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Written & Illustrated by Hans Rickheit
Published by Fantagraphics Books, 2009
Review by R.M Rollson
Hans Rickheit cannot be introduced without an introduction to the ‘underbrain’. The underbrain writes the preface for The Squirrel Machine and has made other appearances throughout Rickheit’s career. I, too, have an underbrain but I call mine my ‘inner bunny’.
For all intents and purposes, the underbrain/inner bunny idea is the entity that resolves all issues regardless of the rules. It’s “through the looking glass”. It’s your brain on open. All day long our lives are generally run through the mill, contained in boxes, stifled by morals. The underbrain sets you free. When Rickheit arts, he lets his underbrain free (or perhaps his underbrain frees him, hmmm).
The Squirrel Machine should be called nothing less than a masterpiece: a true culmination and maturation of illustrative style and story. The atmosphere portrayed in black and white is meticulous and unsettling. Even the banal moments of the story have depth and direction. The underbrain has seen fit to render this machine with reverberation.
The Squirrel Machine is a dream: a dream that culminates all of your ideas (the good, the bad and the ones you should have kept to yourself) and threads them through the loops and whirls of cogs and bolts to end up in the eye of a needle. This is a dream with that moment of falling and realizing you are at the bottom of the rabbit hole. This is a dream that though you try and wake so that the inevitable does not happen in the next second, you can’t and it does. It’s impossible to take your eyes off the next horrifying moment for fear that you will end up in the dark.
Rickheit’s history will only amaze you more; as you can see his art and themes bloom into this lovely and blasphemous affair. He makes available online an earlier version of this story that does not nearly come close to the genius depicted here. His other works in his series Chrome Fetus and graphic novels Kill Kill Kill and Chloe were intriguing but didn’t yet have the attention to detail in art or plot as that of The Squirrel Machine.
It’s music that carries this story forth. Music winds its way down off rooftops from unexpected sources. Music can not only soothe a savage beast but be drawn out of domestic beasts with the right tools and know-how. Edward Torpor and his brother, William are the conductors in a love story. As brothers can do, they hide their predilections from their mother and as they get older, from each other. This hiding is the key. The more you hide something the more illicit it becomes. The more illicit something becomes, the more you have to hide it. They are in secrecy together regarding ‘the squirrel machine’ and because of this they sabotage not only their own relationships but each others as well. Their socializations become distorted. Edward wears goggles because they shield him from reality. They separate him from his own personal responsibility for his actions. His somnambulism is either the cause or the result of his off-kilter mental health. The quiet yet willful William just prefers not to know about responsibility and follows Edward blindly.
Their sexually repressed artist mother, Emma the pig-lady, the curious Morgen, and the giggle-goggle girl unknowingly try and stop ‘the squirrel machine’. When they can’t they are either then included in the machinations or become conspirators and compelling forces. The female presence upsets the hum and whir of this mechanical composition. The brotherhood is desperate but unwavering in loyalty, down to the last orchestration.
The squirrel machine itself is a metaphor for life, albeit a bizarre and surreal life. All the escapes we build into our lives, the regurgitation of information and experience, our dreams and fears – the melodies of these tiny animal lives we lead. We attach the correct nozzles, crank the wheel and hope that something comes of something. It’s the fuel we pay for, with our sacrifices and with our lives to keep the machine running. Hopefully in the end, unlike the Torpor brothers, we find that we run the machine and that the machine does not run us.
Rickheit creates and destroys the squirrel machine with an attention to detail that borders on fanatical. If Rube Goldberg had a ménage a trois with a taxidermist and a Luddite at the World’s Fair in 1851, the offspring might look like the squirrel machine. With that said I, personally, hope to see much more from Hans Rickheit and his underbrain. My inner bunny awaits.
Rachael M Rollson is a long time listener, first time caller. She is not a people person. She is a person person. She is a semi-luddite working with analog photography and collage/assemblage techniques. She has an MFA in interdisciplinary studies from Goddard College in Plainfield, VT and a cat named Spike. She also has a website (I said “semi-luddite”) where you can check out her work, www.loveandanger.com. Though she has been collecting and reading for some time, she comes at this whole comics thing from just outside the periphery. Someday she is going to learn to play the accordion.
review © R.M Rollson. Reprinted with Permission.
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