Manix Abrera is not a happy camper. With his release of “12,” a collection of silent graphic short stories, the author of the daily comic strip Kiko Machine uses the book’s introduction to relate something his friend asked him: “Malungkot ka ba?” (Are you sad?)
It’s a relevant question. One could be forgiven for judging the stories in this book by their seemingly gloomy story arcs: in one, there’s a man who wanders through his days without understanding why anything happens; in another, a little girl is separated from her mother in a cold, faceless crowd. Humans are often portrayed as moronic beings that stumble through life like a blind man without a cane. There aren’t very many happy endings to leave you feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.
However, to write “12” off as a tiresome downer would be a huge mistake.
While the subject matter is almost always heavy—themes of mundane cruelty, celebrity obsession, greed, disgust at humanity, and even plain ol’ loneliness pervade this comic’s pages—the author usually has the good sense to throw the reader a lifeline when the mood threatens to sour.
In one such story, what starts off as a satire of artista adulation quickly mutates into farcical madness when the idealized thought projection of a woman’s celebrity crush attempts to strangle the real thing when she learns that he’s not what he seems to be on TV. In another tale, a swarm of pixies attack a drunk, urinating man en masse after he thoughtlessly stomps one of their kind to death.
Abrera’s timely use of humor balances out the sometimes overbearing inertia of the stories’ messages.
With so many unsavory characters meeting grisly endings, there’s a lot of schadenfreude to be had at the expense of humanity’s ugliness. The karmic justice held inside “12”’s pages is intensely cathartic to read and was probably just as cathartic to write: you get the sense that, if the author is indeed sad, he feels a lot happier once he lampoons his demons on a piece of paper.
Every once in a while, the book allows the subtext to slide in favor of pure whimsy: there are trips into outer space on a balloon, adventures inside a human body, and terrified frogs that alter the course of world history. The pared-down drawing style is a lot of fun to look at, especially when illustrating flights of fancy, but the uniformity of the panel layout sometimes results in sequences of samey-looking shots. It’s a shame that, once finally free from the restraint of broadsheets, Abrera forgot to fully utilize all of the space at his disposal. There’s a missed opportunity here to really bring his excellent drawings to life.
Since what really makes the stories enjoyable is their ability to laugh off, or at, misfortune, the book stumbles when it dives into more serious territory. In particular, one story of unrequited love on the train struggles to find a reason to exist; while the loneliness brought on from a missed connection is universally relatable (who hasn’t had a crush that didn’t reciprocate?), the narrative doesn’t say anything insightful about it. Here, the author would do well to mind Carl Yung’s self-admonition in “A Dangerous Method”: “I don’t want to just open the door and show the patient his illness, squatting there like a toad.”
That I’ve gotten this far into the review without mentioning at length that there are absolutely no spoken words in this book speaks volumes of the author’s ability to distill concepts into their purest form. Far from obscuring meaning, the lack of words means that there’s no clutter to get in the way of telling the story. Doing away with dialogue also reinforces the fact that the themes explored in the book belong to a universal heritage: five people speaking five different languages could read “12” and walk away having shared a mutual experience.
Despite its uneven execution, “12” is a triumphant snapshot of regular life’s common problems extrapolated to their extremes. Here, Abrera finds himself in the company of Japan’s legendary Yoshihiro Tatsumi as a fellow chronicler of human malaise; but while Tatsumi’s outlook was unrelentingly bleak, Abrera is cultivating a knack for making heavy burdens feel light as a feather. –KG, GMA News
Originally published on http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/265318/lifestyle/reviews/book-review-manix-abrera-s-12-laugh-and-the-world-laughs-with-you
