"Was That Normal " by Alex Potts , Published by Avery Hill Publishing 208 pages Full Colour £14.99
We're at a point in the world where the very definition of "Normal " probably went through the looking glass, out the other side and grabbed the nearest black hole to another dimension it could find, probably unable to deal with the uber-insanity of the current zeitgeist. We'd all probably like to return to some cosy recognition of what we mean by normal in these turbulent times.Those things we think keep us from going mad, the dull and everyday, the mundane and ordinary, you know, the bearable lunacy, the acceptable day to day madness we attempt to endure and live with.
Alex Potts' work over the years I've known it ( since Lost Shoe Comics and his wonderful one-pagers in the sadly-defunct The Comix Reader), has been a constant engagement with the mundanities of our everyday struggles to just get on with the day. I have to admit to being a huge admirer of his work, particularly his small raft of zines over the years of seemingly much-ado-about-nothing comic mundanity mixed with the occasional shift into surreal and sometimes off-kilter eeriness ( see his previous Avery Hill title "It's Cold In the River At Night" to see what I mean).In this new book, Alex continues his search for meaning in a life of particular non-eventness through the character of Phillip, a middle-aged everyman seemingly unsure of just how he should be occupying his time when not working at home on a laptop, trying to get to the toilet in his house without being seen by his landlady Caroline, and wondering if he is capable of finding those things in life we're all meant to find-a meaningful relationship, decent friends, your place in the world, and people who think you matter. What exactly is Normal ?
I'm not going to mention that much about what plot there is, because I'd rather you go buy the book and read it yourselves. Also it doesn't have "plot" really. What it does have is a beautifully subtle, nuanced, funny and quietly moving examination of one person's search for meaning in an everyday, ordinary existence. If it's about anything, it's about needing to feel that your time being alive is being occupied in a way that suggests you're not wasting it, but always feeling like you might be. It's also about something that may be timeless or maybe very much of our time; that sense of feeling disconnected, a bit lost and alone and unloved, and knowing deep down those are the very things that give meaning to life, those things greater than you that make you more than you are, and connect you to the world. Phillip is full of self-doubt, socially awkward, feeling out of step and out of place with the world he finds himself in. His thoughts are fleeting and flitty, he finds himself mentally distracted; there are some funny sequences where he pictures himself in various confrontations with animals in a kind of cell or computer game simulation, which are a neat visual contrast to the otherwise everyday movement of the character within the story. There's an echo to the surreal daydream flights of fancy in the likes of "Billy Liar "and "the Strange World of Gurney Slade" I find in these sequences, as well as a clever visual motif in shifting the narrative into another physical/mental space that breaks up the otherwise seemingly daily landscape being played out, as well as acting as a distraction for Philip from the difficulty of engaging with the real world,and his own doubt and awkwardness.
What I want to concentrate on is what makes Alex's work always worth engaging with. It's a very simple yet sophisticated element I feel is lacking in a lot of work out there; certainly in a lot of graphic novels I look at (albeit very fleetingly). It's called brilliant comic-strip drawing. It's something I grew up noticing in an awful lot of comics that inspired and impressed me when younger. I see less of it these days. I think Alex is an old-school comic-artist in his artistic sensibility. What do I mean by that ? I mean someone who knows how to draw comics, comic book pages and stories. Who understands that in order to make a story on the page work, to be convincing, you have to create a world the reader can inhabit, where all the visual components are there and working to the enhancement of the narrative. To do this involves good drawing. Not the flaky half-assed barely-there scribbled nonsense perpetuated by a number of illustrious bandwagon-jumping chancers, but properly crafted pages and panels and pictures. Filled with details that illuminate narrative, set mood and place and character.
This is a book one can open on any page and look at and take delight in the joy of the drawing alone. I was fortunate to see pages of it prior to Alex colouring it and I thought it looked wonderful. I didn't think it needed the colour, because everything on the pages just worked without it. The colour though adds another layer of detail; thoughtful in it's subtle tones and hues, balanced and expressionistic in it's monochromatic approach. Notice how the colour is used in relation to specific narrative locations-Philip's flat is mostly shades of low greens,earthy grounded tones; the bar Quagmires is soaked in hot reds and warm oranges, a place of heightened social activity and engagement ;outside locations are bathed in warm sky blues or countryside subtle yellows. The interior monologue "animal fight simulations" are a contest between blues, yellows and reddish-browns ramped up to full bleed exaggeration as Philip's imagination as well as his heightened emotions take over.
As to these pages and their drawing, well, again, open any page at random you'll find something just beautifully rendered and observed, whether it's Philips flat and all the neat details ( the shape of the little clock on the mantelpiece,the rolled up corner of the rug ) Philip's initial entrance and movement through the bar, and the crowd scenes at the music gig ( there's a wonderful two panel shift of a background character's head between panels trying to look past/round the taller Phillip which is utterly incidental yet brilliant in it's observed realism ).the terraces of houses and street scenes Phillip walks past, the sparsity of a seaside town and it's promenade in daylight. There's the monolithic tower, at the heart of the town, neglected and in a state of disrepair. Broken, damaged, unmoving, just barely existing. Lacking care. A sequence of panels of a Connect 4 game being played out. You can tell that Alex is also an animator; it's there in the expressiveness of capturing the nuance and subtlety of character in their face or body language. Look at Philip caught pacing and dancing about his flat talking to himself, Caroline's mostly positive demeanor,all wide-eyed and big smiles ( maybe it's the Gong Baths !), Lee's blocky head and tautness, Gina's evasiveness and later uncertainty in grief. There's so many little things in the drawing in this book I haven't the space to detail them. Alongside the drawing is the pacing of panels, sequences, pages. Alex understands how to move and shift time within and across the narrative through the use and choice of the picture on the page, not just what's in each picture, but where they sit, what scale and size the respective narrative elements need to be, what needs to move from here to there or back again, what needs to be shown and what doesn't to evoke mood and feeling.There's some intelligent thinking about narrative and page composition going on in Alex's choices of how to think about the page as a singular entity in it's own right and on it's own terms, and how it connects to the next page or builds in narrative sequence, rhythm and pacing.It's a complete understanding of how you "do" comics. There are pages whose sequential movement work so perfectly in expressing emotional weight through stillness here, it lends real heart and emotion to the story. You don't get it through workshops or lectures. You get it by sitting and looking and drawing. Constantly.
Within all of this, there's the one outstanding aspect of Alex's genius, a particular talent that the very best comic artists have in spades. The ability to encapsulate an entire interior world and feeling in just one panel. To describe an emotional weight in a single picture. It's a brilliant thing when you see and feel it. There is a panel on the very last but one page of Philip sat alone in a cafe, still, hand frozen on the mug, staring into space that may just sum up this entire book. ( it's on a preface page at the start of the book, which kinda ruins the impact but I can't say I blame Avery-they understood it's subtle genius ) I haven't even mentioned that whole last 9 page sequence that comes before and is part of it- a masterclass in a subtle, nuanced, gentle ending of a story that still holds an emotional heft.
If I have one minor yet major quibble, it's the cover. The cover doesn't do justice to the brilliance of the interior artwork, which is a shame. It's simply a clip of a detail from a panel. To be fair to Avery Hill, most mainstream publishers haven't a clue about decent book cover design anymore either ( mostly cause nobody is willing to pay good artists for 'em, the bastards !). I'm sure the minimalist school will like it, but they can go do one. Some of us still value wonderful art and wonderful artists. After all, without them, you wouldn't have any wonderful books like this one. Alex Potts is one of those artists. I hope he gets recognised as one of our most enjoyable comic-strip creators. It's about sodding time !
Paul Ashley Brown
