{"id":20111,"date":"2019-05-17T08:00:29","date_gmt":"2019-05-17T08:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=20111"},"modified":"2019-05-16T19:46:35","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T19:46:35","slug":"pocket-full-of-rain-and-other-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2019\/05\/17\/pocket-full-of-rain-and-other-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Pocket Full of Rain and Other Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Jason<\/strong>, edited and translated by Kim Thompson<\/strong> (Fantagraphics Books)
\nISBN: 978-1-56097-934-0 (TPB)<\/p>\n

John Arne S\u00c3\u00a6ter\u00c3\u00b8y works under the pen-name Jason. He was born in Molde, Norway in 1965, and exploded onto the international cartoonists scene at age 30 with a series of short – often autobiographical – strips and graphic novels. His anthological first book, Lomma Full av Regn<\/em><\/strong> won the Sproing Award (Norway’s biggest comics prize) and forms the meat of this review. This is it translated into English and you can read it in paperback or digital editions.<\/p>\n

He followed up with the series Mjau Mjau<\/em><\/strong> (winning another Sproing in 2001) and in 2002 turned almost exclusively to producing graphic novels. He is now an international icon, basking in fame and critical status, winning seven major awards as far afield as France, Slovakia and the USA and all areas in-between.<\/p>\n

Later stories utilise a small repertory cast of anthropomorphic animal characters (as well as occasional movie and pop culture monsters), delivered in highly formal page layouts telling dark, wry and sardonically bleak tales – often pastiches, if not outright parodies – rendered in a coldly austere and Spartan manner. This seemingly oppressive format somehow allows a simply vast range of emotionally telling tales on a wide spectrum of themes and genres to hit home like rockets whether the author’s intention was to make readers smile or cry like a baby.<\/p>\n

Drawing in a minimalist evolution of Herg\u00c3\u00a9’s Claire Ligne style, Jason’s work bores right into the reader’s core, but here fans and students can see the development of that unique vision in a series of pictorial tales – many clearly experimental in nature from – taken from Mjau Mjau<\/em><\/strong>, Forresten<\/em><\/strong>, Fidus<\/em><\/strong>, TEGN<\/em><\/strong>, Lomma Full av Regn<\/em><\/strong> and Humorparaden<\/em><\/strong> as the young artist grasps his muse but still hunts for a style vehicle to carry his thoughts\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

An Introduction<\/em> by novelist and educator James Sturm is preceded by an observational encounter with a human derelict and followed by short absurdist slice-of-life moments including an unpleasant confrontation in the desert and a manhunt across the world and beyond it that evolves into an examination of love.<\/p>\n

The experimental procession is followed by edgy cartoon hijinks and therapeutic caf\u00c3\u00a9 discourses in anthropomorphic yarn ‘Carl Cat in What Time is It?’<\/em>, after which an age-old masculine dilemma is covered in ‘What Shall I Do When I Lose My Hair?’<\/em><\/p>\n

Autobiographical introspection informs single pagers ‘Film’<\/em>, ‘Night’ <\/em>and an untitled gag about playing solitaire, before ‘Bus’ <\/em>and croquet-playing nuns give way to the tragic tale of ‘Edwin!’<\/em> whilst ‘Two Yrs’<\/em> deals with isolation and meagre youthful aspirations and ‘Invasion of the Giant Snails’<\/em> offers an early mash-up of genre movie scenes before we see that the Truth is not necessarily Out anywhere in spoof strip ‘XPilt’<\/em>.<\/p>\n

‘Corto Meowtese’<\/em> provides a loving salutation to classic European strips before ‘Space Cat’ <\/em>offers similar tribute to Basil Wolverton’s legendary Space Hawk<\/strong>, whilst echoes of Samuel Beckett shade a tense situation involving Earnest Hemingway in ‘Papa’<\/em>. Mordant laughs trace ‘My Life as a Zombie’ <\/em>and penal absurdity triumphs in extended act of whimsy ’10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6Lift Off!’<\/em> before relationship woes and human interaction are scrutinised in ‘Falling’<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Nightmarish surrealism underpins vignettes ‘Kill the Cat’<\/em>, school shocker ‘Chalk’<\/em>, home invasion chiller ‘Glass’<\/em> and police drama ‘the thief’<\/em> to conclude the narrative efforts but there’s still plenty to enjoy. The tales thus far have been monochrome strips interspersed with pin-up style images and found art and they are now supplemented with a wealth of multihued material including Colour covers for Mjau Mjau <\/em>(#2, 4, 5<\/em>), hilariously irreverent strip ‘Playing Trivial Pursuit with God’<\/em>, Sleppefest<\/em> and so much more.<\/p>\n

A full Table of Contents <\/em>then lists the origins of each offering with publishing information and author’s commentary.<\/p>\n

Jason’s comic tales are strictly for adults but allow us all to look at the world through wide-open childish eyes, exploring love, loss, life, death and all aspects of relationship politics without ever descending into mawkishness or simple, easy buffoonery.<\/p>\n

He is a taste instantly acquired and a creator any true fan of the medium should move to the top of their \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Must-Have\u00e2\u20ac\u009d list.
\nAll characters, stories, and artwork \u00c2\u00a9 2008 Jason. Lomma Full av Regn and Mitt Liv Som Zombie published in Norway by Jippi Forlag. All right reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jason, edited and translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books) ISBN: 978-1-56097-934-0 (TPB) John Arne S\u00c3\u00a6ter\u00c3\u00b8y works under the pen-name Jason. He was born in Molde, Norway in 1965, and exploded onto the international cartoonists scene at age 30 with a series of short – often autobiographical – strips and graphic novels. His anthological first … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Pocket Full of Rain and Other Stories”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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}},"categories":[75,63,66,125,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-comics","category-european-classics","category-horror-stories","category-humour","category-mature-reading"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-5en","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20111","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=20111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}