Renata Gasiorowska « Optical Sloth

Gasiorowska, Renata – Mini Kus #21: Jungle Night

September 30, 2014

Does it make you crazy or depressed if you just want to be alone after a certain amount of time spent with a large group of friends? That’s the question that Renata asks in this comic, and I think she comes up with a pretty compelling answer. This one starts with our hero, Lili, waking up in the hospital. She has just been found after three days of being lost in the forest and spends the comic trying to explain why she “ran away,” and why she doesn’t think of it as running away. There’s a tradition of the youth all going into the forest together to reconnect to their roots. All of these characters are animals that have evolved to walk upright, wear clothes and talk, so the adults think that it’s important to keep this tradition. The kids, as kids do, see it more as an excuse to go into the forest with a large group of friends to drink and have fun. Anyway, all is going well, the kids are having fun, but Lili is feeling more and more disconnected to the group. Finally she has that moment at the party (that I think most people have at least a few times in their lives) where she notices that everybody else has paired up or is talking to each other, but she’s off on her own. Which makes her think that she could just get up and walk away without anybody noticing, so that’s what she does. But does that make her depressed? She clearly doesn’t think of herself that way, and it’s certainly a natural enough instinct. Your opinions may vary, but I know where I stand on this one. $6

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Posted by Kevin

Various Artists – Baltic Comics Magazine #11: Artventurous

August 19, 2012

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Baltic Comics Magazine #11

Huzzah for international anthologies! Getting a comic from Latvia is a sure way to keep me fired up to write more reviews for another six months or so (international artists take note). One note right off the bat: it would probably be a good idea for them to put the title of their book on the cover. In this case “Artventurous” refers to art both being made and not made and the various adventures surrounding different types of art. Don’t get me wrong, that cover is going to grab your attention sitting on a shelf anyway, but that one descriptive word might have helped them pick up another reader or two who was too lazy to open the cover. Anyway, for me a 2/3 success rate is more than enough to recommend an anthology, and this one is closer to 4/5 fantastic/provocative/fascinating, which covers that spread quite nicely. Please note that I’m not going to talk about every single story in here (because then what would be left for you to discover?), but a full list of artists is down there in the tags below the review. My favorites from this boo include the closed loop story by Martins Zutis dealing with The Odyssey, the silent piece by KJ Martinet called “Ideal Form” (I don’t want to give away a bit more than that), the fantastically creepy “Leda” by Betty Liang, the mind-boggling amount of detail in “Necropolis” by Jean de Wet, Jen Rickert’s “The Loon” and its shifts between what is happening in the moment and the flashbacks from its murderous protagonist, Konig Lu Q’s simple (but not simplistic) extra commandments, Roman Muradov’s story that disintegrates into little pieces in the middle, the sheer adventurousness (and never discount the value of a giant robot yeti) of the Mikus Duncis story, the social horror of Olive Booger’s piece, the gleeful mayhem of Elina Braslina’s story, and the plausible paranoia of Dilraj Mann’s story. And this is all without me even mentioning Simon Moreton’s story (who, if you read this website at all, you know is a favorite of mine), which should tell you something about the overall quality of this anthology. Honestly, I should maybe even bump up that 4/5 quality estimate, as even the (many) stories I didn’t mention here usually had something going from them, between the vibrant splashes of color and the various social anxieties based on growing up around art or just trying to produce something of value when so much incredible stuff has already been produced. Pick it up if you get the chance, that’s what I’m saying, as it’s impressive that they’ve made it to #11 and they should shoot for many more. $13