Carl Antonowicz is an artist whose grim and formally challenging takes on horror and death haven't quite clicked because the visuals weren't quite there to suit the story's needs. Like most young cartoonists, he's starting to figure things out by playing to his strengths as a draftsman instead of overrendering. As a result, his comics are now clearer without losing any of their initial complexity. In Until The Blood Runs Black, for example, he varies his grid structure from page to page as a way of reflecting the uneven course of its main characters but keeps the character design itself simple and expressive. The only visual problem with this comic is that the line weights he uses for the characters is so fine at times that when he goes heavy into spotting blacks (which he does often), it can make whole pages look indistinct. Looking at the pages he drew where the main character tells his sidekick how he lost his birthright, meant to look like a scroll (down to the use of faux-calligraphy), it became obvious that Antonowicz's work looks best in a clear-line style The images snapped off those pages vividly.
In terms of the story, Antonowicz goes back to the laugh-filled Crusades. An indolent soldier (Bernard) and his best friend Jean start heading home, with Bernard desiring some kind of relic or treasure to buy his way back into his family. Jean is world-weary, dependable and kind. They talk their way into a Muslim woman's house for a night's rest, but Bernard steals her relic, a holy cloak that a saint used when blessing the diseased. Jean becomes possessed by the cloak, demanding repentance while his skin festers with boils and he starts attracting flies. In the end, literally no good deed goes unpunished in this pitch-black satire.
Turming Chapter 1. Antonowicz starts the story in media res, as a woman visits a nun who is content to confine herself to her room in an old castle. The nun shakes off the designation of "mother", saying "sister" will do, and that's a huge context clue for what's going on in the village. There is a new status quo in the village, as it is surrounded by some sort of malevolent force called the Miasma. It permanently disfigured the woman's (Yulienne) husband, both emotionally and physically. The nuns and families are certainly bound to the whims of the soldiers who visit, though it's obvious that both parties are interested in sex. The second half of this issue finds Yulienne at home after accepting some food from a soldier who's an occasional sexual partner. While the interesting mix of sex, politics, religion and apocalyptic imagery carries the comic, the character design is still a little shaky at times. On the other hand, Antonowicz is great at drawing buildings and depicting atmosphere. The fog that rolls in with the soldiers is drawn so quickly that you could cut it up. Conceptually, this comic and Buer's Kiss immediately made me eager to see more.
Buer's Kiss. Antonowicz dips into his (fictional) Middle Ages one more time in his most recent project. It's by far his most ambitious and assured book, as he manages to keep clarity of image while losing none of the density of his illustrations. He's more sparing in his use of blacks and even uses a lot of negative white space on some pages. This short preview sets up the ambitious larger story, which he's also adapting for the stage at the same time. That will be a "full-length staged reading...with voice actors, live foley effects and projected images". Given the quality and density of the images in the preview, I imagine this will look impressive. The story follows a woman who was given a funeral mass, which was only ceremonial as her real punishment for her sins was banishment from her village. The exact nature of her sin was not stated, but she doesn't exactly take the news with a smile, saving special anger for her husband, who will no longer even hug her goodbye. The lasting image is that of a defiant woman, breaking the crutch and alms pan she was given as she begins her journey. Everything about Antonowicz's character design and characters in action was impressive, even given a relatively small sample size.
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