J + K is out Feb. 5, 2020. — **J + K** is out Feb. 5, 2020.

By Zack Quaintance — The first quality one is likely to notice within the new Fantagraphics book J + K by John Pham is the work’s striking aesthetic. Printed in three fluorescent pantone inks, J + K achieves a singular palette that is at once washed out and pastel-futurist. This pairs quite well with Pham’s linework, which itself walks a rarely-seen line between simple character cartooning and casual geometric patterning, evocative of an artful extrapolation of a classic video game. I’m entirely unsure whether I’ve ever seen a book quite like J + K, purely on the surface visual level.

The effect of this singularity is that the book commands a reader’s attention from its first page. The visual tone is essentially a statement by Pham that there is something new at work here. It’s an ambitious promise made, and it’s a promise the book delivers well. The other wise choice Pham makes right off is to really heighten the sense that one is experiencing something wholly novel by integrating satirical throwback advertisements. J + K runs 150-or-so pages of vignettes, and after those vignettes is where these faux advertisements show up, serving as interludes between new stories. It lends the already-ethereal reading experience a heightened sense of creative control. Pham is in full command of his ample talents, using the to forge an intact world to pursue both stories and one-page consumerist encapsulations of those stories. Or in a word, J + K is cool.

I found the story underneath the aesthetic and palate and satirical bookends to be moving as well. Fans of another Fantagraphics-publisher cartoonist, Simon Hanselmann, will find a somewhat familiar set of character dynamics in this book as those in his excellent Megg, Mogg, & Owl series. In short, J + K are a pair of sardonic best friends, occupying a space on the periphery of a society that often vexes them. They share an innate understanding that the world has perhaps reached a place where it is not set up for the success of the masses, and it’s especially not set up to facilitate an ease of life for those on the margins. At the sametime, they have a friend who is perhaps a bit more conventional and without question far less self-aware in Eggy, who fights for normalcy without registering the impossible odds or prohibitive difficulty of the world. This creates a contrast that serves these vignettes well.

One of the major themes throughout this series of short stories is a feeling of wanting to change one’s circumstances but being unable to find a viable route to do so. Every character in this book wants something — romance, income, fitness, so on — but there’s rarely a viable route to achieve these things, or to even start making a modicum of progress. It just feels like every path available to J + K and those around them is such a small step that one can hardly fault them for doing nothing at all. It’s all quite melancholy. At the same time, however, there’s a real shared affection between the book’s central duo, and I was personally left with a sense of how vital it is to find support and understanding from the like-minded folks in our life even as circumstances become dire around us, and I struggle to think of any emotional core more appropriate for this odd year of 2020.

J + K
Writer/Artist: John Pham
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Printed in three fluorescent pantone inks, J&K will be one of the most unique and eye-popping releases of 2020, by one of the most distinctive and talented cartoonists working today. This colorful original graphic novel follows lovable losers Jay and Kay, whose quotidian adventures are often hilarious and occasionally poignant, calling to mind everything from Peanuts to Seinfeld.
Available Now: Via Fantagraphics website!
Online: Get it now!
Release Date: Feb. 5, 2020

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.