by Bob Stevenson
Dozens of journal comics dot the net. Most lead somewhere on a daily
basis but nowhere in the longer term. The somewhere is often a silly
punch line. Though there are quite a few humorous punch lines in The
Journal at Keaner.net, it is over the longer-term that Kean
Soo's world becomes provocative and compelling and for more than one
reason.
Several threads run through Keaner's Journal and hold it together,
albeit awkwardly. These include abandonment, depression, and, sadly, a
recurring struggle with alcohol. Thankfully, the Journal is also filled
with a passionate love for music, nature and people. The sudden and
extreme oscillation between these two sets of themes is the driving force
behind the strip. It is what makes the Journal stand out amongst the many
journal comics on the internet. The see-saw between dysfunction and
elation is at its most tragic when Kean tackles the subject of alcohol.
The narrator's struggles with alcohol are surprisingly honest in the
early part of the Journal, making readers wonder if an attempt to deal
with alcohol could have inspired this on-line diary. Kean first hints at
some persistent problem near the end of the Journal's first month
thinking, "A month ago, I would've drunken myself into a stupor." At the end
of the same strip, Kean's wrinkled brow and clenched fist are
surrounded by "No's". In the fore-ground stands a bottle of Tequila, beneath the
panel the words, "I'm so proud of myself, I could fucking throw up," a
tragic bit of irony. It was supposed to be a victory and it was. But it
was a short-lived one. Three weeks later, the same bottle reappears,
this time half empty, its yellows and oranges having taken over and
filled Kean's body. The same wrinkled brow is now angry at his weakness.
Another bottle, empty, lies at his side.
A week later, the bottle returns again, actually becoming the comic
panel. This time, Kean is small and upside down and drowning in a sealed
bottle. The colors and the liquid are the yellows and oranges of hard
liquor. In black words on white space, he calls out for help, "This has
got to stop soon. I just wish I knew how." At the end of February, 2003,
his struggle continues. In monochrome blue with black outlines, Kean
wakes up crying, and although it there must have been daylight, the
strip stays dark all day, ending with the punchline, "but I'm barely in the
mood to draw, let alone try to write something funny," as he reaches
for a small bottle of liquor.
Until the end of May, the struggle falls
silent, but then, in one of only a few longer and more realistically
rendered strips, Liquid Courage, the narrator stares down a half-full glass
of beer. A disclaimer before the strip gives a light-hearted warning
against drinking, seemingly in sarcastic contradiction to the strip's
much more serious message. Afterwards, hints of victory over alcohol pop
up in the Journal from time to time. On Canada Day, below an annually
inebriated Kean, he writes, "But this year...I stayed home and sober."
And on the twelfth of July, a spoon-eyed Kean powerfully holds up a
drunken friend, and mentions almost proudly, "After many rounds of tequila,
we decided to call it a night, some of us in considerably worse shape
than others." The victories lead back into the cycle of problems though.
After just five days of allowing the reader to hope, a crimson Kean
smashes a red bottle full of red liquid at the panel's edge, screaming,
"FUCK YOU!" He then collapses, whimpering, "Just...fuck you." Finally,
the bottles and the alcohol and the internal struggle disappear almost
entirely. Regardless of the outcome, it took a brave person to fight this
battle so publicly, over so many months.
Journal comics do not often have the kind of narrative continuity Kean
achieves. Though their contents, by definition, are personal, journal
comics do not usually embrace the kinds of real, personal struggles with
alcohol, depression or relationships Kean's Journal does. Even more
compelling, he deals with these issues not just day-to-day but over long
periods of time and with a great deal of consideration. By convention,
emotions in a journal strip are most often fleeting, four panels until
tomorrow's unrelated strip, same characters, different funny occurrence.
This is probably because web-comic writers/artists often use journals
as a training ground for bigger projects. This one has a much bigger
mission. Kean Soo uses the strip as a way to face some very real and
personal issues. In the process, he defies many of the journal comic's
traditional stereotypes, both the emotional and the visual.
