Way Off Main

It used to be that the only way to get your dose of Way Off Main was to pick up the Georgia Straight (a weekly arts & entertainment newspaper in Vancouver) and flip through to the back pages. There, nestled between movie listings and sex ads and horoscopes, would be that week’s little comic gem: a sparse meditation on city life, and loneliness, and things left unsaid. You can now get a year’s worth of this great comic all in one place, as Josué Menjivar and Scott Malin have finally released a collection encapsulating their first year of print. This collection, although small enough to breeze through in one sitting, and pricier than I’d usually shell out for a zine this size, is packed with subtle insights on everyday life, and is charged with a level of depth and emotion not commonly found in single frame comics. But can it be too much of a good thing? I found myself devouring page after page, without so much as a pause for reflection between frames. It was like I was eating an entire box of really good Belgian chocolate in one sitting. Perhaps I need the restraint of the weekly paper, where I can truly savour the delicious melancholy of this comic. (Krisztina Kun)

#1, Josué Menjivar and Scott Malin, comic zine, 30 pages, $6.75, Fresh Brewed Illustration, 202-1004 Wolfe Avenue, Vancouver, BC, V6H 1V7, www.freshbrewedillustration.com