Escher-like – Revolver One feels like a cohesive whole

Being a simple sole I was pleased to get a thoughtful review from a recent customer who bought the digital Revolver from me.

Rachel Fenton was kind enough to leave a few stars on Good reads as well as posting her thoughts. 

So I’m most faltered and glad to read this paragraph. Making sure the books hold together well as a whole is a priority for me so glad to hear it reads that way.

Though muted and limited in palette, the art demonstrates a level of skill many comic artists can only aspire to. Perspectives are juxtaposed Escher-like adding to the alter-reality quality of each individual story as well as the collection generally. Revolver One feels like a cohesive whole. 

Thank you very kindly. It’s funny also to me to realize that at 42 now, when I drew those I was thinking about men my current age often.

“The fictions unfold surreally. “Each day he awakes to another dream-like day,” reveals the narrator of “Pin City”. But these are not dreams of optimism; there is little joy to be found either in the text or the art work. What these stories do offer, however, is a looking glass to contemporary North American society where predominantly men above a certain age are caught up in a kind of hinterland between what they imagine life should offer and what the reality of their existence is.”

Yep that’s a pretty strong theme in that collection. I’d like to think that it can be read even more broadly. Not just about men. But that’s certainly true about most of them. I always saw Helpless as being more about the narrators life but the elderly man in that story is quite central. Misplaced was also co authored with the same writer and we reveled in making the child gender ambiguous and watching to see how the bias falls out. But regardless of that aspect universally I’d agree expectations and anxieties and displacement are the crux of those stories, one of the things I wanted to try to talk about. Nice to see it coming out on the other end. I’m still surprised as the first time the lack of Joy is such a strong impression. She’s not the first to note that. But then I suppose this might be a question of perspective? Hmm, wonder what that says about mine eh? Well we’ll have to make sure there’s some fun stuff in future issues, just not to be totally depressing! I think Misplaced and Wildthings are pretty upbeat though. But check this bit out…

One feature of the layout that really surprised and delighted me, as a reader and aspiring comic artist, is Douglas’ use of tangents to create intense dialogue between the external landscape of the city and the inner or psychological landscape of the protagonist. 
 
What Revolver One demonstrates is that there’s more than one way of looking at something. We can observe society from a distance, objectively, but unless we put ourselves in the position of the protagonist in any of these fictions, we may end up trapped in not so much a dream world as a reality behind glass, unable to escape.


Nice.

 I have a authors profile on good reads here, if you add me there i’ll send you a discount code for my digital books!