Obscure
Comic of the Month is a column where I take a look at a comic or
series that hasn't really been talked about. This covers independent
comics, zines, weird spin-offs, webcomics and more.
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Twenty
Thirty Three Special Edition by En Gingerboom – 2019
Mild
Spoilers
When
writing about comics for this column it sometimes becomes difficult
to know exactly what to qualify a comic as. In the author's notes, En
Gingerboom classifies Twenty Thirty Three ultimately as a failure of
a project. It originally started life as a children's book, bouncing
between fantastical fairytale fair and a more grounded, but still
optimistic, post-apocalyptic tale of survival . The various
iterations were something that the author developed over a series of
years, and ultimately settled on a short, dialogue-free comic
featuring reinterpretations of the more fairytale versions of the
characters.
As
a supposed failure I'm not really sure how to talk about Twenty
Thirty Three. So I'm just going to talk about it as a I would any
comic. From the get go the story is deliberately vague. We only know
the character's names and circumstances from ID cards printed behind
the front and back covers of the book itself, and the rest of the
story simply gives snapshots of a life lived by three young girls
travelling from somewhere to somewhere in Britain.
To
tell a story with such sparsity requires a great sense of place and
character. To be communicated entirely through images even more so.
The tone carried entirely by what we see, not by what we are told. At
this Twenty Thirty Three is very deft and intriguing from almost the
outset. The nature of the apocalypse, if it can even be classified as
one through what little information we actually have, is left
deliberately obscured. In a sense it doesn't even really matter, it's
the survivors that this story is concerned with.
The
young girls Molly, Ruby and Phyllis all have distinct visual flair,
and as the story goes on, strong personalities. Flipping through the
pages, moving from panel to panel, you will find yourself moving
backwards and forwards, re-reading earlier points with a greater
understanding of who these people are and what motivates them. While
there are moments of threat, the heart of the story is about the act
of living. Food is cultivated, stories are shared and love and
friendship happens almost between the margins.
The
grounded nature of the story for the most part does not prevent some
of the more fantastical and fairytale aspects bleeding through . Mrs
Mackenzie, the girl's magical witch mentor in earlier iterations of
the story, still appears in the main plot and this serves to make the
scope of the story feel larger. Likewise there are implications of
greater supernatural events happening in the background, and at one
point more explicitly in the foreground, but again their nature is
left vague and open to interpretation.
The
exact message of the story itself falls into the hands of the reader
to decide. Is the story whimsical, or is there a more sinister edge
bubbling under the surface? Ultimately, I think it's this ambiguous
nature that makes Twenty Thirty Three so successful. The story is
like a puzzle, with the reading and re-reading akin to fitting jigsaw
pieces into place, and while I don't think this picture will ever
fully be filled out, there are greater mysteries to be explored for
those willing to look.
The
Special Edition includes all the work in progress from earlier
iterations and the writer's commentary, which makes not only the
further study of the plot more engaging, but also serves as an
intriguing look behind the curtain at where the story started and how
it got to where it is.
Is
the comic a failure? I don't know, but if it is it's certainly an
interesting one.
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Jack
Harvey 2022. Gawain and the Green Knight (c) 2019 En Gingerboom .
Images used under Fair Use.
