Best Comics of 2013, No. 10: Omaha the Cat Dancer, Vol. 8

This one should come as a complete surprise to nobody. I've made no secret of my admiration for Omaha the Cat Dancer, or of my past associations with its creative team, over the years. While there's the usual talk of narratives and techniques, this one also get a bit mushy, so feel free to skip it if you're not into that.
There will be a few spoilers in this entry, but hey, the work's been out for months, and my few words will not detract from any pleasure you might take in the reading of this work.
This year saw the publication of the final pages of the Omaha saga, first in Sizzle magazine, then as a collection (which I've yet to pick up, though I was able to keep up with the story through the magazine, the rest of which is silly at best).
While not all storylines are fully resolved, those whose denouement is not directly discussed are alluded to pretty directly, like Rob and his boyfriend attending the wedding. I would have liked to see some follow-up on Shelley's personal trainer Dave Allen, whose character was intriguing but sort of faded away quite a while ago, but most everyone else gets a long-overdue resolution, if not an ending.
Endings are overrated. Resolutions give chances at new beginnings.

Reed's color sense, seen on this cover and not seen in print since the 2004 cover that launched the conclusion in Sizzle, remains strong and at least rivals that of the late Kate Worley, who colored the covers on the old Kitchen Sink and Fantagraphics runs. His placement and shaping of shadows occasionally troubles me, but that's just a question of taste, not of accuracy - his way works just fine, I'd just handle it differently, that's all.
Reed's art took several turns in these final chapters, spread over almost ten years (!). Working with Kate as a writer, his backgrounds were precise, to the point of architectural accuracy. In contrast, with James Vance taking over as writer, Reed's backgrounds got looser, and the art became even more about the characters. Neither approach is wrong, but it was fascinating to watch Reed again deeply embrace some of the "takes" and other expressive elements of the funny animal stuff that got him started.
I'm walking on eggshells a bit here. Even though it's been more than twenty years since Reed let me apprentice under his tutelage (and there's an awkward phrase for you!), I still tend to see him as the Master, and the Student does not speak ill of the Master. Yeah, I know, get over it. No, I don't think so. I learned a great deal from Reed, about art and about life, and while I may and do disagree with him on some things, I will not disrespect him or his work.

First page of this volume,
with Kate Worley writing

The aforementioned Sizzle cover showed Omaha reaching for an alarm clock that was chiming 2005, a charming recognition of time slipping away.
Some of the things that were revolutionary about Omaha in its heyday are now commonplace. Funny animal work comes and goes in comics. The furry community slogs on, arguably supplanted (or enhanced?) by Bronies- a tentative relationship, but an interesting idea! The rights of GLBT people are now discussed in the Supreme Court, and there are sixteen or seventeen states where the rights of GLBT people to marry are recognized (we'll have to see what happens in Utah). We have mechanisms in place for legal protections of comic creators working in volatile areas (again with no small thanks to Reed and Kate), though the fight continues (note to self- renew CBLDF membership!). Disability rights and depictions of the disabled are more common, and more realistic, in comics now. So in light of all that, how does the new work stand up?
Quite well, thank you. As is the case with many of the titles we've discussed so far in this year's countdown, it's a bit like getting back together with old friends. They will say and do things that annoy and frustrate you, but you still care a great deal what happens to them.
Again, yeah, I know. Fictional characters. So what? They may not matter as much as the three-dimensional carbon based life forms in the long run, but they still matter. And it's a note of respect for the creators that they matter to us as much as they do.

Panel from the later chapters written by James Vance.
Note the level of background detail.

We finally learn who's behind the A Block scandals, and of course, Bonner's murder (I should note that I was wrong about this every step of the way). Chuck is given the opportunity to come to terms with his family, and as the cover of Volume 8 implies, resolves his relationship with Omaha. Again, it would have been nice to see Rob and Geoff marry, but there just wasn't time, I guess. Also, gay marriage wasn't legally recognized in MN until after the story was concluded.
Conclusion and resolution are words that recur in this piece. That's the nature of this story, and that's me. I am such a sentimentalist slob, I am reluctant to let go of any of the good things in my life. And my association with Reed Waller, Kate Worley, James Vance, and Omaha the Cat Dancer and her associates, despite troubles and distances, remains A Good Thing. Naturally, my perception of the work is influenced by that, but that doesn't effect the intrinsic quality of the work. I'd like to paraphrase one of the last lines of Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge: and in the end, they all got exactly what they wanted. This applies to the characters in Omaha and to the people involved, I hope.
Thanks to the Omaha team for more than 30 years of a great comic. It wasn't always easy, but what that's worthwhile is?
Next: Best Comics of 2013, No. 9, courtesy of the WPA.

