The New World: Comics from Mauretania

by Chris Reynolds, Seth (Editor), Ed Park (Foreword)

Since the mid-1980s, the British cartoonist Chris Reynolds has been assembling a world all his own. On the surface, it seems much like ours: a place of cool afternoon shadows and gently rolling hills, half-empty trains and sleepy downtown streets. But the closer you look, the weirder it gets. After losing a mysterious intergalactic war, Earth is no longer in humanity’s control. Blandly friendly aliens lurk on the margins and seem especially interested in the mining industry. The very rules of time and space seem to have shifted: Mysterious figures suddenly appear in childhood photos, family members disappear forever without warning, power outages abound, and certain people gain the power of flight. A helmeted man named Jimmy is somehow causing local businesses to shutter and is being closely watched by the “trendy new police force,” Rational Control. The world is being remade, but in what image?

This new collection, selected and designed by the acclaimed cartoonist Seth, includes short stories, a novella, and the full-length graphic novel Mauretania. It is the ideal guide to all the mystery and wonder of one of the most underappreciated cult classics in the history of comics.

This NYRC edition is a hardcover with foil stamping, debossing, full-color endpapers, and extra-thick paper, and features new scans of the original artwork.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Science Fiction, Comix, Literature

267 pages, Hardcover

First published April 26, 2018

About the author

Chris wrote and drew the graphic novel "The New World" published by New York Review Comics.

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic survey of Chris Reynolds’ cryptic ‘comics from Mauretania,’ including various short stories, the novella ‘The Dial’, and the full-length graphic novel simply titled Mauretania.

As Seth writes in his Designer’s Note: ‘The main reason these comics are so vital is that there is a mystery at the heart of them. A mystery that, thank God, is never solved.’ He goes on to mention the tenuous connections linking the stories—how they never add up to clarify what is happening and, in fact, often do quite the opposite. While there is enough connective tissue within these pages to generate intrigue, it’s not so much as to give anything away or ruin the atmosphere of ambiguity.

I enjoyed many of the individual short stories even more than the full-length graphic novel, though everything included here is satisfying in its own right. Reynolds masterfully sustains the right amount of vague uncertainty about just what is exactly going on. His drawing style is hypnotic, with thick lines, heavy shading, and high contrast black-and-white effects. At times the panels even resemble woodcut or linocut prints. This style suits the stories perfectly. And what about those stories? What happens within them seems to exist outside of time, blending the familiar and the unfamiliar so seamlessly as to disorient without jarring, to point in several directions at once, while still moving the reader forward into the unknown. Waves of nostalgia wash in for former times in places left behind, but rather than distract from the mysteries of the present, these are gently folded within all of the strangeness, where they settle stripped of any semblance of banality. All of it feels so innately human yet at the same time starkly alien.

Seth also did a stunning job with the book’s design. It is pleasing both to look at and to handle. I’ll be sad now to return this library copy. I may need to seek out one of my own, especially since I think I would like to—perhaps even need to—revisit these stories to further plumb the mysterious depths of Mauretania.

[Derek Royal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal! One the one hand, I'm ashamed that I didn't know about Reynolds's Mauretania comics before this year. At the same time, this has been a wonderful discovery, something that may be even more impactful given my previous ignorance. What initially drew me to this title -- outside of the fact that it's published by New York Review Comics, who always puts out great material -- is the fact that Seth did the design of this collection. The book definitely has the Seth "stamp," and his note at the end, albeit brief, in many ways sums up my own experiences in reading The New World. These stories -- and with some, "story" may not even be the best way to describe them -- are almost all enigmatic, drifting unanchored in a narrative sense and unfolding in what could be described as a dreamscape experience. Trying to figure out rationally these stories is futile, and it's not how you should approach these comics. The mystery lies at the heart of what's going on, so one should just assume and accept the ambiguity and head-scratching, and let these unknowns just consume you. The enigma is what draws me, despite my constant questioning. One of the highlights of this year, so far.

[Lashaan Balasingam · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can find my review on my blog by clicking here.

This was nothing like anything I’ve ever read before. Released in bits and pieces since the mid-1980s, Chris Reynolds has been teasing readers with fragments of a world that seemed to continuously attempt to come full circle yet also remain fragmented and indecipherable. The cartoonist delivers a truly surreal story that often puts a strange individual with a helmet at the heart of it and successfully draws up a world that seems real at first glance but quickly shows its dream-like facet in the most calm and controlled way possible. Expect the black and white artwork to suck you into a parallel world that is stripped down to dichotomies and ideals, and the dialogue and direction to conjure a billion questions within you that will unfortunately never find answers in the long run.

