OR ELSE #4 reviewed on Comic Book Galaxy
Updated March 15, 2006
Or Else #4
By Kevin Huizenga
Published by Drawn & Quarterly, $5.95 USD
Kevin Huizenga's latest issue of Or Else, entitled "the Wild Kingdom," is yet another fascinating exercise in comics experimentation. Whereas many of Huizenga's contemporaries tinker with the visual elements of cartooning in service of their characters' stories, Huizenga's latest book reads more like a series of loosely related character moments woven together into a narrative. While there is no single story per se, there are several recurring themes which give this book its contextual structure, including most notably the intersection between nature and humanity. The artist shows, through silent, perfectly paced scenes, a pigeon who, after eating some discarded french fries, is intoxicated and ultimately struck by a car, while in another related example, a squirrel is fed a half eaten apple, carelessly discarded by Glenn Ganges. These examples of how nature co-exists with suburban life, and the often times detrimental effects our careless lifestyle can have, are fascinating. While the first half of the book is almost completely silent, Huizenga slowly, and carefully, slows the pace by adding more and more text. First he introduces a series of fake parodies of television commercials into the narrative (see sample pages). At first, these feel like distractions, though they are so familiar to us, that one cannot help but notice Huizenga's social commentary about our TV obsessed culture. As the amount of text increases, the structure of the book also becomes more cluttered, as literally every panel becomes disjointed from its previous panel, until each page is a sequence of random images and messages without context. Yet to call this style chaotic would be misleading. Throughout this dense section, the recurring motifs of disconnection with nature and rampant consumerism exist, and it is perhaps Huizenga's greatest strength that he is able to carry the reader through such an experimental narrative structure without losing the thread. Throughout the final section of the book, entitled "Appendix A," Huizenga returns to silence, as he shows, quite cleverly, how this simple disconnection between people and their environment can lead to catastrophic results. This is one of the most creative and thoughtful books I've read in a long time, and one I have no doubt will reward multiple readings. To say that Huizenga continues to push the boundaries of what comics can be is an understatement, as literally no one, even among his celebrated contemporaries, has taken experimentation in thematic structure to such a degree. Grade: 4.5/5
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