Jamie Tanner, Adhouse

Speaking of weird…

The Aviary is a comic of the absurd that gains its power by constantly appearing as though it’s about to cohere into sense, but never doing so. A man with a ape’s head walks into a burlesque house and tells one of the girls, “I am a patron of the pornographic arts. I would like to commission a masterpiece. I will pay you with love.” The woman, her knees freshly tattooed with the images of crows, is photographed with a fetish-masked pilot, the results displayed in a private art gallery. “Pay me, Heinrich,” the woman says; “I love you,” says the ape-headed man.

The callback to Heinrich’s promise of love implies that the world these comics take place in has a logic of its own. But this implication is subverted by an endless stream of callbacks and recurring characters who appear in different manners and guises (some turn out to be twins, of course). A dismembered comedian whose tragic subtractive history gradually gets filled in, a carnivorous cyborg penguin who is also a police photographer, and an ubiquitous “Quiet Bird-Man” doll with a blinking eye also feature—but selecting which grotesques among the cast to mention is, frankly, arbitrary. They appear, disappear, and may appear again, or may not. Just when you think the sequence with Heinrich and the burlesque dancer has made a satisfying arc, it continues, and the sense you had dragged out of it is washed away.

Either giving or failing to give a structure to these Dadaist narratives are periodic Victorian-style ads for various ludicrous products. Theses ads sometimes appear between chapters and sometimes interrupt them like commercials. Ads for the “Quiet Bird-Man” doll (“The blinking is quite popular”) bookend the volume, which may hint towards a narrative arc. Or may not.

If this makes Aviary sound like a frustrating book, well, that judgment is not far off. But Aviary is also a fascinating book. Perhaps there is no meaning to be hauled up from its depths; or perhaps I have to reread it, and eventually I’ll “get it.” Avairy succeeds in being interesting and funny enough to make rereading it feel like an opportunity and not a chore. Did I mention that there’s a mad scientist bulldog who with the help of an assistant (the Professor lacks thumbs) builds an alcoholic robot who keeps accidentally decapitating people?

Jamie Tanner’s art serves the story well, but rarely does much more. He’s a competent but unspectacular draftsman, and his strength lies more in his pacing and layouts than in his simple figure work. The angles at which the aforementioned robot tilts when he walks are better than the way the robot itself is drawn. Tanner knows how to play to his strengths, though, and his detailed, crosshatch-heavy backgrounds help place an increasingly surreal story in a world that at least moment by moment feels plausible.

The Aviary may not be the weirdest comic ever to come down the line–the works of Marc Bell and Chris Reynolds stand up as rivals–but it’s certainly aiming to be a contender. It’s also one of the most interesting books you’ll find this month.