Word: schalken
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...lines perfectly match the brutal ecstasy of his superb "Sandra Brown," a story of lust and mud. In one of the several non-fiction entries, Canadian David Collier boldly finds a parallel between himself and an Islamic fundamentalist. More abstract work keeps the book from being too didactic. Tobias Schalken, half of the experimental "Eiland" duo, contributes a story whose images complement each other when holding the page up to a bright light. The overt theme of "Rosetta" may a bit vague - the word appears in several entries, particularly as the name of a diner - but the covert theme, outstanding...
Issue four of "Eiland" (Bries; 28pp.; $13.95), by a pair of Dutch artists, Sefan J.H. van Dinther and Tobias Tycho Schalken, doesn't come at you like a comicbook. You push the contents out of an open-ended cover sleeve. Into your lap plops an eight-and-a-half-foot-long piece of shiny cardstock that has been folded back and forth, accordion-style. Each side of the sheet contains a story by one of the artists, which because of the folding, means the book has no front or back and the end of one turns over to the beginning...
...stories are of an equally unconventional nature. Schalken's "Balthazar" is subtitled "Part III: In Apple Blossom Time," and even if we had the benefit of parts one and two, it seems unlikely to satisfy our need for obvious answers. Using a graphical style that combines hand-drawing and computer imagery, "Balthazar" wordlessly captures fragments of a schoolgirl's romantic fantasies. Linear moments, like a handsome teacher reaching out to touch a pretty colleague, are interrupted by panels of the girl dancing, until the entire page gets filled with swirling patterns of people in movement. Breaking down time into fragments...
...Schalken and van Dinther's "Eiland" and Paul Hornschemeier's "Forlorn Funnies" aren't as easy to read as other comix. But they aren't meant to be. You need to put aside conventional notions of how comix can entertain and accept that the challenge of such works becomes the entertainment...
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