A daydream dayglow of a comic-book. A journey through one’s self that is also a journey through the new social media culture that is also a kickfest like no other. Beware – for here there be punches!
But, is there a story here? Is there anything beneath the pulsing surface?
Cover by Daniel SemanasWritten, illustrated and lettered by Daniel Semanas
Brazilian cartoonist Daniel Semanas’s candy-colored debut graphic novel, influenced by American pop art and manga, is set in South Korea in the near future. A young fighter has a fiercely competitive relationship with her brother. In her effort to top his internet popularity, she gets more than she bargained for.
Sometimes a reviewer just has to give up, surrender, raise his hands up in the air and amit defeat. Not because a comic-book is too bad, but because it just might be too good. That’s my situation with “Roly Poly,” it’s a comics I did not like yet find myself admiring – if not for its brazen go-all-the-way attitude than certainly for Daniel Semanas’ skill as an artist.
It’s a gorgeous-looking book, every single page is alive with new details, backgrounds, ideas, people. Like a Geof Darrow work with a softer edge to it, all curved lines were Darrow is rough and edgy. Also, like Darrow, Semanas’ got a master’s skill for a fight scene – the longest chunk of this book are one endless punch’em kick’em do-anything-else-to’em barrage that is presented in elaborate fashion which utilizes choreography and geography for a sense of maximum satisfaction. Just when you think you get tired of the repetitive nature of it all the artist changes gear and goes for a more psychedelic presentation, leaving behind the video-game inspired berserk-mode for something more out there.
This also one of these rare cases where I have to admit I do not believe I got the full experience from my PDF review copy; “Roly Poly” appears to be the kind of book you need to experience on the printed page, and with all my reservations to be detailed I am still going to buy it in hardcover format to look at it as it was made to look at. All the pages have this unique sense of flow to them that is hard to translate when you try to look at it on a panel by panel basis. Maybe I’m overreaching, but I don’t think I do.
On the other hand….
Unlike the recently released “Dark Angels of Darkness” graphic novel, which treads similarly stylistic ground, “Roly Poly” certainly seems like it’s trying make a point. What the point maybe, something about our social-media obseesed culture probably, I have no idea – if it’s pro or anti or just an exploration of a theme. The main mover for all of the plot is a completion over the amount of followers / likes our heroine has with online personality “Soon_Kickass;” but other than that I am not quite sure; if this novel made me think of anything is that the creator should be paid by the Seoul tourist board for how amazing he makes their city look. I don’t have a problem with a creation that is all surface, what I do dislike is the appearance of depth which is just faux-profound.
The amazing flow of this graphic novel is at least partly the result of how little actually happens, in plot terms, it takes more than thirty pages before Phanta actually reaches the Playssaur arcade, where the bulk of the story takes place, and it’s not like she has to pass a series of challenges, or spends time establishing other characters. it’s just a collection of details and images from Phanta’s bike-ride.
The surface of “Roly Poly” is good enough not need anything else besides. Every page is a hymn of love – to the character, to the world she inhabits. But that love is all form, Daniel Semanas gives us shot after shot of butt, legs, perfectly symmetrical face; likewise the city of Neo-Seoul here is all glitz and glamor, vibrant and pulsating colors, inviting the reader like a moth to a flame; but what’s beneath the lights? Who are the people that share this world with Phanta? Damn if I know!
Works like “King City” or “Terminal City” also give us a semi-idealized presentation of the city the creator would’ve liked to live in, but with them it feels like an insider’s perspective, they show us the highs and lows, the slums and the vistas. And they show us the people, not just the protagonists but the full range of human beings. “Roly Poly” is subtitled “Phanta’s Story” and, in the end, this all it is. There is definitely a place in this a world for a work that celebrates admiration of physical beauty, that wants us to share this admiration. But at certain point, at some invisible line this become fetishzation, “Roly Poly” feels like a fetish work.
I don’t want to come down too hard on this book – it is definitely a labor of love, effort shines from every page, panel and line; and to deny its beauty is to deny the evidence of one’s own eyes. But there is something lacking; when the character of the dealer tells Phanta, and a room full of adversaries, that “what’s really important is in here [points at her brain]. It’s what inside that makes everything real.” She appears to be commenting on the very nature of the book. What is inside “Roly Poly?” damned be if I know.
