Follow the Trail of Pennies to Voids
Pennies are small simple things. Most people consider them to be worthless due to their low monetary value. But some take the time to pick them up each time they see one and take it as a moment to revel in small unnoticed treasures that are generally ignored by the rest of the world, too busy to bother with such "trivial" things.
Shayna Marchese's "Voids" is about the small moments most ignore. The protagonist, Sara, is constantly picking up pennies even when chided by her more jaded counterparts. She claims that she thinks that she imagines "someone left them for me" as she retrieves a penny from in front of the place she has purchased a snack. The coin theme is repeated poetically through out the entire comic like a composer presenting theme and variation in a musical composition. Just as Elgar's Enigma Variations used one theme to tell about each of his friends in each variations, Marchese uses the repeated sequence of Sara retrieving a penny on the ground to develop the characters. Sara leaves her apartment and sees a man digging through her garbage. On the ground are some pennies and Sara dutifully picks them up and wonders who dropped them. Sara's boyfriend dumps her at a coffee shop. We don't see his exit, only that he has left the tip behind in coins and dollars. Sara's friend, Frances hurries off the bus and nearly trips over Sara as she picks up yet another penny. Frances sternly asks why she has to pick up every penny and then barely hears Sara's reply because she is looking at her cell phone.
This is not only a plot device, but also appears to be Marchese's storytelling philosophy. Her simple two-tone illustrations distill the image to its essence while rewarding the reader for looking for the artistic "pennies' in the image. My design professor in college called these places in a composition the "magic dust". In this sequence, we see architectural space sparsely rendered with the exception of the sign reflected in the mirror. The sign is the magic dust on the page. It's this attention to details and the exclusion of others that make this strip unique.
When William breaks up with Sara, his face is either outside of the frame, shown from the back or obscured by his coffee cup. We see his face finally when he begins to say, "I'm not sure how to say this. . . ". In this case the exclusion of details mimics the awkward avoidance of eye-contact that goes with most break ups.
I love the use of color in Voids. Black is used with great proficiency and most compositions are fifty-fifty black and white with one tone highlights. The first chapter starts with muted rose. Sara is in a relationship, but it's on the rocks. The chapter ends with William and Sara's break up and the next chapter starts with an ice blue depression- a crowded subway, a new apartment (which Sara doesn't leave except to go to work). Blue is the right color to use for a chapter about loss.
"Voids" shows great aptitude for storytelling with a knack for magic dust small moments-either in composition or plot. Marchese has left a trail of pennies for us to follow that go beyond the typical soap-opera slice-of-life that one could so easily fall into.
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