When to pick pomegranates
cartoonist: Yasmin Abedifard
Publisher: silver sprocket / $14.99
September 2024
The deeper you go, the darker and stranger it becomes When to pick pomegranates become. Granted, the book is weird from the get-go, but the tiny sounds of innocent bioscience film footage are trapped, twisted, and torn apart. Disgust turns into desire, producing more disgust, and then starts over. This time, the teeth penetrated the flesh, tearing the fruit apart, buzzing and sticky. Meaning and feeling come together like a bitten lip. Yasmin AbedifardThis graphic novel is sensual, repulsive, disturbing, and relatable. A series of encounters between two strangers in a garden that reflect the bloom and entropy of the pomegranate fruit? No.
When to pick pomegranates It is a defiance of convention. Stories of shared experiences turn their attention toward unnatural urges and inner turmoil. Horrible and mundane confrontations inspire darker thoughts, twisted fantasies, and anxieties. Disa Wallander meet EM Carroll. original like Sofia Foster-Diminio As the moment of artistic complexity approaches Michael DeForge. Abedifard shares Wallander’s interest in photography, textured backgrounds, and Snufkinian simple figures/philosophical reflections. Rather than just a talking person in an empty square, American splendor An old-school indie comedy vibe, with Anar (the pomegranate man) and Guli (the naked lady) floating in space. Each one is placed in the hands of God, allowing Him to knead them together like clay. Close your palms and the story begins.
Ostensibly a series of short comics, the aesthetic is enhanced by rendering each comic in a captivating, unique tone. The misplaced desire of a muse, the rotten mold of self-loathing, the physical contact of really hot shit, or twisting that guy’s arm until it physically rips and he bleeds. I think by range I mean from dull to black. This is EM Carroll’s part. A series of rejections and desires keeps sinking. Perspectives and unraveling complexities change with encounters.
Abedifard dramatically changes the tone of the comic as each installment reorients Arnar and Guli’s relationship. There are title cards like “Flower,” “Ripe,” and “Rotten,” but the page colors of the first two make the former look like pebbled glaze on a clay pot, and the latter like fine lines on porcelain. The third is the color of a pomegranate, the shell of the eaten fruit speckled with ink droplets like mold.
Disturbing and beautiful. Troubling. It appears as a series, but it’s actually a graphic novel, with each chapter written in a completely different style. The two main threads are two science fiction-like characters who suffer from crippling grief and are relatable despite their alien appearances or impossible experiences. And – there is inevitable darkness in every story. In order to move forward, when the sun rises every morning, Anal and Guli continue to doubt, suffer and yearn. No matter the color of the page, there is always growth, and then decline.
Life is a sad story, right? Seeds crack and sprouts twist and grow out of the soil. Violence. The flower falls due to its own weight; Alas, that’s what they are, even if they grow to perfection, they will die. Worse, what returns to earth after decay is not rest, but the birth of another seed. Life doesn’t stop. Despite the horror in it (this is a comic and not life), Pomegranate Forcing the reader to experience pure desire. Terror and desire intertwine to provide the basis for the development of the story.
Abedifard’s art style is complex and I find it very compelling. The form and color composition have a graphic art, mural-like simplicity. But there’s grainy dust everywhere, scattered black, like printer toner blown across the page. Gully and Anar show a different wear and tear on the world than other on-paper aspects of the comics. There is a tendency in sketchbooks to leave little lines in them to give gestures and feelings more character. A lot of sweat melted. Overall, there is creative freedom and graffiti experimentation in art, and it shows up in weird and wonderful ways. The image itself is confusing. Things depicted may suddenly become inexplicably chaotic, but there are really no rules anywhere.
That said, it’s also a tightly constructed, perfectly measured creation. The color palette of each comic pushes the mood Jallow Aesthetic field. Their sequence compares each story to the previous palette. Abedifad and silver sprocket We’ve put together a deeply satisfying book in which the power of stylized art is inseparable from the effect an object has on the person holding it. Mistakes in storytelling can take you out of the moment; Pomegranate Makes you aware of the moment in a way that enhances the storyline.
The intent of Abedifad’s visual presentation is matched by the variety of ways in which she tells it When to pick pomegranatesstory. Some feel like watching a scene through the window of a panel, with time passing through the gutter that separates them, a common comic. Some are a series of images whose meanings are explained one by one, like a series of tarot cards arranged in a grid. Some float on the page, little Arnar, little Guli. The disembodied voice of God cannot be contained in a box, it floats. So what did you learn?
When to pick pomegranates Available from Silver Sprocket or wherever great comics and books are sold.
