Strangehaven: Arcadia
August 30th, 2002by Gary Spencer Millidge
ISBN: 0946790043
This book brings together the first six issues of the Strangehaven comic, but this is the first time I have read it.
The story seems to center on a just-divorced man who gets lost on holiday and winds up in the weird little town of the title. There is a lot going on here, not all of which I understand: you can’t seem leave the town; there is a hood-wearing secret society; a cat that shows up unexepectedly; a man who used to be a Amazonion indian shaman; a guy who says he’s an alien; the is it a romance or not between the lost guy and young townie girl; and something going on with a naked chick and some clown fish. I’m not terribly familiar with the conventions of serial comics, but this seems to be introducing a hell of a lot in six chapters. Thing is, I am interested to see how it will play out, and how some (most, I hope) of these elements will pull together. Which is probably the point.
The visuals in this book can be amazing. The pages are structured on nine panels to a page, but he plays with that quite a bit. The main style tends toward realistic drawing, but he puts in elements of painting, photography, and what looks to be digital manipulation. The way boxes would break down and break out into sketches/paintings during the
Amazon stories was particularly effective. I did wonder if any of the orginal run was printed in color, though. Most of the scenes with their black, white, and gray don’t look like they are lacking anything; it is just that I can’t imagine someone doing some of those paintings in just black, white, and gray.
I can see how this comic series could inspire fans to get a bit obsessive about what is happening/will happen next, like The X-files did before it started to suck. I know I’ll read this through again, and will probably check out the next collection, Strangehaven: Brotherhood.
