Back in the 90’s version of Starkville, Mississippi, I lived in, there was a comic shop called Gun Dog, run by two brothers. The name was an archaic reminder of the somewhat bizarre origins of the shop: it had originally been a hunting supply store focused on sportsmen who used dogs. When I first started going they still had a rack of top notch puppy food and some training bones amongst the comics. Turns out those outlasted the comics.
But what damn fine comics. Gun Dog rode out the ascent of not only the self-destructive superhero industry of the time, soaked with its McFarlanes and Valiants and Defiants, but also the indie comics boom that brought us such acknowledged luminaries as Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, and Los Bros Hernandez. We’d plow through the dollar boxes and sift out the gems.
It was there that I first stumbled across Broken Fender, an early work of the Vancouver artist Josué Menjivar. Josué creates minicomics with intimate stories and universal themes, characterized by a delicate visual style that’s heavy on wrinkles in cardigans and angles in chess pieces and thankfully free of capes and heat vision.
Since 2003, Josué has maintained a weekly strip in The Georgia Straight while working as an illustrator under his own Fresh Brewed Illustration imprint. Until 2005, he worked with the writer and artist Scott Malin producing Way Off Main, now collected in three handsome mini-comics. More recently, he’s done Everyday Things solo.
The strips are characterized by a sense of loss coupled with a hope that there really is a light at the end of the tunnel. Josué unspools hurt and cynicism in such a gentle manner that they seem de riguer, no longer perils to be avoided but rather contemplated and endured. “I have finally learned,” says one character, clutching a letter sent Par Avion, “that tattoos last longer than love.” Yet there is no remorse in her thoughts—her face remains impassive as she sits on her apartment stoop—there is simply acknowledgment.
It’s the wondrous little bits of character that I like best here:
This feels exactly right; you know that feeling, you remember little things just like that. It’s the fickle grasp of memory, where now the absence of the Glitter Girl strikes the man more than her presence ever did.
I never knew a girl who kept emergency dandelions in an envelope, but I did know one who had a pet squirrel and was missing her little finger, and when I read this, it made me think of her, for no good reason other than memory electricity. Josué’s best work is at once startlingly familiar, and soaked with heartbreak and longing.
As somebody that makes paper artifacts, I always have an eye on the production angle. Josue’s background as a designer and illustrator means the packaging here surpasses the origins of the strips in newsprint. Each minicomic is draped in a two-color cover with small end papers, complete with a short “director’s cut” in the back explaining the creative process. The three-volume collection of Way Off Main comes wrapped in a band that makes the comics bookshelf-worthy, and the paper is heavy and opaque. The ink wash of Everyday Things suffers a bit of blur in the printing, but Way Off Main’s linework pops off the page. Nestled within the pages of the comics were postcards and stickers (some tiny!) from the series, and the done-in-one nature of the strips works amazingly well in these media.
My one precaution would be that the work, originally published weekly, should be consumed in small doses. While the brevity of the comics allows them to be read quickly, plowing through in one setting the strips can be a bit cloying, since there is little continuity and repeated themes. Instead, savor the strips; these are dessert wines, not a gallon of muscadine you can chug through with dinner.
Warmly recommended if, as a blurb on the minicomic puts it, you’re looking for something “depressingly upbeat,” and you’re the type of person who likes the way a good song by the Smiths cut across your tongue in all the right ways.
Tags: Broken Fender, Everyday Things, Georgia Straight, Gun Dog, Josué Menjivar, minicomics, Vancouver artists, Way Off Main
this is lovely to read.
i adore Josué’s work. excellent recommendation!
Yes, lovely indeed.
I remember when Gun Dog opened in Starkville. Rob (who was editorial cartoonist for the Reflector) & Steve also sold old (used) albums and gaming stuff. I bought a used Led Zeppelin 4-CD set there.