THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2024! What first strikes the reader about the opening issue of Karl Christian Krumpholz’s In the City is the immediacy with which he immerses us in the environs of the titular location. It has, perhaps, become something of a trite observation in comics commentary to speak of cities becoming supporting characters in themselves but in In the City we are beyond cliché. Krumpholz does something quite Eisner-esque here, creating surroundings that feel like they are populated with side-narratives just lurking off-panel; that we are seeing just a fraction of the tales being told in these streets, as an on-page Krumpholz and his partner Kelly meander through the lives of its other inhabitants.
This is largely the tempo of all three books in the series to date with the third and most recent instalment perhaps becoming more dialogue-led than its predecessors. One of the great joys of In the City is that it is more character-led than narrative-driven. It’s simply about the city as a kind of organism in its own right; a constantly evolving being, always in a state of flux. We discover its crooks and nannies and the colourful people who reside there through Karl and Kelly as they take us on informal tours of its bars and night life.
Part Three – making its UK festival debut at Thought Bubble – picks up from the second issue with the couple having to take their apparently permanently inebriated, bar-crawling friend Den home in a worrying state of intoxication. More nocturnal events ensue as characters new and recurring take their vignette-style moments in the spotlight. These cameos provide wonderful character moments over all three parts; the guy whose uncle was a Rod Stewart impersonator; the drunk who opines that in the US you can be anything you want to be as long as it’s not a “commie”; the participants in a game of “chicken shit bingo; the old man with the broken digit who everyone erroneously believes is giving them the finger; and the mugger with a socially awkward choice of victims.
Peppered with quotes from the literary and the famous In the City is a gorgeously illustrated affair, somehow finding moments of beauty and inspiration amongst the grimy, sprawling city landscape. Often so much is said without words here, especially in those intricately realised bar scenes. Inset images are used against the backdrop of more expansive views of the city to create a sense of place and motion while Krumpholz’s cartooning style somehow manages to combine caricature and skewed geographical dimensions with a feeling of urban familiarity and realism.
As slice-of-life work it’s difficult to tell how much of this is direct autobiography and how much is a kind of “enhanced” form of anecdotal storytelling. What isn’t in doubt is the sheer humanity of In the City and that’s something that this series has in spades.
Karl Christian Krumpholz (W/A) • Self-published
Review by Andy Oliver
Karl Christian Krumpholz will be at Table C36a in the Redshirt Hall at Thought Bubble.
Thought Bubble 2024 runs from November 11th-17th with the convention weekend taking place on the 16th-17th. More details on the Thought Bubble site here.
Read all our Thought Bubble 2024 coverage so far in one place here.
Art by Rocío Arreola Mendoza
