Sea, Ben – Eyelash Out

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Eyelash Out

You know how some reviewers refer to any comic featuring a drug trip as
“psychodelic” or just go with the easier “weird?” Yeah, I am very tempted to just
call this comic “trippy” and leave it at that. Still, that would be doing a
disservice to the comic, as there is so much more going on here. It is also trippy
as hell, and if you’ve done a large amount of LSD in your life there’s a chance that
various images in here could lead to flashbacks. That’s how that works, right?
Anyway, this comic starts off with a young man who is barging his way to the front
of a… contest? Selection process? Whatever it is, it’s the process of another
person (?) trying to determine who is worthy to have one of his/her/its eyelashes.
One person goes through the process and is awarded one, while the young man from the
first page bursts through the crowd and just takes an eyelash. The rest of the crowd
apparently doesn’t take this well, but from that point on all we see is the
(distorted, surreal) world through the eyes of these two characters, on whatever
analogy to a drug trip that they’re experiencing, so they don’t have to worry about
an angry mob. And man, that imagery. Every panel has at least a little bit of
floating imagery, often unconnected from anything that could be mistaken as coming
from the “real” world. I often wish for full color in my comics these days, but I
don’t know if my senses would have been able to handle it with this one. From there
we get to experience their trip in all its glory, until the male in the group
chooses a confrontation, and things spiral a bit from there. I’d say I’m avoiding
spoilers by not going any further with the story, but I could tell you the story
from beginning to end and I’d still recommend getting this book for the visuals
alone. If I had to pick a style it reminded me of I’d say early Ron Rege, sort of,
but also entirely its own thing, so not a helpful comparison. Here’s a test to see
if this book is for you: examine that cover image. Really dig into it. If you think
you know exactly what’s going on there, and want to see more, then pick this up
immediately. If you’re not sure what it happening, well, doesn’t that make you
curious to see what you’re missing? $4