The SIZE MATTERS offices have just emerged from a serious renovation project. So, we’re back on schedule again. Over the last week, we’ve embarked on a house transformation and guess where everything was shoved in the meantime - the back bedroom, or as I like to call it the “SIZE MATTERS offices.” I can finally get to the computer and to the mini-comics that got shoved way over into the corner. Poor mini-comics…
So let’s get started with a mini-comic that makes me glow when I read it. One of the first posts here, oh so many months ago was a review of an unknown, to me at least, mini-comic called Capacity. I reviewed issue four then, and recently Theo Ellsworth sent the just completed issue six.
This last issue is even better than the fourth one. Ellsworth seems to be suffering from a surfeit of imagination in this comic. It’s like visual tricks and ideas are hammering on the inside of his mind desperate for a way out. In fact, he plays with this idea a bit in the story “Answering Machine.” He tells the reader that he had planned on being home to take their phone call, but his “ideas” forced him outside. “More often than not, once I’ve gotten started, I find it difficult to stop. But today my ideas refused to be cooperative, and then they kicked me right out of my house. They weren’t even gentle about it.”
That’s kind of a neat metaphor, but reading Ellsworth’s comic, you get the sense that he’s not kidding. It’s not often that I’m just stunned speechless by a comic, but reading Capacity issue six was one of those times. You know the feeling, you’re reading along and then the words and the pictures mesh together so perfectly that they send you reeling. Or when the visuals are so imaginative and startling that they make you pause just to appreciate them a few more times. Again, this happened several times reading Capacity. I almost don’t trust my reaction to this comic. Maybe, I’m over reacting or something. I mentioned in the first review of Ellsworth’s work how much I was reminded of Jennifer Daydreamer’s (who needs to get something else out soon!) work, but this time it was more than that. There’s some Theodor Geisel too, there’s a crazy burst of imagery that excites you viscerally.
Capacity issue six is twenty-four black and white pages of comics that will make you flat out love what comics can do better than anything else. This is comics mixed with the best of kid’s books and it makes me happier than comics should. It looks like Ellsworth has a website coming up soon. In the meantime, email him at theoellsworth@hotmail.com. Shower him with money and tell him that I sent you.
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