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Friday Recommendation: Proof

By | September 21st, 2012
Posted in Columns | % Comments

I think we’re all inordinately attached to the stories that first attracted us to comics as a medium. And while I read my very first comics in trade (they were “Sandman” and “Watchmen”, of course) the first single issue I ever bought — and the first series I ever put on a pull list — was “Proof”. It all started with issue #26.

Yeah, so maybe the penultimate arc wasn’t the best place to start; I soon realized how complicated the world of “Proof” was and bought myself the trade paperbacks. But now, looking back over the series for the purposes of this column, it’s clear that I wasn’t just a starry-eyed noob: this really is an excellent comic, nuanced and detailed and full of fantastic art.

Written by Alexander Grecian (you may have noticed his Victorian crime novel The Yard on bookshelves recently) and drawn by Riley Rossmo (who is dearly loved here at Multiversity, having illustrated the likes of “Green Wake” and “Wild Children”), “Proof” centers on John Prufrock, a sasquatch who works for a secret U.S. government organization. He’s in an odd position: charged with protecting and investigating cryptozoological creatures that the government would rather not acknowledge publicly while still being one of those creatures himself, he doesn’t exactly fit in with the jackalopes and fairies that populate his line of work. So far as cryptids go, he’s pretty human; more than that, he’s a gentleman, and a damn good government agent. But all evidence suggests that he’s the only one of his kind; he’s certainly never met another sasquatch. And while he fits in pretty well with his colleagues, he’s still not quite human, and has a major fixation on trying to figure out his origins.

Generically speaking, “Proof” plays out a bit like The X-Files but with a much more coherent and stable universe backing it all up. You can tell that Grecian and Rossmo really have gotten the peripheral details down, and know a lot more about this universe than necessarily comes through by the end of the series. The plots, meanwhile, tend toward the police procedural side of things but go a lot of different directions, often breaking off into short conversational interludes that help us get to know the characters a little better.

More than anything, it’s the characters that make “Proof” a worthy read: there’s Ginger Brown, a New Yorker and former FBI agent who’s apt to shoot first and ask questions later; Elvis, the goofy county sheriff turned government agent simply because he knew too much; and, of course, the conflicted big guy himself, liable to choose the perfect wine for tonight’s dinner but not exactly sure about where he fits in the world or why.

There’s also a wealth of colourful minor characters, with a standout being the Dover Demon; popping in every now and again to utter obscurely-phrased prophesies, this scuttling cryptid is basically the literary device of foreshadowing made flesh, and a really creative way to hook the reader in to the comic’s long term arc.

The stories, meanwhile, are wonderful in themselves — they’re dense and erudite and a lot of fun. Peppered with “Cryptoid” information boxes that tell us a little more about subjects tangentially related to the proceedings (including but not limited to high tea, corn farming in the United States, and men’s fashion), reading an arc of Proof is a little like diving into a neglected shelf of books somewhere at the back of the library.

Art-wise, this is some really great early-days Riley Rossmo action. The sketchy, fluid style that’s exhibited so well in “Green Wake” is at its loosest and most experimental here, with Rossmo switching media from issue to issue and playing around with a lot of different colour schemes. But the characterizations are lovely and consistent: Proof in particular shows a lot of range and humour in his expressions and movements, and Autumn Song — a character who is one nasty piece of work, and that’s all I’m going to say — gets a good chunk of her personality across by means of an edgy wardrobe and some nifty tattoos.

And then there’s Rossmo’s wonderful monsters, which are continuing to wow us in “Debris”; they’re always believable and gorgeous, with their style of movement coming across particularly clearly. (That’s a ningen up above, tearing up the pages of “Proof: Endangered” #5). All told — and with an encyclopedia’s worth of beasts to be found in the pages of “Proof”, all of them pulled off with aplomb — it’s Rossmo’s sheer versatility that comes through strongest in this series, foreshadowing the diverse work that he’s done since then as well as being pretty neat on its own.

Unfortunately “Proof” finished with a kind of ellipsis: the concluding arc, a five-issue miniseries entitled “Proof: Endangered”, left a lot of loose ends untied. And while the final issue hinted at future miniseries to further expand the world of “Proof”, there’s no telling if or when Rossmo and Grecian will return to this project. For the moment, though, we’ve got six gorgeous trade paperbacks to admire, and an intricate story to mull over again and again. “Proof” is compact and intelligent comic storytelling at its finest, and is well worth repeated visits.


//TAGS | Friday Recommendation

Michelle White

Michelle White is a writer, zinester, and aspiring Montrealer.

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