Deflated: Lev, The Mime Artist

“Deflated” is a single-volume book that pays homage to silent films in both its story and storytelling.

It’s the book I’m only surprised that Roger Langridge didn’t do already. Or maybe he did and I missed it?

If you want a black and white screwball comedy where you can hear the organ music in your head, this is the book for you.

Cue the Organ Music for the Credits

What’s Going On?

Lev is a man with a particular food allergy to everything. While waiting for his girlfriend, Liv, an allergic reaction kicks in that makes him blow up and closely resemble a notorious mafia Don.

As luck would have it, two of that Don’s goons are looking for their boss.

And, in true madcap style, the two people get mixed up — Lev’s girlfriend winds up caring for the mafia Don she thinks is Lev while Lev tries to get out of having to kill anyone or being killed, himself.

It’s a fun story that isn’t terribly deep or metatextual. It relies on crazy coincidences, silly mess-ups, and easily fooled people. But that’s OK. It’s perfectly in the style of the early silent films it’s trying to emulate.

Look, he even emulates a credits scene, missing only a roman numeral representation of the year for that je ne sais quoi:

There’s a lovely sense of wordplay in various parts of this book. CouKa can be playful with sequences of pages here, knowing when to perfectly punctuate a moment with words and when to leave well enough alone.

While most of the captions describe the action on the page, the language style fits into the time period and adds more to the book than simple descriptions. CouKa can go slightly over the top with a page and make it sound like a narrator spewing some clickbait to bring the viewers along, and then have it narrate a scene with a dry sense of humor.

This is the kind of story that would go over well after a Three Stooges short. This is long before the average movie-goer had seen every plot twist and plot device known to man in their first five years of watching movies. It’s a far more innocent time, that way.

The story is played straight, but the situation is funny. Half the fun of the book is in seeing how its creator, CouKa, is going to will the people into place to set up the plot he’s going for. What ludicrous plot device could he come up with to take someone temporarily off-stage so the switch-up can occur? (It’s the baggage carousel at the airport, which wouldn’t have been a thing that existed yet if this book truly took place during the silent film era. Just run with it, it’s worth it. Fun Fact: The airport baggage carousel is a French invention.)

It also has a trippy segment when Lev has his allergic reaction that feels a bit like an early Disney cartoon. Remember how almost nonsensical and visually wild some segments of those early cartoons could be before the formula was locked in?

Or, you know, “Dumbo”? That’s what happens here.

CouKa’s style is very cartoony and iconic. His characters fit in with the 20s or 30s world you’d expect them to occupy. They dress the part and they overact the part. But his style fits into the animated world that this comic would have existed in if it was a legitimate animated silent film.

Storytelling on its Side

The story is also told more in storybook fashion than in comic fashion. Every page is a single storyboard with text underneath it to explain what’s going on or to provide the dialogue. There are no word balloons or multi-panel pages. (There are a couple of double-page spreads, however.)

Also, it’s all sideways. Read this on your iPad and turn it into landscape mode for the best reading experience. I love doing that for a book like this because the pages feel bigger. You get the whole page on a single screen with far less dead space surrounding it.

Sometimes, I take a traditional BD album and read it sideways on the iPad. You can get pretty close to reading a classic BD the way the original art was laid out — two wide pages forming a single page. The iPad will show a little more than half, but it comes pretty close to it.

Recommended?

In culinary terms, this book is an amuse-bouche.

It is a light read in a very specific style. It’s not a gimmick. It’s a loving recreation of silent film as a comic book, and it works well to that end.

It’s not for everyone, and I probably would only recommend it if it went on sale. It’s a solid and enjoyable book, but there’s a lot of competition for your time and attention these days. If you love silent films and comics, this is an easy choice for something you’d want to read.

You can find it now on Izneo. I don’t see it on Amazon.

In a similar vein, I’d recommend another book, “Kiosco”, which I reviewed here a few years back. It’s another sideways, self-contained story, but it’s completely silent.