Attempted Not Known |
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Accomplished artwork and stories of all American lives;
Attempted Not Known is an intriguing little comic by Peter S.
Conrad.
The drawing is particularly fine and the material consists of well pace
short stories and little vignettes capturing workaday and mundane situations.
Conrad executes these perfectly yet beneath the surface of the expertly
inked pages you sense the bend sinister, the horrors we turn our minds away
from, uncomfortable situations. You get the sense that Conrad's scratching
away at America's underbelly with his disciplined nib.
The third instalment of Attempted Not Known mainly consists of a
short story in progress. Peter, a young man in a baseball cap (the young
artist?) who's getting by doing office work, finds himself unexpectedly
sacked. This leads him to him finding companionship in an unlikely acquaintance
named Jim, an aged beaded stoner mechanic. They smoke a bowl, fix up a machine
and the whole point of the scene comes at the height of nothing, Peter stoned
and crying with laughter at his unemployed status. It's weirdly uncomfortable
for the reader and pitch perfect- the silent inked laughter on the page
excluding the reader forever, the characters frozen in time. It's creepy
as hell and the sensation follows you through the comic.
There's American Encounters, one page stories, overheard conversations,
dealings with kooky shop assistants, that leave you feeling like a spy in
suburbia, half entertained, half uncomfortable, and Weird Real Dreams
which again are self-explanatory.
The interaction between reader and artist seems to be something that Conrad's
particularly interested in, asking on the contacts page, "Do you have an
interesting story to tell? Are you in prison?" The material here seems to
confirm the suspicion that the first story maybe isn't biography at all,
maybe it's something he's been told or sent. It's an interesting experiment
considering the theme seems to be 'American-ness'. Using dreams and real
life stories from the world at large, Conrad's chronicling both the waking
life and the unconscious of his country and its inmates. At any rate, the
artist seems to reduce himself to lurker status in this comic, and the result
is a slice of life cut with a dubiously dirty cake slice. Enjoy!
Mardou
Peter S Conrad is a particularly gifted inker and I think the rendering of the scenes using light and dark to create mood and suggest sub-surface tension, is particularly well done.
He manages to never over-draw and uses enough hatching and tones to make each panel evocative. Although nothing much is happening in the story, you can read the faces in each panel to panel, and a subtext seems to emerge from their expression. Despair, bewilderment or anguish all seem to be suggested by each line or wrinkle, frozen stare or open mouth. Conrad has a remarkable talent for this.
Other stories here include The Four Hundred Dollar Apartment (story contributed by Ben Seaman) - a group of friends check out an empty apartment going cheap and discover it to be full of fascist memorabilia from the deceased previous occupier. The friendship winds down as one of the guys gets a real kick out of the Nazi stuff and takes it to further and further extremes. The story isn't delivered with much gusto but rather seems like an overheard story in a pub, though perhaps that's the idea. Artistically, this and the rest of the material her (more Weird Real Dreams) are delivered to the usual high standard.
I don't want to unequivocally praise Attempted Not Known for as talented as Peter S Conrad is, he seems a little fixated with the dark side of life and there's no warmth or humour to provide relief. As much as admire Conrad's artistic talents, the writing and material are just too cold and negative to make me want to check out further issues.
Mardou
Well, never say never! Where as I found previous ANK's a little cold in tone, number 8 delivers all the missing elements, namely humour and warmth.
A collection of shorts by a more mature Peter S Conrad, among the stand out material here is a piece called Oh the Joys. In this story, Conrad employs a split level page layout, where he talks about the pressures of buying up and renovating a house that was more of a 'fixer-upper' than he or his girlfriend anticipated. In the top-panels, the domestic squabbles are played out, a circular soap opera of bickering and compromise, "I hate this place as much as you! But I'm trying to be a happy person!" Peter snaps to his stressed out companion. In the lower panels; the cellar of the house, there's reflection and rumination on the past as an older neighbour helps Peter fix the joists and tells him about the past. The strip ends on a hopeful note, on both levels of the story, and it's a particularly satisfying short, rendered in a more cartoony style than usual. It reminds me a little of Ivan Brunetti or Steve Weissman, but its all Conrad's own, suited to the tale and to his confident penmanship.
Circulation is my favourite piece here. Conrad writes about a workmate: Phil, who has died. We get to meet Phil, through his tastes in books, the stories that he told, stories about Phil told by relatives at his funeral, and through the story here, which Conrad is telling us about him; where this workmate and friend fit into his own world. There are many layers: Conrad uses visual echoes throughout the piece, and the elements of storytelling, stories within stories, to relate a little echo of this man: Phil. At Phil's funeral, his books are laid out for guests to take. Conrad poignantly reflects that the books could have belonged to an older version of himself, so similar are his tastes.
The story is begun and wound up in a library, a building full of stories, we are pushed to consider, and a book from the funeral, which wasn't Phil's but the library's, is returned by Conrad, put back into circulation.
Just as the story of a man's death, is told from the point of view of people living, so Phil's presence is kept in circulation, by the layers of stories, which make up a man's life.
It's a quietly powerful piece, its nuances are subtle but it rewards re-reading. The artwork is simple, taut and does its job of story telling perfectly here.
By putting more of himself into the stories, Attempted Not Known has become truly his own: a really strong issue.
Highly recommended.
Mardou
| Attempted Not Known: #3: 16 pages b+w b+w cover on orange stock. #4: 16 pages B+W, two tone colour cover. #8: 8 pages, B+W, two colour block printed cover with a 'window' hole cut in it. |
Price: #3 & 4: $1/£1 each +P+P #8: $2 Peter S Conrad, PO BOX 64522 Sunnyvale, CA 94088 USA |
Received at ZUM! HQ: reviewer's copy Review Posted: #3 & 4: 22iv04 #8: 01xii04 |
