Review: Micrographica

Micrographica HC
By Renee French
Published by Top Shelf Productions.

I received this as a spiral-bound galley, but I'm assured it will be published as a small but handsome, black-and-white hardcover. For those of you who know French's work, well, guess you don't know her quite as well as you may have thought, because this is quite a change of pace. With other French works, there's usually the feeling of a humming, droning, Eraserhead-like synth accompaniment--chords of doom and dissociation and disturbance. Here, though, she just plain lightens up and presents a silly, funny story about two rodent pals and their quest to recover a ball of dried crap they'd lost. Come to think of it, a title like Micrographica is probably a bit too clinical and hip for what amounts to a fun shaggy dog story with some mother jokes thrown in. The book doesn't aim high but it does find its target, and at the very least it's a creative palette-cleansing exercise while French lets her next expression of horrific compassion ferment.