Daniel Bristow-Bailey Anxious Comics (2019)
The first issue, hand produced in a numbered edition of one-hundred, was tiny - A6, twenty pages - and while there was a lot going on with those twenty pages, it somehow seemed too insubstantial to review, as I might ordinarily have done on the grounds of it being something I've read. I felt as though I was stood at the edge of a precipice beyond which I might find myself compulsively writing reviews of instructions read from food packaging.
Anyway, three issues down the line, Anxious Comics now reveals itself to be of such quality that I would be negligent to stay silent. This is an ongoing story of more than sixty pages, with many more to go, I would imagine, and I'm intrigued. The art is gorgeous and confident, pleasantly chunky, sketchy suggesting spontaneity rather than anything else, reminding me alternately of Peter Rigg, Tintin, and various European things. The story is difficult to describe, and it's impossible to guess at where any of it might be going - somewhere between David Lynch and Yummy Fur before Chester Brown went off the rails. Daniel Bristow-Bailey may well be just making it all up as he goes along, throwing weird shit into the mix just for chuckles - the guy whose mother turns into a moth, the nude spectre which offers financial advice, and Vin Diesel as himself - but the even pace and the masterful way it all seems to fit together lend it the tone of a reasonably literary novel, which probably shouldn't be too much of a surprise given that the author has form in that respect.
I don't know how easy it's likely to be for anyone to catch up with these, given their being limited runs, but maybe he'll reprint at some point; and in the mean time you might like to keep an eye out for this one because it's genuinely wonderful.
The first issue, hand produced in a numbered edition of one-hundred, was tiny - A6, twenty pages - and while there was a lot going on with those twenty pages, it somehow seemed too insubstantial to review, as I might ordinarily have done on the grounds of it being something I've read. I felt as though I was stood at the edge of a precipice beyond which I might find myself compulsively writing reviews of instructions read from food packaging.
Anyway, three issues down the line, Anxious Comics now reveals itself to be of such quality that I would be negligent to stay silent. This is an ongoing story of more than sixty pages, with many more to go, I would imagine, and I'm intrigued. The art is gorgeous and confident, pleasantly chunky, sketchy suggesting spontaneity rather than anything else, reminding me alternately of Peter Rigg, Tintin, and various European things. The story is difficult to describe, and it's impossible to guess at where any of it might be going - somewhere between David Lynch and Yummy Fur before Chester Brown went off the rails. Daniel Bristow-Bailey may well be just making it all up as he goes along, throwing weird shit into the mix just for chuckles - the guy whose mother turns into a moth, the nude spectre which offers financial advice, and Vin Diesel as himself - but the even pace and the masterful way it all seems to fit together lend it the tone of a reasonably literary novel, which probably shouldn't be too much of a surprise given that the author has form in that respect.
I don't know how easy it's likely to be for anyone to catch up with these, given their being limited runs, but maybe he'll reprint at some point; and in the mean time you might like to keep an eye out for this one because it's genuinely wonderful.
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