Sublife volume 2


By John Pham (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN-13: 978-1-60699-309-5

After what feels like far too long, self-publishing wizard/minicomic genius John Pham and Fantagraphics Books have released the second volume of the twice-yearly series dedicated to the sheer expressive joy of pictorial storytelling in this modern, wonder-deprived world, and I must say (grudgingly) that it has been worth the wait.

This offering, once more crafted in an immaculately designed landscape-format tome, printed in quirky two-tone (orange and blue combined to produce a huge variety of colours welcomingly familiar to anybody who grew up reading British comics) features another series of seemingly unconnected tales linked more by sensibility and tone rather than content.

After a faux newspaper strip ‘Mort’ which examines the passions of a failed blogger, the main experience begins with a continuation of ‘Deep Space’ wherein extraordinarily pedestrian star-farers strive to find their way home: a beautifully rendered piece which reminds me of a wistful Philippe Druillet, before resuming the author’s exploration of the frankly peculiar residents of ‘221 Sycamore St.’ This time runaway teen Phineas sees a disturbing side to his cool uncles when they all go dog-training…

This leads into the anti-elegiac autobiographical memoir ‘St. Ambrose 1984-1988’ before the majority of the volume is taken up with ‘The Kid’, a practically wordless post-apocalyptic Science Fiction tale of scavenging and the price of love that is deeply reminiscent of – and respectful to – the movie Mad Max, with just a touch of A Boy and his Dog thrown in, all drawn in a pencil-toned style that is both deeply poignant and powerfully gripping.

The volume closes with the nostalgic one-pager ‘Socko Sarkissian’ a fond memoriam to baseball’s greatest fictional Armenian batsman.

Seductive, quietly compulsive, authentically plebeian and surreal by turns, John Pham’s work is abstract, symbol-stuffed and penetratingly real. He tells strange stories in comfortable ways and makes the bizarre commonplace without ever descending to histrionics: like a cosmic witness to everything you might or might not want to see.

If you’re tired of the comics mainstream but still love it too much to quit, you need to see these stories and refresh your visual palate. In fact, even if not, check out Sublife anyway, in case it’s your horizons not your tastes which need the attention…

© 2009 John Pham. All Rights Reserved.