Snapshot #3
Jeff LeVine
Reviewed by Darren Hick

If you've read any of my previous reviews, whether online or in the print version of the Journal, you may have started to glimpse a flicker of insight into my leanings in comics. Although neither a McCloudian nor an R.C. Harvian, I possess a certain vested interest in creators who negotiate the comics form with homemade maps -- cartoonists who continue to explore the medium, whether by design or by trial-and-error, in both its formalist and narrative aspects. As such, it's always a pleasure to be introduced to the work of a creator who fits that bill as snugly as Jeff Levine.

Snapshot #3, alternating between pages of straight text and , aptly enough, captioned photo-reference drawings, suggests and fully maintains the feel of a personal diary or journal. So much moreso than the vast majority of the autobiographical comics currently flooding the market, LeVine's work sustains a tone of reflection and confession through its train-of-thought narration and scrapbook form. By confession, however, I do not mean to imply that you should expect a Chester Brown or Ariel Shrag type of storyline. Rather, though the first-person epistolary structure does indeed lay out the happenings in the narrator's life, it's the personal, existential self-reflection that marks the work as exceptional.

One doesn't come away from the work wondering what will happen to the narrator in Snapshot #4. That's not the point. Instead, one comes away from the work with a feeling sympathetic to the narrator. The storyline, which chronicles the narrator as he returns to his hometown and begins to settle into contentment with a new life, is, I believe, secondary to the impression portrayed through that storyline. A blending of equal parts narrative recounting and illustrative observation, the text pieces are fluid and voyeuristic. When the work switches to pages of captioned snapshots, though, the effect is choppy, yet at the same time sustains a graceful, drifting feel, like waking for moments at a time on a long, sleepy car ride. It's almost like a haiku in its impression.

Is it actually autobiographical? In the end, it doesn't particularly matter. The work is powerful in all its aspects. And that LeVine is able to accomplish this while experimenting with form is all the more impressive. Whether the narrator is, in fact, LeVine himself, is essentially irrelevant -- the reader is pulled into the story regardless of who is being purported to write it.

Snapshot #3 is available for $1.00 direct from Jeff LeVine, 4956 Kester Ave. Apt. #6, Sherman Oaks, CA 91403.