The Imitation Circle: The Making Of

Belgian cartoonist Brecht Evens has carved out an interesting career to date by eschewing line and instead focusing solely on color to form that backbone of his comics. His most recent book, The Making Of (2012 Drawn & Quarterly), is a book about artists and artist wannabes (and really, everyone in this book is an artist wannabe whatever their reputation might be) where Evens differentiates them less by forms and shapes (though those are present as well in surprisingly subtle ways) and more by a particular bright watercolor. The story is a classic farce: a struggling painter, jealous of the success of his peers, is invited to a small Belgian country town to create a piece for the town's biennial celebration. His comrades for the art show are a group of amateur locals, most of whom have limited ability. As the big fish in a very small pond, the regard he gets starts to go to his head a bit as the piece he intends to create taxes the abilities and interest of his fellow artists. That's pretty much it as far as the plot goes, but Evens is always more concerned with scene and character than story.

Evens has fine comedic chops. The artist, Peterson, is pretty much constantly thwarted by life; it's as though Charlie Brown grew up to be a fine artist and somehow managed to grow an ego along the way. Going to the town of Beepoele is like that one time Charlie Brown drew the admiration of an entire summer camp's worth of kids, to his constant wonderment and even bemusement. Of course, in the case of Peterson, he eats the attention up with a spoon, as the townspeople trip over themselves to make him feel welcome. That includes a sexy teenaged girl who volunteers to document the making of their art piece through photography and is more than willing to throw herself at him. The scene where they finally hook up is deftly set up (as they leave behind Leslie, a local who has essentially become Peterson's shadow) and hilariously interrupted as a real disaster befalls their piece. Evens could have used any number of approaches to tell this story, and it still would have been funny.

However, the approach that Evens chose is what makes this book so interesting to look at. Every character is depicted with a single color, carefully brushed on to each page. Kristoff, the man running the biennial, is a nice ruddy red, which sets off his huge frame and hands nicely with dot eyes. Leslie is blue and ghostly, with an elongated head. The damaged artist Dennis is a mostly brown smudge. Peterson himself is a translucent green, and he looks elfin with his slightly pointy ears and long sideburns. Evens uses a gridless open page that allows the characters and events to flow and seep into each other. When Evens wants a hard stop or to really get the reader's attention, he suddenly pulls back and puts the characters into a dense, rich realistically painted setting. Indeed, Evens repeatedly shows the reader that the most beautiful thing in the town is the actual setting: the trees, the flowers and its people. It's very much the same principle as the common practice of using iconically drawn figures up against a realistically drawn background. Peterson is the emperor with no clothes, as his idea of a worthy project (a giant garden gnome) is denounced by a clown (!) as kitsch, before Peterson "corrects" him. The only worthwhile thing Peterson does in the whole book is calm down the artists after the gnome gets ruined and makes them feel good about their efforts. In a sense, he's trying to convince himself of this as much as he's trying to convince them.

What I like most about this book is that Evens turns the notion of art imitating life on its head in the way he depicts his characters. It's as though this comic was about the figures in a static painting coming to life and interacting with each other on page after page; eventually, the novelty of this wears off as the reader becomes completely immersed in Evens' approach. The fact that this "painting" is about artists creating art, trying to think about art and understanding how and why art is important to them further complicates that art/life circle, with the proper response (in Evens' eyes) being to do a send-up of art and artists. That said, it's a gentle and affectionate send-up, where even Peterson gets a bit of redemption. Incidentally, I thought the way he used the teenager, Cleo, was quite interesting. Far from a simple doe-eyed groupie, she has real agency as a person and in many ways is the most successful artist in the town. The final sequence of the book, where she dresses up as a flight attendant at the senior center for which she volunteers, shows her commitment and devotion to a performance that actually makes a difference. This is simply a beautiful, funny and humane book that shows Evens really showing off his chops as his style evolves and matures.

