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Multiforce
At last, all of Mat Brinkman's 2000-2005 comic strip serial Multiforce is collected in one volume at its original printed size. 22 big pages of some of the best comic strips I've ever seen. PictureBox scanned and carefully retouched these pages in collaboration with Brinkman. Come with Brinkman as he creates, explores and explodes his visual universe. Deeply personal, extravagantly visual, often hilarious: Multiforce is nothing short of a masterpiece.
22 pages
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 2, 2013
Ostensibly a kind of note-margin juvenalia of monsters fighting monsters in a series of underground worlds, Brinkman's 2000-2005 scattered serial is instead instantly elevated by the ordinariness of much of the content. Citadel city seems dominated, even threatened with destruction, by ennui. The giants and armored monstrosities wandering its cuboid passages are animated by petty urges and whims, an aimless noncommitalness to their universe and its factions, a blank slacker avoidance. Their lives, doubtless, are not all that different from the artists making their way through the streets of Providence at the turn of the millennium. Hell, I'm just going to assume this is an accurate map and portrayal of life inside the catacombs of Fort thunder.
And despite this modestness of content panel-to panel, there's also an unbelievable scope to the thing: huge pages packed with smaller and smaller panels generate worlds upon worlds, all intertwining and developing as they go. Creation in plain sight.
And despite this modestness of content panel-to panel, there's also an unbelievable scope to the thing: huge pages packed with smaller and smaller panels generate worlds upon worlds, all intertwining and developing as they go. Creation in plain sight.
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January 6, 2015A sobering treatise on microman-giant relations.
June 14, 2022
bel lebro fonsiglio
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January 1, 2021The museum edition is honestly unreadable
September 6, 2021
This is certainly one of the strangest comics I've read. It has a roughness and amateurish quality that feels more like something made for the artist's own amusement than something intended for a huge, fancy hardcover. Some of the roughness could result from printing issues (I believe my Hollow Press "museum edition", while large, is downsized compared to the material’s original publication in broadsheet newspapers), but I think it’s mostly just Brinkman's chosen aesthetic.
In sharp contrast to Brinkman's meticulous artwork in Teratoid Heights, the art here is generally very loose – much of it looks like it was drawn in a slapdash, hasty manner. Some panels are so busy, and so messy with black ink, that it's difficult to work out what's actually happening. The lettering is also very rough, written in a childlike scrawl, complete with occasional crossed-out mistakes, and the text is sometimes so miniscule as to be illegible.
The strangest thing about this comic is its overall layout and structure (or rather, it's lack of structure). There is a coherent main story, but it’s told in a disjointed way, essentially consisting of separate but overlapping narratives, each of which operates like a distinct strip. Moreover, the fringes of the pages are often occupied by doodles and surreal gag strips, which feel tonally and thematically related to the main story, but don’t actually contribute to it at all. Adding to the chaos is the fact that these doodles and mini-strips aren’t clearly separated from the rest of the comic, meaning that the reader can’t be sure what is or isn’t relevant to the main plot.
Overall, I think the weird extras detract from the main comic; they do feature some cool images, and occasionally they’re interesting or funny (especially the longer ones, like “Pombo” and “Skeleton Jelly”), but they generally feel pointless, and their sophomoric humour doesn’t really appeal to me. The main story, on the other hand, I enjoy quite a lot. It’s basically a lighthearted, irreverent, comedic take on high fantasy, playing with the tropes of role-playing games. Indeed, it feels a bit like a group of friends playing a very casual game of Dungeons & Dragons: instead of a grand quest, it has a meandering, unfocused plot, its protagonists more like drifters than adventurers, hanging out and getting swept up in weird events. It’s goofy, but fun, and it never feels excessively stupid. Importantly, it doesn’t get bogged down in in-jokes or meta-references – it doesn’t lean anywhere near as heavily on D&D as comics like The Order of the Stick or Steve Lichman. In fact, Multiforce has very little in common with those kinds of fantasy spoofs – it’s less about comedy, and more surreal.
Perhaps the best thing about Multiforce is the way that it crafts a world that’s clearly influenced by high fantasy predecessors, but is very much its own thing. It neither takes itself seriously, nor feels like a total joke. Above all, it’s a world full of bizarre fantastical creatures. Indeed, I feel that Brinkman may primarily have seen the comic as a vehicle for cool character designs, and on this count it’s a great success. There are also some wonderful backgrounds – dungeons, fortresses, cities, and the like – often making great use of the big page size. Despite the roughness to the final realization, these images must have been painstakingly planned, and they look awesome.
Multiforce isn’t an instant favourite for me – it’s a bit too rough around the edges for my taste – but it does feature some great art and an amusing story. Above all, I get a lot of pleasure from simply exploring its world.
In sharp contrast to Brinkman's meticulous artwork in Teratoid Heights, the art here is generally very loose – much of it looks like it was drawn in a slapdash, hasty manner. Some panels are so busy, and so messy with black ink, that it's difficult to work out what's actually happening. The lettering is also very rough, written in a childlike scrawl, complete with occasional crossed-out mistakes, and the text is sometimes so miniscule as to be illegible.
The strangest thing about this comic is its overall layout and structure (or rather, it's lack of structure). There is a coherent main story, but it’s told in a disjointed way, essentially consisting of separate but overlapping narratives, each of which operates like a distinct strip. Moreover, the fringes of the pages are often occupied by doodles and surreal gag strips, which feel tonally and thematically related to the main story, but don’t actually contribute to it at all. Adding to the chaos is the fact that these doodles and mini-strips aren’t clearly separated from the rest of the comic, meaning that the reader can’t be sure what is or isn’t relevant to the main plot.
