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Sin Titulo
Following the death of his grandfather, young Alex Mackay discovers a mysterious photograph in the old man's belongings that sets him on an adventure like no other—where dreams and reality merge, family secrets are laid bare, and lives are irrevocably altered.
CAMERON STEWART’S EISNER AWARD-WINNING WEBCOMIC!
*The complete webcomic in one volume.
*Neo noir mystery thriller with semiautobiographical elements.
CAMERON STEWART’S EISNER AWARD-WINNING WEBCOMIC!
*The complete webcomic in one volume.
*Neo noir mystery thriller with semiautobiographical elements.
168 pages, Hardcover
First published June 11, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 107 reviews
November 9, 2015
“When someone in World-Building presents you a summary of their world, trace back the inspirations and influences and treat their world only as a combination of those sources.”
[Panels from “Adel’s Return” in Spera, vol 3]
In the third volume of Josh Tierney’s Spera, the author concludes with a short story, “Adel’s Return,” a bit of a coda in which Tierney (among other things) explores briefly the nature of the worlds we create versus those who would hope to diminish those worlds. His investigation develops via an in-narrative couple of high school classes, World-Building and World-Breaking (both introductory courses). World-Building is the province of the idealists and World-Breaking belongs to the cynics. World-Building is the whole output of the creative and imaginative self, in which a builder invests their lives and experiences, everything they are. World-Breaking is merely a set of tricks, illusions by which the cynic might chip away at the value of anything another creates. “Adel’s Return” is a cool chapter in the middle of a cool series and flirts thematically with what I see going on in Cameron Stewart’s Sin Titulo. Serendipitous that I read them in the same week then, right?
One of the things about worldbuilding we don’t often recognize is that it’s only tacitly the province of fantasy and sci-fi authors. Tolkien and Bradbury and Dick and Rowling and Martin are only showing us their amateur efforts in their novels. At the end of the day, a world you give a name is a world you’ve written off as one of your lesser creations. The real deals are those worlds that we continue to build and hone and craft across the landscape of our whole lives. We never think to name these because, really, what’s in a name? A cheap taxonomy? A way of excluding all the glorious and vibrant details? A commodification of our imaginative selves? Genuine worldbuilding is the cosmos we create and recreate with every waking experience—and a good number of those that ricochet through the meat of our subconciouses, informing our dreams and learning from the same. Genuine worldbuilding is not Middle Earth or Hogwarts or Westeros or Earthsea or whichever other podunk barely realized fantasy realm we’re so fond of. The real-deal worldbuilding takes place in every moment in the heads of every person across the globe. Billions and billions of worlds being constructed by the minute with a fidelity and complexity never imagined by any of the inhabitants of our favourite published fictions. It’s the unnamed, unpublished fictions that are the real majesties of the human creative spirit—only we’re so velocitized to their presence that we forget how incredible they are.
It’s in the connections that you and I forge between ourselves and the objects around us (whether animate or inanimate) that we develop the story of the world. The relationships that we draw up and then (magnificently) prove, whether between human or animal or vegetable or mineral or—most elusive of all—ideological, are fictions we craft to lend credibility to a universe that is plainly beyond the scope of any of our powers to comprehend. And because we are each of us so adept at worldbuilding, at composing a believable circumstance in which the stories of our lives might unravel themselves, we never blink at the suspension of disbelief that goes on when we do simple things like pay for gum in a supermarket line. Or when we attend a class on macroeconomics that we’re merely auditing. Or when we watch a Youtube parody of Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s published story version of a storyworld that he created long before he refined it for the page. We’re so talented that we would never dream of couching our interaction with the world in terms of suspended disbelief. It’s only when our worldbuilding conflicts with the builded worlds of those around us that we encounter dissonance.[1]
So yeah, worldbuilding is serious, big-deal stuff. It’s also so completely normal and average that we almost safely ignore it completely and only use the term to describe its lesser cousins, fantasy worldbuilding and science-fiction worldbuilding. Cameron Stewart hints at this not-quite-subterranean sense of world creation in Sin Titulo. That he does so through thoroughly science-fictional terms does little to dilute his comic's exploration of the worlds we craft for ourselves. The book doubles as both a mind-bending, reality-melting thriller and a discussion of what it means to build worlds (in any of its senses).
I probably might not have come to think of Stewart’s story in this way had I not sat and puzzled over the purpose of the book’s title, Without Title, sin titulo. What kind of works are the ones that remain untitled? Either the pretentious ones or the ones that seek most baldly to engage the viewer, reader, listener, or audience. Presuming that Stewart’s work is not pretentious (a preference and presumption I’m willing to extend simply for how beautifully composed his artwork is), that means that Stewart wants us to think more about his work than what he’s laid out most plainly in the map of his panels and in the legend found in his bubbles. He hopes his readers will depart from the trail, explore a little, forge a path through the underbrush of his story. I mean, obviously I’m guessing here. But I think the clues are there.[2]
As the bulk of Stewart’s discussion of worldbuilding occurs in his climactic, expository finale, I’ll demur from speaking too specifically. The author does discuss the difference between worldbuilding and true worldbuilding, founding his argument on a sort of embellishment of the Platonic forms. He posits that the true artist’s concern is with creating reality rather than imitating it. In a way, we could read this as a dismissal of Tolkien-esque worldbuilding and a promotion of the kind of reality-forging that takes place in you and I in every moment. He doesn’t stop there and I’m not sure he or his characters would be entirely comfortable with this reading, but that’s the story within his story that affected me—the story of several characters trying to build realities in which they won’t be sickened by themselves and their weaknesses. A story that somewhat exists as pedagogy, a nudge to the reader toward an existence in which the stories we create for our lives eliminate our weakest selves and one in which our histories are not our fault.
It’s a neat trick Stewart devises and it’s well told. I’m not sure how ultimately convincing it is, but I’m also not sure it’s intended to be that kind of a tract. Rather, Stewart leaves breadcrumbs to discussions that will be had outside his work—discussions in critical forums, bookclubs, classrooms, and in the space that exists between spouses and their conversation while driving to dinner on a Sunday evening. Sin Titulo, actually, is almost the perfect bookclub novel. Under two hundred pages, sitting squarely in the John-Warner-coined genre of the white, male fuck-up novel, and fraught and teeming with those kinds of interpretive hooks that lead to high anxiety frenzy and argument in the better bookclubs that dot the national landscape. It’s a book about social anxiety, severed relationships, love and its absence, second chances, and the means to constructing a life that will be, at last, worthwhile and whole. Stewart’s built something rather beautiful (for all its ugly bits) and even if I’m reading it entirely wrongly, I’m happy to be a part of the mythos that it develops.
__________
I’d never read a book entirely composed by Cameron Stewart, and for all I know this may have been his first solo comics work. Whatever the case, Sin Titulo is a lovely production. The pages, while long and squat, hold bold and thick-lined panels filled with dynamic art—made moreso by the choice to use a taste of burlap for the book’s only shader, earthy and monochromatic. The paneling sits in a uniform four-by-two grid (though here I’ve only reproduced rows of three for legibility reasons, and I don’t wish to spoil any story surprises). Sin Titulo's cover gives up one of its greatest images, the recurrent lone tree, but at a certain point when the motif breaks from format, I found myself caught unguarded by its forceful presence. Again, lovely work.
Different readers will appreciate Stewart’s narrative more or less than each other, and probably across a great range. Its twisting nature is of the kind that especially appeals to college-aged men who delight in those mind-blowing what-is-real-anyway stories like The Matrix, Donnie Darko, The Thirteenth Floor, and Dark City.[3] Readers less enamoured with that particular trope may find themselves struggling over whether the narrative earns its conclusion. It’s one of those stories that has a thousand dangling threads twenty pages before its final page and then neatly ties them up with a bunch of people standing around talking exposition. That works within the tradition Stewart’s engaging here, but non-fans could be frustrated by what they might (I think unfairly) categorize as a Scooby-Doo Ending.
