| April 2008
|
Alright, I have never done this before
and it may come back to haunt me, but I want to sing the
praises of a comic book only two issues in.
Misericordia
is a projected 11-issue
mini-series that tells the story of a dystopian future in
which humans live underground and humanoids alone inhabit
the surface of the earth. There is much still to learn
about the story Brem is telling here, but the unique
talents on display in this remarkable book make it worthy
of immediate attention and even, at times, slack-jawed
admiration.
Brem brings an animator’s sensibility to the work, and
indeed the book’s pacing, surreal vision, and sparse use of
dialogue will remind many of some of the best European
animators working today. This is the kind of vision we need
to see more in comics today—where the plastic possibilities
of the body and of reality are fully exploited as only
comics can do. The artwork is simultaneously stunning and
raw, an odd and unsettling combination of professional
polish and art brut that lends to the book the sense that
somehow the whole story was composed in an underground
bunker between shifts at the humanoid slave camps. Two
issues in (with the third due out shortly), we know almost
nothing about how the humanoids came to dominate the earth
or why the humans allow themselves to be so dominated. But
with no background narration and only a handful of words,
we do learn a remarkable amount about Solita, our lanky
protagonist, and about the miseries of the daily life she
lives. And here I don’t just mean the somewhat familiar
sci-fi backstory details (her mother arrested by humanoid
police when she is a girl, the daily grind of forced
labor). But without a word, Brem makes us understand the
complicated strength and vulnerability of her protagonist,
her attraction to and loathing of the humanoids who control
her destiny, her empathy for the powerless, and the burdens
of being beautiful in a monstrously ugly world.
But mostly I want to highlight Misericordia to point out how very different it looks,
feels, and reads than most of what we find on the shelves
these days. The plot itself is basic dystopian fare, so the
secret does not lie there. Instead, the strange power of
this book lies in a completely fresh take on the
possibilities of the form itself and a generous (perhaps
too generous?) faith in the reader’s capacity to fill in
the blank spaces with demons and desires of her own
fashioning. Despite having an animator’s sensibility, Brem
does not simply turn in a book of storyboards here or rely
on virtuouso “camera” work for emotional effect. Instead
she trusts in her pencil and unique palette (gouache and
gold leaf!) to do most of the affective work of the story,
forcing the reader (like the inhabitants of this future
world) to suffer through the silences and isolation the
book describes.
I can surely imagine this book burning out (although the
strange precision of an “11-issue miniseries” suggests Brem
has her roadmap well plotted ahead of her). But at a time
when comics are going through another one of their routine
crises of faith and imagination, it is invigorating to read
a comic that reminds us how very new a comic can look, feel
and read in the right hands. I am in for the 11 issues and
looking forward to see where Brem’s career unfolds into the
future of comics, a future that is a bit less dystopian
thanks to Misericordia.
