Review by Ian Keogh

Filipino cartoonist Manix Abrera produces wordless short stories over several pages covering a fair range of emotions. The opening strip begins with a man at college not understanding what he’s being taught. There’s a lot more beyond his comprehension, and he eventually begins searching for answers to life’s bigger questions. Unlike most, he discovers an answer, Manix here toying with the form of comics, but dies before he can pass on what he’s finally learned. It’s a fair amount of effort to reach a punchline that if not entirely obvious, is certainly predictable, but having settled into his stride the following strips apply equal imagination with less certainty about the conclusions.

The imagery of horror is frequent, but creatively used, such as a strip wittily playing out a scenario already seen, but reconfigured, with the ending twisted, or another in which eyesight plays a part. Visual metaphors figure, but as the strips continue Manix increasingly explores the wonders of surreality, turning the worlds of his protagonists upside down. They take a trip in their own brain, meet God, or develop growths with lives of their own. It’s all wacky, but too often, there’s nothing of substance to bolster the surreal explorations.

Because there are no words, Manix has to keep the art simple, and at times his ensuring absolute clarity means the stories drag on a little longer than they should. He rarely departs from a nine panel grid, although a strip concerning a woman’s fantasies about a celebrity is an exception.

There’s not a great deal of comfort here, but a lack of happy endings appears more to do with a perverse sense of humour than a depressive cartoonist. Almost all the stronger material is in the collection’s second half, which works up a sense of anticipation for the sequel, 14.