Reich #1 & #2

Reich, Issue #1 and Issue #2 are the beginning of a biography of the controversial psychiatrist, Wilhelm Reich, written and drawn by Elijah J. Brubaker.  In Issue #1, Reich has returned from World War I to study at Vienna University.  He initially studies law but turns instead to medicine.  A fellow student of his begins technical seminars of topics not covered by the professors.  Reich soon takes over the meetings and devotes them almost entirely to the study of sex, arguing that our social interactions are based almost entirely on sex.  He consults the top psychiatrists of Vienna, including Freud and Adler, borrowing books from them for the seminars.

In Issue #2, Reich argues in his thesis that neuroses are caused by patients not being able to be "orgastically potent," and when fellow psychiatrists claim that many of their patients are able to have orgasms yet still suffer from neuroses, Reich simply redefines the term.  And while Reich does present a thesis, he has preciously little medical or psychiatric training.  I only know of Wilhelm Reich from this comic, but he seems to be one hell of a quack.  At least in our day, when we practice psychiatry on an amateur level, we do it the right way, by creating a good profile on PlentyofFish or SingleParentMeet and let the "patients" come running.

Reich may come across as a hack in this comic, but he also comes across as charismatic, intelligent, and in his own way, intellectual.  On top of that, he appears narcissistic and perhaps even bipolar.  He cares little for other people, and he's fully convinced of his own greatness.

In these two issues, I particularly like the way Elijah J. Brubaker uses shadow and shade; he uses thin, parallel lines to create hints of grays rather than by using gray-scale.  Each issue comes with copious notes in the vein of Chester Brown's Paying for It and Louis Reil.  In fact, Brubaker mentions Louis Reil as an inspiration for the comic and the notes.  It goes to show that the medium of comics has a number of different stories to tell.  Brubaker is coming out with a comedy comic about the life of the Bible's Jezebel, which will be published by Study Group Comics in 2017.  I'll definitely buy it.