As my pull list dwindles due to the continuous onslaught of less than palatable monthly offerings by the comic book industry these days I’ve been forced to expand my view into the trade market with the hopes that I can find suitable enough replacements for my sequential art and text bubbles fix. I’ve been grabbing those ‘Reckless’ books by Brubaker and Phillips which have predictably been fucking fantastic. If you haven’t checked out their ‘Reckless’ trade series yet get thee to thy LCS and grab them all with a quickness you ninnies. I still wish they’d be dropping monthlies rather than only dropping trades but I’ll take them anyway they give them. If Brubaker and Phillips started an old timey comic strip in a newspaper I’d inhale those too.
It’s an interesting debate, why not just purchase trades rather than monthlies? Well, trades are a full blown relationship while monthlies are like dating. I can take a monthly out for a spin or two and ghost them without fair warning. A monthly could make a great first impression and then fall off a cliff on their second go round to which you must assume the monthly has revealed its true colors and must be punished by the absence of your interest. A trade is like meeting someone at a wedding in a resort or on a cruise and then hooking up with them. You’re not really going to be able to avoid them should things turn psycho. Like if you wake up in the morning after a night bang and she’s naked on the floor in the middle of a pentagram drawn with Coppertone tanning lotion and she asks you to help her sacrifice the turkey bacon from your room service breakfast as an offering to Moloch, that’s pretty much your girl until you get on your flight back home; enjoy!
At any rate, I blindly grabbed this ‘Center of the Earth’ book due to its critical darling status to see what all the hubbub was about. Well, bottom line, it deserves all the hubbub and a little bit of hullabaloo with a dash of brouhaha. Zoe Thorogood is a revelation and this book may very well be her ‘Baby I’m a Star’ moment into the world of comicdom. Oddly enough, it’s not the kind of book you read as much as it is one that you take in. The descriptive calls it metanarrative which I’m not so sure is accurate. It’s more like a diary written by the id of the mind the angst of the heart and the wisdom of the soul which is quite extraordinary considering the fact that Zoe is not even a quarter of a century old.
This very well may be the graphic novel gold standard of what it feels like on the outside and inside to struggle with anxiety and depression through the lens of an evolving artist. The devices that she uses to articulate the various aspects of her personality are the true backbone of the book and as you get to know them you get to know her more. This evolving discovery allows the linear narrative to slowly melt away into this pastiche of awkward emotions and an incessant need to comprehend one’s own inner mechanisms. That may be the trap here, you’re looking for a story when what you should really be looking for is how the pages land on you on a deeper level. The fact that she’s already achieved this nuance at such an early stage of her career is an amazing feat.
I totally crush on broken artist babes, something about them, their vulnerability, their passion, their need to overcome despite their illogical approaches; it’s so deeply human and magical. I probably would end up in the friend zone with Zoe which would be totally fine with me; not like she frikkin’ cares but there’s a familiarity here that’s strangely comforting for me and perhaps for so many of us who have boldly taken up the path of being a creative being in this wacky world.
Being an artist is tough. Being a writer is tough. Being anything creative that forces you to find that elusive muted solitude to expand and mine oneself for a flow of art that seems to come from the prick of pin inside of you is as taxing and as rewarding as anything you could possibly imagine. I like to think of it as a ‘Selfless Selfishness’. You have to be maniacally obsessed with yourself while connecting to a wider consciousness at the same time. I get Zoe’s predicament. All I can say to her or to anybody who may be going through the throes of these anxious artistic developments is that if you can somehow find a way to detach yourself where you become the observer of your emotions and your process rather than the reaction of them, you’ll find your way home. Whether she knows it or not that’s what Zoe was doing with this book.
Zoe laments the terms ‘The Future of Comics’ and 'Relatable' that apparently made its way to her at a point in her career. I would say that she’s not necessarily the future of comics but rather a part of the future of comics. As for relatable, I'd replace that with 'connective' as her art truly connected and resonated with many who have experienced similar hurdles in their lives. Her heroic work here is a triumph and while it’s certainly reasonable to assume that she may stumble along as she unravels more and more about herself and her creative process I think it’s safe to say that if she stays the course we’ll be looking back on this book as the one that launched it all many many years from now. To all the loners out there at the center of your worlds, you’re not alone. We’re all alone in this journey together.
Rating: 9.5
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