Review: Deluxe

Day seven, and today I attack a book which I have postponed reviewing, as I have mixed feelings about it... 


Title: Deluxe
By:Marcus Ivarsson
Language: Swedish
136 pages,colour
Optimal Press, 2009
ISBN: 978-91-85951-07-9











I really like the comics that the Swede Marcus Ivarsson creates. He has a way both with the narrative structure and with the images which shows that he's on top of the creative process and has found his "voice", at the same time as he still dares experiment. His latest book, Intro, from last year showed a really interesting creative force, combining autobiographical stories - which actually were based on an interesting experince (of leaving an adiction) and not just wining about missed oportunites and bland everyday experiences - with some really powerfull images.

Deluxe is more of the same, only this time in colour. Ivarsson uses a lot of colour, compensatoing for the lack of it in earlier black and white comics, but doing it with a finesse and a deft hand. This book is also beautifully designed, as most books from Optimal Press are.

The content varies a lot. Initially you find the follow up story to Intro, where we see how the main character not only stays a sober alchoholic, but also finds a partner and begets a child. These stories are interestesing, soul-searching and psychological. Then there's a lot of comical and some not so comical but obviously allegorical and probabaly also autibiographical stores. These are also interesting and beautifully crafted, but somewhere I get lost as I loose focus on what the book is really about. Don't get my wrong, I think some of the stories in here are really good, it's just that that totalty of the book is not fully satisfying. It's like a music album, where there are some really good tracs but the whole of the album doesn't feel like a unity you want to listen to in one go. I'm not sure if that's a relevant crticism to an anthology like this, but that's my feelings after having read this book several times over.

Still, do read Deluxe, and Intro before that if you haven't tried Ivarssons comics before.Sorry, so far only for those of you who can manage Swedish...