CR Review: Wait, You’re Not a Centaur



Creator: Nate Denver
Publishing Information: La Mano, softcover, 120 pages, October 2006, $16
Ordering Numbers: 0976525526 (ISBN10), 9780976525523 (ISBN13)

Nate Denver's late-2006 book effort Wait, You're Not a Centaur flattered both Denver and Zak Sally's publishing company La Mano, although maybe not the way they and some of their fans might think. This book of microfiction mixed with sketchbook drawings doesn't feel like a breath of fresh air. I think the sentiment and approach will be familiar to most readers of this site. The illustrations will remind many of the Fort Thunder predilection for the junkiest corners of pop culture 1978-1994, the act of making clever summary statements in lieu of slowly-developed, lengthy and humorous stories should be familiar to anyone who's read a writer young than 40 in a bookstore or places like the McSweeney's web site, and the act of mixing writing with illustration is only radical if you've embraced a vision for comics that leaves out James Thurber and everyone that came after reminiscent of Thurber.

What Wait, You're Not a Centaur offers up isn't so much novelty -- although it would make a fine gift book, and you might bookmark its catalog page for potential future purchases, particularly if you buy a lot of presents for young, literate people -- but more of a consistently high level in its execution. I find Denver's work to be appealing; micro-micro stories like the following communicate a smart kid's cosmology and then follow the results to either acerbic interruptions of that world view or all the way to their sad, adult viewpoint conclusions. Mostly they're cute:

One night the wind blew so fast that it circled the earth and caught up with its tail. The front joined the back creating a wind loop around Earth with no beginning or end. Many windmills were placed in the wind-loop for electricity and rides and three people were decapitated.

The drawing is equally adorable, an array of robots and animals and monsters that feel like a sick 12-year-old's breakfast table jottings from a cracked-spine copy of the Monster Manual, a Deviled Ham sandwich growing stale set off to one side. There are a dozen or so baroque and design-intensive presentations that hint at more sophisticated artistic talent, but the heart of the book's visuals are crude and therefore familiar and accessible. Since they do roughly the same thing, the drawings and the words mix together in a way that easily allows you question to the interplay between them, affording the book a bit of depth. Given the handsome book design, the overall impact proves considerable when the slightest letdown in any area might have made the work seem cheap or tossed off. There's even a multiple-song CD in the back, of full-album length.

Wait, You're Not a Centaur suggests that Zak Sally's La Mano may have something to offer comics that's a big more Highwater than high profile, books that flatter the subject matter in a way that goes behind providing an attractive surface to make the case for projects being worth a look. That's not a bad place to be.


 
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