#subnormality

As far as I can tell, Winston Rowntree is not on Tumblr and that's a shame. I'd much rather reblog his entries than make new ones while "stealing" his art. But I still want to share because I love what he does and I want other people to have a chance to discover (or rediscover) him.

I classify his Subnormality comics in a few different categories:

Early works. These are short comics, often developing a simple idea. They are hit and miss, but there are some real gems in there. (e.g., Weird)

Posters. These are one-page pieces which are usually to the point while at the same time being very detailed. They remind me of these old children book where you would be looking all over the page, trying to discover all the small details. (e.g., The Creative Process)

Slice of (imaginary) life. In these comics, the same few characters make repeat appearances and you get to learn to love them, much like characters in your favourite long-running TV show. (e.g., Hallway)

Long form stories. These are the most unique in my opinion. They are usually very verbose and tell a story from beginning to end. I find that they capture my imagination like nothing else. (e.g., Message 652)

I'll leave you with this extract from one of his earlier comics:

that part at the end there-

the idea that you can just keep your mouth shut and do nothing and no one will bother you

but the thing that this comic, which i read in college, clicked into my brain is the fact that

no matter what

somehow you are going to piss someone off

and i don't mean in a "everyone hates you by default the second you enter the room" kinda way, i mean in the "you can be doing the most benign thing possible and someone who is having a really bad day to going to find you" way

you can go somewhere and just innocently lean against a wall and turns out you have severely fucked things up for someone in ways you could have never anticipated

what i'm getting at is that one comic panel make me really think about how you can do everything "correctly" in society, be polite, follow the rules and be considerate of others and your surroundings...

but

just replace "man" with " random person"

its not like it happens every hour of every day and that you have to be hypervigilant about it (cos i sure as hell ain't lol) but its just a fact of life you have to accept: yer gonna piss someone off somehow, despite it all, and you gotta be ready to roll with the punches

Friends, tumblrs, countrymates, it is my rare pleasure to make a book recommendation that I've been looking forward all year to making. Winston Rowntree, of Subnormality fame, has just published his first novel—or, rather, his first conventional, text-only novel: Shirley Estar Goes to Heaven.

That link will take you to the landing page where you can learn about the book, watch the trailer, and purchase the paper and/or e-book editions. I recommend it very highly!

I realize that my excitement is not something that will automatically carry over to you, and that I have to sell it a little bit. So, in a SPOILER-FREE way, here is why I am recommending this book:

To get the selfish part out of the way first: Last winter I was fortunate enough to be a very early reader for this work, months before the main beta reading phase. A genuine delight, to put it simply. I haven't gotten my physical copy of the book yet (it just published, after all, and is in transit), so I don't know yet what changes may have resulted from my feedback; but, regardless, it's not every day that I get to have involvement with another artist's work before its publication—so I am very excited on those grounds.

More importantly, however, this book is painfully personal for me. It is a book about a person who can't. You would think they can. They are able-bodied, intelligent, and self-aware. But they can't. In cold clinical terms it is a mental impairment. Qualitatively, it is as though a watery pane of glass separates you from the rest of the world. You can see everything beyond it, but you can't go there. I have struggled with this since I was a small child, much more severely than I have ever fully explained, and I will never not struggle with it. It is the central dominating force in my life. This book is a book about that, except with dramatic elongations of the terrible shadows it casts. Anyone who has struggled with this illness or perhaps let us call it a fault is likely to be able to relate to this story in some way, and it is also a recommended read for those who don't suffer from this condition themselves but want to learn more about it. I particularly like one of the other early readers' pithy assessments: "Characters that you'll love but one of them will always do the thing you don't want her to."

Shirley Estar Goes to Heaven is a reimagining of Winston Rowntree's graphic novel from about fifteen years ago called Captain Estar Goes to Heaven, which old-timers may recall was (and is) also very dear to me. But this novel is a completely different work. It's uncanny, actually, because the characters and the flow of events are very similar, yet the story and the mood and the tonality are all different. Even the core themes have shifted somewhat. The artist has had fifteen years to grow in power and change in perspective, and the new novel makes full use of that transformation. It is a mature and intellectually challenging read. Not so much as in "the sentences are really difficult"; it's actually quite easy to read in that sense. But more like "you don't know where it's going but you're bleeding and you desperately need a band-aid so you hope really hard that there'll be a drugstore somewhere along the route." So, if you like that kind of thing, I can definitely recommend this book.

It's a sci-fi story, so if you like sci-fi then you have another reason to read it. And this book lives up to the name of "science fiction"; it's not just contemporary drama in spaaaaace! It makes creative use of the sci-fi canvas. There are some wonderful settings, futuristic conventions, and technological conceits. The sci-fi on display here is in many ways similar to and in many ways different from my own work. When I read it I saw that there are definitely similarities between Shirley Estar and my own Cherry from Galaxy Federal. But I think the most important comparison to make is that Winston Rowntree has his own pair of eyes and his own point of view, and approaches these issues in different ways and from different directions than I do. Shirley Estar Goes to Heaven says some things that I've been trying to say in my own work for ages, but it does so in ways that I never would or could.

Lastly, this book is also quite creative with its use of the medium, with decisions about the book's narrative structure and even its physical formatting serving to facilitate uncertainty and questions.