Customer Reviews

Perfect Planet & Other Stories

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

 

 

The Perfect Planet is a pleasure to read. Kochalka's artwork is always clever, his storylines are original but emotionally accessible and his always interesting focus on love and lust mixed with a deliberate childish feel make this book, like so many others, fascinating and much more than a one-shot thrill read. Unlike so many other comix writers, I frequently find myself rereading his work and discovering some new emotional undercurrent or some new moment that catches my eye. Bravo.

If you have ever read James Kochalka you know that he is no average comic book. He is part of what is the new underground, along others such as Tom Hart, Ron Rege Jr and, Scott Mills. In which they abandon the traditional American way of comics, focusing less upon the creation of art and image as parts and focusing, upon creating a comic as a whole.
Kochalka's work is so packed with symbolism and metaphor that I doubt any other comic creator could pull it off with the fluidity and blatant love for life that Kochalka has. And unlike the many of the other comics on my shelf Kochalka's work gets better the more you read it, revealing layers of meaning that normally would have gone unnoticed.

are found here in abundance. JK's storys and art are raw at certain levels to be sure but there in lies the works greatests strenghths. JAMES KOCHALKA IS TRYING SOMETHING NEW his whimsical emotionaly charged and just plain funny comics are allways a treat. a great big present!

Like a lucid dream, James Kochalka's "Magic Boy" lives in his own manufactured reality, having a conscious interplay with his surroundings. Only, the unfortunate elf seems not to understand the basic workings thereof, and struggles to grow faster than his mentality will allow. Through each of his interactions, between people, nature, and early childhood memories, the Perfect Planet becomes something not entirely unlike the flawed one in which the readers inhabit.

The title story is teeming with introspection and self-conscious observations, and yet manages to encompass the reader, casting off all pretense. The "other stories," likewise, provide some insight into the surreal mind of James Kochalka without the necessity of a moral, or some form of direct social commentary. Therein lies the intrinsic beauty of a Kochalka graphic novel - the reader is aware of the dangers within their own world, but as with Magic Boy, the phobias come from the least expected places - a flake of newly-fallen snow; a spectral puff of breath on a frosty day; the hidden agenda of a poisonous toadstool; even, dare I say, ourselves?

To become immersed in "The Perfect Planet," it is necessary to suspend all disbelief. We must check our convictions at the front cover, and delve into what's contained therein. And, once the final page is turned, the reader can breath easily once again, regaining that sense of what is real and what isn't. With its large, minimalistic panels, this is a book which can be breezed through with ease. Yet, the ideas contained therein cling to the stems of consciousness, and well into the days that follow.

In this book, James Kochalka is not trying to express a viewpoint or explain some generally accepted idiom. Instead, in an attempt to make sense his world, the information is compiled into a literal new "planet."

And, truth be known, it manages to make as much sense as the world each reader deals with on a regular basis.

James Kochalka's The Perfect Planet and Other Stories consists of three different stories.
The first The Perfect Planet tells the story of Magic Boy as he goes camping, booby traps cigaretts, and explores a massive hole in the earth. In the second story intitled Nonironic Futuropolis, Magic Boy finds a talking snowball. The third and final story called the Frog and the Fly. It tells the story of a frog that turns into a toad.
In this book the reader can see the evolution of James Kochalka's art. From the mini comics to his refined style used in his current series The Sketchbook Diaries.
The 3 tales range from the surreal Perfect Planet, to the far out Nonironic Futuropolis, and the fantastical Frog and the Fly.
I highly reccomend this book to any Kochalka fan!

The Perfect Planet & Other Stories probably would have worked better if it had just been the Perfect Planet. In the first (and best) of three long stories, James imagines himself inhabiting a world inhabited by robotic versions of the people he knew as a child. His interactions with these robots is intended to give us some deeper understanding of our humanity. It works on some level, even if the only real conclusion we arrive at is that people are mean-spirited jerks who don't deserve to live. The second tale, a meandering non-adventure featuring James and his wife, their talking cat, and a misunderstood snowflake, never really gets off the ground, and the third story, about a frog, a fly and a malevolent toadstool, reads like Jon Lewis' late, great True Swamp after about a dozen bong hits. Kochalka is certainly prolific, but a thin idea is a thin idea whether it takes two pages to complete or twenty. As with many of his comics, this one left me thinking "That's it?".