And at any rate, all this just builds on Sin Titulo's value as a great bookclub choice. Bookclubbers will have tons of fun drinking too much mulled wine and arguing about the book’s titlelessness and which character is the worldbreaker[4] and which girl they ship for poor Alex and whether he deserves anyone. Someone get Oprah on the line.[5]
_______
[Review courtesy of Good Ok Bad.]
_______
Footnotes
1) And from there come the frustrations and fights and divorces and murders and wars which comprise the bulk of both our nightly news and our entertainment.
2) Plus, I have a double ear infection so all sorts of things make sense that might not otherwise coalesce. I feel like I might actually be magic right now.
3) All movies that I have enjoyed, fyi.
4) I mean, if they’ve read Spera vol 3 maybe?
5) I don’t know. Does she even still do a bookclub? I haven’t seen those gold seals in a while, but since the Borders closed up in my town, I haven’t really gotten out to brick-and-mortar (do they still use brick and mortar?) bookstores in ages.
[Panels from “Adel’s Return” in Spera, vol 3]
In the third volume of Josh Tierney’s Spera, the author concludes with a short story, “Adel’s Return,” a bit of a coda in which Tierney (among other things) explores briefly the nature of the worlds we create versus those who would hope to diminish those worlds. His investigation develops via an in-narrative couple of high school classes, World-Building and World-Breaking (both introductory courses). World-Building is the province of the idealists and World-Breaking belongs to the cynics. World-Building is the whole output of the creative and imaginative self, in which a builder invests their lives and experiences, everything they are. World-Breaking is merely a set of tricks, illusions by which the cynic might chip away at the value of anything another creates. “Adel’s Return” is a cool chapter in the middle of a cool series and flirts thematically with what I see going on in Cameron Stewart’s Sin Titulo. Serendipitous that I read them in the same week then, right?
One of the things about worldbuilding we don’t often recognize is that it’s only tacitly the province of fantasy and sci-fi authors. Tolkien and Bradbury and Dick and Rowling and Martin are only showing us their amateur efforts in their novels. At the end of the day, a world you give a name is a world you’ve written off as one of your lesser creations. The real deals are those worlds that we continue to build and hone and craft across the landscape of our whole lives. We never think to name these because, really, what’s in a name? A cheap taxonomy? A way of excluding all the glorious and vibrant details? A commodification of our imaginative selves? Genuine worldbuilding is the cosmos we create and recreate with every waking experience—and a good number of those that ricochet through the meat of our subconciouses, informing our dreams and learning from the same. Genuine worldbuilding is not Middle Earth or Hogwarts or Westeros or Earthsea or whichever other podunk barely realized fantasy realm we’re so fond of. The real-deal worldbuilding takes place in every moment in the heads of every person across the globe. Billions and billions of worlds being constructed by the minute with a fidelity and complexity never imagined by any of the inhabitants of our favourite published fictions. It’s the unnamed, unpublished fictions that are the real majesties of the human creative spirit—only we’re so velocitized to their presence that we forget how incredible they are.
It’s in the connections that you and I forge between ourselves and the objects around us (whether animate or inanimate) that we develop the story of the world. The relationships that we draw up and then (magnificently) prove, whether between human or animal or vegetable or mineral or—most elusive of all—ideological, are fictions we craft to lend credibility to a universe that is plainly beyond the scope of any of our powers to comprehend. And because we are each of us so adept at worldbuilding, at composing a believable circumstance in which the stories of our lives might unravel themselves, we never blink at the suspension of disbelief that goes on when we do simple things like pay for gum in a supermarket line. Or when we attend a class on macroeconomics that we’re merely auditing. Or when we watch a Youtube parody of Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s published story version of a storyworld that he created long before he refined it for the page. We’re so talented that we would never dream of couching our interaction with the world in terms of suspended disbelief. It’s only when our worldbuilding conflicts with the builded worlds of those around us that we encounter dissonance.[1]
So yeah, worldbuilding is serious, big-deal stuff. It’s also so completely normal and average that we almost safely ignore it completely and only use the term to describe its lesser cousins, fantasy worldbuilding and science-fiction worldbuilding. Cameron Stewart hints at this not-quite-subterranean sense of world creation in Sin Titulo. That he does so through thoroughly science-fictional terms does little to dilute his comic's exploration of the worlds we craft for ourselves. The book doubles as both a mind-bending, reality-melting thriller and a discussion of what it means to build worlds (in any of its senses).
I probably might not have come to think of Stewart’s story in this way had I not sat and puzzled over the purpose of the book’s title, Without Title, sin titulo. What kind of works are the ones that remain untitled? Either the pretentious ones or the ones that seek most baldly to engage the viewer, reader, listener, or audience. Presuming that Stewart’s work is not pretentious (a preference and presumption I’m willing to extend simply for how beautifully composed his artwork is), that means that Stewart wants us to think more about his work than what he’s laid out most plainly in the map of his panels and in the legend found in his bubbles. He hopes his readers will depart from the trail, explore a little, forge a path through the underbrush of his story. I mean, obviously I’m guessing here. But I think the clues are there.[2]
As the bulk of Stewart’s discussion of worldbuilding occurs in his climactic, expository finale, I’ll demur from speaking too specifically. The author does discuss the difference between worldbuilding and true worldbuilding, founding his argument on a sort of embellishment of the Platonic forms. He posits that the true artist’s concern is with creating reality rather than imitating it. In a way, we could read this as a dismissal of Tolkien-esque worldbuilding and a promotion of the kind of reality-forging that takes place in you and I in every moment. He doesn’t stop there and I’m not sure he or his characters would be entirely comfortable with this reading, but that’s the story within his story that affected me—the story of several characters trying to build realities in which they won’t be sickened by themselves and their weaknesses. A story that somewhat exists as pedagogy, a nudge to the reader toward an existence in which the stories we create for our lives eliminate our weakest selves and one in which our histories are not our fault.
It’s a neat trick Stewart devises and it’s well told. I’m not sure how ultimately convincing it is, but I’m also not sure it’s intended to be that kind of a tract. Rather, Stewart leaves breadcrumbs to discussions that will be had outside his work—discussions in critical forums, bookclubs, classrooms, and in the space that exists between spouses and their conversation while driving to dinner on a Sunday evening. Sin Titulo, actually, is almost the perfect bookclub novel. Under two hundred pages, sitting squarely in the John-Warner-coined genre of the white, male fuck-up novel, and fraught and teeming with those kinds of interpretive hooks that lead to high anxiety frenzy and argument in the better bookclubs that dot the national landscape. It’s a book about social anxiety, severed relationships, love and its absence, second chances, and the means to constructing a life that will be, at last, worthwhile and whole. Stewart’s built something rather beautiful (for all its ugly bits) and even if I’m reading it entirely wrongly, I’m happy to be a part of the mythos that it develops.
__________
I’d never read a book entirely composed by Cameron Stewart, and for all I know this may have been his first solo comics work. Whatever the case, Sin Titulo is a lovely production. The pages, while long and squat, hold bold and thick-lined panels filled with dynamic art—made moreso by the choice to use a taste of burlap for the book’s only shader, earthy and monochromatic. The paneling sits in a uniform four-by-two grid (though here I’ve only reproduced rows of three for legibility reasons, and I don’t wish to spoil any story surprises). Sin Titulo's cover gives up one of its greatest images, the recurrent lone tree, but at a certain point when the motif breaks from format, I found myself caught unguarded by its forceful presence. Again, lovely work.
Different readers will appreciate Stewart’s narrative more or less than each other, and probably across a great range. Its twisting nature is of the kind that especially appeals to college-aged men who delight in those mind-blowing what-is-real-anyway stories like The Matrix, Donnie Darko, The Thirteenth Floor, and Dark City.[3] Readers less enamoured with that particular trope may find themselves struggling over whether the narrative earns its conclusion. It’s one of those stories that has a thousand dangling threads twenty pages before its final page and then neatly ties them up with a bunch of people standing around talking exposition. That works within the tradition Stewart’s engaging here, but non-fans could be frustrated by what they might (I think unfairly) categorize as a Scooby-Doo Ending.
