Renderwrx Productions

Lemon Styles by David King.

Available from Sparkplug Books

Review by Paul D Houston

Lemon Styles is a gorgeous comic, but largely indecipherable. Most of the comic is one or two page segments of seemingly off the top of the head musings attached to recurring characters in different settings. The narratives given to each character could be largely interchangeable amongst them and the different settings used as background only compound the problem of understanding what the hell is going on.

Everything is drawn in a period style set maybe 80 years ago where men wore suits everywhere and the train was the way to go. We never learn the names of the 4 reoccuring characters, we're never given a clue as to why the setting is early 20th century, and the dialogue while at times seems to fit the characters never makes much sense in the end. Are these thoughts and musings relevant to the story or just excerpts from the authors diary? I couldn't tell.

David King is an amazing illustrator/cartoonist. His style is classic enough, but alternative enough to garner a very large audience. I would compare him slightly to Al Columbia, but without the creepiness. He knows how to draw that's obvious, but what he meant by this book, I'm not really sure. Having not read any of his other work, I don't know if this is a consistent theme he uses or not. I'd really like to see him do something coherent at least just a little bit more than this book. He's got amazing potential I hope I see that potential achieved and soon. To fine comic art connoisseurs I would recommend this book!