Jeff Mason at Alternative Comics passed along this 2001 collection of short strips that proved to much more charming and relevant than I ever expected. Annable offers some thoughtful perspectives on such notions as individuality, pettiness, fear and society as a whole, and he does with humor and a cute visual style that one can't help but enjoy in spite of its simplicity. Modern man is put under the microscope, and the result is quite telling about one's own life.
Each one of Annable's strips -- ranging in legnth from one page to several -- examines a different part of our psyches and our everyday lives. Self-image, conformity, hypocrisy, imagination, racism, fear, principles and man's disassociation from those around him are just some of the themes and ideas that Annable explores in this book. Some boasts a charming innocence, others a dark cynicism. The creator shows a wide range of storytelling and styles here as well.
One of my favorite aspects of the book is the cover, which sums up much of the material quite well. We're faced with a sea of entranced faces, people all looking at the same thing but never each other, thinking the same thing but never a thought of their own. And in the middle of it all are a lone man and woman, separated by their place in the crowd. They've somehow overcome that distance and made a connection. The simple image speaks of the power of potential relationships and the dangers of conformity. I like how Annable brings brightness -- optimism -- to the image in the form of purple ink, but tempers that brightness with the earthier yellow and brown tones.
The only strip in this book that didn't quite click for me was the one in which a friend of the seemingly generic main character decides he's had enough of the world... but it's ont a suicide story. He decides to travel to another dimension in order to experience something new, free of the limited perspective with which we're saddled here. I appreciate the sentiments, but the shift in storytelling technique to a more fluid, stream-of-consciousness method just didn't fit with the rest of the book.
Fortunately, that was just one of a plethora of comic shorts that boast universal messages and appeal. Annable taps into ideas, situations and feelings to which we can all relate. He reminds us of the potential for good and evil, for achievement and apathy, within us all in a series of eye-opening strips.
Note: This book was not among this week's new releases.
