4 out of 5

Dave Cooper’s stipply, bubbly style – like Robert Crumb by way of Jon Kricfalusi’s warped character models – has produced some delightfully ooky stuff: everything sweaty, everything bumpy and curvy.  His humor is flexible enough to work for children’s stuff, but much of his output works with that visual vibe to straddle a surreal, darkly comic line that pokes and prods at various neuroses we likely recognize but deny.

Within the pages of his comic Weasel, Dave began a story called Ripple, which Fantagraphics collected in 2003 in a rectangular-ish binding and behind a fittingly flesh-splashed cover, as Ripple does a deep, deep dive into sexuality and fetish, while still somehow maintaining Cooper’s bouncy story-telling abilities.  Few writers can hang out in the muck and still make it an easy read without undermining the emotion and concept; Dave is one of those few, and Ripple does it incredibly well.  Concerning an artist named Martin, Ripple’s five parts cover his obsession with a model he’s hired to pose for his work – Tina – and the indulgences he allows himself as she comes to his apartment, dons bondage gear, and sits for him.  It’s painfully uncomfortable at points but eminently entrancing; it’s funny, but in a I-wish-I-didn’t-recognize-these-feelings way; it’s human.  It’s totally not something I would normally read, preferring my contemplations brought about by stories more removed from reality; by less confessional type stuff.  ‘Cause mightn’t Martin be Dave…?

The story, and the emotions, feel too real to be completely fictional.  Martin’s elucidation of his dom / sub-ish dreams; the way Tina is so physically unappealing to him (and to us, drawn with a huge waist and comparatively small chest, hooked teeth, acne, and overly rouged cheeks) and yet her brusque personality and conflicting willingness to pose are an incredible aphrodisiac to him…  It’s pretty raw stuff, and drawn frankly – although as the story dips into some of its (and Cooper’s?) philosophy behind the study of flesh – its ripples, studied so intensely as to be a separate thing from the body bearing it – we key in to how the sexual stuff we’re seeing is cold and not intimate; the only ‘real’ sex scene is kept off panel.  And you’ve been there for at least part of the story, as Martin, or maybe as Tina, or maybe having known one or the other.  So real or not, Ripple rather masterfully makes you believe it.

Its framed by Martin reflecting on the experience some years later, and that’s where the story doesn’t quite come together.  Ripple’s ‘romance’ is a whirlwind one that happens over a brief period of time; the frame works when divvying up the story into the pages of Weasel, but feels short-sighted when read as one ongoing story; the Martin of the intro and extro doesn’t necessarily feel like the guy affected by the story inbetween.  Perhaps written and presented as, initially, a standalone GN would’ve prompted a bit more of a throughline to make the final section a bigger punch in the gut, or, more likely, I have no idea what I’m talking about.

I hesitated reading Ripple because I didn’t want it to ‘ruin’ my appreciation of Cooper’s more cartoonish stuff.  But it’s only enhanced my appreciation for it.  Dave’s an amazing artist, and with Ripple, he shows how his already variable style can expand into even darker realms.