Reich #4 by Elijah Brubaker
Reich is a biographical account of psychoanalyst and sex researcher Dr. Wilhelm Reich, a protégé of Freud. He courted scandal throughout Europe where he became known mostly for his controversial and radical ideas. Reich claimed to discover a palpable sexual energy, which he called “Orgone.”
Reich #4 concludes the tragic events in young Reich's childhood and recounts a day in Reich's adult life that would politicize the young analyst, turning him eventually toward the communist party.
"I had not seen much of Brubaker’s work previously to picking up an issue of Reich, but I am a committed follower now. Working with outsized heads and compressed bodies that at first seem to suggest a much more lighthearted subject matter than we in fact have before us, Brubaker makes his characters come alive with completely believable and transparent personalities in only a few panels. Reich himself is alternately brooding and open. The regularity of the panels that divide up his pages is in fact the only visual constant in this book, as spaces warp and perspectives shift with each panel, making us feel at times as if we are in a fun house (which in fact we are). There is much in the style he uses here to remind one of David B.’S work in Epileptic, and like that work Brubaker allows dreams and monsters to fully occupy the diegetic space of this rigorously researched historical narrative. And his expressive simplicity owes a good deal to Chester Brown as well. But ultimately, the style feels very much Brubaker’s own, and it feels just right for the strange combination of shadow and sunshine that makes up his subject."
Jared Gardner at Guttergeek
$4.00 and postage (24 interior pgs, 6" x 9", color cover with black and white interiors)
To read a sample from the book click on the cover or here, please.