Remembering Nathaniel Russell’s charming and economical illustrated columns for The Smudge

The Smudge is a pretty cool magazine – run by interviewers, writers, comic book creators and advice columnists, their description stresses that they are ‘not activists, not editors, but we have a printer and we know how to use it’. It sounds like a threat, but in the spirit of underground and alternative presses of the 60s, The Smudge has a unique, charming voice. A great deal of that is due to the contributing artists, one of which was Nathaniel Russell who ran a pillar shaped column called It’s Natural. Featuring across 56 columns between 2017 and 2021, the illustrations are now composed in a new book, The Collected It’s Natural, published by Clay Hickson and Liana Jegers, co-founders of The Smudge. The Indiana based artist’s drawings are wonderful and not to mention perfectly aligned with the easy reading of The Smudge – corn cobs, flocks of birds, bare asses, “memory ghosts” and “space eggs”, every illustration pays tribute to nature and playful extensions of it.

Inspired primarily by music, Nathaniel’s drawings have a sing-song quality in their joyous movements and colours. It seems strange to limit something as expansive as nature and the emotional spectrum of music within a thin border, but that’s where these one-shot comics stand out from other oners. “When I was very young, I was heavily into on-panel comics like The Far Side by Gary Larsen. I would often think about having a comic strip that was for art and ideas with no punchlines, more of an outlet for the more abstract thoughts,” says Nathaniel. These columns are truly accessible, immediately appealing to children and adults alike – one column that lists different types of buttocks is humorous without ever being offensive.

The quaint illustrations are slithers of abstract thoughts contained into straightforward and vibrant cartoons, acting as visual pieces of advice or offering questions. Often limited to a tri-colour presentation, Nathaniel was inspired by the limitation, allowing him to explore large concepts with simple visual storytelling – a crucial part of how printing restrictions influence the way underground comix look and feel. “Usually the idea and the medium appear at the same time. Sometimes the words determine the approach or can float between methods. I don’t fret over it too much, I typically use a first-thought-best-thought approach to these things,” says Nathaniel.

It’s Natural is a testament to how much an artist needs to tell a story, the restrained borders can contain succinct and perfectly minimal narratives, like a corn cob that says ‘help’, or a short and bittersweet story of a dead witch. “This column was a real gift. I was so honored to be included in The Smudge in a regular capacity and it was so great for me to have a monthly art responsibility,” Nathaniel shares. “Being accountable to somebody else (editors Clay Hickson and Lianna Jegers) really forced me to keep it up and I am the better for it. It was therapeutic for me. I really hope people were able to find something in it for themselves.”