{"id":12108,"date":"2014-07-03T08:00:39","date_gmt":"2014-07-03T08:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=12108"},"modified":"2014-07-02T20:14:19","modified_gmt":"2014-07-02T20:14:19","slug":"babak-ganjeis-road-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2014\/07\/03\/babak-ganjeis-road-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Babak Ganjei’s Road House"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nBy Babak Ganjei<\/strong> (Records Records Records Books)
\nISBN: 978-0-9566330-7-1<\/p>\n

Comics are a uniquely universal and predominantly graphic engine of narrative which can be as clear, concise and precise as a diagram or as shaded and meaningfully obscurantist as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Beat\u00e2\u20ac\u009d poetry or The Clangers<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Moreover, when sequential panels are loaded with layers of pristine clarity which are simultaneously hooded or non-specific imagery, the effects can be spectacularly engaging.<\/p>\n

According to author\/illustrator Babak Ganjei this particular pictorial feast results from a momentary connection of artistic drudgery to a state of pure channelled creativity.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was hung-over; sitting in my studio, everyone else was working around me. I had Road House<\/strong> streaming from Netflix, I started drawing it; more than anything just to look busy. However as I got through the first few scenes I thought how it would be nice to truly immerse myself in a project that would take some time and with that time become it’s own thing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

The enterprise grew and, despite overrunning the artist’s self-imposed time and space restrictions, gelled into a compulsive exhibition of artistic motor skills and disassociative construction of story elements. The brain wants logic and sees patterns: the hands and eyes just keep moving. Just ask any freelancer who has spent three days awake finishing a rush deadline job\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

In case you haven’t caught it, Road House<\/strong> was released in 1989, a low-budget action flick starring Patrick Swayze, Sam Elliott and Ben Gazarra. It was directed by Rowdy Herrington, and John Wilson (founder of the Golden Raspberry Awards<\/strong>) listed it as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153one of the 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n

The transformed, reconstituted result is a beguiling 192 page landscape hardback continuity (185 of which are the resultant images) delivered in a stark, enthralling monochrome which offers a truly raw storytelling experience, with one panel per page each captioned with brief, pithy \u00e2\u20ac\u0153found\u00e2\u20ac\u009d quotes from a wide range of other sources such as Foucoult, Foster Wallace and Baudrillard, Ali to Richard Pryor to Steve Martin\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

A moodily effective, oddly gripping little (148 x 210mm) experimental treat, Babak Ganjei’s Road House <\/strong>is practically Dadaist in delivery and ferociously enticing, something no lover of comics or practitioner of the visual arts should miss… and perhaps later attempt for themselves.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this is the beginning of a new trend or Olympic sport\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Tantalising thought, no\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6?<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a9 Records Records Records 2013.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Babak Ganjei (Records Records Records Books) ISBN: 978-0-9566330-7-1 Comics are a uniquely universal and predominantly graphic engine of narrative which can be as clear, concise and precise as a diagram or as shaded and meaningfully obscurantist as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Beat\u00e2\u20ac\u009d poetry or The Clangers. Moreover, when sequential panels are loaded with layers of pristine clarity which … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Babak Ganjei’s Road House”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[42,3,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-british","category-comics","category-mature-reading"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-39i","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}