Page 45 Review by Stephen
Production values bliss! 10 photos as usual.
Jordan Crane's GOES LIKE THIS.
"It's too late to fix this."
Epiphanies abound, as worlds are turned upside down.
From the creator of Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month KEEPING TWO and NON, THE LAST LONELY SATURDAY and THE CLOUDS ABOVE comes this exquisite package of exceptional craft. As promised by its swoonaway threaded spine, the multiple paper and card stocks - yes, card stocks within! - have been collated and bound in such a way that you never know what will pop up to slap up your senses next. Some photograph better than others, so although I've hopefully nailed the varnishes, the glossier inserts you'll have to discover for yourselves!
Poignant, punchy, and occasionally comical comics stories of inner or external conflict alternate with pull-page prints equally charged with narrative.
Some of these I sat staring at for ages. Careful study reveals, for example, the true reason why the chain-strung chandelier is wilted all over the floor. Individuals find themselves under siege, buffeted by the four elements or each other. We witness the lost and the lonely, pain, rain and wreckage. One angry mob is astonishingly well armed.
As to the comics stories, think Adrian Tomine injected with a sometimes surreal kick from Kevin Huizenga. Because you might think that you know what you're in for after reading the first few stories, but Jordan Crane has many more tricks up his contemplative or even combative sleeve, from outer space exploration to an inner experience of the Here and Now.
Essentially, though, simmering emotional turmoil within relationships, friendships and familes boils over into a physical, heart-breaking self-destructive rage ending in guilt, resignation or...
"I am going to stop making the same mistakes."
Are you, though...?
The publisher writes:
"For almost three decades, master cartoonist Jordan Crane has put together a body of short stories that garnered him multiple Eisner and Ignatz Award nominations, via the pages of his comic book series Uptight and the influential comics anthology, Non. Yet they have never been collected until now.
Featuring over a dozen short stories (spanning multiple genres) published over the past 25 years, Goes Like This is a gorgeously packaged anthology (including varying paper stocks and exposed spine) of Crane's work. 'The Hand of Gold' is a short but grim Weird Western, a morality play in which an accidental crime leads a criminal to a supernatural maximum security cell. 'Below the Shade of Night' presents an anxiety that is rooted in the follies and ignorance of childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. 'Vicissitude' maps uncharted territory of graphic melancholia via a tale of infidelity. 'Trash Night' depicts the troubled relationship of Dee and Leo, with mounting tension and mistrust that reaches a boiling point. In 'The Dark Nothing,' a rare foray into science fiction, the three-person crew of prospecting ship Sagasu 17 attempt to harvest an asteroid, and things go horribly awry. 'The Middle Nowhere' begins with a man waiting in a small shack. All around him is a black sand desert.
The wind rises, the rain comes, and it just might be the end of everything he's known. Also featuring additional prints and drawings from the author's archives, Goes Like This is a tantalizing sampler of one of the most brilliant cartoonists working today."
