Demons in Love

 

Graphic Poems & And then some

Authored and Illustrated by Janne Karlsson, www.svenskapache.se

Reviewed by Sreemanti Sengupta, Odditor, The Odd Magazine

 

I was watching this horror movie the other day. It horrified me. I have always remembered myself as a horror afficianado. Bengal has always been rich with ink black nights, high pitched female laughter, anklet bells in a scurry. But then, Poe happened to me. And I got real tired of horror movies with big grecian arcs, a spooky doll, a conveniently big family to kill off one by one. Yawn, I was back to my desk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Karlsson in Graphic Poems and then some more does a remarkable job in making the grotesque relevant and inspiring. Having seen some beautiful attempts on Poe’s ‘Raven’ in graphic, this strip was a pleasant kick to the senses. Why I go back and forth to Poe is the eloquent ambience that he had managed to create back then – the less said the more.

 

As you enter Graphic Poems, the shock of the form is evident – bald, ugly forms with disoriented body parts, splattered blood and vomit, animal bones, fish bones, bare breasts lunging forward, bare landscapes and all too severe a statement that almost repulses you. What attacks you is bareness, like a desert with no respite, a journey that can tire you but not stop, a life that is too true to carry on but has none else to do.

 

So we have got the grotesque, the gloom, the bare, the bald, the melancholia, the cynic, the hypocrite, the desires that are imploding like restrained farts…and yet.

 

Karlsson is in a conversation with the illustration, which brings two worlds, almost diabolically opposite in a painful collision.

 

Consider these frames: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of these will leave you with an undecided feeling – what do you feel? These are feelings you don’t want to have, because confusion is not convenient but memorable.

 

The simple, the ironic, the eerie, the monstrous and the poignant share a burning fag from one frame to another. There are defeated egg like forms panting in front of walls, there are fathers being perfectly and painfully cynical. Here is a world that challenges your reactions. Scroll down and you might leave feeling squeamish in the stomach, or even seriously hurt at not being able to access enough artistic truths. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I thank the creator for this light-hearted frame, that comes at me like a much needed comic relief in an otherwise dark and mysteriously humourous theatre that unfolds before me. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For people like me, who believe in content driving form or maybe no rules at all, I suspect you will especially enjoy these pieces.

 

And for others, they will be mysterious and looming, quite like that little room in your palatial ancestral home whose key everybody has lost and about which nobody questions but little children with inconvenient unbridled courage. And sometimes on full moon nights, weird noises are heard.

 

 

And for everybody else, as Ferlinghetti wisely said, “Fuck Art, let’s Dance”