Review by Frank Plowright
Grant Snider’s cartoons and comic strips have an imaginative and unique way of looking at the world, and encapsulating an idea. They’re clever, thoughtful and visually inventive, and that’s why they appear in smarter publications, yet most remarkably they, and the children’s books Snider produces are just a sideline to his dentistry career. Many other creators are surely gnashing their teeth at Snider being this good without cartooning being his priority. How usual is it that someone with a solid science-based career also thinks so visually? Perhaps the sample art offers a clue.
Snider thinks about thinking an awful lot. Some strips are over-thinking, others clutter, and others still the occasional gust of clarity, and among them are clues about someone seemingly experiencing depression. A strip titled ‘Changing Bliss’ concerns struggling to stay joyful, Snider conceiving appropriate visual metaphors such as being dwarfed by a giant toad, or Hokusai’s wave incoming as a sandcastle is built. It’s one of several exceptions as the majority of strips have a positive outlook along the lines of making lemonade from the lemons life serves.
That, though, is a metaphor of common currency, and Snider’s creativity discards the commonplace. When he does resort to a phrase such as happiness being just around the corner, he plays out occasions where it isn’t before suggesting perhaps the answer to happiness is finding a place without corners. While most strips use the first person, they’re generalised to a degree, but when Snider occasionally moves away from contemplation into personality they become revealing. One strip concerns the hurt of poor reviews and being desperate for approval, yet concludes with a certainty of purpose.
It’s a rare strip that topples into banality, but what prevents anything in Thinking About Thinking being as trite as a Love Is… cartoon is the consistency of Snider’s visual imagination. He’s capable of interpreting feelings such as being stuck in a rut with the simplest of visual forms. Three consecutive strips use a circle, a triangle and a square as means of transformation or fitting in, and if anything the visual leaps are more impressive than their verbal equivalents. An occasional clever additional delight is the incorporation of famous works of art. It’s not only Hokusai.
Collecting strips presumably originally published weekly leads to some repetition, but the title itself surely suggests that, and if the same ground is covered in different phrases Snider always has an appropriate new visual interpretation. The creativity is constant, and almost overwhelming, so Thinking About Thinking is best experienced a few strips at a time to avoid either overload or a lack of proper appreciation.
