Word: ollmann
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2003-2003
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Each of the nine stories in Joe Ollmann's new black and white paperback, "Chewing on Tinfoil," (Insomniac Press; 155 pp.; $15.95) feature some sort of (un)lovable loser. The alienated high-school kid, office milquetoast, pretentious layabout, lapsed art student, and bowl-hair-cut kid: all these and more appear in its pages. Ollmann's work is new to me, and it has the leaps and falls of a new artist extending himself. Some of the tales are artless swipes at the usual archetypes, but enough of the stories surprise you with odd details or an unexpected twist...
...them are single, they begin flirting, with Paul teasing her about her Dan Fogelberg CD. But when Cindy sends Paul, who is black, on an after-hours errand to the closed Dairy Freez he gets picked up by a pair of racist cops. This unexpected change-up highlights both Ollmann's admirable ambitions and his difficulties. The cliched depiction of the southern cops seems as equally prejudiced as the racism they are meant to represent. Still, Ollmann's desire to explore important subject and his ability to provide an emotional payoff with sympathetic characters put this work above the grade...
...Ollmann's cartooning style is at once conventional and grotesque. He works in a strict nine-panel grid system of tight little boxes. This makes his work very TV-like, with nearly every panel featuring a close-up of a character. Wide angles, experimental layouts, and non-action panels are generally shunned, making it easy to read for novice comix readers, but rather conservative to sophisticates. With what he does depict, though, Ollmann has an excellent grasp of caricature. Faces are what Ollmann does best. Frequently covered in zits, freckles and pockmarks, his character's faces are detailed in their...
...strict, conventional rural town. While his crude older brother tries to save the family's strawberry farm by turning it into a theme park, Abel sneaks away and reminisces about his frustrated relationship with a cute alty-girl who moved away. With no central gimmick to distract him, Ollmann fleshes out Abel and his world with thoughtful details like the way Abel's mother "used to laugh more when we were little but she wears her hair pulled tightly now and preserves everything in pickle jars." In the end Abel comes home to a rage-filled father and an absurd...
| 1 |