Late last year Sarah Goodnow Riley-Land released The Last Cyclops as a small zine. It’s been described as a “folk art comic,” and that seems appropriate: it’s quirky and original, both in the art and the storytelling, with a refreshingly straightforward style.
Also for the next few days it’s available digitally for free, and you should check it out.
The story follows the Cyclops, an unnamed woman living on the banks of the Mississippi. This is definitely a modern-day story, and a quiet one, so there’s no Greek soldiers roaming around accidentally eating anyone’s sheep and getting messily killed.
She does talk about her “family” though, the gods and goddesses of Greek mythology, but only in passing. She’s just lonely, and talking about her history makes her feel better.
This isn’t a story with a long arc or a complicated plot, it’s just the Cyclops, talking about how she spends her days. She used to own goats, but it’s hard to keep animals and stay as secret as she needs to be, so now she forages for food, and sometimes catches catfish. Mostly she just tries to stay hidden, though she looks in on humans from time to time.
At one point she sees people exploring a cave, with their cave-lights centered on their foreheads, and she thinks they must remember her and her kind, on some level; their lights are like a single eye, and they seems drawn to the same caves that Cyclopses have always loved.
It’s the art that drew me to the story (I ran across Riley-Land’s art on her instagram feed.) It’s very much like wood-cut pictures in places, with strong lines, and any shading is done in clean hatchmarks.
The lettering is lopsided and casual, but I get the idea that was a conscious decision, because this is the Cyclops telling her story, and you can imagine her writing on scavenged pieces of paper, or on cave walls, or pieces of wood with a burnt stick. It adds to the outsider-art feel of the work.
The book is less of a comic book and more a piece of folk art, almost rustic, a little love-letter to Missouri. Riley-Land said she wanted to communicate how beautiful the area is, even if it’s in a strange and off-putting way, like the massive amounts of billboards Missouri is known for.
She’s shown us how it’d look to a Cyclops out of Greek mythology, as if the area was filled with new gods of bridges and construction equipment, roadkill sacrifices and factories sending up burnt offerings in the smoke.
But there’s also the banks of the Mississippi, dandelions on the river and pilgrims with lights on their heads exploring the caves.
Once the comic ended, I felt like we’d really just been given the introduction to the character. I don’t know if Riley-Land plans on doing any more, but I hope so.
It’s a fun, unique piece of art, and definitely worth a look. From now until January 22, 2016 you can download a free copy from amazon here.