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Reich Issue 6 Page 4 Panels 5-6
Issue 6 of Elijah Brubaker’s Reich just arrived from Sparkplug. I’ve been reading and enjoying the series since it started–one of the only serialized pamphlets I still get–but haven’t had the time to write about it. Brubaker’s got a great style, geometric, hatched and patterned, with the occasional burst of abstraction and expressionism. The story itself, a biography of Wilhelm Reich, has also proved interesting. Reich was an unusual thinker and character, and he lived in a tumultuous time (Germany in the early part of the 20th century). I wanted to share these panels (above) from the latest issue, one of the more unusual pairs of panels. The first panel shows Reich’s wife at a skewed, dynamic angle, pointing along the same angle as the abstract shapes and lines that form the background. The way she is represented is the normal way Brubaker portrays the characters, with big heads that have a geometric cut to them. Between the lack of representational background and her closed eyes, we see a transition into thought. The second panel’s composition is dynamic, proving a mix of representational figures and expressionist abstractions. Accompanying the wife’s words, her head seems to open up to display a chaos of thoughts and feelings. The abstractions in the second panel are considerably more quick and nervous than the almost dark pall that backs the first panel. Together they make a great transition that is not both technically attractive and thematically expressive.
Someday I’ll write more about the whole series. I do recommend you give it a try.
Elijah’s in the anthology!
Awesome. Another reason to look forward to the book.