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Review: Thunderhead Underground Falls
Thunderhead Underground Falls
By Joel Orff
Published by Alternative Comics. $14.95 USD
Alternative Comics has always been nice to me and their books are always pretty well-designed and I've liked a handful of them a lot. But they do sometimes come off like a farm club for Drawn & Quarterly and Fantagraphics, and while it's a credit to publisher Jeff Mason that he hangs onto, in my opinion, big talents like Nick Bertozzi and Matt Madden, there are always some books every year from guys that, to continue the baseball metaphor, aren't ready for the call-up to the bigs anytime soon.
It's not that T.U.F. is a bad book. Actually, it would have made a very nice $3 indie comic if Orff hadn't been encouraged to be so self-indulgent with all his silent, redundant panels and the meandering pace. This is just not a book that warrants $15 when you can read it--absorb it--in 20 minutes, and not feel any need to look at it again. It's about a nice guy and his cute girlfriend and he meets her after he's already enlisted for the Army, so they spend some time together before he has to go and there's an utterly downplayed, muffled and pretty much muffed ending to the thing. The feel of it is like a less precious, less dramatic Blankets, but it's also much less interesting and Orff is a mediocre artist at best. His images just aren't good enought to carry a story of this length, despite the mild sci-fi touches and daydreams. Are those snowflakes falling from the sky, or boogers on a desk? I can't tell, so it's not exactly visual poetry. Orff has a decent feel for that overwhelming first love, but needs to go back to the drawing board, again and again, and get his chops together before he attempts another romantic tone poem like this. He's just not ready.
By Joel Orff
Published by Alternative Comics. $14.95 USD
Alternative Comics has always been nice to me and their books are always pretty well-designed and I've liked a handful of them a lot. But they do sometimes come off like a farm club for Drawn & Quarterly and Fantagraphics, and while it's a credit to publisher Jeff Mason that he hangs onto, in my opinion, big talents like Nick Bertozzi and Matt Madden, there are always some books every year from guys that, to continue the baseball metaphor, aren't ready for the call-up to the bigs anytime soon.
It's not that T.U.F. is a bad book. Actually, it would have made a very nice $3 indie comic if Orff hadn't been encouraged to be so self-indulgent with all his silent, redundant panels and the meandering pace. This is just not a book that warrants $15 when you can read it--absorb it--in 20 minutes, and not feel any need to look at it again. It's about a nice guy and his cute girlfriend and he meets her after he's already enlisted for the Army, so they spend some time together before he has to go and there's an utterly downplayed, muffled and pretty much muffed ending to the thing. The feel of it is like a less precious, less dramatic Blankets, but it's also much less interesting and Orff is a mediocre artist at best. His images just aren't good enought to carry a story of this length, despite the mild sci-fi touches and daydreams. Are those snowflakes falling from the sky, or boogers on a desk? I can't tell, so it's not exactly visual poetry. Orff has a decent feel for that overwhelming first love, but needs to go back to the drawing board, again and again, and get his chops together before he attempts another romantic tone poem like this. He's just not ready.
Posted by ChristopherAllen at 11:59 PM [Link to this post]
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