Afterthought: when Reed and Kate returned from Disneyland (it might have been Disney World), they had picked up some of those giant cartoon mouse hands. As I left my internship duties at their place one afternoon, Reed held out a hand encased by a four-fingered glove. We shook paws, grinning from ear to ear.
Now that's a nice goodbye.

Original Art Sundays No. 159: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 16

As promised, the next page of the story, long overdue!
I've talked in the past about the challenges of self-imposed deadlines. The truth of it, which I sometimes bypass, is that if it's important to you, you make time for it.
There are sometimes circumstances that interfere with this, especially those related to survival. We're talking Maslow's Heiracrhy of Needs here. While even Maslow acknowledged that his theory has flaws, at its core it's solid. One cannot learn as efficiently on an empty stomach, just as it's more difficult to produce creative work when one's resources vary widely and survival is sometimes an issue.
However, difficult is not impossible. J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book on the London subway going back and forth to work. Not the most efficient way to work, but the results cannot be disputed.
As Reed Waller once told me, if your work is good, it will be recognized. That doesn't mean you'll get rich, or even that you will necessarily make a living, but the work will be recognized.
It's been 23 years since I first seriously pursued creativity as a profession. 23 years of fits and starts, mostly as a result of my self-doubt, but ultimately 23 years well spent.
To this date I have no idea if my work is any good or not. I just know when I'm doing doing work I like, and I like this story.
The next page is already 3/4 completed.
While we look forward to next week, enjoy the current page of our story.

Original Art Sundays No. 155: Sketchbooks: Omaha the Cat Dancer, 1993

Next page of Surrealist Cowgirls is still evolving. I may take a day and finish it next weekend.
Always wrestling with the fine line between taking my time to do it right and just dinking around!
Meanwhile, some older sketchbook stuff.
In 1992-1993, I was living with a man who was, ahem, less than pleasant much of the time. I've talked about this in the past and will not rehash, other than to provide context here.
During this time, I found solace in healthy eating and in exercise (I lost over 30 pounds, and when I next saw Reed, he said I was too thin- something nobody else has ever said to me, before or since!) and in my art. I couldn't tell the stories I wanted to tell, since my actions were being closely scrutinized and obsessively criticized, but I filled several sketchbooks. He didn't seem to mind what I sketched too much.
These are all from one sketchbook from that period.
Though these clearly have their flaws, there are many things about them I find pleasing. The anatomy is still lacking in many places, but there's an energy and attitude to them I like to this day.
These were random in the sketchbook. I tried many things artistically during this time, some of which I may post later.
But given that Reed and James Vance recently completed the Omaha storyline, and that Reed may be attending San Diego this year to promote the final volume, this seems as good a time as any to post these.
I'll post a review and final thoughts on Omaha at year's end.
Enjoy!

Marker sketch

Marker and #4 pencil

Metallic marker

Marker and #4 pencil

Marker

Marker (no tail!)

Pencil & marker w/notes

A birthday card for Reed Waller

Today is the birthday of Omaha the Cat Dancer creator Reed Waller.
I've occasionally written here about working with Reed. To say Omaha was an inspiration for Tranny Towers is a bit of an understatement, though I like to think I put my own spin on the whole funny animal soap opera thing.
I have no idea how Reed is doing these days. I've not talked to him or corresponded, aside from reading the occasional post on the Yahoo Omaha boards, for more than six years now. To the best of my knowledge, he's well and his job is treating him decently.
We hope for the best.
New work on Omaha proceeds apace, appearing in the otherwise unappealing Sizzle magazine. Actually, the last issue of Sizzle I read, issue 50, had gone from painful to tedious (aside from the Omaha stuff, of course), so I guess that's an improvement. The next Omaha installment is currently scheduled for issue 51, due out in September.
While reading Bryan Talbot's superb funny-animal Sherlock Holmes Steampunk pastiche Grandville, I noticed a guest appearance by Omaha!

Here is the image in context on the page proper.

 Here's a short video trailer for Grandville.

