Okay a big Broken Pencil apology to Jason Turner and Jesse Bochner. Last issue we compared Jason Turner’s comic Very Quiet to Jesse Bochner’s comics The Best Day Ever and They Let Me Use Their Roads as if all these comics were done by Jesse. Well, we were wrong. Very Quiet is the fine work of Jason Turner. These are slow comics drawn with a telling eye for the close-up. The best moments in these comics are, in fact, the close-ups were things happen almost without happening. Rino goes into the convience store for a bag of chips, exchanges a few friendly words with the proprietor and leaves. Almost two pages are devoted to this moment. There is a sincere peace in these comics, particularly the urban narratives, conversations held like water in the palm of the hand. The fantasy/landscape montages of number 9 are also filled with quiet moments of simplicity, but for me they become disconnected, not exactly random, but meandering as if the characters lack a cohesive desire. Number 10 marks the end of this part of Turner’s project. It ends as if it is just beginning. Maybe this is because I never read the beginning — in as much as one ‘reads’ a comic like this. But I prefer to think of this illustrated series as being formless, less concerned with beginning and ending and more concerned with understanding the way everything — even birth and death — are things that happen right here in the middle.
comic / #9, 10 / main creator: Jason Turner / publisher: Kobold Press / PO Box 623, Station P, 704 Spadina Ave., Toronto, ON, M5S 2Y4