HOT SUMMER NIGHTS by FREDDY CARRASCO
60 pages detailing a final push by 3 friends before summer break is over.
Paul, Benny and Shake are the friends you had when you were 16 and couldn't give a f***. They skate across the sunburnt highways, hang out at a convenience store and get their shy friend who always has his headphones on to talk to the scary, older and hotter foreign girls to roll their joint. Benny shows off his new action figure and Shake needs a mighty finisher down a stair set before the night is up.
Carrasco renders this short story in such a reductive yet expressive way. Mankind is reduced to simple shapes and lined by what looks like a 1 pixel brush on a 20mb JPEG. However the composition and design of the world gives HSN a hauntingly nostalgic vibe. The deep black, paintbucketted into the roads are bleeding into the sky, vignetting these scenes as if a memory, with it's panels punctuating their skating into an almost frame-by-frame, animated memory. "What did you do over the summer?" Your teacher asks you. You're in grade 3 or something. HSN is how the page would look if this memory were to spill out.
PS. The last page says "What's Benny listening to" Followed by a diegetic playlist of what's playing in his headphones during the story. And that's cool af.
Freddy Carrasco is one of my favourite artists. Despite a misdirection from realistic design, his linework is deliberate and expressive. Capturing form within a moment unlike any other.
His other work: GLEEM. Is another favourite I highly recommend, which I may talk about in the future.
Thanks for reading, Tyler
