Word: comix
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Take the bucket seat out of your old Chevy, put it on a wood frame in the middle of a field and sit in it. Now you know what it feels like to read Tom Galambos' comix novella "All the Wrong Places" (Laszlo Press; 74pg; $14.95). Nathan, the protagonist, sits in his Chevy couch a lot. He does it on the cover. It must feel internal yet expansive, comforting yet lonely - exactly like reading this thoughtful book...
...with three small insets, followed by a zig-zag of panels down the page, followed by all verticals. You could look at this book from across the room and enjoy it. Galambos teaches art in Rochester, New York, but by all rights he should be making a living at comix instead...
...that a story about his life would involve sequences of just looking. It's almost magic the way Galambos packs in so much emotional action into a mere 76 pages while taking lots of time-outs for iced tea and sitting down. He uses the unique visual pacing of comix to insert moments that force us into Nathan's state of mind. At one point Nathan says to Jessica, "I'm sorry if you get bored, it seems that all we do is sit around." "No. It's not boring. Sometimes it's good just to sit," she replies...
...draws cleanly too. The black and white images are "classically" representational and nicely detailed. You could almost count the hairs in Odysseus' beard. Shanower generally eschews experimentation except during a cartoony flashback, and an occasional toying with event's sequence in time. Comix aesthetes may therefore snuff at its mainstream approach, but on the other hand, you don't need a Ph.D. in comix linguistics to appreciate...
...that end, "Age of Bronze: A Thousand Ships," would be a fine book to give to your relatives who don't read comix, or as an alternate introduction to the classics for teenagers. And since "Age of Bronze" gets published in chapter format as a regular comicbook, you can continue to enjoy the work without waiting for the next big volume. (The first issue of the second volume should be arriving soon.) You almost pity poor Eric Shanower. By the end of this first book a priest prophesies the Trojan war to last nine years. At the rate Shanower...