Synopses & Reviews
Abandoned Carsis Tim Lane"s first collection of graphic short stories, noirish narratives that are united by their exploration of the great American mythological drama by way of the desperate and haunted characters that populate its pages. Lane"s characters exist on the margins of society'"alienated, floating in the void between hope and despair, confused but introspective.
The writing is straightforward, the stories mainstream but told in a pulpy idiom with an existential edge, often in the first person, reminiscent of David Goodis"s or Jim Thompson"s prose, or of films like Pick-Up on South Streetor Out of the Past. Visually, Lane"s drawing is in a realistic mode, reminiscent of Charles Burns, that heightens the tension in stories that veer between naturalism on the one hand and the comical, nightmarish, and hallucinatory on the other. Here, American culture is a thrift store and the characters are thrift store junkies living among the clutter. It"s an America depicted as a subdued and haunted Coney Island, made up of lost characters'"boozing, brawling, haplessly shooting themselves in the face, and hopping freight trains in search of Elvis. Abandoned Carsis an impressive debut of a major young American cartoonist.
Review
"It’s the modern equivalent of the Raymond Chandler yarns that fill up the more exciting portion of your bookshelf — a string of police chases and back-alley fist fights with a surprisingly introspective thread running in the background." Kempt
Review
"When you put all the pieces together, you don’t simply get a story or a group of stories, you get a book that pulls back the curtain on the collective unconscious of a nation. ... Like the myths that it is inspired by, Abandoned Cars lingers long after reading and grows in stature as you re-live and re-tell it." Chad Derdowski
Review
"The spirit of the Beats imbues the debut collection by Tim Lane… The stories are united by their sense of longing and melancholy. … His pen and ink style, reminiscent of Charles Burns, is extremely detailed and noirishly evocative." Mania
Review
"The book signals the arrival of a major new voice on the American literary landscape, with or without illustrations." Mike Sebastian Campus Circle
Review
"Lane's gorgeous black-and-white artwork -- naturalistic with occasional leaps into the surreal -- consistently lends tension as well as a quiet beauty to these various tales of struggle." Print Magazine
Review
"Dirty, greasy, and impossible to put down, Lane's hardcover debut was the perfectly-timed summing-up of The American Dream in all its power and tail-finned delusion." Graphic Novel Reporter
Review
"Tim Lane presents a personal study of what he calls 'The Great American Mythological Drama,' a fog of events/thoughts/dreams/ disappointments in music/literature/ North American life... Lane leads to something more introspective and extremely sad." Alan David Doane Comicbook Galaxy
Review
"The book is a litany of voices from the deep, and Lane's artwork is vivid and hallucinatory. All in all, Abandoned Cars reads like Jim Thompson writing about post-financial-crisis America." Churrasco la Naje
Review
"A brilliant debut.... doesn't arrive at a clear-cut solution to the American Myth, but Lane's effort to understand it for himself is beautifully presented." William Jones
Synopsis
Graphic shorts in a Jim Thompson vein. is Tim Lane's first collection of graphic short stories, noir-ish narratives that are united by their exploration of the great American mythological drama by way of the desperate and haunted characters that populate its pages. Lane's characters exist on the margins of society--alienated, floating in the void between hope and despair, confused but introspective. Some of them are experiencing the aftermath of an existential car crash--those surreal moments after a car accident, when time slows down and you're trying to determine what just happened and how badly you're hurt. Others have gone off the deep end, or were never anywhere but the deep end. Some are ridiculous, others dignified in their efforts to struggle to make sense of, and cope with, the absurdities, outrages, ghosts, and poisons in their lives.
Synopsis
The acclaimed 2008 debut now in softcover'"noirish, existential short comics.
Synopsis
America depicted as a subdued and haunted Coney Island, made up of lost characters--boozing, brawling, haplessly shooting themselves in the face, and hopping freight trains in search of Elvis. An impressive debut of a major new talent
About the Author
Tim Lanelives in St. Louis, MO.