to readers on my side of their adolescence. I think it would probably make a good chaser to Robot Dreams. If Robot Dreams reduces you to tears and melancholy, Chicken and Cat’s brighter, happier ending might serve as a good pick-me-up.

A second Chicken and Cat book, Chicken and Cat Clean Up, is scheduled for release in March.