Grant Thomas Comics reviewed by Chris Auman
Dodo Comics #1 & 2
Grant Thomas is a cartoonist and art teacher living in Champaign, Illinois, and DoDo Comics is his latest comics series.
Rather than simply draw autobiographical strips about life’s everyday occurrences, Grant experiments with the comics form. Using an idea expounded upon by Neil Cohen at Comixpedia.com, Grant treats his strips as visual poetry.
By establishing a rhythm through the repetition of certain types of panels (polymorphic, amorphic, macro, and micro refiner) at certain points, Grant seeks to create a poetic continuity while challenging his skills as an artist and storyteller.
“Where Do Ideas Come From?” (they come from Idea Gnomes btw) is one such attempt where Grant employs this technique. In other strips, Grant incorporates lyrics from Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna” in his own version, “Visions of Gehenna”; he offers his own interpretation of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel as well as adaptations of pages found in the magna Lone Wolf and Cub and Akira.
Issue number 2 of Grant Thomas’s Dodo Comics continues in the vein of its predecessor (that’d be Dodo Comic #1, if you’ve been keeping track).
There are four strips in #2. The first is an homage to Sergio Leone in which Grant duplicates the Spaghetti Western director’s close-up/long-shot film-making style in comic panel form.
There’s an art school-inspired strip, “Drawing from Life,” concerning the sketching of live nudes.
Grant attempts a comics pantoum with “Visions of Johanna’s Concert,” in which certain panels repeat at certain points, much like the poetic form. Lastly is, “Why Have You Shut Your Eyes,” the second installment of stories Grant took from the sayings of the desert fathers and mothers/ [www.grantthomasonline.com]
Dodo Comics #3
Seeing as how there is not a single written word in this new issue of Grant Thomas’ Dodo Comics, I am at a loss as to what to say about it. I feel like a real dodo.
(Why are dodos considered dumb? Is it because they got themselves extinct? That was hardly their fault, I would think).
At any rate, this issue is titled “Abstract Comics” and it features a series of six comics in the form of poetry. How does that work exactly? Well, I expected certain panels to repeat and follow the comic equivalent of an a-b-a-b rhyme scheme, but I detect no such pattern.
The fact that these visual sonnets do not follow the same structure as a written poem makes them no less poetic. The black and white shades and lines in the panels follow the flow dictated by Grant in a free form, stream of consciousness style, like waves or freed leaves or blowing feathers. It’s a simple approach, utilizing a simple technique to create a simple visual style.
My Life in Records
My Life in Records is a comic book about Grant’s life in records. Records, as in the vinyl variety. The book is proportionate to a 45 record, but smaller, and features an A side and a B side. Side A starts with “Prologue,” in which Grant waxes nostalgic on his formative years listening to, and playing music. “Side by Side” is a story, perhaps autobiographical, about three young brothers and their early love of drawing and listening to records, Bert and Ernie in particular. Side B features two more short tales on the effects music had on Grant as a kid. “Little Wooden Head” concerns Grant’s Pinocchio worship and “Bad Mountain Record” recounts the time Grant played one of his parents’ good records on a crappy Fisher-Price turntable. You can almost hear that needle scratch.
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