Space Opera: The Artist's Book
Late-October, 2000
A transcendental text combines with strips and illustrations to send secret signals that spark all manner of electrical activity in the brain, and down my spine – that leaves me tingling. Mike Weller can write rings around 'himselves', and others, and in Space Opera casts a spell difficult to resist; wherein things are lent focus, the metre (or something) seduces, and my Anhedonia is interrupted. Always involved and involving, at times such was the suffocating convolution of the read that I fully expected the book to collapse in on itself – in truth, I'd been sucked-in from word one.
Somehow simultaneously deconstructing and constructive, the combination of imagery and text is decidedly jolting, and with seductive child-like luminescence, is often a source of tickling unease. In a sense, Space Opera is a 'powerless fantasy' – like the believer relieved of responsibility by 'the will of God'. Ultimately however, despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, we create the illusion of convenient relief ourselves – it is present only because we allow it. (Perhaps "Get writing, or get written" emerges the book's intrinsic message.)
Space Opera, I think, confirms what we have all suspected in our obliquest moments: that fact is not stranger than fiction; that we have allowed ourselves to be dummified and nothinged into invisibility. Though often confusing (in an endearing way), this is certainly not the impenetrable work a thematic synopsis might suggest. For all the intellectualising this book could generate, it is essentially a spirited, fun read (for adults), that intoxicates in much the same way that the Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four once did. Pretty much then a Negative Zone for the New Millennium!
A transcendental text combines with strips and illustrations to send secret signals that spark all manner of electrical activity in the brain, and down my spine – that leaves me tingling. Mike Weller can write rings around 'himselves', and others, and in Space Opera casts a spell difficult to resist; wherein things are lent focus, the metre (or something) seduces, and my Anhedonia is interrupted. Always involved and involving, at times such was the suffocating convolution of the read that I fully expected the book to collapse in on itself – in truth, I'd been sucked-in from word one.
Somehow simultaneously deconstructing and constructive, the combination of imagery and text is decidedly jolting, and with seductive child-like luminescence, is often a source of tickling unease. In a sense, Space Opera is a 'powerless fantasy' – like the believer relieved of responsibility by 'the will of God'. Ultimately however, despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, we create the illusion of convenient relief ourselves – it is present only because we allow it. (Perhaps "Get writing, or get written" emerges the book's intrinsic message.)
Space Opera, I think, confirms what we have all suspected in our obliquest moments: that fact is not stranger than fiction; that we have allowed ourselves to be dummified and nothinged into invisibility. Though often confusing (in an endearing way), this is certainly not the impenetrable work a thematic synopsis might suggest. For all the intellectualising this book could generate, it is essentially a spirited, fun read (for adults), that intoxicates in much the same way that the Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four once did. Pretty much then a Negative Zone for the New Millennium!
400 A4 pages, £25 (inc. p&p) – check availability at www.homebakedbooks.co.uk