I Will Bite You! - Joseph Lambert (w/a)
Secret Acres, $14, 9-780979-960956
Terry Gilliam knew a thing or two about recycling myths and fables to his own advantage when he produced those now-legendary animations as part of the Monty Python team. Using stock figures from illuminated versions of The Canterbury Tales, Aesop’s Fables and assorted religious texts allowed him to subvert these icons and symbols in surreal and parodic ways. It’s this work that is immediately called to mind when looking at the work of Joseph Lambert.
His debut collection of short comics, I Will Bite You!, assembles various works that span from the artist’s studies at CCS to the present day. Although Gilliam appears to be a heavy influence here, Lambert’s aims are entirely different. He uses the symbols of myth to produce work that has a timeless, resonant quality — even, in one of the collection’s highlights, going so far as to update one of Aesop’s classic tales.
The moralizing Greek is never far away in the other stories. Personified suns and moons loom ominously over the characters in the strip “Everyday” and the title story. In the latter tale, a Kirby-faced boy (with a tail, no less) does exactly what the title threatens — all the while watched over by two mischievous suns. Like the gods of the past, they interfere directly with the angry child’s life, tormenting and provoking him further. Unlike the fables, though, it is they who learn a lesson through suffering. In this increasingly secular age, the story reflects the paradigm shift between believers and their gods.
That all this is done without any words (only a chaotic crayon scribble in a speech balloon to signify the child’s rage) underscores the universal quality of Lambert’s comics. There is a beautiful formalism at work in these pages that functions thematically as well as expositionally. In “I Will Bite You!” the suns always occupy the top tier of panels — a comfortable gutter between them and the humans (monsters? aliens?) below. When our frustrated protagonist finally turns against his tormentors, it’s with a breaking of convention and the fourth wall of the comics page. This is a recurring trademark of Lambert’s work — the marauding child-eaters (they’re sinister enough without resorting to the label “paedophage”) reassemble sound-effects and speech bubbles to cover their tracks in “After School Snacks” or the seemingly corporeal sounds of the music in “Mom Said” which we see billowed around in the evening breeze.
Lambert’s approach to comics is remarkably physical. Although he has a post-modern awareness that these stories are simply lines on paper, there is a clear investment in the surreal worlds he builds that makes them convincing, concrete and complete. His experimental ideas are interesting enough to mark him as a stand-out among the recent glut of young cartoonists, and his linework self-assured enough to give an iconic trademark to his storytelling. And some of it is truly stunning. The strip “(Caveman)” presents some beautiful prehistoric visuals as two cavemen ape the myths of Icarus and Prometheus, and touch the face of a god.
That he has only just begun his career in comics (with many of the pieces collected here being reprints of Lambert’s self-published minicomics), there would appear to be great things ahead for Joseph Lambert. What awaits with his sophomore work should be interesting to follow, as this debut has already set the bar rather high.
-- Gavin Lees
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