Drawn & Quarterly Showcase, Book 2, Vol. 2

Drawn & Quarterly Showcase returns featuring two more of the brightest new talents working in graphic novels today. This edition focuses on new stories by two cartoonists from opposite ends of the globe: Chicago's Jeffrey Brown and from the other side of the Atlantic, Pentti Otsamo of Finland. Brown's story is a tense-murder-mystery: a co-worker at a factory has dreams about dogs attacking a girl two nights in a row. The next day he unloads a truck and finds dirty clothing in the trailer, clothing that looks like a young girls'. As it happens, a young girl was abducted and murdered the night before, and the truck had picked up the load in that area the same day. Brown deftly paces the story, drawn in his expressive line, never quite revealing more than we need to know. Pentti Otsamo writes about a boy's move to a new town and of the nastiness of the local kids who do their best to shun the new arrival. Otsamo's moody and atmospheric drawing style is perfectly suited to the subject of the story. His artwork is reminiscent of some of the best D+Q cartoonists, with the warm colors of Seth and the sensitive, yet expressive linework of Chester Brown.

Drawn & Quarterly Showcase returns featuring two more of the brightest new talents working in graphic novels today. This edition focuses on new stories by two cartoonists from opposite ends of the globe: Chicago's Jeffrey Brown and from the other side of the Atlantic, Pentti Otsamo of Finland. Brown's story is a tense-murder-mystery: a co-worker at a factory has dreams about dogs attacking a girl two nights in a row. The next day he unloads a truck and finds dirty clothing in the trailer, clothing that looks like a young girls'. As it happens, a young girl was abducted and murdered the night before, and the truck had picked up the load in that area the same day. Brown deftly paces the story, drawn in his expressive line, never quite revealing more than we need to know. Pentti Otsamo writes about a boy's move to a new town and of the nastiness of the local kids who do their best to shun the new arrival. Otsamo's moody and atmospheric drawing style is perfectly suited to the subject of the story. His artwork is reminiscent of some of the best D+Q cartoonists, with the warm colors of Seth and the sensitive, yet expressive linework of Chester Brown.

Publishers Weekly

The second volume in Drawn & Quarterly's ongoing young cartoonists' showcase features three stories from three very different artists. All share an interest in the mysteries possible in even the most mundane of life's events. Finnish cartoonist Pentti Otsamo has the longest entry, a ponderous tale of a newly transplanted adolescent boy in a middle-class Dutch suburb. Two pets are lost and an odd reunion occurs, but the story eventually just peters out, its cool veneer and competent, streamlined cartooning unable to hold a heavier symbolic burden. The second entry, by American cartoonist Jeffrey Brown, is a switch from Brown's usual autobiographical tales, as what begins as a "true" story quickly veers into fantasy, with a disquieting, David Lynch-like mystery at its center. Brown is trying something ambitious here, weaving his workaday life into a fantasy, but ultimately comes up short, unable to make all the story threads come together to create a larger narrative meaning. Erik De Graaf, of the Netherlands, contributes the book's shortest and best story, an oddly affecting tale of a child's stay on his grandparents' farm. Like the other two stories, this one has a slight mystery and the death of an innocent, but De Graaf's nocturnal artwork and sharp writing carry the day. While flawed, this showcase delivers strong ideas and solid talent. (July 7) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.