{"id":2704,"date":"2008-12-23T05:20:53","date_gmt":"2008-12-23T05:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=2704"},"modified":"2008-12-21T12:26:12","modified_gmt":"2008-12-21T12:26:12","slug":"sublife-volume-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2008\/12\/23\/sublife-volume-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Sublife Volume 1"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sublife\"<\/a>
Sublife<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By John Pham<\/strong> (Fantagraphics Books)
\nISBN-13: 978-1-56097-946-3<\/p>\n

Self-publishing wizard and minicomic genius John Pham has joined with the wonderfully progressive Fantagraphics to release the first volume in a proposed twice-a-year book series dedicated to the sheer joy of pictorial storytelling in our modern, miracle-free world, which any adult fan just won’t be able to resist.<\/p>\n

This initial offering, a sublimely designed landscape-format tome printed in quirky two-tone (Magenta and Cyan combined to produce a huge variety of colours welcomingly familiar to anybody who grew up reading Beano or Dandy) features a series of intertwined tales featuring the odd denizens of ‘221 Sycamore St.’<\/em><\/p>\n

Poignant and surreal by turns, the lives of exhausted ‘Mildred Lee’<\/em>, dubious stud ‘Vrej Sarkissian’<\/em>, the tragic and disturbing religious studies teacher ‘Hubie Winters’<\/em> and those guys ‘Los Hermanos Macdonald’<\/em> are a captivating and laconic examination of the kind of people you probably wouldn’t like or make time for\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

The silent, deadly pantomime of the house cat seeking safety outside is worth the price of admission alone, but when the abstract and symbol-stuffed existences on display here shuffle into your head and just sit there twitching, you too will wonder how you ever got on without this creator on your \u00e2\u20ac\u0153must-read\u00e2\u20ac\u009d list.<\/p>\n