To those in the know, this isn’t news, but I recently completed (horribly, and by the skin of my teeth) my masters thesis document. Tentatively titled Halftones, Stripes & Guttersnipes: The Coincidence of Comics As High Art & Fine Literature, the 35 page document asserts that sometimes, not always, but sometimes comics can fit simultaneously in both categories. While I may one day publish that document here, or in another more appropriate location, today is not that day.
However, I would like to call your attention to the work of a gentleman who goes by the moniker of Geist in his social media escapades. Recently, Geist (real name Mark Ryan of the United Kingdom) launched a crowdfunding campaign for the first two issues of his series, The Tourist. Intrigued by the description and a predisposition to Mark’s unique and amazing art, I got in on it. Time passed, rather quickly as time does, and at last, my prize arrived. I don’t know precisely what I was expecting as I peeled open the protective plastic bag, but what I got blew those expectations out of the water and into deepest hyperspace.
What I think I like best about The Tourist is that it makes the reader a character in the story, and that story is unique to each reader. Peppered with coded text, the book reads like a vacationer’s scrapbook. However, this vacationer, or tourist, has just returned from visiting strange and foreign worlds. Geist’s line work and design aesthetics pop off the page like a language all their own. I found myself ignoring the coded text bits and just absorbing myself in the often mystifying imagery. And the narrative is what you bring to it. Your feelings on travel, vacations and recording memories are put to the test against this high contrast black and white smorgasbord of swirling ephemera.
A sampling from issue 1 of Geist’s The Tourist
Further enhancing the illusion of travel, or having traveled, my backing of this project also rewarded me with some colorful little extras. Included with issues 1 and 2 (which were both beautifully printed on excellent stock) were four bookmarks, or postcards, themselves replicas of the publisher mastheads from the first four issues of this groundbreaking series. As well, Geist was kind enough to include travel stickers. One looked rather like a passport stamp. (Full disclosure: I very nearly applied one of these stamps to my newly minted passport, but, given that I will be traveling internationally in the near future, I would prefer not to give the Swiss and Italian governments the idea that I might have contracted some extraterrestrial bug, or virus.)
In all, I was inordinately pleased with what I got, and considering the cost of printing and international shipping rates, it was quite a value (cost me around $11 US). One can read through these books very quickly, or one can take their time and get absorbed in the images, sort of like a hot tub for the eyes. I would highly recommend them to anyone who is interested in seeing what the comics medium can accomplish. In this amazingly powerful series, Geist has recognized where his strengths lie as an artist and has pushed those strengths, and the comics medium to their very limits. Think of it as a 30 page Rorschach test, but infinitely more exciting and interesting.
To bring us up to this current date though, I would be remiss not to mention that Geist has very recently begun his campaign to release issues 3 and 4. As continuation of the brilliant books I just received, I would be equally remiss not to invest in these myself, and offer up the opportunity for you, Dear Reader, to do the same. If I have enticed you to do so, you can find and invest in Geist’s holy task here.
Geist describes his work as “a different kind of comic,” which indeed it is. In my personal and intermittently but not presently humble opinion, he is doing much more than that. In much the same way that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons deconstructed the notion of the modern superhero in their now legendary Watchmen, Geist’s deconstruction of the medium is precisely what each reader makes of it. Purchasing this book you are not buying a comic book. No. Rather, you are purchasing a pry bar that will rip open the seams of your perception and interweave your own story into the crafted imagery. As the late great Hunter S. Thompson once said: "“Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
Further information on the above mentioned thesis as well as issues 3 & 4 of The Tourist will be available here at a later date. In the meantime, please visit Geist’s Kickstarter page and get a better sense of what this extraordinary series is really about. I was not paid a cent to say any of this. Truly, this is groundbreaking stuff.