Goliath (Drawn & Quarterly)

Creator: Tom Gauld

A Page 45 Comic Book of the Month

This is the first long form work that I have read by Tom Gauld, having been entertained by his cartoons in The Guardian for a while now. His style is such that it was difficult to see whether it would sustain a longer narrative. It is with some pleasure that not only does it sustain such a work, but it helps to enhance its meaning.

The style itself is one of seemingly simple, cartoonish figures (closer to the Schulz end of the spectrum than Eddie Campbell), and panels drawn with a confidence that allows for quite extensive use of negative space. Gauld's panel layouts are never cluttered, his page design quite elegant, and the use of splash pages effective. His panel borders are hand drawn, and the shaky line lends an extra human quality to the look.

All of this contributes to the matter-of-fact attitude that is used to communicate the story. There's no over the top melodrama that you would imagine Marvel possibly using to put over the tale of David and Goliath, no over emoting. Rather the artist takes this gentle, peace loving character and shows the events that lead to his tragic demise, in much the same way that the source material puts across the story with little emotion, but to much different effect.

As for the story, we all know the tale of David and Goliath. What Tom Gauld does here is show Goliath of Gath not as a violent, fearsome hero of the Philistines, but as a more peaceable fellow caught up in the machinations of his senior officer and the apathy of his King:


"...I believe I can end this stalemate and win the war in two weeks at a maximum cost of two Philistine lives."

To be fair to the Captain, he does seem to be concerned with ending the war with the least amount of casualties to his side, but this requires a sacrifice, and he certainly isn't going to use a skilled warrior. Thus Goliath is chosen, especially as his height makes him seem tougher and more convincing as a champion of the Philistines, which comes as some surprise to the man himself. The first time he sees the speech he has to shout challenging the enemy send one man to try to kill him, he faints. When he comes round he is a little confused:

"There's been a mistake...I'm not the champion. I'm the fifth-worst swordsman in my platoon...""

Assured by his Captain that there is no risk and he is merely doing his bit for the cause, Goliath continues to shout this message day after day until one day, as we all know, he is killed by a stone launched from the sling of David. This scene is shown with exactly the same lack of melodrama as the rest of the story, even down to the decapitation, and the simplicity and rapidity with which the death of this character we truly feel for happens is heartbreaking.

"Therefore David ran, and stood upon the Philistine, and took his sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut off his head therewith."
- King James Bible

This death scene is much more affecting in Tom Gauld's comic than the above description. What the artist appears to have done is to have given us a deconstructionist text, forcing the reader to look at the David and Goliath story from a different angle, forcing us to question our inbuilt assumptions about firstly this story, and secondly about the use of violence as a means to an end, and the presentation of this violence, which occurs often in the Old Testament, within a body of work that influences politics and society today (as an example you only have to look at the homophobic reaction of some members of the Christian community who will hold up selective quotes from the Old Testament as some sort of justification).

The decapitation of Goliath, for whom we feel a great deal of sympathy in this comic, raises memories of the horrific decapitations that have been broadcast over the internet by certain religious extremists, and this should make us question our assumptions that the Old Testament should be held up as a moral guide, rather than the gentler New Testament, which is rather less quoted by the intolerant given its propensity for tolerance and forgiveness.

Ultimately what Gauld forces us to confront is the human cost of war and violence. As with the novel, All Quiet on the Western front, so with Goliath - if we humanise the enemy we find that he is more like us than we would have believed, and our desire for violent confrontation is greatly diminished. This is a crucial message given the bloodshed of the last decade.

Too Much Sex & Violence (Self-Published)

Writer: Rol Hirst
Artists: Andrew Cheverton, Paul Rainey, Kelvin Green, Nigel Lowrey, Mark Renhard, Martin Eden, Adrian Bamforth, Rob Wells, Stephen Prestwood, Neil Cavenham, Dave Metcalfe-Carr, Ryan Taylor, Tony McGee
Without a doubt the healthiest part of British comics is the small press scene. Every so often I dip into this whirlpool of creativity and am always impressed by the sheer diversity of material on offer. Unfortunately it used to take a little effort to stay involved in my pre-web days, as it was mainly all mail order from the reviews and classifieds in Comics International. Being by nature a procrastinating bugger, I never stuck around long enough to really appreciate it's true gems and so missed out on The Jock by Rol Hirst with various artists. I did manage to get the first couple of issues of Escape Comittee, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but then just sort of let things fall by the wayside. Rol has a reputation as a quality writer, and the issues of Escape Committee that I read verified this, so when Reggie Rigby mentioned The Jock in his Fool Britannia column over on the Comics Bulletin website (a column you really should read) it piqued my curiosity enough to put the name Rol Hirst in google, which ended in me paying over some money for issues one and two of Too Much Sex and Violence).

