Jumbly Junkery #7
Is it possible for one person to make an anthology? I never thought so, but the sheer range of stories and artwork in this one make me wonder. The bigger pieces of past issues are gone (I think the biggest piece is 3 pages), but variety is the theme for this issue. The “normal” pieces in here include L. wondering if she’s ever going to have the one moment where she joins the sisterhood of women, drinking too much coffee, wondering what makes cats tick (and if they’re inherently good creatures), trying to pick out the things that separate people from animals while walking through a crowd, how Obama easily beats the lowered expectations left over from his predecessor, using cats like skates, whether or not it’s wrong that she loves one cat more than the other, and the thought process of a cat when it sees a box. Mixed in with these pieces are the ones where she’s branching out (and I’m not going to even try to analyze them one by one), dealing with themes such as the unreliable nature of memory, machines as the imperfect perfection of man, happiness, the language of the body, a nightmare, process, and Narcissus. The Narcissus piece was notable because she uses nothing but a collection of short lines to form the whole, it’s a deceptively simple and impressive story. All this and I almost forgot the story at the center of the comic, a color piece about a man who became paralyzed due to his fear of death and was promptly buried alive. It’s an eclectic bunch of stories, that’s for sure, and if you’ve been waiting to check out her work for some reason this one is the one to get. You’ll certainly see a wide range of her talents. And what does it say about me that of all the stories available here to sample, where she uses a wide variety of styles, I went with the cute cat page? $5