Seth, a cartoonist himself, edited this volume and scoured the archives to put together all the artwork that Chris Reynolds ever shared with the world. A lot of the stories are actually short stories that sometimes don’t even exceed a page with nine panels, and often don’t ever show any signs of continuity between each other. Each story also strives for uniform panel size that are sometimes free of dialogue, making it easy to blow through the volume (clueless, most of the time). The main attraction in this collection is however the graphic novel Mauretania that occupies half of the volume and is strategically placed at the end (last half) of the volume. Readers who pick up this edition will thus find themselves in front of a bunch of stories that are extremely difficult to understand, but never meant to be. Just when you think Mauretania will clear up the air and give you exactly what you seek, you’ll find yourself mesmerized by its surreal and puzzling story, and succumb to its spellbinding vision.

I would normally try and tell you what the whole graphic novel is about, but I believe The New World actually doesn’t want anyone to be able to achieve such a feat. In fact, Mauretania alludes to a whole rivalry between the unconscious and the rational. You can try as much as you’d like to try and connect the dots. You can try and enjoy the hunt for answers throughout this adventure. You can try and convince yourself that things seem to start to make sense. But I can assure you that by the end of it all, the only feeling you’ll have is a sense of loss. A feeling that gravity isn’t there to ground you anymore and that the artwork is starting to pull you into a dream where life is a mystery that you just can’t solve.

There’s no lying that this was far different from any typical collection of artwork. It will not please anyone who seek instant gratification. It doesn’t lay out the plans to the whole project and tell you everything that you want to know. Opposite to linear, this is a fragmented tale with recurrent characters and a mysterious world that strives to put forward mankind’s short-sightedness, search for purpose, blindness to detail, tendency to isolation and loneliness, and especially individual and corporate paranoia. As you can see, there’s a huge array of themes hidden within the black and white art, but what you’ll go home with after going through this collection of comics will be personal and probably very different from what anyone else with go understand from it all.

The New World: Comics from Mauretania is, I believe, a mysterious story that is simply meant to remain a mystery forever.

Yours truly,

Lashaan | Blogger and Book Reviewer
Official blog: https://bookidote.com/
________________________

Completely surreal and sometimes truly mesmerizing for its way of stripping everything down to dichotomy and ideals. Had to get around to the main story, Mauretania, to understand that this mysterious story was meant to stay a mystery forever.

P.S. Full review to come soon.

Yours truly,

Lashaan | Blogger and Book Reviewer
Official blog: https://bookidote.com/

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the things I like best I hated at first. They were too new or radically different from what I expected, I guess, until realizing I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t hate THE NEW WORLD: COMICS FROM MAURETANIA by Chris Reynolds when I opened up the handsome tome collecting his work from the 1980s and on, but I didn’t love it. The work was dense in every way: the panels were thick black bands, the artwork dark patterns of brushwork and the stories were weirdly normal. But that rigid facade is not as uninviting as it first looks. There’s talk of wars and flying cars, secret police and other unseen menaces. Plots arise and fall with the regularity of the tide, and like an ocean there’s a deep mystery beneath the seemingly calm ebb and flow of storylines. I got sucked in. The tales, some short others longer, have their details almost scrubbed to a dull hardness and yet they resonate an emotional core that attracted me like a visitor on vacation in a foreign land I never wanted to leave. Sorry. Reynolds makes me swoon poetically, maybe because his work is so evocative not necessarily of a time and place (and least not one I personally know, but he is English and perhaps those who grew up where and when he did feel some nostalgic pull to his art) as much as a mood. And I’m a moody guy. Guess what? I love this book!

[Dylan Horrocks · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could give this 10 stars, I totally would.

[Stewart Tame · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mysterious and enigmatic. There's a quiet surrealism to these stories. It's not loud and obvious, but subtle and quiet. Things almost make sense. One is left with the sense that, if only there were a couple more clues, everything would fall into place. It feels like a bizarre combination of the comics work of Seth and the short stories of J.G. Ballard, maybe a touch of Blue Velvet era David Lynch as well.

