There’s something that I like to think of as a sophisticated minimalism to Norwegian creator Fredrik Rysjedal’s short comic Cramp. It’s a simple enough premise. Rysjedal grew up living by a fjord but his love of the water comes with limitations. He has always been afraid of drowning. In the pages of Cramp he looks to overcome that fear by finally facing it head on. It’s a self-deprecating and somewhat irreverent take on autobiographical comics with an appealing line in occasionally dark wit.
As narrator Rysjedal details some of the reasons for these longstanding worries. His mother’s warning when he was a child about the dangers of swimming alone plays a large part in this. But he also has a near obsessional fixation on the notion of developing cramp while out in the water and perishing that way.
We observe his somewhat bleak ruminations on this across 40-odd pages that veer from the comedically observational to moments of sheer existential dread. Both, perhaps, encapsulated in one scene where his fears about swimming in a fjord manifest themselves in the thought that if he touches bottom he may step on the ancient bones of a Viking who had drowned after succumbing to cramp.
It’s Rysjedal’s visual storytelling approach that will draw the eyes of many readers. His use of two colours – an orangey-brown hue and an aquamarine one – emphasise both the relationship and the divide between the human characters and the sea while a use of white space centres us on the emotional humanity of Rysjedal as protagonist. Overlapping speech balloons, text and irregular panels also provide a sense of informality that is most apt given the cadence and feel of the story. With a fittingly thematically ambiguous finale this is intriguing work for anyone with an interest in slice-of-life or autobio comics.
Fredrik Rysjedal (W/A) • Self-published, £6.00 (digital)
Review by Andy Oliver
