Customer Reviews

Low Moon

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've awaited this book for months now and my expectations for it couldn't have been much higher, but it still managed to exceed them. There are actually 5 separate stories contained in this book: "Emily Says Hello", "Low Moon", "&", "Proto Film Noir", and "You are Here" which are all very different in their subject matter and style of storytelling. This makes for a really enjoyable read, because of the variation herein. I was glad to see that this book went less with the slapsticky style of the recent "The Last Musketeer" and went back to a more serious and kind of surreal tone that were seen in "Hey, Wait" and "The Iron Wagon". Don't get me wrong though, Jason's humor still comes through in the surreality of the stories.

Its awesome to see Jason getting his works published in hardcover too, as I feel his comics are deserving of the respect. All in all, this was really enjoyable for me and I would recommend this to both established fans of Jason and people who are looking to see what he's all about.

This is a masterclass in simple storytelling; the tales have great pacing, simple but powerful narrative arcs, are playful, occasionally laugh out loud.

But overall, the tone of this book is deep deep melancholy - not to be read if you are already feeling down!

"Low Moon" shows two things about Jason's success - firstly that he's getting blurbs from writers like Glen David Gold on the back cover, and secondly that this is his first hardback edition with colour.

It's a little larger than the average paperback and is Jason's longest work yet. It's made up of five short stories: Emily Says Hello, Low Moon, &, Proto Film Noir, and You Are Here.

Emily Says Hello is about a man killing people in exchange for sexual favours from a woman. He records their last moments on a dictaphone, says "Emily Says Hello" and then shoots them. He plays this to the woman who takes the photograph of the dead person, hangs it on the wall and crosses out the picture, then goes on to pay her part of the deal to the killer.

Low Moon is a wild west story with a difference. Instead of shootouts they have chess matches. Horses are no longer around having been replaced with old timey big wheel-small wheel bikes, and cowboys talk on cell phones. A bad guy comes to town to challenge the sheriff to a chess match at dawn.

& follows two separate story lines. A man trying to raise money to pay for a life saving operation for his mother and a man who is trying to woo a woman to marry him.

Proto Film Noir follows a similar storyline to "The Postman Always Rings Twice" only the protagonists are cavemen. Also when the couple try to murder the wife's husband he reappears day after day.

The final story is You Are Here where the wife is abducted by aliens and the husband spends twenty years building a spacecraft to go after her. His son, now a grown man, joins him and they set off to another planet to find the woman.

The plotting and pacing are among Jason's strongest work. Each story is eminently readable and thoroughly engrossing. Emily Says Hello is the most memorable and interesting story with a haunting end and shows Jason can do drama wonderfully. Low Moon and Proto Film Noir are the humour stories while & and You Are Here contain the most pathos and sadness.

The book is a gorgeous production and the stories are brilliant. I utterly loved it and honestly cannot see this artist ever writing a poor book. His sense of story is pitch perfect and his style is developing into a unique and original look. Where Herge is remembered for his drawing, so will Jason be remembered for his, and his wildly inventive stories. Really highly recommended both for fans of Jason and comics in general.

Look, if you've read any of Jason's other stuff you'll know that he puts out only the highest quality of art and story telling in comics. If you haven't read any, this is the perfect place to start.

Low Moon marks a break from the usual repertoire of the Norwegian comic creator generally known only as Jason. The first noticeable difference comes in the book's design. Gone is the usual single-story, matte-finished paperback. Instead, Jason offers his readers five tales on slightly smaller pages in a hardbound collection.

The second notable difference is in the speech bubbles, in that there are quite a few, breaking from the normal less-is-more approach to text. The art still holds up its end, saying a lot in the mannerisms of the deceptively simple anthropomorphic animals Jason draws. While Jason's work can be read quickly, it shouldn't be, as there are so many subtleties to be found in the art.

In that sense, it is almost a shame to see so much text in the Low Moon collection, as it works against the Jason experience in many ways, but the subject matter of the stories arguably requires more text this time around.

The first, "Emily Says Hello," follows a man who carries out implied dastardly deeds in exchange for increasingly intense sexual favors from a woman. The action builds until it culminates in an ending that is almost cruel in its ambiguity. It reminds one of something artsy but misguided that might be expected at a college film festival, but there is always an indication that Jason knows exactly what he's doing and that the college festival feel is the effect he's seeking.

"Low Moon," a story originally published in The New York Times, lends the book its name and follows a traditional western format, replacing the requisite gunfight with a game of chess. It is downright silly, and the payoff isn't there in the plot, but as usual with Jason's work, it entertains with delicate absurdity on the way there.

The next two, "&" and "Proto Film Noir," deal with similar themes of men doing everything they can to win the affection of women who have no interest in them. The theme actually plays a large part in most of the stories in this book, but these two specifically feel quite similar, "Proto Film Noir" arguably being the better of the two. Jason strikes a good pace with the chain of building action, and incredibly violent scenes are handled with a nonchalant, cartoonish approach. "You Are Here" closes the collection, providing a look at the idea of families passing things down to their children.

Jason's books have always had a cinematic feel, and he seems to examine this more than ever with direct tie-ins to film concepts playing major roles in several of the stories. It is hard not to feel that the pacing is a bit off in this collection, though. Whether it is due to the change from six- to four-panel pages, a heftier amount of text, the shift from serialized publication to collection (in the case of "Low Moon"), or general writing issues, the stories don't strike quite the same chord as his previous work.

That said, all of the stories in "Low Moon" are entertaining, and fans of Jason should be more than happy to digest five new comics from one of the best in the business.

-- William Jones

I first became acquainted with Jason in the New York Times Magazine with Jason's serial of Low Moon. I became intrigued with the story but never got to read it all the way through. When this hardcover edition was released, I decided to purchase this edition.

In this hardcover edition Jason provides 4 graphic stories of which one is Low Moon. The other depictions are entitled Emily Says Hello, Proto Film Noir and You Are Here. Jason's works are what everyone calls minimalistic utilizing anthropomorphic animals acting as if they were human. If the media were film, Jason's work would be that of a mime. Jason's writing of Low Moon is the best of the four novellas. It combines farcical drama and a highly thought out story mimicking the old west with a highly ironic and humorous conclusion. Jason's depiction of Low Moon if standing by itself deserves all 5 Stars!

However the other 3 stories are nowhere near the quality or possession of a story line worth following. Emily Says Hello is not funny, is violent and has no redeeming value. The same can be said for Proto Film Noir and You Are Here. Truth be told, I find Jason's anthropomorphic drawings somewhat hard to follow and about one step above drawing stick people. In my reading of the graphic genre, I look for expressions of the human kind with more background depth which in essence tells more of the story than mere words. Jason has very little dialogue and minimal expression with no background depth. It's almost trying to read when going blind.

I'm sure many people find Jason to possess unique graphic talent. I'm sorry to say I'm not one of them.