The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil

September 15, 2014
Cartoonist Collins' debut graphic novel is a long, smooth fable of a man whose unkempt facial hair ravages the tidy city of Here. Here sits on an island, surrounded by the sea, separated from the far-off land of There. And whereas Here is all row houses and trimmed trees and clean cheeks, There is a dark, disordered place that would mix your insides with your outsides, your befores with your nows with your nexts-unpleasant business brilliantly depicted in panels breaking across a single body as it succumbs to chaos. So the people of Here live quiet, fastidious lives, their backs to the sea, and neighbor Dave delights in doodling it all from his window as he listens to the Bangles' "Eternal Flame" on repeat. But an irregular report at his inscrutable office job triggers the single hair that has always curved from Dave's upper lip to be suddenly joined by a burst of follicles. Try as Dave might, his unruly beard won't stop pouring from his face in a tangled flood-and soon it threatens the very fabric of life in Here. Collins' illustrations are lush, rounded affairs with voluptuous shading across oblong planes. Expressions pop, from the severe upturn where a sympathetic psychiatrist's brows meet to the befuddlement of a schoolgirl as the beard's hypnotic powers take hold. With its archetypical conflict and deliberate dissection of language, the story seems aimed at delivering a moral, but the tale ultimately throws its aesthetics into abstraction rather than didacticism. The result rings a little hollow but goes down smooth. Rich, creamy art and playful paneling make for a fun read.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 15, 2014
Here is an oval of land in the midst of a sea, across which, though no one on Here can see it, is There. A fisher's son once set out in a rowboat for There, it's said, and never returned; it's also said that once There, he became untidyleft hand mixed up with right, insides with outsides, and so forth. Here is an exceedingly tidy place. It is exceedingly upsetting, then, when Dave, hitherto hairless save for a single curl beneath his left nostril, sprouts a beard that grows extraordinarily fast and, after a while, resists all cutting. Eventually, all Here's hairdressers are conscripted to manage it, and towers of scaffolding erected to keep it from engulfing the land. The beard is eventually dealt with, but Here is never quite tidy again, and that's all right. British cartoonist Collins' fable against conformity and xenophobia may strike Americans as mild (it's familiar territory for anyone who grew up on Dr. Seuss), but there's no denying the charm of his Gorey-like drawing style and whimsical story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)