How do you critique a book that is essentially criticism? The Cute Manifesto is made up largely of Kochalka's cartoons, but it is all sort of aimed at delivering his philosophy on cartooning, and talking about that in a critical way runs the risk of winding up like the Monty Python arguing sketch. "This isn't comics!" "Yes it is!" "No it isn't!" What I will say is that although The Cute Manifesto is recognizably Kochalka (and anyone who has read anything Kochalka will know what that means), it's also something different, closer to his work on Top Shelf's Conversations than his work on, say, Monkey vs. Robot or Superf*ckers. It's a bit more serious, and while it's still kind of "out there," it's in more of a philosophical "out there" kind of way, leading the reader's mind down the same path as Kochalka's to think about comics and art and how it relates to the world. Whether you agree with the philosophies explored in The Cute Manifesto or not (personally, I don't buy into a lot of it), this is a fascinating examination of the craft (or lack thereof) in the medium by someone who has clearly done a lot of thinking about it. Sort of a weird, counterculture complementary reading to Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics in a way.
The Cute Manifesto is a collection of several things that Kochalka has created. The book opens with two brief letters originally written to The Comics Journal called "Craft is the Enemy" and "Craft is not a friend." In these essays, Kochalka assaults the notion that there is any objective quality in comics, and indicates that the only tool you need to produce great comics is a strong enough will. To be honest, this argument sounds ridiculous to me. The notion that a will to create is all you need to create something great seems like saying the only thing you need to do 85 on the highway is an engine. To my mind, if will is the engine that drives comic book creation, craft is the drivetrain and the shell that completes the package. A basic level of craft and ability to communicate is like a rusted out drive chain and carburetor and a junkyard sedan chassis, while a polished level of craft is more like a fuel-injection system and chromed-up chassis. See, I told you this could turn into a Monty Python arguing sketch. I didn't warn you that it could turn into a litany of meaningless metaphors. Sorry about that. Suffice to say, The Cute Manifesto gets off to a rocky start if you're unwilling to accept the basic premise that "craft" is not essential to creating comics, but, if you believe Kochalka, a distraction. His points are not entirely without merit, as some creators become so obsessed with perfection and polish that they never produce anything that isn't worked over to death, but I think that the legions of badly written and drawn, if passionate, comics are as much a problem as soulless assembly-line produced comics.
The "craft" essays are honestly sort of off-the-cuff analysis of a more complex process, which is what Kochalka spends most of the rest of the book on. "The Horrible Truth About Comics," the last cartoon in the book, is the one most directly exploring the nature of the medium, and it's one of the most fascinating pieces in the book. Kochalka's stream-of-consciousness style can be a little bit bewildering, as he makes connections between drawing and playing as children and the language of music and comics, but he's also exploring sort of the primordial structure underlying comics, trying to discern what it is about the medium that communicates when done right. There's an odd amount of extraneous detail, as Kochalka's "character" talks aloud about his philosophies while engaging in such mundane behavior as getting a drink in the middle of the night or such unusual behavior as walking on the moon, but this visual context helps to reinforce the fluid language and ability of comics to communicate. Kochalka doesn't make his points as clearly and forcefully as Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, but "The Horrible Truth About Comics" is work in the same ballpark.
It is the rest of The Cute Manifesto that I found the most interesting, as Kochalka isn't really examining comics in a meta context but instead using the comics medium to explore questions of life and art. "Reinventing Everything" is a story about the rushed pace of the modern world and the appeal of the natural world in which Kochalka acknowledges the seductive hold of the modern world even as he longs for something simpler, and it's also a story about how, in the wake of a devastating event like 9/11, Kochalka and his wife chose to have a child. Given the recent events of Hurricane Katrina, I found Kochalka's wise words about turning towards beauty, life and "cuteness" in the wake of disaster to be strangely uplifting. The notion that there is beauty in the world more powerful than any ugliness is a good message to hear at any time, but especially in the more trying times. Kochalka has a tendency to cover the simple joys of daily life in his American Elf strips, but in "Reinventing Everything" and "The Cute Manifesto" he reaches deeper and reminds the reader of the deeper joys of life that exist as a counterbalance to the ugliness and horror that is also a daily part of life.
When reading Kochalka, it is always clear that his mind functions in a way that is quite different from most of us. There's an almost childlike innocence combined with the intellectual philosophy of a lifelong scholar, a bit of a rabble-rouser mixed with someone who only wants to remind people of all that's good and right in the world. The Cute Manifesto is a bit more serious and considerably more intellectual than a lot of Kochalka's more "fun" works, and to be honest, I kind of missed that level of quirkiness, but there are messages here that are nice to hear and interesting thoughts that should spark discussion. While discussion of the medium on a surface level is easy to find, there are very few who are willing to try and tinker with the nuts and bolts underpinnings of how it works, and The Cute Manifesto is another addition to those rarified ranks.
