1 out of 5

Jesus.  Suckered by Ghermandi’s art once again.  I read something else by Francesca, and commented on how I had nothing to say about the story, but the pictures worked.  Well, with Wipeout, I at least understand what’s going on, it’s just pretty fucking dumb.  The art – which has the expressionistic characterizations of a Pixar film filtered through a surreal Chuck Jones-ish fantasy world with the leads visually extrapolated to fantastic extremes – a completely flat dude; a beach ball woman with synthetic hair; a… thumb-like man with some wheels attached for mobility.  So the imagery is still excellent, and we get the benefit of (water?) colors here, which really ups the animated ante of the whole deal.  Ghermandi’s choice of background coloring, and when to drop that coloring, and when to make the gutters between panels black instead of white less so…  there’s definitely an attempt to synchronize it with the emotion of a panel on occasion, but later into the story, when I was assuming that the duo-tone panels were flashbacks and realized I was wrong, I started to doubt my confidence in the art’s connection to the story (beyond what’s shown on the surface, anyway), which hearkened back to the cluelessness I felt when reading that other book.  Except since the story going on in the foreground was pretty clear this time, I couldn’t just chalk it up to excessive creator creativity; it rather felt like simple creator excess instead, taking something simple and over-complicating it.

The simple is a tale of lust and jealousy and whatever, told via that flat man and his beach ball wife and the woman flat man suddenly lusts after and the deed she asks him to commit to earn her love…  Surely a story we’ve heard before, but told in such a fashion that we don’t give a single sliver of poo about any of the characters’ motivations, nor do we understand when the beach ball suddenly experiences seeming jealousy over a perceived affair, nor do we really believe the lusted-after woman’s setup, because all of this plotting bullshit feels like justification for Ghermandi to get her art out there.  Like, she digs sequential pictures and wants to toss her hat into the ring.  But the stories, m’afraid, ain’t cutting it.  Maybe working with a writer to reign that in, learning the ropes of more experienced story-telling, then going the writer-artist route could bring her narrative powers up to a level to match the artwork.  Maybe that’s happened since this book was made, dunno.  As far as Wipeout goes, though, insert some witty comment about the title being apt.  A rare example of when I want framed pages but would feel ashamed trying to justify the accompanying story.