Three human-like animals set off on a journey at dawn. Nothing is known about them. It does not seem like they are friends, but rather brought together by fate in order to reach their destination. The road is dangerous and they can help each other. When they reach the end of their journey, they seem disappointed – the reality does not meet their expectations. They do not yet know that this end is just the beginning.
The bear is despotic and violent, the cat’s an alcoholic and the rabbit smokes one cigarette after another – they resemble the fairy-tale heroes of La Fontaine. Here, however, the focus is the negative characteristics of modern man. The end is deprived of delusion, and the reader has the choice to interpret it in terms of gnosis or agnosticism. The construction of the characters and the finale of their story allow the comic to enter a parallel world, where everything is à rebours.
Rostocka plays with the narrative patterns of fairy tales and mythology – distorting and reinterpreting their common themes. The sacred thing for which those forms seek is deconstructed, and the gift misunderstood and rejected. The logic and sequence of events – and the presentation of the world itself – clearly recall the dream-like construction and gesture towards the eerie rabbit in Richard Kelly’s film Donnie Darko. This poetics of sleep is also, unfortunately, a clever ruse that masks and legitimizes shortcomings in the script.
The comic is almost entirely nonverbal, the narrative weight carried largely by the graphics. Rostocka is able to tell the story quite well through images, at times supplemented by pictograms depicting speech. The comic was painted in gouache on A3 white cardboard. Rostocka also used crayons, and often applied watercolors to the sketches and small final details. She creates a world that is dark, mysterious and hostile. Paradoxically it draws on a fear of the unknown and the promise of adventure – for in each successive frame, anything can happen.
The work on the comic lasted for two years. Rostocka spent most of her childhood in France, where her father worked as a nuclear physicist. Searching for a publisher there seemed a natural move. She is now working on an album, End of July, which she describes as a drama. In the queue is also another finished script by her husband.
Author: Łukasz Chmielewski
Bear, Cat and Rabbit
Drawings by Maria Rostocka, script by Michał Rostocki
Kultura Gniewu 2012
Translated by Alena Aniskiewicz 25.06.2013