Creator: Sid Quade
Funcertainty Box, 2024
Our favourite curmudgeon were-hyena/goat returns in Gridley #2. We very enjoyed much enjoyed the first issue of this title: consider our review from January 2024: https://www.worldcomicbookreview.com/2024/01/16/gridley-1-review-the-exile/ . Giles Gridley, a Kaftar sorcerer, is in exile and forced to slum it with the hoi polloi, but he has quickly found gainful employment as an ectomancer in a dusty Western town. Creator Sid Quade helpfully in this issue provides us with a breakdown of the three different types of sorcery in his universe:
That’s Gridley in the middle. Gridley is brilliant in his art, but detached from social etiquette, and so inevitably Mr Quade decides to give Gridley an apprentice, named Hester Ariti, to bring Gridley back to earth and to act as Gridley’s foil. Hester resembles a hyper-cute house cat and sounds like a yokel, and the aristocratic Gridley responds with distaste. (We have started to read Gridley’s voice as that of Alan Rickman, in the Harry Potter movies – “Alright, you captious, little bureaucrat – no one, but you, has had a problem with me and the GuildMaster himself seems to trust me. So the problem seems to be you!”)
Some of Mr Quade’s dialogue is very funny. “And here you are, like a scorpion with a pair of tits – miraculous and rare.” And later, when examining a map: “Is there tree marked by a bullet hole?” asks Gridley. “Yeah. There was a spider there,” replies the map’s owner, a hapless sheriff. And later still, when Hester is being complimented by a hanged ghost: “Oh, yer just too kind,” gushes Hester, to which Gridley replies, with snark, “”Yes, he’s so kind. And I’m sure that the nose around his neck is purely decorative.”‘ (There is unexpectedly a lot of desperate sorcerous action towards the end of the story where the dialogue more or less disappears.)
Why does Gridley work so well? First, there is a subtle poignancy to offset the humour, particularly in relation to the dead. In issue one, the dead is trapped and lost. In issue two, we see that the dead has regrets in respect of personal relationships that he wants to resolve before passing on. The living are haunted by the dead, and the dead are haunted by sadness. (Or are they?) Mr Quade uses a trick we have most effectively seen in the British science fiction television series Red Dwarf: butter up the audience with high octane absurdist humour, and twist it into something unexpectedly heart-tugging. Emotional juxtaposition in this issue sends the characters off on a tangent. The comedy distracts us only long enough to fall into the trap Mr Quade has hidden carefully within the plot – ghosts are a subset of mankind, observes Gridley, and mankind lies. Yet the characters do these best to let the dead bandit, named Sam Hill, rest in peace. (“But what if that closure comes at the cost of someone else’s well-being?”)
Second, Gridley oozes character. Gridley is not motivated by altruism and is certainly not happy. Gridley is resentful, a little sullen, and compelled to take a job he would much rather not in a place where he would much rather not be. Yet in this issue, Gridley unexpectedly offers solace to Jim, a character who suddenly walks us through his existential crisis, and Gridley offers him calm solace. Gridley himself is a striking figure: tall, black-robed and with a shock of black hair when in human form, and an impossible anthropomorphism, a legendary creature of Mr Quade’s own creation. Gridley is not easy to like. But likeable he is.
The zingers are enough for us to be impatient for issue 3. Gridley issue 2 is available on Amazon: amazon.com.au/Gridley-Hanging-Tree-Sid-Quade-ebook/dp/B0D5Z15GHM