And at any rate, all this just builds on Sin Titulo's value as a great bookclub choice. Bookclubbers will have tons of fun drinking too much mulled wine and arguing about the book’s titlelessness and which character is the worldbreaker[4] and which girl they ship for poor Alex and whether he deserves anyone. Someone get Oprah on the line.[5]
_______
[Review courtesy of Good Ok Bad.]
_______
Footnotes
1) And from there come the frustrations and fights and divorces and murders and wars which comprise the bulk of both our nightly news and our entertainment.
2) Plus, I have a double ear infection so all sorts of things make sense that might not otherwise coalesce. I feel like I might actually be magic right now.
3) All movies that I have enjoyed, fyi.
4) I mean, if they’ve read Spera vol 3 maybe?
5) I don’t know. Does she even still do a bookclub? I haven’t seen those gold seals in a while, but since the Borders closed up in my town, I haven’t really gotten out to brick-and-mortar (do they still use brick and mortar?) bookstores in ages.
July 18, 2013
Alex Mackay visits his grandpa at a nursing home only to discover he’s been dead for over a month! He begins looking through his grandpa’s leftover belongings and chances upon a photo of the old fella with a mysterious blonde wearing shades. As Alex looks deeper into the identity of the lady and what her relationship to his grandpa was, his journey will take him down a very twisty rabbit hole and possibly even another dimension – but will he survive?
I was looking forward to Cameron Stewart’s Sin Titulo as I love his art from books like Jason Aaron’s The Other Side and Grant Morrison’s Batman, but was apprehensive as great artists rarely make great writers. Such is the case with Sin Titulo except it’s not badly written, it’s just that the storytelling is so scattershot that it makes reading this a flummoxing experience and I think it’s because Stewart’s not a good enough writer (yet) to make all the pieces fit in a way that works best.
Stewart keeps things lively by chucking in lots of David Lynchian quirks to the plot as Alex follows a repulsive male nurse from his grandpa’s nursing home to discover a strange building filled with rooms in which are a telephone and monitor upon which the mysterious blonde lady with shades appears. The story is peppered with flashbacks from Alex’s childhood (many of which Stewart says are autobiographical) as he recalls his parents fighting the night he injures himself falling down the stairs only for his abusive father to take his frustration out on his alcoholic grandpa who’s dozing nearby. Other memories include a childhood nightmare monster hiding behind the furniture and the time an older woman in the office he worked in propositioned him during an office party.
The haunting image of the idyllic empty beach where stands a lone tree repeats through the text as Alex meets other characters who are also familiar with the scene despite it appearing only in his dreams. Other odd images like the blindfolded butler, the blackouts, the coincidence following coincidence, the character who explodes for no reason(!), and the warping between realities all make Sin Titulo an interesting read but frustratingly hard to get a handle on. So many storylines never go anywhere and moments in the plot make no sense, like Alex – injured- leaps out of a four storey window and lands in a bush unharmed only to coincidentally meet a man who turns out to be the husband of the mysterious blonde woman and relentlessly draws the beach and tree scene.
The problem with setting up so many bizarre plot threads and characters reveals itself when Stewart tries to explain some of them in an effort to tie the story together into something cohesive and meaningful. He does this via a character similar to the Architect at the end of the Matrix Reloaded where one of the last scenes in the book is just an extra-long speech where Alex asks a question and receives a long-winded explanation. The final part of the book is unbearably overburdened with exposition while the final page itself is anticlimactic and forgettable.
The book reminded me of the kind of stuff Charles Burns is doing at the moment with his X’Ed Out series which are weird and wonderful books that make a chaotic kind of sense. The reason I don’t feel the same way about Stewart’s book is that there are simply too many plot holes that make me think that Stewart lost his grip on the story at some point and couldn’t quite recover it after. It’s not that I didn’t understand the story entirely – the “life is what you make it” line at the end pretty much sums it up - but I think if one were to study the book more deeply, that it wouldn’t make much sense purely because so much is unexplained to the point that entire sequences don’t add up. Couple that with the depressing story filled with miserable, angry people and the unimpressive conclusion, none of which make the prospect of repeat readings necessary to figure out if there are deeper meanings, and Sin Titulo becomes much less than the sum of its parts.
I’d say it’s worth a look if only for the great art and sense of mystery as the bizarre plot unfolds, just don’t expect to come away understanding much – if not all – of what transpired. Sin Titulo is interesting at times but is overall an unsatisfying and obtuse read.
I was looking forward to Cameron Stewart’s Sin Titulo as I love his art from books like Jason Aaron’s The Other Side and Grant Morrison’s Batman, but was apprehensive as great artists rarely make great writers. Such is the case with Sin Titulo except it’s not badly written, it’s just that the storytelling is so scattershot that it makes reading this a flummoxing experience and I think it’s because Stewart’s not a good enough writer (yet) to make all the pieces fit in a way that works best.
Stewart keeps things lively by chucking in lots of David Lynchian quirks to the plot as Alex follows a repulsive male nurse from his grandpa’s nursing home to discover a strange building filled with rooms in which are a telephone and monitor upon which the mysterious blonde lady with shades appears. The story is peppered with flashbacks from Alex’s childhood (many of which Stewart says are autobiographical) as he recalls his parents fighting the night he injures himself falling down the stairs only for his abusive father to take his frustration out on his alcoholic grandpa who’s dozing nearby. Other memories include a childhood nightmare monster hiding behind the furniture and the time an older woman in the office he worked in propositioned him during an office party.
The haunting image of the idyllic empty beach where stands a lone tree repeats through the text as Alex meets other characters who are also familiar with the scene despite it appearing only in his dreams. Other odd images like the blindfolded butler, the blackouts, the coincidence following coincidence, the character who explodes for no reason(!), and the warping between realities all make Sin Titulo an interesting read but frustratingly hard to get a handle on. So many storylines never go anywhere and moments in the plot make no sense, like Alex – injured- leaps out of a four storey window and lands in a bush unharmed only to coincidentally meet a man who turns out to be the husband of the mysterious blonde woman and relentlessly draws the beach and tree scene.
The problem with setting up so many bizarre plot threads and characters reveals itself when Stewart tries to explain some of them in an effort to tie the story together into something cohesive and meaningful. He does this via a character similar to the Architect at the end of the Matrix Reloaded where one of the last scenes in the book is just an extra-long speech where Alex asks a question and receives a long-winded explanation. The final part of the book is unbearably overburdened with exposition while the final page itself is anticlimactic and forgettable.
The book reminded me of the kind of stuff Charles Burns is doing at the moment with his X’Ed Out series which are weird and wonderful books that make a chaotic kind of sense. The reason I don’t feel the same way about Stewart’s book is that there are simply too many plot holes that make me think that Stewart lost his grip on the story at some point and couldn’t quite recover it after. It’s not that I didn’t understand the story entirely – the “life is what you make it” line at the end pretty much sums it up - but I think if one were to study the book more deeply, that it wouldn’t make much sense purely because so much is unexplained to the point that entire sequences don’t add up. Couple that with the depressing story filled with miserable, angry people and the unimpressive conclusion, none of which make the prospect of repeat readings necessary to figure out if there are deeper meanings, and Sin Titulo becomes much less than the sum of its parts.
I’d say it’s worth a look if only for the great art and sense of mystery as the bizarre plot unfolds, just don’t expect to come away understanding much – if not all – of what transpired. Sin Titulo is interesting at times but is overall an unsatisfying and obtuse read.
September 5, 2018
When I copped Cameron Stuart’s Sin Titulo, I was immediately grasped by the title. With some training in the Spanish language, I gleefully (if not reductively) translated it as, “without [a] title.” Although the Google Translate results have shown that I’m right (more or less), whether or not you know an iota of Spanish, the eponymously emblazoned Sin Titulo cannot be decoded from its title alone.
