COMIC BOOK BRAIN REVIEW
MONSTER PARADE #1 By Ben Catmull
Fantagraphics Books 2006
Ben Catmull's Monster Parade #1 from Fantagraphics features the most fascinating weather patterns I've ever seen depicted in any genre of comic book. Those patterns are the central feature of the first of Catmull's three tales, Winter Storm, which begins simply with a child wandering outside who then sees a hillbilly storm god hurling lightning, other assorted strange creatures that are so tall they reach up into the clouds like a fairy creature from an NC Wyeth painting, and then a sort of flying-whale that has eight eyes which comes face to face with the child who has climbed a tree. This ominous but gentle tale segue ways to a train hurtling across the horizon which becomes the vehicle of Catmull's second story, Monster Express. A two-color horror/comedy theatre piece of mayhem aboard a train, told almost entirely with back-and-forth dialogue between a grouchy, put-upon passenger stuck with an obnoxious compartment companion who spouts unusual trivia and finally ridiculous descriptions of a demented, monstrous misogynic sexual obsession (hence the apparent double-meaning of the story title?). Meanwhile, the irritated elderly fellow keeps trying to leave the compartment, but is stopped repeatedly by a train attendant who describes the ongoing rampage of a monster loose elsewhere aboard the train. Catmull's final tale, Civilization Studies, is the darkest of these stories and is an examination of a fictitious (but quite human) society that Catmull compares side by side with animals and bugs, clearly making parallels that when he is speaking of a louse colony, he is more so speaking of humankind, or at least the humankind of a civilization he calls:
My impression is that Catmull doesn't like people much, at least the silly and sometimes violent people who populate these tales, excepting perhaps children. He takes the trouble to create interesting parallels that inter-connect the three stories - - for example, the louse colony of "Civilization Studies" hangs upside down beneath a pier, and spotting a fish below them in the waters, call it a "sky whale" since after all their "sky" are waves rolling below 
them (quite a lot the physical world "rolls" in Catmull's stories - - lines of hills mimic the rolling clouds above). The louse colony (upside-down) see a sky whale, which is but a fish, and the reader (and the child protagonist) in the first tale see a sky whale (right-side-up) which looks a lot like a Humpback or Right whale. Throughout all three stories is the presence of water, in the sky, raining constantly, soaking the earth below, and it is all so watery that it is conceivable even without phantasy that a whale could swim easily up into the air.
The humans and the creatures of Monster Parade are all fantastic beings together, though maybe the humans are more 'advanced' in a dubious fashion, but all trapped together in a raining, teary sort of laughing sadness. Meticulously drawn, these black and white toned pages (aside from the two-color treatment of the central tale Monster Express) are fascinating in their own ways as individual panels, but combined into Catmull's stories are a vision of a strange, troubled creation.
Tom Spurgeon has a Sept 2006 interview with Catmull at Comics Reporter
Mile High Comics talks about the comic here.
There is a review of Monster Parade at the Jog Blog.
Monster Parade #1 by Ben Catmull 32 pages $3.95 USD.
