Review: “Monica”

Daniel Clowes doesn’t mess about.

The opening two-page spread of his heart-wrenching fictional biography jump cuts from amoeba to cavemen to Jesus on the cross to the industrial revolution to the Kennedy assassination to The Beverly Hillbillies.

A series of interwoven scenes and flashbacks tumble depicting the truths and times (and incredible strangeness) of the title character’s life.

Cults, conspiracies and countering the counter-cultural revolution are just the beginning. The style is naive, innocent. The result a surrealish meditation on life and parentage, life and the familial love of an unwanted child.  

Clowes’ writing style remains as crisply structured as ever, exhibiting tight control over his lines and spare use of descriptive colour, even when his narrative explodes into prismatic excess.

These are scenes told in a flash of memory.

Half remembered, half imagined.