Interestingly enough (Abre los Ojos) a companion piece (of the A&V variety) and it’s spiritual successor (The Matrix) both have been clearly pillaged here for referential effect. Sharing a visual and intertextual veneer with another complimentary source (Inception), a highly choppy and heavily overwrought cerebrally realigned mobius strip consisting of multiple strands finds itself uncoiled and recoiled unto a caduceus of the seen and unseen variety. Much like Lapham’s quasi-noir Po-Mo offering Stray Bullets
, Stewart’s creation veers way too far into the realm of the experimental. And clearly, without a predetermined end point of sorts, fine grains of unseen gossamer find themselves tossed into the machinery of the narrative, to it’s detrimental effect.
On the flip side, like yet another spiritual cousin of sorts, Mazzuchelli’s Asterios Polyp , too takes a dream-world/heady trip unto a far greater pleasant undertaking. Talent and judicious applications of the chop up style were utilized to far greater effect. Here, a drab pallet consisting only of dark green, black and greys ensconces an equally snipped (up) story that has been re-glued in all the wrong places. Bordering on the realm of the excessive, a dearth of chapters or any chronological demarcation (which are both present in Pulp Fiction and Stray Bullets) leave the product bloated and difficult to decode amongst it’s fleshy labyrinths.
If the Minotaur of Crete and Damocles of Syracuse were to combine first and unleash second their martial prowess upon the realm of artistry, Cameron Stewart’s unaptly titled, Sin Titulo could have found itself in a salutarily pruned situation. Yet, with a single (not-so-smooth) operator operating not-so-correctly, a creation that is far more in love with itself than could ever be enjoyed without, falls into it’s own Narcissistic trap. With lungs deluged by the product, we too are drowning with Cameron.
Kind of difficult to enjoy when you’re drowning. X_X
Interestingly enough (Abre los Ojos) a companion piece (of the A&V variety) and it’s spiritual successor (The Matrix) both have been clearly pillaged here for referential effect. Sharing a visual and intertextual veneer with another complimentary source (Inception), a highly choppy and heavily overwrought cerebrally realigned mobius strip consisting of multiple strands finds itself uncoiled and recoiled unto a caduceus of the seen and unseen variety. Much like Lapham’s quasi-noir Po-Mo offering Stray Bullets
, Stewart’s creation veers way too far into the realm of the experimental. And clearly, without a predetermined end point of sorts, fine grains of unseen gossamer find themselves tossed into the machinery of the narrative, to it’s detrimental effect.
On the flip side, like yet another spiritual cousin of sorts, Mazzuchelli’s Asterios Polyp , too takes a dream-world/heady trip unto a far greater pleasant undertaking. Talent and judicious applications of the chop up style were utilized to far greater effect. Here, a drab pallet consisting only of dark green, black and greys ensconces an equally snipped (up) story that has been re-glued in all the wrong places. Bordering on the realm of the excessive, a dearth of chapters or any chronological demarcation (which are both present in Pulp Fiction and Stray Bullets) leave the product bloated and difficult to decode amongst it’s fleshy labyrinths.
If the Minotaur of Crete and Damocles of Syracuse were to combine first and unleash second their martial prowess upon the realm of artistry, Cameron Stewart’s unaptly titled, Sin Titulo could have found itself in a salutarily pruned situation. Yet, with a single (not-so-smooth) operator operating not-so-correctly, a creation that is far more in love with itself than could ever be enjoyed without, falls into it’s own Narcissistic trap. With lungs deluged by the product, we too are drowning with Cameron.
Kind of difficult to enjoy when you’re drowning. X_X
Read
August 29, 2017This is one of those great surrealist stories that eludes direct interpretation. I always had a sense of what the book was gesturing towards: reality, unreality, creation, destruction, art as invention, art as translation...I could never fully grasp it or put it into words but I knew that it was there and was touching upon a nerve of truth within me.
I loved it all, even if the final info-dump was a tad rushed. It would have been better if this information was spaced out a little more, or if the comic had just been longer and the ending was given more time to breath. Oh well.
The art was wonderful and fit the tone perfectly. Every panel conveyed a palpable sense of unease. I'm new to graphic novels, but I'm confident that this will remain a favourite.
I loved it all, even if the final info-dump was a tad rushed. It would have been better if this information was spaced out a little more, or if the comic had just been longer and the ending was given more time to breath. Oh well.
The art was wonderful and fit the tone perfectly. Every panel conveyed a palpable sense of unease. I'm new to graphic novels, but I'm confident that this will remain a favourite.
August 12, 2014
This is a tale that draws on surrealism, dream state, the reality vs fiction divide, the nature of art, horror, noir and autobiography (Stewart says some of what transpires in his graphic novel actually happened to him) to create a pretty satisfying mix. Reminds me of Bunuel, Kafka, Lynch, as events spiral out of control… only to be explained in some sense by a guy near the end who probably works a little too hard and long to tell us what the tale is about. Still, I say again, I liked it. The art is great, and the story, which is not meant be "realistic" in any conventional sense, makes us care about this guy who might be seen to be in a life crisis, at a turning point where he is required to figure out how to make sense of his life. He loses his grandfather, his girlfriend, his job, his grip on reality… Lots of strange things happen that make the logic of the tale more dream than straightforward biography, but that makes it interesting,
February 1, 2022
david Lynch filmi gibi çizgi roman.
September 19, 2018
Intenzivni mysteriozni surrealisticka jizda ktera ma vse, tedy schazi tomu nejaky dobry zaver. Ten sam o sobe vyznel stylem ze se autor snazi na posledni chvili vse poslepovat a tak tam hodil chlapka co ma radoby hluboky dusevni monolog.
Az na to, jsem si to uzil a bylo to i, ujete, snove a proste...
Pokud hledate Surrealisticky Thriller, tak tohle zkuste.
Az na to, jsem si to uzil a bylo to i, ujete, snove a proste...
Pokud hledate Surrealisticky Thriller, tak tohle zkuste.
January 3, 2025
Idk so weird and I'm scared now
July 19, 2013
ARC provided by NetGalley
This is the collected volume of the Eisner award winning webcomic.
After the death of his grandfather, Alex Mackay discovers a mysterious photograph of a young woman with him...a young woman that Alex doesn't know. This photo leads Alex on a journey to discover who she is and down a rabbit hole that he never intended to enter. A rabbit hole where dreams and reality merge together and secrets are revealed...secrets that should never have been brought to light. And lives are changed forever.
This is the first time I've read/seen Cameron's work and I have to say I was quite impressed with the artwork in the story. The line drawings are deceptively simple in that on the surface they just seem to capture the shape of the character, but as you look closer you see such amazing depth, the wrinkles on a person's face, the details in the clothes...it's just fantastic to see. Cameron is also a master of using a simple color tone palette, with white, black, and brown. It helps create this gorgeous depth to the images, such as on page 14 where we see Alex sweating and the shadows are created by the light brown color and a beam of light shines out, it's just gorgeous.
The writing on the other hand...leaves a bit to be desired sometimes, as sometimes the pieces of the story just don't seem to fit well together, which is a problem when you're moving through multiple timelines. Don't get me wrong, the character are compelling as we try to discover the meaning of the picture and the woman, but as we move towards the climax of the story it just seems like the multiple layers of the story start collapsing in on itself. For example, we've got a man that explodes for apparently no reason, Alex jumps out of a window and manages to meet the husband of the woman that he's looking for who draws the same scene over and over, but we never really find out why. It's like the threads unravel in various places, or we're not getting all of the story. The last part of the book where Cameron attempts to explain everything, just becomes rather longwinded as it's one character (like a narrator) telling Alex what's going on and it just doesn't quite work well.
