Jason (the pen name of Norway's John Arne Sæterøy) is a cartoonist whose work has been published throughout Europe. Although he's won Harvey and Eisner awards, Jason may be better known to North American audiences from recent quasi-alternative comics such as Marvel's revamped Strange Tales series.
Fantagraphics Books has recently repackaged four earlier titles by Jason in a handsome hardcover edition called Almost Silent.
Almost Silent Collects Four Jason Graphic Novels
Meow Baby! (2006), Tell Me Something (2004), You Can't Get There From Here (2004), and The Living and the Dead (2007) are now out of print, but, collected in Almost Silent, they are required reading for Jason fans.
Meow Baby! is a selection of Jason's short gag strips focusing on pop-culture archetypes. Zombies, vampires, mummies, aliens, cavemen, and even Elvis, all make multiple appearances in this laid-back phantasmagoria.
Tell Me Something is part love story, part thriller, told with a curious mixture of flashbacks and silent-movie-style dialogue cards. It is perhaps the most poignant tale of the collection. Jason's expert pacing makes his spare, almost expressionless characters deeply evocative.
You Can't Get There From Here and The Living and the Dead are also romances with semi-tragic outcomes, but their parody of famous horror movies gives them a humorously deadpan bent.
You Can't Get There From Here tells of a love triangle between Frankenstein, Frankenstein's sexually-frustrated Monster, and the Monster's bride. The Living and the Dead finds a dishwasher and a prostitute falling in love amid a gore-filled zombie invasion.
Jason's Style in Almost Silent
Jason is known for drawing lanky, anthropomorphic characters (mostly dogs and birds), and Almost Silent is no exception – even Jason's versions of Elvis and the Terminator in Meow Baby! have canine features.
Jason's clear, precise style makes it easy to get used to this unusual convention. Also, most of the cartoons in Almost Silent are rendered simply in black and white (You Can't Get There From Here employs a single, yellow-green tone as well).
And as the collection's title implies, Jason's work is also quite sparing in that it contains very little text or dialogue. The panels of each story, whether a one-page gag or complete graphic novel, are square and all the same size.
But these self-imposed constraints have artistic advantages. The simple, pantomime style makes Almost Silent accessible, while the panel uniformity gives Jason remarkable control over the pace of his comics. Sequences are drawn out for added suspense, or truncated for comedic effect.
Almost Silent Available February 2010
These features make Almost Silent an ideal introduction to Jason for comics fans and neophytes alike. In addition to bringing four hard-to-find Fantagraphics editions together, Almost Silent costs less than those volumes would separately.
Almost Silent will go on sale on February 28, 2010. A limited selection of original art from Almost Silent is currently available at The Beguiling.
Luke Arnott - Luke Arnott has a Master's Degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Western Ontario, where he is currently enrolled in the ...
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