Chris Reynolds
2 x Chris Reynolds
UK Dark and Golden Books 008 (2024)
Very happy to receive this recent publication from Dark And Golden Books. It reprints two stories from UK artist Chris Reynolds, ‘Space Food’ from 1990 and ‘The Animals’ War’ from 2005, and as a backup article it reprints an interview with Reynolds taken from Paul Duncan’s Ark magazine, first published in 1989.
For me, reading this book passed on an inexplicable mood of sadness. The stories are moving, for sure, especially the second longer tale, but somehow it suddenly made me realise that there won’t be any new Chris Reynolds stories in the world, since his passing in 2023. I miss my old friend. We were around in the same orbit of Fast Fiction and Escape magazine in the 1980s-1990s, although he soon went in his own direction with his series of Mauretania Comics (with Paul Harvey). We overlapped to some extent; we had a shared interest in cinema and music, and similar backgrounds in UK art schools.
I have a good set of Mauretanias, so I suppose I must have read ‘Space Food’ which has been lifted from the pages of issue #11, but I don’t remember it well enough, and today’s read was a mini-revelation to this reader. In it, we see glimpses from the worlds inhabited by other Reynolds characters – Monitor and his girlfriend Queen-Queen-Oil, and life on board their spaceship. Yes, there was undoubtedly a Reynolds “universe”, but nothing so overwrought or convoluted as those created by the big boys at Marvel or DC. Chris’s characters inhabited a benign and intimate environment, were free to do whatever they wished, travel across space and time, appearing in situations both fantastical and every-day. And indeed Monitor is quite tangential to this odd tale about a fellow named Marlon who discovers a cache of space food, in the form of beefburgers which behave in very unexpected ways, including multiplying like the pesky Tribbles before a bewildered Enterprise crew.
At first, this “trope” is slightly comical and eccentric, but then it turns towards the darkly sinister by the end of the story. Right there is one of the many hallmarks of Chris’s work which I will miss; an acute ability to perceive the humour and the darkness in any situation, often seeing both at the same time, and expressing these in a very unforced and natural manner. Another quality which I cherish is here on page one – it concerns the details of rusty metal lockers and a lorry passing by (unseen) as Marlon attempts to prise them open. Fleeting events, moments of everyday life, deftly suggested with just a few strokes, yet somehow charged with significance; I want to say “existential”, but there’s something more graceful and evanescent going on here. I’ve always thought each Reynolds strip delineates a simple surface, where there’s something much more profound and unseen going on somewhere else, on the periphery of our perception.
‘The Animals’ War’ is, I’m fairly certain, quite new to me. It is an astonishing piece of work. In just 15 pages, Reynolds covers more ground, sets up more narrative layers and evokes more possibilities than most creators manage with a work that’s ten times as long. The drawing style has those heavy blocks of black so familiar to me from his 1990s work, but the edges are rougher. Here he seems to have been painting with a brush, and hewing beautiful panels out of heavy, thick lines and deep shadows. There’s a leaping “alien dog” at the top of page 13 which is a tiny miracle, almost like an expressionist woodcut or an abstract painting. To some, this painterly style may appear rough, crude even – but it’s this simplicity that makes it work. Though direct and clear, it also has a slightly distancing effect, keeping the characters, and the strange situation, slightly out of focus and out of reach. It’s entirely fitting for this poignant tale of a sad and displaced wanderer, whose very identity is uncertain as he travels from one mysterious desolation to another, barely able to connect with the world.
The story itself is indeed very strange. Fans of time-paradox stories may find much to enjoy in ‘The Animals’ War’, but the actual focus of the story has nothing to do with that device, and seems to lie elsewhere. It might be about an entertainer singing on stage (or is he a stand-up comedian?), it might be about the tensions of a failed relationship with a girl, it might be about a feud with the mysterious Jingler, or it might be about the war of the animals – an event which is never fully explained, yet lurks menacingly in the background, occasionally erupting into the action at unexpected points – cats, dogs, and farmyard beasts staring out from the page with cold, calculated menace. Are the animals waging war on mankind, or each other? And when The Jingler finally appears, a human with the head of a bull, does that mean the animals have won? “Animals aren’t human, but they are alive,” is all Reynolds will tell us. And then there’s the visit to the “alien site” near the start of the story, charged with atmosphere – almost every external scene takes place at night, and it’s always snowing. The alien itself, once again, exhibits that curious mix of comical and uncanny strangeness, speaking in absurdist riddles, and apparently not even in full control of this time travel mechanism they’ve brought into the world.
At the back of the book you can read the 1989 interview with Chris, which – like his stories – is recounted in a modest and matter-of-fact tone, yet also gives us glimpses of the unknown, the power of dreams, alternative worlds, unexplored avenues. Tom Oldham and Douglas Noble have done us a service by bringing us this splendid publication, with annotations and design by Noble which are entirely sympathetic to Chris’s work and vision. (Noble also published a number of late Reynolds works, including Prowl Car, sometimes under his Pocket Chiller imprint.) I am convinced Reynolds was not only a genius, but a true mystic of story-telling. I now return to my mood of bitter-sweet sadness, as I cherish what’s in these pages.