Squid Works: Quickies

"Tell Tale Signs" by Lonnie Allen

The Squid Works is proud to present the latest mini-comic masterpiece by Lonnie Allen. Tell Tale Signs follows a night of misadventures by the iconic main character (literally!). This essentially wordless comic utilizes and combines universal icons into a hilarious 40-page story that you've got to see to believe!

(Cover shown to left. Man at a bar finds love (below).)

Title: Tell Tale Signs

Intended Audience: Mature

Format: 40 page b&w mini-comic

Retail price: $1.00

Order # 0192

Also available through Cold Cut Comics Distribution

Lonnie Allen's Tell Tale Signs is a 40-page minicomic made up of pictograms, the kinds of symbols seen on street signs and informational placards. The main character looks like the guy on the men's restroom sign, and he talks in symbols, like the international no circle-with-slash.

The plot is fairly typical for this kind of thing: guy tries to hook up with girl, guy gets shot down, over-the-top tragedy ensues. Message: drunk driving kills. The closest thing to a splash page is actually quite impressive in its combination of vehicles, trees, and figures. I especially liked the classic look of the dog silhouettes.

At its best, this comic can be read quickly, due to the well-chosen symbols. The use of the diving pictograph was a particularly funny surprise. Other choices are strained, making too much of themselves. "B + (eye)" was probably the worst, the rebus disrupting my reading flow. Still, the creativity outweighs the occasional stumbles.

It's a clever demonstration of what can be done outside the traditional art approach. Repetition of the concept would destroy the surprise, but as a $1 one-off, it's a treat. ~Johanna Draper Carlson, Cognitive Dissonance 4/17/05 (go to article)

*One of the sketchbook pages within David Collier’s new The Frank Ritza Papers book (D&Q) mentions, “The Canadian designer Paul Arthur created a new, pictographic language for the World’s Fair in Montreal – Expo ‘67 – that quickly spread around the world...” We’ve seen these minimal symbols on washroom doors, telling us where to find a phone, escalator or ski-lift. There are hundreds of different ones and variations - I recycled a hand from a "stop" sign to create the brand-new "applause" icon, above - some stylized into incomprehensibility. (One "woman" symbol looks like a silhouetted woodwind instrument!)

These featureless, geometric little entities have acted in brief sequences before, but now Lonnie Allen’s crisply-produced and consistently funny Tell Tale Signs has them star in a book-length tale. In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud suggested that simplified, "iconic" characters facilitate audience identification more than realistically rendered ones, and indeed - though he showed "cartoony" characters as examples - it's odd how easily here one is pulled into empathizing with the travails of One Bad Day in a nameless chap's life.

He exits his job with countless others, fends off requests from panhandlers. Dialogue's conveyed via word-balloons carrying the appropriate symbol, sometimes aided by a "?" or "!". Over much liquor consumption, he attempts to pick up a woman in a bar, has a fight with a recalcitrant ATM, and during a boozy, rainy drive afterward, we see the "slippery-when-wet" skidding-car road sign, then the familiar duo of youths from "school crossing." Oh, NO! His car upside-down and in flames, he ends up pursued by police dogs, struck by lightning, and his troubles are far from over...

In Tell Tale Signs, Lonnie Allen's wrought an amusingly bleak story, his cleverness, wit and sense of pacing and design well displayed. Further, here's another title to add to that "Best comics to show someone not into comics" list. It's eminently accessible, in the best sense of the word. ~Mike Hunter, Poopsheet Reviews 12/10/04 (go to article)

Tell Tale Signs - There aren't many comics where I could honestly say that the author has ingeniously used street signs to tell a story. Well, I can for this one. This is the story of a man who goes out, gets drunk, hits on a woman, and then wanders off. Any more than that and it's ruined, and this is one of the tougher books to sample because what do you pick from a book with no words and have it make sense? Oh well, who said this had to make sense? This book is only $1 (which is pretty amazing, considering how professional this book looks), and it was a great idea done to perfection. ~Optical Sloth, 4/2004 (go to article)

"I've seen other comics using picto-people, but (it) is the first one to make me laugh! The book, achieves greatness with the three-page accident scene. The story changes tone from comedy to deadly serious and the symbols become even more abstract, then switches back...so the pages in the middle are kinda like the "guitar solo" in the story! Also, I liked how the guy gives up by saying "[Yield Sign]". HAHA."

~Matt Feazell
Amazing Cynical Man

“(One) of Denver’s best comic artists” ~Kyle MacMillan, Denver Post

“This is really clever stuff” ~Brett Warnock, TopShelf Comics

"This is hilarious!" ~ Josh, an 8-year-old at Majesticon

"I just picked up "Tell Tale Signs" and it is great!" ~busterdust, Comicon Message Board

"Fascinating. The icons rule, and they rule us." ~Al Buchet, Comics Journal Message Board

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