Obsolete

You don’t get many pamphlet comics from the indie publishers these days, but Nobrow press are attempting to resuscitate the format with 17 x 23, a series of 24 page single story booklets from a variety of up and coming artists.

Mikkel Sommer’s Obsolete is part of the 17 x 23 series, and presents the extremely slight story of a traumatised veteran whose desperation turns to bank robbery. Sommer can draw, that’s for sure, and it was his ratty Panterish line, filled out with a painterly muted washes and a restricted autumnal palette, that drew me to the comic, along with his deft and expressive figure work. And his artwork doesn’t disappoint, with a competent wordless setup and logical movement between panels – overall the pages hang well together, though he doesn’t seem that concerned about the pages’ design as a whole.

The storyline, sadly, is an entirely different matter, a cliche-ridden, empty, plod through the motions. In it, our vet, returned from a US middle eastern sortie to an unforgiving, unwelcoming America, haunted by his past and mentally unstable, attempts an armed heist along with some street-addled other vet to whom we’re never introduced. The backstory – Iranistan, shell-shocked memories and insomnia – takes up half the pages, while the robbery itself takes up the other half.

Inevitably the robbery goes wrong – the auxillary vet loses his cool and unloads his revolver into various innocents before turning his gun on a woman who may (or may not be!) the main vet’s sister. Torment and emotion ensue, though we’re not too certain why we’re supposed to care, and the comic ends.

Nobrow have produced a good number of excellent comics, but they’ve also produced some shockingly vacant toot – usually very nice looking to be sure, but often a triumph of form over content. 24 pages isn’t long to tell a story, but it’s not too short to create situations and characters that are more than one-dimensional cyphers. ‘Art’ publishers often forget this, and their editors, heads turned by lovely, lovely artwork, neglect their craft, and their duty to their readers, by letting this content-light prettiness out in public.