No Punch Backs
Kelly Denato and Christine Nimocks

Cover of the year?

The best part of any small-press comics convention is discovering some incredibly talented cartoonists you would never have heard of otherwise before they start appearing in every top anthology and signing some book deal with Top Shelf on their way to Pantheon and lives of fame utter oppulance.

No Punch Backs is a two-woman comics and stuffed toy 'collective' of sorts (I imagine the way Cliff Face Comics is a 'collective') with an incredible logo to match a fantastic name. Really. The first two things you're going to notice about the two-color cover of the book featuring both cartoonists' work is A) that's a great?GREAT? name for a comic/crew and B) that image/logo is fuckin' awesome. The name appears on a cloud/blood splatter/paint splatter superimposed upon itself, patched with a bandaid and raining stars. A wonderful abstract image that?fuck it?go to nopunchbacks.com and see for yourself.

NPB #1 is a split book, the front featuring Denato and the back spotlighting Nimocks. As can be confirmed by the website, Denato is an animator/character designer by trade and it shows in her work. In a good way. I'm remined a bit of Scott Morse's early work (with a hint if Craig Thompson's Chunky Rice) in the stylised figures drawn with a supple, loopy line. Each mark in 'Nanni-Nanni and Boo-Boo Part One' manages to be both deliberate and lively. Each character is distinct and capable of showing a wide range of emotion, from subtle to over-the-top. The storytelling is clear and is versatile enough to capture small moments and occaissionally leap right off the page. Through dynamic layouts and a smart use of inkwash, Denato choreographs a flock of birds through one tour-de-force sequence that forced me to read it twice. Once following her expert pacing and once to stop and try to figure out just how she did that.

Tour-de-force, Luke.

The story is one that would seem too sweet in less capable hands. A lonely old man buys a pair of pets (a bird and a fish) who are in love with one another. After one of the pets is lost, the old man gives up the only thing that seems to give him joy, so the animals can have a chance to be together again. There's joy and sorrow, humor and a great little musical scene in the pet store that puts so many recent Disney movies to shame.

'Nanni-Nanni and Boo-Boo Part One and A Half' gets its own xeroxed mini comic, but the work doesn't suffer for lower 'production values'. The inkwashes might be a bit darker and less nuanced, but the inkwashes were never the draw. The linework, the character designs, the fun storytelling and the bittersweat tale is. This part opf the story happens simultaneously with the first part and features a pea who falls in with some Mexican jumping beans only to fall in love with one before having his heart broken. Like another animator-turned-cartoonist, Rebecca Dart, Denato likes playing with some of the formal elements in comics dealing with time. And in that respect, she explores it through the cartoonist's age-old toybox: causality. Every panel sets up the events of the next. Each twist creates a bigger twist until the events reach a fever pitch. The things that bring one joy one moment, the party animals you fell in love with, are nothing but worms inside, and they'll leave you just as quickly as you were taken away from your family. It's this sort of psychological underpinning that gives the formal play weight.

It wasn't me!

On the other side of the spectrum is Christine Nimocks. Nimocks puts the psychological aspect of her work front and center. Her characters are drawn in a way to bring attention to their state of mind. The comics in Nimocks' half of NPB #1 are mostly single panel gags, although many of the single panels build upon themselves and the cummulative effect is more wholistic than most gag cartoonists manage. Nimocks' subject matter is mostly dating, drinking, little funny moments from life, dating and drinking. It's very relatable (I have this horrible feeling that Nimocks has dated me or, if not, there are four guys out there impersonating me. It's just the sort of 'so personal it's universal' sort of cartooning that would make for a perfect addition to a lifestyle magazine.

The drawing is very different from Denato's and the readers first instinct may be that Nimocks is the weaker of two links. But Nimocks displays a more decorative approach to later strips, almost just to show off her stuff. Throughout, her character designs are funny, disturbing and identifiable. Her drawing also serves a different purpose from Denato, in this case the purpose is caricature. Caricature of herself as much as, if not more than, anyone else.

Nimocks stuff is also funny. Too funny. Stop spying on me, Nimocks!

—Justin J. Fox