Although the stories feel meandering and plotless, I enjoyed the head space this put me into. Recommended!

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea of absence comes to mind when thinking about these collected stories. Absence in terms of form: the absence of details, color, frame size and shape of the comics. Absence in terms of narrative: the absence of people who once populated the now-abandoned homes. Absence of context: Reynolds offers us only snippets of the larger world and time in which the stories take place. There is a spooky quality of the stories and drawings: shadowy and foreboding interiors, missing persons and empty places.

[Nate D]

Late in this work, there's a stretch of several wordless pages where two characters follow a telephone cord through an empty landscape. Like most plot points here, this one cuts off unexpectedly into nothing, but it was this spare narration-free passage where I was most able to feel the mysterious, haunted sensation that others seem to get from these comics. Otherwise, these stories, like the blocky, murky linework, just felt a little too vague and half-formed, the images often overwhelmed by narration within the frame, even as that narration ultimately unravels as well. All of this -- these deteriorating, disappearing stories for a ambiguously deteriorated world -- may well be the point, but so far it eludes me...

[Bill Hsu · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the woodcut-style artwork, with the cinematic gestures, and the sustained strangeness. But I keep wanting the stories to do a little more.

[Stephen Curran · Rating 4 out of 5]

The people of Mauritania seem to forever be returning to places where they once lived, only to find them empty, their friends missing, their old homes in ruins. The world – drawn using more black than white – is much like our own, but there has been an invasion, and cars are technically capable of flight. But strangely, these comics aren't about the future. They are about a futile longing for the past.

Or at least I think they are. In their intricacy and their unashamed obliqueness, they resemble outsider art. This feels like a highly personal project: a pen and ink geographical expression of the author's subconscious: what J.G. Ballard would call 'inner space'. The stories (two longer pieces and a selection of shorts) often look like they might move towards narrative sense but then veer off in unexpected directions, refusing to connect the threads. A team of detectives showing up doesn’t mean any mysteries will be solved.

Then there's the central figure, the face in the sci-fi helmet on the cover, Monitor. But is that Monitor, or is it Jimmy? And if it is Jimmy, then where is Monitor? And is Monitor a stand in for the author? I don't know. Better to sink into the melancholic atmosphere and take what you can find.

[Victor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kafkaesque narratives mixed with lavish amounts of comics-as-haiku form a hypnotic, mysterious world that is itself the major character in these stories. Amazing work I've loved since I was a kid in a fantastic hardcover edition.

[Kamakana · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you like this review, i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

090519: yup. my kind of graphic... minimal. goofy. philosophical...

[Przemysław Skoczyński · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gdy po śmierci Chrisa Reynoldsa spytałem o jego twórczość na jednej z komiksowych grup facebookowych, spotkałem się z zerowym odzewem. Trudno wymagać, by polski czytelnik znał dorobek autora, który od lat 80. uchodzi za kultowego, ale raczej w niezależnym obiegu związanym chociażby z magazynem „Escape”. Tak naprawdę pierwsza próba pokazania bardzo specyficznej sztuki Walijczyka szerszemu gronu to wydanie „Mauretanii” przez „Penguin Books” w 1990 roku, ale póki co najwięcej dla tej sztuki zrobił Seth, oddając hołd artyście w poświęconych mu artykułach i mając poważny wkład w stworzenie opisywanego zbioru.

Świat po wojnie, którą ludzkość prawdopodobnie przegrała, nowa religia działająca po części na zasadach hipnozy, tajemnicza organizacja czy tajna policja pilnująca porządku - rzeczywistość Mauretanii ucieka przed logiką i realizuje charakterystyczną dla marzeń sennych poetykę, w której najbardziej niespodziewane czy bezcelowe zwroty akcji wydają się uprawnione, a które dziwią nas dopiero po przebudzeniu.

