Jeremy Tinder, Top Shelf

Black Ghost Apple Factory is a short collection of even shorter minicomics. With seven stories packed into 48 pages, it’s fast moving and surprisingly dense.

Tinder’s work is in some ways reminiscent of Jeffrey Brown’s “emo” stories, but he sometimes elegantly and sometimes uncomfortably straddles the line between parodying the genre and indulging it (it’s always very clear, in contrast, when Brown is being parodic). In “Jeremy Tinder is Secretly in Love with You,” an apparently autobiographical depiction of Tinder addresses the reader with an emotional and heartfelt confession of love. The evident earnestness of his words is artfully undercut by the fact that his confession is, by its very nature, an impersonal statement addressed to whoever happens to be reading the book (but don’t for one moment think he isn’t talking about you, he insists, because he is). The result is archly funny, and at his best Tinder manages to showcase the absurdity of presenting one’s emotions for the world to read in comic form. At his worst he comes across as cloying.

He also has a piece in which ghosts in clouds defecate apples, and that’s just weird.