Two More From Mandy Ord : “Galapagos”

Ludicrously impressed as I was by a couple of Mandy Ord minis — Water and Cold — that I scored awhile back from John Porcellino’s Spit And A Half distro, I was delighted to explore more of this talented Australian cartoonist’s work, and to find that the first thing I opened up in the new (okay, newer, it was published by Glom Press in 2018) package of books that I got from her represented something of a step out of her usual autobio nest and into the realm of horror. Or slapstick horror. Or nature horror. Or maybe it’s all (or mostly) autobio after all? Or something.

Anyway, it’s called Galapagos, it’s 48 pages long in a riso-printed “chapbook” format, and it’s pretty weird and cool and off-kilter and great. And it has zombies. Right on the cover. And inside. And people like zombies. In fact, they seem to like them a lot.

And while we’re talking about the dead and death and the living dead and all that fun stuff, the narrative tone of this book is decidedly deadpan, and that’s part of why it’s so damn effective. It starts as a night in front of the TV to take in the cultural “dead zone” that is The Walking Dead, and ends up as a night in front of the TV watching a nature documentary about iguanas in (well, around, if you want to be technical about things), you guessed it, the Galapagos Islands — and that’s when things really get rolling.

Sort of. Look, I’m not about to tell you that this is a terribly complex story to follow, but along the way it does deal with some reasonably complex themes, most notably the old “as above, so below” relationship between reality and fantasy, or at least entertainment, with special attention being paid to pursuit and paranoia and the thrill of danger and the depressing reality of “eat or be eaten.” It’s funny — Ord’s comics always are — but it also walks that fine line between “high” and “low” art with a certain kind of tenuous precision; it’s not afraid to take pot-shots at obvious targets like The Walking Dead, but it doesn’t have is head up its own ass by any means. And it looks damn good.

Again, Ord’s comics always do that, as well, but I really like how the limited color palette plays with her thick linework and intuitively-rendered facial expressions to draw as much drama as is humanly possible — or zombie-ly possible — from each image. There’s a distinct un-pretentiousness to it all, a realization on Ord’s part that visual information can be conveyed with a fair amount of detail without being belabored. I hesitate to use the term “sophisticated” because sophistication is for assholes, but I will say that this is cartooning that understands both what it wants to do and how best to do it.

Also, I learned something important from this comic : it’s more fun to root for animals fleeing from snakes than it is to root for people fleeing from zombies. Mind you, I always suspected that to be the case, but I was glad to see that I was right. And I was very glad to spend part of an evening with this book. You will be, too.

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Galapagos is available for $11.00 from Mandy Ord’s Etsy shop at https://www.etsy.com/listing/655734996/galapagos-comic?ref=shop_home_active_5&sca=1

Review wrist check – I was wearing my Tsao Baltimore bronze “Torsk-Diver,” emerald dial/emerald bezel model for this one, riding a blue Colareb “Firenze” strap. The Miyata movement that Alan Tsao uses in these things in an absolute beast, you can leave this watch alone for a few days and wind it just a few times and it’s good to go, and the design inspiration he takes from the Baltimore shipyards gives the whole thing a really distinctive look. It’s also amazingly comfortable for a fairly “heavy” watch, and the lume on the dial markers and hands is just plain nuts — on a dark night, you can see it from a block away. And that’s only a slight exaggeration, seriously.