François [Frank-O] Lamy's NAPALM and my own Revolver get mixed but generally positive reviews in the Toronto Eye this month.
NAPALM: BOOK 1
by Frank-O 24 pages, $2.
The pieces are simple and less than half-formed, yet the strongest among them have genuine, iconic power. The book's cover, for instance -- a skull and crossbones made of a hammer, a wrench and a gas mask, from an earlier Frank-O illustration called Work -- captures the essence of punk, with its distaste for the toxic daily grind.
Lamy has a fertile imagination, but needs to decide where his loyalties lie: the clean line mastery of the French school or the unfettered wildness of American punk artists like Gary Panter.Napalm: Book 1 clumsily straddles both, but as a first step, it's a good one.
REVOLVER ONE
by Salgood Sam 52 pages, $6.95.
Where Napalm is tripped by its artist's inexperience, Revolverhas the opposite failings: overemphasized panels that twist the eye with chaotic angles and shadows, and prose that reaches for profundity but fumbles with its sloppy diction. Douglas assaults the reader with technique -- mixing conte and ink and Photoshop in a spastic jam...
...the layouts in Revolver are consistently thrilling, playing with the frames, the gutter, the entire page. They pull the reader on swoops that S down a page, or simulate the vertigo of a big city by distending the horizon or dangling skyscrapers from above. Here is a pro exalting in his craft. That he sometimes seems drunk on his own inventiveness is the danger all artists face, once they find their voice.
I have bad diction it seems. ':-\
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