This blog entry is part of a series where I’m going back and posting unfinished entries, if only to clear out my CMS.
This is last of three reviews I actually wrote for an intended project to review all the stories in the Project: Superior comics anthology, back in 2005.
Just to give you an idea of how far I actually got with this, all of the entries were written on June 25th 2005. So, I managed to spend a single night on it before never working on it again.
Story #3: Jeremy Tankard’s “The Costume”
The Costume starts off quite bleak. It’s about a young boy who gets his mother to make him a superhero costume, and how it affects his life when it emerges that he’s planning to wear it forever. Luckily, it has a relatively upbeat ending delivered in such a way that you can only expect in comics. It’s kind of an “origin” story for a hero, but bordering on meta-plot.
In the wider picture, The Costume can be seen as a tale about the importance of growing up and the point at where you stop being a child and start being an adult. It’s a good context to use for that sort of tale, a child who imagines he’s a superhero, and is eventually forced to confront the reality. It could’ve been far bleaker, but while it’s not exactly smile-time happy hour, you get a definite sense of hope from how it all finishes off. Tankard delivers a great plot in the space he has, and with an excellent sense of pacing and dialogue.
Tankard seems at home drawing everything from a woman at a sewing machine, to an asteroid being thrown at the earth. The cartoonish style conveys a wide range of emotions, and makes the fantastical stuff seem more believable in the universe of the story, because it’s drawn in the same style. It almost gives me a sense of early Disney work, actually, with its thin rounded limbs and exaggerated poses.
Ultimately, Tankard delivers a short story that relies less than most on a twist to make itself seem smart, and concentrates more on making the human element the focus of the ending. An enjoyable read.
Website: http://www.jeremytankard.com - Tankard’s site is utterly brimming with illustrations, and each one a feast for the eyes. Certainly worth a poke around, because there’s a lot to look at.
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