Rick Geary may be best known for his tales of Victorian era murder, but he’s certainly quite capable of drawing things that have nothing to do with the most famous murder cases of the 19th and early 20th century.

There’s that fantastic Gumby series he did with Bob Burden, for example, and now here’s another, newer example: The Adventures of Blanche. This gorgeously designed (by Heidi Whitcomb) hardcover from Dark Horse collects Geary’s rather occasional series of stories about Blanche, an early 20th century American pianist who travels the world, crossing paths with eminent historical personalities and fantastical events.

Within the covers of the book, designed to resemble the size and shape of Geary’s murder treasury books and thus fit nicely on a book shelf next to them, are 1992’s Blanche Goes to New York, 1993’s Blanche Goes to Hollywood and 2001’s Blanche Goes To Paris.

A new, three-page “introductory reminiscence” introduces the stories, a first person account of how Geary came upon the letters of his piano teacher grandmother, and what he learned within them (The title page of each of the three adventures begins with a credit saying “From letters discovered by Rick Geary”).

Exactly how much of that is a conceit is beyond me, but I imagine Geary imagined quite a bit of the details, as the letters, which serve as narration for the stories, are often  quite revealing for ones a young lady was sending home to her parents in the first decades of the 20th century, and then there’s the weird, underground space of New York City, the thing with the tentacles and the super-science involved with the magnetically-powered flying orb.

As for the adventures themselves, in 1907 Blanche travels to New York City, where she rooms with her piano teacher, befriends a young painter, and discovers a few unsettling secrets about the city, its elite and the people she shares a house with.

In 1915, a Hollywood producer discovers her and hires her to move out west with him and compose musical accompaniment for her films. There she crosses paths with D.W. Griffith, Max Sennett, Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Fatty Arbuckle and the international labor movement.

And in 1921, she sails for Paris, where begins working with Eric Satie, Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein, hangs out with their salon and becomes embroiled in international espionage and intrigue.

The tales are all rather breathlessly paced and told, but the letter conceit gives them an intimate, matter-of-fact sort of feel, Geary’s imagery expanding on some of the stranger sights Blanche encounters in ways her words to her parents downplay. For example, when she travels through an open cupboard door and finds a strange, black netherspace between portals beneath New York, with only hanging planks, scaffolds, ropes and ladders stretching between them, all she can say is, “I cannot begin to describe what I found within…Except to say it changed my concept of the Physical Universe!” The artwork, obviously, describes it in greater detail.

Though almost a decade passes between the time Geary created the first two stories and the last one, the artwork remains remarkably consistent; the latter story features slightly sharper lines, but there’s nothing jarring about the transition.

Those familiar with Geary’s artwork will know exactly what to expect: Bold outlines around the somewhat squat, slightly exaggerated characters, thick lines delineating remarkably detailed settings, stark contrasts between the black and white with no real grays, and lots and lots of thin horizontal lines adding a great deal more texture than would seem to be possible for artwork so unabashedly two-dimensional and non-representational.

Those unfamiliar with Geary’s work would do well to familiarize themselves with it, and The Adventures of Blanche is a pretty good place to start.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Caleb's reviews, Dark Horse. 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.