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Copyright Chris Wright
During an excellent interview about his debut book, Inkweed , author Chris Wright poses the question, “Is restraint a virtue?” Though the quote refers to one story from the collection in particular, that same questioning can be applied to all of Wright’s ambitious work. With his bizarre visual style, philosophical themes, and literary dialogue, his work shows a bold inventiveness and an overriding desire to elevate the medium of comics to an unprecedented level, even at the risk of alienating some readers.
Inkweed is a collection of short works produced between 2002 and 2007, yet the book feels more like a unified whole than a hodge-podge of unrelated stories. The works range from 15-20 page stories to single-page drawings, but the same high level of quality is consistent . Themes like an obsession with art, the nature of existence, despair, and futility recur throughout the book and simultaneously tie the works together and give us a glimpse into Wright’s mind and his own artistic goals.