Monsters and the Apocalypse: Enormous from Image Comics
One thing I like about comics: they’re all about the impulse buy.
I can’t afford to impulse buy books, or my house would be full of them (well, more full than it already is). But comics are a different story. My weekly trip to the comic shop is all about buying whatever catches my eye.
Sure, there are titles I follow regularly — Ultimate Spider-Man, Fables, the brilliant Atomic Robo — but the comic shop is one of the few places I can still afford to experiment, and pick up a book just because it looks intriguing.
Some experiments work out better than others. Last week I found an odd artifact on the racks: an oversize graphic novel from Image Comics called Enormous. The artwork by Mehdi Cheggour looked spectacular, and Tim Daniel’s story — something about a planet-wide ecological catastrophe, desperate search-and-recovery efforts run out of an abandoned missile silo, and gigantic monsters towering over the ruins of America’s once-great cities — was precisely the kind of thing comics were invented for. I added it to my weekly selection without another thought.
Unfortunately I still don’t know much about Enormous, even after reading it. Yes, Cheggour’s artwork is spectacular, and Daniel’s story is something about an extinction level event and a desperate search for survivors. With giant monsters. The individual panels are marvelous, but the story is pretty much incomprehensible.
One of the oddest, most esoteric regrets in my life is that I long ago gave away my collection of the now defunct American Film magazine. Most of these, purchased primarily from sidewalk vendors in Manhattan, I do not care to recover; but I would give a great deal to have again the October issue from 1986. It contains a dialogue with film producer David Puttnam, and one small paragraph in that interview taught me more about collaboration than any other single event I know.