The Clarence Principle
Written by Fehed Said; Illustrated by Shari Chankhamma
SLG Publishing
$12.95

I was once madly in love with this girl. I’m talking about the kind of passionate obsession that keeps you from eating and sleeping because those things just distract you from what you really want to be doing, which is thinking about Her.

Truth be told, that’s happened to me several times in my life, but in this particular case, she just wasn’t having any of it. (Okay that’s happened a couple of times too, but just bear with me.) On this occasion, with this girl, I could tell that she liked me, but she always had one excuse or another why it wasn’t meant to be “right then,” and before long she’d found someone else to be in love with. My heart was broken and it took me a while to move on, but we were able to stay friends. I kept up with her for a while, which is how I eventually learned what a bullet I had dodged.

I don’t know if she planned it this way or not (probably not), but it turned out that her excuses were ultimately for my benefit. Her life and personality were wracked with problems that I wasn’t prepared to deal with. I knew about some of them, but I romantically, naïvely thought that I could be the hero who would fix everything and make both of us happy. It wasn’t until I watched her with another hero – one whom I truly believe was every bit as dedicated to her as I was – that I realized what a monumental task I’d been asking for. I’d pursued her and lost, but I was the one who really escaped.

And that’s what I kept thinking of as I read The Clarence Principle, the story of a boy who loves a girl who dies. I’m not entirely clear on how she dies (though I have my suspicions), but I think that’s part of the beauty of the story. It’s poetic and all that matters is that Clarence loved a girl and she moved on to the next world. So he pursued her.

After killing himself, Clarence awakens in the afterlife and receives a simple message: “Find me.” Is it from his love? We don’t know and neither does he, but the possibility is enough to send him looking. Along the way he meets many strange and wonderful characters who teach him as much about living as they do about death in the afterworld. I don’t want to say too much about it, because it’s an elegant journey that’s far better experienced than explained.

Chankhamma’s art is as poetic as the story it tells. Her depiction of the afterworld is affecting: dark at times; hauntingly lovely at others. And the people who inhabit it are sometimes funny, sometimes spooky, sometimes beautiful, but always expressive and real. All of which makes visiting The Clarence Principle an engrossing event.

All I’ll tell you about the story is that in the process of looking for her, Clarence begins to wonder if the girl he’s pursuing is the one he’s really after. Hence my thinking back to this girl I used to know. Does Clarence really want Elissa? Should he? Would he be better off not finding her? What would happen then? What would happen if he does? But most importantly, what’s he learning along the way to finding these answers?

Like me back in the day, the best answers are sometimes the ones we find when we’re asking an entirely different set of questions. That’s a potent theme for a story and Said and Chankhamma explore it wonderfully.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 2:50 pm and is filed under Fringe Benefits, Graphic Novels, Independent. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.