Jordan Crane

Crane does a lot of formally interesting things with comics here. I especially like the unclear manner in which the story is told, which mirrors the doubt/uncertainty the characters are experiencing. Page layouts and panel borders are used to create confusion, but in a way that also clearly tells the story. Unfortunately, I wasn't terribly interested in the characters or the story told within this book.

One aspect I did find interesting was the way Crane frames the way people interpret things. At one point, the two main characters are arguing about whether or not a book ends with the death of the main characters:

A: "It was awful and miserable...They die at the end."
B: "At the end they're alive...if they drown, that's because you are drowning them."

As someone who often finds hopeful, humanistic messages in endings that many people would call a 'downer,' I appreciate the way Crane points out how the same text can be read very differently by different people. People fill in the gaps of their knowledge with their own experiences.… (més)

A man gets stuck in a spiral of catastrophic thinking when his girlfriend fails to return in a timely manner from an errand. A novel they were reading to each other during a car trip and that the man continues on his own to distract himself from the cascade of death and rape scenarios provides a story-within-a-story about a couple taking an ocean cruise in an attempt to deal with relationship issues caused by a stillbirth.

The worry and anxiety are universally recognizable, but then I have to wonder why I'd want to wallow in it with someone who can't stop, especially when the wallow seems to be the whole point of the story. And on top of the man's graphic images of worst-case scenarios, we're fed a stream of graphic images of suicidal ideation and self-harm from another character. Is the purpose to literally burn out my schadenfreude? A fresh take on torture porn horror movies? ("The calls are coming from inside your head!")

Then to really piss me off, it ends with a stupid extended psychedelic dream sequence. Thanks for wasting my time, Jordan Crane.

FOR REFERENCE

Collects material originally published in Jordan Crane's anthology Uptight (2006) #1-5 and then reprinted and continued in Keeping Two #1-8.… (més)

The alternating storylines and jumping around through me a bit. But the more I read the more I was able to piece together this graphic novel. A young couple is going through a rough patch and their recent car ride has the tensions even higher. They are frazzled and annoyed with each other. They are both also reading and reacting to a book with "similar" struggles and both process that story a little differently. As the evening progresses they are both confronting their inner demons and evaluating how important they are to each other. Beautifully illustrated but at times a little tricky to figure out where the story is leading you.… (més)