Sloth
by Gilbert Hernandez
(Vertigo, $19.99, 128 pages; hardcover, published in July 2006.)
 Gilbert
Hernandez is most famous for having co-created the hit underground comics
series Love & Rockets with his two brothers, Jaime and Mario.
Gilbert, however, is a much more prolific cartoonist than his siblings;
consequently, his byline is frequently found on side projects.
With Sloth, Gilbert delivers his strongest non-Love &
Rockets work to date.
A teenager awakes after a year spent in a coma and finds himself unable
to cope with the rapid pace of waking life. Also, he suspects his best
friend of lusting after his girlfriend, both of them his bandmates in
a fledgling rock trio. On a lark, the three of them investigate an urban
legend about a haunted lemon orchard and its mysterious goatman. After
an encounter with the unsettling monster, reality completely changes,
everyone's identities and circumstances becoming confused and oddly
altered.
Gilbert deftly portrays his teenagers; they are full-fledged characters,
each with their own peculiar desires, quirks, and shortcomings. In fact,
the entire cast is imbued with fragile depth, making every scene matter
and, sometimes, hurt.
Rock 'n' roll and teenage lust drive this strange and mysterious tale
of terror and folklore.
Sloth mines the territory of cult art/horror films of the past
decade. In it we find echoes of The Blair Witch Project, Donnie
Darko, and David Lynch's Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive.
But Gilbert doesn't simply pastiche; he synthesizes the pop zeitgeist
and filters it through his own magical imagination and distinctive style
of storytelling.
Originally published in
The Montreal Gazette, Saturday, 16 December 2006.
Claude Lalumière's Fantastic Fiction
is a series of
capsule reviews first published in the Saturday Books
section of The Montreal Gazette.
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