Unlike many journal comics, Kean Soo claims no formal training in art,
but at times he wields the artist's tools like a pro. Take color for
example. It is not a daily part of the Journal until near the end of its
first month, but within two days of his introduction of color he uses
blues and reds deftly to capture the mood of a Holly McNarland concert.
Even more powerfully, the Journal falls to near monochrome every time
the narrator is fighting some internal battle, typically yellows, reds
or oranges in struggles with alcohol and blues or reds when dealing with
depression or loss.
In late March, 2003, a caged heart is surrounded by
the red and black body of Kean. As his palette gets smaller, Kean's
strips become even more personal. A kind of rhythm is set by these
single-color, more introspective works. It is a life rhythm with a day or two
of the most personal kind of self-examination followed by a week of
life's silly moments. The emotions he's working with are too powerful to
deal with all at once. For almost a week after drawing his heart in a
cage, the strip relies on fairly predictable fourth-panel punch lines
until he needs to deal, more subtly this time, with another issue,
isolation. Of course, none of this is planned, making the rhythm even more
interesting.
Kean Soo's artistic experiments do not end with color. In the Journal's
first few days, he's already playing with photography and what appear
to be vector graphics. Swatches of color form an impressionistic can of
soda in the strip's second week. Later experiments employ the style for
some of the more emotional strips, like Liquid Courage. The month of
November, 2003 is full of visual experiments, most powerfully on the
tenth. Color, space, and the juxtaposition of text and image are all put to
work in relating a horrifyingly symbolic dream in which the narrator
tears his own body apart only to find emptiness. Blood spills down the
page as the author realizes it is a hole he tears at and finally wakes
up. There are several of these existential moments sprinkled throughout
the work. For an artist with no formal training, he confronts several of
the artist's dilemmas with success. Early in January, 2004, in a six
panel strip entitled Drawn Out, as the artistic process is deconstructed
with words, the layers of the panel peel away, first losing color, then
ink and finally pencil. Kean Soo's artistic experiments nestle
comfortably between and within plenty of intense content.
Another of the more weighty issues Soo tackles is depression. Once
again he approaches it with an artistic edge. His struggle with depression
is heart-wrenching. At times, he confronts it through near
monochromatic solitude, four panels of pure frustration and desperation, but on at
least two occasions, he personifies it in the form of the crudely drawn
and colored character called Mr. Depression. The Mr. Depression strip
formula goes something like this: Kean is young and happy. Kean meets
the necktie-wearing, triangle-headed Mr. Depression and greets him with a
happy quip. Mr. Depression beats up Kean. At first read, it seems like
a fairly immature illustration of depression and alone it would be. But
nestled in between days of concrete examples of life's little
curve-balls, the strips strike the reader hard. Mr. Depression is every specific
difficulty Kean faces, unemployment, loss, alcohol, loneliness, and yet
at the same time it is none of them because a day or two after being
kicked or punched, our hero is shopping for a new jacket or out with Kate
staring at a rainbow.
Not enough space has been devoted in this review to the happiest
moments in the Journal. The strip is filled with them, but they are best
experienced first-hand for they are written and drawn with the same honesty
and intensity as Kean's struggles. From hanging out with friends, to
playing volleyball, to sliding on ice, to meeting new people, to enjoying
a rock concert, Kean manages to fill most pages with the very best of
life, always with bright colors and humor and lively brushwork. More and
more often as the Journal moves forward, those high points and even
several of the low ones involve music.
Kean Soo's blend of music and comics is his most interesting work. It
may also be his most controversial. In May of 2003, Kean Soo started a
thread at talkaboutcomics.com titled "Music and web comics." He asked
for input on a comic experiment involving music. The strip combines a
long, vertical scrolling web comic with the song, "Devil in the Kitchen"
by Ashley Macisaac. Since its beginning, Kean Soo's Journal has included
several strips that employ music by Eliot Smith, The Wrens, Kurt
Kobain, what sounds like Sinead O'Conner and several other unattributed songs.