Bohaterowie stale przeczuwają, że coś w danej sytuacji czy miejscu jest nie tak, że coś się już kiedyś odbyło, że dzieje się dziwnie szybko, znika albo pojawia w jakimś przedziale czasowym. Za tym idzie melancholia i sentymenty związane z miejscami. W „Endless Summer Wells” to właśnie powrót do miasta związanego z przeszłością jest źródłem szczęścia. W „Dial” Reg wraca po wojnie do domu, wokół którego rozpoczęto dewastujące środowisko prace wydobywcze. Mężczyzna jest w stanie wzbić się ponad rzeczywistość, przejść do czegoś na kształt świata równoległego, w którym jego rodzina nadal czeka, aż wróci z wojny. W „Hello” nagle pojawia się kobieta, którą rzekomo pochowano, jakby korzystając z możliwości naginania czasoprzestrzeni. Jak to się stało? Skąd te możliwości? Tego czytelnik się nie dowie. Z kolei w poetyckim „Sunbuilt” obserwujemy budynek, w którym utkwił profesor, gdy lata temu odkrył maszynę do podróży w czasie. Wynalazca dosłownie zastygł w drodze do przyszłości. Właśnie ta poetyckość jest kolejnym ważnym czynnikiem opowiadań - w „Cinema Detectives” dochodzenie na temat znikających budynków kończy się konstatacją, że być może po prostu czasem się one starzeją i umierają w samotności.

Zastanawia postać Monitora i jego naśladowcy (we wstępie pojawiają się sugestie, że być może symbolizują Boga i Chrystusa). Obaj jakby z przyszłości, ale wyglądający archaicznie - jak kosmiczni bohaterowie starych opowieści w charakterystycznych (niemal sportowych) kaskach. Pojawiają się w różnych sytuacjach, imają różnych zajęć, najprawdopodobniej powierzonych przez kogoś jeszcze wyższego rangą, na co wskazują niewyjaśnione próby nawiązywania kontaktu czy poruszanie się według niewidocznych, lecz jakby wytyczonych ścieżek. Ich zaangażowanie w nadzorowanie likwidacji szkodliwych przedsiębiorstw, czy koneksje z instytucjami zajmującymi się zamykaniem kopalń wyglądają jak echa polityki Margaret Thatcher lat 80., choć tak naprawdę w żadnym tekście interpretacyjnym czy wywiadzie z Reynoldsem, jakie czytałem, o takim kontekście nie wspomniano. Ci Bohaterowie jako jedyni mają tu nad czymś kontrolę. Ich nieuchwytność i tajemniczość wskazuje jednak na siłę jeszcze wyższą, która w pewnych momentach nimi steruje i z którą się komunikują.

Nieco mroczny charakter całości wskazuje na coś w rodzaju złowrogiego powojennego świata (częste widoki samolotów odrzutowych, elementy kontroli, eksploatacja środowiska), ale Reynolds wspomina, że to nie miała być dystopia, czego dowodzą choćby elementy humorystyczne. Całość zawiera cechy science fiction czy opowieści detektywistycznych, nie będąc jednocześnie żadnym z nich.

Grafika zdobiąca te opowieści to coś, co zachwyciło Setha i trzeba przyznać, że po bliższym poznaniu faktycznie wydaje się ona wyjątkowa. Grube linie tuszu nadają całości ciężaru, często tworząc efekt drzeworytu. Tła zastygają w bezruchu, a fantastyczne budowle sąsiadują z „tradycyjną” przedwojenną architekturą. Ucieczka od szczegółu, przewaga czerni, wreszcie inspirowane malarstwem Edwarda Hoopera kompozycje obrazów w kadrach nadają całości mocno artystycznego wydźwięku. Reynolds był też twórcą filmowym, co w połączeniu z fascynacją czarno-białymi komiksami wojennymi sprzed lat dało hipnotyzujący efekt.

Ta sztuka ucieka przed klasyfikacjami. „The New World” zawiera opowiadania, które samodzielnie mogą przyprawić o konsternację, a razem tworzą świat pełen powiązań, ale też luk, niedopowiedzeń i tajemnic, których czytelnik nigdy nie wyjaśni do końca. Wejście w niego to godzenie się na dawkę surrealizmu, absurdu, błądzenie wśród sennych paradoksów i niewyjaśnionych motywacji. Twórca utkał te historie z tajemnicy i nawet jeśli w ten sposób zachęca do kolejnych lektur, czytelnik nie ma szans, by złożyć wszystkie elementy układanki, bo ta jako całość prawdopodobnie nie istnieje. Sugestia Setha, by stale wracać do lektury, odkrywając jej kolejne aspekty, lecz ze świadomością, że całkowitej prawdy nigdy nie poznamy, wydaje się chyba najrozsądniejsza

(Tekst ukazał się na facebookowej stronie "Magazynu kreski")

[Mark]

(A version of this review was published, in German, in the Swiss comics journal STRAPAZIN.)

