I mostly know Koslowski from his work on the humor title 3 Geeks, but Three Fingers is something very different, and it is remarkable. The book tells a sad and sordid tale of Hollywood excess, and its impressive how much pathos Koslowski manages to wring out of the story because none of it actually happened. While there are links to the real world in references to the cartoon empires of Disney and Warner Brothers and their character libraries, Koslowski takes the approach that the "Toons" are just actors like any other, and explores the history of early cartoons in a way no one has before. This book reads like what might happen if Ken Burns had written and directed Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and it has a charm and sense of humor that is mesmerizing.
Koslowski has really captured the feel of a Hollywood tell-all in this book, as he "interviews" various cartoon stars and studio heads to talk about the early days of animation and how one star, Rickey Rat, sort of defined the whole thing with his mentor and studio boss Dizzy Walters. There are very thinly-veiled analogues of cartoon characters and studios in this book, presumably for legal reasons, but the similarities are close enough to make this a highly entertaining read for those who grew up on Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons as I did. Seeing these goofy cartoon characters acting like stars, whether broken down old men or haughty performers who scoff at the lowly early days of their work, is an odd but enjoyable experience.
What really impresses me about Three Fingers, however, is the tone that the book strikes. The story told her is undoubtedly a tragedy, ruining the lives of almost everyone involved and causing pain and heartache to every character forced to remember it. However, there is still plenty of humor to be found, whether it's in the strange juxtaposition of a childhood cartoon icon cursing his way through an interview, the silly idea of cartoons being at Senatorial hearings and Hollywood parties or just the mapping of superstar attitudes and politics onto cartoon personalities.
As you would expect from Top Shelf, the book is beautifully designed, done in an oversized format that approximates the "widescreen" format similar to the one Marvel has used in their "Marvelscope" annuals or AIT/Planet Lar in the Channel Zero design book. This allows Koslowski plenty of room to stage the story, setting it up to look like a mixture of "filmed" interviews and still shots, using the full page and sequential panels to indicate the interviews and more white space and narrative captions to indicate the still photographs. Koslowski evokes the look of an E! True Hollywood Story or something similar with his artwork, and it's that style that makes the story work so effectively.
Though I know that this story is fiction, bearing only the slightest relation to actual animation history and focusing on characters who didn't actually exist, I still found it heartbreaking and incredibly gripping. Koslowski nabs his readers with the opening "pre-credits" sequence where we see a distraught Rickey Rat and smug studio head talking about the bad times, and I defy anyone to read those first four pages and not want to come back for the rest. Three Fingers is a true accomplishment, not only a high point of Koslowski's comic-book career thus far but a ground-breaking work that deserves to be on everyone's 2002 reading list.