This is a lovely looking comic, all glossy cover in full cover, issue one in particular setting the tone with the blood-spattered old fashioned stone road sign saying, "Welcome to Fathomsby".  You can't help but hear Ian Curtis singing, "This is the way, step inside" on Joy Division's Atrocity Exhibition. Instantly we know that things are going to be a little strange and a little disorientating during our stay in this town. Once that fateful step inside is taken, we are introduced to a cast of characters both weird and wonderful. This is very much an ensemble strip resembling the television show, The League of Gentlemen, with our outsider viewpoint being taken by Detective Inspector Sam Kamara who has been sent to work in Fathomsby as some sort of punishment for something he did back home:

     "They tell me it's the force equivalent of being sent to Siberia..."

The warning signs start when the taxi carrying him will not go into the town so he has to walk in, and is not eased any by the sight that greets him on entering the police station.

The fun coninues as we are introduced to what will presumably be the major players. There's a local radio DJ who also happens to be a vampire, a sex shop owner who lets people suckle her, young kids with a big gun threatening the wrong old man, the local gangster who clearly has the local police dancing to his tune, a woman in Leicester who sees the sexual fantasies other people are having in her own head, and her partner who has gone to explore Fathomsby and who communicates his experiences to her through expressive comic strips rather than a letter. The first issue finishes with a dysfunctional family, irnoically called the Modelles, finding a dead body on the beach, whilst the second issue continues to develop some of the plot lines and the various characters, whilst introducing a paedophile after a cure, a nun with a very personal cure for his affliction, and an incredibly intimidating female Chief Constable.

Phew!

That's a lot to fit in, especially in these days of comics taking at least six issues to tell a story that shouldn't be streched to six pages. There's every danger that introducing so many different characters will make things feel too dense, and that there will be a lack of room to satisfactorily establish them as very distinct characters that reader can easily differentiate. However it was only when I came to make my notes for this review that I realised just how many characters there were. It is a masterful job in establishing character quickly and efficiently, not letting the reader get bored, not including reams of exposition, but just providing the scene to display the most telling aspect of their personalities. In some ways this reminds of Paul Grist's Jack Staff, except I wasn't as confused reading Too Much Sex and Violence as I was when I first encountered Grist's wonderful comic. It all flows so seemlesly, so well. This is someone who knows his stuff.

Whilst I enjoyed the construction though, there were some issues I had with the art. The first problem is a little inconsistency. There are a host of artists working on this due to the very practical reasons that they need to spend time making a living and so may not have the time it takes to commit to a comic book that isn't going to pay. That's no problem as all of the artists can clearly tell a story, and although some of the styles did not agree with me from an aesthetic perspective, that's a purely personal view. I'm sure some of the artists that I liked will not be to everybody's taste either. However I think that it may have been more effective to have a single style, or similar styles, for each of the different points of view, which would then be used to gently manipulate the reader's expectations of, or feelings about, the different characters. As an extreme example, I could just imagine Milo Manara drawing the Kathy sections (she who sees everybody's sexual fantasies), and Sean Phillips on the local gangster etc.. (I'm not decrying the work of the artists on these particular sections; just trying to demonstrate the point by using artists whose style most people will be familiar with). There could be very practical reasons for not being able to do this, but I think it would be effective. On the whole though, I like the art, and the variation in styles helps to contribute to that slight feeling of disorientation in the reader as they continue to explore the strange town.

All in all this is a delightfully British comic, very much in the tradition of the League of Gentlement television show, the Strangehaven comic, with the slightly strange feeling communicated by the old Amicus horror anthology films such as Dr Terror's House of Horrors. It is a wonderfully perverse, pleasingly strange strip. In any civilised world this would be picked up by one of the major publishers. As it is everybody should buy it, not just to support homegrown talent (although this is no more than talent on this comic deserves) or to encourage the creators to keep going and provide us with more, but simply because if you don't then you're simply missing out on a brilliantly splendid comic. Don't take my word for it though. Go here and grab yourself a copy to check it out. Get the digital copy at just 99p if you're extremely risk-averse and see what the fuss is about.