Reviews 

“Cult of the Ibis”

By | March 5th, 2019
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

On the run. From fellow gangsters, from a world gone mad or just from themselves. The getaway protagonist of Daria Tessler’s graphic novel is going to discover the he can’t run and he can’t hide; and fighting back might be the worst option.

Cover by Daria Tessler
Written, illustrated and lettered by Daria Tessler
This exquisite and mostly-silent graphic novel takes place in a fantasy cityscape loosely inspired by German expressionist films. Cult of the Ibis tells the story of an occultist getaway-driver who, after escaping with the loot from a bank robbery gone wrong, orders a build-you-own-homunculus kit and goes on the lam. Steeped in architecture and atmosphere, Tessler’s gorgeous cartooning fuels this strangely gripping yarn, which is packaged in a gorgeous hardcover design.

You know the gateway driver, you’ve seen him in dozen films: The Transporter, Driver, Baby Driver, Drive. Confident and self-assured and so cool under pressure you can use him to store ice-cubes. The protagonist of Daria Tessler’s graphic novel is nothing like that, a nervous jittery wreck that seems to have stumbled onto the job by mistake; still, as the sole survivor, and seemingly sole benefactor, of a bank robbery gone wrong he decides to use the windfall to buy his way into mystic power, which is where things go really wrong.

The solicitation text refers to world of the book as inspired by German expressionist cinema, and indeed – just as in these films the bleak and amorphous world signifies the tormented inner lives of the characters (think of leaning backgrounds of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) so does the twisted world of “Cult of the Ibis” signifies its main character. But here the differences end; this is not a world of melancholy or sadness, instead Daria Tessler gives a fast-paced and out of control world, one the always appears to be in the midst of panic attack

More than anything I’m thinking of even older cinema, when the idea of making stories on the screen first came through, but before there was any semblance of rules of how things ‘should’ be done; before we invented genre as a cage. There’s something free-roaming to the ‘plot,’ thin as it is, of “Cult of the Ibis;” but that is not a mistake, it’s intentional. This is a book that’s more about the process of itself, how things in this world come to be, than anything else.

There’s a certain agility to Tessler’s pencil work which gives the work a rare sense of fluidity; shapes contort and twist and move. Everything, from buildings to furniture, seems to be alive; or at least to possess the potential of life. The long scene which involves the actual preparation of the homunculus is probably the standout and exemplar – a dazzling dance of cartooning shifting between beauty and ugliness with the lightest of touches; it’s long and exhausting and totally worth it.

This outburst of creativity, spreading uncontrolled throughout the book, makes “Cult of The Ibis” a joy to leaf through. There’s a sense of constant momentum to the book, it’s easy to speed-read through the thing, going through page after silent page, but it is just as easy to stop an appreciate the small details that make the cityscape, or the thought-through arcane rituals the protagonist goes through.

Yet at the same time this is also a book that tests the patience of the reader, as silent pages give way to more and more faux-diaries and magazines whose pages fill the reader’s eyes with information that might be pertinent but most likely is not (and I have to admit that a certain point my eyes simply began to glaze over the page). The book seems so overjoyed with itself that it simply doesn’t know when and how to stop; and seeing as both the plot and character are mostly flat, cloth-hangers for the visuals and world-building, the 200 odd pages of “Cult of The Ibis” feel like too much of a good thing.

By the end of the story, after many chase scenes and magic rituals, and threats on the life of the protagonist by extremely creepy-looking (have I mentioned how well designed this book is?) chicken-headed gangsters we get a big climax confrontation with the head honcho that seems to be charged with symbolic meaning…. But doesn’t actually say anything; it’s just there to be vaguely mysterious and odd. The protagonist if forced to look within himself, possibly for the first time, but since he was never that well defined to begin with there is no sense of what he or the reader can learn from this event. Theirs is a difference between ‘open to interpretation’ to ‘oblique.’

There’s a strong sense “and then what?” to the end of this book. In many books involving people using magic to solve their problems, especially when the presentation is so arcane, there is a sense of something being lost – an innocence being sacrificed. But insistence on keeping the protagonist not mute means we don’t really understand the psychic process he’s undergoing. It’s not that the art can’t express mood without word, it’s wonderfully expressive; it is simply that the mood is one note – panic, followed by more panic. What we end up with is a long journey that never quite reaches a satisfying conclusion.

Still, there is something to be said about the journey itself – a worthwhile experience; this is comics that feels fully like comics, that doesn’t want to be a film, or a cartoon, or a book or a T-shirt. It savors its own artistic nature, and for that alone I must salute it.


Tom Shapira

Writes for Multiversity, Sequart and Alilon. Author - "Curing the Postmodern Blues." Israel's number 1 comics critic. Number 347 globally. he / him.

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