From Publishers Weekly
For this first volume in Drawn and Quarterly's ambitious program to spotlight young talent in a long-form showcase, the artists each use a different two-color palette and tell stories linked by their emphasis on the visual poetry possible in comics. Huizenga's three interlocking short stories focus on the daydreams of Glenn Ganges, a man deeply preoccupied with conceiving a child with his wife. In a Midwestern suburban landscape, Ganges wonders about refugees from the Sudan and pesky birds and goes on a quest for an ogre's feathers. Huizenga uses a clean cartoon style related to the delineations of Gasoline Alley, combining articulate ideas about love and worry with humorous asides and a knack for moments of stunning visual beauty, as when he devotes a page to the flight of a flock of birds. Robel's half is a single surreal story done in hues of green and red. More vague and angst-ridden than Huizenga's work, it follows a woman through a mansion and into her dreams and nightmares, blurring the line between life and fantasy. It's an entertaining romp, visually arresting, and suggests future promise for Robel, even if it doesn't pack quite the punch of Huizenga's more direct and fully formed work. The anthology is a successful idea and important for comics' future. Giving young artists space to stretch out and develop in book form is necessary, and by taking a chance on new talent, Drawn and Quarterly again proves it's one of today's most adventurous and important comics publishers.
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Alternative-comics publisher Drawn & Quarterly's flagship title has been the annual bearing its name and spotlighting leading alternative-comics artists throughout the world. Now the company launches a more modest companion to showcase up-and-coming talents. The inaugural volume features two young artists presenting dissimilar but complementary stories. Midwesterner Huizenga's two features depict suburbanite family man Glenn Ganges, whose mundane concerns spin off into subtly sinister fantasies; in a yarn loosely based on an Italian folktale, Ganges, in an effort to bring about his wife's pregnancy, undertakes a surreal quest to pluck a feather from a monstrous ogre. Whereas Huizenga's cartoony style derives from classic comic strips, the Swiss Robel's work is artier. While inspecting a vacant apartment with her insensitive boyfriend, his vaguely Munchian protagonist is confronted by harrowing visions from her past, which Robel presents in a stark, bizarre style. Both these newcomers don't just show potential but talent that is already well developed. They have plenty to say and the chops to express it.
Gordon FlaggCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
