I
just received the two latest releases from Kilgore Books and Comics: the latest installment of Noah Van Sciver's personal anthology
collection BLAMMO and a collection of handwritten interviews
conducted by Dan Stafford called I HOPE THIS FINDS YOU WELL.
One
publisher. Two books. The Yin and Yang of the Emotional Roller
Coaster.
Blammo
#8.5
Make
no bones about it, I'm an ardent admirer of the work of Noah Van
Sciver. His writing and art style have taken me to places I've been
uncomfortable going, because they often hold up a vaguely reflective
mirror to the self. The last Van Sciver book I wrote about, SaintCole,
had me thinking about my relationship with misery. Blammo
#8.5 has me thinking about my relationship with loneliness and
depression.
I
made the mistake of reading this book on what had already been a
shitty day. Misery loves company, I guess. When I got to the last
page and put the book down, I had spiraled into that wet, brown paper
bag of a place that craves darkness and lying down and turning off
everything, especially your brain. With this book, Van Sciver binge
watches his own downward spiral. Its effect is damp as it is
dampening. It's unyielding in its familiarity and should come with
one of those trigger warnings that everyone wants to put on things
nowadays.
Yet
it starts off so hopeful – A little boy imagining he is destroying
the monsters that lurk under the surface of the sea. But this
youthful vigor is just a product of day dreams. The reality of the
day to day as he has grown to be a man is oppressive in its
heartbreak. Each vignette that comprises this anthology builds on a
sense of isolation and purposelessness, misery and desolation.
“ALONE.
The scariest word I could think of. It seemed like the only probable
future.”
Van
Sciver is an artist who is able to convey emotion with such visceral
ease through commonplace moments, and when he is this frank, this
open with his emotional destruction he fires a laser beam of
bleakness into your limbic system that is crippling if you have any
proclivity towards depression. It's as if he is blowing the trumpet
notes to a blues version of Reveillle, summoning an army of the sad
from their barracks, hoping that by bringing us all together, by
making us face that we are not alone in our loneliness, that our
darkness is no darker than the shade imbued in the man or woman
standing next to us, we just might make it through.
Whatever
light moments Van Sciver slips into Blammo #8.5 serve only as
a reminder that joy is elusive. It is the beautiful sunset that
occurs before the long night. The universe doesn't tend towards
entropy, it tends towards Depression. This is the constant.
Damn
you, Van Sciver. I hate that when you show me yourself, you show me
myself so vividly too. I admire your courage in doing this. I respect
you for the artist you have become. I eagerly anticipate the artist
you will be.
I
HOPE THIS FINDS YOU WELL
The
back of this collection states that “since 2003, Dan Stafford
has been conducting handwritten interviews with cartoonists, writers,
and musicians he admires.” Apparently he has been publishing
these interviews in The Kilgore Quarterly, but with I Hope
This Finds You Well, all of these interviews are collected together
for the first time.
