To Share is to Divide

By Nick Souček
miscomp.wordpress.com

Reading Souček's comics I can't help but feel kind of bad for him. They're filled with near constant existential doubt, anxiety, loneliness, depression, and other bad stuff. I mean, breaking up with someone sucks, being lonely sucks, but neither of those things are the end of the world.

Of course it seems that Souček is exaggerating his feelings for comedic effect. Even ignoring the fact that I don't think I can take the phrase "forever alone" serious in any way, he follows a scene where he is blown out of a tree by loneliness by saying that he has a tendancy to be melodramatic.

Helping to create this sense of melodrama in Souček's comics are the words that he uses to describe the scenes. There's not much dialogue here, instead we have the poetic monologue of Souček himself. I really feel that much of the text here could be reprinted without the pictures as fairly effective blank verse poetry. Of course, if that was done I would read it and then forget it again almost instantly, so clearly Souček has the better idea by pairing his thoughts with images.

Souček's art is at its best when it's drawing inanimate objects (there are some pretty rad boats in here), while the inhabitants of his stories kind of remind me of Lego people. Large heads, no real expressions, grasping claw like hands, they're totally minifigs! Actually, that's pretty awesome. I really like the idea that these are Lego people and that potentially Souček storyboards all of his comics using actual toys.

Okay, that idea is completely ridiculous, but if Souček is allowed to draw himself being eaten by a whale, I'm allowed to imagine what I want. And if I had any minifigs around I would totally make one and either give it to Souček, or make a photo comic in the same style.

Souček also does comics for Boneshaker, an awesome little bicycle magazine. I really liked his comic in the last issue of that.

Misinterpreted Complications Book Five

By Nick Souček
miscomp.wordpress.com

Parts of Misinterpreted Complications can really be seen more as illustrated philosophic musings than a comic. At first I kind of thought that multiple pages of a character sitting by themselves under a tree drinking wine and thinking about thinking, “the aesthetic of the tortured artist”, and the idea of being alone was wasting space and not using the idea of comics to their full. But then I realized that by having large, mostly empty panels Souček is helping to create the idea of loneliness that his stand-in is discussing. Oh comics! Once more you prove your superiority over prose!

The comic is split about equally between semi-autobiographical anecdotes, and the philosophical musings. The philosophic ones deal with anxiety, self doubt, and wondering about accuracy of the memories you have of your life. How accurate are they? If you have nobody else around to confirm them can you ever be really sure that they happened in the way that you think they did?

The more I think about this (the idea of philosophy comics, not the actual philosophy, as that would drive me insane), the more I think I’d like to see Souček make a comic that was just a philosophy essay. Something sort of similar to Alan Moore’s comics on magic, but dealing with a certain philosophical idea; giving an explanation and examples, testing hypothesis, and creating a conclusion, instead of just brief thoughts about them.

On the anecdote side of things, I quite liked the comic about Sim City and how it’s based around the false economic idea of “infinite growth”. I wish Souček had gone a bit more into this and discussed how constant growth isn’t in any way sustainable, and how our current economic system does not work. Dang, this comic (and I guess my blog) talks about some big ideas doesn’t it?

Souček's people aren’t the most emotive I’ve ever seen, but somehow it seems to work fairly well for a comic where people constantly seem to thank and care more about what’s going on in their heads then what they see in real life. The blank faces reflect the existential doubt the characters are feeling, and I can relate to that.

Souček also has some comics in the really rad ad-free bicycle magazine Boneshaker. Check it out!