A Sharp Chill
Yuichi Yokoyama's graphic novel "Iceland"
Iceland by Yuichi Yokoyama. Retrofit 66, 2015. English language edition published by Retrofit Comics/Big Planet Comics (2017). Translation by Ryan Holmberg.Â
Angular blades jutting in dense juxtaposition. Overlapping, underlapping, ripping. Panels so bladed that to discern action requires a refocusing. An ocular tearing. Angularity, sharpness, the resulting wound: here is plot. Yokoyama’s story opens with the nearly indistinguishable act of a sheet of ice being sawed open, a shark yanked from the frigid bowel of water beneath. The wound and the meat. Icicles, shark teeth, the darts of bullets, tusks. The humanoids that populate this brief graphic novel move through violently ambient settings, irregular patterns offset by irregular faces offset by shards of language, sharp katakana wielded like weapons across the page, their presence an omnipresent beating, grinding, pulsing—sound inescapable, evidence of an unseen wreckage, an infection of the sonic sense. The tale is a riddle that remains a riddle. Two travelers are searching for someone. Plying the locals with a photograph. Eventually they find the object of their search. The three leave together. The end. On each page the illustrations crash at breakneck speed into the reader’s eye, out of sync with the non-urgency of the narrative. Why are we here? Where are we going? Who cares. The story is the sound-image, the catastrophe of the unreadable world, the propulsive vibration of the inevitable rupture wending itself toward us.  Â
Plus, a reminder that my new poetry chapbook A Dash as Long as the Earth’s Orbit is now out. Order it from Bateau Press today!