Matter Summer Special

By Philip Barrett
blackshapes.com
Published by Sparkplug Comic Books

If something has a publisher does it really count as a minicomic/zine anymore? Do I even care at this point after three hundred and fifty something reviews?

The Matter Summer Special is different from the other comics by Philip Barrett that I’ve read (and reviewed on this site). Instead of featuring a number of shorter works focussing on (fairly) realistic stories devoted to obsession and neurosis, we have a long (over seventy pages!) story dealing with parallel dimensions.

The story starts with something we all* love: casual drug use! Whitey White (the cover character who is lacking anything but an outline and a face) and Sean Brown are hanging out in their living room, smoking up a storm and discussing the usual things people in that situation discuss (conspiracy theories). Then suddenly we’re in a corporate lab, and some scientists are telling their boss that they may have managed to grow some sort of new super drug with possible dimension-hopping properties. Then we have a montage of some angry looking gentleman beating up a number of other people, and the reader is left wondering how all of this is going to connect together.

Somehow Barrett makes it work, and the various story threads begin to intertwine. Not all of it is completely successful, but the way seemingly different stories connected to tell a whole reminded me of Jack Staff (and strangely there are a few places where the art even reminded me of Jack Staff creator Paul Grist’s style).

Barrett’s storytelling approach in this comic is interesting as he generally avoids the use of panel borders, or even coherent panels. Characters and speech balloons appear on the small pages seemingly wherever they can fit, while backgrounds are frequently nonexistent, leaving the characters to float in featureless voids. Yet this method allows for some interesting techniques, helping to create a claustrophobic feeling to the whole story. Huge heads loom over smaller people, showing positions of power and authority, humans are reduced to repeated specks in order to show that time is passing, and that nothing is really being accomplished, abstract figures are repeated in various forms to help show what characters are experiencing (see below), and characters are reduced to black blotches when they are unable to understand each other.

The story itself reminded me at times of Deep Sleeper (by Phil Hester and Mike Huddleston) and that issue of Sandman about the city that dreams. I enjoyed the paranoia, the secret agents, the parallel dimensions, and the various techniques that Barrett used. I feel that it will benefit from multiple readings, and plan on reading it again soon. You should read it too!

*Okay, not all of us. 365 Zines neither condones nor condemns casual drug use, but likes it when it’s treated in a way other than “drugs are bad”. I mean, who wouldn’t take mutant growth hormone if they lived in the Marvel Universe? Super powers!


(Unfortunately, due to the thickness of the zine, scanning pages was a little difficult. This is a two page spread from near the middle of the comic. Click to embiggen.)

Matter #12

By Philip Barrett
blackshapes.com

I think out of all of Barrett's comics that I've read the ones I've liked best are those about music. This holds true even in this (semi-) recent collection of short pieces reprinted from other publications.

Haircut is about the haircut that somehow transports a band into superstardom. It's ridiculous, the haircut is hideous, but it's also funny and perhaps says something about the music industry in that it could be anything makes bands successful.

Many of Barrett's pet themes (obsession, fear, a vague sense of unease that your life is utterly worthless) show up in these comics. But in collecting a number of different pieces created for various projects we see a greater variety of styles and material. Barrett is equally at home creating pieces with bizarre (and sometimes malicious) humour as those that make us think about our own lives and those around us.

Barrett's linework and inking are confident, enabling us to see the emotions and thoughts a character has just from their expressions or posture, while at the same time creating atmosphere and feeling.

His artwork generally sticks to the six panel grid for most of the stories in here, and his consistant style of drawing, combined with the fact that there's frequently a theme of depression and subdued horribleness throughout, makes me want to create something like five card Nancy, creating surreal three panel strips from random images.

I haven't done that though, so here's two panels from No. 1 Best pal, which is about beards and hats.

Threes

By Cliodhna Lyons, Maeve Clancy, and Philip Barrett
www.ztoical.com
www.maeveclancy.com
www.blackshapes.com

This comic features three different short comics about the number three created by three different Irish creators. Three three three three three.

None of them is very long. Lyons is about superstitians (presubably inspired by "third time's the charm"), and featurs some pretty cute artwork, though it is lacking in backgrounds (just what is that ladder leaning against?).

Clancy's is a silent tale inspired by the story of the three little pigs. The pencil only (I think) artwork is quite nice, but to be honest I'm not really sure what's gong on here and the ending just kind of confuses me. Maybe I am just dumb.

Barret's also confuses me a little as it jumps through time and I wasn't sure if there were multiple narrators talking. Clearly I am not good at dealing with non-conventional story telling right now! It does have some really nice inking and line work, and some incomprehensible future monster things.

I don't think this comic is the best examples of work by these creators, but if you alrady like them it's worth picking up, and it's possible that reading it will inspire you to go and find more work by one of them.

The Littlest Arsonist

The Littlest Arsonist
By Liam Geraghty & Philip Barrett
www.liamgeraghty.com
blackshapescomic.blogspot.com

From the size of this I automatically assumed it was going to be some sort of Chick tract style parody. It’s not. Instead it’s a collection of three panel newspaper style comic strips about the titular littlest arsonist.

They’re “gag” comics where the joke is that a little kid sets stuff on fire all the time. The kid never talks, he just stares blankly at things, and sets other things on fire. How fun!

Most of the comics are pretty funny, and I really liked the one about him stopping the fire department from putting out fires, but some of them are kind of creepy and scary too. Don’t set fire to that! People will get hurt! What are you doing? No! Aaarrgh.

Black Shapes

By Philip Barrett
www.blackshapes.com

This one hits kind of close to home. A formally aspiring writer can’t write any more and it’s messing up his life. He can’t sleep. His relationship is going down the tubes. He’s in trouble at work. It seems everything is going wrong for him.

And then it gets worse, he has to move back in with his parents. Only temporarily of course, but how long does that last. (Six months and counting in my case. I wish I had job. Or wrote more.)

Barrett returns to the idea of struggling with an obsession that is taking over someone’s life. In this case the struggle becomes physical, as the “black shapes” from the title are actively attacking and mocking the lead character.

It’s all kind of depressing, and I’d rather not think about it as it reminds me too much of my life at the moment. Boo hoo! Oh woe is me. And so on. Good comic though.

Matter Presents #7: Weird Face

By Philip Barrett
www.blackshapes.com

Barrett seems to keep coming back to the idea of obsessions in his comics. Perhaps he’s even obsessed with them. The first of his comics that I ever read was about a record that a character became obsessed with. He couldn’t get it out of his head, he listened to it all the time, but he couldn’t really decide what he thought of it. Eventually he gave it away, only to have finding it again become the new obsession.

This comic deals with visual obsessions instead of aural ones, with an artist who keeps creating the same face over and over again. Who is it? What does it mean? The obsession begins to affect his relationship with others. The gallery curator feels that while they “encapsulate [...] the mindless banality of modern culture” he needs more variation before his next show can be started. His lover abandons him, thinking that he cares more about the face than about her.

He moves onto other forms and styles of art, like sculpture, to try to get rid of the face he now sees everywhere. He turns to drink and despair. And then there’s a twist ending that I think I’ve seen in an old science fiction comic somewhere.

I didn’t enjoy this as much as some of Barrett’s other comics, possibly as I feel it’s covering ground he’s gone over before (“But Matthew,” you ask, “you read superhero comics all the time, all they do is go over the same ground all the time.”). Still I think Barrett’s art work is really good. The different styles the artist uses in his work are pretty fun to look at, and I generally enjoy his line and all the cross hatching he does. Plus the way he manages to use expressions to mirror the feelings between different characters is pretty cool.

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.