I don’t have time for a real review, but I have to say I’m smitten with Seaguy. For one thing, it may well be the first comic I’ve read that uses the word boustrophedon, always one of my favorites. In fact, I hope it’s a telling plot point. This is a story that’s not going to be told directly, but each turn it takes, each stopping point will require passage back across what came before to continue.
See, Seaguy lives in a world that’s somehow been conquered by The Residents and accordingly commodified into an eyeball-based sideshow where cigars are legal. And because they’re so cool, nobody minds. Or nobody minds because of the seven-second attention spans. I like this world, though. Nice place to visit, yeah, yeah, but it’s a much more fun and palatable (and thus dangerous and interesting) than your average authoritarian dystopia.
There are wonderfully bad puns, though I won’t mind if this is the last “Aye, Aye, Seaguy!” we have to read. I like all the characters, the moon-mad seadog and She-Beard, who seems to be Red Sonja with lower standards but clearly is more both on and beneath the surface, and that lovely gondolier Death, and my new fashion icon Doc Hero. And then of course Wynken, Blynken and Nod themselves, Seaguy and his friend Chubby da Choona, who implausibly seem not to be lovers as well, and a third fellow I’ll leave unnamed.
The art is simple and bright and clear, beautiful and appropriate for such a dark story with a buffed veneer. Everything is disarmingly light and casual, though every bit as depressing as any other story of unemployed ennui. How will I ever manage to wait for more?
