Gloriana - Hardcover

Huizenga, Kevin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1770460616 ISBN 13: 9781770460614

Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly, 2012

Synopsis

Formally innovative explorations bring poetry to the quotidian

In Gloriana, Kevin Huizenga exposes the mechanics that underpin everyday life. His protagonist, Glenn Ganges, has conversations about dish soap and library visits that are both faithful depictions of the mundane interactions we all have and so much more: existential dissections of the units that construct our lives. Huizenga has an understated, quiet approach to story writing that allows his characters (and his readers) the self-awareness to recognize the humor and tragedy of every moment.

Huizenga's much-lauded work is finely detailed, and in its innovative use of form, it explores the boundaries of the comic medium, deconstructing and reconstructing panels to express temporality and lived experience more fully. Presented in this expanded edition, Gloriana employs familiar settings and thorough, sometimes scientific explanations to reach thoughtful conclusions.

About this title

About the Author:

Kevin Huizenga lives in St. Louis with his wife; he is the author of the graphic novel Curses and the comic book series Or Else and Ganges.

From Booklist:

Huizenga’s comics, most featuring Everyman Glenn Ganges, elevate the everyday into the rarefied. Ganges is wont to dip into reveries or break into elaborate monologues about mundane tasks like unpacking groceries, analogous to Huizenga’s ability to spin intricate sagas out of quotidian moments, with his simple, cartoony line drawings evolving into fabulously labyrinthine panels. The standout here is a sequence in which Ganges tells his wife about watching a sunset from his carrel at the library. As he retells the event, each successive version becomes more chaotic and kinetic, culminating in a totally abstract fold-out centerpiece. In another story, Ganges’ attempt to allay his neighbors’ fear of a blood-red moon that they believe portends the end of the world grows into a goofily intricate account of optical science. While Huizenga’s more recent work is even more impressive, these early stories, originally self-published in minicomics a decade ago, constitute a prime example of what the comics medium can achieve that other forms of storytelling cannot. --Gordon Flagg

About this edition

• Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1770460616
• ISBN 13: 9781770460614
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 96