How To Say Hello
Comic, Max Morris, 40 pgs, maxmorris.bigcartel.com, $10
Meeting new people is hard. After two years mostly locked in my basement, venturing out only to go to work, I think all my social graces have completely vanished. I know how to greet customers at the bookstore, but do I really know how to say hello? Not really! Thankfully, Chicago’s Max Morris does, and has compiled their knowledge into How To Say Hello, an “educational” comic that, it turns out, is the answer to all my greeting related problems.
There’s a “busyness” to Morris’s work. White spaces in their comic panels are filled in with Gary Panter-esque squiggles and lines. The figures in their illustrations have offbeat proportions and shapes, with the negative space of each of the various page colours, at times, enhancing each illustration more than they are simply ‘displaying’ them. It’s a real visual treat, with that busyness asking you to linger on each page and fully absorb it in. It almost makes you forget that this is an educational work! You’re not going to see lines like these in the “Norton Anthology of Saying Hello.”
If there’s a dent to How To Say Hello, it’s that the single colour printing denies us the treat that is Morris’s colour work, which I encourage people to seek out. Morris already has a follow-up available, How 2 Say Hello. Don’t live in Hello-related ignorance! Seek enlightenment!