Through the Shattered Lens

Billing itself as a “micro graphic novella,” 2016’s Twin Bed was the first published cartooning from Paper Rocket Mini Comics proprietor Robyn Chapman in a good number of years, and there’s a fun air of formal experimentation to it throughout : the publication comes packaged in a paper “slipcase” illustrated to look like a quilt that the reader “uncovers” to get at the book itself, and the story is constructed as a series of roughly 100 single-panel-per-page images that feature a static background (that being a guy’s bedroom) with Chapman’s two unnamed protagonists positioned differently over/within said unchanging space. It’s a choice that no doubt saved the cartoonist a little bit of time when it came to drawing the thing, sure, but it’s also a bold and risky one — after all, if the narrative and the characters’ actions aren’t interesting, the whole thing could get pretty old pretty fast.