Overall, I think the weird extras detract from the main comic; they do feature some cool images, and occasionally they’re interesting or funny (especially the longer ones, like “Pombo” and “Skeleton Jelly”), but they generally feel pointless, and their sophomoric humour doesn’t really appeal to me. The main story, on the other hand, I enjoy quite a lot. It’s basically a lighthearted, irreverent, comedic take on high fantasy, playing with the tropes of role-playing games. Indeed, it feels a bit like a group of friends playing a very casual game of Dungeons & Dragons: instead of a grand quest, it has a meandering, unfocused plot, its protagonists more like drifters than adventurers, hanging out and getting swept up in weird events. It’s goofy, but fun, and it never feels excessively stupid. Importantly, it doesn’t get bogged down in in-jokes or meta-references – it doesn’t lean anywhere near as heavily on D&D as comics like The Order of the Stick or Steve Lichman. In fact, Multiforce has very little in common with those kinds of fantasy spoofs – it’s less about comedy, and more surreal.
Perhaps the best thing about Multiforce is the way that it crafts a world that’s clearly influenced by high fantasy predecessors, but is very much its own thing. It neither takes itself seriously, nor feels like a total joke. Above all, it’s a world full of bizarre fantastical creatures. Indeed, I feel that Brinkman may primarily have seen the comic as a vehicle for cool character designs, and on this count it’s a great success. There are also some wonderful backgrounds – dungeons, fortresses, cities, and the like – often making great use of the big page size. Despite the roughness to the final realization, these images must have been painstakingly planned, and they look awesome.
Multiforce isn’t an instant favourite for me – it’s a bit too rough around the edges for my taste – but it does feature some great art and an amusing story. Above all, I get a lot of pleasure from simply exploring its world.
December 6, 2017
Multiforce is like taking a detour: different, indifferent and strangely enjoyable.
Everything about this book is a little of. The incredibly small cramped drawings printed on awkwardly large (A3 paper?) makes you read it, and think about it a little differently. It reminds me of finding a giant atlas at the library as a kid and studying the many strange maps that described places I had no idea existed. There are so many things that works here that just would not work if many other comics did the same things.
Everything about this book is a little of. The incredibly small cramped drawings printed on awkwardly large (A3 paper?) makes you read it, and think about it a little differently. It reminds me of finding a giant atlas at the library as a kid and studying the many strange maps that described places I had no idea existed. There are so many things that works here that just would not work if many other comics did the same things.
December 9, 2024
I think this is a great work, maybe even comparable to Gary Panter's stuff, but is it? It's certainly intricate, beautiful in a way, arguably the highest form of this style of art that eventually collapsed under the weight of a lot of mass-market, Adventure Time-style fey dreck. The prose and pictures work together to capture a mood, the ennui of 2000s America (and perhaps the Fort Thunder warehouse art scene where it was produced more specifically), yet it all amounts to nothing, which I'd guess (having lived through it!) is the most that the serious pop art of that hopeless-yet-hopeful period in American cultural history could hope to accomplish.
Make sure you've got a magnifying glass handy if you hope to read the lettering, particularly as you approach the last strips. This board-book reproduction is oversized, which seems promising for reading purposes, but the involuted, tortuous presentation of the panels (a far cry from how fellow FT artist Brian Chippendale does it, which probably explains why he does the DC covers and so on) ensures that the process of consuming this content will be every bit as interminable as watching paint dry. Recommended if you're into this sort of thing (I am)
Make sure you've got a magnifying glass handy if you hope to read the lettering, particularly as you approach the last strips. This board-book reproduction is oversized, which seems promising for reading purposes, but the involuted, tortuous presentation of the panels (a far cry from how fellow FT artist Brian Chippendale does it, which probably explains why he does the DC covers and so on) ensures that the process of consuming this content will be every bit as interminable as watching paint dry. Recommended if you're into this sort of thing (I am)
June 13, 2021
Early 2000s Providence classic.
August 12, 2025
6.5
Justice for Skeleton Jelly!
Totalny chaos przeciętności i fajności. Ale historia gigantów nienawidzących swojej pracy oraz przygody Pombo stanowią bardzo ciekawe elementy.
Justice for Skeleton Jelly!
Totalny chaos przeciętności i fajności. Ale historia gigantów nienawidzących swojej pracy oraz przygody Pombo stanowią bardzo ciekawe elementy.
August 6, 2021
Note: this review is for the museum edition of multi force published by Hollow Press.
When I got home from buying this book, I was a little surprised by the low page count. I paid $50 for about 24 pages of comics plus some drawing scans? I was skeptical. However, this is now one of my favorite books that I own. Once you start squinting to see all of the details, you can’t believe how much action and humor is packed into every page. If you get a chance to publish this reprint I would definitely do so.
When I got home from buying this book, I was a little surprised by the low page count. I paid $50 for about 24 pages of comics plus some drawing scans? I was skeptical. However, this is now one of my favorite books that I own. Once you start squinting to see all of the details, you can’t believe how much action and humor is packed into every page. If you get a chance to publish this reprint I would definitely do so.
September 10, 2024
The reason why Michele Nitri from Hollow Press started publishing great comics, is a great comic indeed!
I show this one and many other excellent Hollow press releases in this video :
https://youtu.be/w7L0K-h1_KA
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November 10, 2013epic
March 19, 2015
"Still the One" - Shania Twain
February 23, 2011
this is one of the best things.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews