Regular readers around here are used to seeing me looking at old friend Brian Canini’s works in my Weekly Reading Round-Up columns — short-form works like his tending to lend themselves well to one- or two-paragraph “capsule reviews” (such as the one that’ll be soon forthcoming for the newest issue of his ongoing Plastic People series) — but sometimes even the most modest mini can be well-served by a full-length examination, and his latest, Two Stories, definitely fits that bill.

I’ve always dug Canini’s minimalist cartooning style that utilizes a little to say a lot, his economic imagery drawing the eye precisely where it needs to go with just enough by way of “bells and whistles” to make things interesting though not nearly enough to make them cluttered, but even more than that it’s his thematic versatility that impresses me, and the apparent ease with which he can adapt his signature linework to narratives that vary wildly in terms of both form and content has never been on more clear display than it is here.

First up is “Hand City,” an innovative little number about a guy who wakes up to find a tiny town literally growing on his hand and the consequences, largely unintentional, that said discovery engenders. Observation, it’s said, inherently changes the observer and the observed both, and while that old adage may seem as oblique as it is accurate — one of those things we “know” to be true even if we couldn’t exactly tell you why — herein it’s laid out in explicit detail with precisely zero subtlety but, crucially, no real heavy-handedness, either. It’s a fine line Canini walks here and he does so with admirable grace and even, dare I say it, a dash of charm around the edges. It’s not a “feel-good” story, by any means, but it’s also something less than as tragic as one might expect — even when it is.

This is the point at which you tell me to make some fucking sense, man, but I’d prefer to have you read the comic and understand it for yourself.

The second story, “Baggage,” is the kind of thing we’ve seen before, sure, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still weave a nice little spell, which this certainly does. “Cartoonist — (read, authorial stand-in) — ponders what he’s done with his life, where he’s at, where he’s going, and the choices he’s made while walking through an airport terminal” is a premise that, at this point, is better-served when said cartoonist has something new to say, but barring that, if it feels old and familiar in comfortable ways rather than coming across as tired and down to death, that’ll do in a pinch, as well.

News flash — Canini doesn’t have anything remarkably new to say via this material, but he does have an admirably earnest, I don’t even hesitate to say endearing, way of saying it, and the entire thing’s a whole lot more contemplative and less overtly morose than admittedly navel-gazing exercises like this typically turn out to be. I enjoyed it, perhaps against all odds, and found I even wished it had gone on for a few more pages.

If Two Stories has one over-arching flaw it’s that there’s no real through-line that joins the tales (or, if you prefer, strips), nor any particular contrasts that can be gleaned from their juxtapositon — in other words, no real threads connecting these yarns — but they’re both thoroughly enjoyable reads and frankly I wish more self-publishing cartoonists would package their very short-form works together in affordable (as in two bucks!) little packages like this rather than waiting until they’ve got 100+ pages of them and then putting ’em together in a $15 (or more) book. This is an engaging, smart, eminently re-readable mini that you’ll be very glad to add to your library. You can order it directly from Canini’s Drunken Cat imprint at https://drunkencatcomics.com/two-stories-preview/

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