Open It

By Jason Week

The third of these weird comics that clearly have some connection, but what it is I cannot figure out. (Are they all by people who went to the Centre for Cartoon Studies? That's probably it.)

This one is about the Schrodinger's cat experiment, and a group of kids, including one who has bat wings, and at least one (and probably several) who is a super genius, actually performing the experiment.

Most of the comic is them arguing over whether they should open the box or not, what the experiment means, and stuff about probability. I sort of feel as though all the kids in this comic have clearly defined personalities that I'm just not aware of. I mean there are seven of them, and you clearly don't need that many to tell this story. So I think this would probably work better in a collection of stories about these characters instead of taken in isolation.

The art is fairly cartoony and I thought it was pretty good over all, though the fate of one of the cats at the end was initially lost on me.

I guess the "big idea" here is the multiple endings that exist, creating both possibilities of the experiment. While it is an awesome idea I found the execution a little lacking. Week has chosen to cut the last few pages in half and you are able to turn just the top or bottom of the page to see what happens. The problem I had with it is that the first page that is split already features both possible options: one has the cat living, the other dead. I think an additional page was needed, perhaps giving the reader the choice of whether they wanted the cat to live or die, or even just something that isn't a panel of a comic, as turning the top page and then ignoring the bottom is kind of awkward.

Still, I love physical experiments like this in zines. Hurray!