Three Very Small Comics
Tom Gauld, Three Very Small Comics Volume 3 (Cabanon Press 2007)
Not quite Sun Tzu’s 6th century BC treatise, Tom Gauld’s The Art of War, drawn in his familiar style with tiny silhouetted stick figures set against enormous backdrops, offers up some pretty useful advice across its eight panels: “The way I see it… the best thing we can do… is stay behind something solid..keep our heads down… and our mouths shut… and with a bit of luck… this won’t go on too much longer.”
Gauld, one half of Cabanon Press — the other being Simone Lia — wrote the ‘Move to the City’ serial for Time Out (2001-2002) and currently illustrates the letters page for The Guardian’s Review, but it was in the now-defunct Zembla magazine that this reviewer was swept away with his drawn essay on Edward Gorey, ending with a perplexed Gauld asking, “What on earth does it all mean?”
Some of Gauld’s drawings are very reminiscent of Gorey’s — indeed the Case W (misc), which is not a comic as such but a fold-out poster, illicits much the same response as Gauld’s to Gorey — and he also shares a Gorey Zen koan anti-narrative. Others recall Chester Brown, John Porcellino or Sammy Harkham. Gardening, the longest comic of the lot, weighs in at 24 pages. A simple story of mistaken identity, and told with great subtlety, Gardening sees a not very nice king learn the values of the simple things in life while a bloody revolution rages in the background.
Presented in an 3×4 inch brown envelope, and decorated with a drawn sticker on the front, Three Very Small Comics are produced in limited numbers — the previous two volumes are now sold out, so you are best advised to get yours while you still can.
Susan Tomaselli lives in Ireland where she edits the inimitable Dogmatika and is Comics Co-Editor of 3:AM.
First published in 3:AM Magazine: Tuesday, April 10th, 2007.
