2 out of 5

Maybe I will stick with not having so much faith in these adaptations.

‘Another Suburban Romance’ is Johnston’s comic version of – if I understand this correctly – three performance works from a play of the same name, although the middle ‘song’ – Old Gangsters Never Die – apparently had an EP release as well.  Swallowing the history, I will say that Johnston’s adaptation is well done.  Most of the concepts are pretty out there abstractions on life, and Antony finds a way of drawing the reader from the recognizable into the surreal with each song.  At the same time, while I’m sure this all appears with Moore’s blessing, I’m not sure these needed comic adaptations.  It’s all about the medium.  Sure, we get some insane illustrations from Juan Jose Ryp, but Moore – for as verbose as he is – has made a career of writing between the panels and pages.  Song lyrics, on the other hand, don’t have that visual component.  Accepting that there was a play to match these words, we’ll assume that play wasn’t as insane as the settings Ryp and Johnston dream up.  The end result, of setting the bloated artistry to narration which can stand on their own, is to render Alan’s writing either trite – as in the title ‘track’ – wandering, as in ‘Old Gangsters Never Die’ – or simply difficult to immerse oneself in, as in ‘Judy Switched Off the TV.’

And if I may, Ryp’s art is too much for my taste.  Of the uber-detailed crowd, there’s a skill – one I thin Darrow definitely has, even though I get bored with his work – of putting the finest details into every inch of the page, but being able to draw the reader’s eye to a particular focus.  It’s why I prefer James Stokoe – good at this – over Brendan Graham – bad at this.  Ryp, especially in black and white, is not very good at this.  The pages (pretty much all splashes) are undeniably works of art and intense effort, but there’s just too much going on to follow, and so you just end up reading it on a surface level.  Which is sort of what flows into the unfortunate narrative juxtaposition mentioned above.

It’s interesting, and perhaps worth the encouragement to imagine this stuff presented in its original format, but when I closed the cover on ‘Another Suburban Romance,’ it failed that most important test: Would I want to read this again?