Category Archives: Tom Hart

B. is Dying (#5) by Tom Hart comics review

B. is Dying (#5). by Tom Hart. Sequential Artists Workshop. 2023. 24 pp. $8.

Tom Hart’s new comics series is about a man dying in a ditch. Well, ostensibly so. Yeah, there’s a lot more to it than that. Tom Hart’s work looks incredibly alive as if it is being created as he’s thinking it. But the end result, the actual content, has been refined in a million different ways. So, come take a look at one of the most alive comics about dying, or any subject.

Tom Hart speaks to the utter disconnection we all must confront as human beings. It’s an existential crisis on a personal and global level, even a cosmic one. The focus here is on the planet and how we interact with it. As a cartoonist, Hart gives it his all to express his dismay and heart-felt desire to find some answers. The reader is led on a journey atop the crust of Mother Earth. What does that mean? It’s a perfect metaphor for how we usually interact with nature, all superficial, never digging deeper.

With a gentle nudge, Hart gets me to thinking about how we routinely take our environment for granted: we exploit it, endanger it and rape it. We are more prone to tear it apart than we are to try to understand what we call home. How can we ever ignore our own home? And yet we do. This comic expresses the collective nightmare we are all having, whether we choose to accept it or deny it. If we’re being honest with ourselves, we’re all afraid. Hart leans into that fear with his comics: direct and simple, but not so simple, more elegant-simple. Ah, yes, Tom Hart, the master of the elegant-simple.

I appreciate these comics on many levels, not the least of which is on an entertainment level. I’m thinking of how I cherish any time I spend viewing the work of Buster Keaton or, say, Peter Sellers at their soulful best. I can only imagine what Peter or Buster would have done if they appeared in a Tom Hart comic.

There’s the main character to Tom’s story, a lanky Everyman with hair sticking straight up. He is self-aware enough to know that he’s merely walking on the crust of the Earth. If only all of us could reach that point! It troubles him. It frightens him. It gives him nightmares. He dreams that he’s a helpless/hapless parakeet somehow let loose from the home he’s known as a pet and sprung free into the wild. He is out of his element. He is clueless. He has no real notion of how to interact with nature, just like–you guessed it–the average human being.

Tom Hart’s Everyman is just self-aware enough to know that something’s wrong. He thinks he may have come from a great place but has lost his way. It’s all too easy to lose one’s way, especially if you’re on such an uncertain path. This is not new. This has been going on for a very long time, for as long as there have been humans. Tom Hart has been at his comics-making craft for a long time too, for decades. Tom even makes a reference in the introduction to this issue to a recurring theme in his comics of a lone man in a vague landscape in an existential crisis.  Tom’s experiments have led to masterful award-winning work year after year. And one thing is clear: Tom Hart has not lost his way. In fact, Tom has many followers who wish to create comics every bit as good as his comics. Learn more about Tom and his Sequential Artists Workshop where you too can learn the fine, subtle and rewarding art of making comics.

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Filed under Comics, Comics Reviews, Sequential Artists Workshop, Tom Hart

Review: EQUINOXES by Cyril Pedrosa

Marion lost in art.

Marion lost in art.

Cyril Pedrosa is an ideal cartoonist: very observant, with a compulsive need to comment on what he observes, along with a compulsive need to collect and process everything he may need to depict and comment upon in his work. Pedrosa must take it all in. He has a true cartoonist’s need to absorb, like a sponge, like an overstimulated genius infant still fresh and new. Ah, this is just the way to come at such an ambitious work as “Equinoxes,” published by NBM Graphic Novels. With this graphic novel, the master cartoonist lays it all bare.

A true cartoonist's need to collect and process everything around him.

A true cartoonist’s need to collect and process everything around him.

Pedrosa is living and breathing what he’s setting down on paper at a delicious level. He has an extensive background in animation, which certainly helps, but he takes it even further. He knows how to speed up work. He knows when he can ease up on the details and when to add an extra coat of polish. And to do that well with both his artwork and his writing is definitely remarkable.

We all need a good recurring motif.

We all need a good recurring motif.

