A Review of Disruption: An Anthology
Full disclosure: at one point, I was slated to illustrate a short for Disruption with Zach Petit. Ultimately, I had no hand in the final product.
I didn’t think Disruption was going to be very good.
I don’t mean this as a slight to either of the editors. Simply, I think of online zines as a popularity contest, and I didn’t think anybody involved had enough visibility to attract the kind of talent required for a good product.
Disruption is a sci-fi/fantasy anthology, loosely based around events that, well, disrupt the lives of the protagonists. Some shorts are fairly straightforward about this - in one short (Gestos), the whole world loses the ability to speak. Others subvert expectations about setting and character, leaving the reader to infer what the disruption is. While one story (Mechan Folly) relies on well-known sci-fi tropes, most of the shorts can be comfortably described as magical realism. Straight up, if it were me, I’d go ahead and just call it a “magical realism anthology”. No need to beat around the bush. If you’re part of the internet niche aware of this anthology, you probably don’t need your hand held.
Some pieces are weaker than others. Grovers drags up through the climax, though I can’t tell if this is more a fault of the writing or the illustration; Mechan Folly is competent, but neither particularly original or especially easy to follow. Friendship Comic takes a few reads to really get its point across, but I got a chuckle out of its meta-commentary on self-absorbed zine culture. The stars of Disruption are its remaining shorts - all of which are suprisingly strong, like, I’m not kidding you, this is no joke.
Gestos, Topside, … (Untitled), A Break, and Monday round out the rest of the anthology. These are all super-strong artistically, though I will admit to wishing that (Untitled)'s dialogue was a little less artistic, and a little more legible. Gestos has an absolutely lovely palette. BUT
A Break ended up being my absolute favorite. Clay Lindvall, who both illustrated and wrote the short, managed to cram a lot of history and characterization into six pages, without ever feeling rushed. Pacing? Great. Art? Beautiful. I’d read more about these guys, and that’s not something I expect to say about anything coming out of an anthology.
Long story short, Disruption is solid. It’s really solid. If you’re into supporting emerging creators, into diversity in representation, into people creating what they want to see in comics, not just talking about it - then drop five bucks on Disruption. Seriously, It’s five bucks.