|
FRIGHTENING CURVES
Highly Recommended (9/10)
|
Cyberosia Publishing
Writer: Antony Johnston
Artist: Aman Chaudhary
Price: $12.95 US/$19.95 CAN |
It seems like
every year in San Diego, I discover something new that I've never heard of
before. This year, I actually didn't make a big discovery or a lot of big
purchases, but I did go out of my way to pick up the much-buzzed-about
Frightening Curves at the Cyberosia publishing booth, and I eagerly read the
illustrated novella on the plane back home. I have to say, I was pretty
impressed. The book has just come out this week, and it's well worth a look. I'd
definitely recommend the book to anyone who is a fan of Warren Ellis or Grant
Morrison, or to anyone interested in seeing the early work of people who will
probably be doing a lot of good comics in the future.
While I'm not as much of a fan of the
illustrated prose style as I am of pure comics, when the form is done well, it's
quite good. Gaiman and Vess's Stardust is one example. Frightening Curves is
another. The story centers around a somewhat burned-out ex-spook, a psychic
investigator who has recently lost his beloved wife to a suicide and who is
hired to find his ex-boss. These events draw him into a society living
underneath London, a powerful and very old evil lurking in the subways and
intrigue involving his former employers, culminating in a psychic battle royale
that brings home a lot of the personal issues raised during the story.
If I had to describe the genre, I'd say
it's on the border of both espionage and horror, very much the kind of thing
you'd see in the best Vertigo books. Johnston does a terrific job balancing the
small, personal story of lead character Phil London and his relationship with
former co-workers and current allies and enemies and a larger story of a
Cthulhu-esque evil that is the central foe for the story. There's a sense of
creeping horror and paranoia in the book, as mysterious people are identified as
something different, and you're never quite sure who is on Phil's side. For that
matter, throughout the book, you're not entirely sure that Phil isn't just
cracking up, a perception helped by Johnston's decision to have Phil's portion
of the story told in first-person narration. I'm impressed that the shifts in
narrative style, sometimes very intimate first-person, sometimes distant
third-person and sometimes even comic script style aren't jarring at all, but
instead help to give us different views and moods for various scenes.
I have to admit that I found myself a bit
confused during some parts of the story, and I think that would have been helped
by stronger identification of the various characters. So much of the art side of
the story focused on establishing mood or picturing some of the wilder events of
the series that I often felt as if I hadn't actually seen some of the characters
introduced. While Phil, Harry, Sharon, White and most of the other major players
are fleshed out well in the text, I lost track of supporting characters like
Tosher and Iqbal sometimes, not at all helped by their tendency to adopt new
names and identities down the years.
However, that certainly isn't a reflection
on Aman Chaudhary's art, which does exactly what it was put here to do. There
are several beautiful character pieces that are strictly there to establish the
visuals of the characters in the reader's mind, but more of them are there to
evoke a mood by showing some of the more vivid scenes. Chaudhary is a gifted
painter whose work calls to mind the beautiful covers of Dave Johnson or Glenn
Fabry, just full of striking visual design and color and suited to both the
almost glamorous espionage shots and the more grungy, frightening depiction of
Phil's horrific visions. Both of these guys are talents to watch, but I'll be
especially surprised if we don't see more from Chaudhary in the very near
future.
Frightening Curves was solicited with the
books, and your shop may have missed it, so you may have to ask your shop to
special order it for you. If you're a fan of government conspiracies, modern
magic tales or the unspeakable and mind-bending horrors imagined by HP
Lovecraft, I'd suggest you do so.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review. |