On travels to the United Kingdom in the 1980’s I discovered the vibrant world of British small-press comics, and one title that greatly intrigued me was MAURETANIA COMICS, written and drawn by Chris Reynolds. The comics were starkly beautiful, black-and-white and drawn with what looked like a rollerball pen. The pages contained almost-deserted landscapes (both urban and rural), sterile office building interiors, and a not sad though not exactly happy cast of characters, including one who always wore a peculiar helmet.

The narrative was difficult to follow, however, in part because I was only able to find issues 4-9, 11, and 12. I always assumed that one day I’d complete the series and it would all make sense on a read-through, but with New York Review Comics’ publication of THE NEW WORLD: COMICS FROM MAURETANIA I now realize how misguided I was. This gorgeous hardcover, designed by Seth, collects “Mauretania” stories including a graphic novel, a novella, and a dozen-and-a-half short stories. Having read the book through three times now, I can happily say it makes no sense at all. Or, rather, it makes complete sense, though not in any traditional narrative terms.

More than anything else, the comics of Chris Reynolds depict a state of mind, one deeply disquieted but somehow also hopeful. The stories are set in a “new world” sometime in the near future, after Earth has been invaded by aliens—though the aliens are barely shown, and they don’t seem to have much interest in our planet other than its coal mines. The setting is a time of wars (distant), depopulation (at least in the locales we are shown), religious proselytization (though not particularly forceful), and corporate intrigue (mostly unintelligible)—and in the midst of all that, we encounter a small group of people who are more or less just trying to go about living normal lives.

The MAURITANIA comics are almost impossible to describe, but I can’t recommend them highly enough—nor can Seth, who has been singing Reynolds’s praises for more than a decade. If you like TWIN PEAKS, THE PRISONER, the works of Samuel Beckett or Stansilaw Lem, and/or the drawings of Raymond Pettibon, there is definitely something here for you. I expect to re-read THE NEW WORLD often, seeking to piece together some meaning that I’m sure will continue to elude me, and that elusiveness is part of the work’s beauty and appeal.

[Mateen Mahboubi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wild ride of sparse mysterious stories in a dark and chunky art style. I enjoyed some of the more straightforward storytelling better but even the more obscure stuff was enjoyable. Enjoy the journey despite knowing that you may never get to the destination.

[Jacquelyn Oesterblad · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am clearly not sophisticated enough for this. When all the reviews call it "enigmatic," they mean "baffling," "inexplicable," and "what I imagine it feels like to have a bad trip."

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Page 85 has the best single page comic I’ve ever read.

[Comics Alternative · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://comicsalternative.com/episode-...

[Scribe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got this from the library after being interested in the idea of exploring worlds through surreal narratives. In a moment of synchronicity, this was one of the first 'quick selection' books on view as I walked in through the library door.

The book itself is large, hard, shiny and seductive. The stories inside have a gorgeous, dreamy sense of being. Hints and implications are everything, mysteries are being explored, but the stories feel like they carry on in the gaps between and after the panels themselves. Where does Monitor go? What's the significance of this, that, the other?

A book I can imagine coming back to repeatedly.

[Shawn Conner · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I appreciate most about Chris Reynolds' Mauretania stories is their sense of timelessness. As Seth notes in "Designer notes" at book's end, Reynolds' work has aged well, better than that of many of his fellow comics creators who also came of age in the '90s (the stories in this volume are from 1985 and later). Reynolds isn't caught up in trying to capture any kind of zeitgeist. Or, if he is, he does so accidentally and indirectly.

This is heavy Twilight Zone-ish stuff that takes place in a post-alien invasion Earth (or is it?) that's sort of like ours, or one that is just similar enough to be dream-like in its familiarity. There isn't a lot at stake emotionally in these stories but the world that Reynolds, a British graphic novelist, creates is one that fans of David Lynch (for starters) will enjoy visiting.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tip: The foreword by Ed Park has spoilers. Read the stories first.

[Jonathan Hawpe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This beautiful new collection of Welsh comics artist Chris Reynolds' very difficult to find work is a revelation: lovely, strange, subtle and poetic stories with light touches of surrealism and scifi. Think Jim Jarmusch films, Chris Ware's mundane-meets-fantastic style (Reynolds might be an influence?), Twin Peaks, Samuel Beckett... but this stuff is truly unique, like a dream made of white paper and black ink.

[Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

...I don't get it.

[Titus · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the mid-1980s until his death in 2023, British cartoonist Chris Reynolds produced a body of comics set in a fictional world he called Mauretania – not to be confused with the North African region historically known by the same name, nor with the modern state of Mauritania. This book collects highlights of that work from the 1980s and early 1990s, including a mid-length piece (“The Dial”, 40 pages), 17 shorts (1–10 pages each), and then finally the longest comic he ever made (“Mauretania”, 125 pages). These comics are all extremely enigmatic, largely defying simple explanation, and hard to describe in a cogent way. Several of them – especially the “The Dial” – resemble David Lynch films: dark, moody, drifting back and forth between realism and dream logic. Others, like “Endless Summer Wells” and “The Golden Age”, are more grounded, feeling like quiet, poignant slice-of-life vignettes, with just a hint of underlying strangeness. One of the short pieces, “Whisper in the Shadows”, stands out as an unexpectedly, disarmingly heartbreaking tragedy, albeit with surrealism bubbling below the surface. Others are just brief and elliptical – a few odd moments followed by an abrupt, open ending.

So far, I've been tiptoeing around the question of what these comics are actually about, but that's because describing their plots doesn't reveal much about them and could even give a false impression. For example, I could say that “Monitor’s Human Reward” is about a man who quits his job at a café after unexpectedly inheriting a house, and I'd probably give the impression that these comics are totally mundane. On the other hand, I could say that “Cinema Detectives” is about a policeman and a PI confounded by a spate of disappearing buildings, and I'd probably evoke something more conventional and dramatic than it is.

In a way, the setting is more important than the stories, and a major part of my enjoyment comes from the intriguing worldbuilding. The setting somewhat resembles post-WW2 Britain, but with occasional fantastical and futuristic elements – extraterrestrials, space travel, flying cars – as well as references to what sound like the institutions of an authoritarian government. That's already interesting in itself, but even more compelling is the metaphysics of this place: much like Jim Woodring, Reynolds conjured up a rich, fascinating world that appears to run on its own ineffable internal logic. It's a parallel universe that resembles our own, but where the relations between cause and effect work differently, where time doesn't just progress forward at a steady pace, where places have a tangible power over people, and where rational reasoning is a dead end and the key to achieving anything is following intuition and whims.

Through this strange world, the comics explore humans’ relationship to the passage of time, as well as our relationship to places. The stories frequently follow characters returning to places they'd once known, or discovering new places, and experiencing complex emotions as a result. They feature characters struggling to come to terms with, escape from, or make sense of their pasts. Perhaps most importantly, they examine the way people relate to their own lives, often struggling futilely to control them.

Reynolds had a wonderful sense of composition, and he used really thick ink lines, to the extent that black often dominates the page, his pictures looking almost like stencils or woodcuts at times. The visuals contribute massively to the overall mood – the dark imagery matching the murky stories, the characters often drawn as silhouettes, their faces kept inscrutable, to maintain distance between them and the reader. The comics largely employ fixed grids – 4 panels in “Mauretania”, 6 panels in most of “The Dial”, 9 panels in the shorts – which lends them a steady pace and quietly rhythmic quality.

In case it's not clear yet, I enjoyed these comics a lot. They're not quite like anything else I've read. Mysterious, thought-provoking and above all atmospheric, they had me engrossed from start to finish.


Despite my love for the material in this book, I can't resist airing a couple of gripes about the book itself. If anyone from New York Review Comics is reading this, take heed! Firstly, it's pretty uncool to put the names of the book designer and the guy who wrote the foreword on the front cover at all, and it's very uncool to put those names in text almost the same size and prominence as that of the author. Secondly, a retrospective collection like this should absolutely include indication of when and where each comic was originally published; excluding this informaiton is totally inexplicable.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes you read something and marvel at how the author expressed a thought you’ve never been able to put into words. Reading this collection, I felt like Chris Reynolds was pulling out and examining pieces of my psyche of which I’ve never been more than fleetingly conscious. It was a moving, thrilling, sometimes frightening experience.