This seems to be the first story that Cameron wrote and published himself (at least from what I can tell from Google) so I can give him a bit of leeway in that he was trying to make this first story a great one. And it has it's moments, but...it just leaves too many unanswered questions for me and I wanted a bit more. I look forward to seeing what Cameron writes next, as I'm sure he'll continue to improve. I give this 3.5 out of 5 stars.
This is the collected volume of the Eisner award winning webcomic.
After the death of his grandfather, Alex Mackay discovers a mysterious photograph of a young woman with him...a young woman that Alex doesn't know. This photo leads Alex on a journey to discover who she is and down a rabbit hole that he never intended to enter. A rabbit hole where dreams and reality merge together and secrets are revealed...secrets that should never have been brought to light. And lives are changed forever.
This is the first time I've read/seen Cameron's work and I have to say I was quite impressed with the artwork in the story. The line drawings are deceptively simple in that on the surface they just seem to capture the shape of the character, but as you look closer you see such amazing depth, the wrinkles on a person's face, the details in the clothes...it's just fantastic to see. Cameron is also a master of using a simple color tone palette, with white, black, and brown. It helps create this gorgeous depth to the images, such as on page 14 where we see Alex sweating and the shadows are created by the light brown color and a beam of light shines out, it's just gorgeous.
The writing on the other hand...leaves a bit to be desired sometimes, as sometimes the pieces of the story just don't seem to fit well together, which is a problem when you're moving through multiple timelines. Don't get me wrong, the character are compelling as we try to discover the meaning of the picture and the woman, but as we move towards the climax of the story it just seems like the multiple layers of the story start collapsing in on itself. For example, we've got a man that explodes for apparently no reason, Alex jumps out of a window and manages to meet the husband of the woman that he's looking for who draws the same scene over and over, but we never really find out why. It's like the threads unravel in various places, or we're not getting all of the story. The last part of the book where Cameron attempts to explain everything, just becomes rather longwinded as it's one character (like a narrator) telling Alex what's going on and it just doesn't quite work well.
This seems to be the first story that Cameron wrote and published himself (at least from what I can tell from Google) so I can give him a bit of leeway in that he was trying to make this first story a great one. And it has it's moments, but...it just leaves too many unanswered questions for me and I wanted a bit more. I look forward to seeing what Cameron writes next, as I'm sure he'll continue to improve. I give this 3.5 out of 5 stars.
December 22, 2013
In Cameron Stewart's Sin Titulo, Alex Mackay finds himself in a living nightmare. The kind you might find in a David Lynch movie. Strange and nightmarish events descend on Alex's life and culminate in a surreal ending.
When Alex's grandfather dies, Alex finds a strange picture of a young blonde woman in his grandfather's belongings. When he sees the same woman at the funeral, he pursues and then loses her. The mystery deepens and he finds his life being turned upside down. He makes allies and enemies along the way. A homeless man who is frightening. A man who paints the same scene over and over again. It culminates enigmatically, and perfectly.
Art and story by Cameron Stewart are brilliant. Using only 3 colors for the entire book, the panels have a film noir style. The story is strange and horrifying, and I enjoyed the ride.
I was given a review copy of this graphic novel by Diamond Book Distributors and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for letting me review this strange and wonderful graphic novel.
When Alex's grandfather dies, Alex finds a strange picture of a young blonde woman in his grandfather's belongings. When he sees the same woman at the funeral, he pursues and then loses her. The mystery deepens and he finds his life being turned upside down. He makes allies and enemies along the way. A homeless man who is frightening. A man who paints the same scene over and over again. It culminates enigmatically, and perfectly.
Art and story by Cameron Stewart are brilliant. Using only 3 colors for the entire book, the panels have a film noir style. The story is strange and horrifying, and I enjoyed the ride.
I was given a review copy of this graphic novel by Diamond Book Distributors and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for letting me review this strange and wonderful graphic novel.
October 31, 2016
I'd been meaning to read this for a while, and I'm glad I did, since it's quite good. It's a strange noir story with surreal elements and an interesting metaphysical plot, but it works best as an experience, a series of odd things happening to some guy after he discovers some secrets related to his recently-deceased grandfather and starts having recurring dreams and meeting sinister characters. It's one of those stories where all manner of craziness keeps happening, with each new twist digging the character a bit deeper into a life-changing world he never knew existed. This sort of thing can end up being unsatisfying, since it's hard to come up with an explanation that justifies everything that happened, but Cameron Stewart sticks the landing pretty well, I think, and he builds such a great world through his excellent art that the whole thing makes for a compelling, creepy, thought-provoking experience. I liked this one a lot.
February 25, 2015
Very Lost-ish twisty-turny, rabbit-hole story, beautifully illustrated.
I wanted it to make a little more sense, but that could be my own taste/preferences. I'd love to see what Stewart did with a more realistic story.
I wanted it to make a little more sense, but that could be my own taste/preferences. I'd love to see what Stewart did with a more realistic story.
March 9, 2014
Frickin' *****MIND-BLOWN!*****
Wow!
Wow!
October 2, 2016
I thought this had really cool potential but it lost me in the end. Definitely a cool idea, I just wish it had been expressed a little more clearly.
April 15, 2014
This review will be divided into a general and a signposted Spoilers section. It is written from the perspective of a writer/artist (me, I do a comic called Moth City, not a pro reviewer.
Sin Titulo (ST) is a rollicking crime adventure that grabs you by the lapels before taking your off-road into a mysterious world of memory, imagination and obsession. While for me it doesn’t hit every note, it takes risks that a lot of graphic novels or webcomics don’t and dares to be more than your standard, while also being crafted beautifully and carefully.
As an artist I can learn from the simplified and concise cartooning. As a writer, from the relentless momentum and drive of the first two acts of the story. As a reader things get a little more esoteric and undefined, but in a world of bow tied finales, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
But a word of warning: if you need to understand everything in a story once it’s reached its conclusion you’ll hate ST.
The long gestation period of Cameron Stewart’s creator owned book is reflected in shifts of line quality and small art changes, but you’ve got to respect the approach. A three toned process, presumably all-digital, consistent page layouts and complete control of the reader’s focus tie the work into a unified whole despite the long adolescence of the work. The blacks are used powerfully, boldly creating shapes and frames within frames, giving us enough variation to keep the otherwise generic page layout alive.
It’s a beautiful book, somewhere between the art of Dylan Horrocks and David Mazzucchelli. They’re cartoons, but with a fluid and organic placement of camera and use of angles that turn pared back brush work into a real world.
Where the long gestation and write-as-you-go approach might also be telling is the writing, both positive and negative. Every single page, uploaded weekly when ST existed as a webcomic, is a lesson in pacing and control. Each page gives you something, each page moves you forward and almost every page leaves you with a question or a need to see just a little more. Stewart’s combination of low-frequency mystery and high-frequency action and movement really keep the story ticking over.
The writer/artist in me sees a correlation in how I approach my own work. When you’re the one drawing the work, investing in the page’s creation you don’t want to waste anything. If nothings happening then Stewart doesn’t draw. One would assume that the weekly update schedule, and the expectancy that comes with it, helped keep him honest, as well.
It’s a story with loose ends and unfinished threads, and that’s cool. There might be a few more than is ideal due to this same week-by-week approach. I can’t help but feel like the last third, while enlightening from a thematic perspective, was a little panicked from a plot approach. The drama is still there, as well as a powerful psychical confrontation that reminds us how good a straight mano-o-mano fight can be in comics.
Sin Titulo is beautifully put-together look at a man lost between apathy and obsession. A man who must confront his own self-worth and his regrets to gain a second chance. It benefits greatly from an art-approach to storytelling, from pulling characters from the same subtle design mould, to call backs to certain angles or certain images.
It’s not a perfect book, and it leaves a lot to the imagination, which is just what we need sometimes. Highly recommended.
You can get a lovely hard cover, published by Dark Horse at your LCBS like I did.
