RaveComics Beat... every diamond, sparkle, and burst is placed on the page perfectly ... plagued by intrusive thoughts, the narrative being interrupted and obfuscated by reverie, the reader’s ability to perceive the moment at times pushed out by a tempest of noisy marks ... filled with comics conceits that shouldn’t work but do ... Crane has created a work of incredible suffering. Pain and fear and love. It is a complicated story, stories within stories that reflect upon each other, of a couple, lousy driving, fighting, making up. Reading a book and fearing the worst. Acting on it ... The entire book is meticulously plotted, magnificently structured storytelling. An immersive read where we get to feel the anxiety of the couple we observe. One that acknowledges our thoughts, intangible, have as much power over us as anything concrete. What we read and what we believe and what we think is as much a part of being alive as the air we breathe, the people we know, the place each of us calls home ... Crane leaves the form familiar so that the reader can fall down the rabbit hole of the content. What you want the story to be is crucial to what it ultimately is. Lose track of where the line between before and after was drawn. You make it what you want to make it, like you were told, you have the power to save them once the story is over. Thank you. Alright.
Connor Willumsen
RaveComics BeatThe connection of presence to the world, the erasure of self, is beautifully rendered in full acid blotter psychedelic glory by Connor Willumsen, but it’s all lost on Bradley of Him ... Bradley of Him feels like a new cult classic, an addition to the lexicon of modern outsider storytellers and haunted urban dreamers. It’s densely packed with exchanges, inventories, people ... In Willumsen’s Vegas, the slots and velvet ropes and scrubland vegetation, everything has a similar absence that goes with the amicably perplexing formatting. Familiar, delicate, and yet each face is a ghost missing some essential piece, spared a single line of photorealistic contour or floating up through a car window set into the desert floor ... The thoughtful composition of Willumsen’s visuals, a counterpoint to the sociopathic inner life of his subject, is what makes Bradley of Him so compelling. Willumsen has a deep understanding of each page as both parts and a whole.
