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UNTITLED #1
by Jeff LeVine
(56pp mini, $2.00 from Jeff LeVine,
www.jl13.com)
Review by Mike Hunter
In his prolific and stylistically varied career, this mini serves as an extension of LeVine's earlier
Snapshot comics, which combined prose and drawings based on photographs. Here the verbiage is dispensed with, the entire book composed of forty full-page drawings. Rich, energetic brushwork and well-chosen compositions add vibrant vitality to what would otherwise be banal views of an average, "decoratively-challenged" young man's apartment. Wires bristle from power outlets and an answering machine perches atop a heap of phone books, piles of books and CDs cover furniture. Sneakers, jugs of cleanser and pizza boxes sprawl across the floor. Remotes are scattered here and there. Yet, dreary as this would be in the original photos that likely inspired the art, it's alchemically transformed by LeVine's brush. Worlds away from the unexciting linework in his early
No Hope comics, here a plastic basket heaped with laundry swirls with energy, visual drama and power emerge from an angled, supine beer bottle, a closeup of shoelaces. Mystery lurks in the shadows of the clutter that fills our lives.
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