Tim Hensley (1)

Wally Gropius is a comics tour-de-force, successfully mining all sorts of strange cliches endemic to the medium but infusing them with powerful new strengths their originators could never have foreseen. Tim Hensley has obviously delved deeply into the world of "grocery store rack" comic books (think Archie Comics, etc) and their simple but bold graphics, but he takes it all one step further in terms of representing three-dimensional space in the two dimensions of the printed page, with show more background objects hovering at strange angles and giving the setting of each frame an off-kilter feeling that mirrors the unique narrative. Whatever else it may be, Wally Gropius is highly original, a sort of jazz improvisation on the well-worn norms of the comics medium. In other words, it's one of the best graphic novels to come along in years. show less