Jo
March 1997 75p
24 pages A5 B&W
Jo goes to increasingly desperate lengths to get back with boyfriend Nick.
March 1997 75p
24 pages A5 B&W
The most unexpectedly good comic of the year continues to impress. The pacing is incredibly slow, with the previously mentioned 'characters staring at things' to build up tension, but despite (or perhaps because of) this, a lot of information is imparted, not much of it specific, but still carrying the story on. What's the story? Well, Rachel finds an old letter from her ex and goes weird, to the exasperation of her friend Jo. As glib as that sounds, you'll have to trust me - there's a lot in this and it should prove worth sticking with. The art is at that 'nearly there' stage, with good composition and storytelling but lacking a polish which should come with time.
Flushed with the success of no-one saying the first issue was rubbish, I began to wonder what level of self-indulgence I could get away with. What if I cut to a different scene nearly every page? What if I had a crane falling over for no apparent reason? Freedom at last! With this issue I experimented with zip-a-tone. Couldn't find the real stuff, so I printed some patterns out and cut and pasted. It took bleedin' forever, and it didn't reproduce very well anyway. So I phased it out and vowed to actually try to draw backgrounds from then on.
