Squid Works Offerings

Title: Desperate Souls #3

Synopsis: Another amazing collection of Andy Glass's, including the third mysterious installment of "Nova Via". 2003. 32 pgs., Half-legal, color cover, B&W.

Issue Number: 1

Written, illustrated, inked and lettered by Andy Glass

Intended Audience: General

Format: 32 pg b&w comic. Multi-color cover.

Retail Price: $3.95 US # 0223

(Front Cover, left)

The Squid Works is proud to bring you the latest Sub Studio creation from the fertile mind of Andy Glass, "Desperate Souls #3." The latest installment of Glass collections includes the third installment of the mysterious narrative, "Nova Via" along with some light-hearted vignettes, "Hugo the Skeleton" and "Picnic." 32 pages, b&w, color cover.


(A seductive kiss from "Nova Via")	(Hugo the Skeleton)	(Time's a wasting in "Picnic")

The pages of Desperate Souls are evenly divided between a graphic novel in progress and a batch of short strips. The graphic novel, Nova Via, is such a mess of amateur mistakes that a lengthy comment on it would be nothing but unnecessarily brutal and disingenuous (like those cruel bastards on the makeover shows who walk into the apartment of the fat single man, express horror when -- surprise! -- he turns out to be a slob, then spend ten minutes ransacking his apartments in search of humiliating examples of his already-obvious slovenly nature).

Sometimes a detailed account of how and why a piece of art fails is worth the effort. This time it's not. Nova Via is an ill-advised venture that became scuttled early in its telling. Andrew Glass should be advised to abandon it. It can not be fixed, and is not worth fixing.

But the best reason for ignoring Nova Via is to focus on the author's other strips, some of which show promise -- particularly "Para Bal," from Desperate Souls #3. In "Para Bal" Glass abandons the realistic human figures -- rendered in a stiff, unnatural style that implies a lack of experience on the artist's part -- found in Nova Via. In their place we find cute, dumpy little cartoon characters (think of a potato with eyes and a mouth on top of a larger potato with arms and legs) drawn in a minimalist style. It is by no means groundbreaking stuff, but there is a natural flow to this style that allows the reader to engage the author's work and consider it for more than its failings. After reading the first three parts of Nova Via, it's like a veil being lifted. What we find under the veil is a cute, capable story. It's not consequential, but it demonstrates a natural feel for storytelling that is absent from the author's attempt at a graphic novel.

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