iFanboy Upstarts: Hellen Jo

You might think that your local comic store’s comic shelves holds the work by the best and brightest comics could offer, but I’ve learned through the years that some of the best comics creators are those working in animation. People like Scott Morse, LeSean Thomas, Dave Johnson and others hold down day-jobs in comics and moonlight in the world of comics — and I think I’ve found one more to add to that list.

Berkeley-based artist Hellen Jo works on storyboards for Cartoon Network’s The Regular Show, but has spent years working on comics that have been distributed in the alternative comics community and in zines and magazines. Rising out of similar music-fueled ranks as Becky Cloonan, Jo premiered on the comic scene in 2002 with the first of many mini-comics. After dropping out of the University of California (and a maligned degree in German), Joe took her comics game to the next level with two large-format comics — the teen/horror/romance Paralysis and the coming-of-age story Blister No. 1. In 2008 through Sparkplug Comics Books she released her most well-known comics work yet, Jim & Jam. Since then she’s spent the majority of her time doing short comics for various places like The Believer, Vice and Giant Robot, while contributing to gallery and museum shows in the U.S. and Europe. I’m not-so-patiently hoping she has some big comics plans in the works as well.

Although her work might seem reminiscent of Japanese woodblock prints, Jo’s work looks more to me like some bizarrely wonderful melding of Taiyo Matsumoto and Adrian Tomine over a bed of photocopied zines ordered from Factsheet Five. Her work to date has been exceedingly rare and hard to come by, but she looks to have all the skills, punch and passion to really be more than just a cult-favorite artist in comics circles.