Reviewed by Bill Boichel.
Risographed in purple ink on pink paper, with a hand screened two color cover printed on heavy cream cardstock, this is a tale found in “the museum of epics, in the city of memory.” We are led to it by our intrepid guide, Lale Westvind, who takes us there through a very labyrinthine path indeed, one which crosses cities, continents, oceans and interstellar space – as well as psychic dimensions – and employs all manner of vehicular transport from race car to star ship, from surf board to monster truck, from beast back to energy wave: whether it’s running from or running to, it’s all about getting from point A to point B, whatever it takes. The actual vehicles here, however, are symbol and metaphor, rendered in a turbo-charged, quasi-draughtsman-like manner that is stylistically located in the vicinity of the somewhat obscure neighborhood of C.F. meets Fletcher Hanks.
The tale related in “Double-Head; Torvar & Riparna” is one of two souls meeting on the spirit plane while their corporal beings remain trapped in the material world, the struggles their meeting entail, and their search for refuge and, ultimately, sanctuary. The challenge is how to convey the immaterial aspects of their spiritual correspondence onto the material plane so that it may be communicated here – and, crucially, perhaps enable readers to be transported by this communication to the spirit plane in turn, and share in this archetypal epic in the city of memory and so engage in a bit of spiritual correspondence themselves.
Readers will of necessity need to actively participate in this process in order to maintain the necessary ideational thrust to meet the required psychic escape velocity to achieve spiritual lift-off.