by Joe Zabel
Boy Meets Girl
It's important to look below the surface of things, and William G.'s
modest series is a case in point.
The title, 'It's About Girls,'
sounds like yet another generic romantic comedy series, and there's
nothing immediately obvious in the skillful, vaguely manga-esque art
style to contradict that.
But look a little further, and it soon becomes evident that the
artist is not hewing to a predictable template. What looks at first
like a daily comic strip is actually an infinite canvas stretching
sideways, encompassing a complete episode of the story. In another unusual move, the artist inserts a pause in the action, a cinematic freeze-
frame to isolate, identify and comment on a character--
'Icon DeVeau (not moving on.)' The greater length and the superior
dynamic of side-scrolling makes it easy to pick up on William G.'s
subtle, intelligent storytelling.
This is not a typical story of boy meets girl. When the two
principles, Icon and Regina, 'meet cute,' she's actually naked from the
waist down, having been thrown out of her boyfriend's apartment after
an angry break-up. And she's in no mood to make a new acquaintance!
Their second meeting has a fascinating dynamic. After a drunken
party, Regina discovers that she's invited a stranger to sleep over,
and now she's having trouble shaking this unwanted friend, whose name (Jennifer) she is unable to remember.
Then, on
the street, the two run into Icon and his brother Marc, and it turns
out Jennifer is a childhood acquaintance of theirs.
Furthermore, we learn that Jennifer was Icon's childhood nemesis,
always beating him up and calling him a 'Gaylord.'
So Regina, Jennifer, Marc and Icon stop in a pub for drinks, even though both Icon and Regina fervently want to
be elsewhere. But instead of building into some kind of over-the-top
showdown, the scene resolves itself in a subtle exchange
between them that brings Icon and Regina closer together.
The nervous dynamic of wandering conversations, longing glances and
stray thoughts is the real meat of this tale of young love. Our
interest is focused not on broad plot arcs, but on the moment-to-
moment progress of emotional lives.
Artist Meets Image
'It's About Girls' is the most accomplished work on G.'s website,
Delineated LIfe, but it's stylistic roots can be seen in his fascinating earlier work.
The other pieces are short, playful and uneven in
quality. One series titled 'clothesline' always climaxes with one
character giving the other a 'clothesline.' Another series is told
in verse about a cynical grape-head in a storybook universe. A set of
SF pieces include one of G.'s best, about a robot being mistreated by
humans.
The largest and most vigorous group of shorts, designated 'R3', has a
unifying concept-- a series of pictures are repeated with little or
no variation, the static sequence transformed by dialog into a
story. A hit and miss affair, this series demonstrates G.'s
questing, experimental temperament as he labors within formal
restrictions to create coherent works.
One of the best of these
is 'Johnny Cash.' "I drew a sketch of Johnny Cash," it
begins. "Cash Rocks. So let's just sit here and look at him for a
while." Two silent panels follow, repeating the Cash sketch. This
not only succeeds in conveying G.'s admiration for the singer, it
also raises questions about the meaning of sequential art. Are these
six identical, adjacent sketches of Cash, or is it one sketch of Cash
moving forward in time?
This groundwork in formal play has prepared G. well for 'It's About
Girls.' The panels progress in an engaging dance of shapes and
contrasts. G. exercises authoritative command of the language of
comics, as in the panel where Marc and Jennifer embrace in
recognition, fat golden exclamation marks forming a halo around them.
In a scene where Icon telephones his father, the fringe of a coat in
the foreground rises up in the frame, blocking his face and
suggesting the turbulence of their relationship ( his father's dialog
is encased in square boxes, contrasting with his own round word-
balloons.) A scene of Icon standing before a wall phone, deciding
whether to call a girl, comes to an elegant and economic close with a
simple shot of the phone cord, stretched out horizontally.
G. makes sly references to the symbolic framework, as in the
introduction to the sixth episode, "The spring came, the snow melted, it
was all very metaphorical." When Icon spots Regina on campus, he
comments on the question marks floating over her head. Indeed, his
own first name is a reference to Understanding Comics.
G. has maintained a casual approach to his work, like someone simply
trying to amuse themselves. The lack of pretension and ambition is
refreshing-- and G. possesses enough skill that the results rarely
look slipshod. 'It's About Girls' is developing at a leisurely pace--
too leisurely for web surfers expecting a regular dose of diversion. But G. is building a body of work that promises to
have enduring appeal.
