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dianacantread's review
4.0
we're three comics into this shindig, and already i return to my old preferences and biases.
i knew just by looking at In Pieces that this would be the book in the first batch that i would *probably* enjoy the most. it's very much up my alley: a series of vignettes about the small new england town the writer lived in with his family for a brief period of time. the vignettes are miniscule, often taking up only one page in the book, and do work to characterize this small town while also, perhaps inadvertently, characterizing the artist Kurt Ankeny.
to be honest, i think Ankeny is too self-aware for the "inadvertently" part to be the case. he has a sketchy art style that could be mistaken as messy, but the lines and the breaks in them and their thickness are all so clearly deliberate, and deliberate in their attempts to trick you into thinking they're messy. i also love how he squeezes his writing into corners of the page. it's clear that he knows how to block that stuff out and account for how much space his lettering will take up, but there are little moments like when he crowds the narration into a window pane that creates an excellent sense of spatial and narrative claustrophobia. moments like that make this book kind of brilliant.
the reason this is four instead of five stars is simply that it didn't resonate on a deep, emotional level with me. similar to a lot of works like this, it could easily become a favorite upon second or third read, and the fact that i'm willing to one day sit with this and savor it speaks to how much i already like it.
definitely pick this up if any of the above sounds interesting. it's clearly very personal to Ankeny, drawing from his experiences and emotions and overall has such a concrete sense of place and self, and i think others who appreciate these kinds of slice-of-life pieces that often crop up in online art spaces will find a lot to love here.
4.25/5 stars
my reading-all-comics-from-my-library series thus far:
1: ABERRANT Vol. 1
2: Aero, Vol. 1: Before the Storm
3: In Pieces: Someplace Which I Call Home
i knew just by looking at In Pieces that this would be the book in the first batch that i would *probably* enjoy the most. it's very much up my alley: a series of vignettes about the small new england town the writer lived in with his family for a brief period of time. the vignettes are miniscule, often taking up only one page in the book, and do work to characterize this small town while also, perhaps inadvertently, characterizing the artist Kurt Ankeny.
to be honest, i think Ankeny is too self-aware for the "inadvertently" part to be the case. he has a sketchy art style that could be mistaken as messy, but the lines and the breaks in them and their thickness are all so clearly deliberate, and deliberate in their attempts to trick you into thinking they're messy. i also love how he squeezes his writing into corners of the page. it's clear that he knows how to block that stuff out and account for how much space his lettering will take up, but there are little moments like when he crowds the narration into a window pane that creates an excellent sense of spatial and narrative claustrophobia. moments like that make this book kind of brilliant.
the reason this is four instead of five stars is simply that it didn't resonate on a deep, emotional level with me. similar to a lot of works like this, it could easily become a favorite upon second or third read, and the fact that i'm willing to one day sit with this and savor it speaks to how much i already like it.
definitely pick this up if any of the above sounds interesting. it's clearly very personal to Ankeny, drawing from his experiences and emotions and overall has such a concrete sense of place and self, and i think others who appreciate these kinds of slice-of-life pieces that often crop up in online art spaces will find a lot to love here.
4.25/5 stars
my reading-all-comics-from-my-library series thus far:
1: ABERRANT Vol. 1
2: Aero, Vol. 1: Before the Storm
3: In Pieces: Someplace Which I Call Home
vulveeta's review
a relaxing ruminative series of vignettes however some of the text is so small and i am so blind and i cannot pinch a page and make it bigger in a real book made of paper and not microchips and circuits, this is womanimal cruelty
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