Will You Trust Me When I've Lost My Mind?

As an older successful indy title, Demo has been consistently present in my periphery for about as long as I’ve been browsing comics on my own. That made finally sitting down to read it a little like listening to Rain Dogs for the first time. As with Tom Waits’ 1985 album, I was not disappointed.

Maybe because I’m neither a writer nor an artist, I’m always drawn in by the stories in comic books (rather than by the words or the pictures themselves). In that sense, I got more than I bargained for: the complete run of Demo collects eighteen shorts. Still, I was initially disappointed to discover that there is no overarching narrative. Although many issues involve some supernatural ability, there’s not all that much holding them together. The most you can say for them all is that they focus on changing relationships–a commonality too conventional to warrant the word “theme.” There’s not a dull story among them, though, so I had no trouble letting go of my desire for grand narrative. They include some ambiguous or unresolved endings and definitely tend toward the tragic, but that’s life. A few have a fairly typical “breakup” premise while others explore surprisingly specific topics. I wasn’t prepared for how close-to-home a couple struck me.

That was the most obvious indication for the strength of Wood’s writing. It can border on melodramatic, but that seems only fitting for the younger people to whom he’s giving voice. I don’t mean to condescend; given what they’re going through, I think adolescents deserve some theatricality in their expression. Wood seems to agree, presenting their angst as not just legitimate but relatable.

Cloonan matches the range of the stories with an amazingly versatile performance. Through the first 12 issues in particular, it’s hard to believe that the same person drew every page. She creates a distinctive visual style for each issue which, performed by less skilled hands, would have easily felt incoherent. About the second volume, Cloonan wrote,

My art has become a lot more consistent so I didn’t feel comfortable experimenting as much as I did in the first twelve, but I’m still so pleased with them.

And rightly so: what those final six issues lack in visual range, they make up for in emotional precision.

Demo is an ambitious collection of short stories. The imagination and heart of the creative team makes it work as an accessible and compelling whole.