Daily Breakdowns 013 - Old Man Winter

Old Man Winter
By J.T. Yost
Published by Birdcage Bottom Books. $6.95 USD

Yost is a 2009 Xeric Award winner, and this is a perfect-bound one-shot collecting a few shorts originally featured in other small press anthologies, as well as the previously unpublished title story. It's clear from the start that Yost is ready for a wider audience, at least as an artist. He's got a clean, chunky style not too far removed from Joe Matt or Tom Hart--his shading reminds me of Joe Sacco as well. The big panels and full, densely textured pages give the impression Yost is really enjoying the drawing, so we're off to a pretty good start. We meet and follow an old codger, apparently a widower, who's melancholy and heartbroken but still getting out in the world and trying to relate to people. Yost shows confidence and a feel for little moments in spots here, such as the old man sleeping next his dead wife's ashtray, he never a smoker. Dialogue is pretty well done, too; there's some nice ambiguity with the two shop employees being both sympathetic and cruel to the man. My main issue with the story is it seemed to end too abruptly, especially when the moody scenes didn't drive any particular point home. I wanted it to on with the guy for a while, seeing more of how he fills his grieving days. Also didn't care to see his dead, naked body. That seemed to rob the character of the dignity Yost had taken some care to give him.

"All Is Forgiven" is a silent short about a scientist getting a Dear John letter. Heartbroken, he releases the animals upon which he's been testing products. Due credit for compelling, disturbing imagery, but the point escaped me.

"Logging Sanjay" is a more successful effort, a nice bit of autobio comix about a series of youthful pranks Yost and a buddy carried out on another friend, all harmless though taken a bit too far. "Roadtrip" and "Running Away With/From the Circus" were both commissioned works, the former for a vegan outreach organization and the latter for an art exhibit. They feel like commission works, too, meaning less natural and inspired, more forced and, in the case of "Roadtrip," pedantic. While it seems Yost's vegan beliefs probably run through the "All Is Forgiven" story, too, and it's not entirely successful, at least it has some oddly memorable, unforced moments in it. "Roadtrip" is a tedious series of contrasts between the life of a young American consumer (a kid) enjoying a county fair, and the horrible life of cattle. The nadir of that story was probably the sign above the cattle's path to slaughter reading, "Slayer's Slaughter Est. 1917," because I guess the reader wasn't going to get the point that this was a slaughterhouse without using the word, double-emphasized with an unlikely surname, and with the sign placed where cattle are the most likely to see it (or do the customers go through the same doorway as the cattle?). It's a shame the weakest pieces are at the end, because they definitely take the shine off some of the potential Yost showed earlier. He would do well to keep observing people with the acceptance of their flaws and quirks, as he does in "Old Man Winter," and put the preaching of the earlier stories behind him.

Christopher Allen
August 30th, 2009