|
FINALS.
If
knowledge is power, these guys have stuck their fingers in the
socket.
 Writer:
Will Pfeifer
Artist: Jill Thompson
Colorist: Rick Taylor
Letterer: Rick Parker
4 issue miniseries
Published by DC Vertigo 1999
$2.95 each
FINALS
follows the final semesters of five students at Knox State University,
where university president Michael Woolrich believes in a policy
of learning through practical application. To this end, Dave Oswald
is studying criminal justice by holding up liquor stores. Tim
Pike is applying his theoretical engineering to building a time
machine. Anthropology student Gary Skelton is regressing to a
primal state, and comparative religions major Nancy Bierce has
become the leader of a cult. Meanwhile, film student Wally Maurer
still cannot decide on a subject for his graduate project, and
time is running out.
In
FINALS, creators Pfeifer and Thompson have created an enjoyably
subversive satire on the eccentricities of the American education
system, by creating a university where the emphasis is so firmly
placed on performance, there is no room left for the students
to develop as people. It is an absurdist tale, where the phys.
ed. students are experimented on by the eugenics class, and the
philosophy students tend to take their own lives before the end
of the first semester.
| "The art has a vibrancy
and independence of style that is well suited to depicting
frayed and unsteady youths" |
With
such a morbid sense of humour, FINALS comes across as a
very bleak piece of storytelling, though Pfeifer does a great
job of making the characters sympathetic and recognisable in their
desperation. He also keeps all the different plot threads running
at a clear and steady pace, and though at times the stories are
a little too transparent, it does lend the story a wonderful sense
of terrible inevitability.
Jill
Thompson's art is the perfect complement to Pfeifer's story. It
has a vibrancy and independence of style that is well suited to
depicting frayed and unsteady youths. Her quirky line may not
be to everyone's tastes, but there is more originality and genuine
expression here than one is likely to find in a barrelful of works
by most mainstream artists. Thompson seems to delight in using
an emotional shorthand similar to that practiced by Manga artists,
where faces shift dramatically to convey specific moods. The effect
is generally persuasive, but occasionally jarring.
With
many artists, a story like FINALS would be taken as an
excuse to experimentally push as many ideas into a single page
as possible. Jill Thompson shows admirable restraint here, making
sure even the time machine looks more like a science project than
a piece of Kirbytech, and the carnival float dedicated to Nancy
Bierce has a look of crepe paper and sticky tape about it. The
artist is clearly aware that her style is already eccentric enough
to keep the audience engaged, with no need for unnecessary embellishments.
The series' flat and simplistic colouring is a let-down, though,
and on occasion the characters can become confused as hair colour
leaps from one person to the next.
Recommended (with reservations: for the twisted,
or the academically frustrated)
Andrew
Wheeler is Editorial Consultant of PopImage.
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