cover image Stunt

Stunt

Michael DeForge. Koyama, $15 trade paper (72p) ISBN 978-1-927668-69-6

This hallucinatory graphic novella, slippery both in visuals and story line, follows a stunt double with a death wish through a funhouse-mirror version of Hollywood. “Like most anyone, I was engaged in a constant war against my body,” the nameless stuntman reflects while pumping iron and fantasizing about winning celebrity by dying in an on-camera accident. He takes a job as body double to a movie star, then starts to fill in for the actor during his off-camera life, discovering in the process that no one can tell the two of them apart. The story drifts further and further from reality as the men’s identities merge and they descend together into isolated madness. DeForge (Leaving Richard’s Valley) intensifies the sense of disorientation with his chaotic compositions; every object seems to be twisting, melting, or sliding away. Long, curved figures cram themselves into panels, shedding sweat and speed lines. DeForge also experiments with style and formal conventions, and his serpentine, constantly shifting art seems almost alive. Alternately tragic, horrific, and darkly comic, this experimental work treats readers to an eye-popping dissection of identity and mass media. (Sept.)