This book is comparable in America to, for example, “Asterios Polyp,” by David Mazzucchelli. Other examples of this type of commentary in comics are the work of Gabrielle Bell and Tom Hart, both of who will take part in panels during Pedrosa’s North American tour. For the Europeans, there’s more of a tradition for expansive work like this exploring the meaning of life and such things. Even within that milieu, Pedrosa rises to the top, among the best. Something unique that Pedrosa is doing here is to so effortlessly depict a world according to the author in all its glorious detail. A pretty tall order any way you look at it.

"Equinoxes" by Cyril Pedrosa

“Equinoxes” by Cyril Pedrosa

Divided into the four seasons, we follow the lives of various characters, all searching for answers, crossing each other’s paths in odd and random ways. The question arises as to whether or not there is any order or purpose for any of them. Perhaps everyone is just making it up as they go.

EQUINOXES by Cyril Pedrosa is a 336-page hardcover in full color, published by NBM Graphic Novels. Visit NBM, for more details, right here. You can also find the book at Amazon right here.

Pedrosa will be making the following appearances during his North American tour:

Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore
211 Rue Bernard O, Montréal, QC

September 7th, 7:00 PM

Albertine Bookstore at the French Cultural Services
972 5th Avenue, New York 

September 12th, 7:00 PM

Talk with Gabrielle Bell moderated by Bill Kartolopoulos

Small Press Expo (SPX)
Bethesda, Maryland

September 17th 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM

Special Guest; signing at our booth #W51-52

Signing schedule:

• 11:00 AM-1:00 PM
• 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM

Brooklyn Book Festival
209 Joralemon St, Brooklyn, NY

September 18th, 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM

Guest of the show; signing at our booth, #135

Signing schedule:

• 10:30 AM-12:00 PM
• 1:30 PM -2:30 PM
• 4:00 PM-5:30 PM

Panel: 3:00pm Can You Draw the Meaning of Life?

Location: Brooklyn Historical Society Auditorium (128 Pierrepont St.)

Three comics creators take on big questions–philosophical, scientific, spiritual. Lauren Redniss (Thunder & Lightning) explores the past, present, and controversial future of our world through weather phenomenons. Best-selling French creator Cyril Pedrosa (Equinoxes) reflects on the connections made between people over time and space. And Tom Hart (Rosalie Lightning) asks in a tragic yet beautiful memoir about his young daughter’s death: can you capture the meaning of a life, as you mourn its loss? Moderated by cartoonist and choreographer Kriota Willberg ((No) Pain!).

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Filed under Bill Kartalopoulos, Comics, Cyril Pedrosa, Gabrielle Bell, Graphic Novel Reviews, graphic novels, NBM Publishing, Small Press Expo, SPX, Tom Hart

Review: ROSALIE LIGHTNING: A Graphic Memoir by Tom Hart

St-Martins-Press-Tom-Hart

A basic truth about good art is that it comes from an artist who is compelled to create it. I have followed the work of cartoonist Tom Hart for many years and I consider him a friend. I can see that his latest book, the graphic memoir, “Rosalie Lightning,” brings out the best in him and what he can do as an artist. This is a story about grieving. Tom and his wife, the cartoonist Leela Corman, suffered the loss of their daughter, Rosalie Lightning, a few years ago. She was nearly two years old. The process of grieving has no set amount of time. It can very well go on forever. However, for the sake of one’s own life, and one’s loved ones, there is also a process of acceptance and renewal. In his book, Hart explores all of this with great insight.

The comics medium can offer the reader entry into the mind of a cartoonist in a very distinct way. This often happens with a work from an independent creator who both writes and draws the work. If it is a personal work, and the creator is up to the task, the reader will be swept into a myriad of observations made all the more tangible by the elastic and concise nature of comics. The words must be more condensed, providing a sharper impact. And then you add the immediacy and the intimacy of the drawings coming from the very same author’s hand. Tom Hart is in a unique position, as an experienced storyteller with a highly expressive style, to tell this story.

