Page 45 Review by Stephen
Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month October 2024
Iconoclastic and smartly bombastic, I commend this heartily to all John Allison (especially BAD MACHINERY) fans: the mischief is delivered then often revisited with pinpoint timing, while the behavioural observation reignited so many memory flashes long since lost to oblivion:
Asking teachers impossible / ridiculous questions the second you see them outside the confines of the classroom - for me during lunch, out orienteering or, here, during a fire drill:
"Mr. Tims would you rather be lost in space, or trapped in a painting?"
"Mr. Tims, would you give up literature to be the best dancer in the world?"
"Mr. Tims, would you rather have infinite knowledge or absolute power?"
I think Mr. Tims got off comparatively lightly!
Hunsinger's art is cast across each page with an infectious, electrifying energy momentum and dynamism, plus a thrilling variety of form and free-floating cameo composition.
Pages 38, 39 and 40 *nail* the overwhelming scale of one's first day at secondary school, barely treading water against the swollen crowds - *just* like Posy Simmonds's visual ode to Christmas shopping in CASSANDRA DARKE.
Teenage boys rip their shirts off in response to their English teacher's professed hot love of literature, posing proud of their bare chests and bellies, filling a full page while poor Tara cowers below. Mr. Tims is ill equipped to control 14-year-old boys. And they know it. You can almost hear the hormones cackling in each busy head.
Oh, and Jessup's beard! (He's, like, 13 or something but looks like an indie band guitarist on their 4th album. Then when he finally fills out... Funny!)
Tara is about to enter High School - a year early, as it happens - and, in the vacuum.of her inexperience imagines all sorts of adult-behaviour nightmares awaiting her. (The recurring joke of "Wait... What do drugs look like?" is crackingly funny when first fired out the gate but grows cumulatively funnier and funnier with, once more, exquisite timing.) Fortunately she has a sympathetic older sister to issue deadpan guidance - Jessup's coming with her too - and there's even respite from the English class's testosterone overload in the form of Libby. Phew! They can do projects together!
But then Tara starts to feel subtly different... about everything. Song lyrics expand in importance, she becomes self-conscious about her childlike bedroom, and she starts second-guessing her own behaviour, how it will be perceived by others and she Makes a Mistake...
For pages I was desperate - so emotionally involved that I was desperate - for Tara to extricate herself from that unforced error, that understandable but totally unnecessary self-sabotage.
The clue lies in these three sentences which ring recognisably true:
"I feel like I'm always looking for her. Even in places I know she won't be. I'm hoping for her to be around every corner."
For Tara has fallen in love.
