October 16, 2002
http://www.thefourthrail.com/reviews/critiques/101402/flood.shtml
I really didn't know much about Flood! or its creator, Eric Drooker, before delving into this graphic novel. Based on the cover, I thought I was about to read an urban crime drama, rife with a film-noir atmosphere. Such was not the case, but fortunately, I was subjected to a fascinating, intelligent and melancholy vision of life and isoltion in the middle of a city of millions. Drooker takes the art form to a different place, and it was an eye-opening experience.
A man who feels alone in the grey masses of the city feels even more alone and isolated after losing his blue-collar job. He longs to connect with something, with someone, but his attempts to do so fail. He dreams of a different place, a lush place full of life, but ultimately, he winds up back in the dreariness of the city. He decides to explore another avenue of escape, and he finds it on his drawing board.
Drooker's angular style manages to capture a universal sense of despair, ennui and sadness. Those sharp angles occasionally encounter smoother curves, but they do so in almost a visually violent, unsettling way, such as just about anytime sex finds its way into the narrative. The black scratchboard medium really brings out the weight, darkness and ugliness of the urban prison in which the main character finds himself. His work gets brighter when more natural settings and elements creep into the inhospitable environment that serves as the book's main focus.
Perhaps the elements that fascinated me the most were the understated and secondary criticisms of American corporate culture. Drooker rails away quietly at big business and media monsters, mostly in the background of the main, downtrodden plot. It makes for a nice contrast. The main character is adrift in his own life, in the culture and in a place in which he feels trapped, but behind him, the artist himself rebels against the status quo, against the economic drudgery of the everyday.
What draws one into the book is the recognition of emotion. I've taken that long, lonely walk through a city. I've sat in that cold, dirty room. Drooker taps into a unfortunately universal experience of modern man, taught and tamed to do the same things every day, eat at the same time, and desire what he's told to desire. Flood! is far from a pick-me-up, but it's also far from the everyday, mainstream fare on comic-shop shelves.