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bluepigeon's review
4.0
Curses is a graphic collection of Glenn Ganges stories. Glenn is an everyday middle-American guy with a wife, Wendy. There's a ghastly story about Glenn finding a vicar back in 1800s who had similar eerie hallucinations as him. A humorous surreal search for an ogre so that Glenn and his wife could get pregnant, whereby setting off a curse (another story), in the form of an infestation of European starlings in the neighborhood. There's Glenn and Wendy exploring the Hot New Thing, only to disagree about it in the end. There's Glenn's obsession with the "Have You Seen Us?" mailings, which results in a desire to clean the carpets, only after a long, meandering look at the history of Sudan's Lost Boys. There's adoption case file contents set against tranquil nature scenery. There's a story that's sort of an ode to late night diners and the undead in small town cemeteries (of course!) Jeeper Jacobs, the longest story in the collection, is a strange mix of golf and theology, which will probably challenge most readers (this one was probably my least favorite, though I enjoyed the conversations between Glenn and Jeepers; and the art, clean lines, superb colors and shades, was great.)
Overall, the collection is fun and interesting (except maybe the long theological stuff, which had a lot of humor buried in it, but required patience). The art and paneling is fantastic. Recommended for those who like plastic bags, libraries, monkeys, gutters full of leaves in the fall, and murmurations.
Overall, the collection is fun and interesting (except maybe the long theological stuff, which had a lot of humor buried in it, but required patience). The art and paneling is fantastic. Recommended for those who like plastic bags, libraries, monkeys, gutters full of leaves in the fall, and murmurations.
xterminal's review
4.0
Kevin Huizenga, Curses (Drawn and Quarterly, 2006)
I think that, were Glenn Ganges a real person (and I believe that he is, at least partially, Kevin Huizenga himself), that he and I would get along famously. Ganges seems to take an approach to the world very similar to my own, and we have things in common I never expected to find I had in common with, shall we say, an artist's rendition. Thus, I will freely admit to bias in my review of Curses, Huizenga's first book of Glenn Ganges stories. (A second, Ganges, was released the next year by Fantagraphics.)
The Ganges stories here vary greatly in length, from a three-page quickie that appeared in Time magazine to a forty-page adaptation of a Sheridan LeFanu story (“Green Tea”, for those keeping track). Ganges and his wife are the only solid connectors between the stories, but incidents and characters crop up again and again in different stories, so the volume has more of a feel of coherence than it otherwise would. Much of it reads rather like a magical-realist memoir; there's a realistic setup (e.g., Glenn and his wife trying to have a kid...) that leads to a thoroughly absurd conclusion (...and the only way to do that is to steal a feather from an ogre who lives somewhere beneath 28th Street), or vice versa. It's a good deal of fun, and Huizenga's somewhat minimal drawing style is adaptable to just about anything (and there's some wonderful versatility to be found between these pages). Definitely worth a look. ****
I think that, were Glenn Ganges a real person (and I believe that he is, at least partially, Kevin Huizenga himself), that he and I would get along famously. Ganges seems to take an approach to the world very similar to my own, and we have things in common I never expected to find I had in common with, shall we say, an artist's rendition. Thus, I will freely admit to bias in my review of Curses, Huizenga's first book of Glenn Ganges stories. (A second, Ganges, was released the next year by Fantagraphics.)
The Ganges stories here vary greatly in length, from a three-page quickie that appeared in Time magazine to a forty-page adaptation of a Sheridan LeFanu story (“Green Tea”, for those keeping track). Ganges and his wife are the only solid connectors between the stories, but incidents and characters crop up again and again in different stories, so the volume has more of a feel of coherence than it otherwise would. Much of it reads rather like a magical-realist memoir; there's a realistic setup (e.g., Glenn and his wife trying to have a kid...) that leads to a thoroughly absurd conclusion (...and the only way to do that is to steal a feather from an ogre who lives somewhere beneath 28th Street), or vice versa. It's a good deal of fun, and Huizenga's somewhat minimal drawing style is adaptable to just about anything (and there's some wonderful versatility to be found between these pages). Definitely worth a look. ****
hypops's review
4.0
I enjoyed this much more than the most recent Glenn Ganges collection (The River at Night). Overall, the stories in this collection were much more honest and less visually fussy. The visual wankery of Huizinga’s recent comics just gets in the way of his killer storytelling chops. But not so in this earlier collection. Excellent stuff.
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