Word: foodboy
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After an eight-year gap since her last major work, Swain has finally come out with a new, short graphic novel, "FoodBoy" (Fantagraphics; 72 pages; $9.95). A native of England, Swain creates characters that could be called "Trainspotting" types: mostly working class, they are school outcasts, unemployed and unemployable. Bored but never boring, they discover mysteries about the world or else make up their...
...Gareth, the foodboy, works in a hotel kitchen in Llanparc, Wales. As the story begins he walks along a lonely mountain road carrying a sack filled with a souvenir snow globe and a steak of raw Welsh lamb. He's going to meet his friend Ross, and feed him. Ross hasn't been himself lately, as we see through a series of flashbacks. We first meet Ross, a big guy with a shaved head, at a tent revival in the middle of the town. Ross interrupts the sermon to proselytize his own beliefs - a system he characterizes by saying nothing...
...Gareth and Ross check out the shrinking lake in Carol Swain's "Foodboy...
...This mood of "Foodboy" develops chiefly from Swain's remarkable comix pacing. She uses slam cuts to jump from one time and place to another, in mid-page with no visual cues, keeping you guessing about where and when a scene takes place. It's the kind of pleasant discombobulation you get from a midway hall of mirrors. You feel your way through. Swain also frequently inserts mute sequences that feel like poetic interludes. The narrative breathes. Her "camera" swirls around its subjects while they do nothing more than walk and light a cigarette. Each frame of a Carol Swain...
...Carol Swain has one of the most unique and compelling styles in comix. "Foodboy" will give you the chills. Even the cover features a depopulated, snowy landscape with a trail of footprints leading off into the distance. Cool and natural, it perfectly represents the book: a muted pastoral that holds within it an unquiet human heart...
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