Duncan the Wonder Dog: Show One by Adam Hines
My rating: 5/5 cats
this is everything mike reynolds promised it would be.
i can’t even get close to the emotional parts of this book yet, so i will have to start with the artwork. and then i remember that i don’t really know anything about art, so don’t look for any profound art crit here. all i know is what is skillful, poignant, meaningful. there is a range of styles here, from hyper-detailed to almost unfinished-looking, depending on the mood of that portion of the story. his animals are so expressive in their features, frequently more so than the human characters, and he has a real facility for body language. the scene with the raccoon was so short but so perfect.
(i’m not sure how to cut and paste individual frames from sequential art online—if it moves as one “page” or as individual panels, so that’s all the artwork i am going to show.)
(and now i know—it takes the whole page)
there is no duncan the wonder dog. this is not about some heroic dog solving crimes or being cute. it is about the philosophical and psychological burden of the human-animal relationship that occurs when animals are unarguably fully expressive, verbally, and perfectly evolved intellectually. the image of a chimp reading pythagoras’ metaphysics behind bars waiting for his turn in the ring of the circus…in the wrong hands, it could be manipulative and schmaltzy, but he has a real skill, and all of his drawings feel *real* and potent. there is so much substance to his work—the pictures have depth and the words have density. when i was reading it, it made me think of church and state. i read that about fifteen years ago, so it is hazy, but i remember reading it (my first exposure to the “graphic novel”) and thinking—”holy shit, this is smart.” this is the same way. very smart, very textured, very complicated. there is nothing flimsy about this, nothing frivolous.
i mean, the bundles interlude alone was enough to earn this five stars cats. nicholas sparks could have moistened the hankies of a thousand young girls given that material, but m. hines knows a little something called “restraint,” that pulls some of the violins back a little and gives the story room to breathe, all the better to kick your emotional ass.
and he does offer the whole thing online, which is a wonderful thing, but it is massive, and it is a beautifully-designed book, so why wouldn’t you want to own it?? he encourages people not to buy it, and instead to read it online and donate money to several animal rights groups features on the site, but honestly—you probably won’t do that. you all have good intentions but rarely follow through, right? me, i bought the book, and he can do what he wants with the money. but here is the link, if you are more proactive than me: http://www.geneva-street.com/duncanth….
seriously—big hugs to mike reynolds. a wonderful thing to have brought to the goodreads.com community.
let me know if there is ever a “show two”
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