Still All Wet, in a Good way...

that PBS painter, the late Bob Ross taught me all about the happy accident. one such occurrence lead me to another Ross, Campbell that is, when i came across his southern-fried zombie OGN The Abandoned back in 2006. seems the spirit of Ross has struck one mo' 'gin... today browsing in Borders, i came across Ross's (Campbell that is) new OGN, Water Baby, the story of raw-dog surfer girl Brody for whom all was well , until a giant Shark chomped off her leg. a year later, Brody is still adjusting to her artificial limb and trippy shark-infested nightmares when her skeevy ex-boyfriend shows up and hyjinx ensue.
Water Baby has the easy storytelling and flawless drawing style that hooked me on Campbell's work in the first place. unlike most slice-of-life books that depend on kwirky art styles, the Ross-o-verse titles The Abandoned, Wet Moon, and now Water Baby (because you can sense that these characters live on the same highway up and down the east coast) lean on one of the most naturalistic and classical art styles you'll see anywhere. these cartoon-cool characters are all drawn with a sense of real-world gravity and texture, without falling into that boring imitation-of-life that ruins so many "photo-realistic" artists, who ultimately lose the contest of being compared with the real world. Ross isn't imitating the world, he's creating one where hot, weird girls of all shapes and sizes rule!
then of course, he combines that with a child-like ability to imagine... you'll geek over the gory, eerie mutant shark imagery from Brody's nightmares!
anyways, while Water Baby is not quite as good as his other books, i bet many readers will find it more palatable and mainstream than Wet Moon, and not quite as gory as The Abandoned. I definitely recommend that you cop Water Baby (DC/Minx), or at least go loiter at a local bookstore and check it out!
holla!
samax.
-gM