Ginger Smith and Billy Gee

An Optimistic and Utopian Tale
Frances Barth, 2016
Publisher: Frances Barth.

ISBN: 978-0692767269

Dimensions: 6 x 1/4 x 9 inches

Pages: 72

In this singular abstracted land, six characters drive forward the story in "Ginger Smith and Billy Gee". In the family of a graphic novel, but also like a graphic poem, this is a book in two acts and an Afterword, with interspersed dreams of the main character Ginger. It turns its focus cinematically on the darkly comic relationship developing between Ginger, a painter, and Billy, an aspiring writer, after Ginger is dumped by Billy's best friend.

 

Four other characters contriibute to the richness of the story. Hiker 1 and Hiker 2 are like figures in a Greek Chorus commenting on the action and entering and leaving the story line, and Male and Female add a Freudian coda to the proceedings. This is a winsome and jaunty artist tale, humorous, poetic and symbolic.