This registers not as a celebration of nostalgia but as an exploration of the strangeness of memory, reconciling it both with the experience of the real world after the passage of time and with the impossible logic of dreams. Characters return to old homes to find them strange and empty; old friends resent each other's reappearances in changed lives; temporary reprieves from death are granted. There is religious iconography that refuses to settle into an allegorical framework. Glimpses of the lazily hidden security apparatus of a surveillance state resist description as dystopian. No one has a real job or complete personality; they move through largely empty cities and landscapes trying to make sense of a world that rejects simple cause and effect.

The simple, almost childish prose eventually begins to feel natural, allowing you to focus on the unbelievably assured and effective drawing. The writing is surreal, but not in a way that blows your mind up front. Instead it lingers and gets under your skin, leaving you shaken after reading. I was reminded of long summer mornings of adolescence, of travels in Eastern Europe, of classic point-and-click computer games. Your mileage may vary, but this was exactly what I was looking for.

[cardulelia carduelis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was another one of those 'I know nothing about this but it's on offer' purchases. As such, I was unprepared for the nostalgia I'd feel for the landscapes (they're Welsh, but they could easily be from the North East of England), not to mention the poignant, dark atmosphere of the comics themselves. There's something very, British about the entire collection - but again, that's likely due to the countryside rather than the content as having looked back through there's not too much to suggest this is set in Britain, possibly apart from the trains?

So it's less of a single story and more like a collection of eery, well-written vignettes. The 'impossibly thick black lines', as says the collection's editor, adds to the detatchment and for frames that are filled with black they feel strangely empty.

I wasn't quite as fond of the longer-format comic as I was of the short stories, perhaps because it felt less odd? Perhaps because I didn't care for the protagonist? Perhaps because it featured less of the rolling hills and barren moorland?
I think the real strength of these comics is how water-tight the narration is. There is quite a lot of movement from one frame to the next but it feels as though you're in capable hands.

Really enjoyed this collection and will be seeking out Reynold's back catalogue.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first experience with the comics of Chris Reynolds, which I read now because it came up on the New York Review Comics, all of which I try to read because they are so unique and often strange, often experiments in narrative (or non-narrative). I also read it because it was edited (a generous selection) and designed by Seth, a terrific hardcover collection of his work.

The work, from the eighties and nineties, is strange, operating in mystery, and mystery that is never resolved. We know we are somewhere in the future, as one central character wears a VR helmet, but otherwise it seems like a bleak, vaguely corporate world. Alienated people, thick lined, black and white, little story, little conflict, no resolution. Sounds like so much fun, story lovers, yes??!! But it is not meant to be "fun" but interesting, a comment on the sociocultural present, and the fiction of narrative as sense-making tool.

Mauretania is th e perfect title, the only title possible, Reynolds says, which is in a way perfect as it has nothing to do with Mauretania, though it does have something to do with the creatio9n of the "new world" in the collection's title. Two longer pieces, "The Dial" and "Mauretania" are novellas, while others are fragments, short shorts, anecdotes that trail off. Postmodern, some might describe it? A big book that theoretically could be read quickly. I add one review: "I have no idea what I just read." Exactly.

[William Alleix · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange little book!
The general atmosphere is of uneasiness, something always seems to be on the verge of a breakdown, of a shift.
It reminded me of some movies by David Lynch when the plot takes a turn without warning and (seemingly) without logic.
There is a melancholy throughout the book, the feeling that something/someone is missing and the characters are a bit sad and lonely.
I am not selling the book too well here but overall the atmosphere it creates somehow makes you want to read the next story.
The last story (Mauretania) brings together quite a bit of details from the previous stories. It makes you want to read it all again to see if there are things you have missed. But not now, I'll let it sink in a little bit first.

[Duncan · Rating 5 out of 5]

To me these stories read as if film director Michealangelo Antonioni had story boarded a British kid's tv show from the 1970's. I'm not saying these were infantile, some of the Brit kids show were pretty sophisticated. Nothing makes any sense but one finds oneself okay w/that, not frustrated at the outcome. I was frustrated though at their not being anymore. At 300 or so pages the book almost seems a little light.

[Shtwaan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great example of "less is more". Quietly disturbing stuff, with a peculiar sense of now, though created decades ago. It presents a world that exists in suspension, without recognizable patterns of causality and purpose, and consumed by an unnamed catastrophy which everybody seems to ignore, as if in a trance. The simultaneous lulling and menacing qualities makes this the narrative equivalent of Boards of Canada's music. Beautiful as an object, too.