Grotesque USA review

Se masticate un po’ l’inglese, ecco una recensione di Grotesque edizione americana, tratta da un bell’articolone di Rob Clough che fa il punto su tutte le serie della collana Ignatz finora uscite.
Potete leggerlo

qui

“The first issue of this series was quite a wild ride. Sergio Ponchione has absorbed a lot of different influences and has become a skilled style mimic who can flip through several different approaches in the span of a single page. The press materials compared his surreal imagery to Roger Langridge, and with his reliance on thick, bold but clear black lines, it's not a bad comparison. But there's other stuff in there as well: a European clear-line style, Segar-esque character design, bits of Crumb, hints of Deitch (both Gene's animation and Kim's comics), a smidgen even of eccentric mainstream artist Richard Case. In terms of pure black-and-white eye candy, this is my favorite book in the Ignatz line to simply look at.

This book is about secrets, mysteries and the hope for renewal in the form of a quest. Three different men are drawn to three different strange islands at three different times--but all for similar reasons. They are unhappy with their lives and feel a gnawing need for change, for something different. One man is an explorer with a key given to him by a wizard who's looking for the island by boat. Another man has a bookmark that's affecting the books he reads: the characters he reads about start interacting with each other independently on an island, and he can hear their thoughts as they start to mix with his. A third man in the future is followed by an island that's floating around and following him. Finally confronting it, he knows that a magical glass eye that he's holding is the key to solving his problem. The central figure here is a shadowy and possibly sinister man named Mr. O'Blique, who created all three islands and has drawn in all three men.

Each of the three stories comes to a head as Ponchione weaves different side characters in and out of each man's life. The result is a pleasant mishmash of influences that have a familiar feel yet are wholly original. It's almost a meta-story in some ways for me as a reader; the story about a story that takes on a life of its own made me feel as though I had read that story myself in the past. There's a feeling that's evoked from reading it that's drawn from the periphery of my memory, almost like deja vu'. The book is quite enjoyable on a literal level, but it'll be interesting to see if it becomes a bit deeper on a metaphorical level.”

E mentre ci sono segnalo anche questa recensia italiana di Alex Tirana dal sito

Neurocomics