There’s nothing like a healthy dose of misanthropy to give a comic some kick. Lackluster World 1 (Gen: Eric Publishing) has just the right amount, mixed with mordant humor, lovely illustrations, and smart satire.
Fahrenheit Monahan, Lackluster World’s albino protagonist, works as a newspaper reporter and occasional op-ed writer, and he’d like very much to be left alone. He finds contemporary society painfully banal, and he tries to limit his place in it to that of caustic observer. Unfortunately, the people around him have other plans.
First, there’s his arrested frat-boy co-worker, Cog, who gives Fahrenheit nicknames like “Casper” and tries to drag him on drunken excursions with a pack of his beer-soaked kind. Worse are Fahrenheit’s siblings, older brother Kelvin and younger sister Celsius. Kelvin has a kind of glassy-eyed religious fervor, and he’s determined to introduce his brother to the wonders of faith. Celsius is relentlessly cheerful and enthusiastic; she doesn’t seem to care so much about Fahrenheit’s soul, but she wants him to have fun. Fahrenheit’s only reliable companion is his black cat, the somewhat aloof Mr. Mittens.
Fahrenheit’s frustrations come to a head on his birthday, when the various people determined to engage him converge. In a hilarious sequence, Kelvin and Celsius insist on celebrating their brother’s special day at an establishment called Smiley’s Play Place. Cog and his liquored-up posse stumble across the party, bringing their own vulgar fervor to the mix. A clown is present.
It’s all too much for Fahrenheit, and he takes steps to shake society out of its torpor (or maybe just unsettle it into shutting up for a spell). While it’s often difficult to sell a protagonist who’s fed up with the tediousness of it all, writer/illustrator Eric Adams makes it easy to see things from Fahrenheit’s point of view. He does this by leavening his lead character’s outrage with enough situational absurdity to fend off any sourness. Fahrenheit’s internal monologues could easily become overwritten or shrill, but Adams takes a restrained, character-based approach. The barbs are specific, and Fahrenheit’s perspective has a nice internal consistency and logic.
His work as an illustrator is equally impressive. Lackluster World has the appearance of a grim children’s book, which is just right for this material. Adams finds great variety in Fahrenheit’s persistent scowl and in the fixed grins of Kelvin and Celsius. His sense of composition is strong, too, and panel layouts are imaginative and varied. I’m not quite sure how he managed it, but Adams has also managed to make a black-and-white comic look like it employs a full palette of colors.
We all have moments when the people around us are just too much to stand and the world is exhausting. Lackluster World explores the comic possibilities of those moments as a sustained world view. It’s a very appealing and accomplished piece of satire.
(For more information on the title and to view sample pages, visit the Lackluster World web site here.)