Comics are so suited to telling absurd, outsized adventures that I sometimes forget how effectively they can convey quieter, more human stories. Matt Madden’s Odds Off or, L’Amour Foutu (Highwater Books) is an excellent example of the latter category.
Odds Off is a lot like an independent film with an ensemble cast. Madden tracks the intersecting lives of a group of twenty-somethings as they live, work, and study in and around a university. They wrestle believably with ambition, culture, and relationships, comparing what they have with what they think they want. They have problems, but their struggles are all on a very relatable scale.
Take Shirin. She’s becoming increasingly unhappy as she prepares for medical school aptitude tests. Work is an exercise in everyday stupidity, whether its malicious gossip, inflexible authority, or unsolicited outbursts of conservative philosophy from co-workers. It’s actually driven her to take up smoking for the first time in her life, since the habit allows her to get away from her desk at regular intervals.
She’s got a boyfriend, Morgan, who’s cute, good-natured, and emotionally unavailable. He’s not a bad guy, and he loves Shirin, but it’s becoming obvious that he isn’t equipped to provide the kind of support she needs. And he’s becoming obsessed with what he perceives to be the simmering sexual tension in a French-language instructional program on television.
Then there’s Lance. He’s a gifted writing student, but he’s got a frustrating lack of social skills. He’s also been diagnosed with a bizarre (and possibly imaginary) ailment that prevents him from writing or reading while he’s taking his prescribed medication. Lance doesn’t know Shirin or Morgan, but he’s developed a painfully acute at-first-sight crush on Morgan.
Connecting Shirin and Lance is Chad, a cute, emotionally stable hipster. He’s friends with both and provides valuable service as an observant, clear-eyed sounding board. (He can also be relied on to sneak wine into dry campus celebrations.) Beyond being the thread that brings the parallel stories together, Chad’s a gregarious gossip. He’s an engaging vehicle for expository information delivered in an organic way.
Madden takes these people and their respective states of mind and articulates them in gentle, organic ways. He doesn’t underline anything, and he relies on the reader’s intelligence and empathy to identify the ways his cast connects and drifts apart. It’s an interesting kind of narrative minimalism that never seems sparse. Madden picks just the right moments in his characters’ lives to create a cohesive, affecting story.
While Odds Off can be very funny, it’s never uproarious. It’s comedy of recognition. There are plenty of moving moments, but you never hear the strings swell up. There’s a real sense of scale. That makes it sound muted, but that isn’t the case at all. Madden finds the richness and variety in his story while keeping total control of proportion and tone.
Madden’s illustrations are very much of a piece with his writing. His character designs are varied, but his cast looks like people you’d see on the street. He sticks with small panels that help punctuate the conversational nature of his script and keep things flowing. Relatively simple line work is used to fine emotional effect, too, and Odds Off isn’t without the occasional, unexpected moment of visual fancy. He folds in surprising bits of fantasy or brief, potent dream sequences without allowing them to become overwhelming. They’re nice grace notes that actually underline the emotional realism.
Odds Off is a terrific slice-of-life story, populated by challenging but ultimately sympathetic characters. Madden’s approach is low-key, but his work doesn’t lose any of its emotional impact as a result. It’s a real find.
(To see samples of Matt Madden’s work, visit his web site here.)