David Bird
10-23-2004, 12:39 AM
I ordered this into our store because it had won a best comic poll or other. I have mixed feelings about alternative comics. Theres a lot of alt snobbery, especially towards mainstream comics and mainstream comic readers, but every comic genre has its faults and with atlernative comics they are often amatuerish (sorry - authentic) and simply not very interesting. Short biographical piece about the life of an alt comics artist? Its just boring. So, anyway, I ordered in a couple of copies, and...
Wow. You definitely need to check out this comic. I have no idea what its about, though I've read 2 or 3 times. What is so fascinating about this book is its success as an exercise in sequential story telling. There is no text. Instead, a female rider with a bunny head rides from a graveyard on a steed with a long worm-like neck and a face like a Japanese mask. As she leaves she spits and her spit falls in two places. The story of the rider continues through the middle of the book, but each piece of spittle turns into some fantastic creature and their stories continue, one above the riders story and one below. What you get are their stories told concurrently across the page. From each of the creatures comes another story, also told concurrently, and then two more stories. At the mid point you have seven stories being told. These stories then fold back into each other, leaving you with the original rabbit headed rider. While the stories are told separately they do connect in interesting ways. The mask like head of the 'horse' appears on the chest of one creature and is the face of the priest or magistrate that condemns the rider.
Its 22 pages and $4.95 in America, $6.95 in Canada.
Dart is an American who lives in Canada and works in animation. This is the first of her comics I've ever read.
Wow. You definitely need to check out this comic. I have no idea what its about, though I've read 2 or 3 times. What is so fascinating about this book is its success as an exercise in sequential story telling. There is no text. Instead, a female rider with a bunny head rides from a graveyard on a steed with a long worm-like neck and a face like a Japanese mask. As she leaves she spits and her spit falls in two places. The story of the rider continues through the middle of the book, but each piece of spittle turns into some fantastic creature and their stories continue, one above the riders story and one below. What you get are their stories told concurrently across the page. From each of the creatures comes another story, also told concurrently, and then two more stories. At the mid point you have seven stories being told. These stories then fold back into each other, leaving you with the original rabbit headed rider. While the stories are told separately they do connect in interesting ways. The mask like head of the 'horse' appears on the chest of one creature and is the face of the priest or magistrate that condemns the rider.
Its 22 pages and $4.95 in America, $6.95 in Canada.
Dart is an American who lives in Canada and works in animation. This is the first of her comics I've ever read.