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Ed Brubaker Reviews
November, 1997
icomics
In the first story, 'Under a Big Black Sun', he shows the perspective of the jilted lover. At first resigned to the loss, he attempts to continue his friendship with the other two. But the tension of sharing the same house feeds his resentment, and only a twist of fate prevents him from committing murder.
In 'Wreck', the point of view shifts to the best friend, and we come to know the precariousness of his position. Not only has he alienated his friend, but he doesn't trust the durability of his new relationship --;Any girl who'll dump her boyfriend for you, will dump you for someone else sooner or later.'
The woman's perspective is taken up in 'When I Started Saying "We", a startling counterpoint to the two males. Reflecting on the long procession of disappointing and superficial affairs she's had, she realizes that her search for identity through the choice of a lover has left her feeling hollow and helpless. She wonders if she is shrinking herself and stooping like the tall woman she observes in the store, in order to accommodate the shortcomings of her partners. And she fears that she will not have the resolve to break away from another unhappy relationship.
Running through all the stories is a sense of displacement and foreboding. It manifests itself literally in the blackening of the sun, an image Brubaker borrows from Dylan Horrocks.
Displacement reverberates through the stories because of their similarity. Each is about a different set of characters, different names and appearance, but very similar. Motifs, like the holdup man and the black eye, recur in different ways in the stories. Like the same story echoing through alternate universes; perhaps, as in Milan Kundera's 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being', showing that when our actions are echoed endlessly by those who come before and after us, our decisions are weighed down by the burden of eternity.
Brubaker's writing is, as always, spare and intense. As pessimistic as any comic book writer is capable of being, but liberating because of his compassion for his characters and his courage in facing disconcerting truths.
His fictional writing has always seemed auto-biographical, but when he assumes the female perspective here, he remains convincing and insightful.
His art style has evolved, becoming darker and more intense, dodging the bum rap that accuses him of cribbing from Chester Brown. But he still seems to reside under a dark cloud of some kind. a purgatory that well suits his somber outlook.
Review by Joe Zabel
Images, characters and likenesses © and TM Ed Brubaker
