Adam Rosenblatt

Adam Rosenblatt
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Trick Chilean and The Golden Age show Adam Rosenblatt to be a promising artist still struggling with the basics.The two comics represent vastly different narrative approaches, indicating that Rosenblatt is still searching for his voice as a storyteller.

"A Jacket for María Teresa," from Trick Chilean #1, is Rosenblatt's adaptation of a story by Chilean writer Mónica Hermosilla titled, "Un abrigo para María Teresa.""Un abrigo" is an account from Hermosilla's time in a Chilean concentration camp.Rosenblatt's version employs a frame in which he listens to Hermosilla read her story at an arts festival at Villa Grimaldi, a former concentration camp now converted into a peace park.

"Jacket" is essentially a flawed story, but Rosenblatt makes several interesting narrative decisions, the most interesting being the use of the frame.The author could have easily done a straight adaptation of Hermosilla's story and treated it as an exercise, but he had greater ambitions.By implementing the frame, Rosenblatt attempts places "Un abrigo" in a different context by adding elements of his own creation to the story.
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Rosenblatt closes the frame by describing how later in the evening at the arts festival, an aged Hermosilla stripped down naked and danced in the spray of a garden hose.Rosenblatt struggles to tie this event to the story Hermosilla has just told.He presents Hermosilla's naked frolic as the key that can unlock the hidden meaning behind her story.Rosenblatt writes:
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Rosenblatt is unable to clearly express his reaction to Hermosilla and her story, and rather than keep quiet on the subject, chooses to be florid and vague."Un abrigo" is grounded in real world suffering, the story of a young woman who was tortured and murdered in a concentration camp.Rosenblatt's assertion that Hermosilla dances naked because she is somehow living out the dead woman's youth is grounded in nothing but a desperate search for meaning in an act of playfulness.

Though Rosenblatt's ambitions are intriguing, his reasoning is flawed.He attempts to prescribe meaning to suffering, to, like a Hollywood producer, add a happy ending where there was none before.He would have done better to let Hermosilla's story speak for itself.

While standards of traditional narrative can be used to judge "Jacket," The Golden Age is a wordless, dreamlike comic that spring from an entirely different tradition.Graphically, it is the superior work to "Jacket."While Rosenblatt has enviable drawing skills, his grasp of layout and page structure appears to be no better than rudimentary."Jacket" suffers from nicely drawn pictures that are spaced too far apart, stacked on top of one another awkwardly and gridded in a way that implies a lack of imagination.Fortunately Rosenblatt's skills in this area can do nothing but improve with time and practice.For the time being, he corrects the situation by simplifying page structure in The Golden Age -- one page, one picture.While there are moments of visual flash in "Jacket," Rosenblatt appears constricted by his pages.The Golden Age provides him the chance to cut loose and draw, and we find that he can do so with panache.

What is missing from The Golden Age is the thing that is key to a comic that exemplifies everything it is trying to be, Jim Woodring's Frank -- recognizable purpose in the actions of the characters.For all its visual dynamism, there is a method to the madness of Frank.There is no such insinuation of purpose in The Golden Age.The events related appear random, the only point to them to allow Rosenblatt to flex some drawing muscles.

Those muscles look to be formidable ones, and while his storytelling lacks polish, his instincts are sound.Rosenblatt is at far too early a stage in his development to judge how much will come of the promise he shows, but he is so raw that his work is bound to improve by some degree.