Anyone who longs for the days when The Perry Bible Fellowship updated regularly would do well to check out Jasper Rietman’s TRI/P. Much like Nicholas Gurewitch, Rietman plays with a classic newspaper strip style to create comics that defy our expectations, forcing us to shift our perspectives as we contemplate them.
TRI/P is structured very much as a gag strip: three panels ending in a punchline. But each strip is entirely silent, meaning that Rietman’s jokes are entirely visual. It’s clear that he has certain obsessions, which are explored through the strips: space travel, mythology, the relationship between art and the viewer. And sometimes the jokes aren’t easy; TRI/P asks for our contemplation as much as for our eyeballs.
Because the strips are silent, and sometimes require a moment or two of thought, they often feel less like self-contained jokes than the germs of larger ideas. TRI/P might simply make you laugh or scratch your head, but it might get you thinking about the worlds in which these comics might take place.
[TRI/P]
