Comic World News

April 22, 2008:
CWN and the Grand Finale! -

February 4, 2008:
In Conclusion - David ends his CWN run with Tezuka's MW from Vertical

February 2, 2008:
Acting Like You Have Nothing to Prove -

February 2, 2008:
The Shoegazer Returns - A New Year Begins, And Our Narrator Makes A Pledge

January 30, 2008:
Tim's Reviews -

September 13, 2007:
Wizard World Chicago Loot, Part One - Stykman, Empty Chamber, the Ztarian Saga, and yes, Little Bunny Foo Foo

February 15, 2007:
I Come Not to Bury Nick Cage... - But to mourn the death of my punchline

November 20, 2006:
The End - Rich's last Chicks & Romance

November 8, 2006:
Joann Sfar's Klezmer - And a Front Racks Hiatus

October 4, 2006:
This Month's Guest: Dave Gibbons - From the pages of Elephantmen!

September 18, 2006:
Back in Berlin - or How I spent my summer

July 29, 2006:
KICKING UP A STORM - An interview with David Lloyd

June 19, 2006:
You Ain't Never Had A Friend Like Me. - Graeme looks at Spidey's "genies"

December 18, 2005:
Disappointed - Sad news for fans of Busiek's CONAN, Stephen King, and others

December 13, 2004:
JUSTICE UNPLUGGED 2 at last !!! - By Fabrice Sapolsky & Xavier Fournier

December 2, 2004:
THE TWELFTH AND FINAL STEP - Say it ain't so, Dan.

November 23, 2004:
The importance of editing -

September 29, 2004:
Mystery and Conundrum indeed! - Where in the world is Jason Pomerantz?

September 13, 2004:
Hello and Goodbye and Hello Again - Change is in the air at CWN and it smells sweet.

August 12, 2004:
The Rise of the Web Toon - New Business Model or Dumb Luck?

July 30, 2004:
The Name Says it All... - Spin Doctors revamp Boomerang.

July 27, 2004:
Bigger Isn't Always Better -

June 8, 2004:
Pre-emptive Strike: MoCCA Arts Festival - Looking forward to the con, rather than looking back at it

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Thursday, September 2, 2010

Three Fingers

Review by Michael May

Written by Rich Koslowski
Illustrated by Rich Koslowski

Published by Top Shelf
$14.95

As soon as you see the cover, you know you're in for some mixed feelings. An overweight figure sits alone in an easy chair not smoking the cigarette he's holding as ash builds and builds on its tip. Sitting on the table next to him is a half-empty bottle of tequila and a full glass. It's a tragic, friendless scene, until you notice his big, goofy gloves and the familiar mouse ears in his shadow on the wall.

The cover of Three Fingers is a paradox. It gives you a taste of what you're about to experience by reading the book, but in no way prepares you for it. The story is tragic and goofy, but the intensity of that juxtaposition is something that has to be felt by facing the story.

Told in the style of a documentary, Three Fingers relates the history of movie cartoons, especially the pioneers of the medium, Dizzy Walters and his star Rickey Rat. But what begins as a simple alternative account (�toons in this story are real creatures, not just drawings) of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse's early years quickly turns dark. In trying to figure out why Rickey Rat was so popular when other cartoons weren't, jealous �toons allow superstition to give birth to a bizarre ritual in which they try to make themselves look more like Rickey by surgically disfiguring themselves so that they only have three fingers.

Rich Koslowski is able to use this story to touch on many different subjects from racial stereotypes in cartoons to abortion to the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, JFK, and MLK. All the while making you grin and chuckle. Told you there'd be mixed feelings.

His representations of the characters contribute to the conflicted emotions. Carhorn Armwhistle, a Foghorn Leghorn parody, is a perfect example. Withered with age, Carhorn has veins protruding along his comb, a gummy beak, and a wattle that resembles nothing so much as a hairy, wart-infected scrotum. He's also very very funny. "Now you listen ta me!" he says, talking about Rickey Rat. "Ah love that lil' son of a bitch! Ya heah me? Got me laid back in '36 by this red-headed hot human broad! Heh!"

Other characters are just as grotesque from their botched surgeries and long lives and just as eternally humorous as Koslowski captures the elements that endear their counterparts to real-life audiences. In trying to learn who took some mysterious pictures that surfaced of �toons undergoing surgery, pictures that analysts determined to have been taken by someone moving very quickly, the documentary interviews a prime suspect: a silhouetted rodent with a big hat. "I know notheeng," the Unidentified Former Toon Actor says. "I say notheeng. I don' know who take these peectures� no."

Koslowski uses several techniques to give the comic a documentary feel. Static images overlaid with text remind the reader of those PBS documentaries in which still photographs are shown with voiceover narration. For interview segments, Koslowski uses simple three- and six-panel grids in which each panel on the page is the same shot of the interviewee, with only the character's expression changing from panel to panel. It's an effective system, enhanced by his realistic artistic style. The representations of still photographs look as if Koslowski sketched them from actual photo references, even the ones depicting �toons being loaded into police cruisers by human cops. He draws the �toon interviewees with as much care and realism as the human ones. The effect is so realistic that you expect any moment for the story to be interrupted an announcer begging you to call in and pledge your public television membership.

I expected Three Fingers to be a funny parody of beloved cartoons, and it is. What I didn't expect is to be as disturbed by their portrayal as I was. And it's not that Koslowski simply went too far in trying to be funny and crossed into the land of the disgusting. It's obvious that he intends to upset at the exact same time that he entertains. It's an enormous challenge for a creator to set for himself, but Koslowski meets it with apparent ease.