Art and Story by Jeff Nicholson
Lettered by Chad Woody
"Cat Lover" lettered by Jeff Nicholson
Published by Bad Habit.
. . .
"The jar was kept full. I could easily work on my projects in this state of increasing drunkenness, by doing tasks of decreasing complexity as the night progressed."
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
A nameless man works in a somewhat creative office job where an elaborate series of small, see-through tunnels allow gerbils to scurry about in view of the workers. These gerbils are described as empaths which absorb emotions from the employees. Our nameless man trained as an artist in college, and now he gets to draw advertising illustrations for products that he thinks are scams. His bosses like to stab taps into his body at regular intervals to drain his creative juices. He hates it with every last quantum of his being. But he must work to survive.
So, the man contrives various coping mechanisms. One of the first is a helmet jar he keeps constantly full of beer which he learns to simultaneously breathe-drink, which is both impressive and perplexing in equal measure. Another handy coping technique consists of cultivating an incandescent hatred of a go-getter true believer office mate.
There's a female co-worker he attempts to date. He conceives elaborate scenarios wherein he leaves to pursue projects of purest art only to end up coming back down to reality, back to work. He must work to survive, y'know.
But, when he moves toward making art, or even just exploring the world beyond his office, however bleak it is at times, he does get a lift. In those brief moments of escape, he seems to get into a less destructive headspace . . . but then he comes crashing back down into his helljob.
He bears witness to his co-workers' dysfunctional relationships and masks of normalcy. Conveniently, everyone at the company lives in a single house provided by their corporate masters in a walkable, if soulless, post-industrial neighborhood. This allows everyone to get deep into each other's business. Hooray.
He reflects bitterly upon his collegiate days of carefree fucking and hope for the future. He indulges in misogynistic fantasies of superiority, of putting all those shallow females in their place. Yeah, it gets gross inside that helmet jar.
People wear masks with only eyeholes, a hint of nose, and no mouth. Or, you know, they're not wearing masks, and that's just their actual faces. It could be either or both or neither. Yes, it's bizarre. But otherwise, they look like people you would see outside of a comic book. No superheroic physiques in sight. Some people manifest mouths, usually to smile grotesquely or spout business/marketing nostrums, but there's one old guy who seems kinda sincere who exhorts the nameless protagonist to explore a ruined nuclear silo. I'm not sure, but there seems to be some kind of an ideological divide between the mouthless and the mouthy, something to do with those that speak to maintain a lie, and those that stay silent to hide the truth. Or something.
Our nameless guy gets into a scary headspace. He gets blackout drunk. But then he awakes one day to declare his recent past a lie, and now his real life begins. But this, too, ends up a lie.
He finds a gun, just lying out in the street. He uses up all the bullets to shoot stray cats and dogs, but saves one last bullet. Is it for himself, or an Enemy? Is he Enemy?
This is all in black and white with a copious amount of text that consists of an ongoing internal monologue that veers from funny to scary, sometimes within a single sentence. He tells his story episodically, and sometimes a new episode will completely reframe what he has told up until now. Early on, he seems to struggle with depression, alcohol abuse, and disillusionment. Later, a critter called the Gerbil King is revealed to be his secret master. His life is complicated.
Are the surrealistic horrors meant to be taken as literally real, or are they metaphors? I guess the correct answer is always supposed to be that it's a metaphor, since much of what happens here is so implausible. Like, how do you breathe beer? Sounds like a pitch for a Waterworld sequel.
Through the Habitrails is a funny, scary, and compellingly bizarre episodic comic book novella. Each chapter serves up a standalone slice of weirdness, but taken together they constitute a devastating portrait of work/life dysfunction.
One episode in particular-"The Infiltrator"-is basically a prophesy of social media, and while reading it the hairs on the back of my neck did indeed stand up, but maybe that’s just me.
Believe it or not, it doesn't end as badly as you would think . . . unless that's just another lie from our nameless protagonist who built himself a beer-breathing helmet jar under orders from the Gerbil King.
Hooray.