>> SPOILERS AND POSSIBLE READINGS OF SIN TITULO. <<
I believe that Stewart is exploring obsession, creation, and violence. The story sneaks the violence up on you. It doesn’t seem like that style of book, but as it draws you in the actions of Alex and Wesley (the hospital orderly) take darker and darker turns. A single mysterious photo and a blonde lead, page by page, to the final confrontation on the beach. All because, despite the warnings and the negative consequences, Alex cannot turn aside from the mystery. He risks everything to find the answer, or the ‘story,’ as he says.
This level of obsession is reflected both by the original creator of the Sin Titulo painting, Stanislav Vacek, and his eventual seeding of the alternative world, and the constant repetition of John’s work. The constant recreation of the tree motif borders on the insane, as John attempts to refine the work into reality, perhaps an unknowing attempt to truly reach his comatose wife, D.
The idea of the artist, and perhaps the presumed obsessiveness that goes with it, ties young-Alex (with the crayons), Stanislav, Ladislav and John together, literally men who can make reality out of nothing.
Amongst the summary of Plato’s Theory of Forms (“Consider a bed”) that semi-explains the beach’s existence is another potential clue into the differences between the worlds: the approach of the characters. The Alex from the beginning of the story, is a copier and a pawn who works not as a writer, but a fact-checker, vs. his place at the conclusion as the creator of his own new reality.
Perhaps the counter point to this are the combo of Alex’s father and Wesley, who bare more than a passing resemblance to each other. Both are men of destruction rather than creation.
Another aspect to the story might be free will, or breaking obsessions and patterns to find a happier life. Alex is a man worn down by disappointing others. Lovers, family, teachers and workmates, he never lives up his potential, literally copying other people’s stories in an attempt to please them. When he is given John’s box containing a gun it furthers the predicable path, one that leads nowhere but to more violence, more despair. When he retrieves and opens his own box from the sand he finds it empty, perhaps a symbol of his freedom, his lack of constraints. His life can truly be ‘what he makes it.’
Presumably this is tied to the story’s mysterious conclusion. Alex is back in the real world, but either the time has shifted backwards, or something else has changed. The cops are still alive, he doesn’t have a warrant out for his arrest and he (probably) hasn’t meet or tangled with Wesley. John is presumably still alive, and may now a graffiti artist.
o who does he call in the last page? I imagine there’s some debate about this. I wouldn’t be surprised if Stewart isn’t firm on it either. I don’t believe it’s his girlfriend, because as she vision-sates, he ‘never really loved her’. It could be his former lover from France, or even his resurrected Grandfather. I’m not sure who he is calling is as important as the action itself.
Regardless, the book ends with Alex taking more control of his life, an effective clean slate and possibly more self-awareness and control. He is no longer copying the stories or paths of others, but is creating his own. If only we all got that second chance.
Are there plot holes and unexplained coincidences and alliances? Sure, but I still loved it.
Sin Titulo (ST) is a rollicking crime adventure that grabs you by the lapels before taking your off-road into a mysterious world of memory, imagination and obsession. While for me it doesn’t hit every note, it takes risks that a lot of graphic novels or webcomics don’t and dares to be more than your standard, while also being crafted beautifully and carefully.
As an artist I can learn from the simplified and concise cartooning. As a writer, from the relentless momentum and drive of the first two acts of the story. As a reader things get a little more esoteric and undefined, but in a world of bow tied finales, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
But a word of warning: if you need to understand everything in a story once it’s reached its conclusion you’ll hate ST.
The long gestation period of Cameron Stewart’s creator owned book is reflected in shifts of line quality and small art changes, but you’ve got to respect the approach. A three toned process, presumably all-digital, consistent page layouts and complete control of the reader’s focus tie the work into a unified whole despite the long adolescence of the work. The blacks are used powerfully, boldly creating shapes and frames within frames, giving us enough variation to keep the otherwise generic page layout alive.
It’s a beautiful book, somewhere between the art of Dylan Horrocks and David Mazzucchelli. They’re cartoons, but with a fluid and organic placement of camera and use of angles that turn pared back brush work into a real world.
Where the long gestation and write-as-you-go approach might also be telling is the writing, both positive and negative. Every single page, uploaded weekly when ST existed as a webcomic, is a lesson in pacing and control. Each page gives you something, each page moves you forward and almost every page leaves you with a question or a need to see just a little more. Stewart’s combination of low-frequency mystery and high-frequency action and movement really keep the story ticking over.
The writer/artist in me sees a correlation in how I approach my own work. When you’re the one drawing the work, investing in the page’s creation you don’t want to waste anything. If nothings happening then Stewart doesn’t draw. One would assume that the weekly update schedule, and the expectancy that comes with it, helped keep him honest, as well.
It’s a story with loose ends and unfinished threads, and that’s cool. There might be a few more than is ideal due to this same week-by-week approach. I can’t help but feel like the last third, while enlightening from a thematic perspective, was a little panicked from a plot approach. The drama is still there, as well as a powerful psychical confrontation that reminds us how good a straight mano-o-mano fight can be in comics.
Sin Titulo is beautifully put-together look at a man lost between apathy and obsession. A man who must confront his own self-worth and his regrets to gain a second chance. It benefits greatly from an art-approach to storytelling, from pulling characters from the same subtle design mould, to call backs to certain angles or certain images.
It’s not a perfect book, and it leaves a lot to the imagination, which is just what we need sometimes. Highly recommended.
You can get a lovely hard cover, published by Dark Horse at your LCBS like I did.
>> SPOILERS AND POSSIBLE READINGS OF SIN TITULO. <<
I believe that Stewart is exploring obsession, creation, and violence. The story sneaks the violence up on you. It doesn’t seem like that style of book, but as it draws you in the actions of Alex and Wesley (the hospital orderly) take darker and darker turns. A single mysterious photo and a blonde lead, page by page, to the final confrontation on the beach. All because, despite the warnings and the negative consequences, Alex cannot turn aside from the mystery. He risks everything to find the answer, or the ‘story,’ as he says.
This level of obsession is reflected both by the original creator of the Sin Titulo painting, Stanislav Vacek, and his eventual seeding of the alternative world, and the constant repetition of John’s work. The constant recreation of the tree motif borders on the insane, as John attempts to refine the work into reality, perhaps an unknowing attempt to truly reach his comatose wife, D.
The idea of the artist, and perhaps the presumed obsessiveness that goes with it, ties young-Alex (with the crayons), Stanislav, Ladislav and John together, literally men who can make reality out of nothing.
Amongst the summary of Plato’s Theory of Forms (“Consider a bed”) that semi-explains the beach’s existence is another potential clue into the differences between the worlds: the approach of the characters. The Alex from the beginning of the story, is a copier and a pawn who works not as a writer, but a fact-checker, vs. his place at the conclusion as the creator of his own new reality.
Perhaps the counter point to this are the combo of Alex’s father and Wesley, who bare more than a passing resemblance to each other. Both are men of destruction rather than creation.
Another aspect to the story might be free will, or breaking obsessions and patterns to find a happier life. Alex is a man worn down by disappointing others. Lovers, family, teachers and workmates, he never lives up his potential, literally copying other people’s stories in an attempt to please them. When he is given John’s box containing a gun it furthers the predicable path, one that leads nowhere but to more violence, more despair. When he retrieves and opens his own box from the sand he finds it empty, perhaps a symbol of his freedom, his lack of constraints. His life can truly be ‘what he makes it.’
Presumably this is tied to the story’s mysterious conclusion. Alex is back in the real world, but either the time has shifted backwards, or something else has changed. The cops are still alive, he doesn’t have a warrant out for his arrest and he (probably) hasn’t meet or tangled with Wesley. John is presumably still alive, and may now a graffiti artist.
o who does he call in the last page? I imagine there’s some debate about this. I wouldn’t be surprised if Stewart isn’t firm on it either. I don’t believe it’s his girlfriend, because as she vision-sates, he ‘never really loved her’. It could be his former lover from France, or even his resurrected Grandfather. I’m not sure who he is calling is as important as the action itself.
