THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2025! With her short comic Fury 2020 Broken Frontier Six to Watch artist Dominique Duong gives us a story that is told initially with intense full-page imagery rather than the tighter-packed sequential pages we are more used to seeing from her. Fury is an allegorical piece, using the symbolism of a mistreated dog to communicate some very recognisably human themes.
It’s also clearly an autobiographical narrative with the dog acting as visual metaphor for Duong’s own suppressed rage and anger. With a haunting lyricism she speaks of living with the unkindness of others, with repressing her true feelings, and uses the imagery of the snarling canine, once a content and calm puppy, as the embodiment of those emotions.
This is Duong at her visceral best, building up to scenes of her confronting her inner turmoil with moody black and white art that becomes all the more striking later on for the very occasional use of splashed colour – the blood red of conflict imposed onto images or the yellowing eyes of frenzied fury consuming her and her canine inner being.
As the story progresses it transitions into almost freeform panelled pages, all the more affecting for their almost shard-like compositions. Powerful and instinctual comics work from someone clearly on the brink of breaking out and finding vastly expanded new audiences. Duong’s work-in-progress graphic novel Patchwork from Jonathan Cape may be a little way off yet but it really cannot come quickly enough.
Dominique Duong (W/A) • Self-published
Review by Andy Oliver
Visit Dominique Duong’s website here.
Dominique Duong will be at Table B16a in the 2000 AD Hall at Thought Bubble.
Thought Bubble 2025 runs from November 1oth-16th with the convention weekend taking place on the 15th-16th. More details on the Thought Bubble site here.
Read all our Thought Bubble 2025 coverage so far in one place here.
Poster by Ng Yin Shian
