Shell Collection

by Ron Regé

In 2016, Regé began this monthly, subscription only series in an effort to return to his 1990s self-publishing roots, with 100 copies or so published from month to month. This is the first time any of this work has been collected, with newly added  Shell Collection brilliantly showcases Regé's poetic voice, his deeply humane worldview, and his sui generis visual vocabulary — all of which has made him one of the most distinctive stylists in comics.

Genres: Comics

177 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 16, 2024

Reviews

[Rick Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shell Collection is a compendium of Ron Regé, Jr.'s long-running series of minicomics/zines, The Shell of the Self of the Senses. These were typically low print runs, numbering in the order of 100 copies or so every few months, making a large chunk of Regé's output inaccessible to his fans. Fantagraphics puts together this nice collection of those works, along with new colors to highlight Regé's fine lines further. Regé employs a very pared down artistic style, but it's not minimalistic by any means. Intricate details are peppered in throughout his various comics work, but the extremely thin lines lead to a flighty looking final result. Colors are also delicately applied, often with the aesthetic of being almost not there at all. It's subtle artistic choices that makes Regé a unique artist in the medium, and coupled with the gentle poetic prose and light-hearted narratives, provides us with an altogether fresh set of comics to enjoy. It's kind of an anthology of sorts, with various zines in here framing new stories, so it'll be hit-or-miss at times. I won't say the individual stories here really captivated me all that much, but fans of Regé will have a lot to parse through here and enjoy.

[Granit Hysiqi · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those artists that has really grown on me over the years.