Review by Win Wiacek

Self-publishing wizard and minicomic genius John Pham joined with the wonderfully progressive Fantagraphics to release the first volume in what was proposed as a twice-a-year book series dedicated to the sheer joy of pictorial storytelling in our modern, miracle-free world. Unfortunately only two volumes appeared, but both are irresistible delights.

This initial offering is a sublimely designed landscape-format tome printed in quirky two-tone. The magenta and cyan combination produces a huge variety of colours welcomingly familiar to any UK readers who grew up reading The Beano and The Dandy.

However, while the design is impressive, it’s the content that truly counts, and Sublife features a series of intertwined tales featuring the odd denizens of 221 Sycamore St, who are given individual spotlights by Pham. Poignant and surreal by turns, the lives of exhausted Mildred Lee, dubious stud Vrej Sarkissian, tragic and disturbing religious studies teacher Hubie Winters and those guys Los Hermanos Macdonald are a captivating and laconic examination of the kind of people you probably wouldn’t like or make time for.

Being both writer and artist Pham ensures the illustrations aren’t just moving the story forward, and there’s a lot to be learned about the cast just by studying their surroundings and what’s lying around.

The silent, deadly pantomime of the house cat seeking safety outside is worth the price of admission alone, and that’s before ‘Deep Space’ amusingly imposes the mundanity of everyday life on the excitement of space travel.

When the abstract and symbol-stuffed existences on display here shuffle into your head and just sit there twitching, you’ll wonder how you ever got on without Pham making your must-read list. The weirdness continues in Sublife 2.