Tom Hart Rosalie Lightning

One thing I’ve always admired about Tom Hart is his ability and willingness to open himself up to his readers. He is alright with presenting himself as a regular guy struggling with life in much the same way as we all do. Now, imagine a gifted storyteller like Hart dealing with the death of his baby girl. Is this a story he can even begin to tell? Is it one he wants to tell? You sense right from the beginning that he followed his instincts and chose to continue to share about his life through his comics. There was no set plan. The observations were intermittent posts on his blog. Organically, a narrative took root. And, I believe, the theme of exploring grieving naturally emerged. You find it throughout the book, first in moving recollections and later in greater detail as two parents walk in the wilderness and search for answers.

Aside from the medical reasons, are there any answers as to why a beautiful toddler would die? That is the question that Tom and Leela struggle with. Was it somehow preordained? Both parents torment themselves by repeatedly posing that question. The thing about Hart’s comics is, by their very nature, they are direct and are brimming with immediacy. There’s an interesting tension created by a story following a circuitous and ambiguous path which is punctuated with sharp and forceful drawings. Hart combats a need to contemplate, and recede into the background, with a strong will to tell his story and keep moving forward in his life. Of course, the goal was never to forget but to find balance. Hart’s book proves to be an excellent work of self-discovery and of keeping the memory alive of a dear soul.

Rosalie Lightning Tom Hart

“Rosalie Lightning: A Graphic Memoir” is a 272-page hardcover published by St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers. For more details, visit our friends at Macmillan Publishers right here.

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Filed under Comics, Graphic Novel Reviews, graphic novels, Macmillan Publishers, Tom Hart

Review: REAL WORK by Christopher Green

Christopher-Green-Real-Work-comics

Reviewing comics, particularly independent comics, is a labor of love that will thank you with sore eyes, a sore back, and a profound understanding of the road less travelled or some such malarkey. But find a good mini-comic, a really good one by some glorious weirdo, and all is forgiven and you’re good to go for another batch of reviews. And so it was said and so it was done. Christopher Green is one of those glorious weirdos. His mini-comic, “Real Work,” is a fine example of that.

Oh so many cartoonists of a certain ilk are toiling away with thoughts of perhaps making some sort of impact. They don’t dare to dream to be the next R. Crumb, or at least they tell their friends that. But, hey, some don’t have to dare to dream and just do it. Just doing it. Sounds so easy, doesn’t it?

There’s an effortless quality to what I see in this comic. Maybe it took him hours upon hours to create and then he redid the whole sucker all over again for good measure. Or maybe he cranked it out at one go. There are a number of choices that needed to be made, “problem-solving” tasks, if you will, that Green gets right, one way or another.

Green’s 12-page collection of comics is loopy auto-bio, fantasy, and artful silliness. We begin with observations on the surface to body mass ratio regarding a squirrel’s crash landing. A few more pages in, and we’re in the thick of a war between Alaska and Canada. This also involves the teleporting of souls.

Green has the confidence and skill to pull this zany stuff off. It may seem simple but he’s actually putting his surface to body mass calculations to good use. Adroit placement of objects, thoughtful composition, pleasing contrast, it all adds up nicely. Take, for instance, his two boys on a whimsical crime spree. They may be relatively crude little figures, but they’re well-defined, distinct, and full of life. Katzenjammer Kids underground comix style!

Christopher-Green-Sequential-Artists-Workshop-comics

Consider one last example above: a page on exploring pagan rituals. On just one page, Green evokes a doomed relationship, a universal struggle, and then gives it all a tidy absurdist ending with a hilarious grace note to boot.

Christopher Green’s “Real Work” mini-comic was printed at the Sequential Artists Workshop, or SAW, in Gainesville, Florida. This is a vital center for learning the art of comics founded and led by cartoonists Tom Hart and Leela Corman. It is, no doubt, thanks to the great care to craft at SAW that Christopher’s color cover, with gold no less, looks as nice as it does. Be sure to visit SAW right here. Be sure to visit Christopher Green right here. And visit his store, Wall of Balloons, right here.

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Filed under Alternative Comics, Comics, Independent Comics, Leela Corman, mini-comics, Minicomics, SAW, Sequential Artists Workshop, Tom Hart