DYPSO MAGAZINE
"Let’s get down to business. Dypso consists of dozens and dozens of bald men with droopy-dog faces, all drawn by Dan Welch at a bar after he gets out of work every day. More pertinently, it also consists of a series of introspective beer-soaked squabbles for the artist. The first being what makes Welch compulsively do this? Why the same ugly mugs spouting one-liners and nonsense day after day? ('Yeah I hit the gym like three times a day. And by hit I mean punch the wall outside really hard.' 'They put me in the pen for illegally downloading Lana Del Rey.') All the faces have sunken eyes and elongated, rubbery necks directly contending with gravity. They are wet with sweat and drool. But that is it, just an enormous collection of heads. There’s no real story or background on these men, no real look into their interior worlds, just negative-space fillers to pass the time while Welch drinks. That brings us to our second squabble. What’s more important to Welch here: character design or substance?
In Dypso, two-page spreads are printed together on long white paper then stapled one on top of the other. This makes it so for most of the magazine you aren’t reading two consecutive pages in a row. There’s something to be said about the disoriented feeling this decision provides, but it also gives me that little annoying tingle that there’s a problem here that needs to be solved — that I have to locate the corresponding pages somewhere in there. Here’s another beer-soaked contemplation for Welch. What’s more important: readability or disposability? Dypso is interesting as a whole because it’s evidence of an artist searching for something — inspiration, relief, the bottom of a glass — but it’s not much of a comic. Welch is in a peculiar position right now and that brings us to the final artistic squabble. Is he happy making zines like these and being the two-page palette-cleansing comic relief in various East Coast anthologies or does he desire something a little more?
- The Comics Journal.com
24 PAGES, RISO b/w
