Americans in Paris: “The Tipping Point” with Cassaday, Pope, Fingerman

Anthologies: The Endangered North American Species

Edited by Humanoids publisher Fabrice Giger, on the occasion of Humanoids’ 40th anniversary, this two volume set collects short stories based on a “tipping point” of some sort for a character.  It’s a very vague premise, since most stories rely on a character making a big life-changing decision anyway, but I’ll take it.

Giger talks in his opening editorial about using the book to bring together artists from all over the world.  “Tipping Point” features creators from Europe, Japan, and North American, which definitely helps mix up the styles.

As with most anthologies, it’s a bit hit and miss.  Some stories get a little too artsy fartsy for me and wind up being the kind of meaningless rabble that only award nominating committees ever like.  Some are entertaining, if slight.  Others are interesting for their experimentation, especially since they still make sense.

I’ll cover a few of the highlights here.  To keep with the “Americans in Paris” theme, let’s look at the stories contributed from this side of the Atlantic Ocean first.

Americans

John Cassaday‘s short story is a one minute read, but he does a great job with it.  It’s an adaptation of the moment in “Huckleberry Finn” where Huck writes a letter giving up his slave friend, Jim. I think that qualities as a “turning point” for the character well enough.

He works in a very moody black and white, with some gray washes and a Photoshopped black and white cloudy sky.  It’s a solid piece of work, with some interesting layout decisions and very graphical elements, such as the panel showing Huck silhouetted over Jim’s profile.

There’s not been much of Cassaday’s recent work that I’ve liked, but this is a good one, even if it’s a few years old now.  (Really, have you seen his “Fantastic Four” cover?  It’s awful.)

Again, it’s a quick read and it’s not a lot of story, but it’s nice as an art piece.  This is the kind of storytelling experimentation that works well inside an anthology. I like it.

My favorite story in the two books is the lead from the second volume by Bob Fingerman. In it, an atheist dies and goes to hell (a true tipping point).  He doesn’t believe it, though.

He’s so firm in his beliefs that all of the clear evidence in front of him still isn’t enough to convince him that he’s gone hell.  Even the demon who’s showing him around grows to hate him quickly, and becomes desperate to do something to change his mind or get rid of him..

When you tick off a minion of the devil, you know you’re something special.

Fingerman’s cartoony style fits in well with the kinds of French anthologies I like to read already (“Journal Spirou” and “Bamboo”), and his coloring is so strong that it’s a natural part of the art. It doesn’t feel like something that’s added on top of the art. It’s part of the art.

Finally, Paul Pope tells a 10 page story titled “Consort to the Destroyer.” It’s beautifully drawn, naturally, about a woman held hostage on a small boat. She fights her way out and through a shark to get to safety.  This is definitely a tipping point in her life, and the shark bit is badass.

It’s a pleasant enough read, though I’m sure there’s a deeper meaning to the whole story than I’m seeing. I’ll just treat it as an exercise of imagination and enjoy it on that level.  I have a couple of far out theories for the themes it’s going after, but they’d either be proven embarrassingly wrong or, worse, correct.

If you’re looking for a three act structure with a compelling twist or a spelled-out ending, though, you might not be so enthralled.  Take this piece as a glimpse into another world and imagine what might come next.

Back to Europe

Boulet has a six page story in which he discovers that all the internet legends are true, after all. He falls through a continuous series of them, and they’re all stories you’d recognize, from the alligators in the sewer to the perpetual motion machine inventor to alien abductions and the faked moon landing. Boulet strings them together to make a single cohesive piece that’s funny and filled with knowing nods to stories you may think of as old hat by now.

Frederik Peeters has the shortest story, at just three pages in length.  I’m not so sure it fits in well with the book’s theme, but it’s great. You can read the whole thing in thirty seconds if you wanted to, and the last page reveal is both terrifying and, honestly, kind of funny.  The cover to the second volume spoils the story a bit, but hopefully you won’t realize it until afterwards.

And Over to Japan

Taiyo Matsumoto has a high concept story to start this series off.  Titled “Hanako’s Fart,” it does begin with an uncomfortable and potentially embarrassing moment for a school girl.  But then Matsumoto visually links that moment to an otherwise-unrelated one somewhere else on earth that shares one thing in common.  After taking you down that road for a page, there’s another visual translation.  And another.  And another.

The whole story is a series of these visual shifts between scenes before everything come back around and Matsumoto can wrap everything up into a neat package.  It’s a great short story for its use of structure.

“Solo Mission” by Naomi Urasawa rounds out the first book.  It’s one of the few stories in the whole collection that has a literal beginning, middle, and end.  It tells a full and complete story.  You don’t read it for subtext or deeper meanings. It’s all right out there on the surface, and it’s very entertaining.

It begins with a husband and wife arguing about a job he’s recently accepted and will be leaving home for a while to complete.  It’s particularly dangerous, and there’s precedent earlier in their family for that.  He’s going, though, to provide for his family.  Urasawa’s art is amongst the most commercial of the book, a very satisfying cartoony style with a nice vision for future homes and vehicles.

The ending to it is perhaps a touch of sci-fi cliche.  I think the original “Star Trek” used the twist once, and I know even I used that twist in a story I wrote in college that will likely never see the light of day.  (It used a nine panel grid quite well, though. I was a student of that form at the time.)

But Urasawa’s story feels the most like a classic short story from one of those science fiction anthologies I used to read growing up.  I like it most of all for that.

Recommended?

Yes, but only if you get it on sale.  Even with the half dozen or so good stories I’ve talked about here, I wouldn’t pay full price for the book.  It’s enough if it’s on sale during a Humanoids special, but there’s still too much that wasn’t up my alley.

— 2018.046 —

Buy It Now

Volume 1:

Volume 2:

The print edition collecting both parts in one book is available on the Humanoids page.

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