Tristan Crane

Short graphic novel about the adventures of Catherine, a genderqueer person of unspecified means (work does not appear here except that a guy who tries to pick Catherine up says he’s a Nissan dealer) and heavy drug use. The visuals fit really well with the subject; Catherine is all spikes, while the characters Catherine is attracted to have a nearly-but-not-quite-androgynous appeal. Beauty, the stories suggest, is a negotiation—and in any negotiation, when the parties have very different views of the world, there can be trouble. Structurally, the collection suffers because only three of the four parts include short fantasy stories told/illustrated by Catherine that, as with the pirate comics in Watchman, reflect some aspect of the main narrative; it would have been better to include a fourth for balance. But then again, this is a book that very deliberately refuses balance, so it may well have been a conscious choice, though I’m not sure narrative balance and balance in character are similar enough to require the same treatment. Anyway, I like Naifeh a lot, though I like his fantasy better.… (meer)