Ganges #2
Kevin Huizenga, story
Kevin Huizenga, art
Fantagraphics
Review by Jason Michelitch
Yeah, yeah, this came out last week, but Midtown didn’t get it in (still haven’t gotten it in!) so I didn’t get hold of it until this week, and it’s an astoundingly important release, and no one’s reviewed it here yet, so I’m figuring it’s fair game. Guys? Is that cool?
Kevin Huizenga must be one of the best cartoonists of the decade. He’s one of those people who do what they do so well that they make it look easy. His Ganges books are the comics equivalent of William H. Macy’s acting - so low-key, so seemingly effortless, that you forget that what you’re looking at is someone working very hard on something terrifically difficult to produce. The experience blends into itself, and in the eyes of the consumer it is no longer someone’s work, but an artistic axiom - it always was and always will be and you can’t imagine it not existing for you to enjoy.
Ganges #2 (”Pulverize”) is astonishing in how deftly it blends together its disparate story elements - it starts out artistic and conceptual, an extended visual abstraction of the notion of combat, which then shifts a story of everyman Glenn Ganges’ past, focusing on, of all things, video games, and the modern male camaraderie that can be found within them, which in turn blends into an examination of both video games as a human experience and the confused dot-com corporate culture of the late 90s. Huizenga’s semi-cartoony style and monochromatic color scheme manages to convey everything in an intimate, quiet tone, while never being stiff or stilted.
The sole odd complaint one might make is the sidelining of Wendy, Glenn’s wife, who in previous Ganges stories has been a strong and enjoyable character. Huizenga makes the choice in Ganges #2 to present Wendy only a few times and to only draw the back of her head - obviously completely intentional, especially since the back cover of the book is a picture of the back of Wendy’s head. Coupling this with the fact that the only other female character in the book is drawn with her hair over her eyes forces one to assume that Huizenga is trying to center the book around the relationships between the male characters, which makes sense given the use of video games as male-bonding device which permeates the story. I don’t think we can go so far as to press any kind of misogyny button, since Fritzi, the woman with the hair in her eyes, is a particularly strong character with a central role in the latter part of the narrative. Still, the main focus by the end is Ganges’ wistful remembering of the days when he and his buds would pretend to shoot each other for relaxation, and the shining achievement of the book is Huizenga’s ability to cull so many quiet, introspective, or insightful human moments from an electronic game of shoot-’em-up. I am officially a Huizenga fan, and can’t stomach the wait for whatever he publishes next.
