by Joe Zabel
You couldn't ask for a more sublime pairing of talents than writer Dale Beran and artist David Hellman. Each is a daring, unconventional artist in his own right, and the head-on collision of their styles is a bracing dose of bravura webcomickry.
Their series, A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage is Irreversible, began with droll slice-of-life episodes, but quickly transformed into shopping sprees of free association and mythic transcendence, peppered with sly, ironic commentary.
Beran has a flare for juxtaposing the otherworldly with the mundane: a man from the future returns to the past to correct his mistakes, but ends up playing video games instead; a trip to heaven turns into a television-watching marathon; a character resorts to a candy binge to ward off "the anti-entropy of recollection."
Hellman's graphic art seems ideally suited to depict Beran's reality-bending plots. His skillful draftsmanship keeps one foot firmly planted in contemporary reality, while his simple and loose rendering style and fluorescent color schemes effortlessly usher us away from this reality into a higher realm. He's game for the most challenging assignments-- depicting a match of "cloud ball" in flying cars above a cityscape; or interpreting the descriptive phrase, "like reflections in a puddle, though disturbed, the images inevitably reform!"
An early high point of their collaboration was "No, I'm Sorry," in which Dale, in a jealous rage, drenches himself with gasoline and sets himself aflame, shouting "Ha Ha, Fuck you world." He then discovers that he's entered a dimension solely accessible through self-immolation, where the only things that exist are two oranges by an open window. Eating one of the oranges, he finds it incredibly juicy. The piece successfully juxtaposes absurd humor (at Dale's funeral, mourners are obliged to view the porn from his computer) with speculation about life after death-- what would it be like to spend eternity in a world where nothing existed but a window and a bowl of fruit? And if you ate one of the fruits, you'd be decreasing your universe by half!
"No, I'm Sorry" is an especially interesting departure for Hellman's art. As he explains, "This issue has no 'line art.' There are lines, but they've been forced to mingle and commune with the other pictorial elements. I took away their record collection and made them come downstairs to the party." Indeed, the absence of contour lines forces the artist to depict the figures with contrasts of color, and the results are bright and lively. Also notable is the scene where the word "GASOLINE" tumbles down the middle of the page as Dale pours the volatile fluid over himself. It communicates the idea with great immediacy and urgency, and the thick black letters have a lethal quality to them.
"Will We Ever Arrive" is a variation on the infinite loop plot, where the same thing happens repeatedly with variations. Dale is knocked unconscious by a falling box at work. Awakening at home, he resolves to go back to school; but in the school library a textbook falls off the shelf and knocks him out again. It turns out the school incident was a dream, but he again returns to school and the book falls on him again. This time reality takes a more radical shift, and he finds himself in an interracial marriage. Another book landing on his head gives him a concussion, accompanied by amnesia about the color of his daughter's eyes.
Hellman again shows great verve in depicting a paradoxical situation, this time emphasizing the motif of the falling book, which projects outwards from the picture plane; in fact, the falling books in succeeding incidents come together to form a pattern, as if it is one book falling from the top of the page to the bottom. By intermingling the action of the individual scenes with this higher level of motion, he creates a kind of meta-reality where a single action, the falling of a book, intersects with the character at widely-separated intervals in the story. And in the disquieting epilog of the story, an explosion of trees with blood-red leaves serves as an analogy to the painful head-injury the character has suffered.
"Getting Over Women" is one of the quietest and most enjoyable episodes of the series. It's relatively linear and doesn't employ any startling technical acrobatics. But it settles down comfortably into an exercise in good craftsmanship. It relates the tale of a kindly Yeti who rescues David from the arctic night, carries him home to nurture him back to health and teach him yeti secrets. After David recovers, the yeti accompanies him back to New York, where they enjoy a strange oriental dish, and speculate about David's former lover.
The yeti is Beran's most three-dimensional character, an embodiment of myth who is revealed to be a rescuer, a dispenser of wisdom, an urbane connoisseur, and ultimately someone who is as disconcerted by the changing world as the rest of us.
Hellman's art retains its loose simplicity, but he skillfully marshals it to portray the most realistic sequences of the series. The panels take on a cinematic quality, particularly the wordless prologue where the yeti emerges from the snowstorm to carry the unconscious David away. And the color scheme this time is particularly gorgeous, contrasting the wintry arctic first part with the warm honey-hued sequence in the restaurant. Hellman seems to be having fun particularly with the depictions of the massive white-furred yeti, who dresses in hat, coat, and glasses for his city visit.
The website is elegantly designed, with linking icons employing Hellman's art. As an added bonus, each episode is accompanied by commentary by Beran and Hellman. Beran's ironic writing doesn't go down as well in longer doses; and his remarks have been repetitiously obsessed with discussing the website and its growing audience. Surprisingly it is the artist, Hellman, who is the more engaging commentator. For one thing, he gives us glimpses into the creative process; in one post he links to several WIP versions of the latest strip. And his remarks about his own life are engaging and accessible. He relates a particularly striking anecdote in one of his posts, about going to a house as a door-to-door salesman and discovering a strange, obsessive note posted on the door.
The series is relatively new, but with weekly episodes since mid-July, it's achieved a depth and sophistication that other series arrive at only after years of effort. We look forward to charting the upward path of these exciting creators.
