So Buttons #14
Writer: Jonathan Baylis
Artists: MariNaomi, Brian “Box” Brown, T.J. Kirsch, Sophia Glock, CM Campbell, Nathaniel Breen, Summer Pierre, Steven Arnold, Karl Christian Krumpholz, Lisa Rosalie Eisenberg, and Ayoko Nito
Publisher: Alchemy Comix
Publication Date: 2024
For 14 issues, writer Jonathan Baylis has teamed with some of the best artists in indie comix circles to make memoir anthologies drawn from pieces of his every day life. This series, dubbed So Buttons, owes a great deal to Harvey Pekar, a fact Baylis is fast to point out, doing so when I bought my first issue of So Buttons back in 2019 at Small Press Expo (SPX). Baylis has a voice all his own though, and his scripting is a nice blend of honesty (even when painful) and wry, relatable observations.
What really elevates the series, however, is his eye for talented collaborators. The list of great cartoonists who have contributed pages to So Buttons over the years is truly staggering. In this issue, we get pages from Brian “Box” Brown, MariNaomi, and Sophia Glock, among others, and the last time The Beat wrote about So Buttons in 2022, So Buttons #12 featured artists like Jesse Lonergan, Carol Tyler, Ben Passmore, Josh Bayer, and Noah Van Sciver. If you’re the type of reader who enjoys shows like SPX (or TCAF, or MoCCA, or CAKE, etc.), chances are you’re going to find several of your favorite artists in each issue.
So Buttons is, of course, always going to center Baylis, with his duckbill cap and his stories of celebrity run-ins and making his way through comics fandom and comics creator spaces. Last year’s So Buttons #14, however, finds Baylis working through some major losses in his life, and of the handful of issues of this series I’ve read, this one feels like the most poignant and moving work he’s done yet, complete with a thoughtful emotional journey and thematic crescendo.
So Buttons #14, which was nominated for an Eisner this year, opens with the story of how Baylis once briefly met Gary “Baba Booey” Dell’Abate, the long-time producer of The Howard Stern Show. It’s a great short (you can check out a couple of preview pages in this post, with art by Box Brown), and it’s a piece that really speaks to the intimate relationship listeners have with radio shows and I suppose, nowadays, podcasts. As someone who also grew up listening to Stern, I found it relatable and moving. The next two stories in the issue go on to detail Baylis’ interactions with indie comics royalty, Chester Brown and Jaime Hernandez. But it’s after these first three stories that the issue really starts to find its powerful emotional core.
In the fourth piece in this comic, the story focuses on the late-James Earl Jones, who like Baylis dealt with a stutter as a youth. From there the comic becomes more of a mediation on not just loss, but on appreciating the contributions the departed made to our lives as we grieve them. It almost feels like a pivot point, a bridge between everyday anectdotes and the life-shaking stories that are to come. Yes, after the James Earl Jones piece, this comic starts to explore loss, specifically the deaths of Baylis’ long-time comics dealer, and, ultimately, his mother.
These stories are incredibly touching, honest, and heartfelt. And they’re told in atypical ways. I particularly enjoyed the reflections on Baylis mother, on her death but also on how much she shaped his life. I won’t spoil, but it’s within this context we learn why this comic is called So Buttons (if that had been revealed in a prior issue, I missed that one).
The nature of an anthology series is such that single issues won’t always have a coherent set of themes. But this one does, and it’s powerful and moving and liable to make you appreciate the outsized figures who have given shape to your own life, whether they’re gone or still with you.
So Buttons #14 is available now
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English (US) · 