Jessica Farm [Hardcover]

Like a Lynchian take onA career-spanning comics project 24 years in the making, Josh Simmons creates a deeply personal fantasy drama infused with psychological horror. Indie comics fans will relish this enigmatic mash-up of Lewis Carroll and Jim Woodring. [Simmonss work is] idiosyncratic, grotesque, and adept at wince-level physical violence and comedy  all in service of a worldview so brutally cold that aimed in the right direction it could shut down the sun. Simmons is the reassuring hand in the dark that took yours into his and then shoved it into something sharp and wet. The sort of book you read very fast for the story, then again right away to slow down and savor the images. As ever, the interiors in particular are captivating, darkly hatched and full of mysterious shadows. An exhilaratingly horrific tour de force. There may not be another creator of horror stories working in comics, film, or prose today who comes even close to rivaling Simmonss ability to evoke an atmosphere of menace and dread. Simmonss cartooning is frantic, dark and often furious and theres the obvious interest in seeing how it evolves given that every few pages represent months of work. Obviously Jessica Farm needs a different application of criteria to judge it critically because this is perhaps the ultimate experiment in comics construction. To a large degree the how, the who and the what of Jessica Farm is unimportant. But the experience& well the experience of reading it is everything.