Regardless, the book ends with Alex taking more control of his life, an effective clean slate and possibly more self-awareness and control. He is no longer copying the stories or paths of others, but is creating his own. If only we all got that second chance.
Are there plot holes and unexplained coincidences and alliances? Sure, but I still loved it.
February 25, 2025
I really liked this! I never really knew where the story was going next, and while for the most part, that's what I love in a book, there were a few moments where I felt like this graphic novel could have been improved by being longer and fleshing out a few more scenes. Since finishing it, I have learned that this was apparently originally a webcomic, so that might explain some of the structural issues I had, but I stand by what I said. I mean, as someone who has no artistic abilities at all and has never written any published material, I am sure that I am qualified to critique how someone structures their artwork.
But anyway, it's a great mystery/conspiracy story, and I had a really fun time reading this.
It starts off right away with a young man, Alex, going to the nursing home where he lives and finding out that his grandpa passed away over a month ago. While going through the grandpa's stuff, Alex finds a recent photo of his grandpa with a young woman Alex has never seen or heard of before, and he becomes obsessed with trying to find out who she is. From there, things really escalate, and this story really goes in unexpected places. I had a great time not knowing what direction we were headed in next and just strapping in for the ride.
But anyway, it's a great mystery/conspiracy story, and I had a really fun time reading this.
It starts off right away with a young man, Alex, going to the nursing home where he lives and finding out that his grandpa passed away over a month ago. While going through the grandpa's stuff, Alex finds a recent photo of his grandpa with a young woman Alex has never seen or heard of before, and he becomes obsessed with trying to find out who she is. From there, things really escalate, and this story really goes in unexpected places. I had a great time not knowing what direction we were headed in next and just strapping in for the ride.
January 22, 2017
Un trabajo con una narrativa cercana al thriller psicológico mezclando un viaje onírico del cual no sabemos, hasta el final, si la experiencia vivida junto al protagonista tiene un significado o solución concreta o si nos quedan más preguntas sin resolver que al inicio.
August 12, 2018
Na contra capa vem sugerido "un misterio surrealista en la linea de Haruki Murakami o David lynch" e é exatamente isso... Rolou também uma forte influência de tale of sand, sem a menor sombra de dúvidas, os próprios personagens principais se assemelham bastante. Muito bom experiência diferenciada
May 25, 2021
What a bizarre story. I would have appreciated a little more explanation but it was entertaining overall. Quick read and good art.
July 24, 2014
More reviews (and no fluff) on the blog http://surrealtalvi.wordpress.com/
When reading other reviews of this title, certain terms/words kept coming up: creepy, moody, surreal, tour de force, odd, and beautiful. All are true: this is a story that grabs you from the first page and doesn't let you go as it takes you on one heck of a bumpy ride across the landscape of one young man's troubled mind. There's a good reason Sin titulo has won the prestigious awards it has.
Alex Mackay finds his world unraveling when he goes to collect his estranged and recently deceased grandfather's belongings. In them, he finds a picture of his father with a beautiful young woman - completely at odds with his memories of an acerbic old drunk loner left abandoned in a rest home by his father. In trying to find the identify of this woman, Alex will be led down a rabbit hole of mystery, terror, self realization, and fantasy. It may cost him everything he has - or restore all that he has lost.
The artwork is clean, modernistic, and two color - beige and black. It blends perfectly with the story as it moves from real to surreal then back to real again. Stewart's illustrations neither overshadow nor are eclipsed by the narrative. Text is easy to read and Stewart masterfully avoids the need for excessive descriptions. The mystery and overall arc unfolds organically to an ending that pulls all the strands together beautifully. We are drawn in as inexorably as Alex is himself.
Sin Titulo is a very compelling read - one of those rare gems worthy of second and third readings to fully understand all the nuances. It doesn't pander to readers but also doesn't try to be too tricky. Intellectually satisfying but also a guilty pleasure into the realm of modern noir.
September 9, 2014
Alex Mackay has just learned that his grandfather has passed away and while visiting the nursing home to retrieve his relative’s belongings, discovers a recent photograph of the deceased with a mysterious young woman in black sunglasses. In his attempt to learn the woman’s identity, he is pulled into a shady, underground conspiracy that threatens not only his life but also that of reality itself.
Sin Titulo is about the ways we either intentionally or unintentionally create our own image and project that on the world around us. It is both an extremely metaphysical piece of work that touches upon big ideas like “what does art mean?” and “why do we create?” and also a thrilling, mystical, hallucinatory story with a gripping plot and compelling characters. The mood of the piece is mysterious, creepy, unsettling and melancholy, and there is a strong comparison to be made between it and the stories of magic realists like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges.
From a storyteller’s perspective, one of the things I most enjoy about Sin Titulo is how it starts in the real, mundane world and then slowly builds mysterious elements atop that base. By opening in a nursing home, we as readers are given a concrete, real-world setting before things gradually get weird.
To read the rest of my review, check out my blog: http://oconnoblog.com/2014/02/19/revi...
Sin Titulo is about the ways we either intentionally or unintentionally create our own image and project that on the world around us. It is both an extremely metaphysical piece of work that touches upon big ideas like “what does art mean?” and “why do we create?” and also a thrilling, mystical, hallucinatory story with a gripping plot and compelling characters. The mood of the piece is mysterious, creepy, unsettling and melancholy, and there is a strong comparison to be made between it and the stories of magic realists like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges.
From a storyteller’s perspective, one of the things I most enjoy about Sin Titulo is how it starts in the real, mundane world and then slowly builds mysterious elements atop that base. By opening in a nursing home, we as readers are given a concrete, real-world setting before things gradually get weird.
To read the rest of my review, check out my blog: http://oconnoblog.com/2014/02/19/revi...
May 23, 2020
Are you awake, asleep, dead, alive; what is indeed real or a hallucination? Sin Titulo is an experimental examination of our inner psyche as each new nugget of information for the lead character is an overwhelming and dangerous piece in a puzzle with no clear solution. Cameron Stewart’s webcomic turned printed book pushes the boundaries of the medium by challenging comic storytelling with narrative misdirections and incongruent transitions in a widescreen, 8-panel format. It’s impressive.
The story follows Alex as he unravels a mystery with two beginnings: his grandfather dying and a dream of a tree on a beach. After he finds a photo of a mysterious woman with his grandfather and trails a man from the nursing home, he begins to uncover a strange new world with a lot of violence mixed with, strangely, some serenity.
Unfortunately, with any great work of art that subverts expectations, there’s gonna be some problems. In this instance, the original webcomic medium means that each page feels episodic, and the overall story feels like it goes in different directions with a few false starts and another couple hurried conclusions. As a cohesive whole read in one sitting, it jumps around a bit. Sometimes this works in its favor as the lead character is thrown violently between the waking and not quite sleeping, subliminal world. Nevertheless, it breaks with conventions and does some stuff that is truly groundbreaking.
The story follows Alex as he unravels a mystery with two beginnings: his grandfather dying and a dream of a tree on a beach. After he finds a photo of a mysterious woman with his grandfather and trails a man from the nursing home, he begins to uncover a strange new world with a lot of violence mixed with, strangely, some serenity.
Unfortunately, with any great work of art that subverts expectations, there’s gonna be some problems. In this instance, the original webcomic medium means that each page feels episodic, and the overall story feels like it goes in different directions with a few false starts and another couple hurried conclusions. As a cohesive whole read in one sitting, it jumps around a bit. Sometimes this works in its favor as the lead character is thrown violently between the waking and not quite sleeping, subliminal world. Nevertheless, it breaks with conventions and does some stuff that is truly groundbreaking.
December 17, 2013
The highlights here are the three-color art, the way Stewart keeps readers off-balance through the disturbing exposition that unravels in the first two-thirds of the story, and the noir sensibility that ratchets up the tension. Alex, the main character, shifts through timelines and realities in search of a mysterious woman who posed for a photo with his now-deceased grandfather. Stewart creates a mystery in part because, for most of the story, the reader doesn't really know for sure what's going on. Stewart's juggling a fair amount of plot, characterization, and timeline, and (inevitably?) the balls start to wobble in the air.
