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A review by carduelia_carduelis
The Book of Leviathan by Peter Blegvad
3.0
Blegvad titled the character Leviathan because of the juxtaposition of bringing home a baby. Such a tiny helpless creature that's survival becomes the focus of its parents entire world: the leviathan in the cot. Similarly the strip confronts the word through Levi's eyes, and attempts to deal with a leviathan of topics and puns. Sometimes this works.
I borrowed this from a friend because it looked just my thing with its interesting art and weird concepts (weird is, in general, right up my alley). It's a collection of strips that ran in the Independent on Sunday (an English 'broadsheet') in the early 90's, shortly after the paper was founded. In the early 90's I was much too young to be reading the paper and I don't recall seeing it around the house so this book is entirely new material for me.
It's.. ok. The foreword is absolutely glowing, praising Blegvad's mix of humour and metaphysics but I think I didn't get some of the references and the ones that I did get didn't particularly impress me. There's a scene in which Hegel, 'father of dialectics', breaks down what the antithesis of Levi's stuffed bunny toy is. And, ok, it's some what absurd to see his ideas applied to a kid's toy but is that it? Is that the joke? I'm not convinced it's all that funny.
Some of the panels on word-play, such as the one below, did make me chuckle.
But it's a 'heh' rather than a full-out laugh. The strips I think worked the best were the ones that showed some whimsy and didn't take themselves too seriously.
I didn't dislike this but didn't love it either. I actually prefer Blegvad's original concept with the Stewey-style baby and his mean older sister. The weird stuff was nice but lacked a coherent theme tying everything together.
Art was simple and varied. Short-format comics meant that Blegvad tried to make use of interesting drawing styles and paneling, which is always appreciated.
Overall it's fine, not the best, not the worst.
--------------------
Below I include some of my favourite strips so you can get an idea of the variation in his style and tone.
Word play
Fill in the blanks?
Ghost ship
Tunnel vision (cringe)
I borrowed this from a friend because it looked just my thing with its interesting art and weird concepts (weird is, in general, right up my alley). It's a collection of strips that ran in the Independent on Sunday (an English 'broadsheet') in the early 90's, shortly after the paper was founded. In the early 90's I was much too young to be reading the paper and I don't recall seeing it around the house so this book is entirely new material for me.
It's.. ok. The foreword is absolutely glowing, praising Blegvad's mix of humour and metaphysics but I think I didn't get some of the references and the ones that I did get didn't particularly impress me. There's a scene in which Hegel, 'father of dialectics', breaks down what the antithesis of Levi's stuffed bunny toy is. And, ok, it's some what absurd to see his ideas applied to a kid's toy but is that it? Is that the joke? I'm not convinced it's all that funny.
Some of the panels on word-play, such as the one below, did make me chuckle.
But it's a 'heh' rather than a full-out laugh. The strips I think worked the best were the ones that showed some whimsy and didn't take themselves too seriously.
I didn't dislike this but didn't love it either. I actually prefer Blegvad's original concept with the Stewey-style baby and his mean older sister. The weird stuff was nice but lacked a coherent theme tying everything together.
Art was simple and varied. Short-format comics meant that Blegvad tried to make use of interesting drawing styles and paneling, which is always appreciated.
Overall it's fine, not the best, not the worst.
--------------------
Below I include some of my favourite strips so you can get an idea of the variation in his style and tone.
Word play
Fill in the blanks?
Ghost ship
Tunnel vision (cringe)