Here are some thoughts on the first three comics published by Sacred Prism, Ian Harker’s line of two-color risograph comics. I liked these books and they only furthered my own interest in using risograph printing in the future. Frank Santoro beat me to writing about these, even though we got them at the same time. Let’s see what I can add.
Memorexia by Box Brown
– A general note first: I am very interested in the way that Box’s art has become very angular and geometric. It’s not exclusive to this comic, but it is certainly on display here. I remember that I first noticed this trend with Sock and Sticky-icky-icky, two of his “teenage stories” that were originally serialized online in fairly quick succession.
– This aspect of Box’s art is particularly evident in his character designs, which consist of a series of circles, squares and right angles, but it’s present elsewhere as well. He uses some nice shapes that riff on the “circles around head = drunk” trope in Sock, and, to get back on topic, the design of the machinery in Memorexia is pleasantly simple and right-angled.
– I’m not sure if this was purposeful, but the off register printing is a nice compliment to this comic’s themes of memory and regret. Using futuristic technology, a character relives a memory and, even though he knows it isn’t the right thing to do, tries to alter the past. The printing quite nicely echoes the character’s knowledge that the relived memory is not ‘real,’ and that his actions only accentuate that lack of reality.
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Internet Comics by Maré Odomo
– Maré has said that this comic is composed of a series of 1-2 page comics, but it definitely worked for me as a cohesive piece. A rambling rumination on the Internet and the ways it affects our lives. It has a nice rhythm. I read it twice.
– There is very little white space here, and quite a bit of purple – i.e. the blue and pink inks combined. This means that there is a great deal of ink on each page, to such an extent that the thickness and texture of these pages was noticeable different from the other two comics. All three of these comics work well as objects, but Maré’s was especially successful and unique in that sense. A nice contrast with his subject matter. The ink comes off on your hands.
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Paranoid Apartment by Lala Albert
– Grids are a key visual motif here. They appear in the bathroom tiles, on the bedspread, in the paneling of the pages themselves, and of course on the covers. Click through to Frank’s review above for pictures. I saw these grids as representative of structure and order, something which disintegrates over the course of the story just as the grid is distorted in the image on the inside front and back covers.
– There’s a different approach to color here than in the first two comics, both of which give the two colors used more or less equal weight. Paranoid Apartment, however,would be more or less narratively clear in just black and white, but the yellow both directs the eye through the pages and helps visually distinguish the ghost character. More of a figurative approach to color, I guess you could say. It’s well done.
– If you have the book, look at the second page where the knife is dropped. It’s a nice page, maybe my favorite one in the book, for the way that you’re guided through what might seem to be an unintuitive layout. The vertical movement of the knife down the page shows you what to read next. Maybe I’ll scan it later.