Ex Libris
by Matt Madden
2021
Matt Madden is like a one-man graphic novel Ouilipo movement, and Ex Libris is like his version of If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, although I think Madden is actually more ambitious here.
In If on a Winter's Night, Calvino writes a dozen short stories in the style of other authors, each one allegedly the first chapter of a complete book, and links them with a framing story about a reader who's trying to finish at least one of these books, but keeps being thwarted by misprinted editions that never have the right second chapter, only the new first chapter of the next book in the chase.
In Ex Libris, Madden does give us excerpts of a couple dozen fake comics, each in a different style, but he uses them differently. The overarching story here is about a reader in a rented bedroom, recovering from a bad breakup, and feeling trapped. The rented room has a full bookshelf - but all of the books on it are comics. What's more, the reader sometimes feels like the comics are speaking directly to them (they are!) and that they sometimes contain eerie parallels to the events leading to the breakup (they do!) The reader gradually realizes that they're not just metaphorically trapped in a bad situation, they're literally trapped in a comic. And then they realize a way to escape.
It's hard for a review to do this one justice, because what Madden is doing is easy to understand as you read it, but hard to describe or give examples of. There's a recurring visual spiral motif that seems to represent the sense of being drawn into something. The comics-within-the-comic are full of characters who also feel trapped and are also trying to escape. The scenes where the comic panels the narrator is looking at 'talk back' to the narrator's internal monologue are probably my favorite.
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