I’m trying, I really am, but Henriette Valium’s 2016 Conundrum Press-published, oversized (9 x 14, to be specific), hardback collection, The Palace Of Champions, confounds me at every turn. And yes, I do mean that as a compliment.

For one thing, it’s essentially impossible to discern where one strip “ends” in this book and another “begins,” but maybe that doesn’t really matter, because it’s not exactly easy to puzzle out what’s even happening in any given panel, let alone on an entire page. Valium’s illustrations are loaded with information — hell, worlds of it — and seem to operate outside the realms of time, space, and logic, to the point where they may even render such concepts outmoded at best, if not downright meaningless. Assaulting your eyeballs and sense of reason with equal gusto, Valium takes elements of old-school underground comix “ugly art,” occult and Kabbalistic diagrams, and…