Andy Hirsch's Varmints

“A girl with a broken gun, and her overeager kid brother

pursue their dead beat pa, the criminal king of the west.”

darnvarmints.com

There are two reasons why Andy Hirsch's Varmints is a must read: Varmints is a great companion to Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art, and is an all-ages accessible romp of a narrative. It is a western following Opie and Ned, young siblings on the hunt for their infamous father. So far each issue is a standalone tale as they travel from saloon to bandit-ravaged town to train headed for disaster.  They overcome obstacles through a combination of their native with, the incompetence of adults,  Ned's positive outlook, and Opie's worldly cynicism.


Hirsch makes  look unforced and almost invisible. For those of you who love the art form as much as I do, I want to point out 5 things that stand out in theses books. 

1. Maintaining depth in black and white composition is tricky, yet in issue after issue, impressively crowded spacial relations are clearly defined between fore, middle and background and explored in panel and page as action seamlessly travels though surprising direction and angle.
2. The motion--that is so important to this work--is made smoother by using action to action panel transitions. Liveliness is accentuated by the daring shifts of angle from panel to panel.
3. The expressiveness of the work comes from the synchronization in Mr. Hirsch's art. His lines create a fully fleshed out world with highly stylized character illustrations, reminiscent of Jeff Smith's work. This contrast with work like Tin-tin or Cerebus, where you have very stylized characters in very realistic backgrounds. I'm think of chapter two of Understanding Comics. Worlds that Smith and Hirsch create feel like the worlds that those characters belong in, not the real world. The lines are simple and playful, nevertheless, the objects are really objects (not just images of objects). It is a style that works beautifully for an all-ages action comedy.
4. I'm a fan of experimentation. Weird, innovative page layouts even if they get in the way of smooth narrative. Hirch is innovative, but without sacrificing story telling. It works so seamlessly that you may even miss it on the first read.
5. Varmints is in dialogue with the history of the art form by reflecting and accentuating under appreciated aspects of the cannon. There are strong parallels to Will Eisner and Jack Cole. Another fun homage is callbacks to the house style of the early Mad comics in issue three.

Varmints is simply fun and heart warming.

Opie and Ned are easy for any reader, young or old, to cheer for and identify with. They have the basic dialectic personalities. Opie is a young girl who serious concern comes from having too grow up to quick. While Ned's unflappable optimism is neither out of ignorance nor pollyannaish chirpiness. The art style allows the characters to be hyper expressive and a “vacuum into which our identity and awareness (is) pulled (into)” as Scott McCloud puts it.

The book's tag-line points to an epic simplicity that it shares with Bone. I grew up with the Hobit and I always found Bilbo's memoir title the punch-line of the book. There and Back Again is all you need to know, but it is not all you want to know. Varmints premise is simple, it could be finished in a few more issues or become the backbone of a 1,317 page illustrate masterwork like Bone. The thing that makes it so accessible at this stage is that every issue stands solidly on its own and as piece of larger puzzle. 

This book is a great way to jump in and start supporting creator-owned work.  It is only a few dollars for a digital copy from the artist at his website. This is the a chance to get in and follow and support an amazing project at the start.