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CBG SATELLITES
The ADD Blog by Alan David Doane
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Ganges #1 Before I begin this review, I have a confession to make - I devour
comics. When I get a new comic, whatever it may be, it's all I can do to
keep myself from placing it over my steering wheel and reading it while
I drive home. Which means that my first reading of any comic book is
generally not what you would call a profitable experience - unless, of
course, the comic in question was actually something that was meant to
be consumed like fast food and discarded just as quickly as the goopy
cardboard containers and dirty napkins that accompany such fare. And
hey, there's a time and place for fast food - it may be high in salt,
high in calories, and high in fat, but it's also loaded with
sense-appealing flavors that provide instant gratification. Sure, you
won't remember your McBurger experience a week later, but it is
enjoyable while it lasts. But when you get the opportunity to dine in
high style, you have to slow down, savor the moment, and enjoy. And that
brings me to Kevin Huizenga's latest effort, Ganges #1. Kevin
Huizenga writes comics that force you to slow down. If you don't
let Huizenga's work simmer, you simply won't get out of it what he has
put into it; it would be like sucking back a nice frothy Guinness as if
it were a can of Lucky Lager. Each certainly has its place, but each
must be enjoyed for what it is, in its own particular context. According to Fantagraphics's promotional blurb, Ganges #1 is made
up of a series of "low-key slice-of-life stories." Low-key they
certainly are, but this only adds to their appeal, to the manner in
which they impact me directly. While I love comic writers like,
for instance, Ivan Brunetti, writers who take things to the edge and
beyond, who explore the deepest, most grotty recesses of their souls, I
often find myself enjoying their work from a distance, as it were. Yes,
on a certain level, the feelings of self-loathing and despair that
artists like Brunetti bring to their work find some corollary in each
one of us. But Huizenga taps into something which I believe is even more
universal -- the way in which our minds work, the way our thoughts often
seem to come unhinged and escape the control of our conscious mind, the
avenues our thoughts take when we're not really thinking about anything
in particular. Huizenga does similar things here in Ganges that
he did in his Or Else books, published by Drawn & Quarterly - he
draws out the thoughts that flash through our minds in milliseconds,
dissecting, exploring, and deconstructing them over the course of
several pages, before putting the puzzle back together again by going
from the subconscious to the conscious mind. Time Traveling, the
first story in this collection (available on Huizenga's website), Glenn Ganges is walking to the
library, again. He flashes back to a year previous, then two, then
three. Has he travelled through time? He needs to pick up a newspaper to
read its headline before being able to firmly re-plant his feet in the
reality that exists today. Or... is it actually still last year? Glenn's journey to the library continues in the second story, The
Litterer. He sees a cyclist emptying his pockets onto the street,
and for the next three pages he builds up his own personal apocalyptic
vision of this criminal littering psychopath and his probable
development into a polluting industrialist, a corporate powerbroker, and
Hannibal on his elephant watching a city go up in flames (all the while
still wearing his bicycle helmet). Again, Huizenga has exploded a
minute's worth of thought into a three-page series of images that result
from an average mind's inner workings over a span of seconds. And in the
case of The Litterer, he does so with a good dose of humor
tainted with just a hint of darkness. The book's final story, which is also the longest in this 32-page
collection, sees Glenn's ever-active mind at work again, this time as he
lies next to his wife Wendy as she sleeps. His thoughts travel to the
infinite number of couples who have felt the same feelings throughout
the history of the universe. As he lies awake, the couples appear in an
infinite circle, like an M.C. Escher diagram endlessly spiralling into
infinity. Some thoughts are so universal, even mundane on a certain
level, but at the same time, and probably because of that very fact,
they touch the heart in ways that other stories don't. Glenn's thoughts,
as usual, turn negative. What if something happens to Wendy, like has
happened to so many couples before? Glenn runs through the possibilities
- accidents, betrayal, wars, plagues, death... the options for negative
outcomes are endless. He scrunches up his eyes like a little boy and
says a brief prayer, in what to me is the finest sequence of panels in a
very fine book; but the book closes, almost paradoxically, on a lighter,
yet still somewhat pessimistic note. And to me, this final sequence sums
up what is so good about this all-too-brief collection of stories -
Huizenga manages to leave the outcome open-ended, while combining a
multitude of conflicting emotions and feelings into the space of a page
of silent panels. If you've liked Huizenga's other work, whether for Drawn & Quarterly, or
in his self-published mini-comics, you're sure to enjoy Ganges
#1. And if your comics experience thus far has been the equivalent
of fast food gobbled down in the car on the way home from work, do
yourself a favor and try the comic book analogue to the
delicately-seasoned offerings of a gourmet cook. Socrates said, "The
unexamined life is not worth living." Kevin Huizenga his doing his part
to decrease the amount of "unexamined lives" in this world... and that's
a very good thing. -- Jim Witt Send review copies to:
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