#23 - chasing hope (05-97) 



this one is a mess. i made the wash too dark, and it went on too heavy, resulting in . . . in this. moreover, i had just seen chasing amy, and not content with merely alluding to a pretty topical movie, i actually steal the joke about the one hundred dollar bill and baldly point out that i had done it. this was a mistake. of the forty people who probably read it in the month after i put it out, like as not half of them had seen the movie at the tivoli and probably a few of them got it. the rest would never have cared, and might have just thought it funny on its own merits. insecure, i laid it all out for them. not good. maybe i felt i would get sued.

the whole comic is poorly drawn, and almost illegible. about the only things i like about it are the handle of the pitcher and the way chirp is leaning forward but holding onto the edge of the porch. the dialogue unaccountably appears over elements of the background, obscuring them at best and making the text impossible to read at worst. i do note with interest the round table there on the porch--i don't think it ever appears again; another sniping and useless attack on local independent newspapers; and there is another one of these floating mid-air arrow tags announcing something that the reader might not understand: it identifies the pitcher as being filled with sangria. this is a useless detail that could have been told in other ways, instead of through a non-dialogue intrusion from the invisible (and preferably speechless) Narrator. nips should simply have said, 'i need some more sangria,' at some point, which after to talking to christopher he probably would have anyway, and all would have been well with the world. this device might fit someplace, but it's never fit in sparrow's fall.

at least the story is progressing a little, and sparrow's fall now makes some demands on the readers: i.e., that they read it consistently or run the risk of missing what's going on. i'm sure these demands were ignored, but maybe a few people began to catch on about this point that there was indeed a story here, not merely random episodes.

chasing amy, directed by kevin smith, impressed me at the time because it was about two comic book artists; at a con, one of them meets another artist and falls in love with her, only to discover she's a lesbian. he gets her to (briefly) switch teams, but the whole thing collapses in the end. having drawn comics for some years, i am here to announce that such things do not occur in real life. at all. well, maybe to people who work at marvel. but not to the indie comics artist.

these comics had no titles at the time, and the ones i apply as i archive them are made up pretty much on the spot. i call this one 'chasing hope' because the answer to the question 'who's that girl?' in #22 is answered: 'her name is Hope.' but of course you don't know that yet, shhh.






 

Posted: Mon - April 19, 2004 at 12:13 PM             |

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