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Spectacles Reviews
The
Comics Journal #194: Hit List
by Jason Lutes
"Write what
you know" is a basic rule of storytelling that many alternative cartoonists
have taken to heart, sometimes a little too strictly. As a reaction against
the fantasy and accompanying lack of soul apparent in most mainstream
comics, it's understandable, but the result is an often frustrating lack
of imagination; a dearth of new places to go.
Jon Lewis has imagination to spare, enough surplus to make me wish it would be redistributed to needy cartoonists across North America (myself included). Whether documenting the existential dilemmas of a frog in his first series, True Swamp, or the hilarious travails of a shipful of freakshow pirates in his second, Ghost Ship, he consistently demonstrates that creativity and mad invention are not the enemies of soul and substance. In some cases, they are soul and substance.
The first issue of Spectacles, Lewis' new comic, is both less difficult and more rewarding than his previous effor It consists of two short stories and the first installment of "The Frost Changes," a serial about — among other things — a Finnish false-mustache salesman. A reader used to blander fare may be put off initially by the eccentricity, narrative density, and lack of visual "polish" in Lewis' work, but for me these qualities only serve to enrich it.
Many cartoonists continue to struggle with this ghettoized medium because they can sense its potential as a narrative art form to rival any other. In this sense Understanding Comics is like a rough map of the terra incognita between words and pictures, intimating the wealth of discoveries to be found therein; Spectacles takes you there.
Images, characters and likenesses
© and TM Jon Lewis
