Word: abed
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Finding a comix artist who tries to combine contemplative discourse with autobiography, superheroes and sci-fi has been hard. But lo and behold, a new softcover collection, "Abe: Wrong for all the Right Reasons," (Top Shelf; 176pp.; $14.95), reveals that Glenn Dakin has been doing precisely this kind of stuff since 1984. So where has this charming, poetic comic been hiding...
Answer: Great Britain. Small wonder something this eccentric would come from the land of William Blake, the mystic poet and proto-comix artist, and Alan Moore, the mystic contempo-comix writer. Appearing mostly in the British small press (i.e. photocopied) scene, "Abe" gathers together almost fifty short pieces that have appeared over the last fifteen years. They all star Abe Rat, an ironically cruel name for a nebbishy character who mostly just wants to figure out what makes him happy...
...According to the introduction by Eddie Campbell, also from the U.K. and whose "Alec McGarry" works have much in common with Dakin's, the black and white drawings are done directly in ink. This gives them a loose and spontaneous feel. Abe looks like a doodle of a scrawny nerd who lives in a scribbley universe. But a spontaneous execution should not be confused with careless content. Dakin organizes his pieces so that each panel has a thought accompanied by an illustrative picture. Sometimes they are literal and sometimes more expressionist, but they are always in service to the words...
...child I thought that light had form and size, the flower-like shapes of candleflames, like unopened magnolias, the luminous polygons in my uncle’s tungsten bulbs. It was only when Uncle Abe showed me his spinthariscope and I saw the individual sparkles in this that I started to realize that light, all light, came from atoms or molecules which had first been excited and then, returning to their ground state, relinquished their excess energy as visible radiation...
...fact that dissent is being suppressed anywhere means that it could happen in your hometown,” said Wesleyan junior Abe J. Walker, one of the arrested students...