by David Chelsea
Publisher: Kitchen Sink
Pr; First Edition edition (February 1, 1995)
Softcover, 34 pages
The
Zone
in this case is located in the East Village and is an inter-sectional area
filled with homeless dregs, real estate vermin, cannibalistic aliens, misplaced
robots, giant dogs, and struggling artistic types - deadbeat artists, actors,
and musicians. Each character is an abstract of a person. Taken together the
entire book creates a monstrous nighttime image of the New York underground art
scene -desperate, superficial, and rife with wasted talent. The parallels to William
Burroughs’s Interzone are obvious.
Apparently
many of the characters are parodies of obscure “personalities” and actual
events in the East Village at that time, but their relevance has been lost of
time. I’m sure in that place in the mid to late nineties it had deeper meaning.
However, it’s gone and good riddance. That perhaps makes the work even weirder
now that time has erased its connection to reality. Like Alice in Wonderland, the more the original inspiration is obscured,
the more absurdist it becomes.
What
truly sets the work apart is the excellent pointillism here. It’s so detailed
and so well done that it looks as if each panel was an almost nightmare to
draw. Some of the comments I’ve seen about the book, state that the art gets in
the way of the story or in differentiating between two characters, but that is
ridiculous.
For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.
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