As hugely anticipated as this was (at least in this house), I can'thelp but feel a little disappointed by the payoff this book offers. Instead of the fireworks of The Digging Leviathan or The Last Coin, we get a basically low-key fantasy that doesn't plumb the depths of absurdity hinted at on the dust flap (past the first 50 or so pages at least) and crosses the line from absurdity to mere eccentricity all too readily.

Howard Barton, Blaylockian protagonist extraordinaire (ex-normal N. Cali upper middle-class straight man), undertakes a quest to recover a lost sketch by Jap. artist Hoten-sai, which just so happens to be an ancient magical talisman sought for centuries by various eldritch sects, including the one headed by Barton's uncle's landlord. Barton stumbles through his quest, predictably becoming the Grail's last defender, etc., etc. High points found strewn amongst a tortuous and not too exciting plot: lost tribe of sylvan hippies that does nothing but glue things together, Barton having sex with his cousin (for all intents and purposes anyway), and John Ruskin's bones.

An OK addition to the canon, I suppose, but first-time Blaylock readers should crack The Last Coin at their earliest convenience and hit this depressingly ordinary missive further down the road. --T.C.

(first appeared in Reign of Toads #3)

I am tempted to say that the best part of Underwater is that Jesus is back--that is, the New Testament adaptations that filled the back pages of Yummy Fur back in the "Ed the Happy Clown" days (and which were summarily dropped in the middle of the book of Matthew). With Underwater, Brown's canny and tough secular re-telling of the Gospels is back, but it's not the best part.

Underwater's eponymous main narrative, like the early "Ed" sequences, is slow to make itself clear, but as it emerges it promises to be a more brilliant and mature work than its predecessor. Written from the perspective of a child, the language of Underwater has been slowly evolving from chaotic nonsense to what is now only partially intelligible dialogue as the protagonist acquires rudimentary linguistic skills. The result is twofold: the inscrutable dialogue forces you to focus on Brown's tenuous, disjointed graphic narrative--rather than "cribbing" your way through with the text as a guide (something I tend to too often do with comics), while at the same time suggesting an eerie, alien feel to a plot we can't know completely--not yet. Brown very carefully and skillfully decodes some of the simpler language, while never allowing us the certainty of context. Don't ask me to summarize the plot so far; I've told you all I know. It's haunting and wonderful, and you should read it.

Also in issue 4: "My Mother Is a Schizophrenic", a short stump on alternative explanations for mental illness which easily betrays Chester's beautiful contempt for late Western Civ and its crushing role in our emotional development. More straightforward than most of Brown's work, it is urgent all the same, and helps to explain why his comics are so fucking weird to begin with. --C.S.

(review date: 5/17/97)

last update 7/30/97


Reign of Toads PO Box 40498 Albuquerque NM 87196-0498 USA
info@rtoads.com