You Can't Get There From Here by Jason Review

Like a kid who uses toys of his favourite characters to create his own stories, Jason takes the cast of the classic Universal Frankenstein movies and concocts a brilliant new tale of love, lost and found. 

Frankenstein’s creation is getting into trouble stealing porn and watching women in the shower so Dr Frankenstein creates a female companion to calm him down: the Bride. But the Dr sees his two creations happy together and feels the pangs of loneliness and jealousy as his own (human) partner has left him - and then he does something drastic about the pairing. Also, his assistant Igor is looking for someone to be with as well as a change of profession after seeing his boss’s increasingly erratic behaviour. 

I think Jason is the only comics creator whose work I’ve read in their entirety and loved everything they’ve done – he’s actually incapable of crafting a bad comic! He’s such a natural storyteller who makes what he does seem effortless. 

You Can’t Get There From Here is a good example of the kind of work he produces: animal-headed characters based on pop culture in a story filled with pathos and emotion, despite the limited range of expressions he gives his characters. There’s some humour at first, a sweet romance, some very dark material (Dr Frankenstein drugs, then rapes, the Bride), and some everyday banality with Igor and another assistant meeting in a café to shoot the breeze. There’s even an angry mob with pitchforks and torches like in the movies! 

Jason’s art is very understated but elegant. Every page is a 6 panel grid with minimalist detail, only two colours are used, black and a dark blue, and most of the comic is silent with Igor and his friend providing the only dialogue, so the panels for the most part are even less cluttered with word balloons. This tends to be Jason’s style in all of his comics, though recently he’s taken to including more words. 

Underneath it all is a faint but tangible sense of sadness that’s the hallmark of Jason’s work. While there is a sense of tragedy to the tale, it’s not the most powerful of Jason’s stories. While it’s a very good book it’s falls somewhere in the middle for me. It’s not as moving as Hey, Wait… or as funny and crazy as The Last Musketeer; it’s a bit of both but not quite as amazing. It’s still a great comic though, especially if you’re a fan of the Karloff movies. You can’t go wrong with this creator – pick any of his books for a memorable and enjoyable comics experience!

You Can't Get There From Here