Finch, Scott – Travel Diary

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Travel Diary

Best to be blunt about this one up front, I reckon: it never really clicked for me. Which was surprising! The Domesticated Afterlife, his graphic novel from 2021, was one of my favorites of the year. That one also took some time to cohere into something really compelling, so I kept waiting for this one to do the same, but it never got there. Disclaimer time, and I’m aware that this is a message I’ve repeated a lot (but hey, every review is the first for somebody!), but the fact that this didn’t come together for ME has absolutely no bearing on how YOU respond to it. The premise here (explained in his afterward, and I’ve rarely been as thankful for an afterward as I was here) is that Scott was cutting out drawings from his sketchbooks onto postcards that he was sending to a friend, and he went with the idea and decided to let “some creative chaos into the project.” Judging by that metric, I’d say he succeeded wonderfully. Certain images repeat themselves, they occasionally get additional details added, he even includes number breaks to indicate chapters. If you’re a fan of more abstract art, it rarely gets as widely open to interpretation as this one, so in that case I’d recommend giving it a shot. And to be very clear, I still think Scott is somebody to watch going forward. It’s not like this comic is going to knock the incredibly positive feelings I have for The Domesticated Afterlife out of my mind. These things just happen sometimes, y’know? $25

Posted on April 21, 2023, in Reviews and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink. Leave a Comment.

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