At first glance, it may seem counter-intuitive, if not downright foolish and/or insane, to devote anything other than a “capsule”-style review (say, of the sort that make up my “Weekly Reading Round-Up” columns on this very site) to a 12-page mini that contains very little by way of dialogue and can literally be read in less than a minute, but hey — certain comics defy conventional wisdom.

Or, as is the case with William Cardini’s 2015-issued Sphere Fear, defy conventional wisdom, conventional explanation, conventional analysis, and maybe even conventional thought processes. But goddamnit, I’m gonna give it a shot anyway, because if there’s one thing we like at here 4CA, it’s a good challenge.

As a general rule of thumb, Cardini’s influences are pretty easy to spot : Kirby looms large at all times, a fact that the images reproduced in conjunction with this review make well enough on their own without my needing to belabor the point, but there’s a touch of Ditko-esque cosmic mysticism at the margins, a little bit of Shaky Kane’s reverent irreverence, and maybe even a pinch of “far-out” contemporaries like Pat Aulisio and Josh Bayer. The end result, though, is something utterly unique and fairly (as well as thankfully) bereft of both irony and naked homage. This orange and green riso-printed ‘zine is no exception to any of this (or that, take your pick), but it stands out as possibly the purest distillation of Cardini’s singular ethos, and that alone makes it far more interesting than its brief page count would lead one to believe it has any actual right to be.

“That’s all well and good,” I hear you say, “but what about the story?” It’s a fair question, but it’s also almost irrelevant to the proceedings in a traditional sense : powerful cosmic forces playing for highest stakes is essentially Cardini’s modus operandi, but it’s the way he expresses this most-simple-of-all-plots that makes all the difference, rendering it as a visual “tone poem,” a stream-of-consciousness expression of the most primal of all conflict scenarios where what few words are on offer are chosen for the sake of facilitating the flow of the imagery and adding a frisson of lyricism rather than merely for utilitarian ends — not that they don’t serve that particular, more narrow, function as well, but that resultant utility isn’t the “end all, be all” of what Cardini is going for, nor does it hem him in. It’s all about the holistic flow, and my oh my have we got flow to spare here.

Grandiose as it no doubt sounds, the simple fact is that Cardini manages to make the entire universe his playground and battles of absolutes his playthings, yet the undoubtedly personal nature of what he’s doing is never lost somewhere on the vast scale of his metaphorical chess board — rather it’s expressed both upon and, most crucially, through it. The potential destruction of all there is to satisfy the mercurial whims of a god-like being of endless nihilistic fantasies who just so happens to have the power to make his wishes reality may seem like a curious (to put it mildly) loom with which to weave a poetic piece of individual artistic intent, but whaddya know — not only does Cardini end up producing exactly that, you literally can’t see how he could possibly come up with anything else.

So, yeah — this is extraordinary stuff, the likes of which no one else is really attempting, or probably even should. Five bucks might seem like a lot to pay for such a physically small (to say nothing of short) publication, but there is more sheer earnestness and ambition contained in Sphere Fear than in most comics three, four, even five times its size. You’d do very well to order a copy directly from the cartoonist at http://www.hypercastle.com/store_spherefear.php