Arm's Length #1

This 32-page Xeric Grant winner is made up of three stories:

The main story is a tale about a struggling wannabe stand-up comedian and the night he met Bob Hope. Well, sort of; while the first person narration is relating the encounter, the art, combined with a less starry-eyed perspective, shows the real story. Turns out Tim is a waiter, and it's more likely that Mr. Hope is laughing at how clumsily he did his job.

This refusal to face reality is a continuing theme of the story. What Tim calls getting gigs, we see as performing at amateur nights; he thinks he's entertaining, we wonder how boring he is; he "studies the masters" while we see that he's ripping off those much more talented than he'll ever be.

The story raises a good question; dedication to your chosen field is important, but when is it smarter to just give up? How many years does one say, "Sooner or later I'll get discovered. It's just a matter of time?" Tim's love for something he's so obviously unqualified for blinds him to the expectations of normal human behavior. Delusion is comforting, but to the outside observer, it's pathetic.

When he lists his comedy strategies, we see that he's only approached the most basic items of his craft, and yet he clings to them as if ... if he could only get the rules just right, he'd be a success, not realizing that he needs heart and creativity and something special as well.

(As a reviewer, I could really understand this type of character; I'm too often faced with how to gently tell aspiring artists that persistence isn't enough, that it doesn't matter how hard they've tried with their comic, it's just not that good.)

Although I at first thought otherwise, this story turned out to be a good choice for the medium, since the contrast between the optimistic monologue of the captions and the reality of the art is obvious but not glaring. I particularly noticed the scene where his boss takes him to task for deserting his assigned section to go wait on Bob Hope; good dialogue reveals just how bad a screw-up he is, especially when he mentally shakes off the truth to descend back into his fantasy. The only negative is that the balloons overwhelm the art to a degree, so the page looks a little crowded.

The protagonist's glasses make him a blank slate to us, since his eyes aren't revealed, which ties into the contrast between his emotions and reality. We're forced to watch him as an observer instead of identifying with him, allowing us to understand what's really going on.

The figure work is good enough to support the needs of the story, but a bit vague/flattened at times; it doesn't always look fully three-dimensional. The line weight also varies a good deal.

The backup story deals with the same theme in a different way. An old man in ragged clothes is trying to sketch at a McDonald's, but when parents start complaining, he's thrown out for loitering. In this short piece, I see the artist's fear of the future (the old man is penniless and seen as insane for still following his art) combine with an odd wish fulfillment (since the man is still creating and still feisty).

At almost $4, the book is a bit pricey, but the heavy cardstock cover and thick white matte paper show where the money went. There's no fear of damage while rereading this, and I was surprised at how much more I discovered when I did.