Page 45 Review by Stephen
From the creator of WHATEVER which impressed me and Tom no end, a second instalment of autobiographical episodes and full-colour paintings. But this is autobiography the likes of which you have never before experienced in comics.
If I may indulge in a sweeping generalisation, autobiography in comics tends to be the province either of the fragile sketch-cartoonist fretting over the frustrations of our quotidian existence (girls, shop assistants, being a shop assistant), or those bringing something big to the table in the form of social history, geo-politics, medical issues etc. I love both. And of course that's a load of old rubbish: comics is far too individualistic a medium for a whole genre's worth of creators to be so crudely pigeon-holed. But you've got to start somewhere and I use it to emphasise how different Karl is.
For a start, he's got a pretty cushy set-up here, lodging with his former fine art tutor, his wife, daughter, dog and being force-fed pancakes for breakfast before walking the beagle in beautiful parkland often with his beautiful girlfriend. Other girls pose for him, happily, naked. He has no difficulty in dealing with the world around him nor its inhabitants. Yet these are indeed tales of the everyday, mischievously mixed for maximum self-mockery, published each week in the local Phoenix… and rendered in a delicate cross-hatched, photo-realism that's occasionally in colour. Here's the dog, Cookie, first and last, staring at Karl eating on the bare floorboards:
"What if when we die we get re-incarnated as ourselves again? We just keep living the same life over and over. But say the mistakes we make won't necessarily be the ones we made in the previous life though. Free will is still a factor…"
"Hey. Cookie's freaking me out."
"She just wants your plate."
"sigh."
He's young, comfortable, talented and funny. Tom Spurgeon writes, "I think the thing I like best about Stevens is I have no idea what he'll be doing five years from now". I do hope that it's comics, though I suspect otherwise. Did I mention he was a painter? That's not a photographic cover.
