Drawn & Quarterly Showcase Book One
I want to make one thing very clear, as this review isn’t going to be all positive: I think Kevin Huizenga is one of the most important people doing comics today. His Supermonster series is one of the best things to come out in recent years. It’s something that gets significantly better with each issue (kind of like Eightball), and if there’s any justice in the world he’ll be rich and famous soon and maybe we can see reprints of the older, out-of-print issues. That being said, of course I had nothing but the highest expectations going into this, and those expectations are almost impossible to live up to. It didn’t happen this time around. Kevin has half of a new Drawn & Quarterly Showcase, and he has a few stories in here, all centered around “Glenn Ganges”. If you’re not following, check the rest of the reviews on this page. The first story is an odd, rambling tale about missing children and refugees from Sudan. Boiled down to the simplest possible terms, of course, which is hard to do with his work. The ending is just odd and this should probably have been broken up into two stories, if the universe was under my command. Then there’s the best piece in the book, an adaptation of the fairy tale “The Feathered Ogre”. It’s a long piece and an absolutely bizarre story, about a couple trying everything they can to conceive a child. Great stuff and worth getting the book just for that, although I should mention somewhere that this book is $14.95, so I guess you have to decide that “worth it” thing for yourself. Finally there’s a story about bird migration, still slightly connected to the previous adaptation. I actually learned a lot with this one, so there’s not too much bad to say there. Overall, he’s done better work, but this is still a pretty solid bunch of stories. I’d say get his Supermonster stuff first, if you haven’t already, and then check out this book. Although you might want to know about the other half of the book too, so you can make an informed purchase and all that, so check out my Nicolas Robel review, why don’t you…
