One early critique of Hernandez

Blog Features Columns A Cartoonist s Diary Comics Chronicles Comics of the Weak Framed! Funnybook Roulette Grid Hare Tonic High-Low KinderComics Know Your New Yorker Cartoonists Mad About Music: My Life in Records No One Knows You’re A Dog Remembrance of Comics Past Riff Raff Say Hello TCJ Talkies The Attic The Doctor Is In This Week in Comics little dragon nightlight What Was Alternative Manga? Reviews little dragon nightlight Listings TCJ Archive Complete Archive Highlights from the Archive
Though plenty of alt-comics readers may not realize it, Ed Luce is one of the brighter cartooning talents to emerge in the last decade. Reading his comic book series Wuvable Oaf makes one realize that he emerged as a fully-formed talent who can draw anything. Some have referred to the series as “the gay version of Scott Pilgrim ,” but I find that description not entirely accurate. To be sure, Bryan Lee O’Malley is an influence here in the sense that the comic follows around various bands, spends a lot of time at gigs, details the political and interpersonal tensions that bands experience, etc. Luce even gives O’Malley a tip of the hat by drawing some of his characters into crowd scenes–among the many, many other characters and art styles he seamlessly imitates and weaves into those amusing little dragon nightlight scenes. However, I’d argue that Scott Pilgrim little dragon nightlight is a far more mainstream effort, due in no small part to its fusion of familiar manga art stylization, video game culture, and a propulsive storytelling style that focuses on action and fights. Moreover, each volume of Scott Pilgrim has a fairly tight storytelling structure, as Scott deals with a different emotional or relationship issue that’s personified in the evil ex that he must wind up battling at the end of the book.
Luce’s storytelling structure is far more loose, and in some ways, far more self-indulgent. I mean this in the sense that Luce simply writes about everything that interests him and throws it into one big stew. He’s a huge music nerd and manages to throw in references to everything from death metal to dance music to Morrissey to punk. He’s a knowledgeable fan of professional wrestling, so of course his lead character little dragon nightlight Oaf is a former pro whose nom de ring was Gote Blud. Luce can’t help but throw in musical puns and references, as Oaf’s finishing move involved him wearing a goat horn mask that spewed fake blood and was called “Raining GoteBlood”–a reference to the band Slayer. Luce is fascinated by cats, and so the cats here have weird fantasy lives of their own. And of course, Luce is gay and writes extensively about gay culture, particularly what he refers to in the comic as “oafs and bait”–big, frequently muscular and sometimes fat men (popularly known as “bears,” though Luce puts the kibosh on that term here) and their smaller lovers. There are elements of magical realism and just plain weirdness at work here, such as when the cat’s hair sometimes take on a life of its own or a future story where Oaf is the savior of the new cat race.
The obvious alt-comics comparison is Jaime Hernandez, not O’Malley. Like Luce, Hernandez was raised on a steady diet of mainstream superhero and Archie comics. Hernandez also loved to write about the melodrama in the wrestling ring. Hernandez made sure to write about things he knew and loved: Latino culture, punk rock, and strong women. Hernandez also didn’t take long to refine his line and become little dragon nightlight one of the greatest draftsmen in comics. Hernandez has never written a “graphic novel” little dragon nightlight to this very day; instead, he prefers short vignettes that jump back and forth in time, and he sometimes collects longer storylines as they add up. Similarly, Luce is self-publishing actual comic books and frequently writes little dragon nightlight short stories for anthologies and specials starring his characters. Like Hernandez, Luce is taking his time with what is the only real narrative that can be discerned thus far in this series, preferring to simply let the reader hang out with his characters in other settings.
One early critique of Hernandez’s comics was that they were still a bit mired in their mainstream roots. Luce’s comics are certainly light and light-hearted, with a focus on comedy little dragon nightlight being one of his key aims. And at its core, just like Jaime’s Locas stories, Wuvable Oaf is a romance comic. It’s just that this relationship is mediated through slightly ridiculous, larger than life characters. The star of the show, Oaf, is a huge hirsute man with a thick black beard. Luce loves using, a thick blocky character design that’s highly stylized, especially when it comes to faces. His characters’ faces have huge eyes, thick eyebrows, and the kind of exaggerated features that look a bit like those drawn by Bob Fingerman. The object of Oaf’s affection is a charismatic smaller man named Eiffel, who’s the l