Married Bay Area cartoonists Breena Nuñez and Lawrence Lindell recently released the latest installment of their two-person anthology Laneha House, which also happens to be the name of their publishing house.
In case you’re not familiar, Broken Frontier covered the beginnings of small press publisher Laneha House in late 2020. According to the press release then: “The couple started planning the small press in 2019 at their former home in Oakland, CA dubbed ‘Cartoonist Haus”, but decided to officially launch [Laneha House] this year in 2020. The couple have been self-publishing their work together since 2017 and separately since 2012/13. Now that they are officially marrying this year, they decided to continue the tradition of self-publishing their work, but under an official press.”
Their dual anthology Laneha House #1 was one of the first releases from the publisher. Just five years later, and many more releases from the micropublisher, brings Laneha House #14, all still from Breena Nuñez and Lawrence Lindell. Each artist gets 14 pages to themselves.
Nuñez (Fonny Phases, Speak Africanismos) has a deceptively loose style, perfect for the low-key humor that runs through their work here. Across the seven mostly untitled vignettes, Breena shows off their mastery of comedic timing. The first strip uses facial expressions to drive the actions of a “Karen” angrily stomping out a lit sage offering in front of Breena, Lawrence, and friend, which ends with a perfectly worded punchline. A sharp one-page strip uses a visual clue (from a certain famous comic strip character) inserted into the final word balloon to exclaim the identity of ‘Fictional Celebrity Spotting’. Other strips on voting, a day in a cartoonist’s life, a fly’s revenge, and a lighthearted smoking gag all use visual puns and exaggerated reactions to hilarious effect. The outlier is ‘Cute Ducks, Too Bad Tho’, which is drawn in a more realistic style than the other strips. Only four panels long, this is a masterclass in storytelling efficiency (ending with a horrific misunderstanding the reader will never forget).
Lindell (Blackward, Buckle Up, We All Got Something) uses their fourteen pages for experimental illustrations and a few high concept strips. There is more introspection, as opposed to the humor in Breena’s pages, such as the untitled one-page strip where Lawrence questions his place in the larger comics community or maybe the place of comics in their life. There’s also a clever reprint from the music magazine Razorcake, concerning a punk rock turtle. This pairs well with the other humor strip (also music-related) about Lawrence, using an amazing serpentine layout with no panel borders. One of the untitled experimental strips uses zooming in and panning out over 20 panels to manipulate time and perception in a one page sequence. The other untitled strip features figures of Lawrence talking in word balloons filled with images rather than words, not necessarily forming a sequential narrative but a narrative, nonetheless.
If you’re looking for an anthology featuring work pushing the boundaries of what comics can accomplish (and bring a smile or two along the way), look no further than Laneha House #14 and two of the busiest people in comics: Breena Nuñez and Lawrence Lindell.
Breena Nuñez (W/A), Lawrence Lindell (W/A) • Laneha House, $2.00
Review by Gary Usher
I think you should create your own small press comic based on all the stupid things Bill Griffeth did. It would easily be the funniest comic of the year.