Torus: Stranger Stories from the World of Mauretania

Writer / Artist
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Torus: Stranger Stories from the World of Mauretania
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  • UK publisher / ISBN: Mauretania Comics - 978-0-24465584-6
  • Release date: 2017
  • Format: Black and white with colour section.
  • UPC: 9780244655846
  • Contains adult content?: no
  • Does this pass the Bechdel test?: no
  • Positive minority portrayal?: no

Most of Chris Reynolds’ work was collected in The New World, a luxurious hardback, curated by Seth for the prestigious New York Review Comics. Reynolds’ self-published Torus, mops up some outliers, including his first colour stories in print.

Reynolds emerged from the British small press comics movement kickstarted by Eddie Campbell and Phil Elliott. Reynolds may have been inspired by Campbell’s pioneering exploration of personal material, but along with Elliott, Carol Swain, and Ed Pinsent he explored the personal in more oblique and poetic forms. With Paul Harvey (now best known as a painter), Reynolds created and published Mauretania, an anthology of short, artful and literary comics. They coined the term ‘Psychetecture’, suggesting an interdependence between internal and external realities.

Part of Mauretania’s conceit is a science fiction macro-narrative glimpsed through human micro-narratives. Helmeted observer Monitor features in many Mauretania stories, including three here. In ‘The Beginning of Empires’ mass conscription brings him back to a resonant locale, before a vast processing facility filters him onto a journey, apparently designed solely for him. Elsewhere, Monitor’s talk of his spaceship seemed a delusion, but ‘Golden Shuttle’ shows him departing earth on a NASA type Space Shuttle. However, an intercut narrative of a man with a hood instead of a helmet, heading into earth’s own inhospitable wastes, may be the reality behind Monitor’s fantasy. ‘Planet 4’ reverses that, with Monitor finding an Earth-like planet “small and mean compared to Helios, but the sun still shines”. It’s less a narrative than travelogue of the imagination, mixing the poetic with the prosaic, as Monitor explores (by bus) a built environment almost like our own. Opening and closing panels of a typewriter, foreground the act of creation over the fictional reality. ‘Pure Holiday’ another travelogue, is fuelled by a quest for rare music ‘cubes’. Complications in their quest add a playful meditation on expectations of stories and endings, further highlighting a knack for balancing storytelling with meta-fictional musings.

Though united by the Mauretania concept, these stories are diverse in length, style and content. The contents are undated, but seem chronological, following characters and ideas at either end of Reynolds’ career. ‘Alien Rooms’, told over four vividly detailed panels, powerfully uses omission, with even the characters unseen. Also over two pages, ‘Cherry the Rent Girl’ contains family, philosophy, politics, and a climatic action that’s both unexpected and fitting. ‘Curtain Crawlers’ are disembodied hands lurking behind curtains, in a tale of superheroine Moon Queen. Apparently cute, it proves the most impenetrable story, seemingly intercutting between related characters in alternate worlds and packed with ideas and imagery. Reynolds often gives glimpses of larger stories, but this feels like scattered fragments, resisting even poetic interpretation. Some stories satisfy more than others, but together they highlight Reynolds’ literary range and ambition.

Reynolds is known for his distinctive black and white ‘woodcut’ art style, and there are some good and less good examples here. ‘Curtain Crawlers’ is grayscale until the gradual introduction of colour, building towards a luminous moment. In ‘The Beginning of Empires’ (pictured, left) vivid colours distinguish the facility from the surrounding landscape, and seemingly random colour changes powerfully evoke Monitor’s alienation and dissociation. ‘Spectrum Has Been Abandoned’ (pictured, right) uses digital airbrushing. It’s fade-to-white effects now seem dated, with the more painterly ‘The Countryside Computer’ perhaps best of the colour stories.

The New World is a near perfect collection of a singular creator’s finest work. Torus, behind a weak cover image and design, contains some intriguingly imperfect stories, making it a very welcome companion volume.

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