Quite simply, the pay-off doesn't satisfy. In fact, I'm not even certain there is a pay-off. A minor character explains at length the workings of the world, and from there the story plunges toward a trite non-resolution. It's as though Stewart himself grew tired of trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. The story concludes, but it doesn't satisfy, and that's a serious flaw after promising so much. 2.5 stars, but rounded down for selling the reader out after a significant investment.
Quite simply, the pay-off doesn't satisfy. In fact, I'm not even certain there is a pay-off. A minor character explains at length the workings of the world, and from there the story plunges toward a trite non-resolution. It's as though Stewart himself grew tired of trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. The story concludes, but it doesn't satisfy, and that's a serious flaw after promising so much. 2.5 stars, but rounded down for selling the reader out after a significant investment.
April 24, 2014
This was my first time reading a webcomic from start to finish. I usually give up on webcomics because I still prefer reading physical copies of comics. (The only other webcomic I've read is the delightful "Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant", but I just read the first few pages online and then I decided to get the book as soon as it came out).
Two things kept me hooked on this series: 1) the beautiful art- Cameron Stewart's work is really nice to look at and that three-color palette style he used here (black-white-brown) just works great with the tone of the story; and 2) the suspense- every page and every twist and turn of the story just kept me wanting to find out more about the mystery.
Having said all that, I must admit that the resolution and the explanations left me a bit unsatisfied and that sort of affected my overall feelings towards this story. But still, it's well worth reading.
I'm aware that there's a hardcover available now, and it looks really good (I just might get it if it gets discounted because it will look good on my shelf). But you can also go read the whole thing online for free.
Two things kept me hooked on this series: 1) the beautiful art- Cameron Stewart's work is really nice to look at and that three-color palette style he used here (black-white-brown) just works great with the tone of the story; and 2) the suspense- every page and every twist and turn of the story just kept me wanting to find out more about the mystery.
Having said all that, I must admit that the resolution and the explanations left me a bit unsatisfied and that sort of affected my overall feelings towards this story. But still, it's well worth reading.
I'm aware that there's a hardcover available now, and it looks really good (I just might get it if it gets discounted because it will look good on my shelf). But you can also go read the whole thing online for free.
May 7, 2016
Sin Titulo is quoted - lauded - by many critics as a surrealist masterpiece. Call me a killjoy, but I think there's a fine line between "surreal" and "I have no idea what's going on anymore." There's simply too much happening too quickly, and too many things that don't connect, leading to an ending that isn't very satisfying. You're left with the constant feel that the story is constricted and was capable of being more than it wound up being, and nothing pains me more than reading someone who clearly has talent rush themselves.
At first, I was ready to excuse some of Sin Titulo's rushed feel due to it being a single graphic novel, and now restrictive such a format can be to work with. However, learning this was initially a webcomic, meaning the author had all the time and pages in the world to create the original story, destroys that excuse and makes me knock another star off this book's total.
At first, I was ready to excuse some of Sin Titulo's rushed feel due to it being a single graphic novel, and now restrictive such a format can be to work with. However, learning this was initially a webcomic, meaning the author had all the time and pages in the world to create the original story, destroys that excuse and makes me knock another star off this book's total.
April 25, 2014
Alex MacKay finds out that his grandfather died. He goes to the nursing home to find out what happened and receives a picture of his grandfather with a strange woman. When he looks into the background of the photo, his world starts to spin out of control.
This graphic novel was beautiful. Cameron Stewart encapsulates the confusion and mystery of the world of Alex MacKay in stylized imagery. Each image speaks realms of emotion and also story. Some of the imagery is so powerful it will make you squirm or flinch. The story was a little hard to follow and it leaves you with more questions than it answers. Stewart is a masterful artist and I look forward to reading more of his books. You might also like: Ghost World, Locke and Key or RASL.
Jenny Paxson
Readers' Advisory Librarian
This graphic novel was beautiful. Cameron Stewart encapsulates the confusion and mystery of the world of Alex MacKay in stylized imagery. Each image speaks realms of emotion and also story. Some of the imagery is so powerful it will make you squirm or flinch. The story was a little hard to follow and it leaves you with more questions than it answers. Stewart is a masterful artist and I look forward to reading more of his books. You might also like: Ghost World, Locke and Key or RASL.
Jenny Paxson
Readers' Advisory Librarian
January 7, 2016
A noir style graphic novel, that feels like a David Lynch film on paper.
Wonderful attention to visual details. Stewart knows how to use lines economically for maximum impact. He balances values and layout as well. Even though it was originally a web comic, panels work together and pages feel just right in terms of the amount information present.
The story is odd, but even within the oddness, there a few things that don't make sense to me when I think they should. The experience of reading this novel in one sitting is filled with curiosity and excitement about what might happen next.
The setup allows for some wonderful visuals and prose.
"With enough dedication, can a thing be so assiduously described that it bears no betrayal of its unreality?"
Wonderful attention to visual details. Stewart knows how to use lines economically for maximum impact. He balances values and layout as well. Even though it was originally a web comic, panels work together and pages feel just right in terms of the amount information present.
The story is odd, but even within the oddness, there a few things that don't make sense to me when I think they should. The experience of reading this novel in one sitting is filled with curiosity and excitement about what might happen next.
The setup allows for some wonderful visuals and prose.
"With enough dedication, can a thing be so assiduously described that it bears no betrayal of its unreality?"
October 6, 2018
Somewhat interesting mystery, that doesn't seem to quite gel. I feel like a adaptation would do this book more justice. The atmosphere is lacking somehow, and additional darkness or creepy music would add layers to it. Maybe the right actor. If the darkness were drawn better, or if panels were more fuzzy, it would add to the mystique. The story does not seem to have a larger purpose or cohesive thought behind it.
Maybe if the main character were a little more likable, I would enjoyed his struggle a little more. However, even the struggle is not adequately emotive; it feels more thrown in. It's too abstract about his emotions. What is hinted at only through plot would be better hinted at through characterization.
Maybe if the main character were a little more likable, I would enjoyed his struggle a little more. However, even the struggle is not adequately emotive; it feels more thrown in. It's too abstract about his emotions. What is hinted at only through plot would be better hinted at through characterization.
June 22, 2020
Initially a webcomic written over several years, with the writer improvising as he went along, and it shows: it tries to maintain the Lynchian atmosphere of dread and mystery (at which it occasionally succeeds), but too many subplots and characters are introduced without it every coming together. Or, to put it more precisely, the author attempts to force it into a coherent story by using the tired plot device of a character explaining everything in a speech at the end of the story, but it simply doesn't work and comes across as a half-hearted infodump. The art is good, but some parts of it are a bit too cute to fit the story, such as the way the protagonist's face is drawn. Overall, not a satisfying read.
June 21, 2014
Perhaps I need this spoon fed to me but I'm lost. I generally get it but can we at least have a reasonable ending? Didn't like it. But, I read it in one sitting so it couldn't have been too bad.
Let me just say that I started reading this when it was provided free, page-by-page, on a weekly basis several years ago. Stewart stated that he wanted to provide the story free and invited us to get invested in his weekly offerings. Then Stewart got busy on projects that actually paid. Then, he gave us pages every month. Then not at all - presumably because he got a book deal. It's just as well, because this made so little sense that if I had to wait a week between pages I would have quit.
Let me just say that I started reading this when it was provided free, page-by-page, on a weekly basis several years ago. Stewart stated that he wanted to provide the story free and invited us to get invested in his weekly offerings. Then Stewart got busy on projects that actually paid. Then, he gave us pages every month. Then not at all - presumably because he got a book deal. It's just as well, because this made so little sense that if I had to wait a week between pages I would have quit.
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