When you say "gimmick comics," what pops into people's minds are things like covers that shine, glow in the dark or differ slightly from a hundred other covers wrapped around the same product. Only rarely can the term "gimmick" be applied to the interior production of a comic, and even more rare is the time when "gimmick" isn't a derogatory statement. The Conversation, however, is a gimmick comic in all the right ways. Wickline came up with a clever way of piecing together a story, Hedgecock provided the art to make it work and the result is a lot of fun dialogue and a surprisingly engaging story. The nature of the experiment means that this is almost more of a short story than a great use of the comics medium, but Hedgecock's basic art is solid enough, and it's impressive that the two creators could make a workable story using the high concept gimmick.
The gimmick of The Conversation is that Wickline wrote a basic outline and asked for Hedgecock to come up with "pieces" that could be placed together to make the story. In a reference that will probably fly over the head of some of my readers, Wickline compares it to "Colorforms," and since I had those when I was a kid, I knew exactly what he meant. Basically, the art is made up of fairly subtle changes, giving the illusion of movement, while most of the changes come from the dialogue moving the whole thing forward. From a pure artistic standpoint, it's not terribly adventurous, being literally a "talking heads" story, but from an artistic innovation standpoint, it's pretty clever and an accomplishment on the part of Hedgecock and Wickline.
While The Conversation's gimmick is fun, though, it's really the story that makes it so entertaining. There's a sort of knowing ironic humor to be gained from only seeing the back of the waitress or slight movements of the lead characters, humor that Wickline exploits in the "Out-Takes" section of the book, but one quickly forgets these shticky bits when you get wrapped up in the dialogue between the characters. Wickline has a sense of comic timing and a way with words that compares well to a good sitcom.
Wickline's conversation actually reminds me more than anything of the kind of thing we'd see on Seinfeld, in some of their more nonsense detail moments. Wickline actually takes the conversation into a place that defines and shapes the characters, with a revelation or two about sex and a fun and funny conclusion, but before he gets into the real meat of the conversation, he delights in a variety of minutia. Bits on The Greatest American Hero, tipping and the difference between iced tea in the north and the south are a few of the asides that made me chuckle during the dialogue exchanges. The inclusion of random facts from the Internet related to key words in the dialogue provided even more, another innovation that I suggest naming the "Clavin Track."
The Conversation isn't a comic that provides a great story or great artwork, but then that's not really what it sets out to do. What it sets out to do is provide an entertaining read and to prove that a somewhat wacky experimental idea can work in comics form. In that regard, it's a great success, and if nothing else, makes me curious to see what else Wickline could accomplish if he applied his considerable dialogue and humor skills to a more standard comic-book structure.
