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TERATOID HEIGHTS
by Mat Brinkman
($12.95,
Highwater Books,
Mat Brinkman)
Review by Ayo
Mat Brinkman's
Teratoid Heights is like the debut album from an artist that you always heard was great, and bought on a whim, not sure of how you'd like it for yourself. It hits all the beats that you were told to expect, but their effect on you, and the context in which they appear is what takes you by surprise.
Teratoid Heights is a strange trip; it takes the reader through that amphibious space between image and word in which many comics reside. The images dominate of course, because the bulk of the stories are wordless, save for the titles; the words only exist as "echo" because the titles of individual pieces resonate with the outcomes of the stories. The silent format allows the mind to float and blank out, while watching the action take place. When each given strip ends, the way the ending corresponds to the original title relays a feeling that I can only describe as the cartoon equivilant to a rhyme.
The interesting thing to me about these types of comics is that there seems to be a kind of anti-intellectualism at work. With the work in
Teratoid Heights, along with other strips I've seen of Brinkman's, and some of his friends, there's a tendency to back away from deep meanings and big ideas, and focus on the dumbness of a little squishy thing running around only to be eventually eaten. Strange creatures undergo changes that seem natural for them, and almost devoid of meaning, in the conscious, intellectual way. As characters, they are not distinguishable in terms that humans distinguish individuals. Rather, they appear to represent the natural world...only that its a strange, alien world.
Brinkman's
Teratoid Heights is similar to Jim Woodring's
Frank. Its alien world, and use of fantastic creatures that mimic (or mock) our own world's creatures, and of course, the wordless nature of both that seems to only heighten the sense of strangeness-yet-natural-orderness of it all link these two works as being products of similar lines of thinking. But whereas Woodring's
Frank is a highly intellectual, very carefully thought out series of metaphors for ideologies of Woodring, there is the sense that one gets that Brinkman draws his comics from a less heady source. His intention in creating his cartoon world seems more rooted in the pure fun of drawing the creatures and having them interact and less rooted in any pretenses of deep metaphors. The lack of an overarching, esoteric
deep theme to the work strengthens it, in my opinion (end comparison to Frank here; I appreciate Woodring's work just as much for being everything that it is). Mat Brinkman seems to celebrate cartooning "just for the fun of it." And
Teratoid Heights is fun.
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