The Color of Night: The Wrong Place

Brecht Even's The Wrong Place is a simple triptych of stories about the nocturnal social adventures of two longtime friends.It's a visually stunning achievement in the way Evens uses watercolors to create his comics page, giving it a surprising amount of structure and solidity. What I like best about it is Evens' lack of judgment regarding his two protagonists, Gary and Robbie. Gary is a classic comics sad-sack loser who is desperate to be liked and loved, while Robbie leads a charmed life, creating entire social scenes simply by showing up. Robbie has a fantastic sort of naivete', flitting from person to person without entirely understanding the effect he has on them. Gary is oblivious in a different way, not entirely wanting to understand why people have no desire to be around him. They're both social mirrors: Robbie reflecting confidence, joy and spontaneity and Gary reflecting self-loathing and desperation. To be around them is to see either the best or worst in oneself, though neither seems to fully understand this as both are narcissistic in different ways.

The book's first segment sees Gary throwing a party, luring a bunch of people up to his lame event in a fifth-floor walk-up apartment. The reader slowly learns that every guest came because they though Robbie, Gary's childhood friend, would be there. In a series of hilariously awkward interactions, Gary completely fails to successfully engage any of his guests (my favorite part is when he tells one of his guests to crank up Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" as party music), keeping them at his part only because Robbie has assured him he would show up later.  When he finally doesn't show, everyone leaves. The second segment begins with a shy young woman who is hung up on Robbie going through the process of getting ready to go out to a club he likes, in hopes of seeing him. She hits the jackpot, hooking up with Robbie and getting caught up in his magical trail. Robbie is one of those rare individuals who has the power to create a magical adventure no matter where he goes, and if you're lucky enough to be picked to go with him, you get to be part of that story. The price one pays, as she learns, is that once the night is over, so is the magic. Robbie's ability to totally engage with someone and then detach completely is what makes everyone fall in love with him and follow him around, hoping that he might come around to them again.

That's what makes the third segment so interesting. Gary goes to Robbie's favorite club, and his old friend greets him warmly. While Robbie is happy to reminisce about old times, it's clear that Gary wants to bask in the glow of his friend's charisma and go on a magical adventure. Gary clearly wishes that he could have Robbie to himself all the time, though the attraction isn't a sexual one; Robbie's charisma makes straight men want to be his partner in adventure. Robbie takes him on one of these adventures, but when the time comes for Gary to jump off a balcony to get caught by a crowd like Robbie just did, he demurs. Robbie assures his friend that the crowd will catch him, but Gary doesn't do it. Part of the reason he draws back, I would guess, is that he's simply afraid to take a risk; he has no confidence in himself. There are other reasons, though: he may well think that the crowd won't catch him, because he's Gary and Robbie is Robbie. More to the point, he can pretend to be like Robbie, but in the end he can't do the things that Robbie does, and that scene is cold, hard proof. That scene is the dawning realization that he's kidding himself to think otherwise. Though Robbie urges him to push on through, he eventually lets his friend go, accepting him as he accepts everyone.

 

This book is one of the splashiest characters studies I've ever read, as Brecht uses the looseness of his watercolor approach to get expressionist and almost abstract on some pages, like the sex scene with Robbie and the girl he picks up in the second part of the book. The reader is fully pulled into the strange night world of the club, with patches of darkness being illuminated by gaudy outfits and colorful lights. The sections of the book that are devoted to characters thinking and talking about Robbie are as interesting as the Robbie segments themselves, and Evens doesn't disappoint by talking up Robbie for a chapter and a half before finally introducing him to the reader. Robbie is a tall, odd-looking person who has a simple and powerful sense of enthusiasm that others emulate because of the way he embraces life and the ease in which he negotiates every environment. One gets the sense that if he had asked to hear Jimi Hendrix at Gary's party, others would have gone along with it gladly. Evens impressively conjures up a setting where the stakes are high for its participants, even if they seem low to an outside observer. It's a period of time as a young person where one's nocturnal adventures are both a tether to youth and what gives meaning in an otherwise dull life, and Evens captures every detail along the way, both for his male and female characters.