Fragments #3
Posted on June 7, 2005
Franchise-free but genre-hued, Fragments #3’s purposeful delivery of thinly disguised parables challenges the notion that truth is best served through fiction. It’s a personal detective story, sifting through what Dennis Potter describes as “the superfluity of clues”. Involved is “contending with all the shapes and half-shapes, all the memories, all the aspirations of life – how they coalesce, how they contradict each other, how they have to be disentangled as a human act by you yourself; by you, this unique sovereign individual behind all the selves that are being sold things.”
Again, as with previous issues, the pieces in #3 are made symbiotic by creator Christine Harper’s strong authorial presence, but here the autobiographical element heightens as the writer herself features in almost all strips. Despite this, and though the instruction booklet resemblance of previous issues is agreeably replaced by a more cohesive, more organic, more satisfying comic strip presentation, the ‘telling’ remains dominant over the ‘showing’ and hinders one’s involvement, leaving a niggling thirst for greater development of story structure. Ample compensation however is provided by a progressive ability to cartoon and by the fact that here is an author with something to say. Indeed, in Harper’s most accomplished work to date, ‘The Boys’ Club Talk Crap’, a sickly light is cast on male grotesques, and change fuelled by conflict is delivered in a disarming tonal mix of steaming venom and powdered vulnerability.
With high purpose and cathartic intent, Fragments #3 makes no apology for sermonising. Though absent of inventiveness in dealing with adult issues in a gripping way, this comic does have depth and meaning where others have only inventiveness and/or well-worn platitudes. Self-help philosophising of this kind is no commercial venture for the author – no evidence exists of pandering to the masses. But then, with Fragments there is the sense that Christine Harper has little choice in the matter. As Flaubert said, “We do not choose our subjects. They choose us.”
Franchise-free but genre-hued, Fragments #3’s purposeful delivery of thinly disguised parables challenges the notion that truth is best served through fiction. It’s a personal detective story, sifting through what Dennis Potter describes as “the superfluity of clues”. Involved is “contending with all the shapes and half-shapes, all the memories, all the aspirations of life – how they coalesce, how they contradict each other, how they have to be disentangled as a human act by you yourself; by you, this unique sovereign individual behind all the selves that are being sold things.”
Again, as with previous issues, the pieces in #3 are made symbiotic by creator Christine Harper’s strong authorial presence, but here the autobiographical element heightens as the writer herself features in almost all strips. Despite this, and though the instruction booklet resemblance of previous issues is agreeably replaced by a more cohesive, more organic, more satisfying comic strip presentation, the ‘telling’ remains dominant over the ‘showing’ and hinders one’s involvement, leaving a niggling thirst for greater development of story structure. Ample compensation however is provided by a progressive ability to cartoon and by the fact that here is an author with something to say. Indeed, in Harper’s most accomplished work to date, ‘The Boys’ Club Talk Crap’, a sickly light is cast on male grotesques, and change fuelled by conflict is delivered in a disarming tonal mix of steaming venom and powdered vulnerability.
With high purpose and cathartic intent, Fragments #3 makes no apology for sermonising. Though absent of inventiveness in dealing with adult issues in a gripping way, this comic does have depth and meaning where others have only inventiveness and/or well-worn platitudes. Self-help philosophising of this kind is no commercial venture for the author – no evidence exists of pandering to the masses. But then, with Fragments there is the sense that Christine Harper has little choice in the matter. As Flaubert said, “We do not choose our subjects. They choose us.”
20 A5 pages, £1.50 - available from www.chezchrissie.co.uk