SEE THE WHIRL: COMICS REVIEWS. Three this time:

Cuckoo: Paperback collection of autobiographical comic about woman diagnosed w/dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities). A good chunk of the book is taken from Cuckoo #12, the monthly-comic-sized thing I picked up at the Small Press Expo. The repetition was disappointing, especially since, weirdly, the print quality seemed much poorer in the paperback than in the comic book.

I’m generally unsympathetic to autobiographical works. They tend to promote cruelty to people around you–exposing their secrets and their shames–in the service of the Grand Artistic Vision. They also tend to be, unsurprisingly, self-centered and full of special pleading, trying to buy your sympathy with tales of trauma.

Cuckoo isn’t like that, mostly. There were definitely times when I was uncomfortable with the amount of other people’s lives the creator revealed, but for the most part the book didn’t feel prideful the way so many autobios do. The creator, Madison Clell, has a wry sense of humor (and a very visual kind of humor, too), which helps a lot. She clearly doesn’t see herself as better than the other people in the story, or as a distanced observer of their failings.

The layouts are varied and compelling–making the book harder to read, since every page is crafted for maximum impact and the subject matter can get pretty horrifying. There are scenes of child sexual abuse. The book is harsh, not self-pitying, but it definitely requires a strong stomach.

I was glad to have this, but not sure I would recommend it over Cuckoo #12, which included most of the best stuff from the paperback. If you can’t find that, check the paperback out instead.

Jar of Fools: Story of sad-sack young magician, sad-sack old magician, con artist, con artist’s daughter, and con victim. A sweet, poignant story, but I ultimately wasn’t sure that it added up to much or did something I hadn’t seen before. However, the creator, Jason Lutes, draws faces really well. He makes people as lumpy and human as we are in real life–ugly, but attractive.

Uzumaki vol. 1: This is the first Japanese comic I’ve ever read. It was a fine introduction–familiar enough to be intelligible, different enough to be intriguing.

First off, the story’s hook is great: a town being invaded by horrific spirals. Yes. Spirals. The pinwheel type things. So far I have not said this to anyone who has not started giggling, which is part of the book’s achievement: It takes this bizarre premise and makes it genuinely menacing and horrifying. The spirals are major bad juju, and you quickly start to believe in their threat.

The spirals could represent any number of things–charisma, the perils of breaking out of routine, selfishness (a spiral collapses inward), folie a deux, individuality (I do wonder if the emphasis on the dangers of wanting to stand out is a particularly Japanese element), the unknown, stifling small-town-ness, the desire for a radically new and different world. The spiral is a flexible symbol, which gives the book mystery. The symbol is a tease, a femme fatale. I loved the ambiguity and shifting meanings.

And the pictures are truly creepy. They range from the subtly menacing (spirals forming in a plate of noodles, or looming in the air over the characters’ heads) to the blatantly horrific (tormented human faces embedded in spiraling clay).

Uzumaki also lacks the main thing I can’t stand about the manga I’ve seen: the eyes. The enormous dollface eyes over teeny v-noses. The eyes in Uzumaki are larger than life, sure, but they look basically normal–the eyes in (Japan-influenced) ElfQuest are bigger. The main character, Kirie, is quite beautiful, and does not look creepily neotenous (sp?) as so many manga chicks do.

Understanding Comics talks about the different kinds of pacing found in Japanese vs. Western comics. I was on the lookout for this difference as I was reading Uzumaki–in fact, it’s the main reason I picked up the book. I don’t know that I noticed the specific differences McCloud describes, but the panels did seem to be laid out differently from most of the Western comics I’ve read.

Not sure if this is an accurate perception, but I generally think of Western comics as having one of three styles of panel layout: 1) every single panel, and every single page, are designed differently, each layout carefully chosen to reflect the exact mood and pacing of the scene. Think Torso, Cuckoo, Alias. I love the precision of this approach, but it can shade into showoffiness.

2) Very regular or at least fairly regular square panels, laid out in ranks upon the page. Love and Rockets, Watchmen. This is great in that you get extra impact any time you violate the regularity, but you do lose a degree of distinctiveness on the “normal” pages, and it’s easier (esp. for a very verbal rather than visual person like me) to ignore what the pictures are doing.

3) The size and number of panels vary a lot, but the shape not so much. I tend to associate this with superhero comics, which I think is because New X-Men uses it. (I hope I’ve already made clear that I’m speaking from a fairly limited knowledge base here! Take all generalizations with a lick of salt and so forth….)

Anyway, Uzumaki doesn’t do any of these three things. It’s closest to #3, but the panel shapes vary much more, using slanted lines (making the panels rhombuses–is that the word I want??–rather than squares or rectangles) to give a more dramatic, “running” kind of pace. The panels also seem (again, speaking from limited knowledge) more likely than in Western comics to spill down to the edges of the page, giving you a sense that the stuff in the picture is coming out of the comic at you. In general, the panels felt more skewed and more frenetic. EDITED: No, that’s not quite right, actually. It’s more that there’s a higher contrast between the story’s contemplative and frantic passages than in #2 or #3-style comics.

I loved this, and am planning to pick up the next volume or two next time I’m at the comic shop.