Abstract comics work often exists to allow us to find our own meaning in its pages. By definition it is not about elaboration; it provokes and evokes emotional responses, disseminates ideas without clarifying them, and asks us to simply experience its narrative flow as much as we interpret it. 2024 Broken Frontier ‘Six to Watch’ artist Zhenyi Zheng’s Summer Maze is an excellent example of this. A short comics zine where authorial intent is merely a springboard for audience interaction.
It’s a comic that seeks to examine ideas of truth; of the boundaries between reality and that which lies beyond it. Across pages and grid-like panels we follow a strange red dot as it comes in and out of focus, as the environment seems to shift back and forth from pure abstraction to a garden on a summer day. Throughout, Zheng guides our eye through this idea of the conceptual impinging on the actual (though which is which is another matter) by constantly changing page layouts, mixing and matching two sequential sequences, and playing with our idea of between-the-panels comprehension by essentially eliminating that space.
Where the story eventually takes us is a destination that may be more prosaic than we originally imagined as we are again asked to question everything we have been observing before; a whole other level of possible reality suddenly overlaid on previous pages. This is exactly the kind of work you might expect to see in the pages of a mini kuš! comic or perhaps Fantagraphics’ NOW anthology.
Summer Maze is a fine example of Zheng’s willingness to interrogate our easy definitions of what comics are. If formal experimentation is your thing you need to investigate her work further.
Zhenyi Zheng (W/A) • Self-published, £8.00
Review by Andy Oliver
