The Sound Of Drowning #1 & 2
Posted on December 19, 2002
Not so much the product of a cartoonist comfortable with the panel-to-panel consistency our beloved strip-form requires, as that of a writer/artist conscious of this requirement, 'The Sound Of Drowning' displays a developed grasp of design, is pleasing to the eye, and achieves a polish impressive enough to blind a prospective audience to the fact that issue two's montage/collage effect, for the most part, is redundant.
This second issue seems to strive for a kind of DC/Vertigo-impaired scripting, with self-involved delivery that strains for depth - which isn't to say it doesn't contain some competent, fluid writing, buoyed by a hint of knowing maturity; it's just the tone indulges in a self-pitying whine that grates after the first few lines and simply doesn't let-up. It is thoroughly professional, mainstream, mature comics writing then.
#1 however is the 'alternative' offering, and much more to my particular taste. It shares the angsty emotion of #2, but tackles subject matters with greater imagination and verve in the form of three strips that prove agreeably brief and to-the-point - albeit visually long-winded perhaps. And unlike #2's comic strip appearance, here some effective and affecting sequences are in evidence. Indeed, in some of its more successful moments of visual/word chemistry it captures the kind of agreeably disturbing interruption to cognisance that David Lynch often achieves. And at times I was also reminded a little of recent art-house hit 'Donnie Darko'. (It's those pesky wabbits, you see!)
Certainly there's a sound talent at work here in the form of creator Paul O'Connell, and though his efforts are perhaps not always easily digested in the near-relentlessly sombre tones employed - nor indeed in the script/art detachment dictated by photo-strip resemblance - he still manages to produce some impressive work that oozes mood and polish. Not yet the finished article then, and often more a close-relative of the comic strip than actual comic strip, 'The Sound Of Drowning' #1 & 2 nonetheless deserve your attention. Yup, well worth a dunk, methinks!
Not so much the product of a cartoonist comfortable with the panel-to-panel consistency our beloved strip-form requires, as that of a writer/artist conscious of this requirement, 'The Sound Of Drowning' displays a developed grasp of design, is pleasing to the eye, and achieves a polish impressive enough to blind a prospective audience to the fact that issue two's montage/collage effect, for the most part, is redundant.
This second issue seems to strive for a kind of DC/Vertigo-impaired scripting, with self-involved delivery that strains for depth - which isn't to say it doesn't contain some competent, fluid writing, buoyed by a hint of knowing maturity; it's just the tone indulges in a self-pitying whine that grates after the first few lines and simply doesn't let-up. It is thoroughly professional, mainstream, mature comics writing then.
#1 however is the 'alternative' offering, and much more to my particular taste. It shares the angsty emotion of #2, but tackles subject matters with greater imagination and verve in the form of three strips that prove agreeably brief and to-the-point - albeit visually long-winded perhaps. And unlike #2's comic strip appearance, here some effective and affecting sequences are in evidence. Indeed, in some of its more successful moments of visual/word chemistry it captures the kind of agreeably disturbing interruption to cognisance that David Lynch often achieves. And at times I was also reminded a little of recent art-house hit 'Donnie Darko'. (It's those pesky wabbits, you see!)
Certainly there's a sound talent at work here in the form of creator Paul O'Connell, and though his efforts are perhaps not always easily digested in the near-relentlessly sombre tones employed - nor indeed in the script/art detachment dictated by photo-strip resemblance - he still manages to produce some impressive work that oozes mood and polish. Not yet the finished article then, and often more a close-relative of the comic strip than actual comic strip, 'The Sound Of Drowning' #1 & 2 nonetheless deserve your attention. Yup, well worth a dunk, methinks!
A5, £1.60 - check availability at www.smallzone.co.uk