I suspect that Reed would be honored to have one his pieces included in a Bryan Talbot book, and next to a Mucha at that!
I can't tell if Talbot redrew these or pasted them in. His Photoshop chops are evident throughout the book, but he certainly has the skill to do it either way.
I've been tinkering with posting this for a while now, and the occasion of Reed's birthday seems an appropriate time to do so.
The rest of you: check out Grandville. Either volume. They stand alone, but there is a continuity, so you're probably better off reading them in publication order.
Steampunk funny animal noir. No reason it should work, but it does. It's smart, exciting work. But then, what else would you expect from Bryan Talbot?
There are currently two books in the series, Grandville and Grandville Mon Amour, with a third, Grandville Bete Noir in the works. The publisher is Dark Horse.
Here's looking at you, Reed D. Waller! Happy birthday!
May the next year be kind to you!
(image at left: portrait of the protagonist from Grandville, Detective Inspector LeBrock).

Best comics of 2010: No. 1 (tie) : Blacksad

In 1990, I interned with Reed Waller on Omaha the Cat Dancer for six months.
Or as I put it these days, it was for about 5 minutes a hundred years ago.
It was one of the most catalytic (pun unintended) experiences of my life, both personally and professionally.
This experience, in tandem with my childhood of reading Barks Duck stories, before I had a clue who Barks was, and my 80s and 90s love of Don Rosa's work (note that my affections for these works continue to this day), has given me quite an affinity for the funny animal genre, despite it being a very loosely defined genre.
I mean really. Look at this Omaha image and this Duck image, and tell me where their commonalities lie, beyond the animal-as-person device.
Caveat: this work is not for the young in maturity. Adults only, please, in every sense. It involves people enjoying their bodies, and children can't see that until they're not children any more.  I think it's a little screwy, but that's the way we roll in this society.

Okay,the other similarity is solid storytelling. But that's as far as it goes.
Two points:
1. Waller and Worley did a more Barks-style funny animal story, the wonderful Speakingstone, which ran in two issues of Fantagraphic's Critters and was never completed.
2. I would also be remiss if I didn't mention that this Omaha page is one of the ones I worked on. My work was inking heavy blacks in the background, in this case.
Ahem.
 In any event, as a result of the work of Barks and Rosa, Waller, Worley and Vance, Talifero, Freddy Milton, and so many more that don't come to mind as readily, the notion of humanized animals, or animals with human traits, has been a part of comics ever since there have been comics. What do you think Krazy and Ignatz are, after all?
A new character entered this delightful mix in the early 2000s, from Spanish creators published by the French company Dargaud. Writer Juan Díaz Canales and artist Juanjo Guarnido collaborated on the three graphic volumes of Blacksad. Sporadically printed in the US (the third book only recently appeared as part of this collection), they developed a reputation akin to Corto Maltese among devoted comics lover.
This year, Dark Horse published a goregeous volume of all three stories. That volume is my tie choice for Number One comic of the year 2010.

Another caveat: as always, these choices are based on personal criteria and quite arbitrary. If you have your own list, I welcome it!
Blacksad is a private detective. The story is set in 1950s America.

The level of detail is stunning and appropriate. The palette is precise and reinforces the mood, which ranges from gripping to hilarious to tragic.
In short, this work is beautiful in very sense, even when it's recounting ugly events.

 

The trappings of noir, or what the casual student thinks of as noir (I'm a bit more than casual, but still a student) are all here. The femmes fatale, the levels of fear, greed and corruption, the broken hearts, the sense of unrelenting desperation. There are also some odd male bonds- not so odd as in the classic Gilda, but Blacksad's repulsion/friendship with the reporter Weekly is a rather odd but serviceable bond.
Blacksad is very much a loner, though. His friendships are tenuous at best, and as in the final tale, Red Soul, making its first US appearance in this volume. This story deals with Communism, blacklisting, and unanticipated betrayals.

That's the final story in this volume. The first, Somewhere Within the Shadows, is an eloquent noir with the traditional trappings, skillfully handled. The middle story, Arctic Nation, plays up the animal aspect by using polar bears as white supremacists a la the KKK.

The use of the stylized snowflake as stand-in for the KKK cross is brilliant.
There's one aspect of noir that I question in this book.
Common wisdom on noir holds that there are no heroes, only villains, victims and survivors. And the character who has the best-defined moral code and lives up to it despite damning evidecne of the pointlessness of doing so is the closest we come to a hero.
Well, in reading this, I can't help thinking that Blacksad is a hero, and that's all there is to it.
So is it still noir? In most ways, yes. But no matter. It's a damn good comic, no matter how it's classified.
I'm pleased to note that the creators have two more volumes of bandes desinee coming out. Dark Horse, are you paying attention?

