A comiXologist Recommends
Story, art, and letters by Ryan Ottley
Colors by Ivan Plascencia
Oscar Wilde. Aubrey
Beardsley. Charles Swinburne. Ryan Ottley?
Okay, hear me out.
You might think that a story about half a guy (the top half, if you were wondering), a big dumb redneck, and a zombie baby trying to navigate shark-infested woods and bear-infested waters would be more of a Dadaist piece of literature. But Dada as a movement is steeped in political critique, and while you could try to map social or environmental issues onto GrizzlyShark, its comedic resistance to moralizing or meaning reaches past Dada to the Decadent art and literature of the late 19th century.
Art for art’s sake is a simple concept: the purpose of art is in the pleasure of an individual’s subjective experience of the work. It could be an experience of beauty, or eroticism, or ineffability. The Decadents took this a step further, aiming for the shocking or even the perverse in an attempt to transcend the dullness of heavy Victorian sensibilities.
In the case of GrizzlyShark, decadence is achieved through humor. Sharks swim through the woods, munching people they are drawn to with a drop of blood, in spectacular fashion. How do GrizzlySharks breathe? How do they move about? And OMG what the heck just happened? You know what, just hush for a minute and laugh at the munch-munching, okay? It’s funny, and trust me, you could use the unadulterated fun. It’s as important to your development as a person as contemplating the meaning of existence, or building schools in underdeveloped countries, or whatever moral, important stuff you do in your spare time.
Maybe I’m being a little facetious here. But Ryan Ottley’s commitment to the ludicrous makes GrizzlyShark vs. SeaBear an absolutely delightful read. And delight doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to shake you out of the mundane for a moment. GrizzlyShark does this beautifully, so pin a hothouse orchid to your lapel, sip some absinthe, and enjoy the decadence of laughter.
Tia Vasiliou is a Digital Editor at comiXology. She used to be an art historian, and apparently isn’t quite over the habit of theorizing everything. You can listen to her theorize comics on the I Read Comic Books podcast.
Sea Bear and Grizzly Shark #1, June 2010, cover by Ryan Ottley and Jason Howard
I didn’t know how badly I could want to read something until I saw this.
(via comixology)
If you’ve been waiting for a good time to get into Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley’s INVINCIBLE, now is that time!
All this weekend you can get every issue for just 99¢ each, collections as low as $2.99, and for maximum savings you can get all 110 issues for $75!
If you don’t know what Invincible is, it’s Robert Kirkman’s (The guy who created The Walking Dead) take on the world of superheroes, and it’s not afraid to push the boundaries of the genre.
Mark Grayson is teenage superhero Invincible. He was a normal high school senior with a normal part-time job and otherwise normal life, except his father Nolan is the superhero Omni-Man, the most powerful superhero on the planet. At the age of 17, Mark begins to display superpowers, which come from his father being a member of the Viltrumite race, who, according to Nolan, pioneer the galaxy on a mission of benevolence and enlightenment.
As Invincible, Mark begins working as a superhero, with his father acting as his mentor, and meeting other heroes. Mark worked occasionally with a superhero team called the Teen Team (consisting of Robot, Rex Plode, Dupli-Kate and Atom Eve), from there discovering that his Physics teacher has been turning his students into human bombs. He stops his teacher with the help of the heroine, Atom Eve. He also foils a plan to make an army of robots, created by the Mauler Twins. Meanwhile Omni-Man is kidnapped by aliens, taken to another dimension, but returns after what seems to be only a few days, but was actually eight months to him.
Ryan Ottley’s process art for Page 5 of Invincible #92.
Which just so happens to be on sale this weekend… along with 99 other issues, 17 collected trades, and 2 giant-sized Omnibus editions of Robert Kirkman’s seminal superhero series Invincible.
Sea Bear and Grizzly Shark #1, June 2010, cover by Ryan Ottley and Jason Howard
I didn’t know how badly I could want to read something until I saw this.