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The Trouble With Igor
Posted 18 Nov 2006
Writer: Christopher P. Reilly
Artist: Gus Fink
Publisher: Slave Labor Graphics
4.00 out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by J. W. DeBolt Jr.
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A hunchback — Igor, we must presume — is cooking soup in a cauldron, but when he pulls the ladle out, the only thing in it is a penny loafer. But lo and behold, there is a penny in it! So Igor takes the penny to a wishing well, pops the penny into his mouth and dives in. Thus begins a series of events that take bizarre and unexpected turns in the life of Igor.
This is a delightful existential horror story told with no narration or dialog, and the absence of dialog works very well in helping maintain an alienated feeling. We see Igor receive a mysterious possessed puppet of Death and then commence trying to earn a living putting on puppet shows. But he doesn’t exactly slay them, as audiences are hard to come by. He is lucky to pick up a sidekick after one show. When Igor later goes into a dance bar, his friend enters a cave where the mummy, wolfman and gillman are disguised as a wizard and two lamps. The sidekick attempts a SHAZAM-like transformation and becomes Boomer the Boy Bomb. Other characters encountered on this strange journey include the Hokey Pokey Girls, the Headless Chicken Gang, and the Sea Monks.
The art is simple, but dark and, perhaps, Tim Burton-ish. There are many visual puns or references that add to the dark humor of this creepy story. The fun is not knowing where the story — or even the golf ball hit off the moon — is going.
I won’t make the obvious comparison to A Nightmare Before Christmas, because, except for the odd world of monsters and the undead, and maybe the drawing style, they are totally different. First, the plot and meaning are not immediately apparent, and being without words, one can pretty much imprint one’s own expectations onto the story. The same goes with the moral or absence of a moral — whichever you determine after reading it. The events seem rather like a stream of consciousness or a nightmare, where not everything makes sense to the conscious mind, but the main character doesn’t question the events as they happen — he just adapts and reacts. I wasn’t sure where the story was going, but I enjoyed getting there. Mr. Reilly has worked on Punch & Judy, also published by SLG, and Mr. Fink has sold his artwork for as much as $4,000 for one piece. I look forward to more work by Messrs. Reilly and Fink.
—CCdC—
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