Mascots

Mascots is a collection of vignettes and brief impressionistic scenes that concentrate on moments, characters, settings and ideas. Many of these vignettes are independent, but some are intruded upon by a cast of characters who wander throughout the book. Despite seemingly disparate parts, themes recur over and over in Mascots, and when taken together as a whole form a world that is strange, sad, funny and familiar. Formally, the book is made up of small, brightly colored drawings and paintings done on found book covers. Like Fenwick’s previous work, the acclaimed Hall of Best Knowledge (one of Booklist’s Top Ten Graphic Novels of 2008 ), Mascots is driven by lettering and type, part art and part comics. Mascots are exaggerated, ridiculous representatives, giving form to the abstract. They don’t give this form in a subtle way; they’re surreal magnifications, explosions of the thing they represent. The recurring characters in Mascots are like this, but so are the vignettes themselves. Each scene pushes past normal, exaggerating in order to highlight. In the world of Mascots, failure is everywhere. There is failure to connect, failure to communicate and failure to find meaning, but despite that, there are moments of hope, transcendence and even happy endings.