4.5 ( )

wtf. ( )

4
http://www.planocritico.com/category/quadrinhos/ ( )

I was attracted to this, first by the title (which is awesome) and then by the art. I loved the lettering, the black and white pencil drawings and the way the artwork was incorporated into the narrative. The concept was absurd and spot-on.
Reading this will make you smile. ( )

For a book about the inescapability of existential terror and mankind's fear and hostility towards change, The Gigantic Beard... was surprisingly... sweet. Some of that may have been the kind of sing-song quality of the words (I loved how the images were integrated with the words at certain points; definitely something that more graphic novels and comics should be doing), and some of it may have been Dave's kind of gentle acceptance at what was happening to and around him.

The art was well detailed, and the greyscale palette well-served to the themes of the book and the atmosphere of Here. The idea that everything is orderly and tidy, only to be interrupted by some intrusion of disorder is not a new one, but having that intrusion of disorder be attached, unwittingly and unwillingly, to a helpless/hapless person is unique. Dave doesn't know what happening, he doesn't like it, but he doesn't know how to stop it. The reactions of everyone around him - general dissolving of order, the increasingly desperate but still rational attempts to control the beard, the reaction against Dave - progressed believably and realistically, and the kind of sweet sorrow of inevitability that suffused through the graphic novel was prevalent enough that you both felt sorry for Dave and understood the reactions of everyone else.

While it was foregone conclusion that Dave and his beard would end up There, the fact that Professor Black was kind of regretful of what had happened and was looking for some sign of Dave's continued existence was a nice touch. While the scraps that washed up on the shores of Here could have been just previous sketches from a disintegrating sketchbook, the almost totally blacked out ones that came later hinted towards the fact that Dave survived the journey, at least some of it. ( )