'Richard's Valley' Is Worth A Visit — But You Might Not Be Welcome There
Artist Michael DeForge's enigmatic new graphic novel is all about ambivalence — belonging, displacement, escape and return. Also, strangely charming, blobby animals with all-too-human feelings.
People who talk about comics talk a lot about connection. An image, after all, can spark understanding instantaneously, linking the artist's mind with the reader's in a millisecond while mere words — so weighty and awkward by comparison — lumber to catch up. It's no accident that the medium has always been associated with the semi-literate masses and with children; you don't have to learn to read a comic panel to be influenced) can itself force a sense of identification. Scott McCloud famously wrote that when you look at a realistic drawing of a face, you see someone else, but when you look at a stripped-down cartoon face, "you see yourself."
