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REVIEW - OLGA One Shot (Caruso Comics Considered, Part 3 of 3)
Olga One Shot (ADVANCE)
Review by Dave Baxter, posted February 18, 2008
Pencils: Simon Fernandes
Inks: Simon Fernandes
Price: $4.00
Publisher: Caruso Comics
An 18-year-old narrator relates his story, of an experience obviously life-affecting: a girl named Olga, a girl he hasn’t spoken to or seen in years, calls him up, out of the blue, and asks to get together. Being a shy and—other than a lackluster part of a local hockey team—introverted sort, the narrator agrees, somewhat excitedly but equally (naturally) confused. Olga soon reveals herself to be a desperate, near-suicidal case, having been recently rejected on the romantic front, and so she looks to this socially awkward boy to save her, somehow, and do so in the course of a single night.
To say that Olga, the comic, is exciting, would be a lie, but to say that it’s slow or boring would be the same. It is, without a doubt, an unhurried story. It takes place within a very constrained about of time (a single night) and so is allowed a heavily detailed, wonderfully molasses-slow movement, but this tends to heighten the suspense rather than obliterate it. What’s going to happen? What’s wrong with this girl Olga? What’s the narrator going to do? What’s going on?!? All these questions seem imperative when turning the pages of this latest one-shot by newcomer Dino Caruso.
The narrator remains unnamed throughout, which was probably a smart move on Dino’s part, as without the name the exact true-to-lifeness of the story remains uncertain. It smacks of autobiography, especially the truly poetic turns of events at the end, moments that seem so un-story-like and yet apt that they could only come from reality. The story is delightfully involved with its own weight, so much so that it also becomes self-conscious of its own weight, and ultimately manages a series of life-lessons that aren’t in the least bit preachy, because the lessons skirt the primary issues involved and instead comment upon core understandings of human thought and behavior that…well…they’re actually quite astute, and acute, and mean more and pertain to the story to a greater and heftier degree than what anything more directly preachy could have managed. Caruso intuitively pulls off a magical hat trick, allegorically speaking, showing readers a straight path only to offer an end moral that’s basically: “Space is curved, kid. There ain’t no straight lines, only relative ones.”
Simon Fernandes joins Caruso for Olga, an artist with a thick-lined, stunted-figure style most commonly seen in webstrips, animation, and underground comix, though he uses the aesthetic to great effect here. Under Fernandes’ depictions, the narrator appears sweetly self-contained in both touching and arrogant ways, as demands the story. Olga and the side-characters are also seen across a wide array of moments, each calling for a showmanship of expression most artists would be hard-pressed to achieve. In a way, Olga is Fernandes’ warm-up, a thing he’s very, very good at but not quite perfect for. Caruso and he have a new book coming soon called The Amazing Adventures of Bell Boy, wherein Fernandes begins to cultivate a style and slickness not seen since Mike Kunkel’s Herobear and the Kid. The previews of Bell Boy look genuinely attractive (check ‘em out and I dare you to disagree!).
So that wraps up “Round One” of Caruso Comics. Three very quality comics, two slice-of-life inspired, one a bit more wild and woolly and pulp-flavored. There’s also a baseball themed graphic novel titled Against the Wall (an early preview of which was reviewed on BF) and that’s technically the last of the “Round One” books, and then comes the very intriguing “Round Two’ers”: the aforesaid Bell Boy, Fisk: Substitute Hero, and Courage, all of them genre-flavored and therefore upping the excitement factor by a thousandfold or so. After Olga and Crossroads, and A Cautionary Tale, and the sincere skill they were all executed with, I honestly can’t wait.
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For ordering copies of Olga or other Caruso Comics, go to http://www.carusocomics.blogspot.com/ and send Dino a message.
An official website (http://www.carusocomics.com/) is in the works, though it’s only a homepage for the moment (see date of this article above for an exact definition of “the moment”).
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