Paul Hornshemeier, The Three Paradoxes (Fantagraphics, 2007). $14.95, hardcover.

by Jared Gardner

Like many fans of Hornschemier’s earlier short work in Sequential and Forlorn Funnies (the latter of which has been collected recently in Let us Be Perfectly Clear and in his first graphic novel Mother, Come Home), I have been waiting a long time for this new book, which has been very slow in coming. And like a lot of us, I get grouchy when I have to wait a long time. Women suddenly don’t look so hot, food doesn’t taste so good, and graphic novels seem similarly hardly worth the agita. So I had to put down The Three Paradoxes for a while until my temper cooled, not wanting to break up with yet another long-term relationship in a fit of pique. On cool reflection, I am glad I counted to ten, as The Three Paradoxes is a smart and very handsome book (qualities not to be cast aside too quickly). And while Hornshemeier remains still too close to his parents (in this case Ware and Clowes), the makings of an independent, long-term relationship are as strong as ever.

Especially promising for me is the fact that Hornshemeier is going to be turning more attention in the coming month to the short work featured in Let Us Be Perfectly Clear, reviving his Forlorn Funnies for a new run from Fantagraphics. Because in a sense, it is the short form work contained within The Three Paradoxes that is the best. Hornshemeier has developed into a remarkable draftsman, and his ability to sample different styles is a pleasure to behold – nowhere more than in his dead-on parody of the Dell Four-Color  Comics from the 1950s. Here Hornshemeier tells the story of Zeno and his amazing paradoxes, as Zeno attempts to defend his (and his lover Paraminides’) monism and refusal of the concept of temporal change through a serious of ingenious paradoxes. The pages are a brilliant set piece and could stand on their own as a piece in a larger collection of short pieces, and part of me wishes that this is where I encountered Hornshemeier’s Zeno. In The Three Paradoxes it serves as a somewhat hyperbolic metaphor for our autobiographical protagonist’s struggles to make sense of his future (new city, new girlfriend, new career) against his past (solid, small town Ohio, solid small-time parents, painful childhood memories). His childhood memories are told in a poorly printed 1960s Sunday comicstrip style, while his adult life is drawn with the impeccable lines of father Clowes and the increasingly imitable palette of father Ware. Hornshemeier uses a fourth style in the pages his autobiographical self is struggling with on his parents’ kitchen table – a weak-kneed cutesy parable about Paul and his Magic Pencil, which understandably is going nowhere for our hero.

There is great pleasure found in this book’s virtuoso displays, and as a kind of coming-of-age book for Hornshemeier announcing how far his has developed as a cartoonist from his earlier Sequential work, the book succeeds in every way. But to return to my earlier overbearing date-metaphor, there is a bit of the Sensitive Sleaze about the book that makes me willing to take it home but unlikely to introduce it to my mother: superficially profound, a bit too fond of its grooming and proud of its clothes. The book was worth the wait, but now I feel that I am waiting once again for the great book that I know that Hornshemeier has in him. Hey, he’s cute. I’m willing to sit him out.