My First Festival

My First Festival
By Philip Barret
blackshapes.com
A weird square size.

I met Philip at a comicon in Vancouver a few years ago, I thought his comics were awesome, but never saw him at the other cons I managed to go to or buy any more of them. Apparently he moved to Ireland? Even his friends who I bought this from don’t know where he is currently!

My favourite was comic he did was about a guy who bought a record by some band he didn’t know, and kept listening to it over and over and over again. Then he sold it so that he would stop listening to i, but changed his mind and couldn’t find it again. I’m not describing it that well, but it is in fact really, really good.

This one doesn’t have as awesome a plot, but it is still incredibly well crafted. It is, as you can tell from the title, about his first festival. He goes on a bus with one of his friends, who ditches him for a girl immediately. It takes forever to get to the festival, he can’t find his friends, he misses the bands he really wanted to see, and he gets really drunk. Did he enjoy it? He doesn’t know. But I enjoyed this comic despite it being about your typical festival experience, because Barrett’s skill is evident in his art. It’s not overly detailed, but you can tell from a character’s posture and hand movements how they feel.

I’m sure you’ll see his work in bigger places at some point.