Shelfbound

Critical Mass

Written and Illustrated by Garret Izumi

One of my favorite things about traveling is visiting unknown comic book stores.  I can always find something new, whether it’s a locally-produced comic or a secondhand book I’ve never heard of.  Six years ago I was in Chicago visiting Smitty and bought Critical Mass on a whim.  Izumi is a Xeric Grant winning small press author based on the west coast but I didn’t know that until about four minutes ago.  This comic simply existed in the wild, somehow migrating halfway across the country until I happened upon it and was charmed enough to buy it.  Those charms lie primarily in its design- the pages flip from the top rather than the side, the cover seems to be hand-painted onto each copy (I have number 359), and the binding is delightfully old school.

Izumi’s artwork is where Critical Mass succeeds.  He blends caricature, realism, and iconography into a compelling style.  Watch as Oppenheimer does the slow fade over a four-panel history of the Manhattan Project- not exactly subtle but certainly visually striking.  Therein lies the only weakness of this work- how many different ways can one say that nuclear weapons are bad?  The sentiment is sound but sometimes the execution is too obvious- or alternately, too obscure.

You know what that last panel is missing?  This:

These are rare missteps, however.  More often the writing works, with a strip that posits the bombs Trinity, Little Boy, and Fat Man as babies, complete with attending physicians and nurses; a look at Superman’s connection to the nuclear era (a connection that had honestly never occurred to me); and an examination of the bizarre and horrifying physical havoc wrought upon people exposed to nuclear tests.  The most memorable strips, though, remain the silent ones.

Critical Mass is a snapshot of an artist with something to say.  Izumi clearly has complete mastery of his visual art and he often successfully juxtaposes his words and images in a way that makes the most of the comic form.  As a writer he struggles with tone and consistency, but the sheer scope of his effort compensates for any failings.

It’s easy to over-use a phrase like “labor of love.”  If you want to truly understand it find your local comic book store.  Search out the mini-comics, or the local comics, or the used comics.  Find something rare and obscure.  Discover a work that no one outside of the artist’s friends and family ever bothered to read.  Look at the craft and the care that went into creating it.  Garret Izumi painstakingly created the cover for each copy of Critical Mass by hand.  How many hours went into creating the twenty-four pages within?  He, and the creators toiling in obscurity next to him, deserve our attention.