Broken Frontier

Glamourpuss goes out on a mission of the utmost importance. Meanwhile back at the artist board, Dave Sim continues his meditation on the art of photo realism.

You have to give Sim some credit for gravitas. After years of controversy over his supposed misogyny, writing this particular book is not the best way to stifle those accusations. In fact, I could easily see how things here could be misinterpreted and spun to further the argument. However, I am just a lowly comic book reviewer and not licensed in psychology. I will let other people debate that subject. I will say that if he does hate women, writing a comic book that features a beautiful woman with some kind of super power is an odd way to show it.

The book is the most self indulgent comic that has ever been written. This is a guy writing a story at his own pace, regardless of conciseness or clarity. The missions and abilities of Glamourpuss are still a mystery to the reader. At the rate Sim is writing the book, it could be a long time before we are truly given a reveal as to her purpose and gifts.

This is not a bad thing, as the rest of the comic is devoted to two things. One is a biting satire of the fashion magazine and its subjective stance on all things. By writing an article that shows the magazine as a thinking entity that has an opinion on the nature of marketing for anti-depressants, Sim is pointedly jabbing at the self important absurdity of such a publication. The ads and letter columns and advice are all just another way of keeping the illusion intact.

The other and probably most important aspect of the book is Sim’s meditation on the process of cartooning. What appeared to simply be a discussion of photo realism last issue has branched off into a serious look at the different schools of cartooning from the non-stylized realism of Hal Foster and his progeny to the non-realism based cartoon style of Bruce Timm and many modern cartoonists. The centerpiece is still Alex Raymond’s Rip Kirby and the innovation that the artist needed to find to make his daily strip work with his lines. Much is made of the limitations of the presses at the time which is a direct contrast to the discussion last issue in our inability to faithfully reproduce the fine lines in a cheap format today.

It is a compelling bit of deconstruction of the process and Sim uses all the tools in his book to illustrate what he is talking about, from recreating panels of his hero’s work to creating homages to employing the techniques on a sundry array of advertisements that are seen in the type of magazine at which he pokes fun.

Beyond the art though, he uses many tricks to keep the prose compelling, breaking it up with a mock article which thinly veils the title character’s current adventure and stopping almost mid sentence begging the reader to come back next issue. Then there is the humor which fills the pages following the lead "story". It all makes for one of the most innovative uses of the medium ever from one of comicdom’s most revered (and yes, in some circles, reviled) creators. Like I said earlier, doing something this different takes gravitas and Sim has that in spades.