{"id":1082,"date":"2007-04-10T22:00:52","date_gmt":"2007-04-10T22:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/three-very-small-comics\/"},"modified":"2007-04-10T22:23:34","modified_gmt":"2007-04-10T22:23:34","slug":"three-very-small-comics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/three-very-small-comics\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Very Small Comics<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Gauld<\/a>, Three Very Small Comics Volume 3<\/i> (Cabanon Press<\/a> 2007)<\/p>\n

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Not quite Sun Tzu’s 6th century BC treatise, Tom Gauld’s The Art of War<\/i>, 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.” <\/p>\n

Gauld, one half of Cabanon Press \u2014 the other being Simone Lia<\/a> \u2014 wrote the ‘Move to the City’ serial for Time Out<\/em> (2001-2002) and currently illustrates the letters page for The Guardian<\/em>‘s Review, but it was in the now-defunct Zembla<\/em><\/a> 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?”<\/p>\n

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Some of Gauld’s drawings are very reminiscent of Gorey’s \u2014 indeed the Case W (misc)<\/i>, which is not a comic as such but a fold-out poster, illicits much the same response as Gauld’s to Gorey \u2014 and he also shares a Gorey Zen koan anti-narrative. Others recall Chester Brown, John Porcellino or Sammy Harkham. Gardening<\/i>, the longest comic of the lot, weighs in at 24 pages. A simple story of mistaken identity, and told with great subtlety, Gardening<\/i> sees a not very nice king learn the values of the simple things in life while a bloody revolution rages in the background.<\/p>\n

Presented in an 3×4 inch brown envelope, and decorated with a drawn sticker on the front, Three Very Small Comics<\/i> are produced in limited numbers \u2014 the previous two volumes are now sold out, so you are best advised to get yours while you still can.<\/p>\n

ABOUT THE REVIEWER<\/strong>
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Susan Tomaselli<\/strong> lives in Ireland where she edits the inimitable Dogmatika<\/strong><\/em><\/a> and is Comics Co-Editor of 3:AM<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"ap-gauld.jpg\"Gauld, one half of Cabanon Press \u2013 the other being Simone Lia \u2013 wrote the ‘Move to the City’ serial for Time Out<\/em> (2001-2002) and currently illustrates the letters page for The Guardian<\/em>‘s Review, but it was in the now-defunct Zembla<\/em> 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?”<\/p>\n

\nSusan Tomaselli<\/b> renews our love affair with Tom Gauld<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}