Dog City Press @dogcitypress - Tumblr Blog

Two new comics from me, available in my store.

“October Movie Diary” contains all of my horror movie review strips, which you can also read here. It’s 32 pages, full color. $5 plus shipping.

“Slow Theft” contains a number of shorter pieces, including “Slow Theft” and “The White Woods” as well as an all-new four page story called “Maze.” 28 pages, full color. $10 plus shipping.

Both are available in my online store or you can DM me for venmo or paypal information.

simonmreinhardt

Hello tumblr, to pay for some printing costs, I’m selling off the original art for the horror movie review strips I posted last month. Each page is $35, which includes the finished page, the pencil sketch, and a zine collecting all of the strips. Shipping included as well. You can read all of the strips here. If you’re interested in purchasing, DM me for payment details and availability.

simonmreinhardt

Simon Reinhardt, “Slow Theft”

Made for the Comics Workbook Composition Competition, 2017

mystery-town

Mystery Town #14, “The Mystery Town Awards.” December, 2016. Print-ready .pdf available here.

mystery-town

Mystery Town #12, “Every Clock is a Speeding Bullet.” Print-ready .pdf available for download here.

andsoluke

i saw you yester day

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Luke Howard

mystery-town

Mystery Town #10, October 2016, featuring contributions from Nik James, Dean Sudarsky, and Drake. Print-ready .pdf file available here.

disawallander

Look at these nice previews of my book HELP YOURSELF! It’s a 48 page riso printed thing coming out with Perfectly Acceptable Press, and will debut at Short Run Seattle and Thought Bubble on the same weekend! Contains pretty pictures and funny jokes about people being miserable and mean, as per usual. WANT IT WHILE THE WANTING IS GOOD!

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Disa Wallander

mystery-town

Mystery Town #9. Print-ready .pdf available here.

mystery-town

Mystery Town #8. Print-ready .pdf available here.

lukewhealy

Hey all. My comic got nominated for an Ignatz Award.

I’ll have print copies at SPX in September, but you can buy and read a PDF right now if you like!

https://gumroad.com/l/FPsWS

(Ignatz mouse image by Sophia Foster-Dimino)

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Dog City editor Luke Healy is up for an Ignatz!

sequentialstate

Review: Fourteen Euros at Primark by Sarah Bowie

Sarah Bowie recently sent over a copy of her new comic Fourteen Euros at Primark , which debuted at ELCAF this year. This is the first work I’ve seen from Bowie, who is an illustrator, cartoonist, and cofounder of The Comics Lab in Dublin.

The storytelling of Fourteen Euros at Primark centers on the post-mortem of a cancelled engagement, with the action of the story being based around narration and retelling rather than traditional character interactions. The female narrator gives readers a window into specific moments of the relationship and her general feelings during the course of the eventual breakup. Fourteen Euros at Primark is reminiscent of memoir, but it’s hard to tell if Bowie is the main character. I’ve seen pseudo-memoir in literature, but if it exists in comics I haven’t read it yet (or perhaps I just read it?).

One of the most important narrative devices of the work is fundamental misunderstanding between the narrator and her fiancé. Fraught emotional moments where the narrator feels the relationship is at an end are the precise moments where her fiancé chooses to escalate the relationship. And those interactions in real life are overwhelming, but when the dust settles the background noise remains, the fear and uncertainty are still there. The disconnect is still there.

Bowie also gives readers a sense of the conflict between the narrator and the fiancé through group interactions with the fiancé’s friends. Men and women both interact in ways that make the narrator uncomfortable, emphasizing her interpersonal exclusion as a mirror of her emotional isolation. There are a lot of these, “What do you say to that?” kind of moments that echo frustrations and worries.

I really like the way the comic looks - the linework is all blue ink in a 2x3 or 3x3 grid. Bowie uses some of the formalistic choices of artists like Alyssa Berg, with images existing in multiple panels on the grid. This is a complement to Bowie’s keen sense of pace. The work is very distant and there’s a clear unease in the cadence of the telling, the stop and start of it; the repetition of images is a mechanism in the same vein, emphasizing that unease. There’s this smokiness to the art via smudges and thumbprints that make it seem clouded, like a remembering. Oftentimes the image associated with the text of the story is seemingly disparate, like images of cats in panels where the narrator recounts her mother’s initial reaction to meeting Niall, the narrator’s fiancé. The result of these stylistic and formal choices is clear - the narrator is creating distance between herself and the subject matter at hand.

That distance, and some stunning illustrative choices make Fourteen Euros at Primark a welcome introduction to Bowie’s work and a comic worth pursuing. Recommended.

Sarah Bowie’s tumblr is @lidlesscomics and other comics and illustration work can be found at www.lidlesscomics.com.

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Sarah Bowie