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FURTHER GRICKLE
by Graham Annable
(128pp trade paperback, $14.95 from
Alternative Comics,
Graham Annable)
Review by Alan Rankin
I admit I wasn’t initially impressed with Graham Annable’s cartooning style in this collection of stories. His viewpoint character is invariably a featureless, hairless figure with stick arms and legs, befitting the Everyman/Joe Blow aspect of his whimsical, pointed slice-of-life tales. There’s definitely no problem with his storytelling or sense of comic timing, but the first half of the book seemed a little... I dunno...
light. It felt like there was more he could be doing with his sad characters and their funny world.
Then I got to ”By Necessity,” which takes up the entire second half of the book. This story alone is worth the price of admission. It’s about Todd, whose dog, Billy Joel (chuckle) has a bad habit of chasing the neighbor’s pet wombat. This leads to a situation better read than described, in which Todd is faced with the choice of taking a moral shortcut. It’s the sort of situation we’ve all been faced with: a moment’s dishonesty, to avoid a much longer unpleasantness. The consequences of Todd’s choice are truly surprising and moving. Todd remains mostly featureless like the rest of Annable’s “I-guys,” but he and the other figures in “By Necessity” express heartbreak, loss and loneliness as effectively as the characters in a Steinbeck drama.
I have a minor complaint with
Further Grickle, and I don’t know if I should direct it at the author or the book’s designer. The left and right margins are almost nonexistent, leaving the panels at the edge of the page. This gives the book a cramped feel overall, and in one case, a word balloon falls right off the page. This may suit Annable’s intent, though; he certainly seems to prefer putting his characters in tight boxes they can’t get out of.
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