Uptight #5

A disappearing girlfriend and an outer space repairman populate this solo cartoonist anthology, drawn in a way the evokes mid-century Modern design movements such as Bauhaus, Constructivism, and neoplasticism.

In this 80-page volume, Jordan Crane draws us in with two gripping and wrenching stories, one of the mundane, and the other of the fantastic. First, there is €œKeeping Two.€ William€s girlfriend goes missing during a trip to the supermarket, and he must look down the long dark narrow tunnel that his life will become without her. He is reading a book, but the book doesn€t help, and indeed feeds his anxieties, rendering his loss in starkly contrasting lines. The second story, €œDiscovering the Dark,€ is 26 pages and drawn with two colors. Akihiro Akaike is employed as a repairman aboard an asteroid mining ship in the year 2033. In his spare time, he is an amateur astrophysicist, and a discovery he makes drives him steal supplies and a company ship in order to make a clandestine 7-month voyage. However, when the mining operation discovers his plans, he is forced into a rapidly deteriorating set of probabilities. Black & white with 32 pages color