He received very few public responses to his call for comments on
"Devil in the Kitchen" and those he did receive were mostly of the "I like
it" or the "I can't get the song to play" variety. "Devil in the
Kitchen" speeds the reader recklessly down through Kean's hundred odd tiny
pictures. The tiny pictures force readers to let them wash over their
eyes, as the song washes over the listeners' ears.
The strip and those that
followed deserve much more critical analysis, but currently there is a
huge problem with copyright infringement in the way the songs are being
employed. While it is not the purpose of the Webcomics Examiner to
explore the legality of the issue, it would be irresponsible not to mention
the problem. If issues of legality could be solved through some kind of
micro-payment agreement or licensing deal with each artist in question,
the Journal offers a hint at the rewards of a marriage between comics
and music.
The Journal first explored music in a more traditional way. Half way
through January, 2003, Kean attends a Holly McNarland concert. Though no
song titles are mentioned, at least four songs from her album "Stuff"
play nicely with the strip, including, "Numb, U.F.O.", "Twisty Mirror",
or "I Won't Stay". Kean Soo has some great taste in music and a knack
for matching it with words and pictures from his own life. It is obvious
music is extremely important to Kean Soo and it was only a matter of
time before the interest bled through to his strips. At the end of
January, he talks about "Joy Division" and "New Order." On the first of
February, a music staff and notes at the top of one panel denote a jazz
version of "Hakuna Matata." Five days later, a joyous Kean bursts into the
panel with his latest CD. The strip ends with a drooling Kean
experiencing the music.
Interestingly, the next day's strip ends with a nod to
Bill Waterson who has been embroiled for years in copyright infringement
and licensing battles. Later, Kean is careful to credit Scott McCloud
and others for drawings of their characters with a note, "Characters are
copyright their respective owners, please don't sue me," just a month
earlier, the Journal had begun to include unlicensed MP3 tracks. On
March 10, the Journal includes an un-attributed MP3. The beautiful piano
and voice (is it Sinead O'Conner's?) mesh perfectly with one panel of a
thoughtful Kean.
The first multi-panel experiment using an MP3, "Devil
in the Kitchen," debuted less than one month later on April 2. July 22
carries another one-panel/MP3, untitled and un-attributed. Again,
though, it is a beautiful song juxtaposed with a beautiful piece of art. The
Journal tackles music again in October, in a beautiful little tribute
to Elliot Smith. A light-blue wave wanders across the page topped with
song lyrics. Kean extends this experiment, more successfully with
another Elliot Smith song, "Bottle up and Explode" on January 10, 2004.
Throughout the strip, Kean lines up lyrics with pictures, incorporating some
interesting visual effects along the way including a blurred car
speeding away and an elevator whose decent happens to follow the reader's
scroll. While his experiments have just scratched the surface of the
marriage between music and comics, there are few, if any, cartoonists
scratching deeper. In its every use, music adds to the power of Kean Soo's
Journal.
Every panel of the Journal makes the reader hope a little bit more that
things will work out for
Kean, that he will get a job, that it will be one he can enjoy, that he
someday turns the tables on Mr. Depression, that a relationship will
work out, and that alcohol never gets its claws into him too deeply. By
the time they are finished, novels, comics and movies usually resolve
these kinds of issues or at least clearly let the reader/viewer know
which ones will not be resolved. Each has a final page, chapter or scene.
Perhaps this is the most exciting thing about Kean Soo's work. There is
still hope that another strip will appear with all of the good news he
deserves.
Instead, as Kean Soo's work has become more successful, the
journal's publication has become less frequent. Between April 16 and
July 6, 2004 only two journal strips appear, both link to other projects
by the author. He has left readers of his journal with questions that
can only be answered by his very life, and while readers should be
grateful for being let into some of the deep parts of his soul for a while,
they dare not hope for an invitation to wander or prod for long.
