! - page twelve

Just another page for ! this week.


Ho hum. Hum de dum...

sketchbook: more postit stuff

More postit sketches, drawn at various times throughout the day. Not really a comic this time, but it kind of looks it.

They really oughtn't have given me access to the postit notes.

! - page eleven

You know, I haven't read many reviews of Yuichi Yokoyama's New Engineering that say anything beyond "It was weird. I liked it." (or sometimes, "I liked it, it was weird"), but Ryan Tokola manages a step better in his review of the book. 

He makes some good points about the "architectural" treatment of the stories and the role that the incidental material plays in the reading experience which only really touch on part of what makes this book really great.

And it is great, but like all great thing it's not always obvious why. Sure, the character design is "out there" - that's cool. There's a stylish, otherworldly disconnect throughout. And the omnipresent "sound effects" give the stories amazing tension - but fuck all that, really (isn't that just a hyper stylized version of what happened whenever Adam West socked Cesar Romero in the jaw, after all?) It's the treatment of "story" that blows me away here.

There is nothing so much as plot - or characterization - or dramatic tension/resolution here (not in any traditional sense). What we have instead are finely choreographed construction scenes, or battles, or whatever... that ultimately lead... nowhere. These are narratives- sure - but not "stories." And yet it's as engaging a read as any you'll find in comics. It reinforces a belief I have that runs counter to what so many express - that "telling a story" is not necessarily the be all and end all of all comics. Yuichi Yokoyama conveys his message without the traditional constraints of storytelling that everyone says are so all-fired important.

His book, and comics as a whole is better for it. New Engineering is a fantastic, and important, and challenging work.

That is to say, It was weird. I liked it.

(Link to the review via Derik because I keep forgetting to read Guttergeek myself)

The Briefest of Interludes: on Religion

Last week I spent all my comics time - when I would usually be preparing another page of ! for you all - on Alexander's Uncertainty and on my rewrite of Lost and Found for Cat Garza. To make up for the lack of a ! here is a little doodle postit comic I made when I should have been actually working for a living.
I hope the three of you left reading here will enjoy it:



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! - page ten

! - page nine

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