Koren Shadmi’s In the Flesh is a dark and sometimes brilliant collection of comics about relationships that don’t quite work out. From a boy trying to have a relationship with a headless girl to a woman with a fixation on a children’s TV personality, In the Flesh gives symbolic voice to the times in life when two people can’t quite connect.
The wonderful thing about this collection of graphic shorts is its sense of wonder and creativity in its characters. Each situation tells of different reasons things go wrong, from mismatched intentions to financial problems to a lack of motivation. Shadmi’s art is powerfully expressive also. His rough pencils and bleak palette bring out a tone of inner sadness to both the characters in the stories and the world they’re living in. There’s kind of an eerie feeling about some of the inhabitants too, not unlike Daniel Clowes’s work; a sense of unease comes across in their features.
Shadmi’s visual storytelling is one area that leaves a bit to be desired. He doesn’t take advantage of techniques unique to the graphic novel; there’s rarely a juxtaposition of words only possible in comics. The text in the piece is almost entirely driven by word balloons coming directly from characters in the same panel. It almost reads more like a film. I would have liked to see more experimentation within the strengths of the medium.
There are worse things the stories could be driven by than dialogue, however, as Shadmi’s is very strong. Even in the highly surreal situations these characters find themselves in, Shadmi creates consistently believable, human dialogue that resonates well with the characters and their environments.
One thing that may get on readers’ nerves is the “shtickiness” of these stories. Though each is unique and says something a bit different from the rest about human relationships, they follow a very distinct formula: one apparently “normal” person finds themselves with someone they’d really like to be with, but through some very strange, surreal complication, it doesn’t work out. Each story works well on its own terms, but near the end I felt a desire to say “All right, we get it.”
Ultimately, I found In the Flesh to be quite lovely. It isn’t perfect, or a landmark in graphic novels, but it’s something different. These stories and their message show the artform is growing, and for its flaws, there were some wonderful moments too. I’d recommend it for any fan of surreal fiction, and certainly anyone who’s on the fence about comics as literature.
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