Two worlds, a futuristic dystopian city, and a dense, dreamy forest realm with a mysterious stone temple in it. Two reoccurring sigils, an eye inside of a 7-pointed star and a square inside of a square. And three women who seem to leak in and out of each other’s dreams. This is the ponderous world of Jeremy Baum’s debut graphic novel, Dörfler. You don’t so much read this book (the narrative is quite sparse) as dream along to it. I read it once, had no idea what had just happened (in a delightfully disorienting kind of way), read it again, and still had no clearer idea of the point. But whatever Jeremy Baum is selling, I bought it. This is a very lovely and compelling piece that rewards repeated visits without ever completely resolving itself. Like Luke Ramsey’s Intelligent Sentient?, this book is a hallucinogen in print. It is obviously meant as a kind of graphical meditation on time, memory, dream states, erotic revelry, and the mysteries of consciousness.
Baum doesn’t so much tell a linear tale as frantically point (through the artwork and dream logic narrative) into the dark corners of his world, towards things that seem wildly important but ultimately defy tidy explanation. David Lynch’s Eraserhead came to mind several times while floating through Jeremy Baum’s dreamtime. Peter Chung’s Æon Flux is even closer in both structure and intent to Dörfler. Like that wonderfully avant garde animated series, nearly every frame here seems to ooze equal amounts of sinister intent, dark eroticism, and high weirdness.
Baum’s obsessively detailed artwork is distinctly his own, achieved using pen and ink with meticulous marker shading and washes. The majority of the drawings are black and shades of gray with spare pops of a color, often blue. Or the red of spilled blood. Baum’s influences are a dizzying array of Möebius/Heavy Metal, D&D artwork, bombastic teen notebook art, fairy tales, Tarot and occult symbolism, pin-up and erotic art, and much more. All of the women in Dörfler look somewhat similar, and inexplicably, they all have big bunny teeth. And inside the forest dream world, everyone has elf ears.
So, why the name Dörfler? No idea. The main character’s name is Nola. Like everything thing else in this book, the title seems to point to some deeper meaning that the book is unconcerned in delivering. Sometimes, it’s best to just let a dream have its way with you.
See sample pages from this book at Wink.
Dörfler
by Jeremy Baum
Fantagraphics
2015, 104 pages, 8.3 x 12.3 x 0.7 inches