Tomorrow, the best comic of 2010. Ever.

Original Art Sundays # 31:revision: A Private Myth, p. 7

Well, finally got the scan done. Looks like the new Alvin tech markers are the short-term answer to my scanning woes, though I may take a friend's advice and go to the disposable tech pen.
Still need more darks!
Ahem.
The page:

 

Not mad for that last tier. The middle  tier is doing what I want it to, but it may seem ambiguous until more of the plot is revealed.

I'm using the old form of overlapping multiple plot elements, all revolving around the central character. Reed Waller and Kate Worley were/are Zen masters of this process/style in their work on Omaha.

On Sunday: page 8.

Original Art Sundays, No. 26: A Private Myth, pp. 1 - 4

As today marks the half year mark for Original Art Sundays, I'm tickled that my scanner access at my favorite school to teach has kicked in!
Therefore, I am re-presenting the first three pages of this work, along with the new page, # 4.

Scanning these helped me realize that I need to change the way I work to get the results I want. I like working in markers because, as my former sensei/ confidante  Reed Waller points out, they encourage speed. But if you have to  labor over every page to get a good rich black after the fact in Photoshop, are you really moving faster?

So I'm going back to inks for most of my heavy blacks.

The markers just plain fade too much.

My brush control with inks is not as strong as it might be, but I have a good hand with a crowquill, so I'm not too worried about losing anything stylistically in the switch back.

I do want to spend a bit more time on detail and include more heavy blacks.

I got lucky with the last page and was able to get some very rich blacks, between pushing the markers and hitting just the right scanner levels. But rather than count on that, I'm going to work in richer blacks from the get go. I will continue to use marker for borders and for some of my gray values.

Sidebar: The white area on the left side of the last panel is not on the original art. I had meant to have that symmetry, but got carried away and filled in the whole area on that side!

So I pulled the old gag: select the white spot, do a layer via copy, flip it and move it into position. And we're golden!

Original Art Sundays #6: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 5

The story takes shape, as much as a silly story can.
Again, some added Photoshop values just to give the page a bit of weight. Also, I'm leaning more and more to digital lettering. It's somewhat austere compared to hand work, but legibility is the watchword.
Maybe I'll take a page from the book of Waller (and many others) and create a digital font based on my own best characters.
Notice I did not replace the hand lettered caption of Maggie's mule. I like the convention of perpetual joy and innocence in the mule/whale. He has several functions in these stories.
1. he always smiles.
2. he sums up the situation in one word, always a thought. He never speaks. Much like some of the animals in Oz, we don't know if he can or not, but we know he doesn't.
3. when necessary, he saves the day!

Why they Call her Omaha....

AS some of my readers (if any there be) may already know, I served an apprenticeship with Reed Waller on Omaha the Cat Dancer during my tech school commercial art training.
The internship lasted about 6 months, and is often the case, I got more out of it than my sensei did. And not what I expected to learn.
I learned quite a bit about art and comic art, but learned much more about human nature by being around Reed and his then-partner Kate Worley.
Reed and I continued our association beyond the professional over the years, sometimes with good results, other times not so good. I'm completely out of contact with both Reed and Jim Vance these days. Seems to be the way we all want it, but still a bit sad. Just a byproduct of being human, I guess.
Which is ultimately what Omaha is about- being human.
As the story is currently in its final stages in Sizzle, an otherwise largely worthless magazine full of stories people with impossible anatomy engaging in loveless sex acts, I am reading the final chapters as they unfold.
The pieces are coming together.
It's starting to look like Shelley ordered a hit on Joanne, but the shooter got Bonner by mistake. But why did she keep the gun? And what's the connection to those City Hall bigwigs who were talking clandestinely about the hit a couple chapters back?
Who's behind the A Block Molotov Cocktail?
Will Omaha get her acting career going? Will she marry Chuck? Will Hector live?
Remember, the whole story is being told in first person past tense, from Panel One if BIzarre Sex #9 on.
I'm sure my speculations are way off base. I've believed I knew exactly what was going on in this story so many times in the past, and been pretty much dead wrong every time.
Well, whether I'm right or wrong, it's still a good story.
I love a good story.
The above drawing of Zorro and Omaha was a commission from the master Tom Yeates, and is put out on the Web with his permission.