Review by Frank Plowright
Moa Romanova produces comics with a thin distancing wall separating autobiographical experiences from fiction via a deliberately stylised avatar named Moa. As drawn, this Moa has an undersized head, although it’s not an affliction exclusive to her. It’s a continually disturbing visual effect and it takes some time getting used to the distortion when other than people the world is recognisable.
As Buff Soul opens Moa is in Sweden, but friends of hers in a band have gone to record and play in Los Angeles, where she’s to join them and hang out as part of the tour that also takes in the South by Southwest festival in Texas. If you want to be part of the experience, videos of Shitkid performing there can be found online.
A full catalogue of rock’n’roll chaos and excess follows, but carefully contrasted with domesticity as if pulling back the magic curtain. The band stay with a guy keen to head out and raise hell, yet he has the smallest adopted street dog and keeps chicks in the house to prevent them feeling cold when young. What raises this above girls behaving badly, though, is the cultivated sense of melancholy via astutely paced art. Moa is insecure and uncertain, and portrayed as not being as comfortable with the excess as her friends are, although she’s not above some funny moments, an encounter with the Austin police being an example.
Beyond the strange looking people Romanova’s art is extremely precise with rulers frequently used. It’s distinctively coloured with spot tones on black and white art, with grey predominant, giving the entire project a 1980s feel. The colours are muted further for flashbacks.
More than anything else Buff Soul concerns the value of enduring friendship, of having someone who knows you inside and out and vice versa. However, that’s a slim thread for anyone wanting deeper meaning and something with more depth than diary recollections of a few weeks abroad. It’s a considerable way in before the background buzz of Moa’s concerns is revealed, and they perk up the final fifty pages with some greater emotional resonance. It sustains the uncertain mood until the end, but too much of Buff Soul is inconsequential.
