‘Period’ by Christopher Adams

Christo­pher Adams is an illus­tra­tor who has work in Don’t Call Me Hon­ney, a show I’ve curat­ed on my new­ly-launched eyra online illus­tra­tion gallery. (You can view the entire show here.) Christo­pher was nice enough to give me a copy of his com­ic, Peri­od, which I recent­ly fin­ished reading.

Peri­od is a book bound by tan paper with the title and author writ­ten in pen­cil, so del­i­cate that you might miss it upon a first glance.

 

Casu­al­ly flip­ping through Peri­od, I was imme­di­ate­ly struck by the way Christo­pher for­mat­ted the pan­els of his com­ic.  You would gen­er­al­ly think of a com­ic as hav­ing 4, 6, or 8 pan­els on a page. Not the case here. Some sin­gle pages have as many as 32 pan­els on them.

Christo­pher’s draw­ing style is detailed, using water-based media to depict all of the hairs on an arm or stripes on a shirt. He is care­ful to shade his draw­ings, doing so in a way that gives them weigh, makes them feel real, but at the same time makes them styl­ized.  All of the pages are in black and white, with the excep­tion of a full col­or spread in the mid­dle of the book.

 

The pac­ing is set by the pan­els — both what’s in them and how they are laid out. I men­tioned that sin­gle pages are com­prised of 32 pan­els. Time does­n’t pass quick­ly; instead, Christo­pher uses them to zoom in, pan out, and real­ly set the scene for what’s tak­ing place. At times, it felt like I was look­ing at a film strip.He’s able to pull my eye quick­ly across and down a page, despite how detailed his draw­ings are. I read through the book a few times to make sure I was­n’t miss­ing anything.

Peri­od con­tains vignettes. It opens up with us look­ing at the sea, mak­ing us feel small. We then delve into the lives of a fam­i­ly, a tele­phone com­pa­ny employ­ee, and guys hang­ing out play­ing with elec­tric toy cars. The details doc­u­ment­ed are minus­cule, jux­ta­posed with moments that remind us just how BIG things, impor­tant things, are hap­pen­ing in our world. But, we’re often so bogged down with rela­tion­ships, work, and our own lives to con­tem­plate what’s real­ly going on out­side of our front door. Christo­pher ends Peri­od in a sim­i­lar way of which it began. Leav­ing with a des­o­late land­scape, the moun­tains. The final page is a com­bat drone fly­ing over them, a sym­bol for war and gen­er­al polit­i­cal unrest.

 

Peri­od is for sale through 2D Cloud. Pick up your copy here. Also, check out what else they have to offer. Looks like they have some great stuff.