Arsene, after all, is supposed to be an enigmatic creature from a bygone era. And we get a consistent pitter-patter of our many characters, much like you’d find in a classic comic strip or a silent movie. Schrauwen manages to keep to a steady pace by framing much of the story in a grid-like pattern: most pages hold six panels that oddly resemble playing cards. This is a tour de force of weird fiction full of the fantastical and an unabashed celebration of the human psyche and all bodily functions.įor a graphic novel weighing in at 257 pages, it makes sense to bring in some anchoring devices to keep things on track for the long haul. And then there’s the leopard men with insatiable sexual desires. Ostrich eggs appear regularly as you see Arsene preparing them for breakfast just as often as he’s throwing them against a wall. You read on about the constant threat of “elephant worms” that give Arsene nightmares about tiny elephants entering his body. The very next page thanks you for waiting. At intervals, you’ll get a notice requesting that you please wait a week before reading further. The air is thin at times in this rarefied environment. (Apr.With Schrauwen, you have definitely entered into an ideal example of the often cryptic and fascinating world of alternative comics.
The story’s cheerfully nihilistic approach may not be for all tastes, but it serves up a visceral satire for those that can stomach it.
The varied visual approaches, from scratchy line work to sumptuous color to swirling blue and black lines surrounding souls in limbo, work to break up the repetitive quality of the slapstick violence and give heft to the book’s self-aware moral allegory. Guy’s fever dreams and the spirits’ vengeance converge in a hilarious comeuppance, rendering him a drooling idiot. Guy’s victims spy on him from purgatory, each one increasingly angry to see him get away with murder. Guy grudgingly accepts an apprentice named Clement and proceeds to abuse and demean him through both song (“Whose peepee is bent? Clement!”) and actions, as he leaves the boy to saw off a sailor’s leg with no help. Repellent ship’s carpenter Guy alternates between drunkenly accosting people in bars, dodging responsibilities aboard the ship, and occasionally murdering people for money. Schrauwen ( Parallel Lives), along with Ruppert and Mulot ( The Perineum Technique), spins a good old-fashioned 18th-century pirate yarn filled with depravity, random violence, cruelty, and laughs.
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