Sports comics. Once a great genre staple of the British comic industry but now something of a publishing footnote. They’re not entirely unknown in indie and alt circles either – I once interviewed Sam Bosma about Fantasy Sports on a panel I moderated at ELCAF some years ago after all – but they are a rarity. And with Richard Short’s Chin Music we have something of a niche within a niche; a celebration of the sound of leather on willow in the cartoonist’s visual ode to that most English of games, cricket.
Chin Music is the first entry in a projected series from Short and Breakdown Press with the umbrella title of ‘Richard Short’s World of Sport’, itself evocative of a bygone era of pop cultural programming. This is not so much a narrative to be read as a sporting re-creation to be experienced. Chin Music captures the world of cricket in all its traditionalist and formal glory – its politeness and its arcane rituals – as we join the crowd to enjoy one of the world’s most eccentric sporting attractions. What plays out before us is one keenly observed game, all presented in wordless sequential action.
What will most noticeably strike the reader about Chin Music is how deftly Short plays with comics’ unique relationship with the passage of time. Not simply in terms of the fluidity and sometimes almost balletic choreography of sports figures in motion but also in his ability to shift from frenetic action to sudden slo-mo imagery. Here Short asks us to make the transition from reading in rapid movement to dwelling on an individual moment, like a bowled ball hanging in seeming eternity in the air on its way towards a waiting batsman.
Short keeps our attention by constantly moving between caricatured silliness and a faithful visual record of the game that can only have come from keen observation. It’s a book that rewards re-reading to enjoy all the details missed the first time around. The way in which Short juxtaposes the reactions of the crowd with events on the field underlining the relationship between spectator and sport; the latter forays into visual metaphor; the expressive visual characterisation of the determined cricketers and eager onlookers; and the slapstick comedy that is always so perfectly paced with its exquisite timing.
Chin Music is certainly something a little different. Perhaps even by Breakdown Press standards. But it’s also an immensely likeable piece of diverting cartooning. We can only look forward to more entries in this series from Short.
Richard Short (W/A) • Breakdown Press, £14.99
Review by Andy Oliver
