Bell & Huizenga & Nilsen, and Harkham

There's something charming about seeing quiet, self-effacing personalities -- the sort one usually finds in corners, the sort whose conversations are probably very rich and yet, from the outside, difficult to breach -- suddenly thrust into the spotlight of public attention and compelled to take up a speaker's role. And there's something pleasing about finding oneself slowing down to enter their conversational orbit, learning to pay strong attention and to take up the cadences of understated, seemingly recessive voices. It's especially delightful when those voices represent work you've had a chance to read on your own without prior familiarity with the artists, work as evocative and teasing and happily puzzling as that of Gabrielle Bell, Kevin Huizenga, and Anders Nilsen.

That's what happened to me when I went to L.A.'s Skylight Books on Thursday night to witness what turned out to be the first stop on the Bell/Huizenga/Nilsen West Coast tour, a brief series of whistlestops that aims to promote the artists' new books from stalwart alt-comix publisher Drawn and Quarterly (my vote for the anglophone comics house with the best wheat-to-chaff ratio). Bell's new collection of diaristic strips, Lucky, Huizenga's collection Curses, and Nilsen's illustrated/artist's book/comics memoir Don't Go Where I Can't Follow were the rationales for the gig, though of course they have other works, both recent and forthcoming, that merit raised antennae.

As an aside, Skylight is an independent book shop down in the Los Feliz neighborhood just a few doors down from the Dresden Room, a restaurant where Michele once worked as a waitress. If I remember rightly (this was my first visit, and it's funny how the big things get away from me), it central area does indeed boast a skylight, or at least a tree, ringed by a circular bench.  In that tight, or at least it's fair to say intimate, area, a table was set up with a projector screen to one side. Folding chairs gave the near-capacity crowd a place to sit.

The event, a slideshow, Q&A, and signing, was moderated by cartoonist Sammy Harkham, editor of the almost risibly bountiful and frankly mind-wrenching comics anthology Kramer's Ergot and author of the beautiful, sad comic Poor Sailor and the ongoing series Crickets (check out the Forward's profile of him).

Starting from the far end of the table, Huizenga, then Nilsen, then Bell read excerpts from or adaptations of their work. Huizenga dryly, yet very amusingly, recited the history of starlings on this continent, apropos of Curses; Nilsen read from Don't Go, and then performed (via slideshow) an extraordinary, troubling comics monologue in the photo-collage style of his recent Mome contributions; and then Bell performed, in fine voice, a wonderfully bizarre shaggy-dog story about giants and flying and talismans and, well, a dog, titled "My Affliction" (a minicomic piece that she has since revised).

I should note that all three artists are included, one after another, in Kramer's No. 5 (the second-to-most-recent issue), which I'm currently using as a required text in my CSU Northridge course, Comic Books as Literature. And I've invited Sammy Harkham to speak to the class, near the end of term (the students will also be reading his Crickets No. 1). So, besides wanting to meet the artists, and wanting an incentive to read their new books over this past, very busy week, I also wanted to prime my mind to approach the artists' work from a teacherly POV. Frankly, I haven't been able to learn much about their work, due to my schedule, until very recently -- so part of the motive behind bringing Kramer's into class was to refresh my own comics reading and get more current on what's going on in my field.

With all that in mind, I was anxious to learn more about all three artists (all four!). Earlier that day I finished Bell's Lucky and Nilsen's Don't Go, and, thus primed, I went to the event rather hyped up. Pity the poor artists for having to talk to me afterwards about my still-patchy experience of their work.

All three took mike-shy, halting, if not self-deprecating stances during the panel. One has to listen acutely, and with prior interest, to become entrained to their rhythms. I know the three have appeared together previously (in St. Louis and Chicago, last fall), but this session still had the air of the "first night" on a tour. Close listening is a must; these aren't speakers who try to overawe you by mere presence. But what became evident over the course of the panel (or more evident, since their comics already reveal this) is the range and unpredictability of their interests. Huizenga in particular has a way of following unexpected loops of historical obscura, yoking together disparate things, and making them come to quirky, surprising life. Bell's story had an antic, vaulting quality rendered all the more surprising , and hilarious, by the deadpan, semiautobiographical quality that sticks to her stuff. Nilsen uses photography and maps to anchor his comix monologues, collaging elements from all over (as shown beautifully in Don't Go).

After the three individual presentations, Sammy Harkham enlisted the three in a wayward discussion of their backgrounds, influences, interests, and careers thus far. The discussion was a sometimes halting, always pleasantly unpredictable ramble. Talk of inspirations was revealing -- from Schulz and Asterix to John Porcellino and Chester Brown to Dave Sim -- as were discussions of process. Harkham got pulled in as well, discussing his own cartooning.

Unfortch, things were just beginning to gather steam when the three had to shift into book-signing mode.

I enjoyed speaking to all three afterwards, learning more about, for instance, the decisions behind Nilsen's Don't Go. The signing queue was not long, but the event had that enticingly personal quality that you get when things are small.

I also spoke to Sammy at some length, getting his enthusiastic POV on the current Kramer's exhibit at Macalester College in Saint Paul, talking a bit about plans for his class visit, and briefly meeting his wife Tahli and a colleague from Family, the alt-culture book, art, music, and clothes shop that Sammy is involved in.

A pleasure to see such a group of smart, thoughtful, uncategorizable comix artists together.

In all, it was a real Los Angeles night, that is, a night that gave me some of that good stuff that you long to get in Los Angeles but that I don't usually have a chance to: eating at at Greek diner a couple of doors down afterwards; tearing along the freeway, sans traffic, to get the 30 miles back home; and listening to 2 On The Dial on my campus's radio station, KCSN, which included Ray Charles's cover of "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" and a ghastly show tune that, turns out, was from Disney's interminable bore-a-thon Pete's Dragon.

Hey, it's all good. :)

 

Comments

[Scott Gilbert]

Thanks for the fine report, Charles! I've been following Bell's & Huizenga's careers for a while now and am curious about this tour. People who miss this tour's stops are REALLY going to regret it later. Too bad they're coming nowhere near Texas!

[Charles Hatfield]

Good to hear from you, Scott, and thanks for the kind words.

Every so often I get to complaining that my teaching schedule doesn't allow me to stay quite as current with comix as I'd like. But today I realized, while writing the above post, that at least this semester I don't have cause to complain! It was a joy to read up on Bell, Huizenga, and Nilsen, and to attend their talk.