Disillusion
Disillusion © Jim Cameron
| Disillusion Jim Cameron |
| Also see reviews of: Confused, Complicity Interiority & Transition... when I've got them sorted. |
Disillusion is an agreeable and unassuming comic that its creator, Jim, succinctly sums up as "just one of those wee things that came about by accident". It is an autobiographical comix-diary based around Jim's life in Glasgow.
Refreshing, Jim freely admits that he drew the comic purely for fun, with no high or great artist motives. As a result of his book is straightforward, engaging and unpretentious. Though it is episodic & fragmentary, and inevitably limited in scope, it has a genial warmth and immediacy of improvisation.
Spontaneous projects such as "Disillusion" often have more going for them than overwrought would-be masterpieces. This is often because the creator does not have the chance to hesitate, to procrastinate, to reconsider; to edit the work over and over again in the fevered brain with the eventual result that negativity and self-doubt preclude expression altogether. The blank page can become overwhelmingly daunting!
The most important thing, as Jim demonstrates in this low-key comic, is to produce the work, get it down on paper, and have a good time doing it. What emerges is a portrait of a friendly, intelligent bloke; what's lacking is the sordid warts-and-all revelations that make Crumb's work so compelling. Nosey voyeur that I am, I would have liked to have seen more about Jim's relationships with others, more about his interaction with his girlfriend, for example.
Jim often writes of his disillusionment: his uncertainty, his indecision, his frustrations and scepticism. But ultimately he conveys an air of infectious optimism, hope and vigorous enjoyment of life: qualities not usually conveyed in autobiographical comics.
Vic Pratt
| Disillusion: 20 A5 pages, colour card stock cover | Received at ZUM! HQ: no info |
£1 +P+P | Jim Cameron, PO Box 16163, Glasgow, G13 4JW. |