04/10/2017
Very excited to offer E.A. Bethea's new comic BOOK OF DAZE for pre-order
http://dominobooks.org/bookofdaze.html
Book of Daze by E.A. Bethea is the kind of book DOMINO exists to publish. I first found Bethea's work lying around an apartment I was visiting. I picked it up and from that moment on, have never forgotten it. As I began to read Bethea's dense pages, I was overwhelmed by the straightforward emotional statements and startlingly precise mind behind the sequences. In one moment, Bethea's comics would acknowledge pain and disappointment, then turn to explain it away or justify things, only to finally confront the problem from a new angle. On the next page, simple pleasures would be celebrated, while later on in the book cynical (or semi-cynical---nothing is black and white in Bethea's re-filtering of life) approaches to anything and everything are endorsed.
Bethea, a simple interpretation might offer, chronicles the web of living in the world (and with Bethea's work, we are zeroed in on life in New York City, as this collection reveals itself as a truly local work of art about a city that paradoxically rarely receives its due---for every 1,000 works that gloss over the truth of the city, we have a book like this that has its eye on the reality of daily life in the five boroughs) with a heart and a mind sometimes at odds and sometimes simpatico. But Bethea gives us something more complex: at times, the work feels dead-pan as it shifts from exhilaration to resignation without a change in visual presentation, but it's here where we have a guide to the heart of Bethea's project. The often uniform nature of the pages and the highly non-uniform nature of what is contained within become a catalog of days or weeks or years. One page offers a subdued period in life, while the next (seemingly) similar page offers a day full of regret. Bethea talks about her work relating to cinema and editing. The shifts in emotion and carefully chosen images alongside highly precise language feel like walking into a film where the entire crew--from director to actor to gaffer---united in one mind to make something highly exquisite.
DOMINO is proud to publish this book, our ninth publication.
Book of Daze by E.A. Bethea is the kind of book DOMINO exists to publish. I first found Bethea's work lying around an apartment I was visiting. I picked it up and from that moment on, have never forgotten it. As I began to read Bethea's dense pages, I was overwhelmed by the straightforward emotional...
