SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: January 2022] Rivers
I’m quite the fan of Top Shelf Comics. Their stories are usually off the beaten path and have a satisfying indie feel. I hadn’t heard of either of these two writers before though
This book is full of different stories that don’t seem connected. I really applaud the creators for making the story this way because there were times when I wondered if this was meant to be little short pieces instead of a full narrative. It was a bold decision and it pays off handsomely.
The book opens on yellowish pages (each storyline has a color scheme). Two boys are reading a comic book in 1992. The next page shows the book they are reading–a sci-fi story about evil creatures named Ghoulors and the man and do who hunt them.
The boys are very funny and appear throughout the story with deep conversations like “I think if your life is not great you should just take drugs all the time.” “Me too.” And “What do you think you’ll be doing when you’re 25?” “I’ll be in a band on guitar and occasional synths. The lead singer will leave and I’ll make the band into an instrumental outfit and we’ll do soundtracks to foreign films with subtitles.” “Cool.”
Then we cut to a blueish story about a girl and her dad. The girl’s parents have split up and she and her dad spend their weekends at the dump throwing rocks at TVs. She enjoys it (and becomes quite accurate), but enough is enough.
Then there’s a four panel section that stands out from the rest.
The next section is the grown up woman who was the girl in the blue pages. She is talking abouta new app called Dreamr.
In Dreamr, you write about your dreams and can search other people’s dreams as well. It also tell you (generally) where they live. So she can see that three people who loved not very far away had dreamed about the queen that week. It had features that allowed you to reach out to other dreamrs and even to meet face-to-face.
Then we meet Gideon, he is an IT programmer. He seems to dislike most of the people in his office. Except for Lisa. They go out for lunch and talk about he upcoming Christmas party. At the previous Christmas party, Gideon’s boss Leo (who has an outstanding pompadour) hit on her.
We then see Leo interact with Gideon. He complains of aches and pains because he is building a boat in the basement of their office (the team leader book suggested it as a metaphor, but he took it literally). He also insists that Gideon go to the Christmas party.
Then we meet an older guy who delivers old sports cars to people. He has a funny story about delivering his car and the man he delivered to was in a tree when he arrived. My favorite thing about this guy is that his counter has a toaster built in (you push the toast into the countertop). He likes things to be permanent!
Things start to connect when the people in the blue and white panels pass by the boys in the yellow panels. Then we see that the man with the cars is searching in Dreamr and that five other people on the area have had the same dream.
The stories converge in a cool and unexpected way–with lots of quick scenes where people aren’t quite sure what’s going to happen next.
I enjoyed this a lot and enjoyed reading it a second time even more.
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