Comics as a medium isn't very friendly to minimalism, and I have a feeling that a large reason for that is economic. Your typical "standard-size" pamphlet these days costs $2.99 for about 22 pages of story, and there are hundreds of them released every week. Readers like to feel like they're getting something for their three dollars, and they're likely to be disappointed if they can breeze through a comic in under 10 minutes. For that same three dollars, they could've rented a DVD at their local video store and had 2 hours of entertainment (more if it's a TV series on DVD). The minimalist precept that less is more doesn't have much sway over someone who feels their entertainment dollars are better spent on quantity.
There's definitely a tension between the concepts of quality and quantity at play when reading
Monologues For the Coming Plague, the deceptively gargantuan new collection from Anders Nilsen, published by Fantagraphics Books. First impressions of the book are of a thick, perfect bound collection, similar in size and heft to an upscale paperback book with heavy matte covers. It's apparent without opening the book that there are two different paper stocks used; a blue-gray tinted stock that's unusually heavy, for roughly the first 4/5ths of the book, and a more typically weighted white stock for the last portion. It's a nice package, distinctive and eye-catching.
Artistically speaking, it's a triumph of content over form. If you've never seen Anders Nilsen's work before (the
Dogs & Water graphic novel, his ongoing
Big Questions series, and contributions to anthology series like
Mome and
Kramer's Ergot), it's likely to initially strike you as sloppy and amateurish. His drawing style is fluid, in the sense that it changes depending on the context of his work, and it should be no surprise that these sketchbook excerpts are rough and unrefined. In fact, they're visually reminiscent of something that would be doodled on a notepad during a phone call. Each "story," or monologue, or dialogue, presented here is paced at the brisk rate of one "panel" per page, often with a repeated visual surrounded by generous white space, with text providing the only variation. There are a handful of characters and scenarios, all equally absurd and introspective. Typically, there are either two characters having a conversation or otherwise addressing each other, or there is one character addressing the reader. It's a simple setup, and it's played out over and over again, with either extended interchanges, or a series of variations on one scenario. It's quite literally a page turner, at an average of 1-3 sentences per page, occasionally no text.
Nilsen uses this simple setup to great effect, however, with unexpected insights and sight gags popping up during repetitive sequences. The one-panel-per-page trick is actually an effective device for pacing out the stories, and allowing for surprises to hide behind a turned page. It allows a little more flexibility in the pacing than tiered panels would, where the "reveals" would have to be paced in multiples of the number of panels.
Some of the material here will be familiar from anthology appearances, notably some of the sequences with Nilsen's scribble-headed character, a cipher who plays strangely undefined roles in usually philosophical conversations. This character appears throughout the book, either talking with the vaguely drawn man from the cover, or talking directly to the reader. Here, he fills the roles of devil's advocate, secret conspirator, trickster, everyman, and more. There's also an extended gag-cartoon style setup, with a bird and an old woman with a bag of seeds saying surreal or unexpected things to each other. These scenes work on a simpler version of the central concept of
Big Questions, using animals (specifically birds) as stand-ins for humans to allow us a more detached view of human nuance. While
Big Questions tackles exactly what its title implies using this narrative device, the scenes here are more about quick jabs at human quirks.
It's strong material that takes advantage of its format, but the format itself may serve as an obstacle to many. Despite the high production value and quality content, it would be easy to see this book as padded, and overpriced. Despite its high page count, it's a quick read, with most pages containing no more words than a children's book. Combine that with an illustrative style that eschews craft in favor of roughly symbolic, almost iconic simplicity, and the overall impression to the general public is going to be somewhat skeptical. And at $18.95, that skepticism is going to be hard to overcome. A superficial evaluation of the book probably won't win over any potential readers. It's a prime case of conflict between art and economics; it's unlikely that the book would be as artistically successful in a different form, but it's the apparent conflict between form and content that may prevent it from getting the recognition it deserves.
