Late Bloomer

Late Bloomer is Mare Odomo's experimental comic.  Consisting of a variety of one-page pencil drawings, ranging from a blank page with a few words written in it and then crossed out to deep, detailed images speaking of loneliness, despair, and adolescent angst.  Many of the drawings are the type you'd see in a student's notebook, many are the type that same student wishes she could draw, particularly the landscapes and the images of people and plants.

I recently subscribed to Retrofit Comics; they come out with a new title each month, and I hope to review the back-ordered ones I got in the mail today, some 20 issues, plus two stickers, a patch, and a bag.  You can also buy this comic 104-page comic for $10 on Amazon.com.  The question is, should you?  I love this sort of comic, and I love supporting the artists.  I'm no art major, but there are a few filmmakers that this reminds me of, in particular, David Lynch (his experimental films) and the early Soviet filmmakers, the latter of whom were more concerned with images than with telling a cogent story.

A lot of the people who hated Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me tried to understand that film, when there's nothing really to understand.  It's the same with Late Bloomer.  If you look too hard for meaning in it, you'll miss the imagery, the poetry of drawings.  It was the first book I picked up of my Retrofit package that came in the mail.  I've read it twice so far, and I don't think I'll open a second Retrofit comic today.  There's simply too much to process.