Drawn & Quarterly Showcase: Book Two: Book Two

Drawn & Quarterly Showcase #2

by Chris Oliveros (editor)

Drawn & Quarterly Showcase - edited by Chris Oliveros - returns featuring two more of the brightest new talents working in graphic novels today. This edition focuses on new stories by two cartoonists from opposite ends of the Chicago's Jeffrey Brown and from the other side of the Atlantic, Pentti Otsamo of Finland. Brown's story is a a co-worker at a factory has dreams about dogs attacking a girl two nights in a row. The next day he unloads a truck and finds dirty clothing in the trailer, clothing that looks like a young girls'. As it happens, a young girl was abducted and murdered the night before, and the truck had picked up the load in that area the same day. Brown deftly paces the story, drawn in his expressive line, never quite revealing more than we need to know. Pentti Otsamo writes about a boy's move to a new town and of the nastiness of the local kids who do their best to shun the new arrival. Otsamo's moody and atmospheric drawing style is perfectly suited to the subject of the story. His artwork is reminiscent of some of the best D+Q cartoonists, with the warm colors of Seth and the sensitive, yet expressive linework of Chester Brown.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Anthologies, Graphic Novels Comics

96 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2004

Reviews

[Always Becominging · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing especially exciting in here. Interesting to see Jeffery Brown drawing in a slightly different style

[StrictlySequential · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first tried to be too "deep" and symbolic. The art is ok.

I avoid Jeffery Brown because his work is so LAZY. He surely did the whole thing in two days MAX. The art is reprehensibly sloppy. His subject could have made a very creepy story but it turned out abstract and cumbersome.

So the third -the least professional creator of the three- turns out to be best in show.
->It was deep but not that abstract type of "what is this/that supposed to represent"
->His art was the best by far. I love that Dutch brush style.

[Rikin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first and third stories, Life During Wartime and Game by Erik De Graaf, put me back into the shoes of a lost and confused child. Everything was unfamiliar even when it shouldn't have been, and no one except my mother could keep me safe. These stories, while relatively inane, were told in an intense and slightly surreal style and ended up feeling slightly unsettling. More unsettling however was the second story, Monday Nightmare by Jeffrey Brown. It was so strange that throughout the narrative of the nightmare and mystery, the protagonist was consistently disregarded in daily interactions. The protagonist was haunted by his disturbing dreams and experiences, but worst yet was that he was truly alone in facing them.

[Elizabeth Nordquest · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too short. Strange. Guessing the first one wasn't originally in English, and translated poorly. Wish there was more to story 2.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Pentti Otsamo story was best.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short stories by Erik DeGraaf, Jeffery Brown and Pentti Otsamo. All very different, uniformly provocative, interesting, done work.

[C2015 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was okay. It would've been good but it was such a snippet.