The first story (of three), "Tacit", is my favorite. Wordlessly, it starts with an attractive conceit -- finding oneself underwater in one's house -- that serves as a brilliant metaphor for that period of time between dreaming and waking. It also captures the pain and shock of awakening graphically and the hurt of imagination in conflict with reality.

The following shorter story, "Manos", deals with the fear of creative loss through the striking image of a handless man panicking. Eye-catching imagery, as found in this example, is a hallmark of this title.

Scattered throughout the book are Pentads, intriguing experiments consisting of five wordless non-repeating panels that have meaning only through juxtaposition. I considered them as visual puzzles, trying to work out how close I thought I was coming to the artist's intentions. They caused me to think more about the need for the reader to bring closure to panels that don't immediately appear to be related.

"Winter's Kings" is the story that most resembles a traditional comic narrative. A nomadic tribe leaves three elders behind at the beginning of the change in seasons, but they cleverly manage to gain a measure of revenge in their generational conflict. The last long story, "The Oracle of Now", tells of the second and final meeting between Odysseus and the Cyclops while also managing to ponder the nature of any given individual's effect on society.

Issue #2

After reprinting a poem by e.e. cummings about a hungry mind and the virtue of being wrong, this issue's opening essay is about the connections between visual sequences, narrative imagery, and ultimately, the value of creation. It seems, at first glance, to be a bit odd to be reading ideas about comics expressed in text by a cartoonist (especially since I have an antipathy for such formats), but here, the emphasis is on using the best tool for the job. It works well, provoking numerous insights and connections between thoughts. The value of the gutter, the space between images, is brought home both explicitly (it's the subject of the essay) and implicitly (the essay itself uses the technique).

Moving on to the stories, "Brothers Dundee" is about a government-run nursing home for holders of national secrets (military officers, spies, scientific geniuses). It's peopled with grotesque, ornately rendered visions of characters that are almost no longer human as they descend, waiting for death. Certain similarities in all the faces illustrate how older people are seen by society, defined primarily by their age and little else.

The two brothers of the title wish to escape. While simply walking out the door (sometimes barriers are self-created and not actual), they end up discussing ethical relativity as it relates to fairness and respect. Ethics are ultimately rationalized to make things work out the way we want them to, and sometimes principles lead us into places we don't want to be (as when one brother's rules for himself lead to him wishing an acquaintance of theirs stays dead so that the brother won't be behaving inconsistently). The Brothers Dundee appear twice more in the book in short pieces between the other stories.

The next story, "PUBO & Fish", is a short cartoony piece about a man trying to catch a fish. Instead, the man and the fish end up discussing the nature of fishing. (Mr. Purvis' characters like to talk because they like to express their ideas. This love of communication and thought is a refreshing change from many anti-intellectual comics.) It's a modern-day Br'er Rabbit story, only with more balanced characters.

Both of these stories have in common the way they're introduced with a comment that then becomes almost irrelevant to the story. The nursing home could be any nursing home; that it's filled with ex-spies put out to pasture isn't dealt with, nor is PUBO's status as "a victim of a cruel scientific experiment which made his physical features directly proportional to the proximity of their nerve endings." Mr. Purvis obviously has more interesting ideas than he knows what to do with, and they add a unique background to his characters. There's a lot of potential here to follow up on in future, if he so desires.

"Plywood Exterior, No Interior" is a character-driven piece where head shots of various figures are captioned with descriptions of coffins. It's a unique way to think about personality in contrast with the sketches, although I'm not sure if the caskets would be their choices or what would be appropriate for them (since those two options do not always produce the same result).

The last full story, "The Enemies of Glass", features a group of scientists attempting to determine the best time to release a disease cure in order to maximize their profits. The contrasts between science and business, greed and caring, profit and death are well-played but obvious, and the ending was somewhat predictable if you've seen a story with a similar premise before. However, the emotion drove the story and came through strongly. I also found the lead character's ability to shake off office politics -- she was prepared, and she won through -- inspiring. The use of grey tones also nicely pops the foreground features into the reader's attention.

There's nothing so obviously experimental this issue as the Pentads from #1. That's a shame, but I suspect many readers prefer the boundary-pushing in more traditional narrative forms. The ideas come fast and furious, as in the first issue, and the read is well-rewarded.

Issue #3

The opening "Mindhammer" essay put me in my place quickly by presenting illuminating ideas about style, iconic representation, Eisenstein's theory of montage, emotional content and identification, the problems with photographic comics, and spontaneous deliberateness. This is some of the deepest thinking I've seen about comics in a good while, and it's presented as an opening essay in this comic before going on to other things.

The first comic piece is a followup to my favorite from the first issue, "Tacit". Now, though, the underwater sleeper has armored himself in a diving suit, the better to venture outside. I read the bird as symbolizing the unexpected event, the static that disrupts our life plans, but there could be any number of other interpretations.

"The Break Room" is character-driven, demonstrating what it might be like to notify the next of kin that a plane has crashed. The figures look as though they're constructed from one continuous line, all care and weariness. A variety of types are quickly conveyed to the reader by well-chosen descriptions.

The next piece wordlessly serves as a metaphor for the rise and fall of popular movements through the use of featureless figures. It's one of the most drastic applications of the theory of identification with simplified comic figures I've seen, but in my case, I felt more remote than involved, possibly because the actions were reprehensible.

The final, longest piece, "Eddie Is a Dreamer", deals with the modern boogeyman, the urban terrorist striking out of the blue for no reason. It postulates a troublesome choice between self-preservation and doing the moral thing to save others, a question that becomes more real because we all could be living in such a situation, as when we decide, for example, to stay in the city vs. fleeing to the suburbs. This story gave me a new view on the world, one I didn't like to contemplate too closely, but one I'm thankful I was exposed to.

With this issue, VOX continues presenting some of the most challenging and thought-provoking work in comics today.

Issue #4

After an opening "Mindhammer" dealing with the creation of art as a way of protesting death, the "Brothers Dundee" return in a story reacting to the events of September 11. The characters' age and situation (put out to pasture) make them excellent choices to reflect on the crisis, and it was quietly touching to see everyone in the nursing home rushing to serve their country any way they could, even if their help wasn't wanted.

The standout story of this issue is "Box Boy", a disturbing visual metaphor for relationships. The strikingly direct imagery brilliantly illustrates how even the most hurtful changes can benefit us in the long run and how growth comes through pain.

Another wordless story is followed by "A True Story of Alexander Selkirk", the man who inspired Robinson Crusoe. As a conclusion to the issue, the story of a lone man marooned due to his principles and managing to survive puts it all into perspective. Recriminations are normal, as is the way things don't always work out as we expect. We can't predict the future, or the results of the paths others choose; we can only rely on our ethics and faith in what we believe to be right.

This issue, unlike the others, is a more normal comic book size, which blunts the impact of the gorgeous art to some degree but was an attempt to give the comic continued life.