We always see Nickerson as herself, but we can see just a little more of ourselves as well. It is in the way Nickerson presents herself and her son as these abstract outlines that makes for a closer, more personal look at trying to create in a place that is slowly losing itself. Creation presents us with the idea of the act of creation in the city of Hamilton, a place filled with toxic waste and smog, while working with the creation of human life. What matters throughout her story of her and her newly born son is their environment-how they interact with and move through it. Instead, she opts for outlines of people that interact with beautifully laid out backgrounds and environments. With Creation, Nickerson rarely draws detailed people. What both comics do so well, though, is work with the idea of abstraction to almost absurd degrees. What these two creators do is work with the abstract in multiple ways-either with a new mother watching a city slowly being swallowed by gentrification or with the absurdity of cowboy masculinity. That’s why it’s refreshing to see works like Creation by Sylvia Nickerson and Cowboyby Rikke Villadsen. Seeing abstraction done well, however, is still rather rare. Comics are interesting since they can play with this abstraction and interpretation in ways many other visual mediums cannot. Nothing we see on the page is real-we only ever see a representation of reality through an artist interpreting it. Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #87 by Drew BarthĪbstraction is one of the key components of comics.
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