RaveSolradSophie Yanow draws great legs. There are artists who are masters of the face, who are able to show everything a character thinks and feels with a glare. Then there are cartoonists who can tell a story through body language, drawing characters with their arms flailing wildly or their shoulders raised in indifference. Rarely have I seen someone like Sophie Yanow, though, who can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about a person through the movement of their legs alone ... Yanow’s artistic style, in which simple figures are defined by long spindly appendages, is in full force throughout The Contradictions . This is, after all, a story about movement and distance — not just the distance the characters cover on foot, but emotional distance as well. These are young people constantly testing the boundaries of their relations, never quite sure where they stand with one another, how deep their connection is. The way Yanow draws her characters is likewise useful in showing the relative inexperience of these characters. These figures appear as if they might bend and twist with every motion, which is probably the best encapsulation of the young student’s experience as their every step is fraught with terror because the world is an unfamiliar minefield ... Like many a Bildungsroman, the physical movement of the story is mostly there as an anchor for the psychological development the characters go through. While I have mentioned Yanow’s skills with body language, she also has great ability in other areas of cartooning ... Her figure-line, in particular, is more pleasing in its softness, and more easily finds the humanity of the characters in the minutia of everyday life. She does this while still maintaining her strong grasp of physical spaces and urban development. Her backgrounds are often sparse, but that does not detract from the strength of the artwork in depicting location; Yanow simply knows when to let the figures stand on their own and when to showcase larger sections of the cities they visit. I wouldn’t call her choices in The Contradictions \'evolution,\' because that implies that the art here is inherently better than Yanow’s older work. What we have here is mostly a slight shift in the artistic direction. It shows Yanow can still find new means of expression within her established style.
